First, some shameless self-promotion: The Los Angeles County of Public Health let me illustrate a couple of activity books, which have just been printed. Their plan is to have them distributed at local schools and health fairs. So, if you’re unsure about how to wash your hands, keep an eye out. You can download a pdf of the books from the county’s website.

South Pasadena Patch launches today at 12:30 p.m. If you haven’t heard, Patch is AOL’s hyper-local news initiative, which has been getting mixed reviews. LA Weekly recently published a story headlined “Patch, the WalMart of News?” that looks at the endeavor. On the one hand, it’s providing a much-needed source of news for (upper income) neighborhoods that have been neglected. On the other, Patch is strutting into neighborhoods with $50 million in startup cash and threatening to quash established sites. As an example, they’re planning to launch in Altadena, which already has the excellent altadenablog. Not that South Pasadena is Altadena. This town really lacks an online news source. Of the regularly updated sites, there’s the South Pasadena Review, which refuses to believe the Internet is anything more than a fad; there’s Glimpses of South Pasadena, who will be contributing to South Pasadena Patch; and there’s me. And let’s face it: I have a sporadically updated blog that doesn’t look for advertisers. Not much of a threat.

I chose to not take part in the South Pasadena Patch. But I also choose to not compete with it. It’s not really a big deal. I’m happy to get to spend more time with the laptop closed. This little blog has been here for two years now. And really, I never talked about it or promoted it. In spite of my best efforts, the readership has grown exponentially. I’m proud of that. And I’m comfortable letting someone else do it for a while. In a perfect world, the voice of South Pasadena wouldn’t be owned by AOL. But I expect it’ll be better than anything we’ve had so far.

Thanks for the emails. Thanks for the comments. Thanks for reading.

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