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I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of all the crummy fruit being put forth by the grocery stores these days. And it costs more than ever! Is it time for Monrovia to get a community garden?

Lovely photo by Artcatcher.

Now that summer appears to have arrived (a bit too early for my taste), most of us who spend time in Monrovia will be hunkering down in front of our air conditioners for a good part of the day. If we are lucky, we can get up very early enjoy some fresh air before 10 a.m., and then reluctantly go back inside for some needed cool air. Not until 7 p.m. does it start to cool off.

I am loathe to go outdoors between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. but these are the prime shopping times, and so sometimes I must to get things done. Monrovia is known for it’s shops and eateries closing early, but during the summer months, this seems rather counter-productive. When I lived in Italy, I came to know what is known in some places as the “Siesta.” During the afternoons, businesses roll down their shutters and everyone takes a few hours off to relax before heading back to work again around 6 p.m. Shops often stayed open until 10 p.m., and restaurants much later.

I hear times are tough for local business here in Monrovia, especially in Old Town, and merchants are putting their heads together to come up with a strategy to get more business. Some have said business is down 60%. That combined with increased rents would make things a bit strained.

And so I put the question to you, dear reader. Would you shop in Old Town if businesses closed during the hottest part of the afternoon and opened again in the evening and kept later hours? I say let’s re-institute the Siesta.

I’m a separator. I am the kind of person that believes in recycling, and I do my duty and put all my recyclables in the big blue bin. I also save batteries for the once-a-year Monrovia hazardous drop-off event, and I even recycle my ink cartridges. I’ve also started composting and use biodegradable doggie bags. But hey, this post is not about me.

A couple of very bright and conscientious friends of mine do not separate their recyclables from their trash as they’ve been told that the city puts it all in once place anyway. Ok. I have a hard time believing this. Why would they bother with the blue bins then? Is this all just to make us feel good?

So, I put it to you, dear reader. Do you separate or not separate? Do you have the low-down on this strange bit of goings on? I would very much like to know. Perhaps I will have to take a trip down to the place where the trash goes and see for myself. What do you think?

I’ve often thought about what, in addition to Old Town, Monrovia could create as a focal point for visitors and local residents to enjoy. If I could choose anything, it would be a lake with walking trails around it. Land being at a premium, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

What do you think would be a nice focal point for the city? A fountain? A fantastic building? A waterslide?

Has anyone been to the new Fresh & Easy market on Foothill? Although their produce looked pretty good, the brands on the shelves seemed pretty standard. Where do you shop when there is no Farmer’s Market?

I am providing here the text of a recent article by Chet Raymo of Science Musings. I think he raises some interesting points.

Last Sunday’s New York Times had a front-page story on the growing fleets of off-road vehicles that are churning up public lands in the American West. The battle is on between the owners of recreational ATVs and conservationists over who and what has the right to use our national forests and wilderness areas.

The natural contours of a landscape and indigenous flora and fauna are no impediments to piston-powered two-, three- and four-wheeled machines that are designed to go just about anywhere. A pristine dune or purling stream can be obliterated in a trice. Even in my domesticated New England village, public green space is regularly (and illegally) befouled by the idiotic offspring of internal combustion.

Of course, off-road vehicles are just part of the problem. An even bigger menace is road vehicles.

Scrape it flat. Pump tar out of the ground and spread it out on the surface. Another road. Another parking lot. Sometimes it seems as if our ideal planet would be as round and smooth as a bowling ball, asphalt black, painted with regular white lines.

We are hellbent on destroying the uniqueness of places.

The automobile is the perfect machine for obliterating a place, especially an automobile with a cellular phone. “Honey, I’m just leaving the parking lot; I’ll be home in an hour.” “Honey, I’m on the expressway, home in 20 minutes.” “Honey, I’m in the driveway.”

One place like every other place. And if it’s not, well, we can make it so.

Which is not to say that we can leave natural places alone. We no longer have that privilege. Maybe we never had that privilege. When the first human ancestor crafted a chopping tool out of stone, the wilderness was finished. When the first human struck a fire with flint, untrammeled nature was in retreat.

The entire surface of the planet is inevitably going to be a human artifact. A farm is an artifact. A national park is an artifact. A homey neighborhood is an artifact. The question is not whether we will live in artificial places, but whether we will know and love the place we live in.

“If you know one landscape well, you will look at all other landscapes differently,” says a character in Anne Michael’s novel Fugitive Pieces. “If you learn to love one place, sometimes you can also learn to love another.”

