Zen Monday: #206

I'm so afraid to say anything. I don't want to influence what you say.

It's Zen Monday. Tell us what you think.

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This is not about Zen Monday. Just information for those interested in Hahamongna. The deadline for public comment on the current EIR process is August 23rd. (I'd get mine in by the 22nd, if I were you.)

Please send your responses and comments regarding the scope of the EIR to:
Rosa Laveaga
City of Pasadena
Department of Public Works
Phone: (626) 744-4321
E-mail: mbmuproject@cityofpasadena.net,
Mailing Address:
City of Pasadena
Department of Public Works
Attn: Engineering Division
100 N. Garfield Avenue
Pasadena, CA, 91101


Tomorrow night is the bi-monthly meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee. Here's the info:

The next meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee (HWPAC) will be on Tuesday, July 24th at 6pm.

Meeting location is the
Pasadena City Yards
233 W. Mountain Street, 2nd floor Training Room
Pasadena, CA 91103

I.     Call to Order

II.    Roll Call

III.   Public Comment on Matters not on the Agenda and Items over which the Committee has Advisory Authority. (Please limit comments to three (3) minutes each)

IV.   APPROVAL OF MINUTES
-       Regular Meeting of March 27, 2012

V.    WORKSHOP: HWP Projects (Introduced by PW Staff)
A.    Procedure for presentation and public participation for Item V - ‘WORKSHOP: HWP Projects’ (Chair)
B.    Overview of HWP Master Plan (PW Staff)
C.    HWP Related Environmental Documents (PW Staff)
D.    Active Projects of the HWP Master Plan (PW Staff)

VI.   Old Business
E.    Update on LACDPW Post Station Fire Sediment Removal Project (Information item - PW Staff)
F.     Update on the Hahamongna Multi-Benefit Project and the Hahamongna Basin Multi-Use Project (Information item – PW Staff)

VII.  New Business
A.    General Announcements (From commissioners and/or staff)

VIII. Items from the Chair
A.    Next Meeting – September 25, 2012


Thank you!
Rosa Laveaga
Arroyo Seco Project Supervisor/HWPAC Liaison
Department of Public Works - Parks & Natural Resources Division
City of Pasadena
office: 626.744.3883
fax: 626.744.3932

And don’t forget to go to these City webpages to access all documents
and the most recent information about Hahamongna!

http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/PublicWorks/Arroyo_Seco/
http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/PublicWorks/arroyo_plans_and_projects/
http://www.hahamongna.com/mbmu
A report by Hugh Bowles that describes the grant requirements for Sycamore Grove Athletic Field at Hahamongna, and how it appears the City of Pasadena may have falsified information on its grant application: http://www.savehahamongna.org/documents/SycamoreFieldGrantAnalysis062512.pdf

Picture Picture

I'm reading an excellent book by Ann Patchett called State of Wonder in which a doctor from Minnesota takes a trip (for which she is unprepared) to the deepest Amazon. Patchett makes the jungle real in her writing. I wonder how she researched that. I mean, did she look it up online? Read books? See a movie? Or did she actually go there?

I might be able to research Patchett and find out, but for the moment I'd like to ponder the question.

In one scene an anaconda nearly kills a boy. I don't know a thing about anacondas and it would have seemed real enough to me if the danger had come from either constriction or the snake's bite. But let's say you know about snakes. Would it bother you if the author got it wrong? Or would you just think, "It's fiction, she's allowed to make it up"?

John and I discuss questions like this when we talk about writing. When we talk about photography, we don't. We just take our pictures from our different angles, and we're fine with that.

Theme Day: Cobblestones

There may be cobblestones in Pasadena. I don't remember any offhand but that doesn't mean they're not here. The city was founded in the late 1800s and vestiges of the early town remain.

But mostly when I think of the stones we walk on I think of what we sometimes call "river rocks." They come from the Arroyo Seco and the mountains as well, and they're everywhere: lining walkways, decorating columns and adorning every other garden. Pasadenish have been building with them for the last century. Entire homes are made of them. They're part of our architectural vernacular.

