Tradition is more than a song the character Tevye sings in the acclaimed Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof. All you have to do is live or work in the Crescenta Valley this time of year to see and enjoy evidence of many of our own local traditions that take many shapes and forms. At […]
Congratulations to the Montrose Parade Committee! What a marvelous event we shared last Saturday. And, despite the cold temperatures (we Californians are such babies!), there appeared a good number of folks who turned out for the annual event. Special thanks are extended to Steve Pierce, parade chairman, who pulled it all together. We opened the […]
Now that the Thanksgiving holiday has passed, I have to mention another bunch of turkeys that irritate the stuffing out of me – namely, many of the employees at our city’s primary transportation hubs like Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and Union Station. I fondly remember my dad’s stories of a time when flying was […]
Congratulations to the community advisory committee that just finished up its recommendations for Glendale’s new North Glendale/La Crescenta Community Plan. This is an effort to tune up the city’s zoning and design standards to accommodate future patterns of development in the Glendale portion of the Crescenta Valley. Currently when a developer looks to upgrade or […]
GRATEFUL FIREFIGHTERS SAY THANKS The Wildland Firefighter Foundation (WFF), a non-profit organization established in l994 to give moral and financial support to injured and fallen Wildland firefighters and families in need, has traditionally relied on firefighters themselves to open their wallets at fire camps and fundraising events in order to take care of their own. […]
With Thanksgiving behind us, the Christmas season has officially kicked off! Or should I say “blew in”? My gosh, were the winds ever intense this past weekend! Thankfully we hadn’t even attempted to put up any holiday decorations. I think that if we had we would still be chasing them down the street. But the […]
Dunsmore Park on Dunsmore Avenue above Foothill Boulevard contains a fascinating example of folk art, very similar to the famed Watts Towers. On the sloped acreage of the park are miles of decorative retaining walls snaking through the landscaped grounds. The low walls are built of a myriad of materials mortared in place to create […]
At this time of year, my family often participates in a ritual we started when our kids were little. We make a “Thankful Tree” for our living room wall. Its trunk and branches are made from rolled up brown paper shopping bags. We cut out leaves from red and yellow construction paper. Then family members […]
Many times when I sit down to write this column, I wonder what I’m going to write about. I generally will go over in my mind the things that are going on in town or what is going on in my life that I think may be of interest to you. Sometimes I hit the […]
Last week I discussed the mountain of federal, state, county and local taxes, surcharges, user fees, and myriad of add-on charges we are all subject to at increasingly oppressive levels. Alarmingly, if you follow what our “leaders” in Washington are planning, we ain’t seen nothing yet. Last week I also mentioned that my wife and […]