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Montebello E-News

 October 31, 2010

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. Albert Einstein

Do we conclude from this that our community would stagnate because the majority could not see things differently? Is it possible that solutions to problems would not even be conceived because of the prevalent prejudices of our community?

1. Announcements
 2. Is There Anything Which We Can Learn from Jane Fonda?
3. About Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”

Scam alert. Consumers should be aware of a scam in which recipients receive an e-mail that claims to come from the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System. The e-mail states that tax payments made by the e-mail recipient through EFTPS have been rejected. The e-mail then directs recipients to a bogus website containing malicious software (malware) that infects the intended victim’s computer. To avoid the bogus website and malware, do not click on any links, open any attachments or reply to the sender for any e-mail you may receive that claims to come from EFTPS. The IRS and the Financial Management Service (the Treasury bureau that owns EFTPS) does not communicate payment information through e-mail. ...    From the IRS, October 16, 2010, http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=229075,00.html?portlet=7 

Do a good turn Saturday morning. Groups, families, students and individuals are invited to lend a hand in a cleanup of the San Gabriel River at Whittier Narrows 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 30. It's the first cleanup in this area of the river in nearly a decade. Participation is free. ... Volunteers are asked to RSVP by emailing rivercleanup@hotmail.com or calling (626) 575-5523.

Help a cause as you eat out Saturday. From 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on October 30, 2010, when you eat at the Eastside Chippery, 1416 Beverly Boulevard, Montebello, and present a flier, 10% of your purchase goes to the Save the Montebello Hills Task Force. You can print a flier by going to http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=448022478709&set=a.166894188709.119696.166825158709 

Looking for a Halloween party? The Montebello American Legion, Post 272, takes pleasure in presenting an evening with the sensational Satisfaction band live and in concert on Saturday, October 30, from 8:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight! ... Net proceeds benefit [the post's] comprehensive charity outreach efforts. Call the Post at (323) 721-4878 for more information.   From Spotlight on Montebello, October, 2010.

“Taste of the Town”. The Montebello Chamber of Commerce proudly announces its second annual “Taste of the Town”, to be held o the4 evening of Friday, November 12, at Bagramian Hall, Holy Cross Armenian Church, 900 West Lincoln Avenue, Montebello, from 6 to 9 p.m. Join community residents along with business members and plan to attend this culinary extravaganza, which features an evening of sampling delectable delights from more than 20 local restaurants, fine wine and spirits tasting, wonderful live entertainment and enthusiastic betting at our silent auction. ...    For more information, 323.721.1153. From Spotlight on Montebello, October, 2010.

Like to dance? On Monday, November1, the Montebello-Commerce YMCA will host its twenty-fifth annual YMCA Dinner Show and Silent Auction at the beautiful Quiet Cannon. ... Contact Michael Newton at (323) 887-9622 for more information and to purchase tickets. ...    From Spotlight on Montebello, October, 2010.

Library events. Friends of the Montebello Library are having a video sale on Thursday, November 4, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. About two hundred fifty videos for children, teens, adults. // From our library's children's department. Wednesday, November 10, 4:00 p.m., children's movie; Tuesday, November 16, 6:30 p.m., Thanksgiving stories and art activities. Every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. through December 8, toddler and preschool story time, rhymes, music, and art activity. More information, 323.722.6551.

Flea market every second Saturday of the month. The Montebello Adult Transition Program is sponsoring a swap meet once a month. Please join us for some great deals every second Saturday of each month. We can be found in the parking lot by the girls gym on the northeast corner of Wilcox and Madison in Montebello, just south of the DMV. Vendors are selling new and used clothes, baby stuff, cleaning supplies, furniture, hand-made jewelry and other hand crafted items. We even have a fresh veggie cart. Jesse the DJ is there every month to share and sell his great music mixes for parties of all kinds. It's worth it just to come to hear Jesse's music. Come support MHS's Adult Transition Program fundraiser by becoming a vendor or customer. For vendor information call (323) 356-0439. Reserve your space now.

What is the difference between Halloween and Dia de los Muertos? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween  and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead. 

