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Child Care Preschool | Early Steps Bilingual Preschool

Announcement

SPACE AVAILABILITY AT ESBP – ARLINGTON

We will resume in person tours from 9:00 am – 11:00 am for the 2022-2023 school year. We also offer virtual tours at the same time. Please send us an email to set up a tour. For the 2022-2023 school year, we have availability in the following programs:

• 2 years old: 2 spots
• 2.5 years old: 1 spot
• 3 years old: 1 spot
• Pre-K: 1 spot
• Kindergarten: 2 spots

We are currently accepting applications for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.

SPACE AVAILABILITY AT ESBP – Georgetown

We are now accepting applications for this coming 2022-2023 school year. Starting September 2022, the Space Availability is:

• Infants – waitlist only
• Toddlers – 2 spaces
• Preschool Two-year-old and Three-year-old’s – waitlist only

Currently, there are 2 spaces available in the Toddler classroom for this winter.

We will be posting more availability once the pre-registration is completed by April 2022 for currently enrolled families.

Please give us a call to reserve a tour of our lovely center in Georgetown!

SPACE AVAILABILITY AT ESBP – VIENNA

We are now accepting applications for this coming 2022-2023 school year. Starting September 2022, the Space Availability is:

• Preschool Two-year-old’s- 2 spaces
• Preschool Three-year-old’s– 4 spaces
• Prekindergarten Four-year-old’s – 2 spaces
• Advanced Pre-K / Private Kindergarten – 2 spaces

Summer Camp 2022 has started! We are offering SAC programming to help our community in Fairfax Public Schools!

• For school-age children, ages 5 to 7 years old, and grades K-2, we still have 4 spaces available.

Please give us a call to reserve a time slot for an ‘in-person’ tour of our lovely campus in Vienna!

OPENINGS AT ESBP – SPRINGFIELD

We are now accepting applications for this coming 2022-2023 school year. Starting September 2022, our Space Availability has grown to:

• Preschool Two-year old’s- 10 spaces
• Preschool Three-year old’s– 12 spaces
• Prekindergarten Four-year old’s – 12 spaces
• Advanced Pre-K / Private Kindergarten – 12 spaces

This Summer 2022, we will be offering SAC programming to help our community in Fairfax Public Schools!

• For school-age children, ages 5 to 7 years old, andgrades K-2, we have eight spaces available.

Currently, there are only 8 spaces available in the Preschool 2’s, 3’s, and Pre-Kindergarten for this winter. Private Kindergarten has a closed enrollment until graduation.

We will be posting more availability once the pre-registration is completed by April 2022 for currently enrolled families.

Please give us a call to reserve an in-person tour of our lovely center in Springfield!

Welcome to Early Steps Bilingual Preschool

We are happy to welcome you and your child to Early Steps Bilingual Preschool!

The goal of our early childhood program is to enrich the minds of your children as they grow in a society that demands bilingual capabilities. Not only will we teach the fundamental building blocks of life, but also teach them in a different language. As a result, the children from our pre-school have a good head start for their future. All children are welcomed at Early Steps Bilingual Preschool one of the most respectable Child Care Centres in Virginia. The program does not discriminate on the basis of race, age, disabilities, sex, color, creed, or national origin.

Bienvenidos a Early Steps Bilingual Preschool!

El proyecto pre escolar de Desarrollo Integral Bilingüe toma en cuenta la educación del niño, niña de dos a cinco años de edad en su primera instancia depende fundamentalmente de sus padres, posteriormente y al ingresar al mundo social, es importante que tengan contacto con otros niños de su edad, el tiempo necesario para que su adaptación y desarrollo sean óptimos.

Esté proyecto busca apoyar el desarrollo y la educación de los niños y niñas en edad preescolar, poniendo en práctica un sistema educativo innovador, con metodología (bilingüe español –inglés). “Aprendamos Jugando”

El periodo de edad que se extiende desde los dos años hasta los cinco años es de gran plasticidad neurológica y psicológica, por lo tanto este proyecto busca favorecer aprendizajes de calidad para todas las niñas y niños en una etapa crucial del desarrollo humano como son los distintos ciclos de desarrollo. Si bien es cierto que el ser humano está en un proceso continuo de aprendizaje durante toda su existencia. Lo más profundo de este aprendizaje, que se extiende a lo largo de toda la vida, es que se da de manera integral. Esto significa que el lenguaje y la comunicación, la socio-afectividad, la cognición, la psicomotricidad y la creatividad, se desarrollan en los niños de forma integrada.

La educación inicial constituye a desarrollar el primer nivel educativo que colaborando con la familia, favorece en el niño/a aprendizaje oportuno y pertinente a sus características, necesidades e intereses, fortaleciendo sus potencialidades en función a un desarrollo pleno y armónico.

Objetivos Generales De la Educación Pre Escolar de Desarrollo Integral

El objetivo de nuestra enseñanza es lograr el desarrollo armónico de un ser más completo y dinámico, creciendo en un ambiente grato y apto para él, sintiéndose absolutamente respetado en su individualidad. Basado en los principios de autonomía, actividad y libertad. Favoreciendo el desarrollo de sus capacidades y habilidades individuales en todas las áreas:

Psicomotriz, lenguaje, comunicación cognitiva, emocional-social, socio-afectivo emocional y creatividad.
También integra el idioma español –inglés a los niños de dos a cinco años y la familiarización con la nueva tecnología, de lenguaje y comunicación.

Springfield Virginia Daycare Listings

90,000 chapter 1. Paradise

George Pendl

Strange angel Jack Parsons

Chapter 1

Paradise

9000

Unimaginable paradox: to believe in the illusion, it must be seen. –

Ray Bradbury, “Los Angeles is the best place in America” ​​

In December 1913, Ruth and Marvel Parsons left the ice and snow of the East, hoping to find a new future. Woodrow Wilson was recently named the 28th President, and while Europe contemplated growing tension in the Balkans, many Americans turned their backs on the Old World and looked in the direction of the lukewarm promises of their so dear West.

