altadenablog

"Finding Your Voice" writing workshop at the Library Feb. 5

from the Altadena Library

The Altadena Library presents "Finding Your Voice," a free workshop for writers, with Pasadena writing teacher Esther Bradley-DeTally at the main Altadena Library on Saturday, Feb. 4, from 1-3 PM.

 “Finding your voice isn’t looking at the dust balls under the bed to see if you coughed up anything in the dark,” asserts Esther. “Finding your voice is suiting up and showing up to write about the here and now and to meet other people who have written, not written, may write.”  She adds that those who attend this invigorating workshop “will increase the breadth and depth of what they know about themselves” and be able to “strip the layers of social niceties, to dig deep and find the authentic within.”

Esther Bradley-DeTally, whose work has been widely published both in the U.S. and abroad, teaches writing classes in Pasadena at 10,000 Villages and the Women’s Room. She has taught The Courage to Write at Jamestown Community College, Jamestown, New York, and been an Artist in Residence for Chautauqua County Artists. Her book You Carry the Heavy Stuff, which garnered her the title “Author on the Rise” by Good Reads will be available for sale and signing as will with her just published The Courage to Write an anthology which features the work of homeless and at risk women and others who have attended her workshops.  

This free program is sponsored by the Friends of the Library. The main Altadena Library is located at 600 E. Mariposa Street, Altadena. For more information: (626) 798-0833 or www.altadenalibrary.org.

 

Girardot named PSN editor

A tip of the hat today to Frank Girardot, senior metro editor for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group (which includes the Pasadena Star-News) and writer of the invaluable Crimescene blog.  Girardot was promoted Monday to editor of the Star-News, which means everybody there reports to him.  Frank is one of the paper's best reporters, and an Altadenablog fan (we use his complimentary quote about us in our ad rate sheet!), and we congratulate him on his achievement.

We're gonna pitch an idea called "Gravity Hill"

Just an FYI:  Altadena Films, an Anglo/Altadenan film group, is coming out with a new horror film, "The Reeds."  The not-child-appropriate trailer is available here.

Now reporting for Pasadena Now -- much to our surprise!

Pasadena Now, the place that sends its Pasadena City Council coverage offshore to India, just cut and pasted an ENTIRE BLOG ENTRY from us!  (Not that it's a big thing -- it's just a press release from the county that we printed in its entirety with a couple of introductory sentences, offsetting it in our extended quote format so you reader would know it's not our work).  They could have reprinted the entire press release and nobody would find 'em fault -- but they included our introduction and gave us a byline.  Just didn't ask permission for it. 

UPDATE 4/24 6 AM: Just got a note from James McPherson of Pasadena Now -- the item has been taken down, and someone is going to have a bad day when they get to work ...

Inaugural to LA county: give us 347 deputies for free!

This KABC7 report, shot largely at the Altadena Sheriff's Station, is about a request for LA County to provide 347 deputies to assist in the Presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C.  It also sounds like they're asking for them for free, but at an expense of a couple mill for local taxpayers.  The situation is still fluid, tho', but KABC gets a great standup at our Art Deco station.

Sex after 50? You bet!

We just want to see how many hits we get on THIS story ...

but congrats to Debbie Swanson Patrick, the AltadenaAboveItAll gal, who landed this story in the "Life After 50" website.  She says it's award-winning, but won't tell us which award!

Dear Star News ... we're here!

We got cc'd on this letter by Nancy L.C. Steele to the Pasadena Star-News:

Dear Steve and Larry,
It happened again. The Pasadena Star-News had a story yesterday on the Shake-Out that was accompanied by a city-by-city listing of where to go and who to call in the case of emergencies. Again to my amazement, Altadena and its over 42,000 residents, along with all of the other residents of unincorporated areas, was ignored. There was no information published for County residents. We are apparently invisible to the Pasadena Star-News.

This is inexcusable. Reporting that ignores Altadena and other communities in your sphere is simply bad reporting. Supervisor Michael Antonovich's office publishes a guidebook for Altadena and other incorporated areas with all kinds of information on where to go and who to call. I find it hard to believe that this guidebook is not in the PSN library of resources or that your reporters do not have the ability to actually find this information by making a phone call to the Supervisor's district office in Pasadena. From now on, you need to instruct your reporters that a general article on activities in the region is not complete unless it also reports on Altadena.

Nancy L.C. Steele
Altadena

(Flle photo: Cmdr. Linsenmayer putting the Star News to good use in Mexico.)

UPDATE: After a morning of fevered emails traveling around town, we got cc'd on this response to Alice Wessen from PSN's Larry Wilson:

alice, many thanks for your concerns. as a 16-year altadenan at various times in my life, i understand alta pride. i will pass your comments on to the city desk for discussion. all best, larry

Heavyweight electeds take on Measure TT (sorry Gino!)

This letter in PSN supporting Measure TT on Tuesday's ballot carries the signatures of Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard, Sierra Madre mayor Kurt Zimmerman, and "an Altadena resident" named Gino Sund.  Sund, of course, is an elected town councilman and is in fact the council chair, the nearest thing we have to a mayor -- but this is apparently of no interest to PSN.