Around town. With the tenth anniversary under its belt, the Uniroyal Soccer Program is continuing to support local soccer across the nation. ... Montebello AYSO Region 1065 will receive $2 for every Uniroyal tire sold to the general public on behalf of Uniroyal Tire and Montebello Tire Pros. ... // In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Montebello-Ashiya Sister City agreement, a scholarship has been established in honor of one of its founders, Elaine Kirchner, to be awarded to a student ambassador of the Montebello-Ashiya Sister City Exchange Program ... // Established 94 years ago, St. John's Lutheran School, with its six teachers and four staff members, offers a Christian-centered education to students from kindergarten through fifth grade. ... // Beverly Oncology Women's Foundation, as an introduction to the community, held their first free breast cancer screening and free mammogram event here in Montebello. ... To learn more about [the foundation], please visit our website www.bowf.org. // The Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital Foundation is seeking support of the Scheifly Mammogram Fund. This fund supports free mammogram screenings ... For more information, please call [the foundation] at (562) 698-0811, extension 14120. ... '' // Because of an increasing number of whooping cough (pertussis) cases reported in Los Angeles County, Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital and its affiliated physicians are encouraging area residents to protect themselves and their loved ones from this highly contagious disease. ... For additional information, ... (562) 698-0811, extension 17561. // The Montebello Lions Club recently awarded three $500 scholarships to graduating seniors from Motnebello High School to assist them in furthering their education. ... // The Montebello Rotary Cub recently joined with Soroptimist and the Lions Club at their annual Walmart “Back to School Shopping Spree”. Several local service clubs got together to help purchase back packs with school supplies, [as well as] back-to-school clothing for local youth. ... // Montebello Elks club recently received 27 soccer balls from the California-Hawaii Elks Association. ... // In spite of economic woes and budget cuts, this past summer Montebello residents were still able to enjoy evenings in the park listening to their favorite sounds as the city presented its annual summer concert series. Cook Hill Properties had a hand in ensuring the music played on this summer with its sponsorship of four of the five concerts. ... // The Montebello Police Activities League completed another successful season last month. More than 300 kids participated in the program this year... // The Montebello Senior Citizens Center is open Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. We offer a variety of senior services, both educational and recreational. ... For more information, please visit or contact us at ... 115 South Taylor Avenue, (323) 887-4575. // Peter A. Cosentini, currently serving the City of Montebello in the capacity of interim city administrator, has over 26 years of experience in the municipal public sector. ... // Starting September 7, the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority will conduct dog-license canvassing in the City of Montebello. Dog-license canvassing is the best way for a city to survey for accurate record management, increase public safety, and maximize compliance and revenue. ... For more information ..., (323) 887-1449 .... // Montebello Channel 3 offers a “window” to the activities and personalities that make Montebello's local government and community unique. ... MTB Channel 3 provides 24 hours of programming, public-service announcements and bulletin boards. ... For more information ..., call the city's administration office at (323) 887-1363. // One of the oldest search and rescue dogs in the U.S. Is retiring after 11 years of service from the City of Montebello Fire Department. ... // From Spotlight on Montebello, October, 2010.

Impari dagli italiani! Learn from the Italians! More than 800 Italian communities have responded to rising electricity costs by turning to renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and solar panels for their power supply. The efforts have been so successful that the communities are producing more electricity than needed to meet demand. Abstracted from UN Wire, September 29, 2010, from a report in The New York Times, September 28, 2010.

Lasting impression, coming election. One candidate for governor of California has criticized another candidate for having an army of lawyers to regulate businesses, at a time when businesses needs the freedom to root and grow. I find the criticism irritating, because regulation, while excessive at times, is needed. So, the criticizing candidate is not going to get my vote. Here is an example of the usefulness of regulation: California regulators are seeking fines of up to $9.9 billion from health insurer PacifiCare over allegations that it repeatedly mismanaged medical claims, lost thousands of patient documents, failed to pay doctors what they were owed and ignored calls to fix the problems. In court filings and other documents, the California Department of Insurance says PacifiCare violated state law nearly 1 million times from 2006 to 2008 after it was purchased by UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation's largest health insurance company by revenue. "This is about intentional disregard for the interests of doctors, hospitals and patients in California, and the pursuit of cutting costs at any means possible," said Adam Cole, the insurance department's general counsel. "It's a story of intense corporate greed." Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fi-pacificare-unitedhealth-20100908,0,6657147.story .

