Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, April 14, 2018

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Mountain View News Saturday, April 14, 2018 

Dr. Anderson Named 
State Secondary 
Principal of the Year

Bill to Address Minimum 
Wage for Developmental 
Disabilities Service Providers

Altadena Library Announces 
Trustee Board Vacancy

 
With the resignation last 
month of Trustee John 
McDonald, the Altadena 
Library Board of Trustees 
announced Friday they are 
accepting letters of interest 
from anyone who would like 
to serve on the board for his 
unexpired 2020 term.

 Those applying must be at 
least 18, a registered voter 
and resident within the 
boundaries of the Altadena 
Library District. The Board will 
interview potential candidates 
on a date in May as designated 
by the Board in the April 23 
Board of Trustees meeting.

 As reported in this newspaper, 
McDonald suddenly resigned 
March 30, a day after numerous 
legal allegation were made 
against three sitting Altadena 
Library board members, during 
a special meeting, including 
violations of open meeting 
law and the intent to destroy 
government documents related 
to the violations. 

 Library staff said the applicant 
selected must agree to be 
willing to run in the Nov. 6, 
election for remainder of the 
unexpired 2020 term.

 Interested parties should 
submit a letter of interest, 
resume, and completed 
supplemental questionnaire 
(on library’s website) to the 
Library’s Acting Director, Ryan 
Roy, at wroy@altadenalibrary.
org, by 5 p.m. on Friday, May 4.

 The Main Branch of the 
Altadena Library is located at 
600 E. Mariposa Street.

 For more information, please 
visit the library’s website at 
altadenalibrary.org.

 

 Assemblymember Chris 
Holden’s legislation to 
address the minimum 
wage discrepancy for 
developmental disabilities 
service providers, 
Assembly Bill 2623, 
passed unanimously with 
bipartisan support in the 
Assembly Committee for 
Human Services today. This 
bill requires the State to 
adjust reimbursement rates 
for developmental disability 
service providers in order to 
comply with legally binding 
local mandated minimum 
wage increases.

 “Time is running out,” 
said Assemblymember 
Chris Holden. “Without an 
increase to reimbursement 
rates to meet local mandates, 
many developmental 
disability service providers 
may have to shut their doors, 
leading to a shortage of 
services available to people 
with disabilities throughout 
our state.”

 The statewide minimum 
wage statutes enacted in 
2016 did not recognize that 
a number of municipalities 
and counties have enacted 
minimum wage ordinances 
mandating all employers 
within their jurisdictions to 
increase wages to levels above 
State law. Assembly Bill 2623 
extends authority to the 
California Department of 
Development Services and 
regional centers to adjust the 
rates of providers to comply 
with locally mandated 
minimum wage laws enacted 
in the jurisdiction in which 
they employ workers to meet 
service needs under the 
Lanterman Developmental 
Disabilities Act.

 “The Lanterman Act 
is known as The Bill of 
Rights for People with 
Developmental Disabilities, 
and it declares that people 
born with developmental 
disabilities possess the 
exact same human rights 
as all other members of our 
society. It declares that our 
family members, friends, 
and neighbors have the right 
to live as valued members 
of our communities,” said 
Holden. 

 Dr. Mark Anderson, 
Principal of Marshall 
Fundamental Secondary 
School, has been named 
2018 California Secondary 
Principal of the Year by the 
Association of California 
School Administrators. The 
annual award honors school 
administrators for their 
achievement and dedication 
to public education. ACSA 
is the largest umbrella 
organization for school 
leaders in the United States, 
serving more than 17,000 
California educators.

 Since his appointment in 
2011, Dr. Anderson has led 
Marshall into winning local 
and national recognition for 
academic excellence. Awards 
include the 2015 California 
Gold Ribbon School, 2016 
U.S. News & World Report 
Silver Medalist, and a 2016 
Washington Post Most 
Challenging Schools.

 In February 2018, Dr. 
Anderson was inducted into 
Headmasters Association, 
a group with only 100 
members whose members 
are leaders of elite private, 
boarding, and public 
schools.

 Dr. Anderson will be 
honored at ACSA’s 2018 
Leadership Summit in 
November.


McDonald

Pasadena City Measures 
on June 5 Election Ballot

 Four City measures will be on the June 5 State Primary 
Election ballot. Two measures pertain to proposed 
amendments to the City Charter to move election dates 
for the City Council and Pasadena Unifi ed School District 
Board of Education from odd years to coincide with state 
and federal elections held in even years.

