Juan Cabrillo

The remedial reading and instrumental music programs at the Wiseburn School District's three elementary schools have been cut because of budget shortfalls after the defeat last year of a proposed parcel tax that would have generated about $350,000 annually. Two reading specialists and the district's music teacher will be reassigned to regular classes, said Alice Blyther, a special education teacher and president of the Wiseburn Faculty Assn.

* Where do bees go on their day off? The wax museum. (Diane Silvestre, 9, Hawthorne, Peter Burnett School) * What kind of guitars do whales play? Eel-ectric guitars. (Ally Maize, 5, Beverly Hills, Hawthorne School) * What is worse than raining cats and dogs? Hailing taxis. (Robert Tobolowsky, 8, Studio City, Mirman School) * When is a theater clumsy? When the curtain falls.

The City of Fullerton has been slowly exposing a massive cover-up by its police department. The victim? A three-wall mural painted by the hard-edged co-founder of the post-surrealist movement, Helen Lundeberg, in 1942. This WPA (Work Projects Administration) artwork depicts the history of California from Juan Cabrillo's landing in 1542 to Southern California's entrance into the rail age in 1869. The crime?

City planning officials will solicit public comment on two proposals for the Malibu Civic Center specific plan at a series of meetings next week. Planning director Craig Ewing said he will summarize the competing proposals at the meetings. One proposed plan was prepared by a citizens' advisory committee between January 1996 and July 1997, he said. An alternate plan was developed by a group called Malibu Coalition for Slow Growth.

The California State Historical Resources Commission has rejected a request to designate Malibu Lagoon as the site where explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claimed California for the King of Spain in 1542. The eight attending members of the board unanimously decided "the evidence was not totally convincing," said commission Chairman John H. Kemble, a retired Pomona College history professor.

Bradley's proposal to construct a symbolic monument to welcome immigrants to America's western shore has merit. The Los Angels segment of the "Pacific Rim" grows in importance yearly as American sharpens its focus on the lands and peoples bordering the Pacific Ocean. One appropriate subject to commemorate would be Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, our first historical visitor to California's shores. Cabrillo's good port, "Bahia de los Fumos," at San Pedro Bay was named on Oct. 8, 1542.

In 1542, two years after Hernando Cortes retired as Viceroy of Mexico and returned to Spain, Juan Cabrillo received a commission to find a sea route to the Atlantic Ocean, around what was then believed to be the island of California. Cabrillo's ships were dismantled on Mexico's Caribbean shore, carried by pack mules over rugged mountains and through dense jungles, then reassembled by 40 shipwrights and local Indians.

The Scene: Thursday's premiere of Universal's "The Nutty Professor" in the studio's amphitheater. It was the first time the concert hall has been publicly used for a screening. Though only half the 6,000-seat capacity was utilized, it was still a massive venue. One guest said she'd "never seen ushers using bullhorns before."

The land that Los Alamitos occupies today was home to a group of Native Americans called the Puvu when Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo spotted the Southern California coast in 1542 while sailing under the Spanish flag. In 1784, Manuel Nieto, a soldier, was given a huge land grant, part of which was Rancho Los Alamitos, named after the abundant cottonwoods. The area boomed during the sugar beet bonanza from 1896 to 1925.

In 1642, 60 years after the Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo expeditions up the California coast from Mexico, Sebastian Vizcaino sailed north from Acapulco to explore and chart the coast in a futile search for a Northwest Passage. In the process, he named many of our cities and islands; San Diego, Santa Catalina, San Clemente (Island), San Pedro, Monterey and more. Isn't it unusual that an explorer who has had such a powerful impact on our California history has received no recognition from our geographers?