Listening to some sweet homeboys

Tonight, I’m listening to Greg and Thom Moore, the Moore Brothers.  The particular CD I have on right now is called Now Is The Time For Love. It’s not their latest, but is the one that I find most inspiring when I paint. There’s something natural and leafy about it. It resides in the air around here. It feels like Altadena, the region above Pasadena up against the mountains. The sound affects me like the intense Altadena sunlight shining down on my cheeks, freckling them.

It’s really no accident their music seems to talk to the flowers, the fruit, and the rest of the molecules floating around this place.  The Moore Brothers grew up in Altadena.  They are two young men that channel  Simon and Garfunkel with a little bit of the worldly William S. Burroughs thrown in. They are their own  unique sound and wonderful original very open-earthy-Altadena-esque concoction.

I’m not accustomed to writing music reviews. So, this is not a music review. It’s only that I’ve been thinking about my children, and their friends. They seem to possess a natural beauty, a glow. It’s different. It’s not mainstream. I would say it is healthy and charming but with a confidence in themselves. There’s no shame. They stand as who they are: An uncomplicated beauty that is as complex as all of the elements that make up a place like Altadena.

There is no place quite like Altadena, and no people quite like its people.

Racially, Altadena is mostly black and white; famous Black Panther activists, and white, white Caltechian nerds. Their children grew up appreciating plants, music, and nature… and being connected to it. All of it mixed together has created a lovely tuned-in sort of atmosphere.

In this CD, you can hear the farmy influence… Angst is there too,  the innocence of exploring love.

Falling

dream, has it been changing your way?
rolling down a hill, we’re falling.
please, don’t take away this day.
we’re trying to help each other out but we’re falling.

falling, falling.
what is this dreaming?
falling.

please, dont take away this day.
rolling down a hill, we’re falling.
dream, has it been changing your way?
were trying to help each other out
but were falling.

falling, falling.
what is this dreaming?
falling.

and in the moonlight, i didn’t know what to do.
and in the moonlight, i didn’t know what to do.

From this same ingenious generation of Altadena born around the ’70-80s,  the creation of a Co-Op organic grocery store, and a burgeoning  goat farm- cheesemaking, chickens, and all things grown organic from Mariposa Farms. This is also on the spot of the Zane Grey Estate, where on Sunday, May 29th, there is an Urban Farmers Market from 1-4 pm. So many innovative ideas are coming from these lovely children of Altadena that it’s too much to list.

The Altadena Public Library has no doubt been an influence on the Moore Brothers music as evinced in this sweet tune, Sorting Books:

…just to prove she’s sorting books 

that no one ever reads

she knows time

she’s my wooden guide

precious stone

she’ll come rolling home with her crown and her skin and her bones

you go to bed with his soap on your tongue

you smell like a lemon and I’m almost won

in the curl you complain the feather’s too warm

just to prove your sorting books

that no one ever reads…

I know what you’re thinking,

MG, there’s a lot of non-sequiturs in this post, and in these lyrics. (and maybe you’ve got those lyrics all wrong!)

What can I say? This is how some things get processed. It’s not always neat and tidy. Perfection is not the tool of nature, although it is perfect–isn’t it?

Listening to this CD calmed my rattled nerves tonight. I came from a meeting at La Canada High School that was called by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works where they presented their plans to carve up Hahamongna with their big ten cubic yard carrying dump trucks. Nice. When asked about all of the wildlife in the wetlands they would be destroying they replied, It’s not their job to be concerned about that.

What a mess. It’s Pasadena’s mess visited upon the residents of Altadena, and all of the natural wild critters that live in the wetlands. It’s too bad the City Council of Pasadena has no concern for LIFE in Hahamongna or for the people surrounding in Altadena. What terrible neighbors and stewards of the environment we are!

It’s an unseemly deal with the devil when one city (Pasadena) blames the county (Los Angeles) and the county blames one city. It leaves us in the middle with nothing.

Go to the next Pasadena City Council Meeting, Monday June 6th, and let them know that all of the route plans the county presented are devastating to either neighborhoods and/or wildlife. Make sure Councilman Victor Gordo, and Councilman Steve Madison are awake and listening since these two are suffering from severe testosterone poisoning, and are encouraging the rape of Hahamongna (and Altadena) most emphatically.  Geese, I hope they recover soon.

The Moore Brothers played May 14, 2011 cancer benefit in Altadena. (My son-in-law on the drums)

Hahamongna/Devil's Gate Dam Haul Routes, Meeting at La Canada HS May 26, 2011

This rendering shows the existing sports field,

and the small parking lot. The rest of the area surrounding is beautiful existing woodlands/wetlands to be destroyed by LA County removing sediment, and then further developed by the City of Pasadena into what they believe is ” a park” and “open space.” Many living beings will die in this Hahamongna Holocaust. It’s all about revenues, isn’t it folks? In the end, it’s what the capitalist system is all about. You have only to feast your eyes every year on the fabulous parade of dead flowers down Colorado Blvd. to know how capitalist Pasadena is.

