How to improve writing (no. 133)

Benjamin Dreyer posted a sentence published in The New York Times (title: “oh dear”) and invited readers to have at it. The subject is David Hockney:

And then his wordly peregrinations, culminating in his arrival in Los Angeles, when he quickly helped we longtime residents to start seeing again, as if for the first time: the pools, the palms, the sprinklers, the building facades, the sky and that light !

“Oh dear” is right. Here’s a possible revision, letting the sentence fragment stand:

And then his wide-ranging travels, which brought him to Los Angeles, where his work showed longtime residents their city anew: the pools, the palms, the sprinklers, the buildings, the sky, the light.

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[This post is no. 133 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose. As of this morning, “wordly” stands uncorrected in the Times article. If the writer insists on putting himself in the sentence, add “like me” after “residents.”]