Long Shadows

Whatever we put here, whatever we build or tear down, is irrelevant to shadows. They will crawl across road and lawn and seething Sahara as long as the planet rolls around the sun.

Knowing shadows have existed always, or at least as long as we conceive always to be, feels to me like a connection with those who came before. From Neanderthals to the bog people to Muhammad to Louis XIV to me, we all know shadows, we all know late day, we all know summer days that get shorter and light that's made of gold.

Thursdays in Old Town

One week from today it'll be September. It will also be Thursday. These are two good things because Old Pasadena Locals Only Thursdays are back.

The program must have been a success last year because it's been extended to two months this year. On Thursdays during September and October, Old Pasadena merchants will offer discounts to people who live and work in Pasadena. Click on the link above to get details of which stores, what they're offering, and how to prove you work or live here.

The list of participants is heavy on restaurants, which is fine. But this has been a long recession and Petrea needs some new clothes! There are not enough clothing stores on the list! Come on, merchants!

Oh well, it's a start. Some Thursday within the next couple of months, I'll be shopping at the participating clothing stores that offer a discount worthy of the trouble of parking (there's at least one that's not), and I'm sure I'll spend some of my poor, dilapidated dollars.

For those of you who can't justify a trip to Pasadena to shop even on a weekend, I'm sorry. You really are missing out. Yes, Old Town has a few chain stores, but what makes it worthy of your leisure time and legal tender are the many singular boutiques and specialty restaurants you can't find anywhere else. Some of them are even on the Locals Only Thursdays list. Next year I hope there will be more.

It Ain't Over 'til it's Over

I hear people say summer's coming to an end. I suppose that's true if you have kids or you're in school. Otherwise it's all conditioning, and I don't mean the artificial cooling of indoor air.

It feels like summer's over because it's supposed to end in August. It used to end in August. (Oh, nostalgia.) The shadows are long, the light is golden. When I was a kid I returned to school after Labor Day and pretty soon autumn arrived.

But I live in southern California now and this year as we approach September, temperatures are rising. I have to wait until 7pm to walk the dog and even then I have to carry extra water lest we both expire. All summer long the rest of the country's been suffering from record heat. Well, my east-of-the-Rockies friends, we are finally getting it.

Oh, I just love it.

I've Got Your Pasadena Weekend

I know it's only Tuesday but calendars fill up. Listen, don't worry about it. I have your weekend planned for you.

Friday the 26th: Wine tasting and silent auction benefiting the Be The Match Foundation, the national bone marrow registry. They'll be tasting wines from some of California's top vineyards. There will also be a "pole dance" the likes of which I'm told Pasadena's never seen before, and that's all I'm saying about it.

Saturday the 27th: hike the Lower Arroyo with Tim Martinez, who knows everything about the native flora here except the Latin names. Tim's talk about plant uses was one of the highlights of last spring's Hahamongna Walkabout. Join him and you'll learn fun stuff like "the best" plant in southern California or what to mix with tequila as a topical for aching muscles.

Sunday the 28th: treat yourself to an ice cream social sponsored by the League of Women Voters, celebrating the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote. It's only $5, you need reservations and there's still plenty of time to make them. It's being held at Hillmont House, one of Pasadena's most beautiful Victorian homes.

Then I'll see you back here on Zen Monday and you can tell me how much fun you had.

Zen Monday: #159

Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and tells us what you've learned, rather than me lecturing you about it. In Zen, one learns through experience rather than books or lectures.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good book. It's just that Monday is the day you write it.

Sunday Steps

We've been having cool, cloudy mornings and warm afternoons. If you're one of those people who complains about hot weather, all you have to do these days is get up early. And not like 6am. You can get up at 10:00 and still get in a good hike before it heats up. I wonder how long it'll last.

Probably 'til I post this.

Have a beautiful Sunday, wherever you roam.

Whoosh

I was trying to make a "whoosh" with the camera, and I got this instead. It's more of a "whu-uhp!...phhh."

I'm fine with that. Often, when I set out to create something, I have to let go of the outcome.

Pomegranate

Wikipedia says pomegranate trees were introduced to California by the Spanish in 1769, to be exact. Someone must have kept a record of it. Wikipedia's article doesn't mention how long it took them (the pomegranates) to reach Pasadena.

Our neighborhood pomegranates will be ready to eat in December or thereabouts. Tell that to this bug.

Victorian Pile

Someone once asked me for a photo of a Victorian mansion, as opposed to the usual Pasadena Craftsman. A "Victorian pile," I think she said. Pasadena has them, but the fanciest ones are behind fences and foliage, hard to photograph without trespassing or at least being downright rude.

But wait. How many times have I driven by this place on Marengo? Not fancy but huge, and gorgeous in the way a tattered, vintage nightgown might be. It's got "former glory" written all over it. Nathaniel Hawthorne himself would have drooled.

