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OPINIONOPINION

 Mountain Views NewsSaturday, September 7, 2024

STUART TOLCHIN

RICH JOHNSON 

NOW THAT’S RICH

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

SALES

Patricia Colonello

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John Aveny 

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Peter Lamendola

CONTRIBUTORS

Michele Kidd

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


PUT THE LIGHTS ON


YOUR CAREER 
BEFORE YOUR 
CAREER BEFORE 
YOUR CAREER

So, what does your 
“curriculum vitae” look like? Don’t know 
what a “curriculum vitae” is?

In Neo-Latin it is roughly translated as 
“the course of one’s life”. “Resume” on the 
other hand, is a French word meaning “to 
summarize”. Leonardo da Vinci is credited 
with the first resume circa 1481. 

Included in his resume: Methods for 
destroying every rock or any other kind of 
fortress, how to dry up the water in moats, 
and how to construct an infinite number 
of bridges. I guess good things to know in 
1481.

Maybe if we investigate the resumes of 
famous people we might get ideas on how 
they managed their careers to eventually 
become famous. Maybe we’ll be motivated. 
It’s certainly worth a peek:

The first candidate and I share a skill in 
common. Princess Meghan Markle and I 
are both calligraphers. It may have been 
Meghan’s penmanship that won her a 
bonafide prince!

I hesitate to confess to the skill as it has 
gotten me trapped with friends in need of 
a calligrapher. I can’t tell you how many 
banquet place setting cards I’ve been 
hornswaggled into doing over the last 40 
years. I was even thinking of chopping off 
my right hand. My band mates talked me 
out of it. Couldn’t figure out how to strum 
the guitar with my nose.

Matthew McConaughey got a job at a golf 
course as a sand trap raker. He quit when 
the management wanted him to get rid of an 
armadillo infestation.

Taylor Swift grew up working on her family’s 
Christmas tree farm. She was in charge of 
picking praying-mantis pods off the Xmas 
trees so customers would not end up with 
multi-legged guests.

Mega-star Danny DeVito was a hairdresser 
while climbing up the ”short” ladder of 
success in film and TV. Whose hair did 
he dress? (Certainly not his own) He was a 
hairdresser for female corpses. I suspect the 
tips were lousy, but there were relatively few 
complaints from the customers.

Terry Crews of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and 
“America’s Got Talent” before fame struck 
was a courtroom sketch artist. Oh, and four 
years in a part time gig as a player for the 
National Football League.

If you have ever been forced to do something 
humiliating for a living, you are not alone. 
No less than Brad Pitt made a living dressed 
up as the El Pollo Loco chicken mascot 
ordered to stand out in front of at least one 
of the restaurants.

Talk about a back up job for an actor 
struggling for success on television. I don’t 
know how actor Ken Jeong (most notably 
on “Community”) had to slug out paying 
the bills by falling back on his training as a 
doctor. Somehow, he got by.

If you are old enough to remember a 
incredibly good looking guy knocking on 
your door trying to sell you life insurance, 
you just might have met George Clooney 
before he was, you know, George Clooney.

Martha Stewart was a full-time model until 
she became a mother at 25. She then spent 
five years as a Wall Street stockbroker. And 
finally found her niche in gourmet cooking 
everything else.

Premier women’s designer Vera Wang was 
a figure skater and journalist until the 
fashion industry found her at age 40. Maybe 
she found them, but it worked out!

One of my big heroes was, in his younger 
days, a country lawyer, gas station operator, 
streetcar conductor and railroad worker. He 
had a motel and built a restaurant around 
it. And guess what he specialized in? Will 
it help if I tell you that in 1935 he was 
commissioned by governor Ruby Laffoon to 
be a Kentucky Colonel. Note: His Kentucky 
Fried Chicken Empire did not come to be 
until Colonel Sanders was 65. 

So…if you feel you are too old to pursue a 
new dream, come on, go ahead and take the 
risk. Housekeeper and farm laborer Anna 
Mary Robertson didn’t begin painting until 
she was 78. In 2006, one of her paintings 
sold for $1.2 million. You might know her 
as Grandma Moses.

P.S. One of my favorite restaurants in Sierra 
Madre is Corfu Restaurant. Its right near 
the Southwest corner of Sierra Madre Blvd 
and Baldwin. 48 W. Sierra Madre to be 
exact. They have mostly Mediterranean 
food, which means it is not only very good, 
but yummy. They also serve traditional 
breakfasts and have the world’s best Tuna 
Melt. Their number is (626) 355-5993. 
Call for hours. They have parking and an 
entrance in the back parking lot. I’m usually 
there on Saturday mornings playing a card 
game with smarter people than me. Come 
by, have breakfast and say hi! 

 IGNORANCE VERSUS 
INDIFFERENCE 

Can We Learn To Notice And To 
Care? 

