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It is a sunny Sunday afternoon, and Bryant is about to operate the Red Car from the Marina Station up to Ports O'Call Village. A few kids make their way to the back of the train, reaching out to pull a cord dangling from above. A loud chooooo echoes through the air.
Lined with vintage advertisements, open-air windows and reversible benches, the car chugs along, whistles blowing and wheels clicking, smelling of shiny "No. 1 Electric Lines Red" paint, mahogany and the sea-salt air of the Marina. It's a tourist attraction and a step back into the past, and for Bryant, it requires a specific formula.
"The best way to do it is sit there, close your eyes for a second, and say, 'I'm my grandmother and what did it feel like and look like riding this Red Car?' And open them. And it is spectacular," said Bryant, whose friend Bob Henry offered him a job at the Port 10 years ago.
Equipped with four stops, the Red Car is a historic replica of the original Pacific Electric cars that transported workers and settlers across early Los Angeles. Since its installation 12 years ago, it has carried 1.1 million passengers along a 1.5-mile stretch of Harbor Boulevard and traveled the distance it would take to go around the world six times. Its five conductors serve as "ambassadors to Los Angeles and the Harbor Area," advising passengers on where to eat and what to see.
Despite the Red Car's success, however, Bryant and his co-workers may find their jobs reaching the end of the line.
Come late September, the Red Car's tracks will be dug up to make way for the construction of a new town square and the realignment of Sampson Way into Ports O'Call Village. The project is expected to last 18 months, and plans to restore the Red Car line following construction do not currently exist. It would cost $40 million in current figures to replace the rail line, which the Port built for $10 million in 2003.
The Red Car, which operates on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and charges one dollar for an all-day pass, is also being cut for expenditure reasons. Although the Red Car makes about $11,000 to $18,000 a year, expenses to run the car reach nearly $2 million annually.
Collecting revenue, however, is not the car's main function, Bryant says.
"When Bob Henry decided to build the Red Car station, it was built for transportation," he remarked. "[The Cruise Center] had buses that bused their employees to Long Beach to spend their money. The Port said, 'Wait a minute. Why don't we have some sort of transportation to bring them back into San Pedro to have them spend their money here?' It's frustrating to me because ... we're doing what we were supposed to do."
Discontinuation is not a new dilemma for the Red Car system. The original Pacific Electric (PE) Red Cars were built in the early 1900s and had all but disappeared by 1961, wiping out 1,000 miles of rail line. Originally every major part of Los Angeles had an easement for the PE Red Cars, but as buses, automobiles and freeways increased, it became more difficult to operate the trains, according to L.A. Metro.
"[The Red Cars] helped build Los Angeles," Bryant said. "If it wasn't for the Red Cars, it would have been a disaster. L.A. would have never developed."
When the Port of Los Angeles decided to revive part of the Red Car system, it wanted to preserve this legacy. The line initially featured two replica rail cars with wooden seats, brass fittings and wood-paneled interiors identical to those of the original cars. For six years, the two trains traveled up and down the waterfront, taking passengers from 22nd and Miner up to the Cruise Center. However, when the recession hit, the Port was forced to cut back. Currently, only one car (500 or 501) runs at a time.
Back on the train, Bryant drives the car straight ahead. Sporting a locomotive-themed tie, he offers suggestions of where to go and explains the Red Car's past to those on board. His favorite part, though, is hearing riders talk of the olden days.
"I remember one very close friend of mine sitting in the Red Car with his son and his grandson, and the grandson saying, 'Grandpa, did you ride this when you were a kid?'" Bryant said. "And [the grandpa] saying, 'Yes, I used to date your grandma and we used to travel this on our dates.' In his eyes you could see his memory of when he dated his wife. I mean those years are gone, and he could remember them."
Older relatives bringing younger relatives along for the ride is a common occurrence. Carol Hughey and her husband Ron brought their two grandchildren onboard for what Ron considers "its historical significance."
"It was very pleasant," Carol said. "I was impressed by how restored it was -- every detail. It was just a beautiful museum piece. You just don't see things being made like that today, and I'm kind of sad that it's going to leave."
Faced with the prospect of the Red Car's demise, Bryant is committed to saving the train for the sake of riders like Carol, Ron and their grandchildren.
"This is being stolen from the community," he said.
Bryant, a San Pedro native, is no stranger to community involvement. A retired salesman for both Prudential Insurance and Sears, Roebuck & Company, Bryant chaired the board of St. Peter's Episcopal Day School for eight to 10 years. He spent 12 years as an AYSO commissioner, hosting international soccer teams, sending referees and coaches to clinics and putting on summer programs for kids. For the past five years, he has also sat on the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council, where he produces the newspaper and coordinates a fair that instructs young people on how to get jobs.
