Saturday, November 29, 2008

tsk tsk tsk

Tsk Tsk Tsk.... The misinformation wing of the Altadena Clown Council is at it again, or still... Some friends called and asked me to view a tape of this months meeting. Seems the ATC is still trying to sweep under the rug all the actions of the Sheriffs Support Group and a group fronted by Pasadena's All Saints Church flack, Monica Hubbard, during the last election and the candidates they supported. They kept saying that the report mostly didnt reference Town Council Members who were still here, seeming to imply that it referenced Council members either defeated or who have resigned. Nothing could be farther from the truth in fact.

The report drafted by Laura Graham, Greg Mc Phee and Joe Brown actually mentions misdeeds by three seated Clown Council members, the very three who claimed it didn't have anything to do with present members and no time should be spent on any investigation by the Council as to what really happened, lets move forward. Well as they say, who guards the guards. I think "Lets move forward" is newspeak for "It's Chinatown Jake." Maybe something more like "I've got all the cards F you." O.K. an unholy combination of the two.



Oh well, such is what passes for a community forum up here.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Lets not tell anyone.........

Summers high heat has burned itself out. Now we have the fall of Southern California, it is much like the burned down embers in a fireplace. There is still the radiant warmth by day, but the blasts of cold night, letting us know the fire is burning out touches our skin and needles our nostrils. The light has gone to deep oranges and purples as the fire wanes.

Our Mountians seem to rise ever more majestic and in this weather with the wind scouring our skies, you can see every guy wire on the towers at Mt. Wilson and feel as if you could reach up and touch the Coulter Pines at Henninger Flats. The shadows are long and fade from the fall deep orange our soil seems to turn to violet to purple.

Light breezes float sycamore leaves gently accross long expanses of land, twitting, dancing, turning, lunging forward, up and eventually gliding and landing, laying gently on land. Oaks suddenly drop layers of pale tan leaves expanding their ground carpets. The non native first generation planted persimmons ripen to a deep burnt orange and proclaim winter will soon arrive. The smoke of time honored eucalyptus/pine-deodar/Oak fuel burns, cleaning flues and balancing heat are begining to be burned. The fire purfume calling back to generations of human habitation in this earthly paradise.

The clouds gather in the evenings as sunset arrives and lay across the skies in bands of long gold and silver gilt layers of orange, green, gray, purple, maroon, teal and red suspended in aqua turning slowly to midnight blue skies. From the hills the cities below are bouncing gems of light caught in the matrix of the clouds and the evolving blackness of the ground.

Fall here in the Southern California Foothills is a time almost no one seems to know about. It slowly majestically unfolds within each day. Many who live here never seem to comment on it, and many seem never to notice, but the air is crisp and lively, it is a prime time to expierience the joy of just being alive. It is far more than any other season in Southern California a naturally gentle time. It is a sweet time. Perhaps that is why we never discuss it. It seems that the moments of joy, of wonder, of the pure pleasure of being have all either been bought and sold back to us, or have been outlawed, redeveloped and populated to destruction, or made, like Christmas, once a time of family, a commercial obligation and nightmare.

Perhaps by never printing the wonders of our fall, by slowly smiling as each moment of the eternal now presents itself and marches by, we preserve that joy and it becomes possible for the future. I often find some local marvel of nature or civilization her eand only tell my dearest friend, fearing Huell Howzer, the Real Estate hoardes or Sunset Magazine will get ahold of it and everyone will crowd about and jamb it full, destroying what it once was.

So fall is here, as it ever has been. Lets not tell anyone but each other and enjoy it as it passes to winter, knowing it is a season still uncluttered and observable in its subtlty.