Public Eye

After I complained in my column about how much the sight of the awnings promoting businesses no longer there made me, and other passersby who had mentioned it to me, miss South Raymond Avenue's Braley Building -- La Fornaretta, the Pasadena Antique Mall, Moji's -- the Church of Scientology, which has owned the building for two years, asked me over to show that it's finally taken the awnings down.

Good job. But Pasadena branch church President Eden Stein also noted that when I expressed fear that criticizing the famously thin-skinned church might earn me a snake in my mailbox, I was thinking of retribution meted out by Synanon, not the Hubbard-founded Narconon. No relation between the two. I stand corrected.

After staffer Janette Williams then wrote a story about widespread Old Pas concern about the building, which has been empty for over a year and is looking weathered and disused in the midst of the otherwise bustling district, the church says it has kicked into high gear, and will have plans for a renovation within a few weeks and expects to begin work by the end of the year and to complete it by March 2009. Eden showed me photos of similar historic buildings taken over by the church in Madrid, San Francisco, Milan and London. They look good. Not that they probably have really good Sicilian-style pizza joints in them.

The Scientologists couldn't say whether the new churchy place would include an educational diorama version of the mansion on South Orange Grove Boulevard where in the 1940s church founder L. Ron Hubbard lived with JPL rocket scientist John Parsons , the Aleister Crowley protege. They didn't know if the house is still extant. Or perhaps it's this one, pictured in a front window of the Braley Building, reflecting the Vandervort Building across the street:

Posted by Larry Wilson at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Former Star-News and SGVN science reporter Elise Kleeman had a going-away bowling bash Friday night at the All Star Lanes in Eagle Rock. She's heading back to Philadelphia in search of the next step on what I think will be a brilliant career ladder.

Of all the Pasadena science reporters I hired over 13 years of doing so, Elise was the first one who had a crucial insight into the local techno world: She had an undergraduate degree (in geology) from Caltech itself. Two of our science reporters had graduate degrees from the institute -- but that's not the same experience. Older students are not part of the same pressure-cooker culture, with its all-nighters for days on end and its big releases of Ditch Day and student house parties.

That's two ways good: Just being able to get into, and then graduate from, the best scientific college in the nation means you really get it. You've got both the smarts and the know-how to talk to the engineers and scientists in their own language, rather than in the head-scratching, "Gee, could you walk me through that one again?" conversation those of us who are untrained have to go through.

Not only that: There are plenty of Caltech profs and researchers -- and to a lesser degree JPL engineers -- who do not suffer fools gladly. It makes for a hard interview for the average Jane.

Elise is never that. Brilliant, funny, an excellent translator of high-flying research into stories the rest of us can understand -- a perfect science writer. (She also got the no-sidewalks culture of Altadena, where she lived, and did a very good job of covering the Town Council there as well.)

We'll miss her excited trots through the newsroom, and we'll miss Elise.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When the trustees of Westridge School on South Orange Grove held a going-away party for Tuesday night for Fran Scoble, the head of school for 18 years who is retiring, we were surrounded by at least parts of her legacy.

Not the intellectual parts, as such. Those go forward into the world with her students. In addition to her administrative duties, Fran taught a senior honors seminar I once guest-lectured in, and the level of discourse in that room and at the famously high-achieving school in general would have left many a graduate-school gabfest in its wake.

Under the camphor trees at dinner, it was the physical beauty of the extraordinary campus, unified under Fran's -- well, under her reign -- that stunned. Already a campus with a Greene & Greene, a Roehrig and Whitney Smith buildings, it all came together with a new master plan that includes the Fran Norris Scoble Performing Arts Center. Beautiful.

Just the place for future alumnae to begin to rival past ones such as aviatrix "Pancho" Barnes and Pasadena's greatest writer, Harriet Doerr.

Lots of fellow heads of independent schools were at the gathering to praise Fran, including a very funny James Astman, headmaster of Oakwood School in North Hollywood.

He recalled that Fran often started off her talks with the loveliest parable of the Buddha:

It is said that soon after his enlightenment the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha's extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked,

"My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?"

"No," said the Buddha.

"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?"

Again the Buddha answered, "No."

"Are you a man?"

"No."

"Well, my friend, then what are you?"

The Buddha replied, "I am awake."