At first I thought no one lived in it.

I was wrong.

Guest Author: Irene McDermott and The Internet Book of Life

Today's guest author is all about computers--and libraries. Made for each other! Please welcome guest author Irene McDermott.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, the “Book of Life” contains the name of righteous souls. The Internet Book of Life: Use the Web to Grow Richer, Smarter, Healthier, and Happier, is my new book. This book of life lists the names of righteous web resources: reliable, useful sites on a variety of subjects designed to help families in all aspects of daily life.

I am a librarian at the Crowell Public Library in San Marino. People often ask me if the internet will put libraries out of business. When people think of libraries, they think of books. Yet, since the web came on the scene in about 1995, library use has increased by 50%. Many come for the computers and then pick up a best seller on the way out.

So, the internet has been nothing but good for libraries. I know that I owe my career to it. I studied for my master’s degree just as the graphical web emerged, from 1993 to 1995. At an internship at the Getty Institute for the Arts I learned about the web and taught it to the librarians there. The skills that I learned that summer, playing with the baby web, landed me a “cybrarian” gig at the USC, and later, my current job where I not only staff the reference desk but take care of the computers, too.

When my husband became ill with colon cancer in 1998, I used the web to find an experimental treatment that saved his life. Unfortunately, even the latest medical research could not save him from the glioma that took him from us in 2008. Still, we were active partners in the treatments that prolonged and enhanced the quality of his life thanks to timely information that I found on the internet.

A couple of years later, after I felt sufficiently recovered, I turned to an online dating site to find new love, a divorced dad who healed my broken heart.

As a mom, I find the web essential for managing my household. I use it for shopping, recipes, making travel plans, online banking, and even learning how to make repairs around the house. My son has become a search master, using it for school.

In 2002, I spoke to the Library of Congress about reference resources available to librarians on the web. My sister, who accompanied me, insisted that I share these helpful sites with the world. The Internet Book of Life is the result. I hope that the sites and the stories in my book will help families everywhere to save money and live happily.

Keep current with websites from the book on my blog: http://imcdermott.wordpress.com.

Tool Talk

I have a red wheelbarrow. I like it a lot. I don't need a blue wheelbarrow but if I did I'd go to Altadena Hardware, because last time I was there they had a pile of wheelbarrows.

I love hardware stores and we have many excellent ones in the Dena. Besides Altadena Hardware there's Crown City Hardware (specializing in antique and Craftsman stuff), the highly recommended Berg Hardware and Eagle Rock's beloved Tritch Hardware. You probably know of more you can tell me about. I'll be honest, Pasadena's OSH isn't bad, either--the staff there is knowledgeable.

But I like the small stores. I like aisles not quite wide enough to walk two abreast. I like shelves stacked from floor to ceiling with things I want but don't recognize. Shiny!

The best, though, is the language and the experts who speak it. "What you need, ma'am, is a consarn two. They used to come in two sizes but they don't make the three anymore, the two's standard now. How's your wingbrack? Threads still tight? Huh? Oh. Lemme show you. Here's a wingbrack. It's got this here hinge, and you just flip the spring--no? Okay, so you take the consarn two like this, and you jam it into the wingbrack until the flip nozzle opens..."

I will arrive home with a bag fully of shiny wingbracks, flip nozzles and consarn twos. I will love them and perhaps not remember what I learned about how to use them. I might regret not having bought the blue wheelbarrow, but I've still got my red one and that is one tool I know how to use.

Zen Monday: #158

In Zen, the emphasis is on learning through experience as opposed to books or lectures. Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and tells us what you've learned, rather than me lecturing you about it.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good book. It just happens that Monday is the day you write it.

Imaginary Horses

It's the middle of August and southern California might be the only place in the country where the weather's beautiful. We used to be the ones with the insufferably hot summers, but the last two years our summer days have been almost--almost cool. Folks are loving it. Me--you know me, I wear a sweater.

Sundays on our block are a good time for the kids to get out and play and for the adults to hang out and talk about whatever, you know, the usual stuff: how to solve the world's problems, who has the nastiest grill, whether or not we should get matching block t-shirts with our names on the back.

I used to wonder why adults did that. Talk, talk, talk was all they ever did. Boring! How could they just stand around and jabber? Why didn't they ride imaginary horses like the rest of us?

Throat-Clearing

Just south of yesterday's photo is this empty building. I had stopped to take pictures of the Bellefontaine Nursery building when this one gave a sharp whistle and said, "Hey! Take my picture, too."

I think this is the structure a friend of mine meant when she commented on Facebook about yesterday's picture of the Bellefontaine building. "I love the brick building next to it. I've been after the owner for years to rent it to me. It's empty and doing nothing. It would make a cute sandwich shop."

You know, it would. And right there amid the Huntington Hospital complex, somebody could make some money.

