Striding, sliding or idling?

For the local high schools, the 2005 football season will be about firming up, moving up, keeping up, staying up and getting back up.

The new coach at Los Altos will try to firm up a program that hasn’t made the playoffs in seven years and likely needs to win the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League El Camino Division to do so. Mountain View will move up to the challenging SCVAL De Anza Division after winning the not-so-challenging El Camino. St. Francis will try to keep up with the likes of Valley Christian in a West Catholic Athletic League that seems to get tougher every year. Homestead will fight to stay up in the De Anza on the heels of back-to-back 1-5 seasons there. Gunn, demoted after a last-place finish, will try to get back up to the De Anza next year by winning the El Camino.

Harry Kallshian, former Los Altos mayor, dies at 92

Longtime Los Altos resident Harry Kallshian, who served two years as mayor, died Aug. 21. Mr. Kallshian was 92.

The outspoken Mr. Kallshian, whose conservative views were long chronicled in his own Town Crier column, “Kallshian’s Korner,” served on the Los Altos City Council for 12 years.

LA Scout leader arrested on child molestation charges

A Los Altos resident who has been a Boy Scout leader in the community for more than 20 years was arrested Thursday morning at his home on charges of child molestation. Gregory Allen Wagner posted $200,000 bail Friday and will be arraigned Sept. 9.

Wagner has been charged on four counts: lewd act on a child under 14, continuous molestation of a child, distributing harmful material (pornography) to a child and lewd act on a child. The victim, who is in his 20s and no longer lives in the area, stepped forward three weeks ago, setting off the investigation, said Detective Deborah Johnson of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.

Three-story condominium approved for El Camino

The need for more housing outweighed resident opposition to a three-story condominium project planned for El Camino Real. The Los Altos City Council approved 4-1 the design and building permits needed for the project to move forward during a public meeting Aug. 23.

Councilman Ron Packard cast the sole dissenting vote, saying the building should be scaled down for the sake of surrounding homeowners in the predominantly one-story neighborhood behind the proposed condominium who called the building an intrusion. Approximately 580 residents petitioned against the 29-unit project, which includes three below-market-rate units.

Media off-limits to pool task force

The media is off-limits to individual members of the Rosita Pool task force. Members agreed during their first public meeting Friday to follow voluntary guidelines to keep pool discussions in their meetings and not in the media.

The eight-member citizen group that includes neighbors, school representatives, pool proponents and city officials is scheduled to meet Fridays for the next five weeks to review various options for the swim center planned at Rosita Park. The task force is scheduled to make a recommendation to the Los Altos City Council Sept. 27.

LA personnel committee finds no misconduct in condo project

There was no misconduct on the part of Los Altos staff or the planning commissioner with financial ties to a condominium project on El Camino Real, the personnel committee reported last week.

Commissioner Penny Lave followed city rules, the committee determined. Any failure to comply with California’s conflict-of-interest laws was “unintended and due to an unfamiliarity to new California law,” the committee concluded.

Local Red Cross chapters asked to deploy 125 volunteers a day to New Orleans indefinitely

Officials from the American Red Cross have asked its California and Pacific Island chapters to send 125 volunteers a day to the New Orleans area indefinitely to help with emergency relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

Trish Bubenik, executive director of the Palo Alto Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, said chapter directors received their orders Monday morning during a conference call. There are 47 chapters in California and the Pacific Islands that will have to contribute to the daily volunteer count.

Editorials

Pool issue: Proceed cautiously
After years of legal opposition, Superior Court Judge Les Nichols has cleared the way for at least one community pool at the end of Rosita Avenue.
Nichols said the city did its job by producing a valid environmental impact report for the plan, a report that concluded traffic and […]

Letters to the Editor

Public streets belong to the public
H. Roger Tang

The traffic commission has recently recommended creating a permit parking zone around Los Altos High School to address high school parking overflow in the neighborhood. The primary complaint is the excessive traffic and noise caused by high school “hoodlums” in the neighborhoods.
As a […]

Just how fast, er, slow, do snails move?

