Opinion
“I was really hoping the final updated guidelines for breast cancer screening would be published before this went out, but we can’t always get what we want. The 2016 recommendations are what we have as we find ourselves in the middle of breast cancer awareness month, so I am going with it.”
How to talk about this with our kids? These are the humans we’ve raised to be kind, to “use your words,” to stand up to bullies and help the helpless. How to square those lessons with what they’re seeing and hearing from Israel and Gaza? Again, this is a privileged position, one I am grateful to be in. But it’s also an important teaching moment in American parents’ lives, one I am loathe to fumble. I write this not in retreat or to hedge, nor to resort to “bothsidesism” to avoid taking a stand. I’m not Jewish. I’m not Israeli. I’m not Muslim. I’m not Palestinian. I am human, and I am not sure about the best way forward.
by Janice Hoffman This is a dog tethered to her person on the last walk they will take together. When is life and death real and when is it abstract? This is about pets and how we love them. Sometimes, pets are a stand-in for people because it’s simply less complex. Carina’s choice that day, […]
“One of the easiest ways to identify a true disciple of Jesus Christ is how compassionately that person treats other people,” according to Russell M. Nelson, president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Barring unforeseen obstacles there will soon be life again at the former Press location at 129 Harvard Ave. Escrow is due to close October 16, with Finney’s Crafthouse aiming to open in late 2024. This according to Brad Finefrock (pronounced “Finney-frock”), 52, who with his twin brother Greg co-owns the seven-year-old Westlake Village-based restaurant chain. Finefrock said the company has waved escrow contingencies and now has a pathway to close on the iconic 3,804 sq. ft. 1929 building. The price? Somewhere around $2.5 million, according to the latest listing on Loop.net.
“And though Lisa was born in England, she too has never seen Ireland, so this trip will be a first for both of us. She’s been busy monitoring the weather in Dublin and Galway — generally in the high 40s to low 60s, windy, rainy, typical for this time of year apparently — and doing practical stuff like finding hotels for our roundabout of the island by car over the course of two-plus weeks. Me? I’ve been obsessing about shoes, finding the perfect jacket (waterproof not water resistant!), and researching compression socks. Who knew compression socks were a thing?”
One day as we were sitting in the dirt eating our bagged lunches (like animals, I thought, even then) the old man who ran the show began one of his regular informal employment reviews. This had become a thing over the past few weeks, him scowling at me and muttering about how I wasn’t cut out for hard work, didn’t dig my ditches to his specifications, or fast enough, etc. He wasn’t wrong. I was a skinny kid with a questionable work ethic, and truth be told, had no interest in a life of blocks, bricks, and ditches. This time though, his critique included an extra dose of nasty old man, concluding with, and I quote: “I guess it’s because you didn’t grow up with a dad around.” Though I instantly despised the guy for being so cruel, he did have one thing right: dad wasn’t around. But mom sure was.
Local, free, and famous, that’s James Turrell’s “Dividing the Light,” one of over 80 “skyspaces” worldwide that demand the participant-observer look overhead to a naked, unadorned sky and allow their eyes to be tricked by light changing on the surrounding structure.
Owner/visionary Erica Dubreuil opened Crème Bakery on September 19, 2018, intent on complementing Claremont’s already lively coffee and pastry scene, with Some Crust the next block over, Last Drop Café across the street, and two chain coffee spots also steps away. I was skeptical, wondering how another Village bakery was going to fare. But then I made my first trip to Crème and wondered no longer. I was immediately hooked on Dubreuil’s fantastic baguette sandwiches, particularly the Saucisson Sec, a deceptively simple little bomb of happiness with its dry Italian salami, fontina cheese, Dijon mustard, and cornichons. Oh. My. God. Later I got my hands on the pastries. Game over. I was and remain a devotee.
It is time to get your annual flu shot. But what else? What about these other vaccines? Is the “triple threat” really coming this fall? Yes, it is. To what degree it will affect us is yet to be seen, but public health experts warn that we should be prepared.
“It’d been several years since I’d seen Jen when I ran into her at a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion show at the El Rey Theatre in LA in March 1997. We spoke only briefly, but it was sure nice to see my old friend. Months later I got the shocking news that she had been diagnosed with brain cancer. She was 33. What followed that diagnosis dramatically reshaped the rest of her life. Though she’s never pursued legal action, a local surgeon botched her first brain surgery, removing some malignant mass but leaving behind more, which necessitated a second procedure at UCLA. The accompanying radiation treatments from both surgeries was severe and left her deeply fatigued. The combined trauma is with her to this day.”
A group was making its way through the crowd seated on the lawn in the darkening, warm summer evening. The guys had glow sticks around their necks, and the young woman had one crowning her head, like a string of daisies. Others walked past with hamburgers, ice cream and other treats from the concession stand as the band played into the night.
Though smog remains and LA still consistently tops the list for worst air quality in the nation, the region has seendramatic improvements since California began leading the way in the 1970s, to the point where being “smogged out” is a thing of the past in my old neighborhood. The pathway to cleaner air began when politicians of all stripes looked out their windows, saw the evidence, and followed the science. In 1970 this was just common sense. In 2023, not so much.
By Mark von Wodtke | Special to the Courier Tree legacy Homes, campuses, and Claremont’s public streets and parks should all have the benefit of heritage trees, which provide a living infrastructure for cleaner air and many other ecological amenities. Claremont has California Botanic Garden, the Claremont Wilderness Park, the Claremont Colleges campuses, the Village, […]
The signs are up, though they are low to the ground so you will have to bend down to read them. But make a point of doing so the next time you stroll along the north side of Marston Quad on the Pomona College campus, coffee in hand, dog on leash.
It was difficult to comprehend what I was seeing in that Lake Tahoe hotel room back in 1993. We’d had a few beers and shared a joint, and things were a little fuzzy. “This is a hold-up,” read the note, handwritten on neatly folded yellow legal paper. “You will not be harmed … Put the money in the envelop … Keep smiling – be quick … There is two of us.” He would hand that note to a bank teller and stand there calmly while she — it was always a woman, he said — crammed stacks of bills into a manila envelope. That kind of risk — and cruelty — was as foreign to me as I could imagine. I’d never been so close to a criminal before, and this one was my father.