Mountain Views News          Saturday, November 14, 2015

13

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Views-News Saturday, November 14, 2015 

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

WAITING ON STAR WARS - Picture of the Week


All over the news these 
days you hear of the 
hysteria and anticipation 
for STAR WARS: Episode 
VII that opens in theatres 
on December 18th. 

However, over the 
Halloween weekend, 
PHI-YODA, aka Phiona 
Lambdin had a message 
for all the anxious ones, 
“Keep Calm and Use The 
Force”.

The movie marks the 30th 
anniversary of the original 
Star Wars movie and stars 

Han Solo (Harrison Ford) 
and his allies face a new 
threat from the evil Kylo 
Ren (Adam Driver) and his 
army of Stormtroopers.

Photo courtesy 

Nikki Staggs Lambdin

This Star Won’t Go Out: The Life and Words 
of Esther Grace Earl by Esther Earl, Lori 
Earl, Wayne Earl, John Green 

 New York Times Bestseller!“This moving read 
will have you reaching for the tissues and smiling 
with delight,stunningly alive on the page, 
Esther shows that sometimes the true meaning 
of life,helping and loving others,can be found 
even when bravely facing 
death.” –People Magazine. In 
full color and illustrated with 
art and photographs, this is 
a collection of the journals, 
fiction, letters, and sketches 
of the late Esther Grace Earl, 
who passed away in 2010 at the 
age of 16. Essays by family and 
friends help to tell Esther’s story 
along with an introduction by 
award-winning author John 
Green who dedicated his #1 
bestselling novel The Fault in 
Our Stars to her.

Founding Gardeners: 
The Revolutionary Gen-
eration, Nature, and the 
Shaping of the American 
Nation by Andrea Wulf 

 For the Founding Fathers, 
gardening, agriculture, and botany were 
elemental passions: a conjoined interest as 
deeply ingrained in their characters as the 
battle for liberty and a belief in the greatness 
of their new nation. Founding Gardeners is an 
exploration of that obsession, telling the story 
of the revolutionary generation from the unique 
perspective of their lives as gardeners, plant 
hobbyists, and farmers. Acclaimed historian 
Andrea Wulf describes how George Washington 
wrote letters to his estate manager even as British 
warships gathered off Staten Island; how a tour 
of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s 
and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; 
and why James Madison is the forgotten father 
of environmentalism. Through these and other 
stories, Wulf reveals a fresh, nuanced portrait of 
the men who created our nation.

100 Years of The Best American Short 
Stories by Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor 

 The Best American Short Stories is the longest 
running and best-selling series of short fiction in 
the country. For the centennial celebration of this 
beloved annual series, master of the form Lorrie 
Moore selects forty stories from the more than two 
thousand that were published in previous editions. 
Series editor Heidi Pitlor 
recounts behind-the-scenes 
anecdotes and examines, decade 
by decade, the trends captured 
over a hundred years. Together, 
the stories and commentary 
offer an extraordinary guided 
tour through a century of 
literature with what Moore calls 
“all its wildnesses of character 
and voice.”These forty stories 
represent their eras but also 
stand the test of time. Here 
is Ernest Hemingway’s first 
published story and a classic 
by William Faulkner, who 
admitted in his biographical 
note that he began to write 
“as an aid to love-making.” 
Nancy Hale’s story describes 
far-reaching echoes of the 
Holocaust; Tillie Olsen’s story 
expresses the desperation of a single mother; James 
Baldwin depicts the bonds of brotherhood and 
music. Here is Raymond Carver’s “minimalism,” 
a term he disliked, and Grace Paley’s “secular 
Yiddishkeit.” Here are the varied styles of Donald 
Barthelme, Charles Baxter, and Jamaica Kincaid. 
From Junot Díaz to Mary Gaitskill, from ZZ 
Packer to Sherman Alexie, these writers and 
stories explore the different things it means to 
be American.Moore writes that the process of 
assembling these stories allowed her to look 
“thrillingly not just at literary history but at actual 
history — the cries and chatterings, silences and 
descriptions of a nation in flux.” 100 Years of 
The Best American Short Stories is an invaluable 
testament, a retrospective of our country’s ever-
changing but continually compelling literary 
artistry. All the above from Amazon.com