"In all the years I've been alive, other people have seen things in me that I still don't see in myself," Bryant said. "I believe in not being the person that's the outspoken leader. I feel like you sort of need to be in the background and lead from your integrity, your honesty."]]> Those same values have propelled Bryant into preserving the Red Car. Not only has Bryant met with numerous city officials, but he has also brainstormed an alternate rail route that would run from 22nd Street to Ports O'Call Village. Bryant has also spoken out against an option to rebuild the Red Car in 10 years, calculating that it would eventually take $100-140 million to replace the current system.
"Does anybody believe that the Port should spend $140 million to put back what they already have?" he asked.
Bryant has begun a petition titled "Save the Red Car!" and plans to speak with both Councilman Joe Buscaino and Mayor Eric Garcetti within the next two weeks.
"The bottom line is, we're going to fight for the Red Car, and the mayor's going to get a batch of petitions on his desk," Bryant said. "If he won't see me, I'll stand at his home and hand it to him as he comes in."
Although Bryant is at the forefront of the movement to save the Red Car, he stresses that he is not doing anything for personal gain.
"Whether we shut the Red Car down or whether we don't, honestly, personally, I've had the privilege of operating it," he said. "Yeah it's a shame. But I've done things not for me, but for other people -- children, young people. I'm fighting for the next generation. I don't want to see that type of icon ever be taken away."]]>
On July 12th, L.A.'s first Fermentation Festival took place in Venice. The event not only showcased a wide variety of items that have been fermented, such as "sprouted almond pâté" and "raw apple cider vinegar," but also allowed interested parties, both young and old, to learn all about the process of fermentation.
Fermentation has been around since ancient civilizations. It is also one of the hottest new food trends. So what's going on here?]]> While people have been fermenting foods since ancient times, the science wasn't entirely clear. The whole process was sort of magical. It wasn't until the 1830s that European microbiologists looked at yeast through microscopes, showing evidence that it was a living thing. That new science led to the working definition we now have of fermentation: "the chemical transformation of organic substances into simpler compounds by the action of enzymes, complex organic catalysts, which are produced by microorganisms such as molds, yeasts, or bacteria."
But it was only recently that fermentation became a hot, new food trend.
The Fermentation Festival is not the only proof of this. If you're thinking about learning how to ferment on your own, there are currently just about as many fermentation workshops as there are yoga studios -- just search on Google and you'll find one. And you can barely go a week without reading a story about fermentation being used in order to "improve" some food or another. (The latest example: Apparently, you can use beer-making yeast to make chocolate taste better.)
One such company looking to utilize fermentation to give foods an added flavor is the Brooklyn-based team Afineur. According to their mission, they're "crafting better, healthier, and more sustainable food with nature." They just started a Kickstarter campaign where backers can get their first batch of fermented-aided coffee.
"We do the fermentation on the coffee beans just before roasting," Camille Delebecque, the CEO of the company, said. "We tried to really lower the bitterness and let shine the other flavors that tend to be over-shined in coffee like floral and fruity notes."
Despite the fact that it may make certain foods and beverages taste better, the question still remains to be answered: Why is this only now becoming a food fad? "I just think people are coming to peace with the fact that microbes are everywhere," Delebecque said.
Keep in mind that it's only been about 150 years since Louis Pasteur continued to prove the theory that organisms known as "germs" were the reason for the spread of disease. Once that idea was generally accepted, there was a whole lot of effort to stay away from tiny microbes. That isn't exactly the most ideal introduction to the concept. "Microbes can cause disease and people have been afraid of them since the late 19th century," Delebecque said. "That's a century of avoiding microbes, in the U.S., also in the rest of the world."
Helping the trend is the fact that, because of technological advancements, it's easier and easier to produce more advanced fermentation techniques. And that the production and distribution of craft beer is on the rise. And as it's increasingly clear how horrible processed foods are for us, the health food craze brought many fermented foods (like, say, yogurt) to the cultural consciousness. AND as the Internet continues to expand, the world's disparate cultures are more swiftly being influenced by one another, including diets heavy in fermented foods.
But those reasons may be too analytical, too safe. Maybe there's something else happening when it comes to our emotional reaction to home fermenting.
