Opinion
I had never heard of a compassionate city until I attended the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City in 2015. The parliament is like stepping into heaven on earth. People from religious and spiritual traditions from all over the earth gather to learn from one another, to build understanding around similarities, and to learn from their differences. At this parliament, 26 interfaith friends from Claremont, Upland and Pomona presented a program on the many ways to do interfaith work in a community.
We were driving north on Mills Avenue, stopped at the light at Arrow Highway. There was a spiffy little black car ahead of us with an interesting bumper sticker: “Beto for Texas.” Beto? Surely that’s Beto O’Rourke. Now, there’s a bumper sticker I haven’t seen in these parts and someone I haven’t heard about for a minute.
Just to set the record straight. I am not a golfer. Not the miniature kind. The one with 500-yard holes, sand, water, tall grass, and putts that never find this tiny hole. That’s the kind of golf I play. Once a year, my son Matt and I participate in a charity golf tournament at the Red Hill Country Club to raise money for Children’s Foundation of America and Trinity Youth Services. It’s a fun event, with many different things to do and support. Monday’s event included a chance to win $10,000 from a helicopter dropping golf balls into the 18th hole, an In-N-Out Burger truck, great prizes, and reception after. Heck, we were even fed lunch and dinner. And of course, there’s beer.
“It may not even be worth printing, but as I’m a ‘Claremontier,’ and a British subject, and as old Queenie’s popped her clogs last week, I’ve got an old British car, and also I collect memorabilia, and I’ve got a car badge that celebrated her coronation in 1952.” Thus began my conversation with Tony Raynor, a 73-year-old Englishman who’s lived in Claremont for three decades. Along with retaining his rather upscale accent, he’s also clearly held on to his cheeky British sense of humor, or humour, I should say.
In June I got a call from a former neighbor in Mar Vista, where I lived from 1997 to 2008, who told me a package had been delivered to my former address. The voicemail said, “It’s from the Neptune Society, so it must be a relative who’s died.”
I am writing to clarify some misconceptions about the various forms of cannabis that may be preventing an informed and meaningful dialogue. This article is limited to the potential medical benefits for adults. Whereas our body’s nervous and endocrine systems were discovered thousands of years ago, it was only in 1988 that the endocannabinoid system was discovered. According to “The Discovery of the Endocannabinoid System” in the Medical Cannabis Handbook for Healthcare Professionals, it is “the largest receptor system and the master regulator of homeostasis in the human body … acting as a chemical bridge between body and mind. It regulates blood sugar, immune function, muscle and fat tissues, hormones, pain centers, reward centers, and metabolic functions.”
In response to the August 19 COURIER article “State: City broke law in denying Larkin Place easement”: The vote against the Larkin Park easement at the June 28 Claremont City Council meeting did not “equate to the disapproval” of the Larkin Place project, which the California Department of Housing and Community Development is claiming. The original site plan (aka the “ugly box”) was designed by and presented to city planning staff by Jamboree and remained as an alternative site plan that City of Claremont special counsel Tom Clark said could be used to move the project forward. Jamboree also stated at a community outreach meeting that if the easement was denied they would submit the original site plan for their next funding step to the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee. It was Jamboree’s choice not to do so.
Open letter to city council: Thank you, councilmembers Calaycay, Stark, Leano, Reese, Medina. I am lawsuit adverse, living in a city where we continue to bear the burden of legal fees from a previously failed lawsuit. I have no desire for a redux. I am thinking that those of you sitting on the dais should be just as lawsuit adverse as me. I consider Larkin Place a very good project — a humane project — that took years of community planning, a once-in-a-lifetime convergence of site, zoning, state, county, and local funding, to address the gaping need to house some of our most vulnerable. I consider it a good fit — surrounded as it is by other facilities, churches, a park, a senior center, with access to transit.
Age has a way of humbling us. Every time I feel righteous — about parenthood, work, life — I learn something new that puts me back where I belong. I tend to obsess, and sometimes that predilection produces meaningful results. But that singlemindedness isn’t always helpful or healthy. And learning how to let go when something is just not working has been a lifelong practice. Last Tuesday, I got obsessed again. This time it was with our neighbor Cash Whiteley, whom I’ve written about over the past several weeks. Cash called me about 9 a.m. to report he was suffering and was at the end of his rope. I found him in front of 21 Choices on First St., and again tried to help him get treatment for the massive open wound on the side of his face.
I’ve always believed education saves. As a gay kid, I felt isolated during much of my youth. Sensing my difference, I stayed more aloof than I wanted during childhood and adolescence.
As I begin my senior year of high school, I experience a series of “lasts”: my last first day, last homecoming dance, and eventually my last week.
The lead sponsors of the of the bipartisan Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA) announced progress on a critical bill for local news.
Last week I wrote about our neighbor, Cash Whiteley, who is having a hard time, and has been for a very long while. The 59-year-old unhoused man has been suffering with a shockingly gruesome open wound on the left side of his face for four years. The medical runaround is quite literally killing him.
Over my previous six-plus years as reporter and columnist with the COURIER, mine was a simple existence: I worked mostly from home, in flip-flops and shorts, researched and wrote my stuff, and helped in the office with copy editing on Thursdays. Now as editor I’m in the office every day and must wear pants and shoes. The horror.
Before the monsoon threat outlook flashed across screens this week, it was clear from the massive cumulus clouds hanging over the San Bernardino Mountains that this range was about to get a much-needed, regenerative drenching. As important was a different cloud formation that a year ago exploded dark and ominous. The Antonio Fire’s thick, mushrooming pyrocumulus formation signaled that a small patch of San Gabriel foothills was getting a much needed, regenerative burn.
Do you ever look at something or someone, notice your knee jerk reaction, and then pivot to a different angle, take another view? This is what a man named Mike gave me permission to share.