The murals of Lompoc

A tiny town named Lompoc

Lompoc, pronounced /ˈlɒmpoʊk/ LOM-poke, is a city in Santa Barbara County on California's Central Coast. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 43,834. About half of Santa Barbara, which was 87,533 in the census of 2022. Santa Barbara itself is considered a small town. Compare it to the population of San Francisco 808,437 (2022)or San Jose 971,233 (2022)

For a visual comparison, here is a horizontal graph for you

History

The area has a rich history, with the Chumash people inhabiting it for thousands of years. They named the area "lumpo'o̥," which translates to "in the cheeks" in the local Purisimeño language. The Spanish later renamed it Lompoco after Fermín de Lasuén established Misión La Purísima in 1787. In 1837, the land became part of the Rancho Lompoc land grant under Mexican rule. After the U.S. took control of California, several settlers acquired land in the Lompoc Valley, including William Welles Hollister. Hollister sold the land surrounding the mission to the Lompoc Valley Land Company, which established a temperance colony. Lompoc was officially incorporated as a city in 1888.

Today, Lompoc is often seen as a military town due to its proximity to Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The tiny, sleepy town has numerous vibrant, large-scale murals adorning the walls of buildings throughout its downtown area. These murals depict various themes, from historical events, cultural heritage, and community pride to natural landscapes, local flora, and fauna. The Lompoc Mural Society has played a significant role in commissioning and preserving these artworks, contributing to the city's identity and attracting visitors interested in public art and cultural exploration.

I learned about this charming little town while searching for options to entertain my in-laws near Santa Barbara. I love murals. My MIL enjoys both flowers and art. So, I felt it would be a unique experience we both would enjoy.

Unfortunately, the flowers grown commercially in the fields peaked at the end of June this year.  I found a pamphlet for the Lompoc Flower Festival that happened on June 20-23, 2024. The Festival featured carnival rides and games, arts and craft exhibitors, food booths, and commercial vendors - all fun things. But we were a tad late. Here is a glimpse of what we saw- 

Delphinium growing in the flower fields for commercial use. 

It is next to a medium-security federal prison. The prisoners are known to have been involved in agricultural work historically, though I could not find any current data on it. They are given vocational training in hydroponics and construction

This mural interested me because octopuses are often considered "aliens" due to their unique and otherworldly characteristics, which set them apart from most other life forms on Earth. 

(If you are interested, click here to read why they are thought of this way.)

Of course, I had to take a picture of the mural celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Landsat satellite program, which consists of a series of Earth-observing satellite missions, jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). My husband was a part of the Landsat science team during his stint at NASA Ames.

A field of canna lilies

I absolutely loved this flora and fauna of Lompoc valley mural

There were some fun ones like this T-Rex 

And some historic ones like this

A little unusual in the corner here

But the one that made me pause the most was this one, which is obviously about a serviceman who had died in the field.  

A United States flag is provided to drape the casket or accompany the urn of a deceased Veteran who served honorably in the U.S. Armed Forces. It is furnished to honor the memory of a Veteran's military service to their country.

Aliens don't come from Mars

This is dedicated to anon who called me "pretentious" in a previous post. :)
Nothing to do with the context of his comment, the word triggered a chain of thoughts and rambling followed :D

Somewhere, at some point of our lives, we have all felt like an outsider.
In junior high (read: Standard 7-10), I was a nerd who preferred to hide behind a book and a pair of specs, acted aggressive (read: used to beat up boys badly) to cloak my emotional vulnerability , and was every teacher's favorite student. Though my grades often incited awe among my peers, I'd have traded them anytime to be "cooler". That doesn't mean I shunned extra curricular activities. I had been in the coveted ( What can be the aspiration of a school goer? Not to be a CEO since standard IV ! ) school choir for consecutive six years, was the preferred choice for judges in any extempore or recitation competition, was unanimously voted the CR for 6 years of class (until in Standard 10 where I resigned before my Tests).

Yet, I lost the first position of school final recitation competition to someone who was three years senior to me and had much better voice modulation and was trained for it. Became the second preference for the role of Portia for the school play , even though I delivered the lines better- because one of them looked way better than I did ( the directors - Madam Sharifa Samsuddin and Sir Mohan Nainan were divided in opinion because Ma'm claimed assertiveness and not pulchritude should be the criterion for selecting the character. It never really took off the ground after that) Lost the school elections to someone who was more social than I was, even though my speech was not prepared and I said what I said in the assembly ad lib and earned the loudest applause. Came close second in my Hindustani Classical Vocal exams. And yeah, never got around to tell my school crush that I really liked him.

College was different though, with more social opportunities than I could handle and my grades in second year suffered for that. More people had crush on me than I even knew and books were meant to be opened only a month before the exams. My school mates would remember me as "that Amazon", or "the studious". My college mates would beg to differ and say "happening". Work life was completely dissimilar. With 12-14 hours at job, there was hardly any social life and my team grew to be like my family. Maybe I just got lucky with my first job.

Before I start sounding like a 60 year old woman who's scripting her memoirs, I want to say that those little failures, when my best was simply not enough, got me acquainted with a simple fact of life. There will always be someone who does something better than I do. So, what do I do when I detect something I wish was my characteristic trait too? What any rational person willing to grow will. I imbibe it.

My closest peer group right now is my Management 650 team and I'd like to point out a positive aspect I adore in each one of those five people . Gordon is very enthusiastic when it comes to presentations. Though Prof Novak ( who is usually difficult to please) said that both him and I have (1)very good voice and (2)excellent eye contact, I think he scores way above me in his body language, which is very animated. Vanessa is a bundle of energy and it's almost contagious. Wendy is talented at origami. Matt speaks little, but talks a lot of sense. Mike is THE techie of the group. A few others include Katie with a wicked sense of humor and Chris with an eerie ability to get along with anybody. My friends outside my campus include SG who never complains, SK who is an empathetic listener (thanks buddy), LM who can make you feel like she's your best friend the very first time you meet her, KM who can look at ANYTHING objectively and dispassionately. Now, I'd like to cultivate or improve upon some of these traits in some degree for the rest of my life and not ingurgitate to throw out later.

They might be friends, acquaintances or mere strangers I have come across, who call me by different names or call me by my name differently. But at the basic human level, we are all the same with some dreams, aspirations, fears we share with only ourselves or very close ones. We just need to reach out to know that. Does it make us pretentious? Because we are role playing? I don't think so. We are evolving constantly. I seriously don't know what my emotional, financial, psychological, social, physical ( add as many adjectives with the suffix -al as you want ) needs are going to be after two years. But I have some idea. I am trying to work on that. And I have a long way to go.

**Life is too short to be conceited.

** Attributed to PK , someone I had rejected some 3/4 years ago, because I thought he didn't look good enough. He might still be somewhere in US, but I haven't talked to him ever since. Wish he knew, in that one sentence he had taught me one of the most valuable lessons of life. Humility.