In October Autumn made a valiant attempt to settle in Claremont, but it is still waiting at the edges before fully committing. We did have some days with clouds and even one foggy morning.
This couple was just too adorable not to photograph.
The Claremont Concert Orchestra performed its first concert of the year. The cellos had a particularly challenging passage in the third movement of Beethoven’s 8th Symphony. They rose to the occasion.
What will November bring?
Claremonters like to express their opinions in yard signs. Fall is prime sign season.
This one advertises the Claremont On the Same Page read for this fall. The events surrounding this read are over, but the signs continue to add color to the neighborhoods.
If you “Get on the Bus” you’ve donated money to the Claremont Educational Foundation. CEF supports the Claremont USD with funding for arts and technology. This year CEF donated nearly $200,000 to CUSD.
Many homeowners have used Home Improvement Matters to make their homes more energy efficient. Even in Southern California where the winters are not snowy cold, we do heat our homes, and we certainly need air conditioning in the summers.
Here’s a house that’s very involved in the community!
This Election Day Claremonters will decide if we want to support the building of a new police station. Our current station is too old and small, but some think that the current proposal is much too big and too expensive.
What signs are missing this year? There will be no school board election because only two incumbents filed papers to fill two vacant positions.
Village Venture Past
Claremont parents usually have their children’s Halloween costumes ready in good time for trick-or-treats if their children march in the Village Venture Halloween parade. At least my daughters did when they were young. Their favorite memories of this event involved getting the goodie bag at the end of the parade with swag from local merchants.
Held on the 4th Saturday of October, Village Venture is Claremont’s fall Arts and Crafts Fair. Hundreds of booths showcase crafts, art, promote local businesses, churches and schools, with a big selection of international food vendors.
This year the Santa Ana Winds were blowing, so the skies were clear and the air was hot. That did not deter the thousands of visitor who come from near and far.
The Claremont Young Musicians Orchestra usually plays in a shady spot near the library, but this year, sadly, there was only a placard in memory of Roger Samuel, the conductor, who lost his battle with cancer earlier this year.
Two rules. First, one does not drive into LA, find and pay for parking, and just see one place. Second, one does not go near a bookstore and not go in.
Therefore, we included a visit to The Last Bookstore after our time at The Broad.
With over 250,000 new and used books, vinyl records, art galleries and a yarn shop, old couches and chairs, the only thing missing is a coffee bar.
Most books are downstairs, but there is a Labyrinth Last Bookstore upstairs with half-empty shelves waiting for you to sell yours to them. The art galleries are upstairs encircling the main floor with great views of the space.
We managed to walk away with a new book, The Martian, the book that the recently-released movie is based. We liked the movie, and we’ve heard that the book is even better.
The main floor
Upstairs
So. There’s this new major art museum in Downtown
LA. The Broad (pronounced with a long o sound, like road with a B up front) with its white facade paints a contrasting picture to its across-the-street neighbor, the silver sails on the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Read two articles about the museum here and here.
Tickets are free, but must be reserved in advance. Since the museum has only been open for a hair over a month, one cannot commandeer these on a whim. BUT, if you show up at least 30 minutes before opening time at 10:30 a.m., chances are good you can get in anyway. At least on a weekday. At least we were lucky enough.
We took advantage of a free day during the college’s fall break to give this place a look-see. One of my favorite things about visiting an art museum is taking my own photos. Aside from taking pictures of art I like (especially if it is new to me), I like to try to make my own art. Here are some of my favorites.
I like playing with the panorama feature on my new iPhone.
Peeking through the Broad’s facade looking toward Disney Concert Hall
I liked the reflections of the ceiling in this doggie-balloon shiny sculpture, and the shiny bunny sculpture with the doggy.
This is the line we waited in to reserve a 45-second visit into the Infinity Mirrored Room. It was pretty cool.
Some final exterior shots.
The High School Homecoming Parade is one of Claremont’s nods to a Lake Wobegone kind of community. I don’t remember anything about homecoming when I was in high school in a large Midwestern city with seven high schools, so now I enjoy the small town feeling of CHS.
