Generation

Why garden? Only two or three years ago gardening was pronounced dead. The baby boomers, who had grown up playing in the yard — and often in the dirt — were growing older, replaced by Gen X’ers, who instead, had grown up with video games, iPods and walkmen. Trips to the nursery gave way to trips to Starbucks. Dirt was dead! Planting seeds and mulching were quickly becoming as much a part of people’s lives as churning butter or milking a cow. We — myself and those of you who likely read this column — were an aging, shrinking group.

Members of the Rotary Clubs of Newport-Balboa and Costa Mesa will spend Saturday morning at the fire station on Mesa Drive, titivating some 2,400 seedlings that will be presented to all third-graders attending public and private schools in Newport-Mesa next week. Titivating involves cleaning the excess roots, weeds and dirt off the plastic pot in which the seedlings sit. This year’s tree is the Pink Trumpet Tree, which can grow to a height of 20 to 40 feet, according to Peter Smith, Arbor Day chairman for Newport-Balboa.

Local hotels, restaurants and shops will get an upswing in business when the Toshiba Classic rolls into town on Monday. The seven-day PGA Tour event generates millions of dollars for the local economy and raises about $1 million each year for Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian. Everyone from local bartenders to florists benefit, said Jeff Purser, Toshiba Classic director. “I know of at least 1,000 dinners being booked next week and that’s outside of Toshiba.

Ira Garbutt has heard the joke so many times from golfers at the Toshiba Classic. The tournament chairman laughs every time he hears it. “They say, ‘I have to finish in the top 10 in order to break even,’ ” Garbutt said. “When the guys are playing in the pro-am, the wives are having their own pro-am.” The wives search for highs in department stores. The players shoot for lows on the golf course. The lows tournament organizers want to see are those turned in on scorecards, not at the gate or the traffic at businesses around town.

While it is steeped in old world tradition, the National Charity League experience has morphed into a program that inspires young women to take strong leadership roles in their schools, houses of worship, and communities at large. This winter social season in Newport Beach witnessed the presentation to society of 19 young women who successfully completed years of comm- unity service alongside their mothers partici- pating in the Newport Chapter of the National Charity League Inc. Founded in 1947 in Los Angeles, National Charity League Inc. has 149 chapters in 15 states nationwide.

Mark my words, 2009 in will go down as the year of the bailouts and no matter what anyone says or does there will be no way to stop the flood of handouts that are about to happen. If President Bush could bail out Wall Street and Detroit with 700 billion taxpayer dollars, there is no way to argue against the $1 trillion President-elect Barack Obama wants to bail out homeowners with “toxic loans,” states that agreed to cover pensions they could not afford and any failing business that can say with a straight face, “It is not my fault.

While accompanying my wife shopping recently, I happened to see a friend of mine. This is a man who has been quite successful in his business career, and whom I met as one of the ?powers that be? in the politically powerful Lincoln Club of Orange County. We began talking about the sorry state of our economy and several other matters when he made the comment: ?I have harmed our formerly great system of public education.? Many people have made the truthful comment that our system of public education is failing our children, but I had never heard anyone take personal responsibility for that failure.

Every American knows who won the presidential election this year. But what were voters thinking when they went into the polling booths? That’s the question national pollster John Zogby spent more than an hour on as the first speaker this season in UCI’s Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture Series. His answer? They just wanted someone who could get the job done. “There’s a critical mass of voters, over 80%, telling us they want a problem solver,” he said.

My father was born in 1908 in the New Mexico territory. The Mexican revolution was underway at that time, and Pancho Villa was harassing our border. My father’s family was escaping from the poverty in their family home in Arkansas. His family was a slave-owning family. From New Mexico the family continued its journey until reaching California and settling in Los Angeles. Their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren still live here. My wife and our children settled in Newport Beach 36 years ago. After our national election the other day, I met with some friends who are local business and professional people and we discussed the results of the Newport Beach City Council elections.

Newport native Clark Beek describes himself as the unluckiest of sailors. He’s survived dengue fever in Costa Rica, amoebic dysentery in India and three tsunamis. Beek left Newport Harbor for what he though would be a one-year sailing trip in 1999 at age 29 after a fast-paced career at a start-up Internet company during the dot-com boom left him with a bad taste in his mouth. He returned about a week ago after a nearly 10-year voyage around the world no richer, but with a nice tan and a thousand stories.