A FEW FACTS AND A LOT OF OPINION
Copyright 2006-2026 - Geoff West
All Rights Reserved
Saturday, December 24, 2016
We Wish You All A Very Merry Christmas
VIEWING 2017 WITH TREPIDATION...
Here we are, on Christmas Eve, 2016, and the world is all a'flutter with the election of our new President. As if there was not enough uncertainty before his election, now we REALLY have something to think about.
...BUT NOT SO MUCH IN COSTA MESA
On the other hand, our local election gave many of us Costa Mesans a lot to be happy and thankful about. So, my faithful friends and readers - that may be redundant in some cases - tonight I post a little something that may actually get you in the old holiday spirit. We appreciate your loyalty and comments just as we have for the dozen years we've been posting this blog. Below we've provided for you some very special video clips with some of our favorite Christmas music. Please enjoy the songs, snuggle up to those you love and have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS.
THE SWEET MISS HARPER
Well, Santa is well on his way now, getting the boys all warmed up for that big trip Thursday night, so it's time to get into the real Christmas spirit. And, I've chosen to help you get there by publishing this magnificent image of our great-niece, Miss Harper Hartte Cunningham,age 8 months, taken by her mother Kayla as they began decorating her first Christmas Tree in their Omaha home. This is such a grand photo - taken with an Iphone - that I just had to share it with you all.
SOME SMILES FOR YOU ALL
Today I'll provide you with some of my very favorite video clips to help celebrate the holiday. We hope they will bring a smile to your face and a song to your heart. Enjoy...
BEST HOLIDAY WISHES TO YOU ALL
This year we here at A Bubbling Cauldron wish you all a very Merry Christmas. We hope your new year will be fantastic - full of hope and promise for better times.
THANKS TO OUR READERS
We want to thank each of you who read these entries for your support. Even though fewer of you comment on these pages we know you're out there reading because many of you send private messages on issues addressed here. We'll continue to try to provide you with timely, accurate information and our opinion on what that information means.
THANKS TO MY SPECIAL FRIENDS AT CITY HALL...
We want to thank the wonderful employees of the City of Costa Mesa for your continued loyalty and diligence supporting my city. Each of you work hard and do your individual jobs with great professionalism. We know how difficult these past few years have been for you all, and hope this year brings change. We hope it finally brings new contracts for the Public Safety organizations, who have been working without a new contract for nearly 550 days at this point.
...AND TO THOSE HARD WORKING CITIZEN VOLUNTEERS
I also want to express my gratitude to those residents to take the time to be involved in the important issues facing our city these days. We know how difficult it is for you to step up and speak up on tough issues knowing that you'll get ridiculed and rebuffed by some of our elected leaders. We know that many of you have been treated unfairly this year, but hope the November elections will shift the majority to bring some civility back to our city council.
ENJOY YOUR HOLIDAYS.... I'LL BE BACK!
So, to each of you, we hope your holiday is very special for you and that the new year brings all you hope for. We're turning down the flame under the old cauldron for a few days, but will be back right after the new year to continue to inform and provoke you.
BUMMED, BUT EAGER Well, I'm still bummed out about the latest Fairgrounds fiasco, but I'm trying to get myself back into the holiday spirit. Today my sweet and very patient wife and I will venture out into the chaos that is Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve for some last-minute purchases.
THANKS TO YOU ALL Before I do, though, I want to thank each of you who have taken the time to stop at A Bubbling Cauldron over these past many months - and years, in some cases. I appreciate you taking the time to read my views and to comment when you feel so moved - even Vicki. :-)
RELAX AND ENJOY I want to wish each of you a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year. So, to get us all back into the old spirit I leave you with a couple little video clips. The first one was just too clever to pass up. The second one got me into the mood to go look at an Ipad - you'll understand why.
