Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Take Your Black Holes With Beer

We can think of worse ways to spend a Monday than watching a star get shredded. August in Old Pas is thin on fresh ideas for a weeknight, and you have run through the usual three. Enter Astronomy on Tap, Caltech’s ten-year-old experiment in what happens when you hand working astrophysicists a microphone and a beer garden.

August 3 brings two of them. Gabriel Muro, a senior postdoctoral fellow in Caltech’s Department of Physics, opens at 7:30 with “Black Holes Tearing Apart Stars,” a title that is not exaggerating whatsoever. Xiaoshan Huang, a Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar in theoretical astrophysics, follows at 8:30 with “What Makes a Solar Eruption Extreme?” Her published work runs to tidal disruption events and some of the most luminous stellar explosions on record, so the woman knows her way around a catastrophe. Two talks, one patio, no prerequisites.

Then comes the part that separates this from a lecture hall: you get to ask questions. The format pairs the talks with audience Q&A,

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Red Cross Declares National Blood Crisis as Supplies Fall to Dangerous Levels

CITY NEWS SERVICE

The American Red Cross has declared a national blood crisis for just the second time in its history and Monday urged Southland residents to consider donating.

According to the organization, blood donations have fallen to a four- year summer low, “worsening this season’s emergency blood shortage.” All blood types are needed, but the situation is especially dire for type O blood as the Red Cross is now limiting distributions of these blood products to hospitals. The supply of type O positive blood has now dropped below a one-day supply, according to a statement from the Red Cross.

Residents can help end the crisis and stabilize the blood supply by booking an appointment to give blood by using the Blood Donor App, visiting RedCrossBlood.org or calling 800-RED CROSS (733-2767).

People who donate by Friday will receive a Fandango movie ticket (up to $15 ticket price and fees), and those who donate during the month of August will receive a $20 Amazon gift card.

Monday, July 27, 2026

Altadena Residents Gather Over Dinner to Shape the Record in a State Civil Rights Investigation

Altadena for Accountability convenes a four-hour engagement session Wednesday; the location is released only to those who RSVP

In February, after a year-long campaign, California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened a civil rights investigation into Los Angeles County’s emergency response to the 2025 Eaton Fire. That investigation is now underway — and the residents who pressed for it are trying to make sure the official record reflects what people actually lived through.

Altadena for Accountability plans to host “Shaping Accountability: A Community Engagement Session” on Wednesday from 5 to 9 p.m., a dinner-and-discussion format built around four questions: what the attorney general’s investigation means and where it stands, how community testimony can shape the official record, which harms remain unaddressed, and what remedies — reparations, accountability and equitable recovery — could look like for Altadena. The session’s format, agenda and location were provided by the organization.

Bonta announced the investigation on Feb. 12. According to the state Department of Justice, it will examine whether race,

Monday, July 27, 2026

The Window to Run for the Pasadena School Board Closes Aug. 7

Nomination papers are available at the City Clerk’s Office through 5:00 p.m. Friday; four district seats are on this year’s ballot.

[Updated]   Anyone who has sat through a Pasadena Unified School District board meeting since the Eaton Fire — replete with soil remediation, enrollment, campus rebuilding, consolidations, budget shortfalls, a protected tree ordinance — and thought the job could be done better has until 5:00 p.m. Aug. 7 to say so on paper.

Nomination papers for candidates seeking open seats on the Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education in November are available now through that deadline at the Office of the City Clerk, 100 North Garfield Avenue, Room S228, in Pasadena, according to the City Clerk’s Office.

The nomination period opened Monday, July 13. Voters will elect representatives in Districts 1, 3, 5 and 7 this year, each for a full four-year term, in the Tuesday, Nov. 3 general election.

Papers are issued only to registered voters who live in the specific sub-district they are seeking to represent.

Monday, July 27, 2026

Altadena Contracting Cases Return to Pasadena Court as Prosecutors Widen Fire-Zone Enforcement

Two defendants are due in Department H to schedule a preliminary hearing, less than a month after the district attorney announced a parallel round of cases in Pacific Palisades

Two of five men charged with working as unlicensed contractors in the Eaton Fire disaster zone are calendared in a Pasadena courtroom on Monday, July 27, where the court is scheduled to set a date for their preliminary hearing.

Edgar Geovanni Lopez Revolorio, of Arleta, and Guillermo Ramirez, of Pomona, each face one felony count of contracting without a license during a natural disaster, and both pleaded not guilty in December 2025.

A preliminary hearing is where a judge decides whether evidence supports sending a case to trial. Monday’s proceeding is scheduled only to fix its date.

Nearly eight months have passed since the district attorney’s Consumer Protection Division filed the charges on Dec. 4, 2025, after a joint operation by the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation and the state license board.