"The word that comes to mind is empowerment," said Lynn Hartman from the Santa Barbara Fermentation Festival (coming up on September 20th). "People are interested in learning to ferment because it empowers them and anyone can do it. It empowers them to create a super healthy food that is inexpensive, connect with nature, be part of a science experiment, share and build community, keep tradition. All for the price of a glass jar, a bit of salt and some veggies or fruit."
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KCETLink's flagship news magazine series, Socal Connected, took home two Los Angeles Emmy Awards from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences on July 27. In addition, last month KCETLink was the most honored local television station at the Los Angeles Press Club's annual SoCal Journalism Awards with six awards. Those included four for Socal Connected (including Best Television News) and two for Southern California Arts and Culture series Artbound.
"We are delighted to have been recognized by two of the most prestigious organizations in media, and we're extremely proud of our staff and the hard work that went into creating these quality productions," said Michael Riley, KCETLink Media Group's President and CEO.
Click below to access the full list of awards:
Los Angeles Emmy Awards
SoCal Journalism Awards
A light and refreshing seafood salad is exactly what I want to eat all summer. Add this salad courtesy of Blue Plate Oysterette to your salad repertoire for the season. While we typically think of the late fall as Dungeness crab season, you can still find different varieties of crabs in the seafood aisle this time of year.
This will make a great picnic salad, too. Just dress the crab and shrimp separately from the salad greens and assemble it all together later. Enjoy!
Crab and Shrimp Louie Salad
Dressing (Makes 5 servings)
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup ketchup
1 roasted red bell pepper
1 roasted yellow bell pepper
1 roasted jalapeno
Salad (per person)
2 ounces fresh crab meat
2 ounces poached shrimp
5 ounces red onions, thinly sliced
10 ounces cucumber, thinly sliced
3 ounces olives (kalamata or lugano)
2 ½ avocado, diced
5 ounces croutons
5 hard-boiled eggs, loosely chopped
5 cups Romaine lettuce, chopped
Lemon vinaigrette (Use your own favorite lemon vinaigrette recipe or try this version)
Combine the dressing ingredients in a blender and, in a medium-sized bowl, toss together with the crab meat and poached shrimp.
In a separate, deep bowl, combine your preferred amount of red onion, cucumber, olive, avocado, croutons, egg, and lettuce. Toss lightly with lemon vinaigrette.
Top the salad with the shrimp-crab mixture and garnish with chives.]]>
One of the effects of social media is the ability to gather vast amounts of information in a very short period of time. (As opposed to standing with a clipboard on the side of the street and flagging folks down.) This changes the game of marketing surveys. It also changes the game of scientific research.
Using information offered up by social media -- specifically, from Twitter -- in order to examine our eating habits is one of the ideas behind the fascinating project The Lexicocalorimeter, from the University of Vermont's CompStoryLab.]]> The project analyzed 49 different states and examined two things. (No Hawaii, sorry.) It looked for mentions of foods and physical activities on Twitter. Researchers put a value on the state's "caloric input" and "caloric output," and crunched those two numbers to get a "caloric balance."
"We see the instrument as more of a real-time diagnostic tool, complementary to traditional methods such as food and activity diaries," wrote Peter Dodds, one of the study authors, in an email. "It's very hard to gain a lot of information on a population's health-related behaviors and our instrument gives a fast way to gain a real-time estimate."
You can take a gander at the study if you want to see the other 48 states in the study, but for our purposes, let's focus on California.
As far as calorie expenditure goes, California ranks 10th out of 49, with the most popular activities being, in order, dancing, running, and hiking. This all checks out on an anecdotal level, but the "caloric input," the food-based portion of the proceedings, is where things get interesting.
California consumes an average of 267.32 calories "per food phrase caloric shift." This is a tad less than the average American (267.92 calories), and the state ranks 22nd out of 49 states. The number one food mentioned? Donuts. After that, it was noodles and bacon. After that, it was chocolate, cookies, and peanut butter. Right about now you're probably wondering how California ended up not physically breaking off and falling into the ocean. (Or, at the very least, ranking dead last in the study.)
The reason has largely to do with the next item on the list: Tomatoes. "That's helping drive California's score down by being eaten more frequently," wrote Dodds.
Among the other foods Californians are eating that leads to the relatively modest ranking in caloric input? Mushrooms, strawberries, frozen yogurt, pasta, and avocados. By being huge consumers of these foods, California is partially countering its terrible junk food obsession.
That leads to the question: Just what are we supposed to do with this information?
