Pasadena, CA

Pasadena local, Nikki High, is poised to open an independent bookstore in the city that exclusively stocks authors who are Black, Indigenous and people of color. Octavia’s Bookshelf — set to open this February — is aptly named after Black, sci-fi author and Pasadena legend, Octavia Butler.

High announced the opening in a now viral tweet: “I took the leap and quit my job to open my very own bookstore.” While mainly self funded, High set up a GoFundMe, where anyone can donate toward the bookstore’s opening success. The initiative is just over halfway to its $20,000 goal.

An avid reader, High was thinking about opening her own bookstore for years. The option felt out of reach until she found inspiration while on a trip to Swaziland in South Africa. There she had the opportunity to connect with the groups Baobob Batik and Tsandza Weaving.

Both groups aim to empower women workers with sustainable and fair work. Baobob Batik employs artisans to create batik cloth wares. Batik refers to an Indonesian method of hand-printing textiles by coating with wax the parts not to be dyed. Tsandza Weaving artisans create weaved products by hand in every step of the process from dying, spinning, weaving and sewing.

“It was just an amazing experience to be able to work with them. They were so willing to share their knowledge and you know, we ate together and took breaks together and had dinner together, ” High said. “And I just saw how these women cared so deeply for one another, and then extended that kindness to a perfect stranger like me and made me feel like family. And I thought I could recreate that in a bookstore.”

Still, leaving the security of a 15-year career as a customer communications director with Trader Joe’s is no small feat, so the final push to begin Octavia’s Bookshelf was the sudden passing of High’s grandmother and biggest supporter.

“She was just always one of those people in my life that thought I can do anything,” High said. “You know, if I ran a marathon and came in last she’s like, ‘well, you know, people who finish last are the smartest.’ She had so much faith in me.”

High is further motivated by Butler’s work to center Black futures and perspective, one that High feels is sorely lacking in the literary world. In an effort to continue this legacy, High dedicated the space to BIPOC voices that otherwise are obscured.

“For anyone who watches Sci Fi series and movies and books, historically, they show only a certain type of person in those books. Me being super curious and getting into to Sci Fi a bit when I was a teenager, it just struck me as bizarre that someone had written or envisioned a future without people of color. So, for me, it’s like, ‘no, we’re here. We will be here in the future,’ High said, “I’m here today in 2023. It is always really nice to see a story where I’m there a thousand years from now or somebody who looks like me.”

A graduate of Pasadena City College, the late Butler is revered for her afro-centric works, including Kindred (now a series on Hulu), the Patternist series and Parable of the Sower. In honor of Butler’s contributions, in September of last year, Washington STEAM Multilingual Academy was renamed Octavia E. Butler Magnet, and became the only school in the nation named for her. Additionally, the Los Angeles Public Library dedicated the Octavia Labs, a do-it-yourself maker space and audiovisual studio, to the icon.

“I feel like those authors have such rich stories to tell and they can often be overlooked in larger bookstores … there’s so many stories that come from the perspective of a Black or an Indigenous or a person of color. But we’re all human. So the stories are written by BIPOC, but they’re really for everyone in this community. I think the other really important part is, you know, for people visiting the store to see themselves represented exclusively.”

Octavia’s Bookshelf will open its doors just north of the 210 Freeway, at 1361 North Hill Ave., in Pasadena, in mid-February. High intends to post updates on its opening on the Octavia’s Bookshelf GoFundMe page.

Damn, so much for that vacation from the kitchen.

It seems as if chaos and upheaval are rife in the Pasadena Unified School District and Pasadena City College.

At the renowned junior college, President/Superintendent Erika Endrijonas is applying for a new job as the board irons out an extension on her contract.

According to reports, she was due a three-year extension via an agreement in her contract that would have extended her contract to June 2025 upon a satisfactory review.

But an alleged Brown Act violation may have screwed it up.

Now Endrijonas is a finalist for the LACC job, in part for job security she told the PCC Courier in a well-written story.

Fact is, Endrijonas has been under fire by some members of the faculty since she called on employees to come back to work during the pandemic.

Over in the PUSD, Brian McDonald has probably been packing his bags since members of the executive leadership team began fleeing the district.

McDonald is a finalist for a gig in Columbus, Ohio.

Here’s the deal for the boards in both organizations.

Clean this mess up.

I get it people in high level positions move on all the time.

But this is obviously something else, especially in the PUSD where some board members have been pushing to get McDonald out.

But, I’m curious as to what board members think that will accomplish.

