August marked the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade with America when, in 1619, a ship carrying 20 slaves landed at Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia. This year, Nana Akufo-Addo, president of Ghana, a major slave trade hub at the time, declared 2019 the “Year of Return.” The campaign has given African Americans nationwide a chance to reconnect with and reflect on their ancestral beginnings.

Last month, the second African American Rose Queen, Drew Washington, who presided over the 2012 Rose Parade, traveled with her father Craig to West Africa to learn more about their ancestry and culture. After conducting a DNA test from Ancestry.com to locate the region their forebears originally came from, they traveled to Ghana, Togo and Benin, three small countries in the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic coast.

“I didn’t know what to expect regarding how the dynamics would be, being African American and going back to Africa,” said Drew, 24, who graduated from UC Berkeley School of Law in May and moved to New York a couple weeks ago to begin a job at Winston & Strawn LLP. The firm represents players’ associations of major league sports and the US women’s soccer team in their equal pay lawsuit. “But everyone we met said ‘Welcome home. You are home.’ That felt so good. It’s almost indescribable. I’d never felt like that anywhere else I’ve traveled.”

Correcting Mischaracterizations

When Drew first went to New York University, other African Americans didn’t use the term “African American” as an umbrella term to describe all black people.

“They were able to point to a country in Africa where they were from,” she explained. “They’d ask me, ‘Where are you from?’ I was so frustrated that I couldn’t answer the question, so this trip was about me being able to find those answers. I finally felt connected to a culture. I had heritage, culture and tradition that I could bring back home.”

Craig, 56, who serves as a director-chair of Tournament of Roses committees and regional contract manager at Jacobs Engineering Group, appreciated being able to correct many of the mischaracterizations that Americans have about Africa based on limited and inaccurately negative information. One of those mischaracterizations is about family.

“Family is so important in Africa, so it’s disheartening how African Americans are portrayed as not having strong families,” he said. “Where did this come from? This wasn’t our culture or foundation. Breaking up families, that’s what this whole slave trade did. Now the fabric of this bond of family has just been ripped to pieces. This is a part of African-American history that needs to be more exposed, and exposed truthfully.”

Before the slave trade and before colonial powers imposed modern country names and borders, powerful kingdoms existed in West Africa for hundreds of years, such as the Ashanti Empire and the Dahomey Kingdom. A form of slavery existed, too, among warring African tribes.

“This concept was going on within their own continent, so within the Africans’ mind, it wasn’t farfetched to trade people,” Craig said.

When Europeans first showed up, they didn’t start enslaving people immediately. They first traded goods and indoctrinated Africans into Christianity.

“They did a good job of gaining the trust of the leaders of the kingdoms,” Drew said. “Slavery already existed in Africa, but it was more like indentured servitude. They had no idea what the Europeans had intended.”

‘Its Own Genocide’

After starting their tour in Accra, the capital of Ghana, the Washingtons paid their respects at the Assin Manso Slave River. Inland Africans bound for slavery were marched shackled and barefoot for hundreds of miles over several months to the coast, where they received their “last bath” in African waters at Slave River.

“They would wash all the captured slaves and put shea butter on them to bring out a glow on the skin, prepping the body to make it look its best for the slave trade market,” Craig said.

Once the slaves got to the coast, they were held in slave castles for another few months. That’s all before they were forced onto a crowded ship, where they spent another six months crossing the Atlantic.

“In our history books, we hear about the Middle Passage and the ships being horrible, but you don’t hear about what happened on the ground before they got to the ships or to America, so it was quite the experience to be able to see that,” Drew said.

Historians estimate that between 1525 and 1866, about 12.5 million Africans were forcibly brought to the New World. Of those, only about 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage, and of those, only about 388,000 were shipped directly to North America, with the rest going to the Caribbean and South America.

“Millions of people didn’t make it,” Craig said. “The attrition was unbelievable. It was its own genocide even before they got to the ships, as well as the disease and starvation they endured along the way.”

The Washingtons also visited two slave castles: Cape Coast Castle, built by the Swedish in 1653 and later run by the British, and Elmina Castle, built by the Portuguese in 1482. The castles are about half the size of the Rose Bowl, each with an inner field, guard towers, master quarters for the governor which overlooked the courtyard, a church in the middle, and cramped, non-ventilated dungeons where the slaves were housed.

