‘Getting to know you’ is Groves’ first task

New Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District Superintendent Barry Groves looks forward to following in predecessor Rich Fischer’s footsteps.

Since the board of trustees announced his hiring last month, Groves has been busy learning the ropes before his tenure officially begins July 1. He has toured district campuses, met with staff, teachers, students and board members, attended PTA meetings, worked with the MVLA Foundation, acquainted himself with the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce and participated in the Gay/Straight Alliance parade.

LAH council goes to county with redistricting bid

The Los Altos Hills City Council unanimously voted Thursday to petition the Santa Clara County Board of Education to create a separate K-8 school district that could continue to feed into the Palo Alto Unified and the Mountain View-Los Altos Union high school districts.

The resolution submitted to the County Commission of School District Organization seeks to maintain current high school boundaries for the proposed Los Altos Hills elementary school district. Such a plan would be a departure from current regulations, which channel students from an elementary school district into only one high school district.

Los Altos child molester sent to prison

A painful and emotionally agonizing chapter in David Grewal’s life came to an end last Friday as Los Altos resident and former Boy Scout leader Gregory Allen Wagner, 43, received the maximum prison sentence - 23 years and four months - for sexually molesting three Boy Scouts under his care and supervision between 1987 and 1992.

After hearing compelling statements from Grewal, one of Wagner’s victims, and Grewal’s parents and wife, Superior Court Judge Diane Northway addressed the court.

El Camino Hospital celebrates second groundbreaking

After a year’s delay due to a lawsuit that tied up voter-approved bond-measure funds, El Camino Hospital in Mountain View celebrated its second groundbreaking in 48 years Thursday, this time for a new facility that will incorporate the latest medical technologies while fulfilling the state’s seismic requirements.

“I have one thing to say first - yes!” said Dr. Edward Bough, hospital district board president, raising both arms in triumph to applause from hospital supporters.

News Briefs

Faulty wiring cited in Higgins blaze
A county fire inspector and independent insurance investigator both suspect the blaze that destroyed 90 percent of a Higgins Avenue home likely stemmed from faulty electrical wiring and may have sparked in the attic.
Although arson is unlikely, said owner Barrett McGrath, it has not been absolutely ruled […]

Griffin House demolition ruled unlawful, college district goes back to drawing board

The Griffin House, a 103-year-old Craftsman-style home set on the Foothill College campus, is spared from demolition for the time being, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge ruled June 5.

Judge Leslie Nichols ruled in favor of Friends of Griffin House - a major victory for the local group that filed the public-interest lawsuit against the Foothill-De Anza Community College District August.

Colleges bond finds favor with voters

Supporters of Foothill and De Anza colleges were all smiles last week in the wake of Measure C’s comfortable passage in the June 6 primary election.

Los Altos resident Laura Casas Frier, a board member with the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, said she had a good feeling that the $490.8 million facilities bond measure would pass.

County’s bid for half-cent sale tax hike falls hard

Measure A, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors’ proposed half-cent sales-tax hike, was solidly defeated in the June 6 election, much to the chagrin of supporters such as Liz Kniss, the District 5 supervisor representing Los Altos, and Carl Guardino, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

“Yes, we are disappointed with the results, as it will lead to devastating losses and much divisiveness as our valley tries to address important health-care and transportation issues,” issues targeted under Measure A, Guardino said. “Folks will now be fighting over a very small pie.”

Letters to the Editor

Spend parade funds to rehab orchard
It is outrageous for the Los Altos City Council to spend $8,000 of taxpayers’ monies for a parade to promote a homosexual agenda. That money is better spent sprucing up downtown or tending to the apricot orchard on San Antonio Road. Looking abandoned and desolate, the […]

Editorial

What a week: Highlights, milestones
What a week it’s been, filled with noteworthy events that have marked milestones, comings and goings. Allow us to offer a few favorable - and unfavorable - takes on our week in review:
• Thumbs up: To voters in the Foothill-De Anza Community College District for passage […]

Notes from a remodel

At long last, our family has finally moved back into the home we have owned for 22 years. Whew! What a project this has been. Here are some notes I wrote along the way.

Pre-remodel: Time to purge. In the master bathroom, I’m tossing old prescription drugs, expired cold medications and duplicate bottles of lotion. Gone are a dozen useless hair-styling products and an unopened pregnancy test with an expiration date of 1994. After two hours, I had bagged 25 pounds of stuff to throw away. I know this because I actually weighed it. Twenty-five pounds gone from our lives and hundreds more to go.

Walter Meyerhof, Stanford professor, gentleman and scholar, dies at 84

Walter E. Meyerhof, Stanford professor emeritus of physics, died May 27 in a Los Altos nursing home of complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 84.

