Congratulations to the selfless volunteers who make the downtown Los Altos Festival of Lights Parade happen every year. This year’s wonderful event benefited from great weather, with performers and spectators alike clearly enjoying themselves.

The parade is arguably the most popular community event of the year, so there’s competition for choice viewing spots. For years, people have reserved spaces many hours in advance, some even the day before the parade. They’ve done so by setting out blankets and chairs, and marking spaces on the sidewalk with tape or chalk.

Just finished with Thanksgiving, just starting to get my mind set for upcoming Christmas, so it’s no wonder I’ve been mindful of traditions.

Inaccurate coverage doomed Measure C

I was very surprised to see the Los Altos Town Crier call the race for the citizens’ initiative Measure C before the Registrar of Voters office had even counted half the ballots. Making that call weeks before all the votes were in seemed contrary to the best journalistic practices. The less-than-balanced front-page story seemed to serve the paper’s editorial position opposing Measure C.

The Nov. 14 front-page article was full of errors. Measure C would not have required every land-use change to go before voters. In fact, voter approval would only have been required if the city planned to change access on city-owned land from public use to private.

Waymo should provide accident data

Earlier this month, the California Department of Motor Vehicles approved testing of self-driving cars by Waymo without safety drivers. Waymo would like to begin providing driverless transportation services in a handful of towns, including Los Altos.

There is only one question that matters with respect to whether self-driving cars are safe enough to be on our roads without safety drivers: How often would there have been an accident if the safety driver had not taken control of the vehicle?

A young couple and their son, Mark, 2 – that’s us – arrived in the United States in 1965. My husband, Sam, a brilliant scientist, was invited to work after his post-doctoral time at Birmingham University in England, at the world-renowned Bell Labs in Murray Hills, N.J. An impossible dream came true for Sam, as he loved as a young engineer working at this iconic research institution, a post desired by all geniuses in those years.

For her wedding last month, my daughter wanted both my husband and me to walk her down the aisle, but the moment was staged so that she actually walked to us first before we escorted her down.

Awaiting her arrival at the bottom of a flight of stairs, I got verklempt. To be honest, that surprised me a little because I didn’t have particular expectations about how it would feel to see my child get married, and in fact never gave it much thought.