From there, the Washingtons visited Lomé, the capital of Togo, on their way to a village in Benin called Ouidah, home to the sacred Temple of Pythons.

“I thought that was just a name, but there are real pythons inside this temple,” Drew said. “In Benin, they view the python as sacred, as gods. It’s considered disrespectful to not wear a python around your neck when you visit. You also have to walk into the temple itself where there are pythons roaming around everywhere.”

The Washingtons then traveled to Ganvie, Benin, an entire village built on stilts over Lake Nokoué. Known as the “Venice of West Africa,” the water village of about 30,000 people was built 300 years ago as a defense mechanism during the slave trade.

“They row boats to go anywhere,” Drew said. “A typical family has three boats: one for the father to fish, another for the mother to sell the fish in the market and the third for the children to go to school. They have a hospital, a hotel, a church, a mosque and restaurants, all on stilts. Even their markets are on water. The women gather on boats in the center of the village and sell toiletries, fish, food, whatever you need.”

Sharing the Experience

Part of the reason why Americans have misconceptions about Africa is because of the lack of a meaningful connection. It’s not easy for Americans to travel to Africa and virtually impossible for Africans to travel to the United States.

“I don’t know who has made traveling to those countries difficult, but it is,” Drew said. “It’s not as easy as going to Europe, where you just hop on a plane. You want to go to Africa? Hold on, you need visas, you need shots, it’s a long plane ride, there are no direct flights, the flights are expensive. There aren’t flash sales for plane tickets to Africa. It’s prohibitive for a lot of people to go, coupled with the unknown. What we’re told about it, it doesn’t seem like that’s what you want to spend your vacation time and lots of money doing. But we found that it was just the best way we could have spent our money.”

Craig pointed out that they had virtually no interaction with Americans during their trip, while they saw and met lots of Europeans.

“That’s why no one in America knows about Africa, because no one goes,” he said. “Whatever they’re told, that’s what it is. All we get fed about Africa is that it’s a warzone.”

By sharing their experience on Facebook, the Washingtons have inspired a number of their friends to consider visiting Africa as well.

“It will help take down some of the mystery about Africa,” he said. “That’s what needs to happen: someone they know has gone and done it and they see it as a possibility.”

As a lifelong Pasadenan, author Chip Jacobs thought he knew his hometown well. That is, until he started researching the real history of Pasadena and its “concrete queen,” the Colorado Street Bridge, for his debut novel “Arroyo.”

Published Tuesday by Rare Bird Books, Arroyo chronicles a fictional story that is rooted in historical fact. It takes place in 1912-13, when the bridge was being constructed, and 1993, during the bridge’s 80th anniversary celebration. While conducting extensive research on Pasadena’s history for the book, Jacobs discovered many sordid stories that didn’t comport with what he thought he knew about the Crown City.

“I tried to write an alternate version of Pasadena that doesn’t smear Pasadena’s name, but also tells the truth,” he said. “The majority of the information about the city is real. I took real incidents and built a story around them. Pasadena is very different from its coffee table canon. It is a glorious, accomplished city that has more culture, science and creativity than many other cities per capita, but it’s not perfect. I felt the weight of history on me as I wrote this book. I had to get it right. I’m trying to tell a story but also inform.”

Familiar Names

Jacobs, a Pasadena Weekly contributor, is also the author of “Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles”; “The People’s Republic of Chemicals”; “Strange as It Seems: The Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler”; “The Ascension of Jerry: Murder, Hitmen and the Making of L.A. Muckraker Jerry Schneiderman”; “The Vicodin Thieves”: “Biopsying L.A.’s Grifters, Gloryhounds and Goliaths”; and “Black Wednesday Boys.”

“Arroyo” is his first work of fiction.

Jacobs will read from and discuss “Arroyo” at his book launch at 7 p.m. tomorrow (Oct. 18) at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd. Former Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard will emcee the event, which will also feature a Pie & Burger truck (a restaurant that plays a role in the book) and wine and beer (an ode to Busch Gardens, an estate owned by Anheuser-Busch founder Adolphus Busch and one of the main stomping grounds of the book’s characters). In fact, Vroman’s Bookstore’s founder, A.C. Vroman, figures into the plot as well.