This path leads off the main road into the Angeles National Forest north of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). I haven't climbed it in quite some time. Boz declines to take it anymore (it's a bit steep) and for now I don't mind, because most of that greenery you see is poison oak. But I think the photo gives you an idea of our rocks. They're embedded in each woodland path, every trail, even in the history of our Pasadena home.

City Daily Photo's website was the victim of -- well, not nice people. So the wonderful Julie of Sydney set up a special page for us to use this time around. I posted a little early this time to make mine work.

If you'd like to see how other CDP bloggers around the world are handling the cobblestones theme, go here. And many thanks to Julie!

The Weather is Here

Yesterday's thunderheads over the San Gabriel Mountains were an anniversary reminder of the pyrocumulus clouds that resulted from the Station Fire It began on August 26th of 2009 and is still under investigation.

The Station Fire was at last fully contained on October 16th, 2009. The largest fire in the history of the Angeles National Forest, it destroyed homes, burned over 160,000 acres of forest (250 square miles) and killed two firefighters. The spring rains that followed flooded catch basins with tons of ash. Officials say we'll be digging out of it for years. The cause of the Station Fire was arson.

Those of us who hike the mountains and canyons will probably always look back at the Station Fire as the the one that changed everything, the worst one ever. Let's hope so.

We've had a cool--well--cold summer, by Pasadena standards. Some of us complained of having to wear sweaters even during the day, unheard of in southern California in July. But our heat wave has finally come. Brush fires have popped up in Kern County, the Grapevine and the San Bernardino National Forest, to name a few. John and I got caught in traffic the other day while firefighters put out a brush fire along the 210 freeway in Glendora. With rain in the mountains and flash floods in the desert, you could say things are getting back to normal.

Back on the Mountain

I love the Sam Merrill Trail. Depending on the switchback, civilization seems near...

...or very far away.

Until you get a ways up the mountain. Then everything below disappears into your note pad, your camera, your thoughts, your breathing, your stride.

The trail is open now, as is the Cobb Estate. J and I went about halfway up Echo Mountain yesterday and the skies were downright blustery. It felt good to be back on my mountain. (I share it with the Hiker.) I don't know how far you can go. Most of the Angeles National Forest is still closed (call 626-334-7582 between 7am and 7pm for specifics). But you can go for a good while.

None of Echo Mountain burned. Have at it. Pack out what you pack in. And no smoking. It's brittle as sun-dried bones up there.

The Litterin' Low Life

The Sam Merrill Trail gets a lot of weekend trash. So does the west end of the Gabrielino Trail, north of JPL. These spots also get a lot of graffiti, especially on the lower reaches. The preponderance of litter and graffiti on the low paths is because getting up high on the mountain requires effort and agility, and these are activities of the lazy.

Here's a sampling of what Boz and I found on a short walk Sunday from the west end of Altadena Drive to the ranger station, a 30 minute walk if you're not in a hurry. As you can see, our litterers are athletic (Gatorade), watch their weight (light beer), care about their skin (Neutrogena lotion) and occasionally indulge in candy. I notice one wrapper got out of my little arrangement. Perhaps litterers like to follow their Bliss.

The litterers might disagree with my low opinion of them. Obviously, they have a high opinion of themselves. But I'm right and they're wrong. They're lazy, slothful and stupid. How do I know this? Slothful: self-evident. Lazy: I found a good deal of this trash within about thirty feet of a garbage can. Stupid: See the cigar wrapper in that pile? And I didn't even pick up the cigarette butts. CIGARETTE BUTTS. WHAT ARE PEOPLE THINKING? (At first I thought, oh gee, maybe it was the coyotes, but wait, no, coyotes are too smart to smoke cigarettes in the middle of a forest full of dry tinder, which is more than I can say for some people.)

There's no sense complaining to you, you don't litter. You don't paint meaningless code words on rocks where only lizards can read them. Yet I want to vilify these trash-dropping mofos. Do they decorate their homes in early twenty-first century Garbage Dump? (Yes.) I'd like to scream and swear at the halfwits who think their spray-painted gangspeak--the secret language of morons--actually enhances a rock or a bridge or even so much as a pile of dung.

But I also call myself a writer and writers are supposed to be inventive with language. Supposedly we don't need to swear to express ourselves (though The Seven Words come in handy).

