Easter
Dear ER:
And there we were, on March 21 the Manhattan Beach Unified School District was on national news. Exciting? No. Embarrassing? Yes. Please tell me we are not banning the moniker “Easter” in our school system, with a cowardly “Spring,” afraid that tradition will corrupt the seculars. We are a country founded on Judeo-Christian philosophy.
Easter is a Judeo-Christian tradition, a Christian festival and holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In some public school districts, such as East Meadow School District, NY, our traditions are under attack.
As we stood by and watched “Merry Christmas” changed to “Holiday Greetings” are we now struggling to impose on our nation the soft tyranny of “Easter” secularism? Are the anti-Easter municipalities going to change Easter traditions to “Spring” egg hunts?
The core of de-spiritualization is radical progressivism. Diminish religion and tradition in a culture and radical progressives are happy. Morality surrounding abortions and pedophilia is abstractly contrived, apologetic, in denial, “not speaking,” “not acting.”
Some of our great religious and educational institutions, including The Catholic Church and Public School System, are surrendering our spiritual values that made our nation great. As Europe became more secularized it became poorer, weaker and less influential. Does this sound like America?
Diminish religion and tradition, and freedom is surrendered. This is a “soft” persecution against the very Judeo-Christian philosophy on which our country was founded. Where are our local churches and spiritual champions on these issues?
“Easter” tradition is not a “Spring” ritual. This is not happening in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District?
Donald A Sellek
Manhattan Beach
Creative Art Center
Dear ER:
For my husband Chuck and I, Mira Costa High School’s annual all media art show was deja vu; maybe because we are now seniors reflecting with enchantment memories of our teenage art displays from the 50’s, so urgent from the heart issues of a teenager’s emotional truth. What we viewed of Mira Costa’s students was both humbling and gratifying, they in generous measures of intellectual maturity revealed to us that today’s youth are discovering art everywhere. In the ‘50s, the mediums available for our creative encouragement were clay, pen and ink; charcoal, tempera, and for students serious to be future galley pleasers we used oil paint.
Chuck grew up on a farm where each winter he would measure and make exact templates to the size of tree forks; after cutting with a keyhole saw the two inch thick pond ice, he then colored each triangular panel with food coloring. Chuck would fasten each section of brightly colored ice into the pre-measured tree forks, thus creating a tree of colorful stain-glass all from a media provided by winter’s natural season.
Art lives progressively by the enormous increases of today’s newly found materials available to the youthful artists whose unlimited imagination can be exhibited for our enjoyable enlightenment.
Dora Perez-Meyer
Torrance
Letter for Sketchers
Dear ER:
On behalf of the residents of Hermosa Beach, I kindly request that you take pride in ownership of your property on Pacific Coast Highway. The unkempt and unsightly parking lot which you own sits on one of the most traveled highways in California and is also the first property visible upon entering Hermosa Beach. Your lack of consideration for our City is reflected by how well you keep your building across the street (in Manhattan Beach) routinely manicured. It should not be the responsibility of the residents nor the city to have to continually remind you to clean up this eyesore. So please, have some consideration for the neighbors and the public who are subjected to the blight of weeds, trash and dilapidation of your property and clean up after yourself.
Katrina Bacallao
Why a Carbon Neutral Hermosa Beach Now?
Dear ER:
Recently, this year’s Leadership Hermosa Beach class asked me to participate on an environmental panel to discuss the Carbon Neutral initiative. Unfortunately, I was out of town on that date. In my absence, I prepared the following note that was read in the class. We thought it would be helpful to share it more broadly:
As a Leadership Hermosa alum, 17-year resident and owner and builder of the Green Idea House, I appreciate the invitation to speak on this important topic and honor your commitment to the betterment of our wonderful city. Carbon Neutral in it’s simplest terms is harvesting as much energy from renewable sources as you use on an annualized basis. Even if you don’t care about polar ice caps and the environment, this is an idea that deserves your attention for health and economic reasons.
From a health standpoint, the particulates from the burning of fossil fuels cause heart disease, lung disease and cancer. Wipe your finger on any window sill in the city and you will see the black soot that is the carcinogen that we are all taking in with every breath. We are blocks from the ocean and should have very clean air and we don’t. Our children and elderly deserve better than that.
As a Wharton Business School trained economist, I also look at it from an economic standpoint. Carbon Neutral is the next industrial revolution. Other countries around the world like Germany, Japan, Denmark and even China are taking the technologies that we invented and getting the jump on us, creating clean tech jobs and reshaping their economies in a more efficient and environmentally friendly way. We deserve to have these jobs and opportunities for our economy.