The book’s characters also interact with historical figures such as Teddy Roosevelt, Rose Parade founder Charles Holder, newspaperman Charles Lummis, aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe, muckraker Upton Sinclair and others. Major scenes take place at Cawston Ostrich Farm, Mount Lowe Railway, Hotel Green (now Castle Green), the Raymond Hotel, Busch Gardens, the Doo Dah Parade and other local landmarks.

Jacobs will also present his book on Nov. 7 at Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse, Nov. 21 at the Pasadena Museum of History and Jan. 16 at the Pasadena Central Library.

Bridge to the Past

It’s rare for a book to make one laugh out loud, but Arroyo, written in clever, funny prose, does that several times. Th.e book includes fantastical scenes such as the main character, Nick Chance, racing a brand new Ford Model-T while riding an ostrich from South Pasadena’s Cawston Ostrich Farm in an early, offbeat test of machine versus animal. To find out who wins, you’ll have to read the book.

The book includes an origin story for the green parrots that fly over Pasadena to this day. There are several rumors about how the parrots got here, including that a pet store burned down in the 1970s. But in Jacobs’ telling, an excited boy chases Chance riding a Cawston ostrich, which freaks out and runs through the Arroyo, slamming into a cage holding 37 green parrots. The cage crashes open and the parrots escape, much to the chagrin of two shifty characters who intended to sell the exotic birds on the black market to wealthy patrons. In those days, feathers were all the rage in women’s fashion.

“Arroyo” takes place during the Progressive Era, a time when the Raymond Hotel still stands, when Busch Gardens (once dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world”) hadn’t yet been overrun by residential development, and when automobiles hadn’t yet overtaken horses — or in this case, ostriches — as the primary mode of transportation.

Chance starts out as an assistant manager at Cawston Ostrich Farm and then, when he gets fired from there, as a worker on the budding Colorado Street Bridge installing solar lights that he invented. But the bridge and the universe have bigger plans in store for him and his clairvoyant dog, Royo, who saves Chance from an explosion on South Fair Oaks Avenue.

The book also highlights a rarely told story about a fatal collapse of part of the bridge on Aug. 1, 1913, just weeks before its highly anticipated grand opening, albeit a story told by Jacobs himself in an article in the Pasadena Weekly published on Sept. 18, 2003, titled “Bridge to the Past.” In fact, that story was the initial seed of the idea for this book.

“It was my story in the Weekly about the bridge that galvanized this novel,” he said. “Three people got killed in the collapse. It feels like I have to get angry before I start a book, and I was angry when I walked on the bridge for the story and saw a plaque exalting the Pasadena Board of City Directors [now City Council members], the contractor who died in a car accident before the bridge even opened and the designer who wasn’t on speaking terms with the city because he was so infuriated that they added a curve to his bridge design. But they didn’t give even a mention of the three people who died during construction. It was appalling. That fueled me to write this story, and it touched a nerve.”

In that story, Jacobs wrote that the mold for the top of the ninth arch of the bridge “buckled, creat[ing] a thunderous pancaking action that snatched three workers — and almost eight more — in a violent, plunging mass. Hundreds of tons of wet concrete, scaffolding and machinery came crashing onto the floor of the valley, kicking up dust and pandemonium.”

Origin Story

The other catalyst for Jacobs to write this book was the continuing trend of people leaping from the 150-feet high bridge to their deaths in the Arroyo Seco, establishing its unfortunate and tenacious moniker, “Suicide Bridge.”

“It made me feel almost like the bridge itself was getting a bad name,” Jacobs said. “I felt like I needed to defend her. She’s a benevolent force. She’s been trashed and almost destroyed by the wrecking ball numerous times — thank God for our preservationists who value it. Somebody needed to be her biographer. That’s what I’m trying to do, to tell her origin story.”

Well over 100 people have used the bridge to end their lives, going back to the bridge’s earliest days and then the Great Depression. The first actual suicide wasn’t on the bridge itself, but rather a little way down the Arroyo, when a judge who was despondent about the death of his wife intentionally overdosed on laudanum, a Progressive Era opium tincture. One of the first jumpers, Jacobs wrote in his 2003 PW story, was the “ill wife of a Los Angeles tie maker.”

