A Lighthearted Story Behind (No Pun Intended) the Little House Behind the Other House

Of Citrus Flowers, Palm Frawns, a Proton Beam, and a Portable Restroom–A Brief Essay….

Walking along Anderson Street to the job site after taking photos of the project from the P4 parking structure, I looked up just in time to snap this photo. During this project, I have done my best to avoid taking pictures of the portable restrooms clustered around the job site. From time-to-time delivery trucks bring more portable restroom to the site. Sometimes the positioning of such facilities make it difficult or impossible to take that “perfect photograph.” Depending on the number of workers the number of portable facilities increase.

As the steel floors began to rise, portable restrooms are seen taking a lone cable ride up to one of the levels. When this event ever occurs, I have wondered if anyone bothered to check inside. This particular photographic opportunity presented itself in a way that I could not resist; and so, I snapped the shutter-release button. Now that the topic has been broached, I think that the can shouldn’t be kicked down the road any longer and that we should deal with the subject head on. For public health and safety reason, a portable restroom and small transportable wash station are among the first pieces of equipment delivered once a safety fence has secured the job site. As the project began, I recall one facility at the site. As the workforce increased, the number of facilities grew proportionally. Believe it or not, there is an OSHA regulation that dictates, based on the number of employees, the minimum number of facilities required on the site. For example: “The standard in §1926.51(c)(1) requires that a specified minimum number of toilets be ‘provided’ based on the number of employees.” The following table (D-1)  represents the formula for calculating the minimum number of facilities:

Courtesy of the United States Department of Labor  1926.51  1926.51(c)(1); May 17, 2006.

The subject of the above photograph was captured in all of its glory, as it slowly rose by cable to the sixth floor; bookend by the “sbX” rapid bus lines metal sculpture (lower right), and the frawns of a stately palm tree (lower left). At the upper left an ironworker is seemingly oblivious to the overhead load coming his way.

Perhaps thousands have walked or driven past the sculpture at the lower right and never gave it a second thought. Or maybe they thought that “whatever this thing is” it is atypical to the theme of the campus. To the contrary: this sculpture is a metaphor for what the Loma Linda University campus once was and now is. When founders of the former college purchased the property, much of the acreage surrounding the hill (mound) were orchards, citrus groves, gardens, and farmland. Up to the early 1960s, the area–from Prospect Avenue to the north, Barton Road to the south, Anderson Street to the east, and San Bernardino Avenue (now Campus Street) to the west– on which the current hospitals stand and where the new hospitals are being built–was a citrus groves, which were ripped out to make ready for the construction of the towers of healing. Returning to the sculpture: The flower represents an orange blossom: An orange blossom from the past. In the center, rather than depicting the stamen and pistil, the artist sculptured proton beams coming out of the center of the flower. The proton beams generated by a proton accelerator represent an advanced treatment modality: A proton beam a treatment modality provided on the Loma Linda University campus exemplifies the present.

On August 31, 2009, “The Sun” published an article appeared entitled: “Artists to create designs for bus project,” which was written under the byline of Stephen Wall, a writer from the Riverside Press-Enterprise. Mr. Wall wrote:

“Juan and Patty Navarrete of Taos, N.M., [were] one of the nine artists or artist teams [to] develop artistic concepts for the nearly 16-mile bus route….

“The three stations in Loma Linda will have different identifying sculptural elements about 25 feet tall. They include a large American Flag at one location, a key sculpture with a photo collage of Loma Linda’s past at another and an orange blossom with proton beams emerging from the flower at the third location.

“Juan and Patricia Navarrete have received awards and recognitions [sic] for several public art projects around the country. The couple created the ‘Ice Crystals’ hanging sculpture in Fort Collins, Colo., and ‘Petroglyph Medallions,’ an installation of 100 copper lamppole [sic] sculptures along a 3-mile  stretch in downtown Phoenix.

“‘We want people to get a sense of history and feel invigorated by just being there,’ Patricia Navarrete said of the Loma Linda art concept.”

And so: This short essay on citrus flowers, palm frawns, and a proton beam worked out to be perfect segue into the subject of portable restrooms at the LLU Campus Transformation Project site.

For more information about the Loma Linda University Proton Treatment Center click on the following links:

Center: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/15330346070060S411

https://protons.com/