After the Wind Comes … a Parade! I think I’m finally defrosted from last Saturday night’s Christmas parade – but despite the cold I wouldn’t have missed the night for anything! Thanks to Steve Pierce who did a stellar job of pulling together an event that right up to the first banner marching down Honolulu […]
That’s it. I’ve officially changed the lyrics of the classic Christmas song, “Let It Snow” to “Let It Blow”! I’m mean, chill out, Mutha Nature. That Santa Ana event our county weathered last week was nothing short of epic. In my many years here in Southern California, we’ve made the national news several times due […]
As I outlined in last week’s column, Whiting Woods, one of CV’s most sedate neighborhood, had its origins in vice and crime and was the stage for perhaps CV’s only racially charged murder. The story is given to us in an autobiography of Perry Whiting, founder of the Whiting-Mead building supply company, still in business […]
Activism is Alive and Well in CV I was at the Fire House [youth center] on Tuesday night, Nov. 29 when high school and middle school kids discussed the possible closure of their Crescenta Valley High School campus for lunch with Glendale Unified School District Deputy Superintendent Dr. John Garcia. First, let me say if […]
The Season Is Upon Us On the heels of a fantastic White Friday in Montrose we prepare for the big event – the Montrose Christmas Parade! I don’t think there could have been a better prelude to the parade than the lighting of the “main drag” of Montrose and its huge Christmas tree on Friday. […]
Winter Wonders Thanksgiving is over and I can “legally” play and sing Christmas music. However, I have to fess up and admit to singing one of my favorites, “I Wonder As I Wander,” no matter what season the calendar says it is. In addition to loving the beautiful melody of this classic carol, I probably […]
The Wicked Past of Whiting Woods The little neighborhood of Whiting Woods is one of the most sedate and beautiful areas in the entire Valley. Its shaded streets wind up and around a beautiful canyon tucked into the folds of the green Verdugo Mountains. Native oaks and sycamore trees shade the large rambling homes built […]
A Bushel of Thanks I’ve written on this page before about a cherished tradition my family once had of putting up a Thanksgiving tree on our living room wall in mid-November each year. My wife is uniquely gifted when it comes to creative handicrafts (and cooking, too, but I don’t have room for that topic […]
Logging in the Crescenta Valley? Last week I described the dense forests of 100-foot tall Big Cone Douglas Fir trees that once covered the canyons of the San Gabriel Mountains above our valley and current efforts to replant. But now I’d like to talk about the logging operations that removed those forests in the first […]
Fear of Speaking Up in La Cañada Flintridge Every community has a culture that governs what people feel comfortable talking about publicly. La Cañada Flintridge is so much different from the open culture of the town where I served as a member of the board of education back in a New York suburb. That school […]