Mountain Center resident and artist Dore Capitani was honored and a bit overwhelmed when his beautiful blue intricately cut steel sphere, “Betty,” was installed on the famous El Paseo in Palm Desert.

Although the lead time was too short to publish a story about Dr. Ernest Siva before his lecture, the stories he related about his time at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts (now Idyllwild Arts) from 1953 to the present are valuable historic information. Ernest, a Cahuilla/Serrano Indian, was a saxophone player in…