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OPINIONOPINION

Mountain View News Saturday, March 22, 2025

RICH JOHNSON 

2024 BUSINESS OF THE YEAR: CORFU

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

Lori A. Harris

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

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Case number GS004724: 
for the City of Sierra 
Madre; in Court Case 
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Madre, California, 91024. 
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STUART TOLCHIN

PUT THE LIGHTS ON


ME, HUCK AND JAMES

I had the chance to stand next to one of my best friends while he and 
his restaurant were awarded the 8th Annual Sierra Madre Business of 
the Year award.

Yes, Vik Satamian, owner of Corfu Restaurant, has been around for 17 
years or so, and is the very first of our small community's restaurants 
to win this prestigious award. The city’s first winner was “The Shabby Dog”, followed by 
“Gem Plumbing”, “Leonora Moss”, Taylor’s Meats”, “Best Buy Drugs”, “Arnold’s Hardware”, 
and last years recipient “Mountain Views News”.

If you want to celebrate and have dinner at a Business of the Year winner, I would recommend 
Corfu. 

I suppose you could have dinner at Taylor’s Meats, but only if you like your steak really, 
really rare. Best Buy Drugs (now Pax Pharmacy) and Arnold’s Hardware have candy and 
cold drinks for sale. “Leonora Moss” might be able to scrounge up a salad, I’d rule out 
“Gem Plumbing”, and the “Mountain Views News” (unless you cater the lunch). If you 
really do not have a very discerning palate, you could try “The Shabby Dog”. They may 
have kibble suitable for vegetarians. The meat dishes will definitely come out of a can 
and be served at ground level. Bring your own “eatin’ irons”.

Thinking of events such as awards shows, the big ones are usually televised live. Airing 
live gives us, the public, wonderful opportunities to witness LIVE oops and mistakes. 
Let’s look at couple of interesting anecdotes regarding our annual Academy Awards:

None other than Faye Dunaway announced the 89th Academy Award for Best Picture to 
be “La La Land”. Oops, it wasn’t. The winner was “Moonlight”. So the “La La Land” people 
came up on stage and thanked the entire world before the mistake was announced. 
So, the “Moonlight” winners then came up and thanked the entire world as well. Who 
got blamed? Two PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants. (I think they are still working 
at a Hollywood Car Wash.)

A closer look at the 1974 Academy Awards (don’t look too close) you’ll see a fellow 
named Robert Opel run up and across the stage waving the peace sign as he sprinted by. 
By the way Mr. Opel was naked.

Speaking of the Academy Awards, let’s look at some more trivia. The first African American 
to win the best Actor Oscar? Happened to be my favorite, Sidney Poitier in 1964 
for “Lilies of the Field”. “The Exorcist” was the first horror film to be nominated for Best 
Picture (Didn’t win).

What film character won two actors a best actor Oscar? “Vito Corleone” from the Godfather 
movies. Marlon Brando won best actor for playing Vito in “The Godfather”. And 
Robert De Niro won best supporting actor for playing Vito in “The Godfather, Part II”.

Did any superhero movies ever receive a best Picture Oscar nomination? Well, I’m glad 
you asked, “Black Panther” was nominated in 2018. Brilliantly portrayed by Chadwick 
Boseman who sadly died of cancer a few years later.

Robin Williams won the Academy Award’s Best Supporting Actor crown in 1997 for 
“Good Will Hunting”. And Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won for best original screenplay 
for “Good Will Hunting” that same year. 

By the way, what is the Academy Award statue holding? A crusader’s sword. Why? Don’t 
know.

Was there ever a tie? Did any two actors, actresses, or movies tie? Yep! In 1969 the best 
actress Oscar went to both Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand. Katherine won for 
“The Lion in Winter” and Barbra won for “Funny Girl”.

Finally, there are awards for many different and obscure achievements. Possibly my favorite 
is “The Darwin Award”. They are awarded to someone who died posthumously; to 
someone who died in a most idiotic way. (gonna do a column on that for sure.)

“The Foot in Mouth Award” presented each year to the person who makes the most 
confounding or baffling comment that year. One lifetime achievement award has been 
given. In 2008 none other than President George W. Bush won the award. 

I, your intrepid writer will continue to deep dive into the world of relatively useless information, 
striving to keep you, my insomniac friends, full of information designed to 
help you sleep. It is a task I cherish. 

So, good night and sleep well.

Dear reader:

 In this article I am going to try and do something I 
have rarely done before. I am not intending to complain 
about anything, and I am intending to write about 
something other than what goes on in my own mind or 
simply retelling the events of my own day. In this article, 
if all goes right, I am going to praise the book JAMES written by Percival 
Everett together with the book entitled Adventures of Huckleberry 
Finn by the author who called himself Mark Twain. I am also intending 
to heap praise upon the introduction to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 
Oxford World Classics edition written by Emery Elliot, Distinguished 
Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. 

