Sir Eric Maundry, against better advice, has decided to start a blog.

Oftentimes Sir Eric has regretted that there really are not all that many opportunities for posting news and opinion in our quaint hillside town. A gentleman known for the vigor of his opinions and his seemingly unquenchable desire to share them, Sir Eric has long felt that a venue for discussion is sorely needed here. Once a hotbed for the bloggly arts, Sierra Madre has seen the disappearance of just about anything approaching the form. Sure there is 91024's sporadically active A View From the Canyon, but beyond discussing our occasionally life-threatening weather there just isn't all that much going on. Then there is Bill Coburn's rather chipper Sierra Madre News Net. Heavy on "Lite" news, but can you find much there dealing with the more important city issues? No, not really. And besides, the only commenting Bill invites is on his attached blog, a modestly attended place where gushing about local talking head TV ladies from Eyewitless News infotainment broadcasts seems to be all the rage. Hail Hamilton has an interesting site, and we certainly do enjoy reading his cogent and sometimes idiosyncratic observations. But that is about it! Political strategies changed, and those who once so freely fomented on them packed up their blogs and went home to reconsider the rather disturbing errors of their ways.

But none of this is an adequate excuse for starting a blog, and certainly we shouldn't want to repeat any of the errors of our town's recent past.

Of course, this little burgh still has plenty of places one can go to see past mistakes in action. One look at the ecological disaster zone known as One Carter should be proof enough that common sense and civic concern are not always the first priority of our fair city or those comprising its governance. Or perhaps the bemused frippery of the most underused "recreation area" in the San Gabriel Valley, Goldberg Park, will trigger such reflection in you. And then, of course, there was that "Downtown Specific Plan" that so much of our money was squandered upon. You know, the one that Joe Mosca became so "distraught" about upon learning that it would actually be shared with us, you know, the great unwashed whose tax dollars were so needlessly spent to concoct it?

The overweening presumptions of the bureaucratic personality type always do have the power to astonish this observer.

And so, in the spirit of bad moves and things that we should have known enough to avoid, allow me to welcome you to The Sierra Madre Tattler, Sierra Madre's first new blog in the glowing new era that started a week or two ago. Or maybe last month. Or something. We plan to discuss things that others refuse to consider (i.e., anything that does not fit the pre-approved agendas of the more established communications venues here, you know, like cookie store openings in Arcadia, or the dyspeptic opinions of realty concern owners), and hopefully provoke the kinds of colorful conversation this city has long been famous for. Because that is what we do, right? There is no town quite like Sierra Madre, for so very many reasons, and free-ranging discussion our local politics is certainly one of the reasons we love it so.