Adobes

For years, friends had been telling Octavio Palacios that the old Lopez Adobe was haunted. Emptied of its contents and shuttered after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, it isn't hard to see why the 13-year-old believed them. That was until Thursday night, however, when Octavio got his first look inside the historic home with its treasure of antique furniture and artifacts and decided that the stories were all a lot of bunk. "It's dope!" Octavio said, after a thorough tour of the two-story adobe.

This storied adobe mansion outside Los Angeles was once a getaway for California's last governor under Mexican rule, a landowner so wealthy he called the nearly 9,000 acres of land around it his "ranchito. " Now, state budget cuts have reduced supporters of Pio Pico State Historic Park to begging for recyclables to cash in to keep the gates to the 1850s landmark from closing. As California moves to close dozens of state parks by July 1 to save money, those fighting to prevent the closures are growing increasingly desperate.

With the cracks filled in its original adobe bricks, a fresh coat of turquoise paint on its ornate Victorian balcony and newly installed girders and bolts, the historic Lopez Adobe will reopen Thursday almost four years after suffering extensive damage in the Northridge earthquake. San Fernando officials are planning a large fete to celebrate the reopening of the local landmark, which, despite being among the youngest of the Valley's adobes, is also one of the most historically significant.

Question: What's the outlook for my shares of Adobe Systems Inc.? They have disappointed. Answer: Coming off a lackluster 2010, this pioneering software maker famous for its Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat products should have a better 2011. Online video is a booming business, aided by the surging popularity of mobile computing and increasingly sophisticated website content. An improving economy should provide an added boost. With sales of $3.8 billion in the year that ended Nov. 30, Adobe isn't nearly as enormous as some of its rivals, but it is dominant and profitable in its niche, with plenty of cash and modest debt.

Peering out from stagecoach windows, weary travelers making their way from Los Angeles to San Francisco in the mid-1800s would come upon a welcome sight when they reached the northeast San Fernando Valley. Situated among the cattle and wild mustard was Lopez Station, where the stage stopped twice a week until 1874, when it was replaced by the railroad.

Clint Eastwood knows how to set a scene on screen or at Mission Ranch, his strikingly handsome hotel and restaurant in Carmel. The hotel, a historic property, has a multimillion dollar view of the sea and beautiful grounds to match. Magenta bougainvillea spills from balconies, flowering pots decorate porches, huge cypress trees shade buildings and lawns. You'd expect a room to cost $500 a night or more. So how about $120 a night? Hard to believe, especially in a pricey tourist area like Carmel.

These names are all signposts of Los Angeles' history, most closely associated today with a school, city, street or shopping center. But for a trip into Los Angeles' past, here are several adobe structures that still exist: 1. MICHAEL WHITE ADOBE * 2701 Huntington Drive, San Marino In 1845, an English seaman named Michael White built his adobe house on a parcel of land he called Rancho Ysidro. The old adobe stands in the middle of the campus of San Marino High School.

The make-believe town of Get-Up-An-Get-It was all abuzz Sunday during the Olivas Fiesta Ole. Innocent Miss Molly sat wrongfully accused. The vigilantes gathered to run the town's troublemakers and mountebanks out. A "no good claim jumper" seemed assured of being hanged. Town population: several hundred children and adults who were in just for the day. Many of them seemed interested in one thing--getting their hands on nuggets of gold. Well, pyrite actually.

It has trembled through earthquakes, been caught in a land dispute between ranchers back in the days of Mexican rule and nearly fallen to a 1940s housing boom. Through a series of owners that included a Southern-born lawyer, a Scottish nobleman and the founder of Inglewood, the Centinela Adobe has endured to become an intriguing piece of California history tucked into a neighborhood of tidy tract homes.

Los Angeles, a city of self-inflicted amnesia, is about to suffer another memory loss. Casa Adobe (also called the Johnson house) was denied city landmark status in July, despite the energetic advocacy of conservancies in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Preservationists see Casa Adobe, located in Brentwood Park, as an early example of the Spanish Colonial Revival architectural style. One of the three Los Angeles Cultural Heritage commissioners present at the hearing saw the house as a potential teardown.

