Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, August 27, 2022

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OPINIONOPINION

Mountain Views-News Saturday, August 27, 2022

RICH & FAMOUS 


PUT THE LIGHTS ON

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

PRODUCTION

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

Peter Lamendola

CONTRIBUTORS

Stuart Tolchin 

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

STUART TOLCHIN

TO WHOM CAN WE APOLOGIZE?

ENGLISH AND 

THE WORD UP

If you think English is easy you were 
born here. If you find American English 
a little difficult, you are probably a 
member of the British Empire. If English 
is nigh impossible you are from anywhere else on the globe or galaxy. Here 
are examples of our profound language that may give you insight into the 
difficulty of grasping our native tongue.

The bandage was wound around the wound.

The farm was used to produce produce.

The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

He could lead if he would get the lead out.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

I did not object to the object.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row...

They were too close to the door to close it.

The buck does funny things, when the does are present.

A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present 
the present.

You want more? Okay, I can give you more.

If writers write why don’t fingers fing; or grocers groce and hammers ham?

One goose, 2 geese. Why not one moose, 2 meese? Teachers taught but did 
the preacher praught? Vegetarians eat vegetables. So what do humanitarians 
eat? How come slim chance and fat chance mean the same thing but a 
wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You fill in a form by filling it out, 
and an alarm goes off by going on. Did you ever see some poor soul’s house 
burn up as it burned down?

Possibly the most difficult word in the language is a simple two letter word: 
UP. We wake UP. A topic comes UP. We speak UP. It’s UP to the secretary 
to write UP a report. We call UP our friends. We brighten UP a room, polish 
UP the silver; warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock 
UP the house while some guy fixes UP the car. People stir UP trouble, line 
UP for tickets, work UP an appetite and think UP excuses. The various 
definitions of UP go on and on.

If you are UP for it look UP the definition of UP in the dictionary. It will 
take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP and build UP a list of the 
many ways UP is used you may wind UP with a hundred or more definitions. 
Of course, it’s UP to you.

I think I’ll wrap UP my column because I’m certain it is way past the time 
to shut UP!

 
Please 
be prepared to 
ignore this article. 
I know 
I want to but 
I just cannot. 
I, along with 
you, have been 
taught to believe 
that we 
are the “civilized” 
people of the world. Actually we 
are the ones who hide behind culture, art, 
and politics which have served as a perfect 
disguise for our vicious activity of allowing 
and participating in the destruction of 
the world. Worst of all we barely notice it 
and continue merrily along criticizing each 
other while individually we keep pursuing 
our own goals, perhaps our own needs, 
for power, glory, wealth, and recognition. 
Maybe that is the destiny of homo sapiens 
and I guess it’s not that surprising that we 
know not what else to do.

 Who am I talking about? Let’s start 
with me. Recently, I read a line in a Michael 
Connelly book of fiction wherein he 
describes his creation Harry (short for Hieronymus) 
Bosch as thinking to himself, 
“Sometimes I think that I know strangers 
better than I know anybody else, even myself…
Sometimes I think I don’t even have a 
life…I don’t know what I am talking about.” 
Does any of that resonate with you? Hieronymus 
Bosch was an artist painting in 
the sixteenth century who saw his physical 
world as a depiction of Hell which featured 
lakes of burning sulfur, and rat-kings, demonic 
sadists, and castration via a giant razor 
blade. Five hundred years later Bosch’s 
vision has been taken up by contemporary 
artists such as Bob Dylan and David 
Bowie among many others. The savagery 
he painted was particularly relevant during 
the 1960’s as Americans like me became 
aware of American soldiers setting fire to 
huts and killing women and children with 
machine guns, while others mutilated their 
victims with barbed wire, poisoned food 
stocks, and shot cattle and dogs for sport.

 That was the 1960’s. Today the 
view is even more horrifying and it seems 
like we continue along criticizing our entire 
society for its past wrongs while many 
of us, like me and you, are content to live 
our lives almost untouched by what goes on 
everywhere around us. While glaciers melt 
and the lakes dry up and the habitability of 
the entire planet is threatened we continue 
to debate the rightness or wrongness of 
our wars. Today while on the golf course I 
had a conversation with a very pleasant 70 
year old man who had just returned from 
one of his frequent vacations. He was very 
bothered by the fact that the Biden administration 
was in the process of cancelling 
student debt after he had already paid back 
his loans and the debts he incurred for his 
children.

 Also bothering him, as he walked 
around just after dark in the wealthy area in 
which he lives, he noticed that many of the 
houses remained dark. He concluded that 
this was because so many of these homes 
were uninhabited and were being held just 
as vacation homes whereby wealthy individuals 
could just park their money and 
enjoy the benefits of passive wealth as their 
property appreciated. How is it in this time 
of universal crisis that so many of us remain 
untouched as we read about homelessness, 
starvation, continuing senseless wars and 
billions spent on more and more weapons? 
Do you notice that perhaps you and/or your 
friends are so medicated with anti-depressants 
that it is almost impossible to have a 
conversation? I know there are reasons to 
be depressed but wouldn’t it be better to 
treat the causes rather than the symptoms. 
Of course, there’s so much more money to 
be made by treating the symptoms.

 I sympathize with Pope Francis 
Pope Francis as he travels in his wheelchair 
making apologies to the Canadian Indigenous 
People for the centuries of genocidal 
mistreatment. He is presenting the 
still mistreated suffering populations with 
words while indigenous people clamor for 
tools to remedy their suffering. Most of us 
here in Sierra Madre aren’t suffering yet (after 
all the gas prices have gone down) but 
those of us brave (or perhaps out of touch 
enough) to have children have good reason 
to fear for the future. The fact that the unpunished 
ex-President still walks around 
freely is enough to demonstrate the failures 
of our Democracy. 

 Like Pope Francis I want to apologize 
for my callous indifference but who 
can I apologize to? It’s all of our fault so we 
should just go out and enjoy ourselves. In 
the 95 degree weather today I will do my 
best to ignore the heat in the same way that 
we all try to ignore everything else. Wish 
me luck –sorry to have bothered you.

Mountain Views News 
has been adjudicated as 
a newspaper of General 
Circulation for the County 
of Los Angeles in Court 
Case number GS004724: 
for the City of Sierra 
Madre; in Court Case 
GS005940 and for the 
City of Monrovia in Court 
Case No. GS006989 and 
is published every Saturday 
at 80 W. Sierra Madre 
Blvd., No. 327, Sierra 
Madre, California, 91024. 
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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