Kick Off

Good morning and Happy Mother's Day! Welcome to Claremont Insider. For those of you who aren't familiar with Claremont, CA, or California in general, Claremont is a small-sized town of about 35,000, located in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains about 30 miles east of Los Angeles.

Claremont is a college town, dominated by the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of several different, small, private colleges. The colleges are the largest employer in town.

Claremont itself is set up like a New England township, with a central area called "The Village" (as we'll see later, it is not unlike the movie of the same name). The Village is tree-lined and filled with older Victorian homes. The United Church of Christ is the main church in town, led by Pastor Homer "Butch" Henderson, about whom more later.

Claremont, or rather official Claremont, considers itself a Progressive community, generally liberal in its politics, and somewhat activist.

In the coming days, weeks, and months, we hope to look under the hood, so to speak; to get at the essence of the town, and to show the good AND bad of the town that we observe. Self-image and reality in Claremont have gotten horribly out of phase in the past 20 years, and we feel a certain civic duty to bring those back into clear, sharp focus.

We'll report on the stories behind the stories. We'll take you behind the scenes and show you the side of Claremont that doesn't seem to make it into the papers. We'll bring you the REAL Claremont, warts and all, rather than the sanitized, air-brushed official version.