NEW COUNCIL TO BE SEATED TUESDAY Well, the big moment is almost upon us. Next Tuesday the "new" City Council will convene at its regularly scheduled meeting and swear in the two members elected last month. Yep, current Mayor Pro Tem Wendy Leece and our old carpetbagging buddy, Jim Righeimer, will be sworn in and seated on the dais to begin their four year terms leading the city. They will join Eric Bever, Gary Monahan and, temporarily, Katrina Foley. The meeting will commence at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, December 7th - Pearl Harbor Day.
CLOSED SESSION AT 5 TO DISCUSS ROEDER'S REPLACEMENT(PLUS) Before that happens, though, at 5 p.m. the "old" four, minus Righeimer, will go into a closed session to discuss the replacement of Allan Roeder as City Manager. Nobody is talking about what kind of an effort they are mounting to find his replacement yet - perhaps we'll get some kind of an indication following the closed session Tuesday evening. (Two additional items were added to the Closed Session late Friday evening. One deals with the appeal of the Benito Acosta case and the other deals with pending litigation)
FOLEY FOR MAYOR? When the open session convenes and the new members are seated the first order of business will be selection of a mayor and mayor pro tem. This is going to be fun! In some venues, including Costa Mesa in years past, the person who was Mayor Pro Tem would be elected Mayor. I'm not sure that will happen this time around because Wendy Leece ruffled a few feathers during the final days of the campaign. How about this? Let's elect Katrina Foley as Mayor (for a week) then we can do it all over again when she resigns and a new council member is appointed to replace her? Sounds like fun to me!
The agenda for Tuesday's meeting, while not particularly long, does have some items sure to draw a crowd.
FINES FOR USING UN-PERMITTED TRASH HAULERS Buried deep in the Consent Calendar, at #11, is a resolution to charge a $1,000 administrative penalty and deferral of Certificates of Occupancy for builders who fail to use a solid waste hauler permitted to do business in the city. Seems like a curious move in a city trying to encourage development. RDA ANNUAL REPORT Also in the Consent Calendar, at #13, is the Redevelopment Agency's 2010 Annual Report, which apparently tells us it is still in the black. SEGERSTROM'S SENIOR HOUSING PLAN The first Public Hearing - which theoretically will happen at 7:00 - deals with the planned Senior Housing Development at Mesa Verde Center. The three segments of this plan are long, as are the staff reports, but it actually shouldn't take too long on the agenda. It's a good deal and will almost certainly pass. TEMPORARY BANNERS Then come items dealing with new rules for temporary banners and perimeter walls on multi-family residential projects.
GET THAT JUNK CAR OFF YOUR DRIVEWAY! The first Old Business item is the ordinance dealing with storage of inoperable vehicles on residential properties, so all you guys out there with project cars under a tarp with flat tires on your driveways are going to get "the word" Tuesday. DON'T FEED THOSE CRITTERS! Item 3 under Old Business is the ordinance that makes it "disorderly conduct" to fish or feed water fowl in city parks. This is aimed directly at the lake at TeWinkle Park. I suspect more than a few residents will show up for this one - particularly residents from Mesa Del Mar and College Park, who use this recreational facility frequently.
POOL CLOSURE? Item 4 deals with adjustments to the Administrative Services budget for our current fiscal year. The three sub-sections involve a decision on whether to close the Downtown Community Pool or not; elimination of the ROCKS Program at some schools and an amendment to CDBG-R funds for the Whittier School site ROCKS Program. BIKE TRAILS AND RECYCLING (AND BUDGET ITEMS) Way down at the end of the agenda, under New Business, there will be a discussion of the feasibility study for a bicycle trail connection between the Santa Ana River and the Upper Newport Bay and, finally, a zoning code amendment for Recycling and Collection Facilities. (A third item was added late Friday - a review of the FY 2009/2010 budget and Calendar Year Financial Status) HAPPY HOLIDAYS With that to chew on for the weekend, I leave you with my first of what may be manylittle video clips to get you into the holiday spending frame of mind. I present to you, one more time, Stan Freberg's GREEN CHRI$TMA$.
Today I'm going to present, one more time, those Christmas music clips that I've been providing to you over the past couple weeks. I hope they enhance your celebration of this wonderful day.
We here at A Bubbling Cauldron want to wish each of you a Very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year.