 The Charter Amendment measure regarding the Board of 
Education will also consolidate the current primary-general 
election into a single plurality election.

 The second two measures pertain to the regulation and 
taxation of commercial cannabis businesses in the City 
of Pasadena. The first cannabis measure proposes an 
ordinance to allow the limited cultivation, retail, and testing 
of commercial cannabis in the City of Pasadena. The second 
cannabis measure proposes an ordinance to impose a tax 
on commercial cannabis businesses in the City of Pasadena. 
On January 1, the State of California rolled out its licensing 
of commercial cannabis businesses statewide under the 
Medicinal and Adult Use Cannabis Regulation Safety Act 
(MAUCRSA). However, state law does not supersede local 
provisions regarding cannabis. The current City of Pasadena 
regulations prohibit cannabis activities

within the City.

 For more information on the four City measures scheduled 
for the

June 5 election, visit: CityofPasadena.net/Elections or call

the Pasadena City Clerk’s Office at 626.744.4124.

Astrophysics CubeSat 
Demonstrates Big Potential 
in a Small Package

Pet of the 
Week

 Inez (A452468) is a 
sweet 8-year-old rat terrier 
mix. She is the definition 
of a lap dog. She loves your 
warmth and affection, and 
enjoys being petted. She 
greets every visitor with a 
wagging tail and enjoys the 
treats the volunteers give 
her. Inez came to us a few 
weeks ago from the Downey 
Shelter and is looking for a 
new loving home. 

 The adoption fee for dogs 
is $130. All dogs are spayed 
or neutered, microchipped, 
and vaccinated before going 
to their new home. 

 New adopters will receive 
a complimentary health-
and-wellness exam from 
VCA Animal Hospitals, as 
well as a goody bag filled 
with information about how 
to care for your pet.

 View photos of adoptable 
pets at pasadenahumane.
org. Adoption hours are 
11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday; 
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday 
through Friday; and 9 a.m. 
to 4 p.m. Saturday.

 Pets may not be available 
for adoption and cannot be 
held for potential adopters 
by phone calls or email.

 The Pasadena Humane 
Society is launching 
“Kitten Week,” a week-
long awareness and action 
campaign held April 23-29, 
to encourage community 
members to spay/neuter, 
adopt, and get involved. You 
can find more information 
at pasadenahumane.org/
kittenweek.

 


 The ASTERIA satellite, which 
was deployed into low-Earth 
orbit in November, is only 
slightly larger than a box of 
cereal, but it could be used 
to help astrophysicists study 
planets orbiting other stars.

 Mission managers at NASA’s 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 
Pasadena, California, recently 
announced that ASTERIA 
has accomplished all of its 
primary mission objectives, 
demonstrating that the 
miniaturized technologies on 
board can operate in space 
as expected. This marks the 
success of one of the world’s first 
astrophysics CubeSat missions, 
and shows that small, low-cost 
satellites could be used to assist 
in future studies of the universe 
beyond the solar system.

 “ASTERIA is small but mighty,” 
said Mission Manager Matthew 
W. Smith of JPL. “Packing the 
capabilities of a much larger 
spacecraft into a small footprint 
was a challenge, but in the end 
we demonstrated cutting-edge 
performance for a system this 
size.”

Seeing Stars

 ASTERIA, or the Arcsecond 
Space Telescope Enabling 
Research in Astrophysics, 
weighs only 22 pounds (10 
kilograms). It carries a payload 
for measuring the brightness of 
stars, which allows researchers 
to monitor nearby stars for 
orbiting exoplanets that cause a 
brief drop in brightness as they 
block the starlight.

 This approach to finding and 
studying exoplanets is called the 
transit method. NASA’s Kepler 
Space Telescope has detected 
more than 2,300 confirmed 
planets using this method, more 
than any other planet-hunting 
observatory. The agency’s next 
large-scale, space-based planet-
hunting observatory, the 
Transiting Exoplanet Survey 
Satellite (TESS), is anticipated 
to discover thousands of 
exoplanets and scheduled to 
launch from Cape Canaveral 
Air Force Station in Florida on 
April 16.

 In the future, small satellites 
like ASTERIA could serve as 
a low-cost method to identify 
transiting exoplanets orbiting 
bright, Sun-like stars. These 
small satellites could be used 
to look for planetary transits 
when larger observatories 
are not available, and planets 
of interest could then be 
studied in more detail by other 
telescopes. Small satellites like 
ASTERIA could also be used to 
study certain star systems that 
are not within the field of view 
of larger observatories, and 
most significantly, focus on star 
systems that have planets with 
long orbits that require long 
observation campaigns.