As a result of Hermosa Beach’s small size, lack of heavy industry and access to plentiful renewable energy, we have an opportunity to be the first Carbon Neutral City in Southern California! That distinction would allow us to get grants and other monies for projects to support our Carbon Neutral effort. We have already received a $410K grant to do a Carbon Neutral overlay of our general plan. In addition to the health benefits, this sustainable development would be a boon for our local economy and draw in clean tech jobs and eco-tourists.
Also, our city is facing one of the biggest decisions in our history. In a number of months, citizens will need to vote on an oil drilling project. Having a substantive carbon neutral commitment in place in advance of that vote would be of benefit to all residents if the vote turns out to be a yes or a no. If the citizens vote no, the grants and other monies from a Carbon Neutral positioning will be needed to offset the $17.5 million we will owe to the oil company. If the vote is yes, a Carbon Neutral commitment will set the tone for any and all development in the city in a way that an Environmental Impact or Coastal Commission Report is unable to do.
Responsible developers will understand the value to their projects of building in a way that helps the city achieve its Carbon Neutral goals. And as our Green Idea House case study proved, it is possible to build Carbon Neutral for the same cost as standard construction.
In the City Council’s most recent strategic planning session, Carbon Neutrality received the highest number of votes of any of their major goals. The only thing left to be done is for City Council members to come back with a timeline that directs the $410K Carbon Neutral planning grant. In the City Council’s next strategic planning session council members can direct the planners to create goals that will potentially have us be the first Carbon Neutral city in Southern California. A Carbon Neutral commitment with aggressive timelines accelerates great projects like Blue Zones, Bikeways and Living Streets and will make us all proud of our achievements from a economic, environmental and health perspective.
If you are interested in the subject and would like to find out more, please feel free to contact me at info@GreenIdeaHouse.com.
Robert Fortunato
Ironic position
Dear ER:
Under the advice of the Mayor and the majority of the City Council coupled with the fear of expensive litigation the people of Redondo Beach voted down Measure A. At the last council meeting those same councilmen have taken a position against construction of another power plant on the waterfront. The city attorney warned of high cost of fighting AES at the state level in front of the California Energy Commission. Isn’t that ironic…..
Paul Moses
Redondo Beach
Strand tickets
Dear ER:
The Manhattan Beach Police states that they are ticketing persons bicycling on The Strand, rather than the bike path because of safety concerns. Having spent $1,500 on fines and attorney fees as a result of being given a ticket for riding my bicycle a short distance on the Strand when the bike path was being repaired, I would like to share some observations.
The article failed to state the basic problems with the two paths. On the Strand, one would not see the regulations that are posted in very small print on the cement garbage cans, unless you stopped and read them carefully. The ban on bike riding on the Strand is almost to the end of that list. This cannot be done by people on a bicycle. On the bike path, there are faded signs stating it is for bikes only. The city needs large signs, which are standard in other Southern California beaches. They clearly show a picture of a bicycle with a red cross across it posted on the Strand and a human being walking with a red cross across it on the bike path, at various points.
I wonder if the true intent of the MBPD is concern for the public safety or giving tickets as a means of increasing the monies during these hard economic times. Lastly, please have your ID’s with you when riding a bicycle or walking. If you are stopped by a police officer and if you should be from another planet or country, and should you lie about your residence, you can be put in jail. All this for walking or riding a bike on the wrong path.
Manhattan Beach homeowner
Quaint and fashionable
Dear ER:
Thank you ER for Bondo Wyszpolski’s story “A Vision of their Own” on March 7, 2013.
The successful redevelopment of Torrance’s business district into a well-designed downtown area is perhaps the major clue as to why this quaint fashionable community has been chosen to be the cultural sight for the California Museum of Fine Art.
My husband Chuck and I during our many romantic evening walks, with avid curiosity, have reviewed the California Museum of Fine Art as it progressed through its anamorphic like development. We keenly observed 1412 Marcelina Avenue’s phenomenal transition from Pillers, a once mod-hippie era women’s clothing market, into Torrance’s temple for fine art. Truly, it is a rewarding beacon illuminating internationally known artists and discovering their creative tempo of morality from their inner-most philosophical perspectives.
As we entered the California Museum of Fine Art on its grand opening day, we became enthralled, savoring its exquisite materialization while viewing its reverberating concourse of graphics. We paused only to retain intellectually into our aesthetic senses and pleased to realize that this first splendid exhibition collected from the studios of major artists will be for the Torrance community a cultural pleasure to host for many years to come.
Dora Perez-Meyer
Torrance
