Blanket Drive For The Homeless In Our Town

Local martial arts and yoga studio North Valley Aikikai is organizing a blanket drive this weekend and is asking for donations of any extra blankets for donation to the homeless.

Giga Granada Hills readers may recall our past story about one of our town's homeless encampments, hiding in plain sight between Trader Joe's and Two Guys From Italy. Lee Lavi Ramirez, head of North Valley Aikikai, became aware of the encampment shortly after her martial arts studio moved into the same shopping center.

The studio offers free yoga, exercise, and martial arts classes to first-time students (click here for coupon), so drop by for a class and drop off an old blanket. Here is Lee's letter:

As temperatures are going below freezing, we will be collecting blankets to be distributed to the homeless.

If you have an extra blanket that you would like to donate, please bring it by this weekend.
The hours we will be there are:
Thursday and Friday: 8:30 am - 12 noon, and 5-6 pm
Saturday: 9 am - 1 pm
Sunday: 10:30 am - 12 noon, and 7-9 pm

Here is a video with some information about homelessness in Los Angeles:


Thank you in advance,
--
Lee Lavi Ramirez


A partial class schedule for this weekend:

Friday
10-11 am: Core Strengthening

Saturday
9-10 am: Yoga for Kids
11 am-12 noon: Aikido for Kids
12:30-1:30 pm: Beginners Aikido
1:30-2:30 pm: Beginners Weapons


Sunday
10:30-12 noon: Vinyasa Flow Yoga adults

complete schedule

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Archive: Master of Pirates

Image
Mike Spasoff is a tireless servant to this community -- at least for a few months out of the year -- and that's good enough for me. It's also more than good enough for the 600 trick-or-treaters he delights and terrifies with the elaborate, Disney-rivaling, pirate-themed yard display at his house on San Fernando Mission Boulevard (near Shoshone). When I was a kid, I used to always wish someone in the neighborhood would do something beyond carving a pumpkin. Fortunately, kids in Mike's neighborhood will never have to cope with that same unfulfilled sense of longing that I always had. What makes you want to invest the time, money, and resources into such an elaborate production? I can remember the magic of walking the streets of our neighborhood each Halloween and the excitement of finding a house that did something more than just a jack-o-lantern or a cardboard skeleton. My parents and I always made a special effort to do something extra but it wasn't until we moved to
Read more

Thoughts on Joe's Cafe and cancel culture

On June 1, 2020, the date when people planned to gather in Granada Hills to protest George Floyd's killing, fearful rumors began flying early. The protest was certain to be violent. The claims that it was planned as a "peaceful" protest was certain to be cover for looters. Some started spreading the rumor that "the organizers have cancelled the event," presumably with the hope of making that come true.  I spent that afternoon trying to debunk the myths that seemed designed to suppress the event from happening. Myth debunking has, at times during 2020, seemed like a full-time job for me, starting with my pointless and overmatched efforts to argue with "the pandemic is a liberal hoax" theorists. I still find it difficult to believe that my pleas for evidence-based reasoning would so often be dismissed as radical.  Yet I stubbornly cling to my insistence that without evidence to support them, beliefs are worthless.  On social media, I pled with fear-sprea
Read more

Even XXX Stars Need TLC

Image
"I've never watched a pornographic movie in my life," says Bobi, genial lab tech at the modest, quiet office of AIM Health Care on shady White Oak Avenue. When I press her, incredulous that someone who works in a health care office that caters to the needs of adult film actors has never been exposed to that industry's primary product, she sticks by her story. "They did have one on at my bachelorette party, but I didn't really look at it, and now you couldn't pay me to watch one. I know everyone in the industry, and it would almost be like watching a video of my kids having sex. I wouldn't want to do that." When she puts it that way, it makes sense. Bobi tells me that some clients of the clinic even refer to her as "Mom," and when I overhear her soothing a nervous patient on the phone ("Don't worry honey; chlamydia is a bacterial infection and it can be cured with medicines") I understand why. It's actually rathe
Read more