Luis J. Rodriguez, author of the memoir “Always Running,” spoke to students Friday at Pomona’s Garey High. I was there to hear one of L.A.’s most revered voices. He’s the subject of my Sunday column.
Category Archives: Around Pomona
Column: ‘Bite-Sized’ LA County Fair has many small pleasures
It’s not the real LA County Fair but the miniature, “fun size” version, and it’s going on weekends through Sept. 26. I attended last Sunday, during opening weekend, so that I could bring you a column for Week 2 (of 3), and you’ll find it here. If you go, or if you’ve been, what did you think?
A tribute to Magu
A mural for Gilbert “Magu” Lujan was dedicated Aug. 14, with comments from the artists, Lujan’s family and others during a ceremony near the sprawling piece in the 200 block of South Main Street in downtown Pomona. I wrote a column in June about the piece in progress and attended the dedication.
Lujan, who died in 2011, lived a few blocks away from the mural site from 1999 to 2007 and was an active part of the Arts Colony. Below, muralists Wayne Healy, left, and David Botello said during the dedication that they felt their old friend’s spirit present as they worked. One of Lujan’s sons said the mural will help keep his memory alive.
It’s worth checking out. With the decorated frame, the mural is 52 feet by 17 feet, so there’s a lot to absorb.
Column: In Pomona, a magical mural for Magu
A mural in tribute to a famed artist, Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, is going up in the Pomona Arts Colony, where the late painter once lived, and it’s really something. I write about it, and him, in my Sunday column. You might remember him from my “Pomona A to Z” series of columns and book; he’s the letter M.
Column: With Tuesday reopening, this library is back in circulation
On Tuesday, the Pomona Public Library will open for the first time in 15 months, and there will be some positive changes — not that the library wasn’t already lovable. I update you in Sunday’s column.
Column: Shrinking church sells its property for housing
In Pomona, I visit Church of the Brethren, whose aging and shrinking congregation has sold its longtime home to a developer and plans to leave next month. Their history and fond farewell is my Sunday column.
Column: Not even Clara Voyant could have foreseen this connection
A reader’s fond email about ’50s-’60s KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field was not only funny, in recounting the various on-air characters Field invented, it led me to a surprising find connected to two recent columns. Also: more about Biddy Mason and a personal recollection about Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s visit to Claremont, all in Sunday’s column.
Column: High school students met a ‘shy’ Ritchie Valens
I follow up my recent Ritchie Valens column with, well, another Ritchie Valens column, this one largely based on another find: A Pomona High student’s meeting with Valens a week before his Pomona concert. That and a few other stray comments, plus a brIEfly item out of Upland, make up Sunday’s column.
Column: Valens concert in Pomona was among his last
I return to the subject of Ritchie Valens on the anniversary of his death — Feb. 3, 1959 — after a useful fact dropped into my lap: the heretofore-unknown date of his concert at Pomona’s Rainbow Gardens…which turned out to be less than a month before his death. I fill in that historical gap in Wednesday’s column.
Column: These Obama fans have high hopes for Biden, Harris
Joe and Helen Draper of J & J’s Fish & BBQ in Pomona have always had posters of Barack Obama and his family, MLK and other Black figures in their restaurant. Now they’ve added Kamala Harris images. I talk to the couple, both 75, about their lives and their hopes for the Biden-Harris administration in Sunday’s column.