Yes, the board is privy to far more information that I am on these matters, and of course it’s the board’s right to review and make decisions on contracts.

But at the same time, in the PUSD McDonald is responsible for running the district which does in fact educate local kids which means parents in Altadena, Sierra Madre and Pasadena have a right to question the board.

And hopefully they get some answers.

Whatever the issues are, work them out and right side things.

By the way, if there has been a vote of any kind on McDonald’s contract, a straw vote, a survey of the board, or just casually going around the room and each member expressing where they stand, and it has not been reported out to the public, that’s a major violation of the Brown Act.

The district has been down that road before with Percy Clark, Jr.

Bringing in a new superintendent won’t immediately increase test scores or bring students back to the district.

Nor will it lower the cost of housing in Pasadena and drive people back from the Inland Empire and points beyond, or increase family sizes.

Those things are beyond anybody’s control at this point.

Yes, personnel issues cannot be made public, but if there are issues in the district that forces the removal of the superintendent, the public has a right to know some information.

Without it, distrust of the district could increase.

Just as it did in the City, when Fire Chief Bertral Washington was forced out with no explanation.

PCC, PUSD educate us, what’s going on?

The economy continues to grow, but just a little slower, and continues to be plagued by consumer confidence worries, according to the latest report from the California Association of Realtors (CAR) .

“The early reading for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the first quarter of this year suggests that the economy expanded but the momentum appeared to have fizzled out,” said CAR.

Despite real income improving for nine months in a row, consumers had been holding back, according to recent data, the report added.

While a strong labor market continues to support wage growth, it also translates into higher labor costs and places more pressure on inflation, said CAR, coupled with the fact that recent bank failures added uncertainty to the overall health of the economy in the long-run.

This also tamps down consumer confidence on the short-term economic future.

As has been the case for some time now, the short supply of existing homes for sale has steered more home buying activity into the newly constructed housing sector, which comprised 33.2% of total single-family housing inventory in March – nearly double the 17.8% average in the year before the pandemic.

According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), new home sales surged 9.6% in March to a 683K annual pace. March 2023 was the third increase in the last four months and the highest sales pace recorded since March 2022.

The high mortgage rate environment has made homeowners hesitant to list their homes and trade up to higher rates, forcing many homebuyers to turn to this new construction, said CAR.

The NAHB monthly sentiment survey also revealed that 59% of builders used incentives in March, making new homes relatively more attractive for affordability-crunched buyers.

Thus, sales of new homes increased 9.6% from February to an annual pace of 683K as buyers turned to new construction amid low resale inventory. Although February’s sales gain was revised down to a 3.9% decline, March was the third increase in the last four months and the highest sales pace recorded in 11 months, said the survey.

The increase in sales finally began to make a dent in the Months of Supply of new homes, which dropped from 8.4 months in February to 7.6 months in March. The sales increases also resulted in greater competition and modest price gains, said the CAR report.

The median price for new homes also rose 3.8% over the month and 3.2% over the same month of last year, so new home sales continued to run below their pace of one year ago as interest rates remained elevated.

Consumer confidence continues to be an issue as those numbers dipped to a six-month low in April .

Specifically, the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® fell in April to 101.3 (1985=100), down from 104.0 in March. The Present Situation Index—based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions—increased to 151.1 (1985=100) from 148.9 last month.

The Expectations Index—based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions—fell to 68.1 (1985=100) from 74.0. The Expectations Index has now remained below 80—the level associated with a recession within the next year—every month since February 2022, with the exception of a brief uptick in December 2022.

The survey was fielded from April 3—about three weeks after the bank failures in the United States—to April 19.

“While consumers’ relatively favorable assessment of the current business environment improved somewhat in April, their expectations fell and remain below the level which often signals a recession looming in the short-term,” said Ataman Ozyildirim, Senior Director, Economics at The Conference Board.

“Consumers became more pessimistic about the outlook for both business conditions and labor markets. Compared to last month, fewer households expect business conditions to improve and more expect worsening of conditions in the next six months. They also expect fewer jobs to be available over the short term. April’s decline in consumer confidence reflects particular deterioration in expectations for consumers under 55 years of age and for households earning $50,000 and over.”

Meanwhile, the present situation index rose slightly to 151.1 during the same month, as consumers remained upbeat about both the labor market and business conditions.

Further overhauling its troubled juvenile detention facilities, the county Board of Supervisors has approved a series of moves, including the relocation of most juvenile detainees, upgrades to most facilities and asking the sheriff’s department to deploy volunteer reserve deputies to help fill holes in staffing.

