Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, September 16, 2023

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OPINIONOPINION

Mountain View News Saturday, September 16, 2023 

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 

Harvey Hyde

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

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

RICH JOHNSON 

NOW THAT’S RICH

STUART TOLCHIN


PUT THE LIGHTS ON


JULIUS HENRY AND FRIENDS

MAYBE NOT

A great hero of mine is Julius Henry. Julius was born the same 
month as I (October) but he was a bit older having been born in 
1890. His birth took place above a butcher shop in Manhattan, 
New York City. 

Julius was one of 5 brothers, the others: Leonard, Milton, Arthur, and Herbert. 
The brothers all worked together at first, and later only Leonard and Arthur 
worked with Julius. 

As I’m sure you surmise by now, Julius is better known under a different nom de 
plume which I will divulge momentarily. So, where was I? Oh yeah, there are 206 
bones in the typical human body, 22 of them in the skull. I suspect Julius has 1 
more bone than most humans. The bone they call the ‘funny’ bone. And it’s a big 
one.

Alright, a little drum roll. The Julius Henry I am talking about has a last name 
and that name is ‘Marx”. And, at the front, the nickname of Groucho, a name he 
took from a comic strip character.

It was the silliness and cleverness of the Marx Brothers that attracted me to comedy. 
Not the slapstick. Their clever ‘repartee’: a French word repartire, which is a 
fencing term which means, “an answering thrust with a sword”. And nobody was 
better at it than Groucho. Such as:

“If I held you any closer, I would be on the other side of you.”

“One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll 
never know.”

“I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.”

“I never forget a face, but in your case, I’ll be glad to make an exception.”

“Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

“Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.”

“Room service? Send up a larger room.”

“I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.”

“A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.”

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.”

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”

“Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.”

“She got her looks from her father. He’s a plastic surgeon.”

“I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.”

“No man goes before his time…unless the boss leaves early.”

“Before I speak, I have something important to say.” (One I use regularly).

Julius (Groucho) once said something serious that I know of: 

“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose 
which it shall be…I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it!” 

Have a wonderful week. We are all in this together. If you have kids love them and 
let them know it. Parents? Love them and let them know it. Pets? Love them and 
let them know it. 

Brothers and sisters? You’re on your own lol! 

Shameless plug. My band, JJ Jukebox, indeed is performing a Halloween Concert 
at Nano Café, Saturday, October 28th. Many people will be wearing costumes. I 
would love to see new faces. Make reservations for sure (626) 325-3334. Come for 
dinner, drinks, dancing and…funky costumes. There may even be a few prizes.

 Really I want to write a positive article 
but when I look around things just don’t look 
very good. I receive emails from my travelling 
retired friends telling me that in other countries 
they pretend they are not Americans; in order to escape criticism 
they masquerade as Canadians. It is tough to be an American 
these days but compared to what? Why are Americans addicted 
to guns? Why is drug and alcohol addiction such a continuing 
and worsening problem? Why is there so much divorce? Why do 
so many people report that they no longer have “best friends”?

 When I eat at restaurants I see couples or even groups of 
people with their phones in their hands not even talking or looking 
at one another? Why does this all bother me so much? Really 
I don’t want answers—I just want changes.

 First, can’t America get rid of people’s need to have guns? 
It’s not about the second amendment or about that time-honored 
American pastime of shooting and killing animals and cutting off 
their heads and hanging them on the wall. Really though today 
many Americans keep guns because they don’t feel safe and keep 
the guns to protect themselves. Do more guns really help to make 
people feel safer?

 Why in the mornings are the freeways jammed with passengerless 
individual drivers barely moving as the fight their battle 
of commuting to and from work. Well, at least they’re working! 
What about retired folk like me who aren’t working and cannot 
really afford to pay the twenty or twenty five dollars to eat breakfast? 
Is inflation a global problem or is it only a matter of time 
until we will all be eating only Chinese food and driving Asian or 
German cars? 

 

 Maybe it’s only my perception but it seems that people are 
so guarded that they are reluctant to share their feelings with anyone 
and even hide from themselves. Are we all so afraid and does 
that fear lead to a nation-wide depression?

 One of my pet peeves is that all the time many of us 
spent in College acquiring degrees which in no way prepared us 
for the inevitable problems so common to us now. Several men I 
know of my age, or even younger, are married to women almost 
a decade younger. Originally the women were probably pleased 
to be with these experienced, sophisticated seemingly successful 
men. As time passed, as it inevitably does, the women now feel 
that they are caretakers for irritatingly hard of hearing and almost 
enfeebled men who are of no help around the house and cannot 
even be considered as safe drivers. It’s tough for the women and 
the men are powerless (I don’t want to use the word “impotent” 
to do much about it. My point is that couldn’t our lengthy and 
expensive educations better prepare us to deal with the generally 
inevitable stages of life.

 Proper effective child rearing is still a mystery! My life 
experience has recognized that many marriages break up to the 
great detriment of children and afterwards the divorced couple 
remain close even after they move on to other relationships. The 
problem is that often during the marriage one of the parties, or 
both, carried on secret liaisons which when discovered made staying 
together and the children be damned. Guess what! I’m afraid 
that is just what humans do and it always comes as a devastating 
shock. I wish that somewhere along the line we all learned to be 
more prepared in addition to being able to being more responsible 
and truthful. It hasn’t happened yet and subsequent generations 
must cope with the insecurities related to their parent’s dissolution. 
Maybe not getting married in the first place is the answer 
which does not seem like much of an answer. I have no solutions 
but I hope to live a little while longer and get a chance to see the 
world become more harmonious. 

 

 Maybe we all may end up speaking Chinese and forfeiting 
our prized individual rights in a Constitutional Democracy. Will 
things be easier then? Another question I can’t answer and presently 
am content to not ask many questions about the future. It is 
now Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Years) are still privileged and 
happy to not be in Libya. 

Mountain Views News 
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Madre; in Court Case 
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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