Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, June 13, 2020

5

Mountain Views-News Saturday, June 13, 2020 

All Fireworks 
are Illegal 

in Pasadena


The Pasadena Chalk 
Festival Goes Virtual

 
City ordinance to be 
strictly enforced

 Fire danger and injuries 
from fireworks still exist even 
in the midst of a pandemic 
crisis. The City of Pasadena 
municipal code holds 
property owners and tenants 
responsible for permitting 
the possession, sale, usage 
or discharge of fireworks on 
their property. The ordinance 
allows for the prosecution of 
fireworks-related offenses and 
for the demand of payment for 
all costs associated with the 
safe disposal of confiscated 
fireworks. The City maintains 
a zero tolerance enforcement 
policy for fireworks, and 
Pasadena’s police and 
firefighters are teaming 
up for special fireworks 
enforcement patrols before 
and during the Fourth of July 
holiday. Violators are subject 
to arrest; having their vehicles 
impounded; and serving up 
to one year in jail and fines up 
to $50,000.

 National Fire Protection 
Association statistics reveal 
that a majority of fireworks-
related injuries are caused 
by so-called “safe and sane” 
fireworks, which are illegal in 
Pasadena.

 Help keep all of us, our 
children, our homes, and 
our property safe from 
illegal fireworks. If you see 
something, say something! 
Call Pasadena Police at 
(626) 744-4241 to report 
illegal fireworks and other 
suspicious activities. 

 Due to the potential for 
fire hazards and injuries, 
Pasadena police and fire 
personnel will patrol the city 
looking for illegal firework 
activity, and police officers 
will seize fireworks in an 
effort to protect the public. 
Parking enforcement officers 
will ensure that vehicles 
illegally parked in Pasadena’s 
hillside areas on July 4 are 
impounded.

 The Pasadena Fire 
Department will be applying 
Phos-Chek to brush areas 
around the Arroyo area. The 
main ingredients of this fire 
retardant are phosphates and 
fertilizers to help prevent 
plants from burning and to 
re-vegetate burned wildland 
areas.

 For more information visit: 
cityofpasadena.net.

 Organizers for the popular 
Pasadena Chalk Festival 
held each year over Father’s 
Day weekend at the Paseo on 
Colorado Blvd. announced 
Thursday that they will hold 
the festival “at home” by 
having participants create 
chalk murals at home and 
showing them off on social 
media. 

 Organizers said there will 
be no gathering at the Paseo. 

 They suggested artists make 
a checklist including:

What will I draw?

Where will I draw?

T-shirt and badge 

Pastel chalk

 They also suggested 
planning a zoom party, 
sometime between Thrusday 
June 18 and June 21 with 
your chalk team to kick it 
off.

 When finished, post your 
mural on social media @
pasadenachalkfestival and 
#pasadenachalkfestival. No 
entry forms are needed. 
The virtual event is open to 
everyone they said.

 Organizers will then 
post all the murals with 
names of artists at: 
pasadenachalkfestival.com. 

 “Sadly we can’t have a silent 
auction this year but save 
your canvas for next year’s 
festival,” they said. 

 The Pasadena Chalk 
Festival began in 1993 
after a summer intern at 
the Light Bringer Project 
attended a street painting 
festival in Paris and brought 
back her amazing pictures 
and observations. The first 
“Chalk on the Walk” took 
place at Centennial Square 
at Pasadena City Hall with 
over 150 visual artists 
participating in the first 
Los Angeles-area event. 
All proceeds went toward 
community arts programs 
and HIV/AIDS resources.

 In 2010, The Pasadena 
Chalk Festival was officially 
named the largest street 
painting festival by the 
Guinness World Record, 
welcoming more than 600 
artists using over 25,000 
sticks of chalk and drawing a 
crowd of more than 100,000 
visitors in one weekend. In 
fact, previous festivals have 
attracted artists and design 
teams from many regions 
of the country, across 
Southern California, and 
virtually every Los Angeles-
area community. Leading 
art schools, museums and 
cultural centers are also 
represented at the festival.