One of the most shocking incidents occurred in 1937, when Myrtle Ward, a young, depressed mother who had just lost her job, threw her baby off the bridge and then jumped herself. The baby landed in a tree and survived; her mother did not.

“I felt a little callous even writing about suicide, because what do I know? Think about somebody who lost a loved one there and they have to drive by that bridge every day,” Jacobs said. “I tried to keep the suicide part only a consequential element of the book, not the driving force.”

The city of Pasadena still struggles to this day with how to prevent suicides while maintaining the historical and aesthetic character of the bridge, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In May, the city hired Donald MacDonald Architects to develop a proposal to address the issue. On Sept. 26, the city held its first community meeting for its Colorado Street Bridge Suicide Mitigation Enhancements Project to present the design of a vertical barrier with end treatments and gather feedback and ideas from the public.

“I don’t know the answer, but I’m sure some kind of barrier can coexist with the original magnificence of the Colorado Street Bridge,” Jacobs said.

Former Pasadena Mayor Bill Paparian is successfully recovering from a lifesaving kidney transplant from his wife of 37 years, Sona, even though they have different blood types.

The rare and relatively new procedure is known as an ABO incompatible transplant, which only a small number of hospitals in the United States are able to perform. It enabled Paparian, 70, who has had kidney disease for 12 years, to receive the healthy organ just 10 months after starting dialysis rather than the many years it usually takes, if at all.

“I’m getting stronger every day,” Paparian told the Pasadena Weekly. “I have to confess it was a real struggle in the beginning. It wasn’t easy post-surgery. I basically was confined at home for weeks, which was pretty difficult for me because I’m normally a very active person. Two of my three sons, my oldest and my youngest, were there to take care of us. We basically had to have someone help us each day. My oldest son returned from Armenia, where he lives and works, for five weeks so he could be with me and my wife and help out.”

The surgery took place on Aug. 6 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A criminal defense attorney, Paparian is already back to work and back in the gym.

“I went to court for the first time last week,” he said. “I was in court yesterday morning. I’m in my office right now waiting to meet with clients. I’m slowly getting back to where I was physically. I’m not there yet, but I’m slowly getting there.”

Paparian said his wife researched their options after he signed up on the National Kidney Registry and discovered the ABO incompatible transplant procedure. He said in a blog post on Cedars-Sinai’s website that Sona “stepping up like this is a real testament to our very strong relationship.”

He added that when he first went to Cedars-Sinai in 2016 he wasn’t told about the possibility of an ABO incompatible transplant.

“My understanding was that you had to find a donor with the same blood type as your own,” he said. “I’m A positive and Sona is B. So when we found out that that was an option, we went back to Cedars and we both had to go through an intensive screening process. There was a lot to it. It took a long time, about 10 months before we were finally cleared for the procedure.”

Now the Paparians are spreading the word about the procedure, which Cedars-Sinai began performing in 2005, according to a hospital blog. Only about 200 have taken place since then, and success rates are “in line with lower-risk compatible kidney transplants,” according to Dr. Stanley Jordan, medical director of Cedars-Sinai’s Kidney Transplant Program. Jordan “led the development of a process that greatly reduces the risk of the body rejecting a new kidney,” a process that “has been instrumental in the success of ABO incompatible transplants,” according to the blog.

Paparian told Cedars-Sinai that he initially resisted going on dialysis, and instead went on a “strict renal diet and even sought stem cell therapy in Florida. In October, however, he nearly collapsed while attending an event, and his doctor at Huntington Hospital told him he needed to begin dialysis.

Paparian served on the Pasadena City Council from 1987 (when it was known as the Board of City Directors) to 1999, including a term as mayor from 1995 to 1997. While serving as mayor, he visited Cuba and called for an end to the US. trade embargo against the communist-led island nation. In 2006, he ran for Congress on the Green Party ticket against Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, receiving 5.5 percent of the votes cast, or about 6,800 votes.

Bill and Sona met in 1981. Sona’s brother introduced them while she was visiting the United States from her hometown of Aleppo, Syria. According to the Cedars-Sinai blog, Bill and Sona “stayed up all night talking, causing Sona to miss her flight the next day back to Syria. Within two weeks, before Sona got on another flight home, Bill proposed to her, and they were married the next year on Valentine’s Day.”