Dr. Meyerhof was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society.

Obituary Notices

BILLY C. SPENCER
August 28, 1921 - June 1, 2006
Dad’s Story
Born and raised in a small town in Oklahoma, Bill liked to kid that Eldorado was the “hub of the world - because everything went around it”. But to him, Eldorado was the universe for he was blessed with a […]

Los Altos Girl Scouts receive Gold Awards

Seven members of Los Altos-based Girl Scout Troop 321 received Gold Awards at a banquet held in their honor at the Garden House in Shoup Park last month.

The Gold Award, the highest achievement in Girl Scouting, is earned by only about 3,500 young women annually in the United States. To earn the Gold Award, a high school student must earn four Interest Project patches, the Career Exploration pin, the Senior Girl Scout Leadership Award and the Senior Girl Scout Challenge, then plan and implement a Girl Scout Gold Award project, approved by the Girl Scouts of Santa Clara County Council, that requires at least 50 hours of work.

Chaves receives honor for nutrition work

San Jose State University’s Center for Service-Learning has honored Los Altos resident Sally Chaves for her work with overweight children, most of whom are Hispanic.

Chaves received a Provost’s Award for Excellence in Service-Learning for her work at the Pediatric Lifestyle Clinic, a satellite clinic of Valley Medical Center, located in East San Jose. The clinic treats overweight children at significant risk for type-2 diabetes.

Local sale, fundraiser to help Kashmiris

Kashmiri carpets, papier- mâché, jewelry and pashmina will be for sale Saturday and Sunday at the Z Castle Gallery, 127 First St., Los Altos, to raise money for health care, housing and education in the Kashmir Valley of India.

Sponsored by the Sozni Valley Foundation, the 5-8 p.m. event aims to keep the traditional arts of Kashmir viable as well as to provide help to the thousands of Kashmiris forced into refugee camps by political unrest.

Los Altos Hills reception highlights Global Funds for Women, Children

Los Altos Hills residents Susan and Tom Harrington hosted a reception last month for the Global Funds for Women and Children, gathering donors, volunteers and those new to the non-profits. Terri Unger co-hosted the event, a full house that brought together 70 supporters of both groups for wine, snacks and education.

Maya Ajmera, who works with the Global Children’s Fund, told compelling stories of a young Muslim man who founded a floating school for impoverished girls living along the waterways of Bangladesh and a group of teachers who convened an elementary school for transient children on India’s railway platforms. Ajmera, founder of the fund, joined Kavita Ramdas, president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, to describe their work.

Los Altos-supported family shelter offers families a fresh start

The San Jose Family Shelter houses parents and children in transition and surrounds them with support. Occupying a converted warehouse in industrial East San Jose, hotel-like rooms line two high-roofed, sunny galleries that are fronted by a big communal dining hall and kitchen.

Many factors bring families to the shelter, including failed relationships, unemployment, abuse and sky-high housing costs. Clients are drug-tested when they come to the shelter - using illegal substances precludes entry. When new residents arrive, they are greeted with a fully furnished private family bedroom stocked with toiletries, books, stuffed animals and bedding to use at the shelter, which they are then able to take when they establish a permanent home. Pillows are always on the shelter’s donation wish list.

E-mail to update readers on selections

A new program at the Los Altos library will allow patrons to keep up to date on the most recent publications in subjects of special interest to them.

People who sign up for the service will receive an e-mail every few weeks listing as many as 15 titles. A link in the e-mail will connect to the library catalog, where readers can place a hold or request on titles that interest them.

Arts & Wine Festival caters to kids and families

Robin Blinde, owner of KidsArt, a fine-arts drawing and painting program at Loyola Corners, is one of the featured artists at this year’s Arts & Wine Festival, set for July 8 and 9 in downtown Los Altos. This is her first year on the Arts & Wine Festival planning committee.

KidsArt will host an art show, featuring students’ handiwork. Blinde has also created the artwork for the 2006 Arts & Wine Festival poster and will have a craft booth in the festival’s Kidzone, which will showcase the art techniques taught in the KidsArt classroom, where children ages 4 and up can draw pictures, using shapes to build them up. “I think that a large part of a festival’s success is whether the children have a place to participate as well,” Blinde said.

Open space district seeks input

Town Crier Report

The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District is seeking public input by Friday on its amended draft Good Neighbor Policy, which was developed with neighbors and neighborhood groups and includes comments collected at four public workshops.

School’s out for MVLA Superintendent Fischer

A former student from the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District walked into Superintendent Rich Fischer’s office last week and handed him a certificate of appreciation along with a picture of himself in his San Jose State University graduation garb.

As Fischer prepares to leave the district he has served for nine years, he said it was just one token of affection he has collected throughout his career. His office is decorated with mementos and pictures that celebrate his role in the community and in the lives of his students.