The retina of the human eye has 137 million cells - 100 for seeing black and white, and 7 million more to see colors.

• Snails move at 0.000362005 mph.

Engagement

Iris Colón and Paul Meyer

The bride-to-be is the daughter of Pedro Colón and Iris Ferrán of San Juan. She is a graduate of Academia Menonita High School and earned her bachelor’s degree and doctorate in medicine from the University of Puerto Rico. She is the associate chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University.

New restaurant donates $1,000 to LA libraries

Despite the busy task of opening a new restaurant, the owners of Aldo Los Altos took the opportunity to contribute to the community by donating $1,000 from their extensive pre-opening training activities to the Friends of the Los Altos Libraries and Community.

Chef-owners Alan Moll and Donato De Marchi presented a check to Gerry Dunkel, president of the Friends of the Libraries, in a Aug. 23 ceremony at the Los Altos main library.

MV festival scheduled for Sept. 10-11

The 34th Annual Mountain View Art and Wine Festival is scheduled 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 10 and 11 on Castro Street.

The downtown event will feature handcrafted work by 650 artists, two days of music, food from around the globe, a pinot noir tasting booth and a “Cervesa California” brew crafted for the festival by Tied House brewery.

Community Briefs

Federated club holds first meeting
The Federated Woman’s Club of Los Altos has scheduled it’s first meeting of the season at 11 a.m. Sept. 7 at Michael’s at Shoreline.
After lunch at noon, the program for the meeting beginning at 1 p.m. will feature a violin/piano duet performed by Tibor Horvath and Yelena […]

Hidden Villa to honor local activist Dolores Huerta of United Farm Workers

Dolores Huerta, the community activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez in 1962, will be honored at the 10th annual Josephine and Frank Duveneck Humanitarian Awards Dinner at Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills on Sept.10.

The annual event recognizes exemplary humanitarians at the national, regional and local level. Also being honored are Los Altos residents Nan and Chuck Geschke and Mountain View teacher Kristina Underdal.

English lessons pave the way to self-sufficiency

“Employers, please come inside,” reads a large sign at the entrance to the Mountain View Worker Center at Calvary Church.

Inside the center, men and women, paper and pencil in hand, fill rows of folding chairs. A volunteer English tutor scribbles on the whiteboard, drilling grammar, vocabulary and useful phrases. Attention wavers from the lesson when a potential employer enters the room, as many of these workers will be lucky to get work for more than one or two days in a given week.

First week of school makes the grade

Keith Moody, interim principal at Mountain View High School, sounded both excited about the first week of school and glad it was over last Friday. When classes resumed for the year Aug. 24, Moody stepped out from behind the scenes to fill in for Pat Hyland. Until the principal’s illness allows her to return, Moody will be front and center.

“This is the first time I’ve been the go-to person dealing with all the little situations that arise, and I miss having Pat here to mentor me,” he said. “Fortunately, Matt Neely and Donna Peltz are doing a tremendous job of running interference. Things are running pretty smoothly.”

Noteworthies

Danielle LeFevre, daughter of Val Carpenter and Tom LeFevre of Los Altos, was named to the dean’s list for the spring semester at Scripps College.

Ashley Brooke Trepanier Hannebrink, now a junior at Dartmouth College, received the Rufus Choate Scholar award for the academic year 2004-2005. She is the daughter of David and Renee Hannebrink of Los Altos Hills.

Preschool for All to operate in Mtn. View next fall

Forty preschoolers in Mountain View’s Castro and Theuerkauf elementary school neighborhoods will have access to Preschool for All services in September 2006, if all goes according to plan.

They will attend three hours of school five days a week in facilities enhanced to meet the program’s standards.

Schools Briefs

Los Altos Art Docents will train volunteers
The Los Altos Art Docents are recruiting volunteers to assist in giving in-class art lessons to Los Altos School District students. Anyone who loves art and children is invited to an informational coffee scheduled for 10-11:30 a. m. today in the Dr. Marge Gratiot Board […]

Local teen lunches with Sen. Feinstein

The heat was almost unbearable Aug. 22 as we stood in the Hyatt San Jose hotel’s unshaded parking lot. As I swung open the shiny glass door to the lobby, my father and I were welcomed with cool darkness.