11/4 UPDATE: Sund tells us why he's a mere resident in the comments.  It's strange being a town.

Our obligatory "Lakeview Terrace" article

"Lakeview Terrace" is a film debuting soon that is loosely based on an Altadena story.  Since every paper will be reviewing it, we won't have to, but we'll point out some items of interest.

• As for example, this PWeekly story comparing reality to the film.
• Westword, the Denver version of PWeekly, works in an Altadena reference without knowing the backstory behind the film.

Truthiness in advertising, Nation!

Dan Abendschein, the meister of PSN's Under the Dome blog, has found this interview with Congressman Adam Schiff by the one and only Stephen Colbert.  (Altadena's Old Fashioned Days is mentioned -- blink and you'll miss it!)

Altadena story gets Hollywood treatment

This is like a condensation of Altadenablog's week ...

PSN's Larry Wilson, in his column today, talks about a film that is being made by Neil LaBute, fictionalizing the Irsie Henry story (Henry being the African-American LAPD cop who allegedly harassed his mixed-race neighbors in Altadena).  "Lake View Terrace," it's called, and it stars Samuel L. Jackson as the cop.

This has it all: Altadena location, the movies, and a story that was covered by (and just got an award for) Pasadena Weekly's (and A-blog fan) Andre Coleman .  We can retire now.

Barbara La Marr-ticle

Boudoir Girl (a blog previously unknown to me) has a feature on Barbar La Marr, one of the first real movie stars, who died in Altadena at a young age.

We're on TV! ...

or so says Home & Garden Network, which is looking at an 1882 house on Christmas Tree Lane on "If These Walls Could Talk" at 5 PM this afternoon.

Double Jeopardy

P-Weekly's Jim Laris talks about the Ken Jennings Experience! at the Altadena Library

Another one bites the dust ... beer's on us

Comes the news from Gary Scott's fine reporter-g blog that Molly Okeon announced Tuesday that she is leaving the Pasadena Star-News for the L.A. Daily Journal.  Since Molly, along with Carolyn An, was picking up the tail of Altadena news following the layoff of Elise Kleeman last week, this comes as a huge blow for local news coverage.  According to Scott, this leaves five reporters in the PSN newsroom -- 50% of what it was just two years ago -- and with a hiring freeze in place, nobody to pick up the slack.

On the other hand, the Society of Professional Journalists is holding a mixer in downtown LA on March 26, and offered this invitation:

*** SPJ-LA Special – For anyone who was let go from the Los Angeles Newspaper Group this past month, arrive before 7 p.m. and we'll buy you ONE FREE BEER. ***

Star-News lays off Altadena reporter

Dean Singleton's Los Angeles News Group (which publishes the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Whittier Daily News, San Bernardino Sun, among others) has followed the lead of the Los Angeles Times by cutting staff and thus reducing the chance of actual news getting in the way of the ads.  Gary Scott (of reporter-g blog) carries a list of the dead, including Elise Kleeman.  A Caltech grad, Kleeman's beat included science, her alma mater, JPL, and Altadena. Most recently, she filed great stories on the rise and fall of the Pederast Hilton. No word on who will cover Altadena now, or if it will even by covered by our Denver-owned hometown paper.

Foothill Cities blog waxes eloquently:

Perhaps the greatest loss will be this area’s ever-weakening grasp of history. A couple of weeks ago, one of the founders of the Valley, Bill Temple, passed away just short of his 104th birthday. He had run packing companies in Covina and La Verne, and sat on the valley water board for a half-century. Yes, 50 years.

The Singleton media jalopy made barely a mention of what should have been front-page news. And that was before these most recent cuts.

So, what will be left? High school football and basketball stories, wrapped by the occasional shooting spree, all of which will be hard to find in the jumble of ads.

Of course, the ads will soon thin, as nobody will have any motivation to buy the remaining excuse for content.

Picture shows Singleton (in black) explaining the watchdog role of a free press to a threatening government official.

Altadena library hits basic cable

Roberta Lauderdale of the Altadena Library in a video interview for Crown City News on the library and its programs -- right about here.

This Old (Altadena) House

Altadenans Frances and Gordon Stong's household deficiencies will be laid bare to the public in this Sunday's episode of "Sell This House!" on A&E.  "Roger takes the house from 50's to fabulous!" they say, whoever Roger is (Altadenablog hasn't watched home improvement TV since Bob Vila left). 

Best of what?

Altadena didn't fare too well in Pasadena Weekly's yearly "Best Of" advertising extravaganza.  The editors picked Coffee Gallery as "one of the best listening rooms in Southern California," (indisputable) and the almost Altadena-adjacent Phoenix Wellness Center Pharmacy. But no mention of Bulgarini Gelato!  Oh, well ... maybe if we opened more massage parlors that bought advertising there, we'd do better ...

Who you callin' seedy?

Pubisher's Weekly's review of Naomi Hirahara's Summer of the Big Bachi:

In chapter one of Hirahara's seamless and shyly powerful first novel, a Japanese PI unsettles prickly, stubborn Mas Arai, Hiroshima survivor, widower and estranged father, and the other elderly Japanese-American gardeners who hang out at Wishbone Tanaka's Lawnmower Shack in the seedy L.A. suburb of Altadena.