Even from the time gold was found in California in 1848, thousands upon thousands of people flocked to the Pacific Coast, flooding the state, which by now already had a population of about 18,000. The alchemical wave of the gold rush brought not only seekers, but also accompanying them – sheriffs, cheaters, and ministers – the last who were intent on transforming the hordes free from the laws and moral codes of the East. It wasn’t an easy task. California, declared one Methodist minister, was “the most difficult country to reform criminals”; indeed, “to move a man to look through a mass of gold into eternity” was almost impossible.

By 1913, most of the gold had disappeared, but the transformative effect of the fever persisted. The promise of a golden life was now the prize. Agriculture surpassed mining as the state’s largest industry, and California was turned into America’s Garden, establishing a reputation for itself as a land of orange groves, vineyards, flowers, and sunshine. The health rush had surpassed the gold rush, as the doctors who regularly recommended climate change, along with long lists of do’s and don’ts, now offered California as the best cure. The State will always keep in touch with the most impressive American myth – the myth of the pursuit of happiness.

A young couple now traveling by rail through a freezing winter only got married the previous year in the bride’s hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts. Ruth Virginia Whiteside, the only child of Walt Hunter Whiteside and Carrie Virginia Kendell Whiteside, was aged 22 when she married. Adored by her parents, she lived a peaceful life under their patronage, growing up in a wealthy business family in Chicago. Her father was hugely successful as president of the pharmaceutical company Ellis Chalmers before taking over the reins of the Stevens-Duriaja Automotive Corporation of Springfield. There, Ruth met Marvel H. Parsons, all males, two years her senior, who loved great travels, and whose family founded the city of Springfield in the early 17th century. His unusual name came from his mother, Eddie M. Marvel, but he was known to everyone by the less awkward name “Ted” or “Teddy”. Marriage seemed like a good union, a union of the happy destinies of the middle class. Marvel’s father was a real civilian developer who co-built the Colony Hills area just outside of Springfield. He was also president of the Eastern States Refrigeration Company, which owned large stores spread throughout the Grand Junction Wars in Boston. For all its financial raison d’être, the union between Ruth and Marvel did not go well.

Less than a year after their marriage, Ruth gave birth to their first child. He was without signs of life. The young couple were mentally devastated, especially Ruth. With her fragile health and their home in Springfield soured by tragedy, their move from the East seemed like the best solution. The choice of direction did not take long. Nowhere has the surrounding area been more auspicious, the opportunities more abundant, and the fans more obsessed than in Los Angeles, the ecstatically beating heart of the Sunshine Land.

This was not always the case. Founded as a Mexican colony in 1781, Los Angeles was an inactive village for about a century. By 1850, the city had a little over 8,000 inhabitants and was known as the “Queen of Cow County” based on its role as a trading center for the Southern California cattle industry. Under the influence of the American occupation, it was transformed from a bedroom community into a strong frontier town. A colorful assortment of “cowboys, gamblers, bandits and the desperate”, attracted by both the cattle and the opportunity for gold, was a guarantee that a murder was committed every day of the year. The Reverend James Woods, an itinerant missionary, was shocked at the lawlessness, alcoholism, and low-mindedness of the people he saw. “The name of this city in Spanish means City of Angels,” he wrote in his diary, “but with more truthfulness, in the present it can be called the City of Demons.”

But in the decades that followed, unprecedented floods and droughts shook the livestock industry. With the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad and the rise of the community from a “city of cows” to an agricultural center, more and more wealthy immigrants began to arrive. By the end of the 19th century, the hell that Reverend Woods saw was transformed into its exact opposite.

“We have a tradition,” wrote one California journalist, “which really indicates the proximity of Los Angeles, the City of Angels, to the territory of the original Paradise, where the tombs of Adam and Eve, the father and mother of mankind, were found, and (with some share inaccuracies and doubts, since the question of his death is debatable) also the snake.

Boosterism on a biblical scale became a common force and reinforced what the gold and health rush had already proven: there was a place to redeem oneself, return to the Garden before the Fall, cut all ties to the past, and hopefully create a wonderful new beginning.

In 1910, Los Angeles had 319,198 inhabitants, a sixfold increase from twenty years earlier. But growth was to be slowed down by what was to follow. When Ruth and Marvel arrived three years later, William Mulholland, the city’s chief engineer, had just opened the desert city’s first aqueduct. As the water coursed over him, assuring the city’s urban destiny, Mulholland spoke as if there was an assimilated divinity in his scheme. “Here she is,” he proclaimed, “take her.” And people did it. More and more people have been taking it every year. The California Dream was the belief that Fantasy could be turned into Reality, the dream that the people, as well as the resources of California itself, could be activated and transformed from fruitless disappointments to fertile success. Los Angeles has now become a sprawling, vibrant city spread over 62 square miles and rapidly integrating nearby areas, most notably Hollywood, which was already beginning to attract film companies, with its climate suitable for year-round filmmaking. Along with real estate, automobiles and shipping, cinema soon became one of the city’s largest industries. The architecture of Los Angeles was a mosaic of styles, combining design elements from the early Spanish mission days with the American Midwest ranch houses. Garden bungalows have become the preferred form of building homes, and the automobile has quickly become a key component of city life, as ubiquitous as street electric vehicles.

The Parsons settled at 2375 Sharf Street, south of downtown Los Angeles. The generosity of their respected families helped pay for the couple’s westward journey, but now they have to fend for themselves. Marvel found himself a modest job with the English Automobile Company in the Great South, selling automotive equipment to an increasing number of car owners. The new metropolis delighted him. In the words of California critic Carrie Mac Williams, Los Angeles was not so much an urban landscape as “a great circus without a tent.” Residents came not only from the US, but from China, Japan, the Philippines, India, and Mexico, supplying much of the farm workforce, and bringing with them many of their customs and religions.