Prior to beginning this article, I was completely 
unfamiliar with the term “agnotology” I which according to Wikipedia is a branch 
of Social Science that looks at the ways in which doubt or ignorance is created. 
It is the study of deliberate, culturally induced ignorance or doubt, typically to 
sell a product or influence opinion, or win favor. Today the combination of the 
heat, my fears of covid infection, my age plus my malfunctioning old car have 
left me as a prisoner in my own home. I do little beyond watching television and 
worrying about things like what can I do positively to assist in creating a better 
and safer future for myself, my family, and everyone else. I wonder if an offshoot 
of agnotology which studied methods of recovery from this induced ignorance 
could be developed and presented. 

 Just now, while watching the PBS news, I learned that the Russians 
are attempting to create chaos in America through various presentations. I have 
no doubt that television can be used for this purpose. I am already bombarded 
with commercials proclaiming the benefits of medications that guarantee 
terminations of life-threatening or highly dangerous physical conditions. 
Some time ago, I asked a neighbor who is a medical professional, why it was that 
if medications that brought about cures existed then why didn’t our primary 
doctors prescribe or simply suggest that we purchase these medications? My 
neighbor condescendingly laughed and informed me that hospitals and medical 
providers are not interested in preventions or cures. They are businesses which 
require revenues. Ongoing treatments in disease bring in money. Diseases, 
after their prevention, do not.

 Last week in my article I described my optimistic belief that the 
stepping aside of President Biden would ensure the election of a Democrat 
and that the nation and all humanity would be spared the horrors of another 
Trump Presidency. Of course, I still favor the election of Vice-President Harris, 
but I wish that more time and energy were being spent on demonstrating that 
the candidate will pursue policies and programs that will ease what seems to 
be world-wide suffering. I would love to hear about policies that would assist 
people to have a good relationship with one another in addition to appreciating 
their own existence.

 Education should emphasize learning how best to live and this is 
not the kind of learning presented by educational institutions. Traditionally 
religious adherence attempted to meet this need but to my mind religion was 
always about maintaining control and conformity. Religion may give people a 
sense of belonging, but it may also lead to prejudice and division and fighting 
against scientific progress which invariably conflicts with mythical creation 
theories. I believe, progress can be made to help people find satisfaction and 
mental health in their individual lives. Big Religion like Big Pharma and Big 
Politics have all contributed to bring us to the place we are in as they fought 
to maintain control and wealth. For their own purposes foreign countries 
present their devious lies. Frankly, I am ignorant as to what to do but I am 
not indifferent. I wish areas of social science like “agnotology” would study 
how to remedy the effects of our socially induced ignorance and assist us in 
recognizing when it is happening.

Schools should help us. Education is not the ability to memorize 
the answers to questions. There should be emphasis on learning to ask one’s 
own questions, and to check facts and resources, and to maintain curiosity. 
Discussions should not be considered as competitions but rather as continuing 
explorations. Schools should be more than required pathways to jobs, status, 
and regular incomes. Instead, it would help if we learned to appreciate our 
own abilities to understand and not to simply accept the current opinions 
surrounding us. Really, comparing ourselves with others is usually not helpful. 
Less television, fewer recreational drugs and alcohol and recognizing our own 
abilities is the better idea and the best way to combat depression and isolation. 
Truth is out there - we just must learn to recognize it. Please stay informed; 
keep your eyes open and be sure to vote.

Mountain Views News 
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ANOTHER SHOOTING

TOM PURCELL


THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN


I’ve been listening to old crooners on Pandora lately, and one 
of my favorite Frank Sinatra songs is “The House I Live In.”

Sinatra performed the patriotic song in an 11-minute movie 
short that was made in 1945, shortly after the conclusion of 
the war. In the short, Sinatra steps out of a recording studio 
into an alley, where he confronts a group of kids chasing a 
smaller boy. He learns that the smaller boy was being picked 
on by the others because of his religion.

Sinatra explains to the kids that it is un-American to dwell on what makes 
us different. Rather, we must celebrate the many unique characteristics we 
have in common — the characteristics that make us very strong as a nation.

To illustrate his point, Sinatra sings “The House I Live In:”

What is America to me?

A name, a map, or a flag I see.

A certain word, democracy.

What is America to me?

More than just a democracy, America is a representative republic. It was 
designed to put the power in the people’s hands — people like Sinatra’s 
Italian-born father, who understood how lucky he was to be American 
when, for many years, his birth country had been run by the fascist dictator 
Benito Mussolini.

The howdy and the handshake,

The air and feeling free.

And the right to speak my mind out,

That’s America to me.

The howdy and the handshake speak of a civility and friendliness that we 
are losing in modern America. Though people are still able to “speak their 
minds,” many fear punishment for doing so.