 The Pasadena Chalk Festival 
is produced by The Paseo and 
the Light Bringer Project, as 
a financial benefit for the 
nonprofit arts organization, 
raising proceeds for vital 
arts and learning programs 
in the schools and cultural 
opportunities for those of all 
ages.

 Officials said they hope to 
have the Pasadena Chalk 
Festival back at the Paseo in 
2021 

 For more information visit: 
pasadenachalkfestival.com.

State Orders Nursing Home Evacuated

By Dean Lee

 The California Attorney 
General’s office ordered 
Thursday all residents at Golden 
Cross Health Care nursing home 
in East Pasadena evacuated over 
failing to provide basic care and 
medical needs. The facility also 
has a high number of positive 
COVID-19 cases. 

 Ambulances lined Fair Oaks 
Ave., in front of the nursing 
home, late into the night 
Thursday. All 63 residents were 
transferred to other facilities in 
Los Angeles County.

 “This was a 12 hour process 
yesterday because you need to 
find facilities that have COVID 
units or wards,” Pasadena 
Public Officer Lisa Derderian 
said. “We had to alert all the 
families.” 

 According to Derderian, the 
Department of Justice “de- 
licensed’ the facility days before 
for health violations, “they were 
running unlicenced.” 

 She said the situation could 
lead to criminal prosecution. 
This is the first nursing home 
in the county to have a license 
suspended and evacuated 
during the COVID-19 
pandemic. Derderian said it 
was unlikely the facility would 
reopen anytime soon.

 “The police department is 
investigating, the city attorney 
is involved with several of the 
allegations and looking into 
the owners of this place in 
particular,” Derderian said.

 She said city officials, including 
the fire department had been 
trying to resolve issues at the 
nursing home for months. 
“They took no corrective 
actions on any of the numerous 
violations.”

Derderian said had they 
waited any longer, some of the 
residents would have needed 
hospitalization. 

 She said violations included, 
neglect, abuse, not offering 
treatments and other basic 
medical services.

 Golden Cross Health Care has 
seen eight COVID-19 related 
deaths. 

Mars Rover 
Drivers Need 
Your Help

 Using an online tool to label 
Martian terrain types, you can 
train an artificial intelligence 
algorithm that could improve 
the way engineers guide the 
Curiosity rover.

 You may be able to help NASA’s 
Curiosity rover drivers better 
navigate Mars. Using the online 
tool AI4Mars to label terrain 
features in pictures downloaded 
from the Red Planet, you can 
train an artificial intelligence 
algorithm to automatically read 
the landscape.

 Is that a big rock to the left? 
Could it be sand? Or maybe 
it’s nice, flat bedrock. AI4Mars, 
which is hosted on the citizen 
science website Zooniverse, 
lets you draw boundaries 
around terrain and choose one 
of four labels. Those labels are 
key to sharpening the Martian 
terrain-classification algorithm 
called SPOC (Soil Property and 
Object Classification).

 Developed at NASA’s Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory, which 
has managed all of the agency’s 
Mars rover missions, SPOC 
labels various terrain types, 
creating a visual map that 
helps mission team members 
determine which paths to take. 
SPOC is already in use, but 
the system could use further 
training.

 “Typically, hundreds of 
thousands of examples are 
needed to train a deep learning 
algorithm,” said Hiro Ono, 
an AI researcher at JPL. 
“Algorithms for self-driving 
cars, for example, are trained 
with numerous images of 
roads, signs, traffic lights, 
pedestrians and other vehicles. 
Other public datasets for 
deep learning contain people, 
animals and buildings — but 
no Martian landscapes.”

 Once fully up to speed, SPOC 
will be able to automatically 
distinguish between cohesive 
soil, high rocks, flat bedrock 
and dangerous sand dunes, 
sending images to Earth that 
will make it easier to plan 
Curiosity’s next moves.

 “In the future, we hope this 
algorithm can become accurate 
enough to do other useful 
tasks, like predicting how likely 
a rover’s wheels are to slip on 
different surfaces,” Ono said.

 For more on how to help visit: 
mars.nasa.gov/msl/home.

