Last summer, a Laguna Beach woman decided to kick people off the sand near her oceanfront home.
“I’m not joking around,” she screamed. “It’s not harassment on the beach, it’s harassment in my whole property. Get out of here! Now!”
She dragged a rope across the beach, marked an imaginary boundary and continued to shout. Beachgoers packed up and trudged away.
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Kent Lacin finds joy in many places. Behind a camera. Drawing or writing with a new fountain pen. Jamming on jazz piano. Teaching college students. Making films.
“I never felt like I worked a day in my life, I had so much fun,” he says. “I did so many wonderful things and met so many wonderful people, it was a dream.”
Lacin retired four years ago after a decades-long career as owner of Kent Lacin Media Services. But that’s a small part of his story.
Growing up in Arden Park, Lacin loved to draw and play the piano. His parents gave him a Pentax camera at age 8, and he loved that, too. But since neither parent had a background in the arts, Lacin thought of art as a hobby, not a career.
When the call came saying Roberto Fatal’s short film “En Memoria” had been accepted to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival out of 8,000 submissions, Fatal almost crashed the car.
Back home in Land Park, Fatal told co-writer and girlfriend Ali Meyers-Ohki. Then they called the cast and crew.
It was a dream come true for the team that brought “En Memoria” to reality.
“I’ve been in love with movies and sci-fi since I was a child,” Fatal says. “But being queer, in the closet, Latino and mixed Indigenous, I didn’t see a lot of my community in sci-fi, which scared me a little bit. I’d think, Oh, my God, I think this means we don’t make it to the future!
Walk the dirt trail along the lower American River. Underfoot is cobble, buried in soil and held in place by decades-old tree roots.
Added in the 1950s, the smooth stones have protected the riverbank from erosion for more than seven decades. Cobble is a far cry from riprap, large angular rock and rubble used to protect shorelines.
“Cobble is very effective and still holding in place,” says Bill Avery, a biologist and Sacramento State professor. “Roots plus cobble are almost invincible. You’ve got extremely powerful erosion protection.
“It does not need to be covered with angular riprap exploded out of a quarry.”
Recently, I made a conscious effort to smell the roses. My gardening had veered into the fast lane, bypassing the fragrant route.
When I discovered a weed, it had to be removed. A lopsided perennial was promptly shape-pruned. Fallen fruit was a sacrilege, immediately gathered and discarded. No time remained to smell roses and admire all things green and growing.
I realized constant maintenance had become more difficult, more exhausting, more unnecessary. Perhaps it’s not all about aging, but the realization that duties can wait and the planet will not suffer mass extinction. Thus, maturity of thought. Coupled with deliberate inaction.
