Happy New Year: 2017!

Hope this new year is better than the last One. There is always hope.

For me, here in Northern California rain has finally come back this year so we are less worried than the last 5 or 10 years at least so far.

I thought it strange that the Rose parade wasn't today. I think because it started in very traditional Pasadena where the rich lived around the turn of the century in Los Angeles 1900 and after, they couldn't have the Rose Parade on a Sunday. So, likely these rules still apply today.

I grew up from age 8 to 21 in Glendale next door to Pasadena and my 2nd wife was from Altadena which is right next to Pasadena too.

When I was 12 in 1960 my cousin played the Glockenspiel in the parade for the Glendale High Dynamiters which was our team there at Glendale High School. I myself attended there from 1963 until 1965 when I went in the fall of my Senior Year to a private school in Santa Fe, New Mexico from fall until May 1966 when I graduated there in Santa Fe.

I got to go to the parade once then in 1960. We went at about 4 am to get a good seat and froze waiting for the parade. The people in the parade often were shivering at 4 am as they assembled for the parade to start. But, many wore jackets especially the girls scantily clad in costumes for the parade. At the last moment they threw off their jackets to march in the parade with instruments, floats, and batons etc. It was an amazing experience to watch the whole parade in person for me even though we suffered along with everyone else from the early morning cold. It felt incredibly good when the sun came out and we could thaw our our hands and feet and faces.

Rose Parade 1960.

My cousin who marched in the parade playing the Glockenspiel went to college at USC the next fall while I was still in Woodrow Wilson Junior High in Glendale then.