Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 13, 2012

5

AROUND SAN GABRIEL VALLEY

Mountain Views News Saturday, October 13, 2012

CANDIDATE SPEAKS TO 
STUDENTS

THE URBAN BEARS

By Christoper Nyerges

[Nyerges is the author of “Self-Sufficient Home,” “How to Survive Anywhere,” and 
other books. He can be reached at Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or www.
ChristopherNyerges.com.]

“What’s Going On?” 

News and Views from Joan Schmidt


Congressional 
Candidate Jack Orswell 
Addresses Class at La 
Salle High School

By Joan Schmidt

 This past Tuesday, 
Mr. Ring’s AP government 
class had a special speaker, 
27th Congressional District 
candidate, Jack Orswell, 
and what a great learning experience it was! 

 Jack began with an introduction about himself 
and qualifications. Born and raised in Pasadena, 
Jack and his wife Janice of forty-one years attend 
Trinity Presbyterian Church, where he is an 
Elder. A graduate of Pasadena City College, Jack 
received his Bachelor of Science Degree from 
USC in 1971. Upon graduation, he worked for 
a Certified Accounting firm in Pasadena for two 
years, then received an appointment as a FBI 
Special Agent and served in the Denver, San 
Francisco and Los Angeles offices. His crime 
cases included bank fraud, political corruption 
and racketeering. Jack received specialized 
training from the US Environmental Protection 
Agency and was one of the first Agents to 
work with the EPA in investigating federal 
environmental crimes.

 In 1988, Jack moved from government service 
into private industry and worked for an insurance 
investigation company in Santa Ana, conducting 
insurance claims investigations. In 1990, Jack 
started his own company which employs nine 
people and conducts environmental assessments 
for financial institutions, real estate companies 
and law firms. He also is a licensed Private 
Investigator with the State of California. In 2009, 
he returned to college and earned his Master of 
Arts Degree in Organizational Leadership from 
Woodbury University.

 Jack is also a Reserve Police Officer for the City 
of Arcadia, an Eagle Scout who serves on the 
Board of Directors for the San Gabriel Valley 
Council, Boy Scouts of America. He’s an active 
Scout Leader, a Rotary International Paul Harris 
Fellow and has received the Honorary Service 
Award from the Hugo Reid PTA.

Why is Jack running for office? He wants to be 
a representative of the people, a voice for the 
people of the 27th Congressional District which 
includes 16 cities. Jack’s motto is “leadership, not 
politics.” He believes in Free Enterprise, “That is 
what makes our country great.”

 
When asked why he chose to run, Jack said, “I 
am concerned that the $16 trillion in national 
debt will be a burden to our children and 
grandchildren, and we must bring back fiscal 
responsibility to our government.”

 A question about his business brought this 
answer: “I am a trickle down owner who has 
nine employees. When business is good, I give 
bonuses. People work with me, not for me. 
When business wasn’t doing well, my partner 
and I went without pay for six months, so all of 
the employees were paid, and no one was laid 
off.”

 Questioned about Iran, Jack acknowledged 
it is a very dangerous situation and made 
a comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis. 
However, he feels “War is the last resort.”

 One student queried Jack about public speaking 
before this high school class and in general. Jack 
mentioned that as a scout leader, he addressed 
audiences of all ages, and he felt his speaking 
skills have improved other time. 

 Why did Jack choose to run for Congress? “I 
am very pleased with both the Arcadia City 
Council and Arcadia School Board; I wouldn’t 
run against them, when they are doing a good 
job.”

 Jack has visited all sixteen cities in the district 
and would stay involved with the community. 
He lamented over funding removed from JPL, 
and the tax situation. He brought up loopholes in 
the projected health care measure. If businesses 
like Burger King can’t afford insurance for their 
employees, they’ll simply reduce employees’ 
hours to 25. (Great, a double whammy- These 
people themselves can’t afford health care and 
now the employees will have lower paychecks 
from working fewer hours. 

 He spoke of having courage and voting against 
your party’s policies when necessary; “I am tired 
of politicians”.