 The ASTERIA team has now 
demonstrated that the satellite’s 
payload can point directly and 
steadily at a bright source for an 
extended period of time, a key 
requirement for performing 
the precision photometry 
necessary to study exoplanets 
via the transit method.

 Holding steady on a faraway 
star is difficult because there 
are many things that subtly 
push and pull on the satellite, 
such as Earth’s atmosphere 
and magnetic field. ASTERIA’s 
payload achieved a pointing 
stability of 0.5 arcseconds RMS, 
which refers to the degree to 
which the payload wobbles 
away from its intended target 
over a 20-minute observation 
period. The pointing stability 
was repeated over multiple 
orbits, with the stars positioned 
on the same pixels on each 
orbit.

 “That’s like being able to hit 
a quarter with a laser pointer 
from about a mile away,” said 
Christopher Pong, the attitude 
and pointing control engineer 
for ASTERIA at JPL. “The laser 
beam has to stay inside the 
edge of the quarter, and then 
the satellite has to be able to 
hit that exact same quarter -- 
or star -- over multiple orbits 
around the Earth. So what 
we’ve accomplished is both 
stability and repeatability.”

 The payload also employed 
a control system to reduce 
“noise” in the data created by 
temperature fluctuations in 
the satellite, another major 
hurdle for an instrument 
attempting to carefully monitor 
stellar brightness. During 
observations, the temperature 
of the controlled section of the 
detector fluctuates by less than 
0.02 Fahrenheit (0.01 Kelvin, or 
0.01 degree Celsius).

Small satellites

 ASTERIA is a CubeSat, a type 
of small satellite consisting of 
“units” that are 10 centimeters 
cubed, or about 4 inches on 
each side. ASTERIA is the size 
of six CubeSat units, making it 
roughly 10 centimeters by 20 
centimeters by 30 centimeters. 
With its two solar panels 
unfolded, the satellite is about 
as long as a skateboard.

 The ASTERIA mission 
utilized commercially available 
CubeSat hardware where 
possible, and is contributing 
to a general knowledge of how 
those components operate in 
space. 

 “We’re continuing to 
characterize CubeSat 
components that other 
missions are using or want to 
use,” said Amanda Donner, 
mission assurance manager for 
ASTERIA at JPL.

 ASTERIA launched to the 
International Space Station in 
August 2017. Having been in 
space for more than 140 days, 
the satellite is operating on an 
extended mission through May.

 ASTERIA was developed under 
the Phaeton Program at JPL. 
Phaeton provides early-career 
hires, under the guidance of 
experienced mentors, with the 
challenges of a flight project. 
ASTERIA is a collaboration 
with the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology in 
Cambridge; where Sara Seager 
is the principal investigator.

Free Monthly Events at 
Pasadena Senior Center

 There is something for 
everyone at the Pasadena 
Senior Center, 85 E. Holly St

You do not have to be a 
member to attend. Some 
events require advance 
reservations as noted.

 A Toast to the Joys of 
Music – Tuesdays to April 
24, from 9:30 to 11:30 
a.m. Tom Campbell returns 
to play his guitar and sing 
covers of traditional country, 
country rock, blues, folk, 
gospel and classic rock 
music made famous by The 
Grateful Dead, Vince Gill, 
Merle Haggard, B.B. King, 
Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, 
The Rolling Stones and 
others.

Scenic Walkers Club – 
Wednesdays, to April 25, 
at 10 a.m. Join members of 
the Pasadena Senior Center’s 
Scenic Walkers Club for 
walks to scenic local places 
to enjoy the great outdoors 
and get some exercise. For 
more information, including 
where to meet up each week, 
contact Scenic Walkers Club 
coordinator Alan Colville at 
alancolville@charter.net.

 Domino Club – 
Thursdays to April 26, at 1 
p.m. If you’ve never played 
Chicken Foot dominoes 
before, or even if you have, 
come join the fun as Vicki 
Leigh leads participants in 
a rollicking version of the 
game that is easy enough for 
beginners yet challenging 
enough for seasoned players. 
The accompanying laughter 
is contagious! For more 
information call Vicki Leigh 
at 928-478-4654.