Monday, July 27, 2026

Altadena’s Recovery Beat Moves to Morning Drive on KBLA This Week

James Farr guest hosts First Things First through Friday, closing with Greenline Housing Foundation and singer Jon B. ahead of Saturday’s Chris Holden block party in Pasadena

James Farr has spent more than a year telling Altadena’s story to Los Angeles one Saturday at a time. This week he gets five mornings in a row.

Farr is guest hosting “First Things First,” KBLA Talk 1580’s weekday morning drive program, through Friday, according to a programming advisory posted at kbla1580.com. The advisory lists guests and topics drawn from Pasadena, Altadena and Los Angeles County’s Fifth Supervisorial District: housing and homelessness, civic engagement, public safety and police accountability, technology, journalism and long-term recovery from the Eaton Fire. KBLA calls it the lineup at the time of publication.

The district, represented by Supervisor Kathryn Barger, takes in Pasadena and unincorporated Altadena. KBLA Talk 1580 is Black-owned and bills itself as Southern California’s Black-owned talk radio station. Regular host Dominique DiPrima’s program airs weekdays from 6:00 a.m.

Monday, July 27, 2026

Judy Chu To Open the Altadena Chamber’s Speaker Series in a National Register Landmark

The Ways and Means Committee member takes questions Friday morning at the Maxwell House in Pasadena.

The Altadena Chamber of Commerce launches its Legislative & Government Affairs 2026 Speaker Series on Friday with the member of Congress whose district has absorbed the region’s hardest year. Congresswoman Judy Chu speaks from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the Maxwell House in Pasadena.

Chu represents California’s 28th Congressional District, which covers Pasadena and the west San Gabriel Valley. Elected in July 2009, she was the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress, and she serves on the House Ways and Means Committee — with jurisdiction over taxes, revenues, Social Security and Medicare — as well as the House Budget Committee. Her subcommittee assignments include Health, and Worker and Family Support.

Her recent local work has run through Eaton Fire recovery. Chu convened a roundtable at the Altadena Library with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services,

Monday, July 27, 2026

An Altadena Artist Who Makes Jewelry Out of Chemotherapy Pills Returns to the Bead and Design Show

More than 300 exhibitors fill the Pasadena Convention Center for three days beginning Friday; one ticket covers all of them.

Susan Braig looked at a drugstore receipt in 2004 and did the arithmetic that has organized her work ever since.

Her first round of post-diagnosis medication cost roughly $500 out of pocket. She looked at the pills, then at the receipt, and wondered whether they were precious gems.

In 2007, invited into a medical-themed exhibition mounted by the NewTown Pasadena Foundation, the Altadena artist built a tiara encrusted with her leftover cancer medication. The public’s response launched Designer Drug Jewelry, a line of statement pieces studded with repurposed pills sealed in resin. Braig has described the work as both an income source for her medical bills and a visual argument in her health care activism — her formulation is that health care remains a luxury item for millions of Americans.

Braig returns to the Pasadena Bead and Design Show this weekend with a new collection.

Monday, July 27, 2026

Guest Opinion | Dr. Jessica Cobb and Mo Hyman: The SAT/ACT is a Relic of the Past. California’s Resilient Students Are the Future.

Calls to add SAT/ACT scores to University of California admissions have reached a fever pitch, with droves of UC faculty signing online petitions and the New York Times editorial board weighing in from across the country. But third-party standardized tests do not measure students’ UC-readiness, and they will not fix skills gaps in US education. What the SAT/ACT does is block highly qualified low-income students and students of color – our students – from attending selective colleges. And that’s the point. Excluding more of our students is the UC faculty’s stated aim.

The current fuss over UC admissions began with two reports prepared by UC San Diego faculty. The first, by the Workgroup on Math Preparation, is a thoughtful piece, identifying an increase of students taking remediation courses and considering multiple options to improve those students’ ultimate college success, including supplemental instruction and better faculty assignment. 

The second, widely-cited, report by the UCSD Workgroup on Admissions, also focuses on students who need math remediation,

Sunday, July 26, 2026

Emmy Win Puts a Spotlight Back on Altadena’s Black Neighborhoods

A local NBC series on the community’s history and its fire losses took the News Series award

A local television station’s video report on Altadena’s historically Black neighborhoods — how they were built, who lives there and how much they lost in the Eaton Fire — was recognized this weekend with a Los Angeles Area Emmy.

NBC4 Los Angeles won the News Series Award for “Black Heritage: Altadena Roots and Resilience,” part of the station’s “Discover Black Heritage” reporting, at the 78th Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards.

The ceremony was held Saturday, July 25, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The honor recognizes the reporting a recovery that a year and a half after the fire, is far from finished.

The NBC4 series traces Altadena’s roots as one of the few areas in Los Angeles County where Black families could buy homes and build wealth through the mid-20th century, when discriminatory housing practices shut them out elsewhere.