PASADENA EDITION

 SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2018 

VOLUME 12 NO. 47


Local Area 
News Briefs

Mayor’s 
Holiday Tree 
Lighting at 
City Hall

City Gets Pedestrian 
Safety Grant for Bicyclists

 
Big Rig Crash Snarls 
Traffic Shuts Down 
Gold Line

 
Deck City Hall with Holiday 
Good Cheer by joining 
Pasadena Mayor Terry Tornek 
for a City Holiday Tradition: the 
Mayor’s Annual Tree Lighting 
Celebration, 5-7 p.m., Friday, 
Dec. 7, at City Hall, 100 N. 
Garfield Ave.

 Pasadena’s free holiday 
celebration featuring local 
singers and dancers, crafts for 
kids provided by the Armory 
Center for the Arts, free light 
refreshments and a special 
appearance by Ol’ Santa Claus. 
The Mayor lights the City’s 
Official Tree at 6 p.m., so come 
early for parking and a stroll 
over to historic City Hall.

 Santa Claus is set to make a 
special appearance and will be 
available for a photo op with 
your children and the young at 
heart. Festive photo stops will 
also be available during the 
event to capture the spirit of the 
season. Bring your own cameras 
to snap a special holiday picture.

 Organizers are asking “This 
year more than ever, please find 
it in your hearts to help fill one of 
the Pasadena Fire Department’s 
paramedic ambulances—and 
make our firefighters smile—by 
bringing a new, unwrapped toy 
or sports equipment for gifts to 
less fortunate boys or girls as 
part of the annual Spark of Love 
Toy Drive. We need your help 
and your donations, please.”

 Entertainment throughout 
the night will include, by 
popular demand, a triumphant 
return performance from the 
thundering Wilson Middle 
School Drum Corps! Plus, 
those adorable kids from the 
City’s Tiny Tots Troupe; the Boys 
and Girls Club of Pasadena, and 
from Pasadena’s Afterschool 
Adventures Program will be 
there too. Pasadena High School 
LEARNs Orchesis Dance Troop 
and Elements Dance Space will 
perform exciting dance routines. 
And, of course, the evening just 
wouldn’t be complete without 
our favorite emcees, our own 
Dynamic Duo of retired police 
Lt. Rodney “Rodney D” Wallace 
and Sgt. Glen Thompson of the 
Pasadena Police Department.

 The Metro Gold Line 
shutdown Thursday 
morning after a big rig 
swerved on the 210 
Freeway then crashed 
through the center divider 
and landed partly blocking 
the Gold Line tracks near 
Sierra Madre Villa Avenue. 
The Gold Line was out of 
operation for nine hours. 

 According to officials, 
the crash happened at 
1:55 a.m. The truck was 
traveling westbound when 
the driver lost control. 
Three lanes of the freeway 
were also closed including 
the carpool lane. 

 Officials said the semi 
did not damage the 
tracks or overhead cables, 
although some equipment 
was damaged. Gold Line 
service and all lanes of the 
freeway were reopened by 
11a.m. 

 Metro was running on 
a holiday schedule at the 
time.



 The City of Pasadena’s efforts 
to enhance safety for bicyclists 
citywide just got a financial 
boost thanks to a $175,000 grant 
from the California Office of 
Traffic Safety (OTS) to the City’s 
Department of Transportation 
for its Pedestrian and Bicycle 
Safety Program. The City will 
use the funding for a year-
long motorist safety outreach 
program aimed at reducing 
severe injuries and fatalities 
to pedestrians and bicyclists 
resulting from crashes. 
Specifically, this program will 
bring awareness to motorists 
of the importance to yield to 
pedestrians when making left 
or right turns at signalized 
intersections and upgrade the 
City’s collision database for 
more effective interpretation.

 Collision data collected in 
Pasadena for 2017 showed 
that over 65% of collisions 
involving pedestrians occurred 
at signalized intersections. 
In 2015, the most recent year 
comprehensive state data was 
available, the City of Pasadena 
ranked 4th highest in the 
number of pedestrians killed 
or injured in traffic collisions 
among 57 comparably 
populated cities throughout 
California.