Street uniforms ranged from straw hats to fur coats. Electric signs glittered everywhere: “clairvoyants, palmists, Indian swindlers, crazy cults, fake healers, Chinese doctors” all promoted their craft. In 1906 over 50% of the population of Los Angeles may have been Protestant, reflecting the number of settlers from the Midwestern states, but an entirely new breed of radical metaphysical religions such as Christian Science, New Thought, and Theosophy began to take root along with mainstream beliefs. Confucianism, aided by Chinese immigrants, began to seep its way into the preaching of some of the most liberal Protestant churches. Spiritualism found supporters for its worldview of mystical development and séances, especially in the Hollywood movie community where something crazy was going on right now. Utopian communes of alternative spirituality also sprouted outside the city, most notably the short-lived Socialist Society of Yano del Río, which at its peak included more than 1,000 self-sufficient men, women, and children inhabiting a 10,000-acre rural area.

Despite the large number of religious groups, and the fact that the Anti-Salon League of California was virtually holding back every drinking community, in Los Angeles, by 1910, organized immorality was common, and many of the police forces took bribes, foreshadowing the corruption that become another hallmark of the city. The brothels could often be on the same street as the churches, and although the evangelists did their best to give the appearance of a paragon of morality over the city’s immoral tendencies, they instead imbued it with a quality of schizophrenia.

The Parsons decided to celebrate their arrival in the city by trying to conceive a new child, and this time everything was supposed to go without shock. Almost 10 months after his parents set foot in Los Angeles, Marvel Whiteside Parsons was born at the Good Samaritan Hospital on October 2, 1914. Just as his father always went by the nickname Ted or Teddy, so the new family member was spared his unusual name; his parents called him Jack.

The new family moved into a larger house at 2401 Romeo Street, just outside the long line of Wilshire Boulevard that ran northwest of the city center. But rather than strengthen the marriage, the appearance of little Jack heralded its end. Los Angeles lacked many of the social constraints of sedate Massachusetts, and Marvel Parsons followed the city’s immorality recklessly and impulsively. In the months before Jack’s birth and in the weeks after, he made frequent visits to a prostitute. Whether he was caught in the act, or whether he admitted he was wrong in a fit of remorse, we can only speculate; the surviving letters do not speak of this. However, by January 1915, two and a half years after their marriage, Ruth forced Marvel to get out of his house on Rue Romeo, which had a bad reputation.

It was a bitter split. Marvel Parsons continued to live and work in Los Angeles, writing long, dramatic letters to Ruth begging for her forgiveness. He wanted to return to the house, but was afraid “of being shot or scaring her to death”. His letters inspired Ruth with the insane rage she felt at the time. By losing her first child, leaving her hometown, and giving life to her son, she was rewarded with Marvel’s infidelity. If up to this point Ruth had been a modest and fragile New Englander, her husband’s infidelity demonstrated how ferocious she could be.

Marvel desperately tried to calm Ruth’s anger by convincing her that his act meant nothing. “Ruth, I may be very rude, but I think you are very stupid, having thoughts that you have about another woman … You think I like this type of women … Love … – you are crazy if you think that I love her or anyone else besides you. Haven’t you learned that it’s anything but love, let alone weakness, when a man stays with a prostitute.

He also tried to convince Ruth that she was wrong by trying to impress her that they lived in a new, less strict age. “Honestly, Ruth, I think I was raised the way the average boy is raised, while you were raised as the only woman in a thousand. Your ideals and standards do not match the modern world. They are beautiful, they may one day be true to the world, but not in our generation.” But Ruth could not be appeased, she must have ignored Marvel’s arguments: not a single letter from her, while he hinted that he was meeting stony silence, even when he begged her to be able to see “Little Jack”.

By March 1915, Ruth began the process of divorce. Judging attitudes towards divorce have diminished somewhat since the strict and dogmatic Victorian era, and Los Angeles in particular had one of the highest divorce rates in the country, with one in six marriages ending in court. Marvel, finally realizing that he had no chance of getting Ruth back, meekly asked her not to name adultery as a reason. Ruth ignored, and at the end of the divorce, cut off all contact. Publicly declared a traitor, and unable to see his child, Marvel chose to return home to Massachusetts. Before, he went south for the benefit of his wife. Now she didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He continued to write to her sporadically. “Do you think it’s fair enough,” he writes in one of his letters, “not to write to me at least once, how is our boy?” Again there was no answer. “It’s pretty hard to sit here,” he says, defeated, “and think that my own son hasn’t even been taught to say ‘dad’.”

Indeed, Jack would never truly recognize his father, and Ruth Parsons made sure that no reference was ever made to his first name, Marvel. Her son was to be listed as “John Whiteside Parsons” on all official documents.

We can guess the depth of Parsons’ reaction to this loss because he later wrote about it, an act he rarely performed. His father’s absence was a central theme in a brief autobiography he wrote during a time of extreme emotional despair in his 30s and 35s. The manuscript, written in the second person (“Your father is separated from your mother so that you can grow up hating authority figures”) is part psychoanalytic autobiography, part re-creation of your life with the creation of a myth about yourself. It is because of this that he becomes painfully frank and embarrassingly indifferent, and claims that his childhood relationship with his mother became especially close to compensate for the loss of his father. Indeed, the search for a father figure would occupy Parsons throughout his life.

However, his mother was not the only influence in his early years. Shortly after the news of their son-in-law’s infidelity and their daughter’s adamant that there would be no reconciliation, Walter and Carrie Whiteside decided that since they were approaching retirement age and also very rich, they would go west to live with their only daughter and grandson. The house on Romeo Street was abandoned, and the Whitesides bought a house in the suburbs of Los Angeles, which increasingly attracted the richest and most sophisticated members of society to his sacred land – Pasadena.

After the bitterly cold winter of 1872, Dr. Thomas Eliot in Indianapolis decided that he and his friends had suffered long enough in the inhospitable Midwest climate. To escape the colds, coughs, and colds that plagued their families for so long, and to arrive “where life is easy,” he created the California Indiana Colony. Explorers were sent to find suitable land, and within a few months they found it – 4,000 acres of “the finest part of California” on the western elevation of the San Gabriel Valley. The plot of land was well located. Sheltered by the mile-high San Gabriel Mountains, it enjoyed constant sunshine, was filled with an abundance of colorful local flora, and was conveniently located just 10 miles from the growing urban center of Los Angeles. Soon this territory was subdivided; cottages were built and orange groves were planted. By 1875, the Indiana colony had received a postal office and was named by them Pasadena (the Chippe name for “valley”), and ten years later Pasadena was connected by rail to Los Angeles and Chicago. “Pullman emigrants” came to the city, many coming like actual colonists, to avoid chronic ailments like tuberculosis, for which Pasadena’s dry air was known as a cure. Within 10 years it became the first resort town in the country.

