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A good film entertains. A great film engages our feelings, and entertains; it teaches us. From Israel, Germany, Italy, and Spain, films beckon to our hearts. They call to us, at times as powerfully as the Greek sirens luring sailors by seduction. Sometimes a powerhouse film seduces as it goes on; the beguiling happens while we watch. At the Israel Film Festival, over 40 films and 30 filmmakers wiggle an index finger drawing you in. The diversity's delightful, and in theaters this week. Opening...
Monday night, November 6th, the Culver City Council will decide if they want to allow further discussion and comment on 1000+ pages of a Specific Plan showing where they will allow oil wells to be drilled & fracked within Culver City and its Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The EIR and Specific Plan cost over a million dollars of Culver City taxpayers' money and took more than nine years to prepare. Have you even heard of it? What the effects will be on you, your home, your loved ones? By...
I decided to spend my birthday soaking in good news. Sunshine and laughter: a lovely way to spend one's birthday. * In Quebec, a six-year-old autistic boy was so super-sensitive it hurt to have his hair touched. Franz Jacob, a barber, grabbed his tools, following the boy around his hair salon, even laying down on the floor when the boy did, to keep cutting. The boy's mother was so grateful, she put the barber's photo online. * Prison inmates around the world, competing to be the most compassiona...
I am a resident of Culver City and founder of Angel City Ferret Club. This past week we have requested Culver City City Council to become a Ferret Friendly City; publicly supporting the legalization effort here in California. Since 1988 ferret enthusiast have been trying to change the 1933 law banning domestic ferrets. Supporters have tried every conceivable path towards legalization; legislative, regulative, in the courts and even a ballot initiative. The plain fact is that we the people don’t have enough political power to change this unjust...
The Los Angeles Focus 20th Annual First Ladies High Tea will take place on Saturday November 11 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, 9876 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills. Our Congresswoman the Honorable Karen Bass will be the Focus Honoree (310) 677-6011 or firstladieshightea.com. It just seems, and rightly so, Theodorsia and I are traveling more frequently and staying away longer. While we were away visiting friends and family our Congresswoman, the Honorable Karen Bass sent us this letter regarding...
While watching a video of one of last month’s School Board meeting, online, something happened that set me back. At the one-hour, seven-minute mark David Mielke, the Teachers Union president, was there to address the Board about School District salaries. While he was handing out an L.A. County salary survey and before he could get to the rostrum, Kathy Paspalis set the desired tone for Mr. Mielke’s address. She chirped in with a well-placed exclamation, “We’ve moved up!” Arriving at the speaker'...
While watching a video of one of last month’s School Board meeting, online, something happened that set me back. At the one-hour, seven-minute mark David Mielke, the Teachers Union president, was there to address the Board about School District salaries. While he was handing out an L.A. County salary survey and before he could get to the rostrum, Kathy Paspalis set the desired tone for Mr. Mielke’s address. She chirped in with a well-placed exclamation, “We’ve moved up!” Arriving at the speaker'...
I decided to spend my birthday soaking in good news. Sunshine and laughter: a lovely way to spend one's birthday. * In Quebec, a six-year-old autistic boy was so super-sensitive it hurt to have his hair touched. Franz Jacob, a barber, grabbed his tools, following the boy around his hair salon, even laying down on the floor when the boy did, to keep cutting. The boy's mother was so grateful, she put the barber's photo online. * Prison inmates around the world, competing to be the most compassiona...
When the great Russian ballet dancer Ivan Nagy was asked if ballet dancing were as easy as he made it look, he confessed, "It hurts. It hurts," with a suffering smile and begging eyes. "It hurts." It hurts. It hurts to have a president who acts this way. It hurts that there are Americans who are thrilled to have a president who acts this way. Indelibly written on our minds and hearts: Puerto Rico. Las Vegas. Stained onto our consciousness: Donald Trump's actions and words. Behavior counts....
Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse the City Council’s pitcher threw a spitter high and outside. Most of us who knew his Honor Judge Harold Cherness to be honest, fair and just; a person who had the respect and admiration of the community upon his passing the Council said no tributes could be installed for at least one year. So, we waited and waited and waited some more; until a member of the Council said they were developing a new policy and there was no telling when this phase wou...
Congresswoman, the Honorable Karen Bass will hold a meeting at Holman United Methodist Church on Saturday, October 7 from 10 a.m. to noon at 3320 West Adams Blvd, Los Angeles. RSVP at (323) 965-1422. Special guests will be L.A. City Council President Herb Wesson and Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson discussing excessive airplane noise and pollution. Can you believe the California taxpayers have invested heavily in solar power? Now there is so much power that other states are sometimes paid...
This spreadsheet shows the count of homeless students enrolled in unified school districts throughout LA County. Enrollment was measured by counting the number of students enrolled in school on a particular day in October. The data shown was collected by the California Department of Education (CDE) from the individual districts through the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) and published on the EdData website. The California Dept of Education defines homelessness as: Children and youths who are sharing the housing...
Steve, I writing you as President/CEO of the Culver City Chamber of Commerce and you as a past Chair of the Board. I find it disturbing that your Centennial publication choose to pick one position of the chamber over its 96-year history as Culver City’s leading business organization to leave a negative image of the Chamber for history to judge us by for current and future citizens of Culver City. As a matter of fact, 50% of the RAP program is being spent on administrative overhead; we did not think that was an appropriate expenditure of rare c...