Why develop Hahamongna?: Beautiful wetlands destroyed

May 24, 2011

Dear Readers, Neighbors, and Government Officials,

Let me tell you about my day. At 9:00 A.M. it started at the Los Angeles County Municipal Court in Alhambra, Department V, 4th Floor before Judge Stephanie M. Bowick. I was there to show my support for the Arcadia Tree Sitters. A small group of ordinary citizens that took it upon themselves, in our behalf (that’s you and me Q. Public) to sit in trees to try to prevent those trees from being violently ripped to shreds by bulldozers to make way for nearby dam sediment (formerly known as what becomes beach sand) to be dumped. The subject of which is a whole other rant I’ll not go into here. Let’s just say, it was a tragic human rudeness against an ancient natural resource. Old oaks and sycamores were slaughtered without a care in the world for the benefit they provide to the public and to the habitat they provided to many wild creatures.

After a parade of many other people that had driven drunk or were accused of some other serious offenses, at 10:45 the tree sitters case was called. At that time, their attorney stated to the court that they were still in ongoing negotiations with the District Attorney’s office regarding disposition of their case, and if no agreement could be reached (as in dismissal) the case would move forward to trial on June 23, 2011.

I ask you, in voire dire, where are they going to find a jury of twelve tree haters and total haters of free speech? This is a ridiculous waste of precious taxpayer dollars. I ask you, District Attorney Steve Cooley, to give this up and let it go. This case goes against everything you know in your heart to be right. You can’t convince me that you didn’t sit in a tree one day in your life and feel cradled by the earth (ref. Kelly’s comment on a previous post).

All these people did was try and save a few trees. A heinous outrage! (excuse me for laughing out loud)

After a fabulously luxurious nap with my cat at home, I attended the City of Pasadena’s Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee meeting. This is where things got a little more crazy for me (and I use ‘more crazy’ loosely). The committee is comprised of ordinary citizens (appointed by the mayor), government staff employees, and representatives of establishment environmental organizations-like the Sierra Club.

On the big screen was projected this map:

The pink area is a development project proposed in partnership with the Arroyo Seco Foundation. Which I trust to be sensitive to the surrounds, and appropriate to the further nurturance and practicality in preservation of the watershed, an extremely valuable resource. I feel the same confidence in the integrity of the Pasadena Water and Power Department and the work they do in protecting and purifying our water.

The Annex section of the map (the area just below JPL and to the far left on the map) concerns only development and renovation of a group of buildings that were once occupied by the US Forestry Service. No problem there. It’s reuse of established stuff. It’s like recycling. It would be good to find or transfer some funding for that. Fix it up. Make it an Environmental Education Center, but what environment do you have left?

There’s a serious problem in the areas shown in blue and yellow on the map. This is an area that the committee seems bent on using city funding and finding grant funding to develop. It is undeveloped habitat. This is human encroachment, rudeness toward nature. It irritates the hell out of me. Why? Why do they want to mess with any of it? WASTE of taxpayer dollars!

The committee spent at least an hour discussing the status of the various funding/grant application status to develop these areas. The idea is to pile up tons of sediment in there and make a piece of land that is high and flat. Then, create a “multipurpose” athletic field, ie. famously known as the soccer field. This has been blogged about extensively to the credit of Petrea Burchard, a Pasadena homeowner and frequenter of  Hahamongna. She designated a blog day about it last year: http://pasadenadailyphoto.blogspot.com/2010/07/hahamongna-blog-day.html

Hot!

Chris Holden, Pasadena City Councilman of District 3 weighed in with his observations and expertise: http://chrisholdenblog.com/tag/hahamongna-watershed-park-master-plan/

At the last meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Committee, Los Angeles County Department of Public Works presented their plan to remove sediment from behind Devil’s Gate Dam. This is at the base of the Hahamongna wetlands area. They propose a roadway created specifically for their humungous hauling trucks from the base of the dam all the way up the right side of Hahamongna to the JPL parking lot. That plan in conjunction with the areas of development in the blue and yellow parts on the map leaves a very narrow strip of wetlands, of wildlands.  Do you see? This is too much human intervention.

There are animals living there.  How much of this habitat destruction do you think they can take? It’s absurd the arrogance of these plans! Great Horned Owls are thriving in Hahamongna, among other treasured wildlife.

If I were not the flawed human being that I am, I would have yelled at the committee tonight like a Code Pink Activist at a Carl Rove book signing. I would have said: What are you doing? You are totally ruining Hahamongna!!!!

Totally ruining Hahamongna.

We will all wake up tomorrow and say, Where is it?

It’s gone.

Do you have the money to replace this waste?

No, we can’t ever.

World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (via Mother Earth)

This the proposal that is being circulated among the United Nations. It is the initiative of Prime Minister Evo Morales, Bolivia. This is a brilliant, and beautiful thing.

Working Group 3: Rights of Mother Earth Proposal UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH Preamble We, the peoples and nations of Earth: considering that we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny; gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and learning and provides everything we need to live well;recognizing that t … Read More

via Mother Earth