Let's see what we can do. Today I invite you to invent incendiary invective in the comments. Rail! Accuse! Vituperate! Tell the litterers how big a pile of offal you'd like to force them to sort, by hand, at gunpoint. Let the taggers in on your plans for their edification in a federal facility. Or perhaps you'd have them clean, under the hot sun, with a toothbrush, every inch of wall they've ever defaced. See how vicious you can be--without using The Seven Words. In fact, if you use one (or a variation of one) I'll delete your comment. But anything else goes. And I do mean anything.

And while you're at it: tell the Station Fire arsonist what painful punishment you have in mind for him (or her?). Heated words are welcome, my friends. Go ahead and get mad. But please: no swearing.

Zen Monday: #62

Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and give us your thoughts rather than me telling you what the photo's about. I look for something provocative or, failing that, at least something odd.

As I post each new Zen Monday photo, I'll add a label to last week's to identify it if necessary (if I know what it is).

Theme Day: "No" Signs

The first of every month, the City Daily Photo Blog community shares a theme day. July 1st's theme is "No" signs.

You know, it's not like we're way out in the country here. This sign is about a hundred paces beyond an entrance to the Angeles National Forest. This particular entrance is, oh, about a quarter mile north of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

So yeah. No shooting. Please.

172 blogs are participating in theme day this month. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants.

Chantry Flat

John and I both had the afternoon free yesterday, and since Boz had the day off too we decided to try a new trail. We drove through neighboring Sierra Madre and up to Chantry Flat in Big Santa Anita Canyon.

It was extra cool and cloudy, driving off casual hikers. Not much goes on there on a Wednesday anyway, which suits us. Instead of the popular Sturtevant Falls trail, we opted for the trail to Hermit Falls simply because it's not paved. It took us deep down into the shady canyon, where we came upon the small waterfall and three cabins, at least one of which was occupied and marked "private." The noisiest thing there was the water.

I think it's good for us humans to spend time surrounded by nature's disorderly shapes, to get away from computer screens, office cubicles, shiny kitchens and soft sofas, and to get out among rocks, trees and leaves for a while. It reorders our brains, sets us right again.

This is a post I wish you could smell. Damp, fresh sage, still rooted in the ground: there's no aroma like it.

Sfumato

From dictionary.com:
"sfu·ma·to: the subtle and minute gradation of tone and color used to blur or veil the contours of a form in painting." The word originates from the Italian, sfumare, "to gradate tone or color," which itself originates from fumare, "to smoke."

The fire in Sierra Madre, officially known as the Santa Anita Wildland Fire, is now 100% contained. But you can't contain the smoke.

We don't smell it anymore, and when we're in it we don't see it. But when you drive in to Pasadena you see it hanging over the San Gabriel Valley, backed up against the mountains, waiting for wind or rain to clear it out. I don't think we're going to have much wind soon, and surely we won't have rain. But time will take it away. Meanwhile, it softens the views on the Sunset Fire Road.

North Lake Avenue

I'm in Pasadena, facing south. The mirror looks north on Lake Avenue. It's about three miles to the foothills in Altadena. I took the photo for fun, messing around. Later I realized the dominant feature in the reflection is the swath of land laid bare by last August's brush fire in the Angeles National Forest.

Click on the photo to enlarge it and you get an idea of what the locals see passing through on the freeway, or heading north on local roads. You can see the scar from everywhere.

It was a minor fire of 12 acres. Firefighters got to it immediately and put it out fast. Since the area is mere yards from homes, that's a fine thing.

Wireless

Pasadena is well-populated with somewhere around 150,000 souls. We have street lights, telephone wires, strip malls and all the cement you could ever want. We also have more access to nature than most city dwellers do. Not just parks (although there are many outstanding ones) but actual hiking in actual nature. That's one (just one) of the best things about the place.

Looking northwest from the northwest edge of town—so far northwest, in fact, that you have to cross through part of Altadena to get there—you can see across La Cañada-Flintridge to the mountains of the Angeles National Forest.

"Everything north of town (once you cross Altadena) is the mountains of the Angeles National Forest," you say. Yeah, yeah, I know. I just wanted a picture free of cement, street lights and telephone wires.

(click photo to enlarge)