Friday Movie Matinees – 
Fridays at 1 p.m. Everyone 
enjoys the experience of 
watching movies and the 
pleasures they bring. April 
20: “Ladybird” (2017, R) 
starring Saoirse Ronan and 
Laurie Metcalf. A young 
woman comes of age in 
Sacramento while her 
strong-willed mother works 
to keep her family afloat 
after Lady Bird’s father loses 
his job.

 LA Opera Talk: 
“Rigoletto”— Monday, 
April 16, at 1 p.m. An LA 
Opera community educator 
will lead participants 
through Giuseppe Verdi’s 
tragic masterpiece 
“Rigoletto,” the story of a 
lustful and immoral duke 
who ravishes the court 
jester’s daughter, only to 
have the jester’s revenge goes 
heartbreakingly awry.

 My Gift to You: The 
Importance of Planning 
Ahead – Thursday, April 19, 
at 10 a.m. What to do when 
a loved one passes away is 
a difficult topic to discuss, 
and most families spend less 
than five minutes talking 
about it. This can cause them 
to be completely unprepared 
and overwhelmed by all 
the details that must be 
handled. By planning ahead, 
you and your loved ones 
can maneuver through this 
emotional and financial 
burden. Presented by Forest 
Lawn.

 Signs and Symptoms 
of Depression – Thursday, 
April 26, at 10 a.m. Not 
everyone who is depressed 
suffers from the same 
symptoms, and not all 
symptoms are obvious. Learn 
more about the symptoms 
of depression during this 
special class presented by 
Pacific Clinics.

 Founded in 1960, 
the Pasadena Senior 
Center is an independent 
nonprofit agency that offers 
recreational, educational, 
wellness and social services 
to people ages 50 and older in 
a welcoming environment. 
Services are also provided 
for frail, low-income and 
homebound seniors

A Noise Within Announces 
its 2018 2019 season

 Led by co-producing artistic 
directors Julia Rodriguez-
Elliott and Geoff Elliott, A 
Noise Within (ANW) is excited 
to announce its 2018-2019 
season, themed “Let Me In.”

 The season opens this summer 
with the return of a critically-
acclaimed audience favorite: 
the musical misadventures 
of Man of La Mancha. This 
will be followed in the fall by 
Michael Michetti’s adaptation 
of Oscar Wilde’s shocking and 
provoking novella, A Picture 
of Dorian Gray, playing in 
rotating repertory with Tom 
Stoppard’s Tony®-winning 
comedy Rosencrantz and 
Guildenstern Are Dead. ANW’s 
holiday tradition continues 
for the seventh year with A 
Christmas Carol by Charles 
Dickens, adapted for the stage 
by Geoff Elliott. In the spring, 
Shakespeare’s intimate tragedy 
Othello plays in rotating 
repertory with Tennessee 
Williams’ haunting memory 
play The Glass Menagerie 
and Mary Zimmerman’s 
mythical retelling of the classic 
Greek myth of The Voyage of 
Jason and the Argonauts in 
Argonautika.

 “All of our 2018-19 offerings 
feature characters who 
are outliers—people who 
have blazed their own trail 
but nevertheless struggle 
for acknowledgement and 
acceptance,” says Geoff Elliott. 
“LET ME IN isn’t about a 
physical space, it’s about the 
deeply human passion to be 
understood for who we are.”

 “Whether they’re in self-
exile (The Glass Menagerie), 
or shunned (Othello; Man of 
La Mancha), or led astray by 
hedonistic desires (A Picture 
of Dorian Gray), or thrust 
there by the fickle cruelty 
of fate (Rosencrantz and 
Guildenstern Are Dead) or 
the gods (Argonautika), all of 
these characters on the margins 
of society are fascinating and 
deeply resonant with anyone 
who has ever felt left out.”

 Plays include 

Man of La Mancha by Dale 
Wasserman, 

Music by Mitch Leigh, Lyrics 
by Joe Darion

A Picture of Dorian Gray by 
Oscar Wilde,

Adapted by Michael Michetti

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 
Are Dead by Tom Stoppard 

Othello by William Shakespeare

The Glass Menagerie by 
Tennessee Williams

Argonautika: The Voyage of 
Jason and the Argonauts by 
Mary Zimmerman

 A Christmas Carol by Charles 
Dickens, adapted by Geoff 
Elliott, returns for its seventh 
season

 For subscription tickets, please 
call 626-356-3121, or visit 
online at anoisewithin.org/. A 
Noise Within is located on the 
corner of Foothill Boulevard 
and Sierra Madre Villa Avenue 
at 3352 East Foothill Blvd., 
Pasadena, just north of the 
Madre Street exit off the 210.


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