Caution Drops Dead — Sluggers Win

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

      Note to the Equipment Manager in Council Chambers: Don’t take down the boxing ring. Fight Night ain’t going away just because the City Council changed mayors.
      Gary Silbiger, the new Mayor of Culver City, and Scott Malsin, the single new member of the City Council, made smashing debuts — as in smash-mouth — at Monday night’s meeting. Neither needed any time to warm up for his new role. Both came out swinging, and so did the veterans on the City Council.
      Neither was ever regarded as a violet of the shrinking kind. But it was presumed that each would start out a little more cautiously.
      Stiffening his spine and showing that he is going to be a hardnosed player, Mr. Malsin scored two impressive battleground victories for committee assignments while Mr. Silbiger forcefully demonstrated that the Council will be run differently now that he is, unmistakably, in charge. Mr. Silbiger, an unknown quantity as a leader as he starts his fifth year on the Council, surprised his colleagues by laying out an ambitious, full-sized, markedly Progressive agenda.

Ludlow — The Missing Pieces

Ari L. NoonanSports

   I am intrigued by what remains hidden about Martin Ludlow’s downfall from public life for diverting union funds. The story is full of fig leaves. I am disappointed by how meekly the young, formerly promising former Los Angeles City Councilman has been allowed to walk away from a spectacularly busted career without an explanation. Just too pat. He is of the wrong color and the wrong ideology to be pressed by the Los Angeles Times, and there is no one else. Left dangling are penetrating questions about the context in which he stabbed his career in the back. The answer is a tightly guarded mystery. 

Bilingual Award for Zamora

Ari L. NoonanA&E


Award-winning teacher Maria Zamora with El Marino third-grader Geneva Monteleone.

            Maria Zamora, a twenty-one-year teaching veteran at El Marino Language School, was honored last week as the Outstanding Paraprofessional of the year by the County Assn. for Bilingual  Education.      
            A native of Mexico, Senora Zamora came to America with her husband, Arturo. After her two sons were enrolled at El Rincon School, she began volunteering., and eventually she was hired. A dozen years ago, when the Spanish Immersion program was shifted to El Marino, Senora Zamora moved, too.
            She has specialized in individual  tutoring and working with small groups. She also has interpreted at parent meetings, and  she also has provided translations  for newsletters, flyers and  School District forms.
“Senora Zamora is able to provide whatever a student needs, Spanish language enrichment and vocabulary development, basic reading and math skills, improvement in writing,” said Sara Fields, the principal of El Marino. “Her presence in the classroom helps our teachers to differentiate their instruction to meet the needs of all learners.”

            Senora Zamora received her Outstanding award in Cerritos at a luncheon in the Sheraton Hotel.

In Honor of Earth Day

Ari L. NoonanA&E

        In honor of Saturday being celebrated as Earth Day, leaders of the Ballona Creek Renaissance said that opportunities abound to reconnect with the earth and its issues.
 
Here are several events of importance:
 
Saturday, 9-5, Mid-City Ballona Creek Revitalization Project. (Also May 6,7.) Location: Hauser Boulevard and Ballona Creek, between Washington and Venice boulevards.   Mid-city neighbors, the Ballona Creek Renaissance and Los Angeles city will be present for a groundbreaking, planting and improvement day at this and other locations, upstream and downstream. Refreshments, water, gloves, and tools provided. If you can help with planting instruction or need details, contact BCR’s Jim Lamm at jim.lamm@ballonacreek.org.
 
Saturday, 10-5, Baldwin Hills Earth Day Festival. (Also Sunday.) Location: Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, 4100 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles. For details, see http://www.thegreatnessfoundation.org/2006_earthday.html.
 
Sunday, 10-4, Eco Station Children’s Earth Day. Location: 10101 Jefferson Blvd., Culver City (at Pearson Street). Amid lots of activities, booths, food, and entertainment, visitors can see BCR’s booth in Pearson Street to paint flower pots, take a short creek walk, take an updated “Quacker Quiz” and see what can be done to renew the creek and watershed. For event details, go to http://www.ecostation.org/. To volunteer at BCR’s booth, email jim.lamm@ballonacreek.org or just stop by.
 