Simply awake -- and open to the world -- is what the best teachers are.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There is no cooler spot on Earth to hold an awards ceremony, or a party, or to hold anything at all, than the Castle Green on South Raymond Avenue. This year the Pasadena Arts Council had an especially good reason for giving its annual Gold Crown Awards there -- this year the Golds were the Greens, for people who give a lot to the arts in the Pasadena area and who did it in a eco manner.

The awards went to David Brown of Descanso Gardens in Flintridge, Susanna Dadd and James Griffith of the Folly Bowl in Altadena, and the Mother's Club Family Learning Center in Pasadena.

In the photo below, that's David and Judy Brown; Annie and PAC board Chair Steve Nowlin; Susanna and James.

The bash was a blast, and Lightbringer's Tom Coston and Paddy Hurley and I conspired.

I did not see Miss Havisham, but she was surely there somewhere.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My step-brother, Bart Hibbs, a Caltech grad, one of the world's leading experts on batteries of all types and an AeroVironment engineer, has put his money down on a Tesla and so is in line to get the fastest little Lotus-bodied electric sports car ever built.

The line's a year long.

Until the zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds thing comes along, here's a video from Pasadenan Bill Provence showing his much cheaper and much slower electric car, which our former staffer Melissa Pamer wrote about a few weeks ago, and which he hopes to put into production next year.

Bill Provence driving on El Molino

Posted by Larry Wilson at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Left: Marge Wyatt and Delores Hickambottom Tuesday at the Museum of History

Dorothy Garcia, PHS class of 1973, was naming all the great electives a Pasadena student could take in the district in the early '70s.
"Asian literature, science fiction, African studies," she ticked them off on her fingers. "And" -- here she looked toward the rear of the conference room at the Pasadena Museum of History Tuesday where a bunch of us had gathered to discuss the early years of desegregation of the schools -- "it was because you all took us really seriously."

"You all" would be revered former school board members Al Lowe, Marge Wyatt and Ann Hight, who helped preside over the schools during the busing period, and who took the wrath of the reactionary community for doing so. They eventually were booted by a new board majority that literally tried to make John Birch Society propaganda required reading. Dorothy and the rest of us hardly suffered from that lack of overly narrow standards that practically eliminates electives these days. Then she could be student body president, a cheerleader, a hippie artist and a political leader simultaneously. She went on to a storied academic career of her own at Bennington and Mills and teaching future teachers at Pacific Oaks, and now operates Art Aids Art out of Cape Town, promoting education and sustainable economic development in South Africa through the arts.

Al gave a joking reply to Dorothy's praise of the dynamic between students and the schools then.

They took us seriously, he laughed, "Because we were scared of you!"

The conference was themed "The Integration of PUSD: How it Happened by Many of the People who Made it Happen & Its Legacy Today."

Its legacy is clearly dismal, but it was not integration's fault. And integration was not the darling of only the progressives -- Ann, a stockbroker, future president of the Chamber of Commerce and lifelong Republican, recalled being appalled by the L.A. Times headline when she joined the board: "Liberal Integrationist Appointed to the School Board."

It was those who left town who destabilized the schools. Conference co-organizer Michele Zack recalled how by 1975 Newport Beach was known as "Altadena By The Sea." Al recalled federal Judge Manny Real, who ordered the district to integrate, saying in 1974: "I wonder what would have happened in Pasadena if all the energy expended in trying to block desegregation instead went into making it work."

And it didn't work because some in the educational establishment maintained the old legacy of institutional racism. Robin Kelley, recently lured away from Columbia University by USC, where he is now professor of history and American studies, became at 32 one of the youngest tenured full professors in the nation. At PHS in the late '70s, though, the schools by then battered down, he was told by a counselor from whom he sought help with college applications that he shouldn't even bother to apply.

The schools left us rather than we them. But anyone who hasn't lifted a finger to remedy that, who has never been on a campus -- or not in 30 years -- has no credence in this conversation.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

For some reason, by the time I get down to the Pasadena Kennel Club's annual dog show at Brookside Park, it's always late in the afternoon of the second and final day -- so late that you might be able to sneak in your own hound, aka border collie mix Charlie, seen howling at left.