I enjoy reading my copy of Bloomberg Business Week but the March 27, 2017 – April 2, 2017 was just full of surprises. For example, the F.B.I. gave a guy that just agreed to be an informant several high-tech devices, a set of keys with a hidden recorder and realistic Starbucks gift cards that recorded audio. The bad guy working for the good guys sometimes wore a white dress shirt with a button that concealed a tiny camera. In the same magazine on page 72 was a lot about Wendy Williams, such as w...
Dear friends, My name is Ed Ryba and I thoroughly enjoyed reading your "Culver City Centennial Special Edition” from cover to cover! Although it contains quite a few typos every one of them is completely forgivable. Taking on a project like that had to be a daunting and ambitious piece of work and you did it beautifully! However, you did miss one important event in your “Culver City Timeline”. In the year 1955, I WAS BORN HERE! Unfortunately, I didn’t grow up in Culver City. My parents moved to California from Chicago in 1951. When they we...
I am just sick and more than a little angry when I found out Ole Miss imposed a bowl ban for 2017 on herself. Just because the Rebels might be facing more penalties when the NCAA says their program committed more than 20 rules violations over the past several years. For the ninth year in a row Sea Islands (near Brunswick, Georgia) has received four stars from Forbes Travel Guide making it the only location in the world with that distinction. Need a vacation then take a rest in Savannah,...
Contributing Columnist In 2014-15 our district hired so many new teachers that almost one in five teachers (18.3%) in our district were first and second year teachers with very little or no real classroom experience. The State’s Education Dept. has just released new data for the school year 2015-16. (See the latest CCUSD data here.) Even though this latest data is almost two years old it does show a disturbing trend in the increased hiring (22.3%) of first and second year teachers. In some cases, at a couple of individual schools the p...
Congratulations to cities and people who are 100. In the UK, the Queen sends a greeting card to everyone on their 100th birthday. It's a silver cup in Japan; royal greetings in Sweden; a President's letter in Italy. But in Ireland, you get money: €2,540 ($3017). In the U.S., the President congratulates you. * In 400 BC, life expectancy was 30 years. Centenarian: lives to 100 or beyond. Supercentenarian: lives to 110 or more (only 1 in 1,000 centenarians.) There were 316,600 living c...
It's time for a couple of lyrical, and not so, anniversaries. The time was sensational. A half-century ago, The Beatles released their seminal Sgt. Pepper album, shaking up rock music and culture. The album won four Grammy's, was number one for 15 weeks, and ranked number one in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".A peek at making the album, "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond," features John Lennon (in extreme close-up) explaining the group, with...
According to the New York Post, Wells Fargo’s reputation took another hit on Friday, April 22, 2017 when the bank admitted its practice of opening phony customer accounts started back in 2002 not in 2009 as first reported. For all you coffee drinkers keep your eyes peeled on the food store circulars, because coffee futures in New York driven by worldwide crop gluts touched a ten year low recently. Don’t get the person with the gavel upset; a judge said VW was guilty of deliberate and mas...
Let's not expose Culver City to possibly becoming another disaster like San Bruno or Porter Ranch. Inadequate regulations and private interests have too often gotten in the way of protecting people's rights. Fortunately we in Culver City will soon have the opportunity to protect what we hold dear. Culver City is soon coming out with a draft of environmental impacts (EIR) on proposed regulations for oil and gas (O&G) exploration and production on the oil field in our City. Our quality of life will be impacted by the resulting regulations. We...
Sometime in Mid-September Culver City is planning to put out an Oil and Gas Drilling Regulations Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Public to review and comment on, Citizen Activists have been proposing the City require a surety book of one billion dollars to deal with damages if the oil company has a blowout similar to Porter Ranch or if it causes an explosion like the San Bruno, California fire that destroyed 38 homes. At the current price of Culver City real estate if the City...
The real danger: Could Fascism replace our democracy? Are we heading to a second Civil War? Are we moving toward nuclear war? Who thought fascism and a Civil War redux would rise again? In the U.S.? At the same time? It's psychological warfare: gutting the EPA, health care, climate change (July 2017 was the hottest July in 137 years of record-keeping (NASA). Fascists oppose democracy and want totalitarianism; Mussolini and Hitler were heroes. It can't happen here. Right? Slippery slope....
What is the only thing Democrats and Republicans; right wingers and left wingers; progressives and conservatives can agree upon? Without a doubt, everyone who knew his Honor Judge Harold I. Cherness recognized him for his fairness and a sense of justice he brought to his courtroom every day. His wisdom and humor knew no bounds. On September 25 the Council will hold a hearing to name the intersection Overland and Culver the Harold I. Cherness Plaza. Please plan to attend and tell Mayor Cooper...
Plein été. It's what the French call full summer. We're intensely in the middle of it. What's on your mind? Nothing, should be. Summertime, And the livin' is easy Fish are jumpin' And the cotton is high George Gershwin wrote it in 1934 for the opera "Porgy and Bess." Summer's emblem, lyrics were written by DuBose Heyward (although ASCAP also credited Ira Gershwin.) Stephen Sondheim called them "the best lyrics in musical theater." It had more than 33,000 covers. It's so evoca...
