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NOT THE ORECK STORE TOO?
This week during my drive to work, I noticed the forlorn vacant Oreck Vacuum shop on South Lake Avenue. When did that close? I glanced into its empty storefront, one of how many in the stretch from San...
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WASC Sting Averted
I've had to remove myself from my dating scene in order to complete work on our school accreditation, cryptically known as "WASC." Western Association of Schools and Colleges is the organ's proper...
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Parsing the Parson's Nose Productions
Tonight was yet another winsome evening of readers' theater sponsored by the Parson's Nose Productions. This is a South Pasadena-based troupe whose motto is "introducing classic theater to contemporary...
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COME OVER TO "LA MISSION"
"La Mission"Written & directed by Peter Bratt/starring Benjamin BrattSome ten years ago at UCLA I heard Raymund Paredes, Ph.D., state, "The universal lies in the particular." His context was...
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Homeowner Once Removed
I've lain dormant for the last eight weeks since my Pasadena house sold. More accurately, I've laid my head in a number of different homes because I've become a housesitter. I didn't foresee this...
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Me and Mrs. Jones
"She bore her burden because she did not wish to be a burden." I'm paraphrasing from an Isaac Bashevis Singer short story, "The Washerwoman." It's one of those anthology selections for ninth graders...
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The Questions
"Miss, don't you ever get mad?""Miss, does a crime record hurt you for college?""Miss, you're wearing different shoes! Does that mean you got a place to live?"Every day students ask me the unexpected....
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The Glass Menagerie
Dateline: Alhambra, 10/5/10Twenty-seven students and three teachers headed to the Mark Taper Forum to see a Young Audience Program of "The Glass Menagerie." Beforehand I must confess I sweated out the...
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NAMI Walk & Union Station Benefit
Last week I had invitations that both relate to homelessness. Not my temporary, seeking-a-house-to-buy homelessness, but the serious kind, often symptomatic of mental illness, poverty, or addiction....
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How I Met My Mortgage
Where do I start with the saga of my mortgage application? What a lamb I was at the outset; it's a wonder I am not a lambchop today. Last May I began with what we call the pre-approval phase.Squaring...
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DESTINATION: KOREATOWN
If you haven't read HELEN OF PASADENA, by Lian Dolan, treat yourself to a sweet truffle of a novel. For many reasons it is a delicious local confection; and one is its reference to a Korean day spa,...
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Note to Self: Read 365 Thank Yous
On New Year's Eve I waited with several friends to watch Rose Parade floats being towed along Huntington Drive. We were seated in a car parked at San Marino High School plowing through two boxes of...
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Beginning Again
"Girls, make your life a dance!" our Orange High School PE teacher, Mrs. Weatherill, would exhort us. She of the black tights, the blacker ponytail, the Kathyrn Crosby demi curl-bang, a big apostrophe...
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These Are a Few of My Favorite Things
Sometimes I ask people if they are comfortable going places by themselves. In the past year I've grown ever more capable of taking myself on solo excursions. I've discovered places that are satisfying...
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I Call Him Sugar
"Oh, come give me some sugar!" Miss Lois McLeod would greet us children when we'd arrive those summers to visit our granny. Nowadays we'd refer to Lois as a spinster. She was a bred-in-the-bone North...
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CLUB 21: Just Imagine
The volunteers at Club 21 are wrapping up spring session. I help there every Wednesday at ECAR, the Every Child a Reader tutorial. I am one of a cadre of ten teachers who report from 4 pm to 6 pm. Each...
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PSST! WORD OF MOUTH! GO SEE TERRI!
TERRI is an intimate, autumnal-lit film about an overweight high school boy and his unexpected relationship with his assistant principal, Mr. Fitzgerald. Though we locals can sense that the movie was...
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CHILDREN OF THE STREET
"To all those who dare to care" is the dedication in the newest novel by Pasadena author Kwei Quartey. CHILDREN OF THE STREET has just been released in paperback. It's a book unlike any you have read,...
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22 Miles Across the Sea
Catalina is a local destination I'd never visited before. The occasion? A day trip with a dear friend who was celebrating her birthday. Since she's more in the know than I am, she had acquired a free...
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The Boy Who Taught Me How to Be a Teacher
Once you get old enough, you start to develop a perspective about how life's random puzzle pieces have come to connect. Some pieces attach by sheer force, some settle gradually; but there are others...
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