Schools Briefs

Newsweek ranks MV-LA high schools
Newsweek magazine ranked Los Altos and Mountain View high schools among the top schools in the nation, according to a study published in May.
Mountain View High School ranked 258 and Los Altos High School ranked 299 out of 1,200 public schools around the nation.
Brigitte Sarraf, associate superintendent […]

Blach dedicates library and rose garden in honor of Harris

The Blach Junior High School community offered a heartfelt tribute to the life of Principal Arthur Harris during a June 6 ceremony dedicating the school’s library and rose garden in his name. Harris, loved for his wry humor, intellect and care for his students and faculty, died April 27 after battling cancer.

The school’s quad was filled with student musicians, reflecting Harris’ love of music, including a Blach alumni orchestra whose members volunteered to play in memory of their beloved principal.

Young Sudoku champ boxes out competition

Los Altos gained a champion last week when Blach eighth-grader Juliana Walton outsmarted a field of adult competitors in the San Francisco Exploratorium’s Sudoku Tournament. Winning the event landed Juliana an Exploratorium family membership and other swag, but equally exciting was besting the San Francisco Chronicle’s scrabble puzzler.

“To be honest, I really didn’t think I’d make it that far,” Juliana said. She drowned out the pressure of competition by singing songs in her head as she worked through the puzzles, including some very appropriate material from the Disney movie “Mulan II” (”Like an oak/You must stand firm…Think fast/Unafraid!”).

MVHS service project is music to Castro students’ ears

The sound of music wafts through the multipurpose room of Mariano Castro Elementary School in Mountain View as fifth-grade musicians of the Homework Club prepare to show off skills learned from their high school mentors.

Over the past three years on Friday afternoons, Mountain View High School students, members of the Apollo Club, have visited Castro school to provide after-school music lessons to 22 of the school’s fifth-graders. For one hour a week, the classrooms in the back of the school that house the Castro School Homework Club are turned into a rehearsal hall replete with the sounds of instruments and lively conversations between teens and their younger protégés.

Community College Briefs

Host families needed
Families are needed to host students from China going to De Anza College (by bus) for two weeks this summer. The host dates are July 22 through August 3 and reimbursement is $600 for room and board. For more information, call Kristi Clarke at 949-3091 or e-mail k.clarke@mindspring.com.
Foothill commencement set […]

MVHS orchestra ships out to entertain

The Mountain View High School String Orchestra took to the high seas, as 50 students performed in a shipboard concert during a cruise to Victoria, British Columbia, from San Francisco May 10-13.

“It was too much fun,” said violin player Kevin Nee, “but too much of a good thing can be a great thing.”

On a ‘Mission’

When Mission Rugby endured a winless season four years ago, team members couldn’t possibly have imagined this. But there they were on June 2, celebrating a national championship.

The men’s club team, with players from Los Altos and Mountain View, claimed the USA Rugby Division III crown by beating the Boston Irish Wolfhounds 32-22 that afternoon in San Diego.

SFHS golfer Bramlett has off day at state final

It seems every golfer has had one of those days. A round when drives intended to go left veer right and putts miss the hole as if there were an invisible lid on it.

Unfortunately for Joseph Bramlett, he had such a day at the California Interscholastic Federation State High School Boys Golf Championships.

St. Francis’ Sitler caps prep career by winning 3,200 at Golden West

Runner Ben Sitler capped his high school athletic career Sunday, and it couldn’t have ended any better for the Los Altos resident.

Sitler won the 3,200-meter run at the 47th annual Golden West Invitational in Folsom. The St. Francis High senior finished in 9 minutes, 7.44 seconds - nearly three seconds ahead of runner-up Colton Tully-Doyle of Rancho Bernardo.

Most professions speak jabberwocky - you have to decode it

The professional investment community is like other fields that have a set of unique buzzwords - it has a language all its own. The medical profession is a classic example. People struggle to understand it to advocate for a sick relative. Did you ever listen to air traffic controllers? Don’t! Most of their communications, you wouldn’t comprehend.

On Wall Street, trader slang can be quite colorful. “Don’t try to catch a falling knife.” Well, duh! But what does it mean? It means when a stock is falling or correcting, don’t try to pick the bottom and buy on the way down. Wait a while until things settle down. For example, if a stock goes from $20 to $14, give it some time because maybe it will go to $9.

Jane Bigelow retires from realty but not from community

Longtime Los Altos resident and realtor Jane Bigelow may be closing the chapter on one part of her life, but there’s little doubt she’ll continue to contribute to the community with her usual zest and thoughtfulness.