Mount Lowe and Mount Wilson together dominated the city to the north. Those who have climbed their pine-covered peaks and looked back at the lands below have been fascinated by the panorama. Pasadena looked like a sea of ​​green trees, among which the spiers of numerous white churches protruded upward. Huge hotels could be seen nestled among orange groves, enchanting wealthy tourists from the East and Midwest to prolong their visits and make them Pasadena residents.

“This is the land of noon,” wrote resident Charles Frederick Holder. – “People live in the open air and have, as an integral property, a love of flowers.” While the rest of the country froze, Pasadena gazed in admiration at its natural exuberance at the New Year’s Festival, better known as the Tournament of Roses. Since 1890 the city has been celebrated for its profusion of flowers in a true Arcadian social match. Races were held, games were organized, and chariots were harnessed. There were even knightly battles in which riders with spears tried to pierce three rings suspended at a 30-step distance. But the highlight of the day was a parade of flower-decorated carriages that moved through the streets of the city, driven by Pasadena’s most resplendent beauties, who scattered flowers as they went.

The city was quickly becoming a Mecca for visiting architects as new and unique Californian designs were erected. Henry and Charles Green created the Stonemasons style almost with the same hand, with large wooden bungalows they built for Pasadena clients. Inspired by the influences of Sweden and Japan, and using materials collected from the surrounding wilderness, they built homes that became a poetry of wood, texture and light, highlighting open sun porches, see-through roofs, stained-glass windows, low cornices, befitting the fantasy of any American who aspired to install the lifestyle of gilded frontiers.

But while the city’s inhabitants were basking in their pleasant languor of early dreams, the city also contained something of the intellectual energy and progressive spirit of its Midwestern Protestant origins. When an opera or symphony was played in Los Angeles, the Pacific Electric Railroad was filled with moving traffic to and from Pasadena. New schools and learning centers were constantly being built, and groups such as the Chautauqua Literary both the Science Circle and the Social Purity Club quickly filled their lives with lectures and dances. Astronomers began studying the skies from the Mount Wilson Observatory, built by astronomer George Ellery Hale; and the local technical college, Froop, slowly began to undergo its transformation into the California Institute of Technology. It wasn’t long before Pasadena became known as the “Western focal point for the Eastern Geniuses.”

By the turn of the new century, Pasadena had already been visited by two presidents and residents, such as Jason and Owen Brown, sons of a prominent abolitionist ( abolitionists ) John Brown, who confirmed the ethical seriousness of the city and its political leanings. When the third president, Theodore Roosevelt, visited in 1903, Pasadena’s importance was undeniable. The publisher of the Pasadena Daily News in 1907 spoke of the city as the epitome of all that is “beautiful, pure, cultural, moral, and aesthetic.” Such epithets were deserved not by chance. While a flood of emigrants has seen Los Angeles grow out of control, Pasadena has been adamant about its rejection of the unattractive byproducts of urban growth. The Pasadena Council of Commerce, led by many of the richest residents, strongly voted against the intervention of factories and corporations of large scale business. “We don’t ban factories,” said the haughty president of the board of directors, D.W. Coolidge, “but we emphasize our excellent location, climate, city development, churches and schools as factors that create the atmosphere of the most desirable place to live.” At 1906 only according to available estimates 10% of the population were classified as “workers and artisans”. By 1920, Pasadena had the highest per capita income of any city of its size in the country; and by 1930 the city, whose population was now over 76,000, could still claim domestic staff as its largest workforce.

Compared to conservative anti-Union rule, which was held in balance 10 miles from the city, in Los Angeles, Pasadena harbored numerous left wing thinkers. While the Los Angeles oligarchs were waging a pitched battle against labor to bring business to the West Coast, Pasadena, which had neither the desire nor the need for business, paradoxically proclaimed itself one of the most union-friendly municipalities. Open shop alliances often came into existence at the Tournament or Parade of Roses, and the American Civil Liberties Union was allowed to speak in Pasadena, despite fierce opposition from the strictly conservative American Legion and the Federation of America’s Better. Indeed, Pasadena will receive all his credentials when Upton Sinclair, the author of such woeful tales against big business as Jungle and Oil! , will come to the city (even with his extraordinary interest in the fact that the workers see him rejected by the higher echelons of power). Pasadena was luminous, ethical, aesthetic and rich. If people went to Los Angeles with their dreams in mind, they moved to Pasadena when their dreams had already been fulfilled. It was Paradise’s VIP space.

If Pasadena was the gem of Southern California, then the gem of Pasadena was Orange Grove Avenue. Unlike the grid system that had shaped the rest of the city, Orange Grove was positioned at a three-degree angle from true north to preserve some of the local relic oaks that now stood stubbornly in the middle of the road. By the time the Parsons family moved to Pasadena at 1916, about 52 millionaires inhabited the avenue, a mile and a half long. Among them is Lamon Vanderburgh Harkness of New York, one of the richest men in the world thanks to his Standard Oil Company, which was recently dissolved by a Supreme Court ruling. Arthur Fleming, a Canadian-born forestry magnate and philanthropist, lived in the first Arts and Crafts home built in Pasadena. Chicago chewing gum millionaire William J. Wrigley lived in the Italian Mansion at the very top of the avenue, while Dr. Adalbert Faines, the famed entomologist, lived in an Algerian-style house nearby. St. Louis beer millionaire Adolphus Bush created a giant stone mansion overlooking its marvelous gardens, and the mourning widow of slain President James A. Garfield also lived on Orange Grove Avenue. Behind ivy-covered walls, manicured hedgerows, and twenty-foot pillared gates were wide estates with swimming pools and tennis courts, roads lined with roses and flowering vines of eternal summer. Footmen and even carriages were sometimes visible in the street. And where did these great and beautiful meet each other? At the northernmost end of the avenue, where the Valley Hunt Club operated as an exclusive VIP area for Pasadena’s high society.

