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What Bad Thing is Next? Have you seen the YouTube video that is going viral in Laguna where a fictitious version of Hitler finds out that the reopening of Third Street has been delayed once again? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE-pM2Ygk2c The dreaded dictator has been...

Feeling the Heat The pot boiled over and the soup spilled on the stove. In the overall scheme of things it was just a little incident. But it was indicative of a greater problem; the heat has been turned up for a long time. The heat I’m talking about is not only the many warm...

  Sixth Sense The phrase, “I see retired people,” seems to be on the minds of writers wanting to blame someone or some group for stopping what they consider to be progress. Maybe the description “old timers” or “older generation” or “seniors” are substituted for “retired,”...

Full up “Oh, to be a newlywed with an empty apartment!” I found myself saying as my niece told me about her upcoming wedding. I am happy for her in more ways than one. Not only is she embarking on a lifetime journey with the love of her life, but she and her future husband get to...

Got trees? When I was considering buying the house we now live in on Wildwood Road, I mentioned the address to Fred Lang, my boss at the time. Fred, of course, had to immediately know all about it and dashed over to take a look. It wasn’t 20 minutes before he telephoned. “I think...

  Reconsider please… Not enough funds to maintain “The Sunbathers” sculpture? The two semi-abstract figures lounge in Nita Carman Park behind the high school baseball field. They will be “deaccessioned” and removed because the cost to refurbish them was deemed to be too high...

Laguna Beach their Liverpool? I’m not much of a groupie. I haven’t followed the music scene, either locally or further afield. But that changed last year when I got the idea that the South Laguna Community Garden Park should have a rock concert to raise money to buy the garden...

Gifts From the Past Does anyone remember green stamps? Back in the olden days instead of getting points on your credit card for making purchases we got green stamps. They accumulated in a drawer all year and Mom said if we pasted them in the redemption books, we could turn them...

Giant in Distress Whoo..whoo, whoo…I heard the repeated haunting calls of owls early this morning. They were coming from the giant Torrey pine tree across the street from our house. Today they seemed to be asking, “How..how how much longer will we have this sheltered lookout...

Painful Cost of Rising Home Prices Our neighbor had a garage sale for the second weekend in a row. After 10 years in the small board and batten cottage, she has to move. Her rent was just increased to $2,800. There are many ways we hear the pulse of the community. Garage sales...

Not enough to do? “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do.” Can anyone in Laguna say that? I never make the society pages in Riviera or Laguna magazine, resplendent in my shimmering gown. But even my less-than-star-studded life seems to be packed with one event after another. Sometimes...

Appreciating Change It’s been 50 years since the UC Irvine campus opened, and there has been ample publicity about how the university has grown and all its academic achievements. But as we think about it, it’s not just the campus, the research and the students, UCI’s influence...

Joyce McElree Lee Lowell, a grandchild of the “pioneer mother” of Laguna Beach, Catherine Aurora Brenizer Skidmore Brooks, died Sept. 1 in Long Beach. She was 95. Lowell’s mother, Anita Skidmore, was one of four siblings from the marriage of Catherine and George Skidmore. Her...

Reunion Proves a Strange Trip The projection screen was down. There was equipment and fussing around with it as author Nick Schou prepared to talk about his 2010 book, “Orange Sunshine, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World.”...

Be Bold, Breathe Easy Personalized repairs—that’s what you got at Karl Klass Electric downtown on Forest Avenue. I took my toaster there once and when I picked it up there was a piece of stale toast in one of the slots. “I just wanted to show you it works,” Craig explained. No...