How We See It

A JEWEL OF AN IDEA

While Carol Jewell’s third-grade class at Andersen Elementary School

learns how to read and write, they are also learning a language often

forgotten: sign language. Through an innovative program, the students

write to Danielle Berman -- who has been deaf since birth. This week,

9-year-old Danielle came to visit the class and the kids talked to each

other in sign language.

We commend Jewell for coming up with the program, which not only

helps young people gain a better understanding of the hearing-impaired

community but also gives her students another avenue for learning. Like

she says, “Why not hit them with everything?”

PLEASE, DON’T GO

Say it isn’t so.

Please tell us that it is some sort of bad dream we had where we

dreamed that Phil Sansone, the unofficial mayor of Corona del Mar, is

leaving us.

Sansone has proudly called Newport Beach his home since 1966. And we

have proudly called him a friend of the Daily Pilot for many of those

years, even when he was sitting up on the dais down there at City Hall.

Sansone, a former mayor and councilman, knows well the battlefield.

And each time he went into combat it was either with his countrymen

(as an Army airman in World War II) or with his faithful constituents and

neighbors in mind.

That’s what makes him so genuine and his planned departure so hard to

fathom. He is everything a politician should be -- honest, straight

shooting and beyond reproach.

Yeah, we must be dreaming, right?

THEY TOLD YOU SO

For years, environmentalists like Frank and Fran Robinson and Nancy

and Jack Skinner have been warning us that the watershed that feeds into

Upper Newport Bay is filled with pollutants.

Thankfully, those warnings have received heightened publicity of late

and officials from neighboring municipalities are acknowledging that they

need to do their part to keep the watershed cleaner.

We wonder why it took them so long to listen.

DENNIS DON’T BE A MENACE

OK, this is going to sound a bit ironic coming from us, but isn’t it

time that Dennis Rodman just gives it a rest?

The basketball bad boy and West Newport Beach resident just can’t seem

to stay out of the headlines.

His latest brush with the news came when he and wife Carmen Electra

were arrested in a Miami Beach hotel after reportedly getting into a

physical tussle. The charges against him were dropped this week.

Hey, don’t blame us. We’re not making this stuff up.