If any street was responsible for the cultural education of California in the minds of the New England Brahmans, then it was Orange Grove, for it would show an insistence even more than Episcopal East that it was not impressed with the pure and ear-sweet qualities of Orange Grove. Dreamy mood and energy, simplicity and sophistication, American nature and European art are sweetly mixed here everywhere. Avenue did so that even the palm trees looked with dignity. The year the Parsons arrived at Orange Grove was the year the Los Angeles Times called it “the finest residential street in the world.”

Not alone in his avoidance of ostentation, Walter Whiteside bought a giant Italianate villa at 537 Orange Grove Avenue so that his small multi-generational family could rival Pasadena’s most traditional dynasties. Away from the road, amid an acre and a half of pampered foliage, the house welcomed the visitor with a facade of pristine stucco, shaded windows and graceful arches. Inside the cool walls, a family of four shared some 20 rooms with their two English servants. And besides, the mansion was right next door to the Valley Hunt Club.

Jack Parsons spent most of his childhood surrounded by this wonderful wealth. His earliest memories were of an exotic palace that seemed to belong to him alone, with attentive servants responsive to his every need. As the only child in the household, he was taught strict rules and manners, and was treated as the undisputed heir of the Whiteside family, thanks to his loving grandfather. As for Ruth, the blue blood of Pasadena suited her far more than downtown Los Angeles, and she quickly entered the social whirlwind that occupied Pasadena’s elite – the Pasadena Music Concert Room and the Arts Association, lectures at the Twilight Club, theater at the Pasadena Playhouse, competitions. golf and tennis at the Valley Hunter’s Club, and maybe odd trips to polo fields a few miles out of town. One day, the world-famous opera singer, Madame Schumann Haik – better known in the popular press as “Haik”, was performing a private concert for the family, and little Jack was sitting on her voluptuous lap.

Parsons’ neighborhood was as fantastic as his home. The French Chateau, with slits and slots for artificial arrows, stood side by side with the domes and young rising moons of the Moorish palaces, while the wide bungalows in the style of craftsmanship and art conjured up pictures of the Orient, with their sloping beams and clear lines. South of the Parsons’ home lay the Bush Gardens, consisting of 30 acres of manicured lawns and exceptional flora. Plants from all over the world surrounded the neatly manicured lawns, and about 14 miles of winding paths made their way through these gardens, offering themselves to the attention of thousands of tourists a year (not counting the numerous Hollywood film companies). The miniature architecture and statues scattered all over the place, created specifically to delight young visitors, added a touch of magic.

Beneath the darkening pavilion was a small cottage straight out of Hansel and Grettel, a closer look at the fountain revealed a horde of tiny terracotta fairies. In such an idyllic setting, a small child could easily get lost in his fantasies that these stories were true, and that such creatures exist, and if not here, then where?

And if the pampered and irrigated natural landscapes of the Bush Gardens felt too exquisite, the real wilderness was right behind them. The Arroyo Seco (dry bed) cut deep into the landscape along the western edge of Pasadena. The borders of the old limit are still preserved here. The chaparral covered the slopes, and the sheer rocky edges provided a playground for young and old alike. The land of the valley was densely covered with sycamores and tangled thickets of wild grapes. Rabbits and deer could be chased among the spruces, oaks, and laurels, and city children made camps, blowguns, and launched rockets. A touch of surrealism has been added to the ostrich farm located at the southernmost edge of the valley. Part Huckleberry Finn’s playground, part Never Neverland, Pasadena provided the dreamy child’s imagination with the perfect landscape, with Orange Grove its most happily secluded center. It was not very surprising that Parsons had grown up unrestricted by the ties of reality. Throughout his life, nowhere did he feel more at home, or more at ease, than on this fantastic street.

David McGowan, Laurel CanyonChapter I: matveychev_oleg – LiveJournal

May 8, 2008

“Something is happening, but it’s not clear what. ” ¹

Join me if you have time as we take a stroll down the memory lane to an era almost four and a half decades ago – the time when America last had uniformed ground troops fighting a long and bloody war to impose on a sovereign state, hmmmm, “democracy”.

First week of August 1964. US warships under the command of US Navy Admiral George Stephen Morrison were allegedly attacked while patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam. This event, later called the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident”, will lead to the immediate adoption by the US Congress of the apparently pre-prepared Tonkin Resolution, which, in turn, will plunge America deep into the bloody Vietnam quagmire. Before it ends, more than fifty thousand American corpses, along with literally millions of Southeast Asians, will litter the battlefields of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

By the way, the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin seems to be somewhat different from other alleged provocations that have brought this country to war. It was not, as we have seen so many times before, a “dress-up” operation (that is, an operation in which Uncle Sam attacks himself and then points an accusatory finger at someone else). Nor was it, as we have seen many times before, a deliberately provoked attack. No, as it turns out, the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin was actually an “attack” that never took place. The whole incident, and it is almost officially admitted, was completely faked. (However, it is quite possible that , the purpose of was to provoke a retaliatory action, which could then be billed as an unprovoked attack on US ships. The ships in question were on a reconnaissance raid and acted in a clearly provocative manner. It’s possible that when the Vietnamese troops didn’t respond as expected, Uncle Sam decided to pretend they did.)

Nevertheless, in early February 1965, the United States, without declaring war and without good reason to wage war, will indiscriminately bomb North Vietnam. By March of that year, the infamous Operation Rolling Thunder would begin. Over the next three and a half years, millions of tons of bombs, shells, rockets, incendiaries and chemicals will be dropped on the Vietnamese people in what can only be described as one of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed on this planet.

Also in March 1965, the first uniformed American soldiers will officially set foot on Vietnamese soil (although special forces disguised as “advisers” and “instructors” have been there for at least four years, and probably much longer). By April 1965, 25,000 uniformed American boys, most of whom are teenagers just out of high school, will be plodding through the rice fields of Vietnam. By the end of the year, the number of American troops will grow to 200,000.