 Educational efforts funded 
by the OTS grant will promote 
safe behaviors by motorists, 
including avoiding distractions 
like cell phones, awareness 
of recent changes in state law 
that allows for pedestrians to 
enter crosswalks during the 
flashing-don’t-walk phase of a 
pedestrian crossing, and a need 
to yield to pedestrians crossing 
a crosswalk. Educational 
components on pedestrian 
safety will be especially 
geared toward motorists and 
pedestrians in commercial 
districts.

 This grant funding provides 
an opportunity for the City 
to potentially reduce the 
percentage of collisions 
involving pedestrians and 
bicyclists and reduce the 
number of fatalities and 
severe injuries by providing 
educational resources and 
improvements to the City 
collision database.

 “Bicycle and pedestrian safety 
responsibilities go both ways,” 
OTS Director Rhonda Craft 
said. “Understanding the rules 
of the road behind the wheel, 
on foot or on two wheels helps 
all roadway users get where 
they need to go safely.”

 Funding for this pedestrian 
safety program was provided 
by a grant from the California 
Office of Traffic Safety, through 
the National Highway Traffic 
Safety Administration.

Mayor Terry Tornek 2017 Tree 
Lighting Celebration. Photo D. 
Lee/MVNews

La Pintoresca 
Holiday 

Tree Lighting

 The 30th Annual 
Kwanzaa Celebration

 Join The Pasadena Library 
for Kwanzaa: A Celebration 
of Family, Community 
& Culture. Enjoy music, 
stories and tasty dishes 
prepared by members of 
the Pasadena Alumnae 
Chapter of Delta Sigma 
Theta Sorority. Thursday, 
Dec. 27 • 11 a.m.-1 p.m. 
•La Pintoresca Branch
located 1355 N Raymond 
Ave, Pasadena.

 Join in the holiday fun Friday 
from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. as the 
La Pintoresca neighborhood 
comes together to sing carols, 
listen to holiday stories, make 
crafts and share in the delight of 
the lighting of our community 
Christmas tree. Presented in 
partnership with the Pasadena 
Human Services & Recreation 
and Public Works Departments 
and the Armory Center for the 
Arts. For more information, 
call (626) 345-0708.

 The La Pintoresca Branch 
Library & Park is located 1355 
N. Raymond Ave.

NASA InSight on Course 
for Mars Touchdown

It’s a Wonderful Life at the 
Playhouse: A Live Radio Play

 NASA’s Mars Interior 
Exploration using Seismic 
Investigations, Geodesy and 
Heat Transport (InSight) 
spacecraft is on track for a 
soft touchdown on the 
surface of the Red Planet 
Monday. But it’s not 
going to be a relaxing 
weekend of turkey 
leftovers, football and 
shopping for the InSight 
mission team. Engineers 
will be keeping a close 
eye on the stream of 
data indicating InSight’s 
health and trajectory, 
and monitoring Martian 
weather reports to 
figure out if the team 
needs to make any final 
adjustments.

 “Landing on Mars is 
hard. It takes skill, focus 
and years of preparation,” 
said Thomas Zurbuchen, 
associate administrator 
for the Science Mission 
Directorate at NASA 
Headquarters in 
Washington. “Keeping 
in mind our ambitious 
goal to eventually send 
humans to the surface of 
the Moon and then Mars, 
I know that our incredible 
science and engineering 
team — the only in the 
world to have successfully 
landed spacecraft on the 
Martian surface — will 
do everything they can to 
successfully land InSight 
on the Red Planet.”

 InSight, blasted off from 
Vandenberg Air Force 
Base in Central California 
on May 5. It has been an 
uneventful flight to Mars, 
and engineers like it that 
way. They will get plenty 
of excitement when 
InSight hits the top of the 
Martian atmosphere at 
12,300 mph (19,800 kph) and 
slows down to 5 mph (8 kph) — 
about human jogging speed — 
before its three legs touch down 
on Martian soil. That extreme 
deceleration has to happen in 
just under seven minutes.

 “There’s a reason engineers 
call landing on Mars ‘seven 
minutes of terror,’” said Rob 
Grover, InSight’s entry, descent 
and landing (EDL) lead, based 
at NASA’s Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory. “We can’t joystick 
the landing, so we have to rely 
on the commands we pre-
program into the spacecraft. 
We’ve spent years testing our 
plans, learning from other 
Mars landings and studying all 
the conditions Mars can throw 
at us. And we’re going to stay 
vigilant till InSight settles into 
its home in the Elysium Planitia 
region.”