Last year when we got there, the only thing going on was a few stragglers from the agility trials. When the expert borders, Aussies and other herding dogs are on their game in agility -- jumping hurdles, diving through soft tunnels, hip-hopping through fence posts -- you've never seen anything like it in your life. What we happened to catch was somehow even better: the agility beginners, who often as not would completely fail to do anything agile whatsoever, declining to leap, halting when they should hit the teeter-totter, wandering off to sniff the lawn and other normal dog stuff. It was really funny.

Sunday when my mom Marka Hibbs and her caregiver Amala and I got there for the end of the centennial version of the dog show founded by Lucky Baldwin's daughter Anita, we were just in time for the grand finale, the best in show. I was of course all for the border collie entry, seen below, which had won the herding group:

Or at least for the gorgeous Bernese mountain dog, below, which probably really should have won:

Instead, the judge unaccountably gave best in show to the standard poodle, which was sheared into one of those frou-frou 'dos with a big basketball-sized Afro on top, shaved legs and topiared balls atop each foot. It looked like a space alien, so scary that I just couldn't find my way toward taking its picture. I like the looks of standards all right when they are not made grotesque.

Could we maybe ban shearing for dog shows? And the bobbing of tails while we're at it? I'm just saying. The AKC world is not my world.

See you at the 101st!

Posted by Larry Wilson at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week kicked off with a very cool guitar concert themed Guitarra del Sol at the Hale Solar Observatory, now the home of architects Liz Moule and Stephanos Polyzoides. The blazing playing of Felix Bullock, Adam Brown and Andrew York benefited Guitar for All, a scholarship program at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. Felix teaches Liz and Stephanos' kids and I took the picture at left of the guitar case in the basement of the observatory, a great place to play.

Then the Huntington Library art gallery reopened for press and members on Wednesday. From Pasadena to L.A. to NYC, the redo is getting stellar reviews. And it is very nice. I'm just more of a contemporary art guy. This portrait of Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds is apparently known as "Blinking Sam."

Wednesday night as well Caltech's Bob O'Rourke threw a big party for Irish Ambassador Michael Collins -- nice name for that job, what? Below is the Irish consul for the Western states, Emer Deane, based in San Francisco. Emer and I discovered that I knew her father, the great poet and novelist Seamus Deane, when I was in Dublin 30 years ago.

Gloria Ohland, below, is the backer of streetcars I've been writing about in my column:

Thursday at the annual benefit for al-Kebulan Cultural Center on North Raymond Avenue, Tavis Smiley was honored, and gave an inspirational speech. I had been confused about the reverence in which he is held in the African-American community based on his interviewing skills on the radio and TV. I am confused no longer after meeting him and hearing him speak in person. He knows -- brilliantly -- how to connect:

There may not be life on Mars, but, thanks to Phoenix, it's got one more robot. This was the scene Sunday in the press room at JPL:

Posted by Larry Wilson at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was so hot Sunday, the final day of the Pasadena City Golf Championship at Brookside, that I swear you could see the algae bloom on the big lake just below Washington Boulevard -- pictured at left -- grow before your eyes. The course was looking its best, and algae likes all that fertilizer in the run-off.

I walked down just after noon and followed the first threesome in the Championship Flight -- all guys with handicaps under 4, so all unbelievably good golfers -- for two holes. They're not used to a gallery except for family, and I didn't want to break the spell if they were in the zone, so I didn't ask for names and just clapped at good shots and walked alongside the group. But the fellow ahead on course No. 1's hole No. 4, the medium-long dogleg right just above Washington at the far west of the Arroyo Seco, hit this second shot from about 125 yards stiff to the flag and sunk his 2-foot putt for birdie.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Look for my Sunday column about the reinvigorated virtues of Pasadena's Washington Park, historic acreage designed in the 1920s by two of the greatest Southern California landscapers and recently recovered from graffiti-ville by a group effort spearheaded by neighbors:

Posted by Larry Wilson at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Some images from the last few weeks:

That flying spaniel/woman by my old friend Marnie Weber, former bassist in the greatest downtown art band L.A. has ever known, the Party Boys, is on view at the Armory Center for the Arts' Good Doll Bad Doll show, through June 1.