Lookout Mountain Avenue and Laurel Canyon Boulevard, google maps

Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of the world, in the city of Los Angeles in these first months of 1965, a new “scene” was just beginning to take shape. In the geographically and socially isolated community known as Laurel Canyon – a heavily wooded, rustic, tranquil but vaguely sinister part of Los Angeles nestled in the hills that separate the Los Angeles Basin from the San Fernando Valley – musicians, singers and the composers suddenly begin to gather, as if summoned there by some invisible Pied Piper. In a few months, the “hippie/flower children” movement will be born here, along with a new musical style that will provide the soundtrack to the tumultuous second half of the 1960s.

Laurel Canyon

An uncanny number of rock superstars will emerge from Laurel Canyon from the mid-1960s through the entire decade of the 1970s. The Byrds will be the first to release an album, whose brightest star will be David Crosby. The band’s debut effort,
‘s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, would be released on the 1965 summer solstice. It will quickly be followed by releases from the John Phillips-directed “Mamas and the Papas” (“If You Believe Your Eyes and Ears”, January 1966), “Love” with Arthur Lee (“Love”, May 1966), Frank Zappa and “The Mothers of Invention” (“Freak Out”, June 1966), “Buffalo Springfield” with Stephen Stills and Neil Young (“Buffalo Springfield, October 1966) and The Doors (January 1967).

An early pioneer on the Laurel Canyon/Sunset Strip scene, Jim will quickly become one of the most iconic, controversial, critically acclaimed and influential figures to settle in Laurel Canyon. However, oddly enough, the self-proclaimed “King of the Lizards” has another reason for being famous, but which none of his many chroniclers would consider particularly significant for his career and possibly untimely death: as it turned out, he is the son of the aforementioned Admiral George Stephen Morrison.

So, while the father is actively involved in a plot to fabricate an incident that will be used to escalate an illegal war, the son is positioning himself as an icon of the “hippie”/anti-war masses. I guess nothing out of the ordinary. You know, the world is small and all that. And it cannot be said that the story of Jim Morrison is in any way unique.

In the early years of its heyday, the main figure of Laurel Canyon is a rather extraordinary person known as Frank Zappa. Although he and the various line-ups of his “Mothers of Invention” group would never achieve the commercial success of the group led by the admiral’s son, Frank would be a very influential figure among his contemporaries. Nestled in a cabin dubbed the “Log Cabin” in the heart of Laurel Canyon at the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Avenue, Zappa would host just about every musician who crossed the canyon from mid to late 1960s. He will also seek out and sign numerous deals for his various Laurel Canyon-based record labels. Many of these deals will be quite bizarre and somewhat obscure (eg Captain Beefheart and Larry Fisher (nicknamed “The Savage”)), but some, such as psychedelic and shock rocker Alice Cooper, will become superstars.

Frank Zappa: pro-war, authoritarian and what else?

Zappa, along with some members of his sizable retinue (The Log Cabin was a semblance of an early community, with numerous hangers-on occupying various rooms in the main building and guest house, and in peculiar caves and tunnels that thread through the base of the house, far from the quaint homestead And by the way, the name seems to imply that the Log Cabin was a cavernous, five-level house that had a 190 sq. m living room with three massive chandeliers and a huge floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace.), will also play an important role in determining the appearance and mindset that would define an alternative “hippie” culture (although Zappa’s company favored the “Freak” label). However, Zappa (born, oddly enough, on the winter solstice 1940) has never hidden the fact that he has always despised the “hippie” culture he helped create and surround himself with.

Frank Zappa’s Log Cabin

Considering that Zappa was, by numerous accounts, a hardline authoritarian figure and supporter of the American war effort in Southeast Asia, it is perhaps not surprising that he felt no kinship with the youth movement he helped nurture. And it’s probably safe to say that Frank’s father also had little respect for youth culture.60s, given that Francis Zappa was, in case you were wondering, a chemical weapons specialist assigned to (where else?) Edgewood Arsenal. Of course, Edgewood is the longtime seat of the US chemical weapons program, and is also often cited as being deeply involved in the MK-ULTRA ² program. Curiously, Frank Zappa literally grew up in the Edgewood Arsenal, living the first seven years of his life in a military compound on the site. The family later moved to Lancaster, California, near Edwards Air Force Base, where Francis Zappa continued to do classified work for the military intelligence complex. His son, meanwhile, was grooming himself to be an icon for the crowds of peace and love. Again, I suppose this is not surprising.

By the way, Zappa’s manager is a shady character named Herb Cohen, who came to Los Angeles from the Bronx with his brother Mutt, just before the music and club scene started heating up. Cohen, a former Marine, spent several years traveling the world before arriving in Laurel Canyon. These travels, ironically, took him to the Congo in 1961, at the same time that leftist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was tortured and killed by our own CIA. Don’t worry though, according to one of Zappa’s biographers, Cohen was not in the Congo on any nefarious intelligence mission. No, he was there, believe it or not, to supply arms to Lumumba “to resist the CIA”. Because, you know, that’s exactly what traveling ex-Marines were doing in those days (as we’ll see pretty soon when we take a look at another Laurel Canyon star).

The other half of Laurel Canyon’s First Family is Frank’s wife, Gail Zappa, formerly known as Adelaide Slotman. Gail comes from a long line of career naval officers, including her father, who spent his entire life working on a secret atomic weapons project for the US Navy. Gail herself once worked as a secretary for the Office of Naval Research and Development (she also once said in an interview that she “heard voices all her life”). For many years, prior to their almost simultaneous arrival in Laurel Canyon, Gayle went to Naval Kindergarten with “Mr. Mojo Risin'” himself.0117 3 , Jim Morrison (Gail is said to have hit Jim over the head with a hammer once as a child). The same Jim Morrison later went to the same high school in Alexandria, Virginia, as did two other future Laurel Canyon celebrities, John Phillips and Cass Elliott.