And that’s what place is all about — learning to love. No one loves a crowded expressway. No one loves acres of asphalt marked with white lines. The automobile is the antithesis of love because it is the antithesis of place.

The place we learn to love can be a windowsill in a New York high-rise, a patch of New England woodlands, or a thousand acres of the high Sierras. Alaskan nature writer Richard Nelson states: “What makes a place special is the way it buries itself inside the heart, not whether it’s flat or rugged, rich or austere, wet or arid, gentle or harsh, warm or cold, wild or tame. Every place, like every person, is elevated by the love and respect shown toward it, and by the way in which its bounty is received.”

Civic planners and stewards of public lands have a responsibility to ensure that our parks, greenways and open spaces remain bountiful. One thinks back to that grand era of public places designed and executed by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his contemporaries. His was the generation who gave us our national parks, national forests, and great city parks. His was the generation who knew we can’t survive without roots in nature.

New York’s Central and Prospect Parks, Boston’s Emerald Necklace, Chicago’s Jackson Park and Montreal’s Mount Royal Park are just a few of Olmsted’s many splendid urban creations, feeding our need to connect to the natural world. He reshaped the landscape, to be sure, but in a way that lets organic nature shine through. Even such ostensibly wild places as Yosemite and Acadia National Parks show the marks of his civilizing influence.

Imagine what our cities and suburbs might be if those in charge of the planning and execution of public and private development were guided by Olmstedian principles. Instead, we have created landscapes that cater to automobiles, not people, even to the point of sacrificing the aesthetic integrity of some of our forbears’ most precious gifts, such as Charles Eliot’s system of metropolitan parks and parkways around Boston and Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway.

If aliens from outer space visited this planet, they would quickly decide that the ruling beings have four wheels; certainly, the two-legged creatures seem eager to sacrifice to the automobile their time, fortune, and quality of life. Add a lane, pave it over, build a strip mall. If there is a shred of natural beauty left, erase it. All hail to the automobile. The automobile rules.

And now the spawn of the automobile has been unleashed even from the asphalt.

The automobile is here to stay, of course, and properly so, but we are not required to love it, or sacrifice everything to it. A house with a three- or four-car garage is unlikely to become a home. The number of miles on the odometer is a pretty good measure for how far we have gone from where we belong. We might have created a culture that emphasized place rather than mobility, nature rather than asphalt, public rather than personal transport. We chose not to and we are poorer for it.

I just read a great article in the New York Times about bringing your dog to work. I did this many years ago when doing a short term gig in San Francisco. It was wonderful. One of the reasons I work at home is to be with my dog during the day. How many of you Monrovians feel the same? Do any of you work for companies that allow you to bring your dog? Would you like it if more stores allowed you to bring your dog inside? (I love that Bank of America lets me take my poodle with me while I wait in line.) Would you like to see more dog friendly areas in town?

Looks like we are getting three new yogurt shops in old town: Sierra Cup, Pinkberry, and another one in the Von’s Pavilions shopping center where the photo store is leaving. What sort of business would you like to see come to Old Town Monrovia?

Ok. I know it’s tacky, but I’m announcing that yes, today is my birthday. Money is a bit tight, and I’ve decided to stay in Monrovia. What should I do? What would you do if you were going to stay in Monrovia and it was your birthday? Who can guess what I have planned? Hint: It costs less than $50.

The internet is changing the nature of television, and long-standing services, like public-access television, are in the position of re-defining their function. Sites like YouTube make it easier than ever for people to create and share their own movies. How would you like to see your local public-access station, K-GEM, evolve in the next few years?

I first discovered Monrovia shortly before I started househunting, and I was so happy to find it. The city appealed to me on so many levels. I loved being near L.A., and yet got the small town feeling I craved.

Also, the locals were helpful and friendly, and hanging on out Myrtle on a weekend night was fun, and reminded me of Mayberry, or some other such mythical small town place.

I love walking and felt it would be easy to walk from many of the homes I saw for sale to shopping and movies. All in all I’ve been happy with my choice.

What first brought you to Monrovia? What makes you stay?

I’ve been thinking over the nature of community lately, and believe that its importance cannot be overemphasized. Take Monrovia, for example. Every Friday night the streets are filled with people walking, talking, and taking each other in. Of course, you say, it’s the street fair. But if we look further, and take note that contributing to this is the absence of cars on Myrtle for a night, an area and time dedicated to getting people out and amongst each other.

Some people have said that they’d like to see the area Myrtle Avenue that bisects Old Town be free of cars to encourage walking. What do you think of this idea? I would love to hear relevent discussions from both points of view.