One of the local blogs I read is produced by a woman who calls herself the Goddess of Pomona.

She’s not especially political, but her Pomona-centric posts are easy reading and illuminating. Her themes include Lincoln Park loiterers, gardening, children’s programs at the library, her husband’s fight against mice in their house, the La Brea Bakery bread situation at Stater Bros. and her young son, whom she calls Mr. Big. She sometimes notices the same things around town that I notice, and sometimes notices things that pass me by.

We’ve exchanged a few friendly notes but haven’t met, and I don’t know anything about her other than her writing.

Toward the end of Monday’s Pomona council meeting, the man next to me got my attention on behalf of the woman seated at the far end of the row. She met my gaze and swept her arm regally before her. I looked blankly. She swept her arm again. Suddenly things were clear.

It was the Goddess!

She was in jeans, not a toga, and she carried a purse and a bottle of water, not a basket of fruit. We chatted after the meeting. She wouldn’t give her name, even for conversation purposes, but that’s all right. I asked where Mr. Big was. Checking the clock, she said he was probably in bed.

Just think, a Goddess with a blog. If you live in Pomona, check it out sometime.

Today’s entry could be called “The Day Ike Turner Almost Played Pomona.” It happened like this.

In March 2004, Turner was booked to play the Yesteryears nightclub in downtown Pomona. Seeing his name on a poster in the club window was a real sight. I didn’t go, I think because none of my friends could be persuaded to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer given how he’d treated Tina, even if he was also responsible for “Rocket 88,” often called the first rock and roll record.

In a column later in the year, I mentioned Turner as being one of the few Hall of Famers to have played Pomona. A musician in one of that evening’s warmup acts then informed me Turner was a no-show.

“He let ’em know a few days ahead of time he wouldn’t be there and that he’d cashed the check,” the musician told me.

I thought I’d better confirm the item before running with it, so I called the club owner. He was reluctant to say anything negative about Turner, noting correctly that most of the early blues and rock musicians were treated shabbily by record companies and promoters and cheated out of their earnings.

At this point I realized I wouldn’t get an anecdote, a funny comment or, at this rate, even confirmation. So, thinking fast, I came up with an approach I’m still rather proud of.

“How about this,” I said. “If I write in the newspaper that Ike Turner was paid in advance and didn’t show up, would I be wrong?”

No, you wouldn’t, he admitted.

Whew. That settled, I went with the Ike Turner story. Turner, as you may have heard, died Wednesday at age 76. Wherever his troubled spirit is supposed to go, may it show up.