On Sept. 18, President Trump named Ambassador Robert C. O’Brien, a Pasadena resident, as his fourth National Security Advisor. Trump made the announcement on Twitter while visiting Los Angeles.

“I am pleased to announce that I will name Robert C. O’Brien, currently serving as the very successful Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the State Department, as our new National Security Advisor,” Trump tweeted. “I have worked long & hard with Robert. He will do a great job!”

O’Brien enters an administration mired in chaos as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry against the president on Sept. 24. In August, a whistleblower in the intelligence community filed a complaint against the president for allegedly pressuring incoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Trump’s potential political rival in the 2020 election, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and allegedly threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine if they didn’t comply with Trump’s request.

The move to hire O’Brien came shortly after the departure of Trump’s previous National Security Advisor, Ambassador John Bolton. Trump said he fired Bolton, while Bolton insisted that he offered to resign first. The two disagreed about a number of foreign policy issues, including Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. O’Brien has similar ideological views as Bolton, though he is much less confrontational and is well-liked by those who know him.

As Trump’s hostage negotiator, O’Brien led the US government’s diplomatic efforts to secure the release of Americans held hostage worldwide while liaising with their families in the United States. A conservative Republican, he has served in both Democratic and Republican administrations in State Department positions and as a representative to the UN General Assembly under Bolton. He was also a major in the US Army Reserve.

O’Brien is the co-founding partner of Larson O’Brien LLP in Los Angeles, a litigation firm that focuses on international arbitration. Before moving to Pasadena, O’Brien lived for many years in La Cañada Flintridge. He had two sons, one of whom tragically drowned in 2015. O’Brien converted from Catholicism to Mormonism in his 20s, and is the author of the 2016 book, “While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis.” He has long argued for expanding the U.S. military, particularly the Navy.

In 2016, O’Brien laid out what he thought the incoming 45th president’s foreign policy priorities and national security agenda should be in an article for the Pacific Council on International Policy, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan organization in Los Angeles dedicated to foreign affairs. He argued that the new president “must commit to a national security policy of ‘peace through strength,’ reassert American leadership, and rebuild our alliances.” He has been a member of the Pacific Council since 2007.

While he was not a “Never Trump” Republican, O’Brien also wasn’t a full-fledged Trump supporter from the beginning. During the 2016 Republican primary season, O’Brien served as foreign policy adviser to the failed presidential bids of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and then Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. O’Brien also served as a senior adviser to then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, and considers himself a traditional Reagan Republican who warns against isolationism.

“Ambassador Robert O’Brien has been a valued member of the Pacific Council for over a decade,” said Dr. Jerrold Green, president and CEO of the Pacific Council. “His long career of public service, as well as recent successes as Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the US Department of State, have been characterized by great integrity, commitment, effectiveness and success and the country is lucky to have Robert as its new National Security Advisor.”

The state Legislature passed a bill last week that brings nonprofit tenants of Caltrans-owned properties such as Arlington Garden one step closer to purchasing their properties from the state transportation agency.

Recently named Nonprofit of the Year by state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena, Arlington Garden, Pasadena’s only dedicated regenerative Mediterranean Chaparral climate garden, is holding its annual fundraiser on Sept. 29.

“Instead of a freeway, we built a garden,” said Michelle Matthews, executive director of Arlington Garden. “In that same vein, in addition to purchasing the garden property, we hope to purchase one of the Caltrans homes and turn it into an urban design and ecology library and nonprofit co-working space. That way, we don’t have to build structures that impact the garden and we get to continue our same successful gardening principles, to help everyone understand the value of regenerative landscaping.”

If signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Senate Bill 7, introduced by Portantino, a former La Cañada Flintridge mayor and council member, also effectively kills the 710 North freeway tunnel as a replacement for an overland connector by removing the planned extension between the 710 and 210 freeways — something that’s been on the books since the 1940s — from the state highway code as of Jan. 1, 2024. SB 7 also includes housing provisions such as a rent hike freeze and an extended deadline for Caltrans tenants in its Affordable Rent Program.

A second bill, Assembly Bill 29, introduced by Democrat Assembly member Chris Holden, a former Pasadena mayor and council member, contains language identical to SB 7 regarding the tunnel, minus the additional housing provisions. If Newsom decides not to support the housing provisions in SB 7, signing AB 29 will still effectively kill the tunnel plan. He has until Oct. 13 to sign the bills. Whichever bill he signs last becomes law.