 The City of Pasadena and 
the Pasadena Convention & 
Visitors Bureau announced 
Tuesday the launch of “Shop 
Pasadena,” an online webpage 
featuring Pasadena’s small and 
independent retailers now 
open for in-store shopping and 
curbside pickup. City officals 
said Shop Pasadena arrived 
in time for people to shop for 
Father’s Day, graduations, and 
everyday retail.

 The Shop Pasadena webpage 
features a variety of shopping 
categories from apparel and 
entertainment to home and 
outdoor recreation. Retailers 
have opted in to be listed, 
and businesses who meet 
the minimum criteria are 
encouraged to submit their 
businesses for inclusion at: 
cityofpasadena.net/retail-
directory-signup. Content 
must meet certain criteria.

 Shop Pasadena is one of 
three resource directories that 
the City and Convention & 
Visitors Bureau established 
to support the ongoing 
operations and reopening of 
its business community. The 
other two resources include 
“Dine Pasadena,” a directory of 
Pasadena restaurants open for 
takeout and curbside service as 
well as “Connect Pasadena,” a 
directory of curated educational 
and engaging content from 
Pasadena businesses and 
cultural institutions. With 
school out and summer 
camps yet to reopen, Connect 
Pasadena is a great source for 
the community to stay active, 
entertained and enlightened.

 All three resources–Shop 
Pasadena, Dine Pasadena, and 
Connect Pasadena–can be 
found online at: visitpasadena.
com/covid-19-resources.

 To be added to the directories, 
businesses must meet certain 
criteria.

 Pasadena’s small and 
independent retailers that 
are open for business, online 
shopping or curbside pickup 
are encouraged to submit 
their business for inclusion 
at: cityofpasadena.net/retail-
directory-signup.

Pasadena restaurants open for 
business, offering curbside 
or takeout, are encouraged 
to submit their business for 
inclusion at: cityofpasadena.
net/restaurant-signup.

 Pasadena businesses with 
free educational or engaging 
content are encouraged to 
submit their virtual content for 
inclusion at: cityofpasadena.
net/virtual-connect.

 Since the launch of the Shop 
Pasadena, Dine Pasadena and 
Connect Pasadena directories 
in March, these directories 
have garnered over 25,000 
website views.

 Stay connected to the city of 
Pasadena at: cityofpasadena.
net.

Convention 
& Visitors 
Bureau 
Launches 
‘Shop 
Pasadena’


Pasadena Allows for More 
Businesses to Now Reopen

 

 The City of Pasadena has 
issued a revised Health 
Order that allows for 
additional sectors of the 
local economy to reopen 
while the community slows 
the spread of COVID-19. 
Sectors included in the 
latest health order and 
deemed safe to reopen with 
appropriate health protocols 
in place include day camps; 
hotels, lodging and short-
term rentals; museums and 
galleries; fitness facilities, 
including pools; music, film 
and TV production; and 
professional sports- without 
spectators. 

 If your business is 
identified as one eligible to 
reopen under the revised 
Public Health Order, your 
business must implement 
industry-specific protocols 
and complete a checklist to 
resume operations. Guidance 
is expected to be published 
within the next 24 hours 
on the city websitehttps: 
cityofpasadena.net.

Library Expands 
Curbside Pickup

to More Sites 

 Pasadena library has 
expanded curbside pickup 
service this week to seven of 
its branch libraries. Curbside 
pickup service is now 
available Monday through 
Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 
12:30 p.m. at Central Library 
and Allendale, Hastings, 
Lamanda Park, La Pintoresca, 
Linda Vista, San Rafael 
and Santa Catalina Branch 
Libraries.

 Library patrons are able 
to pick up previously-
reserved materials at their 
neighborhood branch. 
Patrons are contacted 
individually via email or 
phone when their reserved 
materials are ready for 
pickup, and then provided 
instructions as to when and 
where to pick them up. 

 Reserve library materials 
for curbside pickup online 
at: pasadenapubliclibrary.net 
using their Pasadena Public 
Library card number.

 Pasadena Public Library 
buildings are closed to the 
public until further notice.


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