“Daddy” John Phillips, probably more than any other famous Laurel Canyon dweller, will play a major role in spreading the nascent youth “counterculture” across America. His contribution will be twofold: firstly, he will become one of the organizers (along with companion Manson ⁴ Terry Melcher) of the famous Monterey Rock Festival, which, thanks to unprecedented media coverage, will give the rest of America the first real opportunity to hear the music and glimpse the style of the emerging “hippie” movement. Secondly, Phillips would compose a gaudy song known as
“San Francisco (don’t forget to put flowers in your hair)”
⁵ which would quickly rise to the top of the charts. Along with the Monterey Rock Festival, the song will play a major role in luring disillusioned people (the vast majority of underage runaways) to San Francisco to birth the Haight-Ashbury phenomenon.0117 6 and the famous “Summer of Love” in 1967.

Joni Mitchell performing in the backyard of Cass Elliot’s home in Laurel Canyon; David Crosby and Eric Clapton listening to it, 1968.

Before arriving in Laurel Canyon and opening the doors of their home to future celebrities, already celebrities and infamous (such as the aforementioned Charlie Manson, whose “Family” also spent time in the Log Cabin and in the house of “Mama” Cass Elliot in Laurel Canyon, which, in case you didn’t know, was right across the street from Abigail Folger and Wojtek Frykowski’s house, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves), John Edmund Andrew Phillips was (and rather surprisingly) another kid in the military. intelligence complex. The son of US Marine Corps Captain Claude Andrew Phillips and a mother who claimed to have psychic and telekinetic abilities, John attended a number of elite military private schools in Washington, D.C., culminating in his admission to the prestigious Naval Academy in Annapolis.
After leaving Annapolis, John married Susie Adams, a direct descendant of “founding father” John Adams ⁷ . Susie’s father, James Adams Jr. , was involved in what Susie described as “Air Force espionage in Vienna”, or what we call covert intelligence operations. Susie herself would later find employment at the Pentagon, along with John Philipps’ older sister, Rosie, who had been a regular at the complex for almost thirty years. John’s mother, “Dean” Phillips, also worked for the federal government most of her life. And John’s older brother, Tommy, was a battle-wounded ex-Marine who found a job as a police officer in Alexandria, albeit with a disciplinary record for engaging in a series of violent acts against people of color.

John Phillips, although surrounded throughout his life by military and intelligence officials, certainly did not engage in such matters. Or we should believe it. However, before succeeding in his musical career, John apparently visited, of course only by chance, rather unusual places. One such place was Havana, Cuba, where Phillips traveled in the midst of the Cuban Revolution. For the record, Phillips stated that he went to Havana as nothing more than a concerned private individual, with the goal of (and you’ll love it) “fighting for Castro. ” Because, as I said, a lot of people in those days went overseas to thwart CIA operations before settling down in Laurel Canyon and joining the “hippie” generation. A few years after Castro came to power, while the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded, for two weeks or so Phillips lolled in Jacksonville, Florida, near (by accident, I’m sure) Mayport Naval Station.

Anyway, let’s now move on to another of Laurel Canyon’s earliest and brightest stars, Mr. Stephen Stills. Stills will be known as one of the founding members of two of Laurel Canyon’s most famous and beloved bands: Buffalo Springfield, and, of course, Crosby, Stills & Nash. In addition, Stills will write perhaps the first and certainly one of the most enduring hymns of the generation of the 60s,
“For What It’s Worth” the first lines of which are given at the top of this post (Stills’ next single will be called “Blue Bird” ( Bluebird), which, coincidentally or not, is the original codename given to the MK-ULTRA program).

Prior to his arrival in Laurel Canyon, Stephen Stills was (sorry for the boring repetition) the product of yet another family of career military men. Raised in part in Texas, young Steven spent most of his childhood in El Salvador, Costa Rica, the Panama Canal Zone, and other parts of Central America with his father, who, we can be sure, helped spread “democracy to the unwashed masses in an affectionate American way. As with the rest of our characters, Stills was educated primarily at military base schools and elite military schools. Among his contemporaries in Laurel Canyon, many considered him a harsh and authoritarian personality. Of course, this is not unusual, as we have already seen with the rest of our characters.

There is, however, an even more curious aspect of Stephen Stills’ story: Stephen would later tell anyone willing to sit and listen that he served Uncle Sam in the jungles of Vietnam. These stories will be universally dismissed by the chroniclers of the era as nothing more than narcotic ravings. It will be argued that this could not be true, as Stills arrived on the Laurel Canyon scene at the same time that the first uniformed troops began to depart, and he remained in the public eye thereafter. And this, of course, will be quite fair – Stephen Stills could not serve in the form of ground forces in Vietnam, but what will not be taken into account is the indisputable fact that the US had thousands of “advisers”, i.e. CIA / special forces operatives operating in the country many years before the appearance of the first official ground troops. It will also be ignored that, given his experience, his age, and the chronology of events, Stephen Stills was indeed not only able to operate in Vietnam, he would seem to have been a prime candidate for such an appointment. After which, of course, he could quickly become (stop me if you’ve heard this before) an icon for the pacifist generation.

Another such idol, and one of the brightest residents of Laurel Canyon, is a young man named David Crosby, one of the founding members of Laurel Canyon’s ancestral Byrds, and of course Crosby, Stills & Nash. Crosby is, not surprisingly, the son of Annapolis graduate and World War II military intelligence officer Major Floyd Delafield Crosby. Like many others in this story, after his retirement, Floyd Crosby spent most of his time traveling the world. These travels took him to places like Haiti, which he visited at 1927, when the country had just been occupied (a coincidence, of course) by the US Marines. One of these Marines involved in the occupation was a guy we’ve met before by the name of Captain Claude Andrew Phillips.