‘The Final Nail’

For decades, Caltrans has tried to connect the 710 and 210 freeways first by acquiring more than 460 properties in the 710 Corridor — which includes portions of West Pasadena, South Pasadena and the Los Angeles neighborhood of El Sereno — with the intention of razing them to build a surface freeway, and then, when that was defeated, by exploring ways to build a tunnel through portions of West Pasadena to connect the two freeways.

Due to environmental, health and cost concerns, along with local opposition from the cities that would have been most impacted by the project, Caltrans capitulated to political pressure and decided not to move forward with the tunnel project, according to an environmental impact report released by the state agency on Nov. 28.

The department instead chose to pursue transit improvements, increased bus use, traffic signal optimization, intersection improvements and other projects. Cities in the region, including

Pasadena, have been allocated hundreds of millions of dollars from Measure R funds for those and related projects.

“Generations who have been fighting this freeway can rest in peace knowing that they made this day happen and that the freeway will never get completed,” Portantino said in a statement. “Many people worked collaboratively to get us to this place, giving moral support for those of us in office and providing the runway to let this 60-year-old plane land.”

Claire Bogaard, a long-time anti-710 activist and member of the No 710 Action Committee, said she was “extremely grateful to our senator for putting the final nail in the 710 tunnel’s coffin. He has been by our side for two decades. When SB 7 is signed we can all finally sigh in relief.”

However, Caltrans successfully negotiated the removal of language from the original bill that would have compelled the state agency to immediately relinquish control of the freeway “stubs” — areas where the existing freeways end — to the cities of Pasadena and Alhambra. Caltrans now retains control of the stub lands until 2024, which worries some anti-710 activists.

“I’ve long suspected Caltrans is not an honest broker,” William Sherman, a member of South Pasadena’s Freeway and Transportation Commission, told the South Pasadenan newspaper. “This gives them four years to do something. I don’t know what, but I suspect the tunnel is not dead. Caltrans has been strongly opposed to giving back the stubs to the cities and they have said so on multiple occasions. It’s not a shocker but I expected more from our state legislators.”

SB 7 authorizes the California Transportation Commission to relinquish the north stub area near California Boulevard to the city of Pasadena “upon terms and conditions the commission finds to be in the best interests of the state, if the department and the city enter into an agreement providing for that relinquishment,” the bill states. “The city of Pasadena shall ensure the continuity of traffic flow on the relinquished portion of Route 710.”

For several years, a group of Pasadena residents have been working on the Connecting Pasadena Plan, developing a vision for what the stub land could look like if the city of Pasadena were to acquire it. That could include reconnecting east-west streets that were divided by the freeway and building new green space or parkland, a boulevard and new retail, office and residential development.

Garden Party

SB 7 also makes permanent a rent hike freeze for tenants who reside in Caltrans properties in the 710 Corridor and are in the Affordable Rent Program. It also gets rid of the so-called “2012 policy,” an arbitrary rule Caltrans used to prevent tenants who moved in after August 2012 from being eligible for the Affordable Rent Program. The new eligibility deadline is July 1, 2019.

The bill also helps the nonprofit tenants in the 710 Corridor purchase their properties in a fiscally prudent manner,” including Arlington Garden, Ronald McDonald House, Sequoyah School and others. In late 2016, Caltrans announced it would sell the 710 properties in three phases, but so far has only sold a handful. Caltrans has not released a timeline for when the hundreds of remaining properties will be sold. More than 160 houses — including about 50 percent of the houses that Caltrans owns in Pasadena — are vacant and falling into disrepair, according to an investigation by the Pasadena Star-News. Caltrans does not rent out houses again after they become vacant.

Arlington Garden will hold its annual fundraiser, Autumn in the Garden, from 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29. During the event, the garden’s newly completed custom Batchelder tile fountain, designed by local artist Cha-Rie Tang, will be dedicated to the founders of the community-built, climate-appropriate garden, Charles McKenney, who died in 2015, and Betty McKenney, who died last year. Charles McKenney served as a member of the Pasadena Board of City Directors, now called the City Council, from 1972 to 1978.

