Mountain Views News          Saturday, September 21, 2013

5

AROUND SAN GABRIEL VALLEY

Mountain Views-News Saturday, September 21, 2013 

WILL THERE EVER BE WORLD PEACE? 

Finding Lessons in The Lord of the Flies

By Christoper Nyerges

[Nyerges is the author of “Self-Sufficient Home,” “How To Survive 
Anywhere,” and other books. He does a weekly podcast at Preparedness 
Radio Network. To learn about his books and classes, he can be contacted 
at www.ChristopherNyerges.com, or Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041.]

REMEMBRANCES


DONNA MARIE BONAPARTE CLOW

June 15, 1953-July 26, 2013

 From Joan Schmidt: Recently I attended a 
Memorial Mass for Donna Bonaporte Clow, well 
known in the San Gabriel Valley. Donna grew up in 
Alhambra and attended parochial schools. She came 
from a very close-knit Italian family, having two 
brothers and four sisters. 

 Pastor Father Eugene Herbert recalled meeting 
Donna when he passed the Church and heard “an 
angel” singing to Jesus as she played the piano. 
Donna was an integral part of the Music Ministry at 
Annunciation Church, Arcadia for several years. She 
also was well-loved by the school children. Every Friday afternoon the classes walked over to Church 
and Donna would teach them various hymns that would be incorporated into their weekly liturgy.

Six years ago Donna married Robert Clow. He began her Eulogy by singing, Forever and Ever, Amen” 
as he had done at their wedding. He felt she gave him the best six years of his life and that she was “The 
most caring, compassionate, loving woman”. 

Donna is survived by her husband Robert, two brothers, four sisters and MANY nieces and nephews 
who will greatly miss her.

 She died from PSP, a little-known disease. Please go on line-CurePSP to learn about this dreaded 
disease. The family asks for donations in her name. 

Several of us were sitting 
around a table 
at Bean Town in Sierra Madre, drinking coffee, 
and discussing the problems of today’s world. We 
were discussing the challenges that parents have 
with out-of-control children, various wars, terrorism, 
and other issues. 

We began our discussion by analyzing two somewhat 
misleading questions often asked by Sunday 
morning pundits: One, why does God allow all 
the trouble and evil in the world? And Two, will 
we ever experience a world in harmony, in peace? 

The first question is easy to deal with. God has 
nothing to do with the trouble in the world. Period. 
Why do we blame God (or Universal Consciousness, 
or whatever we call God) for the results 
of our own ignorance and hypocrisy and 
preferences? We are agents of free will, are we 
not? We are the architects of our future, though 
most of us create our future in a willy-nilly, accidental 
way, not realizing that every inner secret 
choice and desire, and every word spoken, and 
every action, is creating destiny and the “future.” 
But we choose to pretend that this is not so, and 
when we experience the worst nightmares of our 
own making, we blame God. As Fred Renich 
wrote, “We must become increasingly aware of 
our ever present tendency to use the mercy of a 
loving God, and his readiness to forgive, as an excuse 
for careless living.”

 Question Two is a little harder. Will there 
ever be peace on earth? Not just cessation of hostilities, 
but actual harmony among nations and 
people, and mutual respect that creates an environment 
of growth (inner and outer), real prosperity, 
and upliftment.

 To answer this question, we have to ask 
ourselves, What is the obstacle to this harmony? 
Perhaps the best way to get a handle on this question 
is to look at all the ways in our own personal 
lives where disharmony exists. In our relationships, 
among our work peers, among our family 
members, among neighbors, among the differing 
members of our community. 

 All too often, we find that our problems 
are caused because we choose to think limbically, 
we make choices subjectively, based on who we 
like, and preferences to my family, my people, my 
religion. We have not been taught or trained to 
focus upon universal principles or objective reality. 
If we make decisions in familial or group 
disputes simply by choosing my side, my group, 
my religion, rather than upon what is objectively 
right, then we foster disharmony. 

