Mountain Views News          Saturday, July 9, 2016

Come Home to 
SIERRA MADRE Playhouse 
LA’s Destination for Great American Plays 
“The Sierra Madre Playhouse brings you wonderfully produced shows that tell of the 
American Experience --from comedies to dramas to musicals both heartfelt and toe-
tapping and plays for youth to inspire a life-long appreciation for theater. Come see 
how we’ve grown. You’ll be glad you did!” 
TICKETS: Call 355-4318 or visit SierraMadrePlayhouse.org 
SIERRA MADRE Playhouse 87 West Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, CA 91024 
HIGHLIGHTS 
OF OUR 2015-16 
SEASON Always, Patsy Cline 
Deathtrap 
Charlotte’s Web 
A Christmas Memory 
And here’s to the start of a great 2016-17 season! 
The 25th Annual Putnam County July 8-Aug 21 
Spelling Bee 
Bee Luther Hatchee Sep 23-Oct 22 
The Glass Menagerie 
Christian Lebano, Artistic Director 
HIGHLIGHTS 
OF OUR 2015-16 
SEASON Always, Patsy Cline 
Deathtrap 
Charlotte’s Web 
A Christmas Memory 
And here’s to the start of a great 2016-17 season! 
The 25th Annual Putnam County July 8-Aug 21 
Spelling Bee 
Bee Luther Hatchee Sep 23-Oct 22 
The Glass Menagerie 
Christian Lebano, Artistic Director 
SECTION BSATURDAY, JULY 2, 2016 
AROUND SAN GABRIEL VALLEY 
but ask the guys to dry off your clothes while they healthcare economy, it’s curious how dismal our 
have their blowers going. report card is on actual health. How did we ever 

It’s the same on walks through our park-come to have such abiding faith in petro-chemical 
like town. I used to think Sierra Madre was a solutions to everything, anyways? 
relatively quiet and peaceful community, until I In a recent television commercial, a “regular 
realized that there is never a day I don’t encounter guy” does battle against dandelions on his lawn 
leaf-blowers and other gas-powered gardening by spraying Monsanto’s Roundup. It all seems 
equipment filling the air with dust, exhaust and so innocuous; the camera angle gives the man a 
outrageous noise pollution. In fairness, some slightly heroic stature, humorous, but still a good 
newer blowers seem less polluting, but they still foot-soldier upholding certain values. The scene’s 
blow, and that sucks. Wouldn’t those dust clouds ordinariness belies the controversy and scope of 
also carry all the chemicals folks spray, or animal Monsanto’s actions, with complicit government 
feces, urine, mold, allergens, spores? By wearing agencies, patenting one crop after another with 
facemasks, some workers acknowledge these genetic modifications to withstand the staggering 
things don’t belong up in the air and down lungs. tonnage of Roundup applied annually around the 
But I’ve yet to see a worker hand out masks to world, all while actively obscuring the public’s 
neighbors, bystanders or passersby. And what guinea pig status in this grand experiment. The 
is the accumulating toxic load for workers not company that brought you Agent Orange, dioxin, 
wearing masks? Do I worry about their jobs? PCBs, DDT, bovine growth hormone (rBGH), 
Sure. But did rakes and brooms suddenly stop and Roundup wants to monopolize your food 
working with the advent of the digital age? needs. Funny how that didn’t warrant a mention 

A convenient symbol for the leaf-blowing in a national health care debate. 
lifestyle is the lawn. Maybe there’s a kind of Intelligent, life-supporting alternatives don’t 
hypnosis to tidy green lawns that we don’t see get the media coverage, but represent sustainable 
their cost in resources, commotion and pollution, approaches to work with nature’s ways. Among 
as if a nano-sized gardening crew were injected those methods include crop rotation, biointo 
awareness and blew that observation clean. diversity, forgoing petroleum-based fertilizers/
They don’t produce food like a vegetable garden or pesticides, no till farming, and ground cover 
fruit trees. They’re not drought tolerant like cacti crops or mulching. The latter brings us back 
or other indigenous plants. They don’t inspire around to the topic at hand. Apparently we are 
contemplation like a Zen garden. They usually enduring drought effects and climate-warming. 
require chemicals and tons of water, and for all Whether or not you buy the latter, few who have 
that return a rather unimaginative, uninspiring grown up in Southern California can doubt man’s 
example of close-cropped uniformity.ability to pollute the skies as we transfer carbon 

“Brown is the new green,” they say, but the from earth to air combusting various things for 
old green wasn’t that “green” to begin with. The energy. But the greatest factor in all that carbon 
history of the lawn is essentially the “everyman” being up there is not automobiles, but farming 
aspiring to the privilege and ostentation of royalty. and other land-management practices. The most 
There’s nothing particularly environmental effective agent in sequestering carbon out of the 
or intrinsically beautiful about it, other than air is a living soil, the kind that results from not 
the mind conditioning seeing it so. Likewise, poisoning the ground and letting organic matter 
there is nothing intrinsically ugly about the accumulate and decompose. 
beneficent, yellow-flowered dandelion, other Do I think people are going to want fallen 
than that it disrupts the uniformity of our lawns leaves or dandelions in their lives? Maybe not, 
and prejudices. It’s a common mistake—people but then let’s manage that desire in a way fitting 
confuse neat and orderly with beautiful all the the “problem,” and save the fire-drill commotion 
time. for the real emergencies such as firemen handle. 

