Serendipity

Mike treated me to a belated birthday lunch yesterday at Euro Pane near City Hall. Mike and I know each other because we're local bloggers.

So I walked in the door to say hi to Mike and, much to my surprise and delight, my long-time friend Bill Matthies was there, too:



Neither one of them wanted to pose for photos, but I snapped them anyway. So there.

Mike and Bill know each other casually because they both happen to frequent Euro Pane. I had never been there for lunch (only early morning meetings), so I had no idea that I would ever run into Bill there. We haven't seen each other in more than a year.

Mike had to leave early, and Bill and I settled in for a catch-up chat, but too soon it was time for me to get back to work.

Bill and I have known each other for the better part of 20 years. In addition to having a few great friends in common, we've hung out at the Troubadour, sung duets in Latin by the light of the moon, swapped stories in teepees, and on and on.

Bill is an artist in the most magnificent sense of the word. One of my prized possessions is a very limited print of his "Sunset on the Arroyo" (I have #16 of only 25) featuring a sycamore tree on the edge of the Arroyo Seco with the Colorado Street Bridge in the background:


It's on the wall of my office at Pasadena City Hall.

Thank you, Mike! Yesterday was serendipitous to say the least. And the egg salad sandwich was phenomenal.

Bloggers for Racial Justice

I hosted a table at the YWCA's Women for Racial Justice breakfast this morning.

With one exception, everybody at my table was a female Pasadena blogger.

Left to right on one side of the table (above): Rev. Susan Russell (Inch at a Time blog), Meredith McKenzie (Arroyo Lover blog), Thelma Reyna (Latina/o Writers Today blog), and Patt Diroll (On the Town writer, Pasadena Star-News).

On the other side of the table (below), left to right, Dianne Patrizzi (Mademoiselle Grammophone blog), Gina Mendolo (Mendolonium blog) and Debbi Swanson Patrick (Altadena Above It All blog).


The recipient of this year's Women for Racial Justice Award is Tony Stewart, who at the tender age of 9 picketed in her hometown of Pine Bluff, Ark., when the coloreds-only library didn't have the materials she needed for a school project and the whites-only library refused to let her in. Pine Bluff police escorted her off the premises.

After the family moved to Pasadena in 1930, she served as secretary of the Pasadena branch of the NAACP from 1934 to 1936, chaired a committee that petitioned the national NAACP headquarters to charter an Altadena branch, and worked with the League of Women Voters to draft the charter for the Altadena Town Council.

Now 93, she is president emeritus of the Altadena branch of the NAACP, which she led from 1984 to 1992.

Tony was too ill to be at the awards breakfast, so her family accepted for her:


Some participants in the YWCA's Just for Girls program were at the breakfast as well; all are students at Blair and Muir high schools.


The breakfast kicked off the YWCA's Week Without Violence.


Many thanks to the YWCA Pasadena-Foothill Valley Chapter.