I'm aware some people are going to look at this and see a tear-down but I like every detail, from the dry, cracked wood at the bottom of the green door to the tattered curtains in the windows. Imagine the musty smell inside. What's in there, do you suppose? What did this place used to be? Do traces of its former purpose linger? Dishes? Old wires? A printing press?

I've never studied architecture and I was a lukewarm student of history. Now, though, perhaps because I'm getting older (as old as some charismatic architecture), buildings are beginning to tell me stories. Some are louder and more articulate than others but all of them talk, and the older they get the more they have to say.

Bellefontaine Nursery

This is one of those times when I find a picture of something I like and I figure I'll post it, no big deal. Then I find out it's got a story behind it. In this case, 72 years of Pasadena history.

One of my favorite buildings in Pasadena houses the Bellefontaine Nursery at 838 S. Fair Oaks. I can't help but notice the building because it's so much older (circa 1900?) than the new, beige, high-gloss Huntington Hospital complex that stands poised to trample it without so much as a glance over its nondescript shoulder.

Let's hope that doesn't happen. I don't know what lived here prior to 1939, but since then it's been home to the Bellefontaine Nursery, founded and owned by successive generations of the Uchida family since the beginning.

Current partner Alan J. Uchida has written an absorbing history of his family's business, complete with black & white photos. He glosses over the bizarre World War II period during which Japanese Americans, including the Uchidas, were sent to internment camps: "Fortunately, with the help of watchful friends, the Uchida family was able to retain their nursery which was closed from 1942 to 1945." What a gentle, generous way to say what happened to his family.

How must it have felt, that day in 1945, to have shaken the hand of your loyal (Caucasian?) friend and accepted your keys from him or her, then to open the door of the nursery? Did the outer door stick, just a bit? Did the screen door whisper a familiar screech? The sun would have streamed in the east windows, giving even the dust a welcoming gleam. The air would have been stuffy but in it you would sense a hint of your own past presence--your future, too--still there, if barely, needing nothing more than everything you could give.

A-Movin' Kinda Slow

At first, this looked like a family had a good day at the beach or the city pool.

Then something else entered my mind and wouldn't leave. Something eerie. Something otherworldly. Something...wrong.

Today: Poo.

Boz and I find these free poo bag kiosks at a few of our favorite hiking spots. Isn't that convenient? Of course it's publicity for My Pet Garden, but what a generous way to go about telling people about your business.

In the olden days, I thought it was no big deal if Boz left his creations behind along some of the more rural paths. I mean, coyotes poo outdoors, right? But I learned a few things, like dog feces don't biodegrade the same way wild animal feces do (doo doo). And while those little piles are sitting out there in nature, they're carrying bacteria, parasites and viruses right into our water--and those things can cause all kinds of deadly diseases in humans.

I was walking Boz in the watershed! What part of "watershed" did I not understand?

Now we always pick up, and I thank My Pet Garden for making it easy to do, even when I forget Boz's personal bags.

You might enjoy this rockin' video on today's topic.

Volunteer

I transplanted a bush several weeks ago. It died. But up from the compost in the hole sprung a volunteer--a squash maybe, or a pumpkin--that's so pretty and healthy I'm letting it take over the property.

I might as well. I haven't been lucky growing things, and I'm so pleased to have something grow that I don't care what it does or where it goes, as long as it stays alive. I water it every day. It seems to like that. It can have the whole yard if it wants it.

The bees love love love it, which I consider a bonus. We need more things for bees to love.

Zen Monday: #157

photo by John Sandel

Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and give us your thoughts rather than me telling you what I think the photo's about. This is because on Mondays I post the photos I don't comprehend.

Please share your thoughts in the comments as they come to you. Thanks.

This photo was taken by John Sandel, PDP's resident Zen-spotter, without whom Zen Monday would probably occur about once a month.

An August Personage

I liked to read books as a kid, but I didn't like school. I was dutiful, I studied, I did what I was supposed to do and got the grades. But I preferred horseback riding, building forts and wading barefoot in the river--things there wasn't time or weather for during the Illinois school year.

Even now, years out of school, for me, August signals the end of fun, the beginning of work.

This year August also signals the end of The Sky is Big in Pasadena. Ben Wideman began his blog in September of 2007 and "Can8ian Ben" has been chronicling Pasadena life ever since. He's a long distance cyclist, a lover of food, baseball and beer, a husband and father, a seminary student and soon-to-be-pastor, and that rare man who can hear all ideas with an open mind.

This month Ben says goodbye to his adopted home with daily tributes to Pasadena in the form of two lists: the things he'll miss (a long list) and the things he won't (shorter). The list of Pasadenans who will miss Ben is longer than a baseball field, longer than Ben can ride a bike in a whole day, longer than the distance between here and Harleysville, Pennsylvania--and I'm on it.