Getting the most out of life. (Reuters) – The warmth generated by human bodies in the Parisian metro will help heat a public housing project in the city center, the capital’s largest owner of social housing said on last week. The building, located in the famous rue Beaubourg close to the Pompidou museum, is being renovated in an environmentally friendly way. “Luckily, the building is connected to the metro through a staircase,” Francois Wachnick from Paris Habitat told Reuters. The calories emitted by passengers, around 100 watts per person, combined with the heat from trains moving along tracks and the underground location of the metro mean that corridor temperatures are 14-20 degrees Celsius all year around. ...    From CleanTechies, September 7, 2010, http://blog.cleantechies.com/2010/09/07/paris-metro-body-heat-to-help-warm-building/
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The right question to ask. The question is not “Who is he?”, but, rather, “Why did he have a change of heart?” Bjorn Lomborg, one of the world's foremost climate-change skeptics, has changed his mind about the threat that climate change poses -- and posed a new course for meeting the challenge. In a book to be published next month, Lomborg will outline his change of heart on the threat of carbon emissions and call for $100 billion annually in investments in eight solutions, including clean energy resources and climate engineering research. Lomborg says that research and development hold more promise to curb carbon emissions than political promises for cuts -- some of which have failed to materialize or have already been broken. As abstracted in UN Wire, August 31, 2010, from an article in The Guardian, August 30, 2010.

Teach your children well. Kids & the Law: An A-to-Z Guide for Parents has been revised for the fourth time and will be available later this month. The State Bar [an organization of California lawyers] has distributed 3 million copies of the guide since it was first published in 2001. Kids offers parents information about laws affecting their children, their relationship with their children and resources about drugs, driving, drinking and other issues facing all families. The new guide covers sexting, cyberbullying and information on new laws that make it illegal to smoke in a car if any passenger is under 18 and ban the sale of nitrous oxide to anyone under 18. California Bar Journal, September, 2010.

Why is America not winning this race? In the past five years, Portugal has made dramatic changes in its energy policy, becoming the fourth-largest producer of renewable energy in Europe. The country's installed renewable energy capacity more than tripled between 2004 and 2009, from 1,220 megawatts (MW) to 4,307 MW, and renewables now represent roughly 36 percent of electricity consumed. From e-newsletter of Worldwatch Institute, September 2, 2010.

Remember, caveat emptor, buyer beware. You often get what you pay for. India, the world's largest manufacturer of generic drugs, has emerged as major provider of counterfeit and substandard pharmaceutical drugs, damaging the country's $8.5 billion industry. Worldwide fake-drugs cost an estimated 1 million lives a year. India's health officials altered drug laws to accelerate legal action, and have launched a program to offer cash rewards to those who provide information about illegal operations. Abstracted in UN Wire, September 13, 2010, from a report in The Washington Post, September 11, 2010.

Too good to be true? My first encounter with the sweetener Splenda was at the 99-Cent Store a few years ago. I bought a nutrition bar with Splenda as an ingredient. When I researched online, I did not like what I read. Now, a friend has referred me to a blog about Splenda. Translated from Spanish:    ... To hide its source, the “pushers” of Splenda state that sucralose [an ingredient in Splenda] is made from sugar and, therefore, tastes like sugar. [However,] sucralose is as much like sugar as Windex is like ocean water. ...    April 3, 2010, http://www.estudiabetes.org/profiles/blogs/splenda-un-engano-mas-de-la .

Is our democracy fundamentally flawed and, if so, should we do something about it? A number of U.S. lawmakers and their family members have helped create or run charities that routinely accept donations from businesses and major corporations seeking to influence them, the New York Times reports. Despite rules imposed in 2007 to curb the influence of special interests in Congress, corporate donations to lawmakers' charities have continued, thanks to a provision that allows businesses to make unlimited gifts to them. Indeed, a review by the Times of federal tax records and House and Senate disclosure reports turned up more than two dozen charities tied to lawmakers that bring in millions of dollars annually in gifts from dozens of corporate sponsors, including AT&T, Chevron, General Dynamics, Morgan Stanley, and Eli Lilly. ...    As abstracted in Philanthropy News Digest, September 10, 2010, http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=307700025  .

Your misery is my livelihood. In law school, thirty years ago, there was a fundraiser through the sale of a t-shirt with that statement. But it is not just lawyers who profit from the pain of others. Note this. Rising food prices are raising tensions across the developing world and have sparked violent confrontations in Mozambique. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has called a meeting Sept. 24 to examine wheat and grain pricing, but has so far refrained from describing the food situation as a "crisis" for fear of triggering a run by financial speculators that could cause more price increases. As abstracted in UN Wire, September 7, 2010, from a report in The Globe and Mail, September 7, 2010.