It is nearly always wrong to have a blind adherence 
to defending “my group.” I strongly recommend 
you read and study Eric Hoffer’s classic 
book “True Believer.”

And this is where the way we train our children to 
think comes in. If we have been trained to “take 
sides,” and “defend my family” and to filter all our 
judgements through subjective ideas, we become 
inept as community and national leaders. If we 
rise to national leadership with all our preconceptions 
about other people, we become part of the 
problem. We become Democrats or Republicans, 
believing our side is right and the other is wrong. 
We become Sunni or Shia, knowing we are right 
and the other is wrong. We think as black or white 
or brown or red, and we believe that the others 
are wrong. We think as Catholic or Protestant and 
consider the other beliefs wrong. Etc.

It is our very belief that keeps us in our limbic 
brain, thinking primitively, mentally residing in 
a Dark Age.

 It is not as if “answers” are not abundant. 
But we filter the answers through our subjective 
minds, and the typical human response is to kill 
off, imprison, marginalize, or ridicule to obscurity 
all the world’s great answer-givers.

 Perhaps the greatest “answer” to the 
many problems of human existence is the command 
to Love your neighbor as yourself. Or, the 
command to do unto others as you’d have them 
do to you. 

 Will there ever be harmony on earth? 
Must the human condition continue to worsen? 
Perhaps it is time to think about saving and improving 
our self, and being less concerned about 
“saving the world.” 

 As his sipped the last of his coffee, and 
looked out the window of Bean Town, one member 
of our group, Gary, said that each and every 
one of us is like the boys stranded on the island 
in Lord of the Flies. In each moment of our daily 
life, we make choices. We can choose to be uplifted 
and civilized, or we can choose animalistic 
anarchistic choices. Each choice, and the consequences 
of those choices, creates the reality we 
live in. And in that sense, we are each the architects 
of our future. Once we find harmony within, 
there will be hope that there can be harmony 
in the world.

 

CLASSES:

 Please join us in weekend wild food and 
survival skills outings. See our schedule at www.
ChristopherNyerges.com, or Box 41834, Eagle 
Rock, CA 90041. Nyerges’ many books can also 
be seen on that web-site.

LONGTIME SIERRA MADRE RESIDENT MARTHA WOOD COUTANT PASSES

Martha Wood Coutant died peacefully on September 12th at one 
hundred years of age. Second eldest of six girls, whom she outlived, 
Martha was born in Arlington, Massachusetts. The family moved 
to Pasadena in 1926, where she attended John Marshall Junior 
High, Pasadena High School, and Pasadena Junior College.

Martha met her future husband Stanley in Pasadena, and the two 
were married in 1934 at the Calvary Baptist Church across the 
street from PJC. They lived in Rancho Santa Fe until 1938, when 
they bought a house in Sierra Madre and moved back to the area.

Son Stanley was born in 1943, and once he started school Martha 
became involved in the PTA, and was an active member of the 
local school board for several years. She wrote and published 
numerous works of fiction to magazines including Highlights for 
Children and McCall’s. Later she put her writing skills to work as 
a reporter for the Pasadena Star-News, and later for the Monrovia 
Daily News-Post as its Arcadia correspondent. Her journalistic 
career lasted for nineteen years.

Later in life she published twelve historical documentaries, several of them involving family members, 
one about the Mojave Desert, and yet another that tells of the 1839 founding of the “normal school” 
in Massachusetts.

Martha is survived by her son Stanley, two grandsons Jonnathan and David, and a great-granddaughter 
Delilah. It was her wish that there be no services.


ALTADENA'S WATER FUTURE PANEL DISCUSSION

Free to the public 

September 23,2013 7:00 pm

Altadena Community Center

 Altadena Heritage will be hosting a public forum, Altadena’s Water Future, to try to clarify issues 
of water supply, water quality, handling of storm water, and mandated compliance with the Federal 
Clean Water Act as they impact Altadena.