Saturday, May 6, 11-noon, Native Plant and Wildlife Garden opening and barbecue.
Location: Upper Picnic Area, Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. Project sponsored by Baldwin Hills Conservancy, Friends of Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles Audubon Society, and California Native Plant Society. RSVP at gardenparty@laaudubon.org or call toll-free to 866.778.3755. For details, go to http://www.fotbh.org/. See also the Mid-City event above.

A Day to Savor at Dog Park

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED


Friends’ member Brian Zydiak with his friends Scamper, Maggie

   Regardless of how the uneven spring weather comes up on Saturday morning, dozens of well-behaved dogs and their usually well-behaved masters will ascend one of Culver City’s loveliest hilltops for the Grand Opening of the Dog Park.

   What is an opening without a parade? Much less, evidently, if it involves Culver City Park.
   At  10:30, a Dog Parade will form on Jefferson Boulevard, at the western-most entrance of the park. Marchers will proceed east to Duquesne and then troop up the hill to the much-praised Dog Park, a sloping, grassless, fenced-in area that has become a magnet for Culver City residents with two legs and with four.
Speaking roles during the 11 a.m. Grand Opening ceremony will be limited to those born with two legs. Generally, they are regarded as the more articulate of the two types of species.

I Believe, and You Better

Ari L. NoonanSports

   On Thursday of last week — three days before Easter and on the first day of Passover — the thoughtful people who run the Julian Dixon Library staged a
pleasant, and I trust harmless, event.
   For Christian boys and girls, there was an Easter egg hunt, and Jewish children were invited to search for the afikoman, as they probably had done the night before at home.
   You have your beliefs, and I have mine — separately, please. Let us keep the lines straight. I don’t want to pray in your church, and you don’t want to pray in my synagogue.
   A couple of Sundays ago, when the father of a dear friend was buried, many of his Christian pals came for his funeral. The man next to me asked if he should don a yarmulke. If you wish, I said, but it isn’t necessary. (He didn’t.)

Council Improves Its Looks?

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

   About 7:30 on Monday night, the graying City Council will become arguably handsomer and decidedly more youthful, by thirty years, when just-elected Scott Malsin takes over the considerable chair of the retiring Mayor Albert Vera.
   The car is new, but the mileage it will get, how comfortably it will travel, how effectively it will run, are matters that lie months away from being answered.
   Mr. Malsin presented himself as an open book during the campaign.
   But questions necessarily remain over how he will fit in with the well-established dynamics thrown off by his four new teammates.

Black Museum Is in the Waiting Room

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

   Typical of government-fueled projects — months, years, even lifetimes in the making — an African American library/museum planned for the Old County Courthouse, across the street from the Vets, remains in a Parade Rest position.
   Clouded by layers of impersonal governmental uncertainty, the entrepreneur Avery Clayton said yesterday he doesn’t have a very precise guess about when to schedule Opening Day.
   Late June/early July was the target last winter, the last time he discussed a date.
   That is too early, said Mr. Clayton, who plans the enterprise as a tribute to his mother, Mayme Agnew Clayton, Ph.D, unique for her times and race, an eighty-three-year-old retired law librarian.

Wanted: A Black Newspaper

Ari L. NoonanSports

      I keep hoping that a smart entrepreneur will open a black newspaper in this town.
      A sober observer of black cultural, political and social life in Los Angeles is strongly needed.
      I am not aware of one outlet where such a view is available.
      Isn’t this one of the two or three most important black communities in America? What is the temperature in the community? I don’t know.
The once-venerable Los Angeles Sentinel has fallen — no, leaped — off the cliff into that sad abyss called We Don’t Know What We Are But It Ain’t Much.

Talkin’ Trash, Council-Style

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

   People who take out the trash seldom break through the news barrier, but the City Council made an exception last Monday night.
   Damien Skinner, the bright young man who was the Sanitation Manager, hardly ever was mentioned, in public, during his years at City Hall.
   After he left, he became a peripheral subject for discussion.
Recruited late in the winter by Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor company, Mr. Skinner recently was appointed to a financial position with Intel’s expanding operations in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. The campus employs ten thousand people, and an additional $3 billion facility is underway.