Is the U.S. going to war in Iran?

I was 15 when President Johnson announced that U.S. naval forces had been attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. The immediate aftermath was the deployment of tens of thousands of American troops to Vietnam. A year later, when asked about the incident, Johnson replied, “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”

Today, more than half a century later, I am wondering if President Trump isn’t launching a revised Gulf of Tonkin strategy. Sources at the Pentagon claim as many as 120,000 U.S. troops might have to be deployed to the Middle East. As a longtime Laguna resident and 70-something father of three, I have to ask: What has changed in Iran? Why the rush to war? What if it is whales again?

Denny Freidenrich
Laguna Beach

A weed with a secret identity

The other day I went down on the hillside below my home with a small plastic container containing three tins’ worth of California poppy seeds, sold locally as souvenirs of California. The wet winter here had famously sprayed the wild lands with color as far as the eye could see, but the majority of it in our area was an invasive mustard, whose solid patches of bright yellow may prove a short-lived entertainment at the cost of a long-lived fire hazard. Amongst the color visible from our home, sadly, was a notable lack of the circus orange of the state flower, the California poppy. It was for this reason I struggled on uneven, sloping terrain dotted with gopher mounds and blanketed with dried grasses, the seeds of which cleverly inserted themselves into my socks (which created a 10-minute chore later to remove them, requiring turning the socks inside-out to pull the little barbed things through from the inside). In relatively clear areas I tossed little pinches of poppy seeds willy-nilly, doing my best impression of Johnny Appleseed (too bad my name isn’t Peter, as in Peter Poppy Seed). This section of hillside is soon to be visited by a large herd of goats, for fire suppression, and they will be eating more mustard than a stadium full of Dodger fans. I am hopeful that they also will be distributing, disturbing, embedding, and fertilizing poppy seeds, inviting a mini-super bloom next spring. 

On the way back toward the house, I encountered an unfamiliar small flowering plant, with lovely albeit minuscule orange buds. What was this? A wildflower? After all, this was a wildflower season for the record books. Perhaps this was a hidden gem, an unsung participant, due to its pea-sized blossoms. I carefully dug out a small ball of earth containing the plant and brought it to the house, where I did what everyone does for everything, I began an Internet search to identify it. Unfortunately, the super bloom this year in California meant that any search with both of the words “orange” and “flower” triggered an avalanche of images and links about the California poppy, seemingly ignoring every synonym for “tiny” I could think of. 

I visited wildflower databases. I scrolled through page after page of images of flowers. I entered descriptive terms as search criteria (leaf broader at base than middle, one blossom per stem, etc., etc.). All to naught. However, I could not accept that the identity of this plant was going to continue to evade me. I then took the step that occurs after every failed Google search: I slept on it. Refreshed, this morning, I sat down, and typed in the following inspired phrase: “trailing weed with tiny orange flowers.” And there it was, on the third line of images, at the link (lawnscience.co.uk). Unmistakable. I had tracked down the mysterious interloper. It was not what it pretended to be. It was not a wildflower, at all. It was a lowly weed. Charlatan! 

My disappointment, however, was short-lived when I saw the name: Anagallis arvensis; common name, scarlet pimpernel. As in, The Scarlet Pimpernel! Secret identity? Hard to identify? Pretending to be something it isn’t? Yes, yes, and yes. The Scarlet Pimpernel predated Zorro, Superman, and a host of other fictitious do-gooders who maintain a secret identity (but, admittedly, does trail Robin Hood by 600 years). The 1905 novel, the first in a series, recounts the tale of an apparently feckless aristocrat who, in fact, is the expert swordsman and clever escape artist who helps French aristocrats avoid the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. He is known only as “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” because the humble weed is his symbol. Life is such an entertainment. And I suppose it makes sense for the Scarlet Pimpernel to have a weed as his symbol – you can’t stop them, no matter how hard you try; they will escape you, and pop up somewhere else, including, in this case, a Southern California hillside, blending in with the crowd and going (largely) unnoticed.

Gary Stewart

Laguna Beach

Let’s do our part, Laguna – let’s sort our trash, recyclables, and green waste correctly

Today is trash day in my part of Laguna. Just within a short block I saw some things that made me wonder – do people read the lids to the blue, gray, and green bins? Each bin serves to pre-sort our ever-growing mound of trash in the landfills, oceans, and streets. There were items obviously in the wrong bin, some people just stuck stuff anywhere hoping that someone else will know better, I saw one bin where the person put whole cartons, not folded down, into the green bin (where green waste should go) with a note saying “recycle.”  Do the drivers really have time to read these personal notes/requests? I don’t think so – they drive up and down our streets, some are very narrow with curves, some people park their cars without concern about traffic, sometimes the drivers even have to drive down a street backwards as there is no place to turn around as they have to on my street. Talk about dangerous.