 One way engineers may be 
able to confirm quickly what 
activities InSight has completed 
during those seven minutes 
of terror is if the experimental 
CubeSat mission known as 
Mars Cube One (MarCO) 
relays InSight data back to 
Earth in near-real time during 
their flyby on Nov. 26. The 
two MarCO spacecraft (A and 
B)are making good progress
toward their rendezvous point, 
and their radios have already 
passed their first deep-space 
tests.

 Once engineers know that 
the spacecraft has touched 
down safely in one of the several 
ways they have to confirm this 
milestone and that InSight’s 
solar arrays have deployed 
properly, the team can settle 
into the careful, three-month-
long process of deploying 
science instruments.

 For more detailed information 
on the InSight mission, visit: 
mars.nasa.gov/insight

 The Pasadena Playhouse presents the largest holiday celebration 
in its history – the mainstage holiday production It’s a Wonderful 
Life: A Live Radio Play for 15 performances only (December 12 
to 23), performances of Bob Baker’s Nutcracker in the Carrie 
Hamilton Theatre (November 24 to December 31); and an 
additional free holiday concert will be held in the Playhouse 
Courtyard on December 14 at 6 p.m. in association with the 
Playhouse District Association.

 One of the all-time classic Christmas stories comes to life 
onstage in a 1940s-style radio broadcast – following last season’s 
production of the original radio play of Miracle on 34th Street.

 This year -- join George Bailey, a down-on-his-luck man, as his 
guardian angel shows him what his town would have been like 
had he never been born. This timeless masterpiece guarantees to 
warm your heart this holiday season. 

 As was often the case with mid-century entertainments, once a 
film found an audience, it became a radio drama. It’s a Wonderful 
Life was originally released in 1946. Directed by Frank Capra, 
it was based on a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern. Stern 
started working on the story in 1939, finished it in 1943 when he 
sent it out as a Christmas card to his friends and relatives.

 Bob Baker’s adaptation of the ballet classic is one of Bob Baker 
Marionette Theater’s most beloved shows since it began in 1969. 
The Sugar Plum Fairy and her promenading cakes, waltzing 
flowers, and all of the wonders beyond the mysterious door are 
now to be found at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre --- entirely 
outfitted for the holidays -- at Pasadena Playhouse.

 This is the first time that the show is being performed outside of 
its original location. 

 Tickets are available at pasadenaplayhouse.org, by phone at 626-
356-7529, and at the box office at 39 South El Molino Avenue. 

CALENDAR Pg. 2

MORE PASADENA NEWS

 Pg. 3

Woman’s 
Civic League 
Holiday 
Boutique

SAN MARINO/SO. PAS

Pg. 4

SIERRA MADRE Pg. 5

ARCADIA Pg. 6

MONROVIA 

 The Woman’s Civic League of 
Pasadena’s Annual Holiday 
Boutique and luncheon will 
be on Monday, December 
3rd at the Women’s City 
Club, 160 N. Oakland, 
Pasadena. Free parking 
behind the Clubhouse on 
Madison. Shop for holiday 
and year round gifts. 
Doors open at 10am and 
shopping till 2:30pm. Silent 
Auction and Opportunity 
Drawing, Jewelry, Clothing, 
Gift Items, Accesssories, 
Baked Goods and Candies. 
Proceeds support women 
and children in the 
Community. Luncheon at 
12pm and cost is $35 at the 
door. Call 626-888-9404 for 
lunch reservations which 
must be made by 8pm Weds. 
November 28th. Visit their 
website at: wclpasadena.
org for more information 
in the announcement 
section. To learn about 
joining The Woman’s Civic 
League contact Membership 
Chairwoman Lela Bissner at 
lbissner@gmail.com

EDUCATION/YOUTH

Pg. 7

FOOD & DRINK Pg. 8

THE GOOD LIFE Pg. 9

WORLD AROUND US 

 Pg. 10

 BEST FRIENDS Pg. 11


SECTION B: 

AROUND SAN GABRIEL 
VALLEYB1

THE ARTS B2

BUSINESS NEWS

B3

OPINIONB4

LEGAL NOTICES B5


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