Remember the ice-block sculpture in Memorial Park across the street from the Armory I was worried would melt much sooner than the three-day life span it was predicted to have? Yep -- melted the very same night it was put up. That late-April hot spell was almost as hot as this one. We went by after the movies that Friday night and "Fluids," a recreation of Allan Kaprow's original Happening, was already almost fluid:

A decidedly different form of art is championed by Elaine and Peter Adams, on the right below at a recent preview at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, of the California Art Club. Plein aire and representational works are favored in the juried show, now on view at the PMCA:

As I mentioned in my column, the good people of Pasadena's sister city Ludwigshafen came from Germany this month to celebrate 60 years of being siblings, and the Sister Cities Committee hung this banner in the Athenaeum:

Pasadena Rotary met in the new dressing rooms at the Rose Bowl to hear L.A. Times columnist and former Sports Editor Bill Dwyre describe the newspaper business: "It's changing. It's different. It sucks! ... There are times we make only 9 percent on (our owners') money! Terrible, huh? I'm sure you all would be so upset if your businesses only made 9 percent, huh? I'm tired of it. I want to start thinking inside the box." Leaving the room, listeners found the motto the UCLA Bruins will see every time they leave that locker room for their home field this season. Good luck on that one, guys:

Gorgeous model, track champion, Georgetown Foreign Service grad, double amputee Aimee Mullins brought many of her prosthetics to the stage with her toward the end of Friday's session of the Serious Play conference hosted by Art Center College of Design, told funny stories about how her boyfriend is flummoxed when she decides to be 6'1" instead of her usual 5'8", and how when she was in elementary school her classmates would goad her on when they had a substitute to swivel her plastic feet 180 degrees, which she could easily do: "One fainted!" she laughed:

These are the legs that make her tower: toes based, she said, on Elle Macpherson's:

Posted by Larry Wilson at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I
If you've noticed a rise in the general IQ level and the number of MacArthur winners wandering the streets in these parts in the last few days, chalk it up to another of Art Center's biennial design conferences, this year themed "Serious Play," at the South Raymond Avenue campus.

Hundreds of designers and big thinkers from all over the world are there through Friday evening, and it's not only smart as a tack -- it's fun. Jump-roping and juggling kicked it off Thursday night, along with martinis and oysters, and before the keynote by Tim Brown, everyone found a rubber-band powered finger rocket that can fly 100 feet taped under their chairs and catapulted them toward the stage at once.

Today it's been JPL Director Charles Elachi updating us on Mars, with Berkeley physicist George Smoot, who won his Nobel in 2006 by proving the Big Bang. As the leading mapper of the universe , he took us places none of us had ever remotely dreamed of going before. Host is NPR's John Hockenberry, broadcasting his new morning show "The Takeaway" from Pasadena this week..

Posted by Larry Wilson at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Art Center College of Design President Richard Koshalek, left, himself trained as an architect before he came west as the founding boss of MOCA, hosted a Mi Piace lunch a couple of Saturdays ago for Thom Mayne, the star-power architect and Morphosis principal who will be redefining the new South Campus addition to the college at the old power plant on Glenarm. Mayne, below, with Art Center's Gloria Kondrup, had just given the spring commencement address on the Lida Street campus.

This week I'll be blogging from Art Center's latest international biennial get-together of design-world major players, this time themed "Serious Play." It's growing into Pasadena's version of George Soros' Davos conference in Switzerland -- the place to be for really big ideas from the best in the business. Participants include NPR's John Hockenberry, Google's Director of User Experience Irene Au, JPL Director Charles Elachi and double-amputee Aimee Mullins, the springy-legged holder of the world record in the 100-yard dash.

"Serious Play" kicks off Wednesday night and continues through Thursday and Friday.

Posted by Larry Wilson at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday at the Arboretum I followed through on my I Can Garden project of a month or two ago by checking in on it at the preview for the Arboretum's prestigious, fun L.A. Garden Show, which displayed all things green and gorgeous over the weekend at Arcadia's temple to flora.

Altadena sculptors and landscapers Karen Bonfigli and Andreas Hessing, below, created a great field of indigenous plants watered by pottery placed in the ground:

Rose Queen Dusty Gibbs did, natch, roses in her piece:

And my wildly drough-resistant can of cactus, copper and succulents looked very ... minimalist among the other corrugated examples:

Posted by Larry Wilson at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)