Louise Spangler, owner of Uncommon Threads on State Street, presented Bigelow with the Walter and Marie Singer Award last June. The Los Altos Chamber of Commerce award honors a “business leader in the community whose community service and leadership demonstrate the spirit of the community.”

Barry Bonds, Carly Fiorina and Al Gore: What do they have in common?

Barry Bonds, Carly Fiorina and Al Gore had an interpersonal flaw. They did not seem to be approachable. Face to face, they may have been completely charming, enjoyed for their intimate conversation and lighthearted humor. In the press, the world that “everybody” sees, they appeared cold and distant, people who would be difficult to meet in an elevator. The consequences of appearing aloof are dangerous. These three discovered this.

When the chips were down for Barry about the drug scandal, he hardly had a friend in the press. They were still stinging from the brush-offs he had been handing them for nearly 20 years. He had not made close friends with those who might support him in the press. Until the last year or so, his teammates had also found him unapproachable. Rarely did he joke with the other players, meet, greet, eat or ride with them. He appeared to have no special buddy on the team. Most of the fans cheered when he hit 715, but there was not the rush-to-love syndrome that Mark McGwire inspired over similar feats. I am only referring to appearances - not necessarily the truth. Barry seemed apart and unwilling to join others.

Le Boulanger

Le Boulanger, the bakery café with the French name started by an Italian family, is celebrating 25 years in business this year. Begun in Los Altos in August 1981, the business now boasts 17 area stores and a thriving wholesale business.

Le Boulanger (pronounced “luh boo-lahn-zhay”) is French for “the baker.” When Los Altos native Roger Brunello started Le Boulanger in the Main Street spot now occupied by Posh Bagel, French pastries and bread were experiencing a surge of popularity in America - hence the French name. About a month after Roger started Le Boulanger, his brother Dan came back from his honeymoon and joined the business.

Post Ranch Inn shines even during a storm

It is not every day one has the opportunity to lunch at Big Sur’s Post Ranch Inn and participate in a blind tasting of some of the best wines the Northern Rhone has to offer. We were in the midst of one of April’s many storms, and Highway 1 is sometimes daunting even when the sun is shining. We decided to go for it and make the drive. The Post Ranch Inn is 30 miles south of Carmel. It rained and blew all the way, but the road was passable.

If you have never been to the Post Ranch Inn, and I had not, it is a real treat. The rooms even include a tree house. This is a unique and wonderful place, with rooms and small houses built in an ecologically organic style on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The room rates reflect this one-of-a-kind experience, with a range of $525-$2,400.

Maddalena’s marks 30th anniversary

The restaurant bearing Fred Maddalena’s name in Palo Alto will celebrate 30 years in business this month. Maddalena is somewhat north of 75, and the restaurant business is renowned for sapping blood in addition to sweat and tears from even the most successful of its purveyors.

But ask Maddalena to sum it all up, and, ever the continental gentleman, he said: “It’s been a challenge, this business - not a chore.”

Franklin captured as scientist and inventor

Years before his famed experiment with a kite, Benjamin Franklin nearly killed himself trying to electrocute a turkey for Thanksgiving. Franklin didn’t always have things right - a point at the center of Philip Dray’s new biography of the Philadelphia electrician, “Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America” (Random House Paperbacks, 2005).

Dray’s portrait of Franklin belies its own title: Franklin’s inventions were never swift acts of paradigmatic theft, but usually succeeded only after a series of false starts and revised experiments.

Books

Kepler’s showcases local authors
Kepler’s Authors Showcase turns toward summer relaxation and highlights mystery, thrillers, filmography, travel and local authors in June. At Kepler’s this week:
Sheerly Avni: ‘Cinema By the Bay’
Sheerly Avni will discuss her book, “Cinema By the Bay,” 7:30 p.m. June 23. Her book, about Northern California film directors, profiles […]

Into the Land of Fire

This is the second of two articles describing Casey’s trip to Tierra del Fuego. Part one appeared in the June 7 issue of the Town Crier.

If I had been anticipating rocky chasms, shipwrecks, spindrift or tidal waves, then I was to be sorely disappointed: the infamous Strait of Magellan had about as much turbulence as a bathtub. In the days before the Panama Canal offered a shortcut to travelers, sailors seeking California by ship had two options: either (a) round the windy spews of Cape Horn and risk being blown into the open sea by squall or (b) brave the narrow - and I had thought quite treacherous - reaches of the strait. Apparently, it would be option (b) for me today.

Travel Briefs

Open Space adventures
The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District hosts free guided hikes in local open space preserves throughout the year. For most activities no reservations are required.
Today
Scenic Aerobic Hike, 10 a.m. Visit a variety of district preserves on these 4- to 5-mile, moderately paced aerobic outings. Meet at the Rancho San […]

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).

THEATER