Back to the bins – the tops are very specific about what one can put in them. One of the most logical and I think important – do not put your trash in plastic bags and then put into the bin. Aren’t we putting enough plastic into the world from which right now there is no escape? These bags are not cheap and how well do they recycle their things when putting them in the plastic bag? I don’t know. But putting plastic, glass, and paper in them – that means that someone on the assembly line will have to tear them open to find out and sort them. Some folks are very conscientious and take the time to screw the lids back on the plastic bottles. Did you know that the lids are made of a different plastic and they are processed differently? So that means the lids have to come off. I learned this when I sometimes take my plastic and aluminum cans to the Orange Coast College Recycling Center. I do that so that those young people who “work” there sorting the trash are earning scholarships. Young people from different countries are working there to help with rent, books, etc. I like to help those who help themselves to achieve goals. I don’t drive there specifically to recycle there – I save them items for several weeks and when it is part of my “route of errands” I drop them off.

Back to trash day – did you know that the waste industry is one of the most dangerous of all occupations? (I understand that someone is hurt every day and last year, I read that 33 people were killed while on the job.) They don’t get paid that well for the risks they take and of course it is not a very clean job. They have to work fast as there is a lot of trash generated in our country and there are fewer and fewer ways of disposing them. Also there are fewer and fewer people who want to work in this industry – who will do this work? (Certainly not any of the children growing up in Laguna Beach, it would seem – parents are even paying thousands of dollars for them to attend prestigious schools even though they may not “qualify.”)

As we know the oceans are being inundated with trash – recently one whale had 88 pounds of trash in its stomach. Little fish, big fish, our coral reefs, lobsters, and other crustaceans are all victims of our carelessness and lack of concern. We depend on them for food especially as land animals are becoming less sustainable with loss of land to floods, droughts, use of chemicals, and other insane ravages of mankind. Never mind the wildlife.

So please take a moment, involve your children as well, sort things before you dump, see if it can be recycled by donating things such as clothing, furniture, and books to agencies that can re-use them to help the planet and help those who are not as fortunate as you are. I wonder why people are not concerned about what we are doing to this place called Earth. I saw a bumper stick that said, “There is no Planet B”.

In closing, I recently saw an article about a man who is collecting old and abandoned fishing nets and recycling the materials used to make them – to make new nets, clothing, etc. 

Ganka Brown
Laguna Beach

Another school shooting

“Lock her up” was heard many times during the 2016 presidential campaign. It’s time to revise that refrain. With Tuesday’s school shooting near Denver, I suggest “lock them up.” 

Like I did during President Obama’s tenure, I urge President Trump to convene a Camp David-style summit on gun safety, similar to what President Carter did when he invited old warriors Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel to Maryland in 1978. In case anyone needs reminding, the peace agreement that was reached after nearly two weeks of negotiations still is in effect today.

The president needs to take a page out of the Carter playbook and sequester all the critical players (i.e. NRA, 2nd Amendment proponents, ACLU, parents of shooting victims and more) until they agree on common ground (AKA federal legislation). This crazy, unprovoked violence must stop now.

Denny Freidenrich

Laguna Beach

Residents want a level playing field

While the Chamber of Commerce is a vital part of our community, it is not representative of the majority of Laguna’s residents. In fact, in my opinion, the Chamber represents a small share of our total resident population.

Why is it then that the “State of the City” address is given as part of a fundraiser for the Chamber of Commerce? It sounds as if Chamber members and their guests are more important than the rest of Laguna’s residents. Unfortunately, doing a State of the City presentation at a Chamber of Commerce event gives the impression to some that the Chamber has an outsized influence on Council’s decisions for our community – perhaps even dictates those decisions. For example, the City has prioritized new development projects at the top of its Strategic Projects as the City with the support of the Chamber. I don’t believe that the majority of residents would share fast tracking development as the most important strategic goal of City Council. 

A large number of residents feel that local government isn’t responsive to their needs. We heard from residents at past Council meetings of how they’ve become frustrated by their experiences with Design Review. We have also heard complaints that special interests, like some developers, seem to get special treatment, such as accelerated design and planning review for large projects – for a price. There’s a perception that the City removes large development projects out of the normal planning and design review process, such as the Coast Inn project being reviewed by the City Council instead of the Planning Commission or Mo Honarkar’s development projects being removed out of the normal review process, it seems.

There’s also a concern about too much money spent without fiscal caution. There’s the painful fact that the City spent millions of dollars as a result of mistakes on projects like the Llewellyn property, which is likely to be mirrored with the future liability from building permit approvals of the Katz project. A level field is made askew when those who formerly worked for the City or served on City Boards or Commissions, use their connections for the benefit of their clients and themselves by acting as consultants.

Here’s a suggestion. We have all heard about “Town Hall” meetings. These are held by elected officials to share ideas, answer questions, and solicit the views of residents during hours when voters can attend – at similar times as City Council meetings. These meetings can be held at the Artist Theater or other venues at low cost.

City Council might be surprised to learn that residents of diverse political views want the same thing from Council: direct communication with residents, greater transparency, and accountability.

We can do better than this. It has to start with setting a level playing field, which takes residents’ views into account instead of marginalizing them. Let’s work to keep all residents involved and informed. It is all of our community. 

George Weiss

Laguna Beach