I chuckled to myself in disbelief. I had never seen so many people in business suits. We were there to listen to Sen. Dianne Feinstein give a report from Washington. I could not wait to see her.

Loyola celebrates rebirth of secret garden

The Loyola Elementary School community dedicated its secret garden at a back-to-school picnic last week.

Karen Jones coordinated the picnic and the garden dedication.

Starr earns her stars

When your name is Starr and you live in the Lone Star State, you’re bound to draw attention. Add the title of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, and you’re practically a celebrity in Texas.

That’s the situation Los Altos native Starr Spangler finds herself in after making the world-famous cheerleading squad last month. Routinely asked, “Is that your real name?” during her freshman year at Texas Christian University, Spangler can expect a new line of questioning as a sophomore, like “Hey, aren’t you a cheerleader for the Cowboys?”

Greenspan’s housing remarks drive stock market downward

The stock indexes turned in another down week as Alan Greenspan’s housing comments drove stocks down on Friday.

Substantial buying programs tried to rally the market on Friday but were unsuccessful. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.5 percent for the week while the Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq were lower by 1.2 and 0.7 percent respectively.

Young, hip consignment boutique opens

A sandwich board and a dress model on the State Street sidewalk announced a business newcomer this summer: an inexpensive boutique for fashion-conscious women, from petite to plus sizes. Three young women entrepreneurs decided to fill a niche in Los Altos, opening the kind of store they themselves would want to shop in.

Sisters Kellee and Kara Breaux and their friend Jeanette Pedroni, all in their 20s, love fashion and wanted to start a business together. When they stumbled across a perfect rental space on Craigslist dot-org this spring, their dream became a business overnight.

Unforgettable, that’s what you’ll be

Ask any of us: We’ve been thinking about our weddings since we were little pigtailed girls, creating mock romances between our Barbies and Kens in the sandbox. And why shouldn’t we? It’s our big day, the day we seal the most somber and important decision of our lives with the one we love.

It is also the only chance we women ever get to steal all the attention, have everybody’s eyes on us, be selfish, demanding, picky - and feel perfectly fine about it. Yes, some women get two or more wedding days, but let’s for a second pretend that marriage is still a sacred bond. Even if it’s not our first marriage, we always hope it’s our last.

Preparing body - and mind - for wedding day

Every detail counts when planning a wedding - from the dress and the flowers right down to your smile. Taking advantage of expert advice whenever possible can help ease the pressure of preparation.

Carley Roney, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Knot (www.theknot.com) has been hailed by Vogue magazine as “cyberland’s Martha Stewart” and is a frequent guest on NBC’s “Today Show.” Here are her tips for getting ready:

Well-traveled wedding dress shows the stamina of glamour

During the Depression my mom was working for Livingston Brothers (then one of the best stores in San Francisco) when they had a big sale on wedding dresses. One of them was fabulous.

The cut of the dress was simple and good; the fabric was sensuous, bias-cut satin. Bias-cut means the material was cut on a 45-degree angle to the length of the cloth, giving a stretchiness to the garment. The dress doesn’t draw attention to itself, but makes the wearer look good.

Learn financial skills now to ensure bright future

As the old saying goes, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” Make a resolution to stop acting foolishly with your finances and let go of old misconceptions.

Ginita Wall, adviser to the GE Center for Financial Learning, has compiled this list of some foolish financial notions that can be dispelled through financial education.

Datebook

Datebook items are run on a space-available basis for entertainment, non-profit events, low-cost classes and groups of wide interest in our circulation area. The deadline is noon, Tuesday, for the next week’s paper. Notices must be typed and include a contact name and phone number. Items may be submitted via e-mail (peteb@latc.com); fax (948-6647) or post (138 Main St., Los Altos, CA 94022).

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