This is our 24th year of awarding the Dolphins and this issue announces the winners of the 2013 Dolphin Awards. As in years past, there were many more nominees than winners. If you nominated someone and they didn’t get it, don’t get discouraged. A number of this year’s winners have been nominated several times over the last few years and had to work their way up through the crowd before they made it. We try and select people from different walks of life, with different community contributions, which together make up what we call our Malibu community.
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Daily, my dog Ella and I walk through Legacy Park (known to some as Weed Park), the 20-acre parcel square in the middle of our town’s Civic Center that is planted with what is referred to as native grasses. The truth is, I like Legacy Park. My dog Ella likes Legacy Park.
On days when there is water in the park, you sometimes find all sorts of birds, some lovely flowers and a small group of us, with our dogs, who regularly walk the park. Underneath the park is an engineering plant that cleans the runoff water, and I understand that it works quite well and is considered an engineering success. The problem I have is that most of the time the park is simply ugly, and the citizens of Malibu I assume agree with me because they appear to have voted with their feet. They just don’t come to the park.
I think we can do better. It’s time for the council to commission a group that will look into alternatives for Legacy Park. Perhaps we need a Conservancy to run it, as they do in many places, like New York. We certainly should be talking to landscape and park architects who have done other parks and can give us some ideas. I believe it’s an idea whose time has come.
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As I skim through the daily newspapers looking for things to write about, I’m acutely aware that I’m getting older.
—You know you’re getting older when the LA Times is filled with stories about the transition in the late show, or whatever they call it, these days from Jay Leno to Jimmy Fallon and Frankly Scarlett, I couldn’t give a damn. It’s been so long since I’ve stayed up to watch the opening monologue, I’m not sure I’d still recognize Leno, and I’m certain I wouldn’t know Fallon if he fell on me.
—You know you’re getting older when the entire world seems agog about the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and commentators are all full of reasons why our national reputations are on the line. My reaction is ho hum. What’s on Netflix?
—You know you’re getting older when my three-year-old grandson is infinitely better at all the new electronics than I am, or ever will be. And at the paper, when we are into all the new media, the multiple online variations—Facebook, Twitter, the Daily Headline newsletter—my young staff are very helpful and quite patronizing when they try to explain to me very slowly what it is we’re doing and why it’s important.
—You definitely know you’re getting older when you run into someone you haven’t seen in a while and the first 15 minutes is spent exchanging medical information and gossip about joint replacements and body maintenance routines.
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The Trancas Center is beginning to really take shape and there is a new market opening called Vintage Grocers. The general manager, Eric, who comes out of a high-end supermarket background, gave me a walkthrough and it’s going to be wonderful and exciting. They’re doing it right. It’s a high-end, foodie market like many you see in Manhattan. You know what I mean; the kind of market where you go in for a carton of milk and a loaf of bread, and everything looks so good, you end up spending $90. They’re planning on giving you the basics and all the fancies, too.
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If you haven’t done so already, send in your Oscar ballot and we’ll see you at the movies.