HE KNOWS IF YOU'VE BEEN BAD OR GOOD... Here we are, on the Sunday before Christmas with only a few shopping days left before the BIG GUY comes sliding down your chimney...
3/4 MILLION DOLLAR MAN? The next few days will likely be sparse local news days. Most of us are having a hard time digesting the news that The City of Costa Mesa and it's contract legal firm spent well over $500,000 on the Benito Acosta trials - and those numbers don't even count the December costs for the actual trial time! Yikes!! I wouldn't be surprised if the final number ends up being somewhere around $750,000! Man! That's a lot of cops and firefighters.
WHILE PONDERING... So, while I think about how the city is going to balance the budget for the remainder of this fiscal year and how in the world they plan to finance the purchase of the Fairgrounds if the sale cannot be stopped, I've decided to ramp-up my Christmas entertainment for you this week. MORE CHRISTMAS FUN... We begin today with a couple selections that will likely give you some pleasure. The first, Charles Schultz' character Linus in "What is Christmas All About?" The second is a current YouTube offering called "Christmas Light Hero" that has become an instant smash. As I type this more than 1.6 million hits have been recorded on this piece. I guarantee that you'll find it fascinating. Enjoy
FOR YOUR PLEASURE From time to time this year as we head for Christmas I'll post a little YouTube video clip for your viewing and listening pleasure. Perhaps it will help you as you scamper around, trying to finish that last minute shopping or while you're catching up on emails.
THE FIRST OF MANY TO COME This weekend I leave you with one of the most enduring classic Christmas songs in my personal memory - White Christmas, performed by Bing Crosby in the movie "Holiday Inn". Enjoy...
HOLIDAY THOUGHTS FROM "THE CAULDRON" As we here at A Bubbling Cauldronbank the fires for the holidays and turn the old pot down to simmer, we want to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a safe, prosperous and Happy New Year.
THINGS ARE BLEAK I know things are bleak this year. We have the highest unemployment in decades, banks are folding up all around us and the domestic automobile industry is teetering on the brink of collapse. Our state legislators seemed determined to further complicate things with their chronic mismanagement of our state finances. It seems that the only news we see these days is bad news, and it probably would be worse except the news media seems to be withering before our very eyes, including our very own Daily Pilot. A LITTLE NUDGE FOR YOU That being said, I'm sure you need a little nudge getting into the old Christmas Spirit, so I hope these photographs help with that process.
THE TREE We have a friend who, every other year, creates the most magnificent Christmas Tree I've every seen in a home. She only erects it every other year because it is so full of ornaments and lights that it takes most of a week to put it all together and another week or so to dismantle it and store it away. There are so many lights on the tree that it takes two electrical circuits - one in the garage and one in the house - to power them all. We can practically hear their electric meter spinning all the way to our house!
COUNT 'EM Look closely at these pictures. There are well over 3,000 ornaments on this ten foot tree! Every one of them is placed with great care for the greatest impact. You can spend hours looking closely at this tree and probably would still miss hundreds of ornaments. THANKS TO OUR FRIEND Thanks to our friend for her contribution to the spirit of the season. I hope seeing her handiwork helps bolster yours.
E. SEALS, ONE MORE TIME Last year at this time I wrote a blog entry about the Elephant Seal colony on the Central California coast, above San Luis Obispo, near Hearst Castle. I wanted to remind you again because it's the beginning of Prime Time with the critters again - pups are being born as I type this. Click HERE to read that entry again.
SURROUND YOURSELVES WITH LOVE This is the time of the year to surround yourselves with those you love. Enjoy their company, share your gifts, stuff yourselves with holiday goodies and take a few moments to remember the reason we celebrate this holiday in the first place.
WE'LL BE BACK... We'll be back next year - maybe sooner - with more observations to get your attention, provoke your thoughts and encourage your involvement in community affairs. Until then we leave you with these "touching" lyrics, extracted from the 1958 Stan Freberg holiday classic, GREEN CHRI$TMA$...
We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas And please buy our beer!