See the equation? Demand for resources equals territorial conflict. Expect conflict in coming years. China is working to access unexplored areas of the ocean floor in search of minerals, oil and other resources to mine, using a submersible able to travel deeper than any other craft in the world. China developed the submarine in secret over the past eight years and conducted a successful trial to the bottom of the South China Sea this summer. Observers worry the trials, scheduled to continue into 2012, may exacerbate territorial disputes with China's neighbors. As abstracted in UN Wire, September 13, 2010, from a report in The New York Times, September 11, 2010.

What is the real message here? I think that the real message is that, generally, we know less than we think and we should be less dogmatic in what we teach our children, as in the case of science.    ... This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands. The findings are discrediting a once-bedrock theory of archeology that long held that the Amazon, unlike much of the Americas, was a historical black hole, its environment too hostile and its earth too poor to have ever sustained big, sedentary societies. Only small and primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, the assumption went, could ever have eked out a living in an unforgiving environment. But scientists now believe that instead of stone-age tribes, like the groups that occasionally emerge from the forest today, the Indians who inhabited the Amazon centuries ago numbered as many as 20 million, far more people than live here today. ...    The Washington Post, September 5, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302302.html  .

National security is painted green. Does the gentleman from Texas have a remark?    ... It was easy to see how much work we have to do: According to officials from DOD, the military uses 300,000 barrels of oil per day. According to Deputy Secretary of Energy Poneman, that translates, with every $10 rise in the price of a barrel of oil, to more than $1.3 billion in additional costs the Department of Defense shells out for energy. Deputy Secretary Poneman also pointed out that a gallon of fuel can cost $40 or more in theater. Our armed services understand that these are not just statistics – they are real costs and they affect our mission. That’s why each of the branches, DOD, and DOE are so focused on increasing efficiency, reducing waste, and increasing the security of our energy use. Navy Secretary Mabus summed it up well when he said in his opening remarks, “changing the way energy is used and produced in our country is the right thing to do. It’s the right thing to do for our security, it’s the right thing to do for our economy, and it’s the right thing to do for our environment.” The President is committed to supporting and working with all branches of the armed service, all branches of the government and private industry as we together strive to build an energy future that is deserving of our men and women in uniform. ...    July 29, 2010, http://blog.cleantechies.com/2010/07/29/case-national-security-clean-energy/
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YMLP+Newsletter&utm_term=The+Case+for+National+Security...

Is “Saturday Night Live” worth more than a laugh? There is a “Saturday Night Live” skit offering a solution to stay out of debt. The solution is simple, but our consumer society makes it hard to implement the solution. Enjoy the skit: http://consumerist.com/2010/10/snl-teaches-the-secret-to-staying-debt-free.html .

Jane Fonda published My Life So Far in 2005. Many of us think that we know Fonda from what we see and hear in the media, but one of the most dangerous things which we can do is base our lives on what the media tell us. I have begun reading her book―even the title is enlightening, as it is what a lifelong learner would choose for a title―and, so far, I would suggest that every adult do the same. The following paragraph on page forty caught my attention, because it has nothing to do with climate change, but everything to do with the quality of our lives:

I like that I was born on the shortest day―winter solstice. It makes me feel connected by some primordial energy to Stonehenge and Machu Picchu, where the solstice was celebrated and revered by the Celts and Incas. I also like that I am able to look back over my span of history to a time before plastic, before smog and sprawling suburbs and fast-food restaurants. Before television, even! I like that I can remember in my bones what it felt like to have a lot fewer people in the world than there are today. Four billion fewer, to be exact. Four billion fewer feels different, trust me. Life was very different then, just because of the fact of four billion fewer people, seven million fewer just in Greater Los Angeles alone when I was born. It's a feeling of space, more space between people, between houses, between tempers and cars, more open spaces with grass where a girl could explore and hear birdsongs. More birds.

To learn about this newsletter, Montebello E-News, and the accompanying, growing Web site, “My Montebello”, visit www.mymontebello.com.  Also, you will find instructions and contact information for submitting announcements for publication in this newsletter, and for submitting stories to “Montebello Memories” at the Web site.