In one of the first frontal assaults on Apple Inc.'s increasingly popular iPad tablet computer, smart-phone titan Research in Motion Ltd. on Monday announced a pad of its own. The 7-inch device, called the PlayBook, will be released in early 2011 — and it will go places the current iPad doesn't. The PlayBook's two built-in cameras will allow for video chat (the iPad is camera-less), and the device will permit Adobe Flash programs, which make up a huge percentage of online video and games.

The Justice Department has reached an agreement with six major Silicon Valley companies to settle charges they colluded to keep a lid on wages by agreeing not to poach employees from one another. The proposed settlement, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, bars Google Inc., Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc. and Walt Disney Co.'s Pixar Animation Studios from pledging not to "cold call" one another's employees as part of partnership agreements.

Edmund Shea Jr., a venture capitalist who co-founded Shea Homes, one of the nation's largest for-profit home builders, has died. He was 80. Shea died of pulmonary fibrosis Friday at his home in San Marino, according to spokesman Aaron Curtiss. As a venture capitalist, Shea invested in such startups as Adobe, Compaq computers and Peet's Coffee & Tea. "He's had an extraordinary record of success, and he did it under the radar screen," said William Brody, president of the Salk Institute in La Jolla and president emeritus of Johns Hopkins University.

Los Angeles, a city of self-inflicted amnesia, is about to suffer another memory loss. Casa Adobe (also called the Johnson house) was denied city landmark status in July, despite the energetic advocacy of conservancies in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Preservationists see Casa Adobe, located in Brentwood Park, as an early example of the Spanish Colonial Revival architectural style. One of the three Los Angeles Cultural Heritage commissioners present at the hearing saw the house as a potential teardown.

Tommy Tafoya and his sons were taking a break from building a $400,000 custom adobe home to spend a few days trowelling a thick mixture of mud and straw onto the walls of a 195-year-old Catholic church, and he looked a little weary. But all things considered, "this is easy," Tafoya said, pushing back his mud-spattered straw hat to gaze up at the massive rounded buttresses of the San Francisco de Asis church. "The ones that built it are the ones that had it hard." As dozens of volunteers busied themselves around the site, Tafoya said the enjarre — the annual ritual of applying fresh mud to the walls of the adobe church — united the parishioners.

The sun is rising in the brilliantly blue sky above the Imperial Valley desert. The curious and the devout have come to meet 78-year-old Leonard Knight, self-described "hobo-bird," self-taught artist and deep believer in the transformational power of God's love. For nearly 25 years, Knight has spent his days — and many a night, flashlight batteries willing — painting pastoral designs and biblical quotations on a three-story mound of adobe he calls Salvation Mountain.

Description: Located on land that was once part of the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, the Ramon Peralta Adobe is the oldest remaining adobe in Santa Ana Canyon. Historical exhibits include artifacts excavated on the site, a furnished period room and numerous photographs tracing the history of the adobe. Structural details uncovered during the restoration work can also be seen by visitors. Location: The Peralta Adobe is at the corner of Fairmont Avenue and Santa Ana Canyon Road in Anaheim Hills.

It was a Sunday afternoon in 1974 when a black-suited Claretian missionary known as Father Pat walked into the monthly meeting of the Long Beach Cactus Club looking to make a deal. Turn the sunny dirt patch next to his home at Dominguez Rancho Adobe into a cactus garden, Father Patrick McPolin said, and you can use the state historic site's carriage house for all of your future meetings. Members of the club, who had been convening in a small room at the Angelo M. Iacoboni Library in Lakewood, didn't think twice.

Adobe Systems Inc., the world's biggest maker of graphic-design programs, plans to cut 680 jobs, or about 9% of its global workforce, as the company copes with a lingering sales slump. Adobe will record $65 million to $71 million in pretax expenses, including costs for shutting offices and severance pay, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. Adobe expects to report additional costs related to its $1.8 billion purchase of Omniture Inc. last month. Adobe Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen is dealing with a slowdown in demand for software from advertisers and other creative professionals.