 Jack told the class, “You are the future of 
America. I am doing this for you. If you are old 
enough, you must vote. If not, go home and tell 
your parents what you have learned today.”

 This was a great experience for the government 
class to personally meet a candidate and ask so 
many questions on various issues. Thank you Mr. 
Orswell, candidate, and Mr. Ring, Government 
teacher for this invaluable experience for your 
class.

 

Kim Bosell, the Natural Areas 
Administrator for the County of 
Los Angeles , shared her years of 
experience with bears recently 
to a full house, as part of the 
Summer Twilight Program series 
at Eaton Canyon Nature Center . 
The Summer Twilight Program is 
part of an on-going educational 
effort by the dedicated County 
staff and ECNCA (Eaton Canyon 
Nature Center Associates) 
volunteers. 

 Grizzly bears were native to 
Southern California, and though 
they apparently 
got along just fine 
for centuries with 
the indigenous 
people, bears and 
new settlers didn’t 
get along. There 
were conflicts 
right from the 
start as settlers 
began to kill the 
grizzlies, Bosell 
told the audience. 
The last known 
grizzly was killed 
in California in 
the 1920s. 

 Though all 
the grizzlies 
were killed off 
in Southern 
California, the 
black bears of 
Yosemite were 
alive and well, 
getting into trash 
cans, begging 
for food, getting 
too close to 
people, getting into cars. The 
solution? Send them to Southern 
California! In 1933, 13 black 
bears from Yosemite were let 
loose in the San Bernardino 
mountains, and 11 were let loose 
in the Angeles National Forest. 
Bosell stated that that are an 
estimated 3,500 black bears in 
the entire state of California, 
and the Department of Fish and 
Game allows 1,800 to be hunted 
each year. “But most hunters 
don’t hunt bear in Southern 
California, and so the black bear 
population is a wild guess,” says 
Bosell.

 Bosell shared everything 
you’d ever want to know about 
black bears – and more – in her 
informative – and humorous -- 
photo presentation. 

 Black bears, for example, 
are usually brown, but can also 
be black, white, blond, even 
blue! The color depends on the 
location, and our local black 
bears are mostly brown. When 
walking on all fours, they are 
about three to four feet tall, and 
they can be up to seven feet tall 
when standing. And they are 
fast! Black bears can run up to 35 
mph in spurts.

 “To protect itself, a bear will 
fight or flight, and the black bear 
chooses flight, especially up a 
tree,” says Bosell. She points out 
that the black bear will just wait, 
and wait, even for hours, until 
a threat goes away, and so news 
crews and police and gawking 
public watching a bear up in a 
tree only prolong the situation. 

 Bosell pointed out that our 
local black bears are not very 
concerned about people, and 
don’t have a predatory instinct.

 “Bears will always communicate 
how they feel,” says Bosell. “They 
will blow air through their lips, 
clap their jaws, and when they 
start vocalizing, they want you to 
leave their personal space. Next, 
they’ll flatten their ears, and next 
they’ll charge.” 

 Bosell shared what we’ve 
heard many times: If a black bear 
approaches, don’t run, but rather, 
make yourself appear larger and 
more imposing, raise your arms, 
and make noise. 

 “But when I was tracking 
Henry, and he charged, I never 
ran so fast in my life,” said Bosell 
to much laughter. Fortunately, 
according to Bosell, 99% of the 
time, the bear charge is a bluff, 
intended to scare you out of the 
area. 

 In fact, despite the fear caused 
by the local black bears, Bosell 
pointed out that only one death 
has been attributed to the black 
bear – in 1875! “Since the 1980s, 
there have been 14 black bear 
attacks, but none fatal,” points 
out Bosell. 

 Still, Bosell’s educational 
– and highly entertaining – 
presentation pointed out that 
bears can cause a lot of damage 
when they get into urban trash 
cans, cars, and inside homes. 
It’s important not to feed the 
bears because they will come 
back again and again to the 
desirable urban trash food. “In 
Canada, they don’t give bears 
a second chance. Bears caught 
eating human food are killed. 
In California, we have a ‘three 
strikes’ policy,” explained Bosell. 
To emphasize the point, she said 
that “a fed bear is a dead bear.”