We have lined up a panel of important water people for this round-table event:

 Chris Stone, LA County’s Water Resource manager;

 A representative from the Roads division of County Department of Public Works, to be announced;

 Tim Brick of the Arroyo Seco Foundation and former chairman of Metropolitan Water District;

 Rich Atwater of the Foothill Municipal Water District.

 Other local water purveyors including Pasadena have been specially invited to attend, and most are 
sending representatives.

 

Our goal is to increase Altadenans’ knowledge of, and involvement in, today’s water issues, including 
water security and water quality initiatives such as Clean Water, Clean Beaches Act (designed to put 
LA County in compliance with Federal regulations. It was recently dropped, but is sure to reappear).

We will focus somewhat on Altadena's position at the top of the inhabited watershed, but will also 
address the general situation in Southern California. We want everyone to understand local opportunities 
for management: capture, recharge, and treatment.

 

We also want to clarify who is responsible f or what in Altadena, including oversight of public works 
projects.

The County has many laudable “best management practices” and low-impact development guidelines 
on the books, which, for a variety of reasons are not followed in all new projects.

We would like to understand the County's process and overall goals, and we hope our panel will 
clarify interrelationships (or lack of coordination, as the case may be) among local water companies, 
Foothill Municipal Water District, the County, and the State of California.

 

With people representing several jurisdictions in the same room at the same time, this is a great opportunity 
to get your water questions answered.

 

Please join us at the Altadena Community Center on Monday, September 23rd, at 7 pm. The public 
is invited and there will be no admission charge.

MAN HIRES A HUNDRED HOMELESS TO STAND IN 
LINE FOR NEW IPHONE By Dean Lee

Tempers flared as fans waited to get the new flagship phone from Apple

 Apple halted iPhone 5S sales Friday morning to nearly 100 homeless people, who were promised 
payment to camp out over night in front of the Old Pasadena Apple store. The incident causing a 
near-riot after a businessman refused to pay the hired line sitters once the store became wise to the 
situation.

 Pasadena police told reporters that the businessman, who identified himself as “Bobby,” was not 
breaking any laws. Police had to escort him out of the area after the group became mad, surrounded 
and threaten him.

 

 
According to reports, Bobby (above with Pasadena Police Officer), hired the homeless people from 
Skid Row, promising them between $20 and $40 each to wait to buy the iPhone 5S. Some of the 
recruits said Bobby gave them pizza, drinks and cigarettes the night before. 

 “I buy phones,” he admitted to KTLA News. “And I resell them. It’s not illegal if I buy them at full 
retail price.”

 Two men, also in line, were taken into custody, in a separate situation, after fighting. 

 Police said Pasadena resident Lamar Mitchell and George Westbrook, of Compton, were arrested 
about 7:30 a.m. The two men attacked each other as officers watched then immediately stopping the 
situation. Mitchell and Westbrook were both given citations and released. 

 The iPhone 5S Gold, Friday afternoon was already reselling on Craigslist for over $1,000. The phone 
sold out in many of the Apple stores across the country including Pasadena.

 


LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS PASADENA AREA 
PRESENTS FORUM ON THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

Never mind that .Obamacare is making headlines and continuing down a contentious path. Pasadena 
is prepared for the big rollout of major provisions on Oct. 1. And the League of Women Voters 
Pasadena is holding a free, public forum on how this will affect almost everyone -- often to their 
pleasant surprise. You and your audience will not want to miss this stimulating, informative program. 
We hope you will announce the program and also cover the event,educating the public, as 
you know, is essential. Please be our guest for lunch, The second speaker will make his presentation 
after lunch. 

We’d like to hear from you! 

What’s on YOUR Mind?

Contact us at: editor@mtnviewsnews.com or www.facebook.
com/mountainviewsnews AND 

Twitter: @mtnviewsnews