“Since the reserves undergo the same hiring standards as a full-time deputy, (the Probation Department) is seeking to deploy them to supplement the sworn staff assigned to the juvenile halls contingent upon training to adapt reserves’ existing practices and skills to comply with Probation and state policies regulations, contingent upon County Counsel’s assessment of legally permissive,” county CEO Fesia Davenport wrote in a letter to the board outlining the proposed moves.

The deputy deployment idea found little public favor.

“Why should the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department watch over our children? Will we have deputy gangs in charge of them?” Ambrose Brooks of the group Dignity and Power Now told the board Tuesday.

The ACLU of Southern California also decried the move, noting on its Twitter page that it is suing the sheriff’s department “because of its failure to provide adequate care or safety to people in L.A. jails.”

“It is a shameful and dangerous idea to think sheriff’s deputies can take care of youth in L.A. juvenile halls,” according to the ACLU.

The moves approved by the board Tuesday without discussion are the latest steps by the county to address its troubled juvenile justice system, which has been under fire from state leaders and regulators. State Attorney General Rob Bonta recently slammed the condition of the juvenile halls as “appalling” and filed court papers seeking to force the county remedy “illegal and unsafe” conditions.

A hearing on that matter is scheduled for May 9. That state Board of State and Community Corrections, meanwhile, has scheduled a hearing for May 23 to consider possibly ordering the shutdown of the county’s juvenile halls altogether due to lack of compliance with state regulations.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a series of steps Davenport recommended in her letter. Davenport wrote in her letter that the Probation Department “has determined it is necessary to move all predisposition youth to Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, operate Central Juvenile Hall as a law enforcement intake unit and medical and diagnostic/assessment hub, and house only Secure Youth Treatment Facility (SYTF) youth at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall to ensure optimal and constitutional levels of care for Probation youth. … Probation’s plan will better leverage existing facilities and available staff and resources to improve conditions and care for Probation youth, while flexing up temporary staff and other resources.”

Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, located in Downey, was closed in July 2019.

The plan outlined by Davenport also included the readjustment of millions of dollars for capital improvements at the juvenile halls, with overall costs anticipated to reach nearly $50 million.

Davenport wrote that the maneuvering “will allow the Probation Department and supporting departments to take immediate steps to improve facility conditions at the juvenile halls necessary to move all predisposition youth to Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, improve facility conditions at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in accordance with state law and the California DOJ settlement agreement, implement changes to the operations at Central Juvenile Hall, and make other improvements of facility conditions at Barry J. Nidorf, as needed.”

In a statement Wednesday, Guillermo Viera Rosa, chief strategist for juvenile operations at the county Probation Department, said the moves will “put the safety and welfare of our youth at the center of our efforts.”

“As we wipe the slate clean, we’re leaving behind a traditional, incremental approach that has bred distrust and confusion,” he said. “Instead, we are embracing radical change — change that I’m convinced will demonstrably improve the care that our youth receive, the accountability the public demands and the professionalism the state requires.”

He insisted the moves are not a “quick fix” to appease state regulators or buy time ahead of the upcoming court hearing. But he also acknowledged that there is some opposition to the plan, particularly the use of sheriff reserve deputies and reopening Los Padrinos.

“”As we activate this plan, I’m confident it will become clear that the county is committed and determined to resolve the problems in juvenile operations with the goal of enhancing the welfare of the youth entrusted to our care,” he said.

The county Board of Supervisors has been struggling to overhaul the troubled juvenile justice system even as it prepares to assume responsibility for youth being transferred to counties from the state’s soon-to-close Juvenile Justice facilities.

The board recently voted to advance a “Global Plan” for the placement and care of juvenile detainees, with a goal of reducing the number of juveniles in custody and development of Secure Youth Treatment Facilities to provide a more supportive environment for detained youth.

But while those plans have been slowly advancing, the juvenile detention system and the Probation Department that oversees it have been routinely under fire from state regulators over conditions at the facilities.

In March of last year, about 140 juvenile detainees were hastily transferred from Central Juvenile Hall in Lincoln Heights to Barry J. Nidorf hall in Sylmar — a move that the county inspector general later concluded was orchestrated to avert a state inspection that appeared likely to fail.

Late last year, nearly 300 boys and girls filed a lawsuit alleging they were sexually assaulted, harassed and abused by county probation and detention officers while being held at juvenile facilities dating back to the 1970s. Davenport noted while releasing her recent budget proposal for the coming year that the county could potentially face liabilities reaching $3 billion from such abuse claims.

