I would like to thank the city of Malibu and Papa Jack for building the new skateboard park. It is really cool having a skateboard park here in Malibu.

I really appreciate it!

Skyler Davis, age 7

I attended my first Malibu City Council meeting in years a couple of weeks ago. I attended it because it concerned a group of us that live just beyond the reach of all the bickering that goes on within the city boundaries. It concerned making a portion of Corral Canyon Road that is within the city into a one lane road. I have lived and owned property in the Malibu Bowl area for more than 30 years. What the city road department staff and the council fail to realize is that when a fire comes to Malibu, Corral Canyon is one of the places the fire department usually takes a stand. During the ’70s there was one fire that the fire department forced into Corral Canyon to save the homes around not only Pepperdine but the school itself. Until this year they could drive trucks up the Puerco fire road and up Corral. I don’t know if the council realizes it but Puerco is closed due to a massive slide that took the road out. Corral is the only way to get to the back or to the other side of the canyon. If they put in a new one lane road with stop lights and gate off the old section of the road for fire truck access only, the old road is still going to slide like Puerco did, and when that happens there will only be the new single lane road for fire trucks, homeowners and emergency vehicles. Of course one would not expect whoever is in charge of maintaining the city roads to look at that situation ever happening. Especially after spending $180,000 to patch a road that everyone knew would just keep on sliding. What a waste of money! The only way to assure not only Corral Canyon residents their safety but also several other parts of Malibu their safety is do the right thing the first time and build a new two lane road. It is really less expensive doing it now than doing it after more money is wasted.

One other thing was brought up at the meeting by councilpersons House, Hasse and Keller. That was that if we were annexed into the city then the city would get our tax dollars and the city then would have more money to fix the road the right way. I would like to remind the council that as far as I can tell, most of the roads that have slipped in the city, the residents have had to form a Special Assessment District to help the city pay to fix their roads. Why would we want to do that? Being part of the city just means we will get less services. There have been two major slides in Corral in the last couple of years. Thank God it was on the county part of the road. They came in and stabilized the road and fixed it properly. They not only fixed Corral Canyon Road but they also fixed Newell Road which is not a primary road. No “Special Assessment District” was needed. The county did it right the first time without costing us any money other then our tax dollars. I know it’s easy to sit back and bash the council for whatever they do or don’t do. All I am asking is that they look at the whole picture now and in the future if a fire comes and the only access to Corral Canyon is a single lane road because the road the fire trucks was supposed to use has slid away and Puerco fire road can no longer be used because it to is no longer there.

Ken Freeland

It’s barely three weeks since Karen and I are back from vacation, and it’s already becoming a distant memory.

Invariably, you arrive back from vacation feeling wonderful and relaxed, and there, sitting on your desk, is a two-foot stack of mail and a blinking light on your telephone announcing a queue of voice mails. Then, of course, there is a seven-day backlog of e-mails, and by the time you hack through all of that, you can barely remember where you went on vacation.

I suspect we are all the victims of a gross excess of communication, and we allow our time to be stolen by just about anybody who has a phone or e-mail, and, worse yet, most of us are now carrying cellular phones. I am still mightily resisting carrying one around, but I can feel myself weakening. Truth is, I like being out of touch for a while, at least until my anxiety level builds to the point where it’s more painful not to check in than it is to check in.

Which is a long way of saying we went back into another time, to Vermont, to a little town called Brattleboro, just north of the Massachusetts border, to attend a family wedding. It was a typical contemporary American type of affair.

Two kids from New York, raised and polished in Manhattan, had decided they had enough of that and retreated to a small, former mill town, alongside a small, rolling river in Vermont, where neighbors say hello and smile, and life seems to move at an entirely different pace. I went there with some apprehension, sort of like I was about to pass through the glass into a Norman Rockwell illustration, but stayed long enough to experience it. I must confess it really isn’t such a bad way to live after all. I actually saw people walking down the street without a cell phone in their hands. True, there were more pickups with shotgun racks than I’m used to, but the town, which I am sure has seen better days, seemed to be happy with the newcomers. Kids with young families were moving in, looking for an easier place for their kids to grow up, and they brought with them energy and optimism that this old town probably hasn’t seen for a century, not since the mill closed and moved to Georgia or Alabama or Tijuana or wherever they are today.

As I said, it was a typical American wedding. The bride was beautiful and the groom was handsome. Their salt shaker-style house looked out on eight acres of rolling Vermont hills with lush grass. In the distance, here and there, you could see the beautiful beginning reds and oranges of fall. The bride and groom were married outside, under a chuppah, in a fairly typical Jewish/Unitarian/Vegetarian kind of wedding with their families gathered around them: the father of the bride with his new wife, the mother of the bride with her friend, the father of the groom with his wife, the groom’s mother with her friend, and an assortment of sisters, brothers, cousins and aunts. They said the vows they had written themselves, friends and family spoke and there was hardly a dry eye in the group. We were all caught up in the moment, the beauty of it all, the breathtaking scenery, maybe the simpler nature of the life these kids had chosen. Afterward, people who hadn’t talked to each other for 15 years were actually seen chatting away at the reception, which was in a tent on the rolling lawn.

