Call Me Fed Up In the classic Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth” the band sang, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Now, I don’t know if whatever’s happening is only happening at my house or throughout the entire Crescenta Valley. It could be happening all across L.A. County and […]
Adds Input to Reader’s Observation This is in response to a letter published in the Aug. 30 issue of the CV Weekly by Mr. Tony Bowling. His letter was pointing out that the lawsuit being filed against the Glendale Unified School District by the parents of Drew Ferraro was not the correct target and that […]
Kimball Sanitarium Part 4 – Anti-Sanitarium Movement As I’ve documented in previous columns, the sanitarium business was booming in the Crescenta Valley in the late ’20s. One old-timer stated that at that period there were some 20 different sanitariums locally for the aged, for lung diseases and for mental illness. During that same period […]
Missing Meatball Already Way back when I was a kid, we used to sing a parody version of “On Top Of Old Smokey” that went something like: “On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese; I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed!” I know it’s an odd connection, but last week I couldn’t help […]
The Con is On My father-in-law called while I was working at my desk the other day. He asked if I knew that one of my sons (the one attending college in Missoula, Mont.) had been in a car accident in British Columbia and was now in jail. Wait. What? I was vaguely aware of […]
Sanitariums in CV – Kimball Sanitarium Part 2 Last week I wrote about the background of Merritt Kimball, owner of Kimball Sanitarium. He had been raised in the fledgling mental health industry in Southern California, his father having been head of the first state run insane asylum in San Bernardino, and later a large private […]
Reflections by College Bound CVer Part II Now that I’m back from my last beach trip for a while, I am ready to write the final goodbye letter. First, thank you to the Leum family for letting my little sister and I stay with them at the beach and for teaching us both how to […]
Reflections by College Bound CVer It’s been 162,744 hours that I have lived in the Crescenta Valley. I have had 46 teachers beginning at Dunsmore Elementary and working through Mountain Avenue Elementary, Rosemont Middle School and CV. I have logged 587 volunteer hours in the past four years and been part of eight school clubs. […]
Sanitariums in CV – Kimball Sanitarium Part 1 Finding information on the local sanitariums has been difficult. There’s this code of ethics called “patient confidentiality” that has been terribly inconvenient for local historians. A lot of what I have on Kimball Sanitarium is pieced together from random news clippings, eyewitness accounts from old-timers, and some […]
Summer Medal Moments It’s official: I’ve gone into Olympics withdrawals. Granted, I’m probably not as depressed as the London cleanup crews or vendors stuck with shelves of historically unpopular official souveniers, but now that the 2012 Summer Olympics have come and gone, I’ll have to wait two whole years until the Winter Games in Sochi, […]