 But it is a on-going battle to 
educate the public about how to 
live with bears, and how to bear-
proof homes, cars, and trash 
cans. 

 In California, the three 
problem areas are Tahoe, 
Mammoth, and Monrovia. 
Monrovia has lots of old growth 
avocadoes, and unfortunately, 
the problem is exacerbated by 
people deliberately leaving trash 
out so they can watch the bears 
eat it.

 Unfortunately, feeding bears 
can cause harm to children, and 
property damage, and ultimately 
the problem bear could be killed.

 The entertaining program was 
well-received by local residents. 
A lively question and answer 
period followed the slide show 
presentation where residents 
inquired about the personal 
ramifications of living close to 
bears.

 To learn about upcoming 
programs of the Summer 
Twilight Program, go to the the 
Eaton Canyon website, www.
ecnca.org.


Students listen attentively as Orswell explained his position. The candidate did not 
excape serious crutinty from the audience.

THE WORLD AROUND US


UCLA ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER STAR RACING AROUND BLACK HOLE AT CORNER OF OUR GALAXY

Discovery crucial to revealing fabric of space and time 
around black hole

UCLA astronomers report the discovery of a remarkable star that 
orbits the enormous black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy 
in a blistering 11-and-a-half years—the shortest known orbit of 
any star near this black hole.

The star, known as S0-102, may help astronomers discover whether 
Albert Einstein was right in his fundamental prediction of how 
black holes warp space and time, said research co-author Andrea 
Ghez, leader of the discovery team and a UCLA professor of physics 
and astronomy. The research was published Oct. 5 in the journal 
Science.

Before this discovery, astronomers knew of only one star with a very 
short orbit near the black hole: S0-2, which Ghez used to call her 
“favorite star” and whose orbit is 16 years. (The "S" is for Sagittarius, 
the constellation containing the galactic center and the black hole.)

“I'm extremely pleased to find two stars that orbit our galaxy's supermassive 
black hole in much less than a human lifetime,” said 
Ghez, who studies 3,000 stars that orbit the black hole, and has been 
studying S0-2 since 1995. Most of the stars have orbits of 60 years 
or longer, she said.

“It is the tango of S0-102 and S0-2 that will reveal the true geometry 
of space and time near a black hole for the first time,” Ghez said. 
“This measurement cannot be done with one star alone.”

Over the past 17 years, Ghez and colleagues have used the W. M. 
Keck Observatory, which sits atop Hawaii's dormant Mauna Kea 
volcano, to image the galactic center at the highest angular resolution 
possible. They use a powerful technology called adaptive optics 
to correct the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere.

Black holes, which form out of the collapse of matter, have such 
high density that nothing can escape their gravitational pull—not 
even light. They cannot be seen directly, but their influence on 
nearby stars is visible and provides a signature, said Ghez.

Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that mass distorts 
space and time and therefore not only slows down the flow of time but also stretches or shrinks 
distances.

“The fact that we can find stars that are so close to the black hole is phenomenal,” said Ghez, who 
directs the UCLA Galactic Center Group. “Now it's a whole new ballgame, in terms of the kinds of experiments 
we can do to understand how black holes grow over time, the role supermassive black holes 
play in the center of galaxies, and whether Einstein's theory of general relativity is valid near a black 
hole, where this theory has never been tested before.”

“The exciting thing about seeing stars go through their complete orbit is not only that you can prove 
that a black hole exists but you have the first opportunity to test fundamental physics using the motions 
of these stars,” Ghez said. “Showing that it goes around in an ellipse provides the mass of the supermassive 
black hole, but if we can improve the precision of the measurements, we can see deviations from a 
perfect ellipse—which is the signature of general relativity.”

As the stars come to their closest approach to the black hole, their motion will be affected by the curvature 
of space-time, and the light traveling from the stars to us will be distorted, Ghez explained.

You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@MtnViewsNews.com.