Such confusions, and the tenacious desires Nature gives us the sound of falling leaves, and 
built upon them, is where this little issue to that offense we react with the uproar worthy 
shares a pattern with “important,” seemingly-of a bombing raid. Let the clamor fit the crime. 
intractable global problems. If a desire requires What do I propose? For starters, let’s ban all 
an increasingly-convoluted support structure, gas-powered leaf blowers in Sierra Madre… that, 
exposing a true cost greater than the reward and more mulching. Maybe we’ll get to all the 
(“the cure is worse than the disease”), or if each other stuff later. If someone shows up tomorrow 
solution ushers in new problems, those are signs blowing a swingin’ version of Autumn Leaves on 
found heading down the wrong path and clues to tenor leaf blower, I might reconsider.

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 

The 25th Annual Putnam County 
Spelling Bee 
All Photos by Gina Long 


MEDITATIONS ON A LEAF BLOWER 

By David Arzoumanreconsider the original desire. Maybe the only 
Every week, the same scenario plays out on one problem was one of perception. Are the leaves a 
of my neighbors’ property: a small commando nuisance, or a gift? Unfortunately, backing out is 
force deploys from their pick up truck, wearing practically un-American. If overburdening the 
jet packs and waving their nozzles frantically environment with synthetic chemicals creates 
over the ground. If noise and exhaust were any problems, use more or different chemicals to fix 
indication of thrust, these guys would be flying the damage. If problems then erupt in human 
around the neighborhood Buck Rodgers style and bodies, try ingesting or injecting the chemicals 
you’d hear no complaint from me. But for all advertised to restore physical, emotional or 
the commotion, only clouds of dust get airborne. mental health, and then those to handle the 
Their backpacks—gas-powered leaf blowers—are side-effects…. 
apparently as underpowered and polluting as the With higher stakes, the economic interests built 
1967 Volkswagen microbus I used to plead up to upon consumers’ desires will spin those desires 
freeway speeds, and flight isn’t on the agenda at in terms of freedom, fun, patriotism, sex appeal, 
all; it’s gardening. Foolish of me to expect more, your rights, fitting in, keeping up, luxury, what’s 
although flight-ready yard tools can be found in deserved, etc., anything to distract away from 
witches’ lore. By some accounts, they had flying the fact that there’s big money in getting folks to 
brooms. Assuming they could still sweep, they undermine their own best interest. Beyond that 
would put to shame the single-purpose jet packs are ever more insidious levels of manipulation, 
of today’s gardeners.such as the sly sophistication of problem and 

Once flight is ruled out, we face the mundane solution collaborating in a corporate venture or 
fact that leaf blowers do only one thing: move stuffnational policy. Tacitly propping-up or creating 
away, perplexing in a society whose main purpose a problem, usually by instilling heavy doses of 
seems to be getting things. But this is specifically fear, and then providing the cure is the long way 
unwanted stuff. Since “away,” just about anywhere around through rich fields of false economy. How 
in Southern California, is somebody else’s “here,” much of our culture and history amount to little 
the problems with this system shouldn’t require more than this elaborate shadow boxing, fighting 
explanation. And what don’t we want? Leaves, our own projections as if they had independent 
fallen leaves. existence? Why isn’t more attention paid to 

Since we’re in a naturally hot, dry environment the underlying partnerships institutions and 
(in fact, a desert), drought or not, leaf blowers are individuals hold with problems they purport to 
also dirt/dust blowers. The ensuing dust clouds battle? 
and litter know nothing of property lines, but hire We can, for example, hold grand debates on 
your own mercenary crew to blow the stuff back… national health care, but not on the ways we first 
or, blow it forward; let’s see how much economy undermine health. Honesty requires a much 
can be generated blowing the same cloud all broader view than was taken during the national 
over town. Those leaves no one wants laying health care debate. That truer picture (even 
around are nature’s way of keeping water from putting aside the spiritual implications in health’s 
evaporating, keeping the soil cooler, rich with root meaning of “wholeness”), would at least 
nutrients and alive, all while requiring less water, include adulterated, devitalized, or genetically-
a “win-win.” The added dust on nearby cars will modified factory “food” delivering antibiotics, 
need to be cleaned sooner than they might have, pesticides and herbicides, among thousands of 
presumably using more water, a “lose-lose.” And other environmental assaults. Is this toxic trail 
if you hang laundry outside—another win-win meant to lead into the grip of pharmaceutical 
that saves energy and adds sunshine freshness giants and their various minions, like a tag-
to clothes—you may not appreciate the dusting, team maneuver? Given our world’s-largest U.S. 

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