In March, the Board of Supervisors fired Probation Department Chief Adofo Gonzales, with board Chair Janice Hahn noting that the juvenile halls “are in crisis.” Karen Fletcher, the interim probation chief, told LAist on Tuesday she plans to retire May 19.

In August 1865, a 10-pound rock fell from space to Earth, landing with a bang in the remote village of Sherghati, India. After being recovered by witnesses to the event, the stone passed into the possession of a local British magistrate who endeavored to identify the source of the strange object. After more than a century of studying the meteorite fragments—so-called shergottites—researchers in the 1980s finally determined its alien origins: our neighboring planet, Mars.

Until humans are able to bring back samples from Mars, the only pieces of the Red Planet found on Earth are Martian meteorites such as the shergottites. The journey for these little Martian travelers has been violent: for Mars rocks to get to Earth, they must have been ejected from the Red Planet’s surface with enough force to escape Martian gravity. This ejection was likely due to a large impact on Mars. The rocks withstood the massive temperatures and pressures of this impact and flew through the vacuum of space, eventually crash-landing on our own planet.

For decades, scientists have worked on modeling the kind of Martian impact events that send bits of the Red Planet to Earth. Now, researchers at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which Caltech manages for NASA, have conducted experiments to simulate the so-called “shock pressure” experienced by Martian rocks. They have found that the pressure required to launch a rock from Mars into space is much lower than originally thought.

The research was conducted in the laboratory of Paul Asimow (MS ’93, PhD ’97), the Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Geology and Geochemistry. The study is described in a paper appearing in the journal Science Advances on May 3 and is a collaboration with JPL.

Meteorites from varied sources have been discovered on Earth for millennia, but their origins were not known until much more recently. As NASA’s Viking orbiters made measurements of Mars’s atmospheric composition in the late 1970s, Caltech’s Ed Stolper (now the Judge Shirley Hufstedler Professor of Geology) was one of the first to suggest that shergottites are from Mars—confirmed later when gases in the thin Martian atmosphere matched up with the gases encapsulated in the meteorites.

But that is not all a meteorite’s composition can tell us about its journey. One major component of Martian rocks is the crystalline mineral plagioclase. Under high pressures, such as an intense impact, plagioclase transforms into the glassy material known as maskelynite. Finding maskelynite in a rock, therefore, indicates the types of pressure the sample came into contact with. In the last five years, Martian meteorites have been discovered with a blend of both plagioclase and maskelynite, indicating an upper bound for the pressures they were subjected to.

In the new study, led by Caltech staff scientist Jinping Hu, the team conducted experiments to smash plagioclase-containing rocks from Earth and observe how the mineral transforms under pressure. The team developed a more accurate method to simulate Martian impacts in shock-recovery experiments, utilizing a powerful “gun” to blast rocks with projectiles traveling over five times the speed of sound. Previous shock-pressure experiments required reverberating shock waves through a steel chamber, which gives an inaccurate picture of what happens during an impact event on Mars.

“We’re not on Mars, so we can’t watch a meteorite strike in person,” says Yang Liu, a planetary scientist at JPL and a co-author on the study. “But we can recreate a similar kind of impact in a lab setting. By doing so, we found it takes much less pressure to launch a Mars meteorite than we thought.”

Previous experiments had shown that plagioclase turns into maskelynite at a shock pressure of 30 gigapascals (GPa), which is 300,000 times the atmospheric pressure one experiences at sea level, or 1,000 times the pressure a submersible comes into contact with while diving beneath 3 kilometers of ocean water. This new study shows that the transition actually happens at around 20 GPa—a significant difference from previous experiments. In particular, the new pressure threshold is consistent with evidence from other high-pressure minerals in these meteorites indicating that their shock pressures must have been less than 30 GPa. Nine out of the 10 high-pressure minerals found in Martian meteorites were discovered at Caltech in studies led by mineralogist Chi Ma, Caltech’s director of analytical facilities, and a co-author of the study.

“It has been a significant challenge to model an impact that can launch intact rocks from Mars while shocking them to 30 GPa,” Asimow says. “In this context, the difference between 30 GPa and 20 GPa is significant. The more accurately we can characterize the shock pressures experienced by a meteorite, the more likely it becomes that we can identify the impact crater on Mars from which it originated.”

The paper is titled “Shock-recovered maskelynite indicates low-pressure ejection of shergottites from Mars.” Hu, Asimow, Liu, and Ma are co-authors. Funding was provided by NASA, Caltech-JPL, and the National Science Foundation.