A couple of days later, we drove to Boston, and we passed homes where people were stacking fireplace logs and putting on weather stripping and doing all the things that you do in preparation for a New England winter. The road crews were putting up long, thin, upright branches on the road posts so when the snows come they can find the road.

Then it came back to me, and I remembered. It’s called winter, and it invariably follows the beautiful autumn. It means snow and slush and coats and gloves and steam heat, and restaurants too hot and streets too cold, and finally getting the kids into snowsuits just about the time they remember they forgot to go to the bathroom.

It’s called winter, and I remembered sitting in our apartment as a kid, watching the Rose Bowl on TV, with everyone sitting in the sunshine, in their shirt sleeves, adjusting their sunglasses, while the wind howled in New York.

I can remember saying to myself at the time, “That’s where I’m headed.” So, on balance, I can say it’s nice to go away, but it’s even better to come home.

My whole life I have successfully resisted the hype for cruise ships. The Love Boat to Mexico, the Caribbean, the Bahamas, not for me. But I’ve always wanted to see Alaska. So I agreed to join my family on a 7-day Carnival Cruise: Vancouver to Juneau by the Inland Passage in mid-September.

Cruise ships have been getting a lot of bad press lately, what with Royal Caribbean dumping bilge and other yucky water in inappropriate places; ships plagued by food poisoning and malfunctioning toilets; and most recently, virulent flu bugs hitching a ride into the lower 48 on Alaskan cruise ships.

However, my son-in-law had booked the cruise last year (a Christmas present to my daughter) with a local travel agent, a friend who had taken this trip before with her husband and three children. It was, she said, “family friendly” and relatively informal. (Formal dress was requested at dinner only two nights.) Their family would caravan with us on the drive, yes, drive, to Vancouver (don’t even ask).

Out of a passenger list of 1,400 on the MS Jubilee, about a dozen teen-agers and as many little kids were kept entertained and pretty much in line by Camp Carnival counselors (all on my list for probable sainthood).

Seven days away from telephones, faxes, e-mail, TV news and traffic were, as the commercial says, “priceless.” For everything else there’s Carnival’s Sail and Sign Card, without which one cannot “debark” (isn’t that what they do to noisy terriers?), reboard the ship or even order a glass of cabernet. One’s card is “activated” with a $150 minimum deposit. Don’t think for a moment that’s all you’ll spend.

Food is another story. All you can eat 24 hours a day, in case one craves pizza or soft-serve ice cream at 3 a.m. Dining room meals are more structured, and in deference to the youngsters, we signed up for early (6 p.m.) dinner seating. Bon appetit is a real struggle before 8:30.

Cruise-ship food has a long-standing reputation (salmonella and E-coli notwithstanding) as lavish and luscious. The menu was extensive, the presentation artistic, the execution a bit of a let down. Most egregious omission, Alaskan King Crab Legs. Saving grace, Grand Marnier Souffl — twice.

Open seating for breakfast in the dining room was a good way to meet other passengers: a large contingent from Iowa, many Canadians and several from Mexico.

For Californians, accustomed to smoke-free everything, a rude surprise: the rest of the world still smokes, and cruise ships cater to them. There was a gray haze everywhere: the casino, the children’s video arcade, even the library. Only the gym and sauna smelled like California (and old sneakers).

Choosing shore excursions from a list of dozens took hours of deliberation and proved tedious and in some instances futile. Children under 7 are excluded from everything fun — mountain biking, kayaking, horseback riding (my 5-year-old grandson does all of these at home and was seriously bummed).

Best trip for kids: the train to White Pass out of Skagway (big kids can bicycle back).

Best out of Juneau: a short bus ride to see the Mendenhall Glacier and a wildlife cruise in a covered boat (it rains 300 days a year in Juneau). We saw no moose or bear, but we encountered a pod of orcas and a humpback whale teaching her baby to wave at tourists.

Best trip for adults: kayaking in the Haines Wilderness Area with a naturalist/guide who lives there year round. He drove us, and only two other passengers, in an old bus the 20 minutes up to Chilkoot Lake, explaining everything along the way and stopping wherever we wanted to take pictures. When we got to Chilkoot, a gorgeous, freshwater lake surrounded by forest, he gave us a crash course in kayak handling, and we set off around the lake. We saw several bald eagles, again no moose or bear, but it was heavenly, quiet and clear. We had to do some serious paddling against a stiff breeze to get back, working up an appetite for the best lunch of the whole trip: ale dipped fish and chips, crisp and greaseless, and the best latte north of Seattle. Splendid!