But David Crosby is much more than just the son of Major Floyd Delafield Crosby. David Van Cortland Crosby is revealed to be the offspring of the Van Cortland, Van Schuyler and Van Rensselaer families. And while you’re probably thinking, “Families Van whom ?” I can assure you that if you type these names on Wikipedia, you will spend quite a lot of time reading about the power that has been concentrated in the hands of this clan over the past two and a quarter centuries or so. Suffice it to say that the Crosby family tree includes a truly staggering number of U.S. senators and congressmen, state and local legislators, governors, mayors, judges, Supreme Court justices, Revolutionary and Civil War generals, signers of the Declaration of Independence, and members of the Continental Congress.I hasten to add that it also includes (for those of you with a taste for such things) quite a few high-ranking Freemasons Stephen Van Rensselaer III, for example, was reported to have served as the Grand Master of Freemasons in New York, and if all that’s not impressive, according to the Genealogical Society New England, David Van Cortland Crosby is also a direct descendant of the “Founding Fathers” and authors of “Feder Alista” ⁸ Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

If there is, as many believe, a network of elite families that have shaped national and world events for a very long time, then it can probably be said that David Crosby is a blood member of this clan (which might explain, think about it, why in certain circles, his sperm is in such high demand – because, to be honest, of course, not because of his appearance or talent). If there was royalty in America, then David Crosby would probably be a duke or prince or something like that (I’m not very good at this). But other than that, he’s just a normal, ordinary-looking guy, and he just so happens to shine as one of the brightest stars in Laurel Canyon. And I think I should add that he has a great love for firearms, especially pistols, which he has amassed a considerable collection throughout his life. According to his inner circle, it is rare that Mr. Crosby does not carry a pistol with (John Phillips also has and occasionally carries pistols). And, according to Crosby himself, on at least one occasion, he fired a firearm at another person. Of course, after all this, for the “flower children” he became an obvious choice for the role of an idol

Just a few years later, the other bright star on the Laurel Canyon scene would be singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, who was (you are getting as bored as I am ?) a product of a family of regular military men. Brown’s father was assigned to work in the “reconstruction” of post-war Germany, which most likely means that he was in the service of the OSS ⁹ , the forerunner of the CIA. If readers of my Understanding the F-Word will remember, the US involvement in Germany’s post-war reconstruction was mainly to preserve as much of the Nazi infrastructure as possible, while at the same time preventing the arrest and prosecution of war criminals. Against this backdrop, Jackson Browne was born in a military hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. About two decades later, he resurfaced as … however, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Let’s instead talk about three other Laurel Canyon vocalists who would rise to sky-high heights of fame and fortune: Jerry Beckley, Dan Peak and Dewey Bunnell. Individually, these three names are probably not known to almost any of the readers, but together as part of the group “America”, this trio would be a huge success in the early 70s with songs such as
Ventura Highway,
A Horse With No Name, and The Wizard of Oz themed
The Tin Man. I guess I probably don’t need to add that all three of these guys were products of the military/intelligence community. Beckley’s father was commander of the now-defunct West Ruislip US Air Base in England near London, a facility deeply involved in intelligence operations. Bunnell and Pick’s fathers were both career Air Force officers who served under Father Beckley at West Ruislip, where the three boys first met.

I also think we could discuss Michael Nesmith of the Monkees and Corey Wells of Three Dog Night (two other hugely successful Laurel Canyon bands), both of whom arrived in LA shortly after their service. in the US Air Force. Nesmith also inherited a family fortune estimated at $25 million. Graham Parsons, who would briefly replace David Crosby in The Byrds before becoming the lead singer of The Flying Burrito Brothers, was the son of Major Cecil Ingram “Koon Dog” Connor II, a decorated officer and bomber pilot, which reportedly had over 50 sorties. On his mother’s side, Parsons was also heir to the impressive fortune of the Snively family. Said to be the wealthiest in Florida’s exclusive Winter Haven enclave, the Snively family owned Snively Groves, Inc., which reportedly owned a third of all citrus plantations in Florida.

And so on, scrolling through the list of Laurel Canyon superstars. More often than not, you can find sons and daughters of the military-intelligence complex and sons and daughters of extremely wealthy and powerful people—and often you will find both traits in the same individual. From time to time, you’ll also stumble upon a child actor like the aforementioned Brandon De Wilde, or the Monkees’ Mickey Dolenz, or the eccentric wunderkind Van Dyke Parks. You can also occasionally run into former mental patients such as James Taylor, who spent some time in two psychiatric institutions in Massachusetts before entering the Laurel Canyon scene, or Larry Fisher (“Savage”), who was repeatedly incarcerated in nursing home as a teenager, once for attacking his mother with a knife (an act that was hilariously parodied by Zappa on the cover of Fisher’s first album). Finally, you can find the offspring of an organized crime figure like Warren Zevon, son of William “Bubble” Zevon, lieutenant of the infamous LA crime lord Mickey Cohen.

All these people gathered almost simultaneously along the narrow, winding roads of Laurel Canyon. They came from all over the country—although Washington, DC was notably overrepresented, as well as Canada and England. They came even though there wasn’t much of a pop music industry in Los Angeles at the time. They came even though there was no live music scene worth mentioning at the time. They came, although, in retrospect, there was no discernible reason for this.

Of course, nowadays it would make sense for an aspiring musician to go to Los Angeles. But at that time the centers of the musical universe were Nashville, Detroit and New York. You see, it wasn’t the industry that drew the crowds to Laurel Canyon, but rather the Laurel Canyon crowds turned Los Angeles into the epicenter of the music industry. To what do we owe this unprecedented gathering of future music superstars in the hills of Los Angeles? What inspired them all to go west? Perhaps Neil Young said it best when he said in an interview that he couldn’t figure out why he went to LA at 1966; he and the others “just plodded along like lemmings”.

To be continued…

1	“There’s something happening here What it is ain’t exactly clear” Lyrics from Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”, 1967
2	Project MK-ULTRA (or MKULTRA) is the code name for the CIA’s secret illegal human experimentation program. Published evidence suggests that the MK-ULTRA project has been associated with the use of many techniques to manipulate mental state and alter brain function, including the covert use of drugs and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture.
3	Mojo Risin’ is an anagram for Jim Morrison.
4	Charles Manson – (Charles Manson) criminal, leader of the commune “Family”, some members of which committed a series of brutal murders in 1969.
5	“San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”.
6	Haight-Ashbury is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Known as the center of the hippie movement in the late 60s, as well as the central location for the events of the “Summer of Love”.
7	John Adams – a prominent figure in the American Revolutionary War, first vice president and second president of the United States (1797-1801). <- Предыдущий пост: Day care monett mo: THE Top 10 Daycares in Monett, MO Следующий пост: Kindercare in fremont: Fremont KinderCare | Daycare, Preschool & Early Education in Fremont, CA ->