Tickets are $45 and $65. There will also be a special VIP reception from 3 to 4 p.m. Tickets for that event are $150.

Autumn in the Garden will be “an immersive, sensory experience with music curated by dublab, a listener supported, nonprofit radio station dedicated to the growth of music, arts and culture,” according to a press release from Arlington Garden. There will also be other live music performances.

Matthews said Arlington Garden and the other nonprofit tenants are excited to move forward now that the 710 tunnel is officially dead.

“With the passing of SB 7, Sen. Portantino is helping to ensure that our nonprofits, which provide so many public benefits, can afford the properties that we have made improvements on and have long sought to own,” said Matthews.

For more information about Arlington Garden, visit arlingtongardenpasadena.org.

Monday, Aug. 26, Women’s Equality Day, marks the 99th anniversary of ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote. 

In commemoration, two floats in the 2020 Rose Parade will celebrate the 100th anniversary and the history of the women’s suffrage movement: one produced by the city of South Pasadena, the other by a diverse group of Pasadena women and the National Women’s History Alliance, under the auspices of a nonprofit called Pasadena Celebrates 2020.

The theme of Pasadena Celebrates 2020’s float is “Years of Hope, Years of Courage,” with the tagline, “Upon Their Shoulders, We Won the Vote. Upon Our Shoulders, We Protect the Vote. We Celebrate and Build for the Future.” The theme of South Pasadena’s float is “Victory at Last.”

The theme of the 2020 Rose Parade is “The Power of Hope.” This year’s Tournament of Roses president, Laura Farber, is the third woman — and first Latina — to preside over the parade in its 131-year history.

Between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Sunday and Monday, California Pizza Kitchen restaurants in Pasadena, Santa Anita, Glendale, Burbank and Studio City will donate 20 percent of their proceeds toward building the Pasadena Celebrates 2020 float.

“There are still people who have trouble with the vote,” observed Martha Wheelock, who serves on Pasadena Celebrates 2020’s executive committee. “It’s keeping it both historical and how we feel we’re guardians of it. It’s not history; it’s still going on.”

'Unbossed and unbought'

The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment will be August 2020, but Ellen Snortland — long-time Pasadena Weekly columnist, self-defense advocate, sexual assault survivor, author, playwright and filmmaker — wants to educate people ahead of time. That’s why, in addition to helping the Pasadena Celebrates 2020 float committee, she has curated an exhibit on the women’s suffrage movement in the north lobby of the Pasadena Central Library.

Martha Wheelock and Ellen Snortland

“1920 is the year we actually won the vote,” said Snortland. “People say, ‘Oh, they were given the vote.’ No, we weren’t given shit — yeah, we were given a lot of shit. It’s a big deal that women won the vote without having to kill anybody. Gandhi got his ideas of nonviolent social change from watching the women in the UK and the United States, and hardly anybody knows that. He saw them picketing and chaining themselves to the White House fence. They were just not putting up with the hypocrisy. President [Woodrow] Wilson was fighting a war to promote democracy in Europe and half of his population couldn’t vote.”

Her exhibit runs through Aug. 31 and features her personal collection, decades in the making, of dresses, books, photos, pamphlets, political cartoons, campaign buttons and other artifacts highlighting the major players and moments of the movement in the United States, as well as the UK suffragettes. Wheelock also donated some of her memorabilia with a focus on California. The exhibit will return to the library in December and March.

The exhibit pays tribute to several women and men who played key roles in the fight for women’s suffrage. For instance, one shelf displays a pair of ruby slippers, a nod to L. Frank Baum, who wrote the original “Wizard of Oz” series.

“I have been studying this long enough that I get connections that a lot of people aren’t aware of,” said Snortland. “For instance, this woman, Matilda Joslyn Gage, was one of the most radical of the radicals, and that’s why you’ve never heard of her. She said it’s the patriarchal religions that have the feet on our necks, and that was just not going to fly in her time. However, she influenced her son-in-law, L. Frank Baum, to be not only someone who was interested in having a female protagonist, Dorothy, but to be a suffragist himself who promoted women’s rights and equal rights big time. Perhaps, if it hadn’t been for Matilda Joslyn Gage, we would not have had Dorothy.”

The exhibit also pays homage to famous first political campaigns, including Victoria Woodhull, Shirley Chisholm and Hillary Clinton.

