Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, January 16, 2021

13

CONVERSATIONS

 Mountain Views News Saturday, January 16, 2021 

Mountain View News Saturday, January 16, 2021 

FRED THOMAS


TO FRIEND 
OR UNFRIEND

For the first time in my 
FB life. I am considering 
unfriending or unfollowing 
some friends. Some 
of whom I've known for 
decades. But not who you 
think and maybe not for 
the reasons that may appear 
obvious. 

Easily the most effective 
agent for change in the 
history of our country is the late Reverand Dr. Martin 
Luther King Jr. All day yesterday and throughout the 
night, his words were stuck in a constant loop in my 
mind. 

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper 
darkness to a night al-ready devoid of stars. Darkness 
cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate 
cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies 
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness 
multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of 
destruction.”

and 

"A riot is the language of the unheard."

I am tired of all of the vitriol being spewed. There is 
simply no way to fix our na-tion's problems by attacking 
the same people that are attacking us. And for the 
record, how is all the violence and anger working? A 
year of civil unrest to pro-test the very real heavy-handed 
and murderous assault on people of color by law 
enforcement has got us where? Where are the results? 
How many of us have participated in real substantial 
changes to community policing? I'm not talking about 
a meeting or two. I'm talking about actual actions taken 
in a sincere effort to save me and my brothers from 
being killed in the streets by law enforcement without 
the guarantee of due process.

MAGA... how did your riot work for you yesterday? 
did it solve anything. Under-stand that your actions 
are the desperate acts of the frustration of your voices 
not being heard. A legitimate and transparent investigation 
to have the results of the election reviewed 
in a manner that would appease you. What you got 
in-stead was a dismissal of your concerns from your 
elected officials (not talking about the courts because 
as every person of color knows, the courts don't al-
ways provide the justice we are seeking). In your frustration, 
some chose to storm and damage the capital. 
Does this sound familiar? I suggest you look across the 
aisle. the BLM movement is comprised of people myself 
included that have generations of feeling the same 
despair that caused your national display yesterday. 

We cant see these parallels because we choose not to 
see them. We want to be angry with each other, our 
politicians are raising billions from all of this discord. 
You don't believe me, go to the SEC website and look 
at the numbers.

Every day I pray to God that we do this differently as 
a nation. But I fear that prayer is doomed to fail. It's 
doomed to fail because we have to choose love over 
hate. truth over convenience, and integrity over victory. 
These are the choices that God has empowered 
each individual to choose for themselves. And moving 
forward if you choose to continue the name-calling 
and vitriol because you are upset and frustrated. I may 
choose to move you from my conversation. Even if I 
agree with your views and politics. Dr. King used to 
implore people that could not remain non-violent not 
to join his efforts because he knew that any hate-filled 
expression would shift the focus from the merits of 
justice and give those that don't want to change a convenient 
excuse not to. I can't change the nation. but I'm 
trying to heal the pain and lack of understanding from 
my friends,

Please, don't force me to unfriend you. we are truly in 
a "Descending spiral of de-struction" Your voice (all of 
yours) is critical to solving our issues, together.


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR



I appreciated the statement from Rep. Adam Schiff on 
the events of January 6 in your last MVN, while the 
columns at the bottom of the Opinion page informed 
us that BLM violence was bad and this was bad, too.



Rich Manieri quotes Ari Fleischer; “What is the difference 
between the left-wing fringe, BLM, that lit police 
stations on fire, tried to light a federal courthouse on 
fire, occupied two cities, looted and engaged in violence, 
and what people did yes-terday at the Capitol?”



Numbers I’ve seen indicate BLM protests were 93% 
peaceful, with destruction coming after most protestors 
had left and yahoos arrived on the scene after-
wards. Guns and violence came with Proud Boys-
types who couldn’t miss out.



As for cities being “occupied”, those protests grew 
largely from police treating cer-tain communities as 
occupied territories; bad cops held unaccountable for 
treating residents accordingly and as if their mostly-
Black lives didn’t matter.



Whether BLM, “far-left anarchists” or all-purpose 
boogeyman antifa, none sought to kidnap governors 
(13 were arrested last October for targeting Michigan 
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer). None showed up with guns 
in cosplay-camo to invade state capitols from Salem, 
Oregon to Frankfort, Kentucky. None wore endorsements 
of the Confederacy or the Holocaust. They 
didn’t come with lynch-mob fervor along with zip-
ties, Tasers, mace and makeshift gallows threatening 
elected lead-ers. There weren’t the homemade bombs, 
bats and beatings of police (with one officer’s skull 
smashed with a fire extinguisher).



Sorry – but insurrection against our government, invasion 
and desecration of the Capitol, death threats 
against lawmakers to halt constitutional duties and 
smearing excrement on the walls of our temple of democracy 
can’t be equated with looting the local Target.



Michael Reagan laments detraction from Trump’s “record 
of accomplish-ment”. It’s a record that led to this 

insurrection; from the demonizing and play-ground 
bullying of those refusing to kiss the ring - whether 
political opponents, protestors or journalists (with a 
particular disdain for women of color – go figure); to 
his refusal to comply with checks and balances and 
congressional oversight un-der the Constitution.



