Readers of the COURIER have been kept informed about the financial challenges and projected structural deficits our city has been quietly dealing with for over a decade.
Until two years ago, our city council was able to adopt balanced budgets that did not appear on the surface to impact the day to day operations of our city, or the quality of our lives and leisure moments spent enjoying our community.
Home is a familiar, safe place and I am glad to be in it. I have a front stoop with a chair where I sit and watch the bees pollinate—hopefully—my Meyer Lemon tree blossoms. Masked walkers pass by, birds sing and the sun feeds me vitamin D, and I read and feel peaceful.
Since we have to stay home, I try to find the positive side of this situation.
You’ve probably heard stories of small business owners attempting to get help from the Small Business Association (SBA) coronavirus bailout using the Payroll Protection Program.
With $349 billion available to assist businesses just like the Claremont COURIER, one might think it would help a lot of struggling small businesses keep people employed. And the reality is it has. For some.
Years ago, I wrote a piece that I entitled “Growing Up and Out at Camp,” about going to Camp Joan Meier on the coast above Malibu and other summer camps for disabled kids.
I opened by describing a camp dance at Joan Meier, at which the arts and crafts director, a young woman named Chris who I had my eye on stood me up from my wheelchair and held me up as we gyrated and sweated through the song, which turned out to be the long version of the Doors’ “Light My Fire.”
I walk. A lot. I've always done so but now with a different kind of energy, an unsettling drive. Restless.
Clocking more miles due to the quarantine, its prohibitions have altered some of my normal routes through Claremont. Morning treks up into the chaparral-studded foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, or along dusty Thompson Creek Trail, are no longer possible. So I have been hugging closer to interior neighborhoods, from dawn to dusk, and one consequence has been to become more sharply attuned to small moments.
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