“Woodhull was completely notorious and a brilliant woman,” said Snortland. “She ran on a ticket with Frederick Douglass,” an escaped slave who became a social reformer, abolitionist, orator, statesman and writer who penned numerous autobiographies. “Of course, they didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning that, but she ran and she was important. And we have Shirley Chisholm, who was a serious contender,” Snortland said of Chisolm, the first black woman elected to Congress, who served New York from 1969 to 1983. Her signature campaign slogan was “Unbossed and unbought.” Last year, the Washington Post wrote that her “feminist mantra is still relevant 50 years later.”

'Where are the women?'

Snortland’s exhibit features the women who are considered the mothers of the US suffrage movement, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as lesser known but equally important figures, including women of color such as Sojourner Truth.

“The African-American women were thrown under the bus by not only white women but by Frederick Douglass, who was caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Snortland. “He had to make a devil’s decision, which was, ‘Do I get behind the vote for black men, or do I wait for universal suffrage?’ And he decided he needed to get behind black men, but that threw all these African-American women under the wagon, so to speak. And the white women did that, too, because the best way to control people is to have them fight each other and then the dominant class doesn’t have to deal with it.”

An important part of the exhibit features Native American women, who promulgated and practiced democracy and provided early lessons in gender equality.

“Ben Franklin and the early suffragists got their ideas about gender equality from the Haudenosaunee, commonly known as the Iroquois Confederation,” said Snortland. “They are the longest standing practicing democracy on the planet. Ben Franklin invited two leaders from the Haudenosaunee to visit Philadelphia during the Constitutional Convention. They walked in and said, ‘Where are the women? You can’t create a society without women.’ They thought they were nuts.”

The exhibit also features Pasadena resident, suffragist and author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She wrote the semi-autobiographical short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis, as well as the novel Herland, considered to be the first science fiction book, about a society composed entirely of women who reproduce through parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). She also wrote a book way ahead of its time called Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, which inspired women to start their own businesses.

The exhibit also focuses on the substantial anti-suffrage movement, which Snortland categorized as the foremothers of the ultraconservative Eagle Forum, which was founded by anti-feminist firebrand Phyllis Schlafly in 1972.

“They were determined to keep traditional womanhood and rigid gender roles in place,” said Snortland. “They basically believed the extent of a woman’s life should be to get married and have kids. They were promulgating the idea that if women voted, their ovaries would dry up, and a lot of the women who already had eight children said, ‘Great idea! Sounds good to me.’

Piecemeal struggles and hatchetations

Snortland’s exhibit is one of many exhibits, conferences, parades and other events across the country telling different aspects of the movement’s story, including three major exhibits at the Library of Congress, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Archive Museum in the nation’s capital, all curated by women.

The exhibits, including Snortland’s, bring forward lesser known elements of the story, such as the fact that the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade was the first peaceful march on Washington. And that the temperance movement was led by women such as Carrie Nation who went into saloons and used a hatchet to break bottles and chop up bars in acts she called her “hatchetations.”

It also shows how ratification of the 19th Amendment came down to one vote in the Tennessee Legislature, the last state to seal the deal. Assembly member Harry T. Burn, who wore a red rose to represent his opposition to women’s suffrage, cast the deciding vote in favor of the 19th Amendment when, at the last minute of roll call, someone brought him an envelope. He opened it, read it, put it in his pocket and changed to a yellow rose, signifying his newfound support of women’s suffrage.

“It was a letter from his mother saying, ‘Please, let your mother vote,’” said Snortland. “By one vote, we were ratified. Unbelievable. But that’s the existential question, isn’t it: how do you win the vote if you can’t vote for yourself?”

Dr. Robyn Muncy, a historian at the University of Maryland and one of the curators of the National Archives exhibit, told The New York Times that the ratification of the 19th Amendment was not the final “triumphant culmination” of the movement, “but one landmark in a struggle for equal rights for all citizens that isn’t over yet.”

“It’s important to remember how piecemeal a struggle it was,” Muncy said. “Seeing change as coming in one fell swoop undermines us as citizens and gives us a false idea about the way change happens.”

Learn more at pasadenacelebrates2020.org, sptor.org, ellensnortland.blog and snortland.com.