On the Marquee: Notes from the Sierra Madre Playhouse

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY 

Opens Nov. 27th


Jeff’s History Corner By Jeff Brown

1.Santa Anita Park was originally part of “Rancho 
Santa Anita,” whichxwas owned originally by 
former San Gabriel Mission Mayor-Domo, Claudio

Lopez, and named after a family member, “Anita 
Cota.” The ranch was later acquired by rancher, 
Hugo Reid, a Scotsman. Later, it would be owned by 
gold prospector Lucky Baldwin. Baldwin initially 
founded a racetrack adjacent to the present site in 
what is today, Arcadia, outside of the city of Los 
Angeles in 1904. It closed in 1909 and burned in 
1912.

 After the legalization of pari-mutuel gambling 
in 1933, San Francisco dentist Dr. Charles H. Strub 
and movie mogul, Hal Roach, create a new Santa 
Anita Park in its current location at the foot of the 
San Gabriel Mountains and found success despite 
being in the midst of the Great Depression. The 
newly formed Los Angeles Turf Club reopened 
the track on Christmas Day in 1934, making it 
the first racetrack in California.Architect Gordon 
Kaufmann designed its various buildings in a 
combination of Colonial Revival and a type of 
art deco known as Streamline Modern, painted 
primarily in Santa Anita’s signature colors of 
Persian Green and Chiffon Yellow.In February 
1935, the first Santa Anita Handicap was run. The 
race’s $100,000 purse, the largest of any race ever 
in the United States makes front page news in the 
Los Angeles times.

2.The San Gabriel valley derives its name from the 
San Gabriel River that flows southward through 
the center of the valley, which itself was named 
for the Spanish Mission San Gabriel Arcángel 
originally built in the Whittier Narrows in 1771.

3.The San Gabriel Mountains for decades also bore 
a more poetic name: the Sierra Madre (Mother 
Mountains). Both names were handed down by the

 early Spanish missionaries and existed side-by-
side until 1927, when the U.S. Board on Geographic 
Names acted on a petition from a Pomona College

geographer and decided in favor of “San Gabriel 
Mountains.” “Sierra Madre” has since passed out 
of common usage, although it still survives in 
numerous place names, from the City of Sierra 
Madre to the Gold Line’s Sierra Madre Villa 
station, named after a tuberculosis sanitarium at 
the base of the mountains.

4.Stretching from the Cajon Pass in the east to 
the Newhall Pass in the west, the San Gabriel 
Mountains are something of a topographic 
anomaly.

 Whereas most mountain ranges in California 
parallel the coasts, the San Gabriels and the other 
Transverse Ranges, including the San Bernardino,

 Santa Monica, and Santa Susana, run east-to-
west. Geologists credit this crook -- responsible 
for the prominent jog at Point Conception in the 
California coastline -- to movement between the 
Pacific and North American tectonic plates.

5.About 20 million years ago, the Pacific plate 
began scraping against the North American plate 
and broke off a piece of continental crust.

 Trapped between two plates, the loose block of 
crust turned 90 degrees clockwise as the Pacific 
plate dragged it to the northwest. About 5-7 
million years ago, part of that block began rising 
as a mountain range along the Sierra Madre and 
Cucamonga fault zones, creating the San Gabriels 
and forming an unusual bend in the otherwise 
orderly line of coastal mountain ranges.

A Christmas Memory Photo by Gina Long

“If you’re in a ‘bah, humbug’ mood this holiday season, A Christmas Memory may be just the remedy…it is an 
entertaining and heartwarming theatrical work that is just PERFECT FOR THE HOLIDAYS.” San Jose Mercury News

Sure to delight the entire family, Truman Capote’s enchanting Depression-era story springs to 
life in this big-hearted musical treat. A wistful memoir of cherished youth, it chronicles the 1930s 
friendship of a shy boy, Buddy, and his eccentric cousin Sook —misfits who launch kites, haunt 
speakeasies, and mail fruitcakes to everyone from Jean Harlow to President Roosevelt! A Christmas 
Memory celebrates friendship, the simple pleasures of life and the joy of giving.

Don’t Miss This Performance! Tickets are selling briskly! Buy your tickets early! 

This show would make a wonderful group outing! Get a 20% discount for group sales of 10 or 
more. Please call Mary at 626.355.4318 to arrange your purchase. 


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com