The things I see about me,

The big things and the small.

The little corner newsstand,

And the house a mile tall.

It’s hard to imagine now, but envy had never been a big part of the American 
spirit. America was a place people came to rise on their own merits. Most 
of our early immigrants were too proud to take handouts — all they wanted 
was the opportunity to work and prosper and make a better life for their 
children.

Sinatra’s father became a fireman and eventually a pub owner and lived a 
good life. But look at the remarkable life his son went on to live — a life and 
career that could be possible only in America.

The words of old Abe Lincoln,

Of Jefferson and Paine.

Of Washington and Jackson,

And the tasks that still remain.

The American Constitution went into effect on March 4, 1789 — 156 years 
before Sinatra recorded “The House I Live In.” Most Americans were still 
very much aware of the unique ideals upon which the country was founded 
— most realized that, despite America’s many imperfections that still needed 
to be worked out, it was a blessing to be an American citizen.

It was a blessing to have God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness.

In 2024, I dare say, many Americans have little understanding of the ideas 
and principles that make our country exceptional, and far too many are 
eager to give up our freedoms in exchange for government goodies.

A house that we call freedom,

A home of liberty. And it belongs to fighting people,

That’s America to me.

That’s 
America to 
me, too. And 
we better 
work harder 
if we hope to 
maintain the 
principles 
and blessings 
that have 
made our 
country 
great.

MICHAEL REAGAN

SMART PARENTS CAN PREVENT 
SCHOOL SHOOTINGS


“He was on our radar.”

How many times have we 
heard that after a mass 
shooting at a high school 
or a shopping mall?

We heard it for the 
umpteenth time again this week after a 
disturbed 14-year-old kid in Georgia took a 
rifle to school and killed two students, two 
teachers, and injured nine others.

“He was on our watch list,” the local police 
said to no one’s surprise.

A year ago, after the FBI’s radar picked up 
Colt Gray reportedly making threats online 
that he was going to “shoot up a middle 
school tomorrow,” the feds tipped off the 
county sheriff.

Colt and his father, Colin Gray, were 
questioned about the anonymous and 
unsubstantiated tip.

Colt assured a county investigator “he never 
made any threats to shoot up any school.”

His dad told the investigator that Colt had 
mental issues, but he was a good kid who’d 
never even joke about doing a terrible thing 
like that.

His dad also assured the police that though 
he had hunting rifles in the house, Colt did 
not have unfettered access to them.

The investigator said that he urged Colt’s 
father last year “to keep his firearms locked 
away and advised him to keep Colt out of 
school until this matter could be resolved.”

Case closed – until the tragedy of this week.

Colt was not kept out of school. His dad 
failed to prevent him from getting his hands 
on a rifle – and in fact, gave Colt the AR-
15-style rifle he used in the shooting as 
a Christmas present months after he was 
visited by the investigators.

The police “radar” failed to stop the shooter 
– again. And four innocent people are dead.

Realistically, there’s not a lot that parents 
can do to “fix” a child like Colt, who has 
serious mental troubles and is a potential 
threat to others.

Parents can admit the truth and not be 
afraid of being shamed as a “bad parent.” 
They can seek professional care or put their 
child in a mental health facility, though 
when he turns 18, he has the right to get out.

But there is something very important 
that sensible and caring parents can do to 
prevent or reduce the number of future 
mass shootings.

It’s really not complicated. It’s simply 
putting the family’s pistols and rifles in a 
gun safe and making sure your kids don’t 
have the access code.

Even better, it’s getting all of your guns 
completely out of the house by giving them 
to a relative or friend to hold for you until 
your child grows up, gets control of his 
brain and stops being mad at the world.

Unfortunately, irresponsible or clueless 
gun-owning parents like Colt Gray’s father 
are not rare. They play a role in so many 
mass shootings that prosecutors and the 
courts are starting to make them pay for 
their carelessness.

Earlier this year a Michigan couple became 
the first parents convicted in a mass school 
shooting.

Because they missed so many chances to 
prevent their disturbed 15-year-old son 
from getting a handgun and killing four 
schoolmates in 2021, they were sentenced 
to 10 years in prison for involuntary 
manslaughter.

As the AP said, they were guilty of failing to 
secure a “newly purchased gun at home and 
acting indifferently to signs of their son’s 
deteriorating mental health.”

And Thursday night, as this was being 
written, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation 
charged Colt Gray’s father Colin with 
second degree murder and involuntary 
manslaughter “for knowingly allowing his 
son Colt to possess a weapon.”

Parents can play an important role in 
preventing tragic shootings like the one this 
week – which would never have happened if 
our “radar” worked the way it should – by 
knowing when to take their children’s guns 
away.

They should do their own “gun control” 
before the government tries to use mass 
shootings as an excuse to take all our guns 
away.


Mountain Views News

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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