So an old nemesis writes to complain of my Swine Shit post. He doesn't understand why not do something positive? Why not support annexation to (shudder) Pasadena? Now there is a evil idea even beyond all that ails Altadena. I always did say he was a evil guy....

Well, I guess when you've tried positive, and devoted years of your life to a few positive initiatives and seen them barnaclized with every imaginable form of slimy stinky pork self interest to the point that the positives are net negatives, the idea of working for the greater good in the public arena through say local Government, seems like a really twisted bad joke. That's the very long of it, and a short answer to a number of now historical questions. The brief somewhat kind, less than totally bitter answer.

Yes, I could explain at great length, but have I not done that endlessly already? So what becomes the point? To rehash what could, but will not be repaired? Why does this person who claims anyway to know nothing really of Altadena, care except as a platform for his uninformed insults? For more of his posturing? For another attempt at silencing a voice that does not agree with the donors whose campaign contributions he hides behind relatives friends and people who the Tongs gin up? Who can say?

Pasadena annexation? How would the People of Altadena better be served by a City that already isn't serving it's citizens? Didn't most Altadenans move here to escape that mess? Yeah most. True some to the east desire it, and I for one would be only too happy were they alone annexed, but they and here is the oh so funny part, they are not desired alone, because their side of town would not be profitable to serve. You see they have a low population density and a high demand for service.

It's the dirty little secret of city governments: They are businesses. They don't really exist, contrary to popular opinion, to provide residents with services. They exist to provide jobs for people who can't get them in the private sector, and then to provide same with benefits and retirement no private sector employee can dream of.

These benefits are the next looming fiscal crisis that awaits not very far off in the future. Public sector retirements beyond what the People can afford. This is a main driver of over development, the wolf at the door, the gun to the head of every municipal government. That and special interest Not For Profit funding, said funding providing what used to be public services, at a lower level of service and a much higher cost per actual service delivered than even the public sector provides. These Not for Profits must be funded via government or governments can not function.

There is a long history to these deals made more or less with the Devil of expediency, a thirty year shameful history, and one that could go on for pages.

While I like tilting at windmills, I don't like doing it alone and I like to win against the windmill at least on occasion. There is no win here I can imagine for the public, and no win where I would gain personally where I would not be tempted to cut my throat while shaving. I would have thought my nemesis could understand that, having once at the end of his public career having said he often thought of same peaceful end, but he does not.

No, the best thing for me is to save my hundred year old Valencias from whatever it is afflicting them, do what good design work is still possible, make some art, and finish my 1912 Model T. It is what can keep one from being a raving lunatic, a condition my nemesis once took full advantage of.

It is not true that all that is needed for evil to triumph is for the good to do nothing. I think of my friends, Hari, John, Frank, Tim, Mike, who poured out their too short lives doing so much to do good and who were in the end left only with the legacy of long fruitless fights. I love their memories. I treasure the years we had together in battle, more than I was ever able to understand or tell them before they had to die, but that said, I do not wish to die disappointed.

I wish for my oranges to live to be two hundred, for my model T to sing the songs of trembling coils in the nervous youthful songs of propulsion, to make small places once ugly, lovely personal forms of habitation and by so doing also in small ways heal the planet and with it the souls of those who enter. I tried to no avail doing Justice and Righteousness in my generation. It doesn't seem to have been mine to achieve even in a small way. I roll that rock uphill no longer.

I found a early Dodge brothers stamped wishbone for the T, that is enough for a few months, a joy my nemesis will never understand.

I understand that every restoration is a Prophetic work, a gift to the past and future of mankind. The smallest of these is now enough, the would be public good, too painful to see destroyed. better not to speak what can not be made and will only be destroyed.

As some old Jewish prophet wrote in red letters in a book with gold gilded edges "Cast not your pearls before swine." No more of that.