Behind the Front Page
By Maureen Robertson
CLEAN UNDERWEAR—During an otherwise serious school board meeting last Thursday evening, the importance of wearing clean underwear came up several times. It seems it was on board member Dan Lopez’s list of Top 10 Ideas for Success at Ramona High School and Beyond during freshman orientation the first day of school. In thanking Lopez for being the guest speaker during the Fresh Start program, Shay Alwan, Ramona High’s student representative on the school board, said, “some of his most notable ideas were always wear clean underwear, stay away from senior boys, give back and be generous, challenge yourself and advocate for yourself.”
It wasn’t until the end of the meeting that Lopez explained that, on his first day as a freshman at Julian High School, he was giving a campaign speech for the class council election at a schoolwide pep rally “and I had a senior pants me during my speech. Times were different. The bullying and sexual harassment laws were not quite the same as they are now,...but my point was it was a good thing I was wearing clean underwear that day.”
TEEN CENTER VOLUNTEERS—Because of job changes, Arriba Teen Center has lost two of its volunteers. The center at 1710 Montecito Road is a safe place for teens to hang out after school and enjoy an amazing range of choices and opportunities. The center is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 to 6 p.m., but the goal is to have it open Mondays through Fridays. At least two adult volunteers are needed each day so the main room can be open as well as the new exercise room. Check the center’s home page at www.arribaramona.org/ for a sampling of what’s offered there. Middle school and high school students are welcome at the center when it’s open. Adults looking for a way to give back to the community are invited to call the center at 760-788-6433 or stop by to see the positive things happening there.
FIREBALL IN THE SKY—Something in the sky caught the attention of young soccer players practicing on the soccer fields in Ramona Community Park last Wednesday evening.
Their “oh, look” sent all eyes upward, with one woman thinking it may be a small plane on fire.
“It was definitely a big glow up there, shooting by,” said Ramona resident Kim Lasley, who was at the fields. “...Once it went past the hill, we couldn’t see it.”
The director of Griffith Park Observatory said that what was seen over the skies of Southern California and Arizona was probably “a piece of interplanetary debris” that “passed through the earth’s atmosphere and burned up,” reported City News Service (CNS).
The public “saw something that was at a very high altitude, just a piece of rock or maybe a grain of sand as it hit the atmosphere,’’ Dr. Ed Krupp, observatory director, said. What people are really seeing is superheated air... you’re seeing the luminous trail of its passing.’’
Reports from Chatsworth to Palm Springs and Phoenix began about 7:30 p.m., according to an official at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Los Angeles operations office.
CNS reported that Curt Kaplan of the National Weather Service said there were plenty of reports of lights going from west to east.
To Krupp, “all the evidence suggests it was small and burned up at a high altitude. This kind of thing happens about once a year or once every few years. Few people see them because most of the earth is ocean and uninhabited and then it gets forgotten until it happens again.’’
Lasley’s question — where did it land — perhaps is answered by Krupp’s explanation that whatever it was burned in the Earth’s atmosphere. But some wonder......