Festivities start off in Memorial Park, across the street from Sycamore Elementary School just as school is getting out, making for a congested traffic situation as people are arriving from the high school, and parents are picking up their kids.
The bandshell is decorated as a backdrop for announcing the Grand Marshalls of the parade, hearing the chamber singers perform a song, and presenting the royal court of nominees for Homecoming King and Queen. Each one is escorted by someone – maybe a parent or grandparent, or even a friend.
Then the King is announced. Each candidate is given a tube, which, when pulled, will shoot out confetti. The candidate with the gold confetti is crowned King. Queen will be announced at the game that evening.
About 30 minutes after this fanfare, the parade begins.
First comes the CHS Marching Band, followed by floats from each class. The theme this year, I think, was American Road Trip, so each class chose a city. The seniors came in first place with their Route 66 nod to California.
At the end the El Roble Cheer Squad, holding hands with little girls, looked as though they were running a race.
When it was built in the early 1940s, the building 
at 206 W. Bonita served as Claremont’s movie theater. With one screen, 500-600 people could watch films such as Dr. Zhivago, Dr. Strangelove, The Graduate, Pinocchio and many others. The Facebook page “You know you’re from Claremont if you….” has a nice long discussion of people’s memories of this theater.
In its second life, this building became Harvard Square Café serving French-inspired cuisine. The café had a run of 21 years before it closed in 2013. This photo is from Judy Wright’s book Claremont: A Pictorial History.
Currently, the restaurant Bardot occupies this building, and I finally made it there for dinner this week. Because of our delightful Southern California weather, the inside bar opens to the outdoor seating area, while there are still inside tables in case of rain or excessive heat. I thought that the short ribs were quite delicious, and I will definitely be back for special occasions.
In California, Electric Cars Outpace Plugs and Sparks Fly ran an article in Sunday’s NY Times. Now that we have a plug-in hybrid, I felt compelled to read the story. The main issue, it seems, is for cars which rely solely on electricity and need to recharge when out and about. Since we use gas, too, we charge our car at home. (Most of our driving is local, so the majority of days we only use electricity with our 22 mile range.)
What if we ever want to charge up when we are around town? This handy site will locate charging stations and tell the cost, the hours, and any other pertinent information. Some are listed as private residences (not ours!), and I’m not sure just how that works.
Here is the charging station in the Claremont Village near City Hall.
If you shop at Montclair Plaza and get there before another electric vehicle, you can charge up for free. Since it takes our car 5 hours to fully charge from empty, that would mean an awful lot of shopping.
Growing up in the landlocked Midwest, I did not see an ocean until I was 11 years old when my family drove halfway across the country, stopping in Oregon to visit my cousins. The Pacific Ocean has been my favorite ocean ever since that trip.
During sabbatical we did not really see an ocean, except the Atlantic from the plane, although we did enjoy the Mediterranean Sea in Spain and Italy. It was time to reconnect with the surf and ocean breezes, so H took the invitation to umpire a softball game at UC Santa Barbara on Saturday. We drove up early so we could stop by at the Goleta Beach, just a few minutes away from the campus, to spend some time enjoying the view and the air.
The Slough is a perfect place for bird-watching, and we saw a number of people with long camera lenses and binoculars. If you look carefully at the top right-hand photo here, there is a blue heron sitting in front of what looks like a small cave.
With the addition of a plug-in hybrid to our household,
and because we would like to be good environmental stewards, we had solar panels installed on our roof this week. The process is not particularly swift. About two months ago we had a conversation with Solar City concerning our interest. A few weeks after that, someone came and walked around on our roof, taking measurements. They had to draw up plans, run these plans through the city for approval and take care of paperwork.
The actual installation took less than a day and required that our electricity be shut off for a short time in order to connect the system to our switch box.
Not yet up and running, we must wait for the city inspection as well as So Cal Edison to come by and deem us ready.
We can count at least five friends and our church who already harness the sun’s power (that we know of).
It’s hard to see the panels on top of the tall roof, but they are hard at work.
Here is a map from the Solar City website that shows the number of buildings in Claremont which are solar powered (by their company).
claremontography 
