A Newsletter for Camarillo Seniors
April / May 2022| Issue #6
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In This Issue:
Day Trippin'
Bottle House
Lotus Land
Volunteer at City of Camarillo
Did You Know
Poetry Corner
Just for Fun Video Links
Fun & Funny
Travel Trivia
Community Shred Event
Parkinson's s Moving Day
Sign-up for CityScene Online
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What is the Camarillo Council on Aging? |
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Recognizing that seniors are a significant and vital segment of the City’s population, the Camarillo City Council formed the Camarillo Council on Aging (CCOA).
The CCOA is an advisory body whose purpose is to provide a mechanism for the senior community to make recommendations regarding matters of concern to the City Council, the Ventura County Area Agency on Aging, and other appropriate organizations and agencies.
The CCOA meetings are open to anyone interested in senior issues. The CCOA seeks and values your input.
Meetings are held the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 3pm at Camarillo City Hall, except in August and December. COVID precautions may require virtual meetings, please check the City's website using the link below for details on the upcoming agenda.
2022 Upcoming Meeting Dates:
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Day Trippin' - The Most Scenic Drives |
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Roll the windows down and crank up Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” as you hit LA’s wide open roads. The picturesque beaches, dramatic cliffs, and rolling hills covered with wildflowers offer you a chance to leave your care behind and discover something new as you remind yourself just how spoiled we are to live in this diverse area. |
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1. Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) from Neptune’s Net to Malibu
Here the road hugs the shoreline with jaw-dropping ocean views on one side and impressive cliffs with mansions perched atop on the other side. Then park off at the beach to take in that classic California sunset and have some fish at Neptune’s Net.
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2. Mulholland Drive
Mulholland Drive is easily one of the most recognizable and photographic stretches of road in the city. Heading from Ventura to Santa Monica, you can take in views from one of the many overlooks and see top attractions like the Hollywood Hills, Getty Center and Griffith Park.
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3. Mel’s Drive In
This shorter drive transports you back in time to the day with carhop service served by waitresses on roller skates and endless lines of vintage cars.
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4. Palos Verdes Estates to San Pedro
Heading from Palos Verdes Estates to San Pedro along Palos Verdes Dr. S will provide you breathtaking views of rugged cliffsides. Keep a lookout for whales near Point Vicente Lighthouse in Palos Verdes. While in San Pedro, explore on foot Angel’s Gate Park with features the ornate Korean Friendship Bell.
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5. White Point – Royal Palms Park
Take the drive along W Paseo Del Mar to White Point Park at sunset to see the most spectacular sunset over the Pacific Ocean. On the drive down Paseo Del Mar, turn right into the Royal Palms parking area that is packed with surfers or turn left towards White Point where you’ll find scuba divers, tide pool explorers and remnants of the former 1920s hot spring resort.
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6. Windsor Boulevard
This just screams LA with this palm-lined boulevard with a view of the Hollywood Sign. If you want that pic of the sign, you can stop between 4th and 5th streets on Windsor Blvd. near Hancock Park.
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7. Wilshire Boulevard
Take in the city’s diverse cultural heritage ranging from Museum Row with LACMA’s iconic “Urban Light” installation, to Koreatown and past the manicured boulevards in Beverly Hills.
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8. Chumash Indian Museum
This museum is a Native American Interpretive Center. The site is a former Chumash village, known as Sap'wi and is located in Oakbrook Regional Park. The 432-acre park is also home to a replica of a Chumash village and thousand year-old Chumash pictographs. The museum is located at 3290 Lang Ranch Pkwy, Thousand Oaks. Click here to learn more.
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Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village |
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The world loves a dreamer and dreamers come in all different forms. Grandma Prisbrey was born Tressa Luella Schaefer in Easton, Minnesota in 1896. She began living her dream at age 60 with her third husband. They purchased a one-third acre in Simi Valley and lived in a trailer. There, she became known as Grandma Prisbrey. At the time, she had a large collection of 17,000 pencils and wanted to make a house for them.
Discovering that cinder-blocks were too expensive, she resorted to visiting a local dump where she found thousands of colored bottles. She made cement by hand and built her first bottle house. She was interested in the fact that everything has a purpose and is special and unique.
Everything was made by hand with recycled materials. Prisbrey salvaged over five hundred dolls and piles of other odds and ends, including old headlights, television sets, fluorescent tubes, shot glasses, and much more. Prisbrey continued to build until she had constructed 16 buildings, each with its own materials and theme. She also built a rumpus room for her grandchildren, a school house, a shell house, and a doll house to house her 600 dolls.
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Bottle Village has wishing wells made from tiles as well as a leaning tower of bottles.
There are shrines such as The Shrine for All Religions created primarily from blue milk of magnesia bottles. The Headlight Garden was made for her then 35-year-old daughter who had been diagnosed with cancer. Prisbrey decided to make her a rose garden out of headlights. According to Prisbrey, the day her daughter died, the roses died.
For 75 cents, Prisbrey would take visitors on a tour of the compound, which was enclosed by a bottle wall.
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Prisbrey died in 1988 in a nursing home. Bottle Village was purchased by a group in 1986, Preserve Bottle Village (PBV). Bottle Village was severely damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake but PBV raised money to repair the damage and pay back property taxes and interest fees.
"Anyone can do something with a million dollars. Look at Disney," Prisbrey once said. "But it takes more than money to make something out of nothing, and look at the fun I have doing it.” Bottle Village is seen by art historians and folklorists as a complex work.
The site is somewhat in disrepair but the foundation is working to restore it. Monthly private tours are available at www.bottlevillage.com (Suggested donation is $15/person). |
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Did you know that just a short drive north on the 101 freeway in Montecito, sitting in a residential neighborhood, is Ganna Walska’s Lotusland, which is recognized today as one of the ten best gardens in the world?
