News In Brief: February 6, 2015

Windy Weather Blows In Business Opportunity For Local Entrepreneur

While recent high winds have vexed West Valley residents with falling tree branches and tumbling patio furniture, one Canoga Park resident has turned the breezy weather into a profitable venture by offering a valuable service to West Hills residents with Italian Cypress trees suffering from unsightly, wind-blown branches. “What I do is I take my broom, and I push the branches back in place, like this,” says itinerant laborer Desmond Churyk, as he demonstrates his trade yesterday outside a Foxboro Lane residence, near where he had just finished a job sweeping something. The stately, largely column-shaped conifer, known only to grow west of Shoup Avenue, is a popular landscaping plant in the tony West Hills area. Mr. Churyk charges $10 per tree and can reach out-of-place branches up to ten feet high with his broom. For an added fee, he will bring a step-ladder, extending his reach another four and a half feet.

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Quilt Editor-in-Chief Apologizes For ‘Misremembering’ Lanark Park Story

Owen Smouth, the editor-in-chief of this online newspaper, publicly apologized for admittedly fabricating a tale of being hit with an errant soccer ball while walking through Lanark Park in 2003. In the past, on an appearance on “Good Morning Valerio Street,” he described an incident where during a soccer, or fútbol, game being held in the park, a player kicked the ball that overshot the goal and went out of bounds where it flew towards some people walking by — including Smouth himself who said the ball glanced off his thigh and left a smudge on his chinos. But according to witnesses, Smouth was not hit and was nowhere near the old lady who was. “He was like four or five feet away,” noted a source who wished to remain anonymous. “I made a mistake in recalling the events of twelve years ago. ...Whoops!” Smouth later said in a statement. The Quilt considers the matter closed.

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Canoga Park High School Seeking Charter Status

A majority of the employees at Canoga Park High School have voted to turn their school into a charter campus and break ties with the Los Angeles Unified School District in an effort to gain more control over funding, academic programs and other aspects of education.  “We’ve fully got the support of 65%, or three-quarters, of the teaching staff,” reports Joseph Hitchings, the advanced calculus teacher spearheading the project. Adds AP English teacher Betty Winslow, “We am very incouraged about this.” In related news, Canoga Park High senior Valeska Stoica is moving onto round two of the semi-finals of the LAUSD Spelling Bee after beating eight other contestants by successfully spelling the word “charter.”

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Windy Weather Blows In Italian Cypress Scammers, Warns Better Business Bureau

While recent high winds have vexed West Valley residents with falling tree branches and tumbling patio furniture, some unwary West Hills residents have been additionally dealt a financial blow by falling prey to the age-old Italian Cypress con currently being plied by swindlers who have descended on the area from nearby Canoga Park, reports the Better Business Bureau of Southern California. “Typically, what they’ll do is tell you they just finished a job in the area sweeping something when they noticed your Italian Cypress trees have some unsightly, wind-blown branches,” explains BBB spokesperson Leann Wells, “and for usually ten dollars a tree, they’ll take their broom and push the branches back into place.”  Wells explains that the conifer, a popular landscaping plant, is very resilient, maintains its largely column-like shape naturally and will go back to normal on its own within a few days of the wind subsiding.