Alright reader, I can’t resist; here is a little background. As I have written 
many times before, since my retirement I feel very isolated. My major 
activity, other than writing these articles has been to meet friends for 
lunch and to play golf with two friends I have met on the golf course. 
Well friends have moved away and one of my golfing partners has died 
and the other man just had surgery and will be unavailable for a couple 
of months. I find myself feeling lost when I do drive the roads near my 
home which is embarrassing as I have lived in this same spot for 45 years. 
I tried being a volunteer at the nearby Arcadia Arboretum but that didn’t 
work out. Could the confusion difficulties and the unsuccessful volunteering 
have been my choice? Before thinking about the message in the 
books as explained by Percival Everett I would never have entertained 
the thought. 

At about this time I received a text from my sister which described her 
highly positive reaction to the book entitled James which described the 
incidents the Huck book from the perspective of the slave James. I went 
to several libraries and bookstores attempting to obtain a copy of the 
James book in large print but was unsuccessful. 

While at The Sierra Madre Library I learned that a small book club had 
been formed which would be discussing the Adventures of Huckleberry 
Finn. Unfortunately, the library in Sierra Madre is only a temporary library 
and has little space requiring he meetings of the book club to occur 
over Zoom and is scheduled for today, Thursday at 11AM. I learned 
about the meeting last week and spurred on by the goal of participating 
in the group I have reread the book. I have never even tried to use ZOOM 
but I will choose to try in a couple of hours. 

Percival Everett discussed the Twain books and his own. He explained 
that the name “Mark Twain” taken by the author Samuel Clemens was a 
boating term meaning two fathoms deep which was a symbol of the fact 
that the Twain books had double meaning. (Who knew?) It was further 
explained that one of the premises of the book is that any individual is 
what he has chosen to be and always has the power to choose something 
else. I would like to explain more of the book to you, but I have already 
run out of space and can only urge you to read the books yourself, carefully, 
and realize you have made yourself into what you want to be and 
that what is important is what you make important.

I still have a bit of trouble understanding the message and guess it’s not 
appropriate to say I wish I had told you more about the books. I realized 
now I did what I wanted to do and I have wanted to influence you somewhat 
in the way Tom Sawyer influenced people to do his work for him in 
the famous incident involving face painting. 

As this article illustrates, I have written what I wanted to write rather 
than what I had previously declared in my first paragraph. Right, it depends 
on what I want to do rather than what I say what it is I want to do. 
This is not an easy message and perhaps that that is why the meaning 
of Twain’s books are still discussed and debated and sometimes banned 
more that 150 years after they were written.

Almost time for the ZOOM meeting, I can hardly wait to hear what I and 
others say.


TOM PURCELL


MORE CHILDREN NEEDED

It’s a growing concern that world leaders, economists 
and even Pope Francis have warned about: people 
aren’t having enough children.

Across the globe, birth rates are plummeting below 
the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, the 
minimum needed to maintain a stable population.

Countries such as Japan, Italy and even the U.S. are 
now facing shrinking workforces, aging populations and economic uncertainty 
as a result.

Pope Francis, too, has urged families to embrace more children, praising the 
value of big families, which teach children selflessness and sharing — benefits 
that extend far beyond the home. And I couldn’t agree more.

I was raised as an only boy in a family of six kids, which was at once a blessing 
and a curse.

When I was 12, the neighborhood bully was constantly picking on me, but I 
had no brothers to teach me to fight. My sisters taught me. I looked the bully 
dead in the eye and said, “You are soooooooo immature!”

Despite having no brothers, my father made me wear hand-me-downs. It 
wasn’t too bad most of the year, but Easter Sunday was unpleasant. Do you 
know how hard it is to outrun the neighborhood bully with your pantyhose 
bunching up and your bonnet flopping in the wind?

Though my sisters loved and doted on me many times, other times they complained 
to my parents that I was stinky and gross, which meant I was forever 
banished to the third seat in the back of the station wagon.

One of my fondest memories was going grocery shopping with my father 
every Thursday night. We hit the Del Farm grocery store, the beer distributor 
and the butcher and we arrived home just as “The Waltons” theme song was 
playing on television.

Like a Red Cross operation, everyone in the house unloaded and packed away 
our weekly supplies, then we joined for some potato chips and orange and 
cherry soda pop as we watched John Boy and his many siblings show us what 
life was like during the Great Depression.

Pope Francis has said that “having brothers and sisters is good for you.” He 
said, “the sons and daughters of a large family are more capable of fraternal 
communion from early childhood.”

He has also said that “each family is the cell of society, but the large family is 
a richer, more vibrant cell.”

I found this to be true.

My parents’ house was a wonderful, raucous place, filled with laughter, chaos 
and lots of love and joy. You had no choice but to interact.

I can’t help but wonder how many of today’s kids — without siblings and isolated 
with their smartphones alone in their rooms — are missing out on the 
childhood I was blessed to have.

According to a 2023 report from the U.S. surgeon general, young people are 
experiencing record-high levels of loneliness and anxiety.

Being part of a big family would solve that problem. You simply can’t isolate 
yourself with so much commotion going on all around you.

And if you attempted to hide from the rest of the family, one of your siblings 
would demand you come out of your room or risk the greatest punishment 
that can happen in a big family.

Someone would threaten to brush their teeth with your toothbrush!


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