Madame Ganna Walska was born Hanna Puacz in 1887 in Brest-Litovsk, Poland. At the onset of her musical studies, she took the stage name Madame Ganna Walska.
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There is nothing ordinary about Madame Ganna Walska. She was a well-known Polish opera singer, painter, fashionista, and socialite who had exotic taste in husbands, jewelry, and plants. At the encouragement of Theos Bernard, her sixth and last husband, Madame Ganna purchased the 37-acre estate in Montecito in 1941 and spent the next 43 years filling it with more than 3,000 different types of plants from all around the world. Madame Walska originally intended to use the site as a retreat for Tibetan monks and named the property “Tibetland.” However, the Tibetan monks never appeared, and after divorcing Bernard, Madame changed the name of her estate to “Lotusland” in honor of the sacred Indian lotus growing in one of the ponds.
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Lotusland is home to several extraordinary plant collections and 14 distinct gardens. The collections include rare cycads that are extinct in the wild and date back to the Jurassic Period some 135-180 million years ago. There is a cactus garden with palms and euphorbias, a turquoise pool lined with abalone shells and giant cascading clamshell fountains, and a Topiary Garden where topiary animals are planted around a garden zodiac clock. Additional gardens feature ferns, aloes, lotuses (bloom only in the summer months), water lilies and bromeliads, orchards and a nectar-producing flower garden that attracts bees and butterflies.
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Madame wrote her autobiography, Always Room at the Top and continued to study both vocal music and spiritual teachings in search of personal enlightenment.
Lotusland reopened for the 2022 season on February 16, 2022 by advance reservations only on Wednesday – Saturday.
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City of Camarillo Committee Vacancies |
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Have you ever wanted to make a difference? Have you wondered, “Can the City benefit from my experience and knowledge?”
Consider volunteering to serve on one of the City’s Commissions / Boards / Committees. The rewards can be gratifying and provides opportunities to meet other residents with similar interests, learn about the city, and help shape the future of Camarillo. The City has several volunteer openings as listed below. These committees meet either monthly or as needed.
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Position
- Camarillo Council on Aging (3 vacancies)
- Investment Committee (1 vacancy)
- CDBG Citizen Loan Committee (1 vacancy)
- Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council, Ventura County (2 vacancies)
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The deadline to submit applications is Friday, April 15, 2022, at 5:00 p.m. Applications are available at City Hall or on-line. Applicants are asked to provide a current resume along with their completed application.
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Fire Safety Tips by Ventura County Fire Department |
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- Check the batteries in your smoke detector regularly.
- Make sure no electrical outlets are overloaded.
- Keep portable heaters 3 feet away from everything.
- Never leave cooking unattended.
- Never pour water on a grease fire. Cover the pan with a lid to smother the fire.
- If a fuse blows in your home, try to find out why. It could be a sign of trouble.
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The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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Click the links below to view videos. |
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1. Trail mix, a popular road trip snack, is known as GORP for “good old raisins and peanuts” in the states and as “scroggin” in Australia.
2. Oregon and New Jersey are the only two states that you cannot pump gas yourself.
3. Twizzlers are consumed most in Utah.
4. Beef Jerky means ‘burnt meat’ from the Native American word “Charqui.”
5. Most played game during a road trip “I Spy.
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By the way, when you’re in your car, you can:
- Stop by local famous eating spots
- Listen to your favorite songs or podcast without the cabin air pressure
- See that one cool roadside attraction
- Read funny cute license plates
- Have an intense conversation with your driving partner as to reasons for and against why Lois Lane didn’t know that Clark was Superman
- Teach your kids how to pump gas
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Tongue twisters
A tutor who tooted the flute tried to teach two young tooters to toot. Said the two to the tutor, “Is it harder to toot, or to tutor two tooters to toot?
If you must cross a coarse cross cow, across a crowded cow crossing, cross the coarse cross cow across the crowded cow crossing carefully.
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Questions:
1. What was the first official United States National Park?
2. What is the newest U.S. National Park?
3. Which U.S. state has the most National Parks?
4. Which U.S. National Park gets the most visitors each year?
5. Which is the most visited state in the U.S.?
6. Which is the most visited city in the U.S. (for tourism)?
7. Which is the most visited historical site in the world?
8. Which country receives the most international tourism?
9. What is the tallest building in the world?
10. In what country is the town that’s considered the coldest habited place in the world?
11. What is considered the first travel guidebook ever published?
12. Where does Route 66 start and end?
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Answers:
1. Yellowstone National Park
2. New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia
3. California with nine
4. Great Smoky Mountains National Park
5. California
6. New York
7. The Forbidden City in Beijing, China
8. France
9. Burj Khalifa in Dubai
10. Remote Russian town of Oymyakon. There is about 21 hours of darkness every day and its average temp is -58F
11. A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land published in 1483
12. Starts in downtown Chicago and ends at the Santa Monica pier in California
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Shred Event - Reduce & Recycle |
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Discarding confidential personal information in your household trash is a risky practice that makes you susceptible to identity theft. Documents containing Social Security numbers and other identifying information should be shredded.
This event is open to all City residents and businesses. The cost is $5 (cash) per vehicle, payable when you enter the event area. All proceeds will benefit the Camarillo Council on Aging (CCOA) to support senior education and senior needs.
Access will shred documents with a per-vehicle maximum of 10 boxes (15”x12”x9”) or 12 grocery bags.
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In an effort to move the City toward more environmentally- and fiscally- sustainable practices, future CityScene Newsletters will ONLY be published digitally and sent electronically to email inboxes.
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