Most disappointing: a canoe adventure out of Ketchikan, too many people and a guide bent on energizing the crew with rowdy rowing songs, sending any wildlife in the neighborhood for cover. Our last chance to glimpse a bear or moose was dashed.

Environmental interest: a short trek through a corner of the rain forest. Tongass is the world’s largest temperate rain forest. Apparently there’s no dirt in Alaska; the forest floor has just a 6-inch mat of decomposing mulch from which plants, mosses and medicinal herbs sprout. Hemlock and spruce grow out of solid rock; seedlings sprout on the backs of fallen trees and spread their roots laterally among the needles and lichen.

Six days without Washington Week, Jim Lehrer and Wolf Blitzer. I was suffering major news withdrawal and made for the Ketchikan newspaper office, where I collected a week’s worth of back issues to read on the way back to Vancouver.

So did Carnival change my mind about cruises? Not really. Would I go back to Alaska? Definitely. I would rent a cottage in Haines for the summer, explore the Haines Wilderness Area with a quiet guide — surely I would see a moose and a bear — maybe rent a small boat and tour the channels looking for orcas. I might even be able to extend my news fast to a month or so. Get real, you say? Okay, maybe I could get by with a weekly paper. But no Sam and Cokie.

Dear Fellow Malibu Parents:

Do you know where your children are? And do you know what they are doing? This week our children have had the scare of one child who brought a gun to school with just one bullet in the chamber for his intended victim — and today, the threat of a bomb being planted in the school.

Do you know where your guns are and have you taught your children about their safety and their potential devastation? Do you know when your chidden go to a party if there are adults chaperoning? Is there going to be alcohol there? Have you taught them the effects of alcohol and diminished capacity? Have you taught them to handle their anger or how to channel it? Have you taught them that one mistake can follow them the rest of their life — and that some events are just not worth sweating over?

Our schools are doing their best to provide a pleasant environment, good and up-to-date materials and challenging curriculum in which our children can learn in an already competitive world. Our duty as parents is to send them to school fed, rested and with their homework complete from the day before. And, in mid process of building and nurturing character within them with which they may attempt to tackle the tasks ahead and face the bumps that life has in store for all of us.

Character building is part of their education, but the part that we should be instilling in them and not expecting the schools or anyone else to do it. Don’t expect the government to fix it afterward when they become entrenched in the criminal system.

Raising children is a long, diligent and often difficult job, but the most rewarding job we can ever do. Our parents did it for us and our grandparents before than. A positive attitude is the only tool with which we can arm them against the trials of life. Let’s all take the time to teach our children character and attitude — it could be just what will save ourselves — from ourselves.

Avesta Carrara

I’m writing to job Mr. Hasse’s memory and correct the record for the public. In his recent letter, he states that I originally supported “negotiations over a potential development agreement with the Malibu Bay Company to determine the future use of its 93 undeveloped acres throughout Malibu” but “changed my position at a subsequent City Council meeting.” Not so. I have always and continue to support open, public negotiations with the Bay Company and held many public meetings with them as a member of the Council Land Use Committee. What I opposed at that “subsequent council meeting” and continue to oppose is holding negotiations in private, out of the public eye.

Mr. Hasse further states that “Mr. Keller and Ms. Van Horn themselves negotiated a proposed development agreement with the Malibu Bay Company, which was rejected by the City Council.” The Feb. 22, 1999 council agenda indicates the Land Use Subcommittee recommended to the council that they consider accepting approximately six acres of Bay Company Point Dume property with improvements, in return for a guarantee that buildable portions of those six acres would be included in determining the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) for their remaining Point Dume land. As should be clear — this was a recommendation to consider — hardly a negotiated development agreement.

The recommendation was ignored by a majority of council members, Hasse, House and Barovsky, and instead they voted to appoint Hasse and House to negotiate in private with the Bay Company on all their property. The reason I made the motion on just the Point Dume property was that after a year of public discussion with Bay Company representatives, it was the only concrete proposal that did not give the Bay Company more than they were already legally entitled to, and appeared at all beneficial to the community.

The community should be aware that receiving land from a developer in return for a development agreement is not a “freebie.” Developers expect something in return, usually higher building density than otherwise would be allowed.

I wonder if Mark Twain ever said anything about the errors of omission?

Walt Keller

Can anyone tell me the logic of Caltrans current work on the shoulders along Pacific Coast Highway?

In addition to their periodic spraying of herbicides, they have recently undertaken some kind of mowing program that completely strips away all vegetation for about six feet up the road bank.

Perhaps this is a plan to use nature’s rainfall, picking up the now exposed raw dirt, to dilute the runoff from the previously applied chemicals.

In any event just exactly what is wrong with the vegetation coming down to the edge of the pavement, other than it looks a helluva lot better, which we all know is not allowed — that is, any aesthetic consideration.

Harry Wolf