In the meantime, he put another $1.5 trillion on our 
nation’s credit card to shift more wealth to the oligarchs. 
He abandoned allies and embraced despots 
–our country becoming an international embarrassment. 
He engaged in unprecedented graft and used
foreign policy for extortion. (Reagan refers to “character 
flaws”.) And this was all before COVID.



The “legacy” Reagan frets about might be summed 
up in two words, “Twice im-peached”; or maybe two 
words and a number, “400,000 dead Americans”; or 
then again maybe three words, “Kids in cages”. 



Reagan warns of “the one-party socialist state, the 
Biden-Schumer-Pelosi troika”, thus engaging in the 
very “throw-it-out-there-and-the-rubes-might-believe-
it” practice that brought us here. (Decades ago, 
his dad warned that with passage of Medicare, America 
would no longer be “free”.)



Manieri notes that all sides feel they’re on “the right 
side of history”. I’ll side with those who appreciate 
that history (a good start is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 
YouTube posting on growing up in the aftermath of 
Nazi rule). One side seeks to protect our right to vote; 
the other seeks to limit that right and then, if that 
doesn’t work, to invalidate that vote altogether. One 
side seeks “to form a more perfect union”. The other 
seeks to weaken and destroy it. Those with a longer-
term appreciation will recall Dr. King’s citation, “the 
arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards 
justice.”



Now that consequences are apparent, some warn a 
second impeachment might prove “divisive”; that we 
should simply condemn violence and move on. But, 
as observed on the website MeidasTouch, “Nobody 
asked al-Qaeda for advice on unity after 9/11”.



Howard W. Hays

Sierra Madre


PORTRAIT OF OUR NEIGHBORS By Stuart Tolchin

YVETTE NATALIA 

DEL CORAZON

 Our neighbor Yvette Del Corazon is 
a long time resident of Sierra Madre Canyon 
and has operated a business in Sierra Madre 
for 23 years. Her business card identifies her 
as the owner of Hands With Heart a holistic 
healing center specializing in the area of 
MIND –BODY- SPIRIT which provides 
services in twenty different areas including 
Massage/Bodywork/Physical Therapy and 
Transformational Coaching, Yvette is a fully 
educated, accredited and licensed Massage 
therapist. Additionally she has taken multiple 
specialized classes offered at the Esalen 
Institute in Big Sur. Yvette characterizes 
herself as someone devoted to cultivating 
deep changes in self and society.

 She is a person who has had 
extraordinary life experiences but 
emphasizes that Sierra Madre is her home 
and identifies the Sierra Madre Canyon 
Community as keeping her alive and never 
letting her down. She really loves her life 
and has always followed a spiritual path 
which remarkably has included four near 
death experiences. During these near death 
experiences she describes visiting heaven 
which she experienced as a spiritual place 
wherein she was completely encircled with 
divine love from which she was saddened to 
leave when the experience ended.

 As you can see by the enclosed 
picture she is an unusual person even by 
Sierra Madre standards. In another one of 
the pictures you can see Yvette surrounded 
by members of the Sierra Madre community 
who participated in a drumming which 
was intended to and did successfully bring 
Yvette back to health. Prior to her last death 
threatening condition which allowed her to 
return home just before Election Day Yvette 
was walking seven miles in the morning. 
Now, only a week after returning home after 
a month in Intensive Care and recovering 
from a condition that doctors told her was 
terminal she is now walking a mile in the 
morning.

 Yvette describes herself has a person 
with gifts, spiritual gifts that allow her to 
have insights into the lives of people she 
has never met or who predeceased her. She 
was formerly the head of the Spiritual Values 
and Community Outreach program as a part 
of the Sierra Madre Civic Club. She is part 
of a uniquely active family which includes 
a former mayor of Los Angeles and a 
brother who was speaker of the House of the 
California State Assembly and is presently a 
Regent of the University of California. When 
asked to explain the distinguished positions 
occupied by family members she explained 
that her family had been long involved 
with the work of Caesar Chavez and farm 
workers. She also has had the opportunity to 
meet famous almost mythic individuals who 
were parts of the Civil Rights Movement. 
She describes meeting Rosa Parks as one 
of the most memorable moments of her life. 
(If you are not familiar with the name Rosa 
Parks you owe it to yourself to look her up. 
She is called “the mother of the civil rights 
struggle for racial equality based upon her 
refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man 
in Montgomery Alabama. Also a part of the 
10 Freeway is dedicated to her.)

 Returning to Yvette, notwithstanding her 
familial political connections politics is not 
the road she has travelled. As a part of her 
continual spiritual quest she has spent months 
in the jungles of Peru in the apprentice 
Ayahuasca apprentice shaman program. 
(You should look this up too as it is described 
in National Geographic Magazine as a 
journey to Hell and Back.) Yvette does not 
describe the experience that way but still she 
may well be considered as someone who has 
visited both heaven and hell and has chosen 
to remain living with us in Sierra Madre. In 
any case, it would be inaccurate to picture 
Yvette as some other worldly type person (oh 
maybe a little bit). In reality she is just one of 
the remarkable interesting neighbors that we 
see walking the hills of the canyon every day 
and should the opportunity arise she would 
be a person well worth your time to get to 
know.


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