"We can connect food and activity with health problems (e.g., obesity and diabetes) and estimate how these are changing over time," wrote Dodds. "The output from our instrument should be useful for public policy makers and for the general populace. And over time, we'll be able to see how a population's tweets about food and activity change, and then be able to ask what's going on (e.g., if people or marketers are talking more about unhealthy food)."
And although the current model is admittedly simplistic (and there are also glitches in the program: ice cream comes up as a low calorie food, for instance), this is the first time that a team is trying to accomplish something like this and they're contining to tweak the formula and design of the program. Besides, it offers policymakers and consumers alike the ability to access a massive store of information.
At the very least, it reminds us to eat a few more tomatoes with dinner.
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Ever since Senate Bill 1201 gave the public more access to the Los Angeles River three years ago, the waterway has become the city's newest, burgeoning local attraction. More and more people are discovering this once neglected waterway, including the avid fishermen that live in and around Los Angeles. While good for the river, the increased recreational traffic has also meant additional trash that has proven harmful to wildlife -- especially to Mr. Fred, a Great Blue Heron hobbled by a fishing line tangled around his ankles.
Though rescued by Elysian Valley residents and driven to International Bird Rescue in San Pedro, Mr. Fred didn't survive this seemingly meager injury. "Mr. Fred's foot was infected and spread to its bones," reported William Preston Bowling, special projects manager with Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR).
Disturbed by such tragic consequences, Bowling set about trying to find a solution to prevent any more wildlife suffering from misplaced or thoughtlessly disposed fishing lines. The problem begins when birds smell the remnants of fish on the discarded line and hunt for them in the regular trash bins where fishermen dispose of their lines. Because the trash is often easily accessible to birds, they can get tangled up and injured in them. The solution to this was simply to make the disposal container less accessible to birds. By deploying bins in the form of simple tubes, birds cannot get their root through the trash and accidentally harm themselves. The solution is already being used in ocean piers and streams in the High Sierras, where fly fishing is popular.
Working with councilmember Mitch O'Farrell and the Atwater Village Neighborhood Council, FoLAR has launched a fishing line recycling and education program. They've installed three pilot recycling stations in popular, woodsy fishing areas along the Los Angeles River -- Dover Street and Acresite Street -- and the non-profit's summer oasis the Frog Spot. They will be up until the end of the recreational zone season in October.
Additional stations are planned for the Bowtie Parcel, and the non-profit is also working with the Mountains Recreational and Conservation Authority to install another one at Marsh Park.
"I'm so pleased to work with FoLAR and take the initiative to address this vital environmental issue and protect our beautiful birds. We encourage the community to come out and fish and enjoy the river and all the outdoor experiences it has to offer," said Sean Woods, Los Angeles Sector Superintendent, California Department of Parks and Recreation, in a statement. "By installing these fishing line recycling tubes we can do that and keep our majestic birds safe. The recycling tubes are also a symbolic recognition that the Los Angeles River is alive and well and provides an important habitat for a wide variety of birds and fish in the heart of our city."]]> The stations are elegant tubes that can hold fishermen's lines once they're through with them, rather than littering the river. "After putting on the first ever fishing derby on the Los Angeles River, we wanted to make sure that the attention was focused on being good stewards of river fishing," said Bowling.
Every week staff and volunteers empty these recycling stations and send them to Berkley Conservation Institute in Iowa, a non profit that recycles the fishing line into fish habitats made of monofilament fishing lines an dline spools, along with other post-consumer materials like milk cartons and soft drink bottles. These habitat structures attract fish and encourage plant growth almost immediately, providing the natural cover essential to the growth of a healthy fish population and ecosystem.
Aside from this FoLAR has also launched an educational component to the program, distributing 5,000 English and Spanish language cards that alert anglers about the dangers to wildlife, in the hopes that increased awareness would result in less preventable injuries to the beautiful birds of Los Angeles.
"Fishing the Los Angeles River is important for our community. It's about enjoying a shared experience for anglers and families," said Bowling in a statement, "but we also must be good stewards and make sure it's safe for everyone, including our wildlife."
Learn more about the program here.]]>
High & Dry surveys the legacy of human enterprise in the California desert. Together, writer/historian Christopher Langley and photographer Osceola Refetoff document human activity, past and present, in the context of future development.
Mojave mining towns come and go. They burst upon the scene, prosper and grow for a few years. Then the mines play out. The towns dwindle and eventually blow away. Their ruins fill with ghosts. Their memory entices the desert enthusiast from the city to come and visit.
Randsburg is one of those towns. Once it was the Queen of Rand District. It dominated the western mining news and gold fever rumors. It had companion communities of Johannesburg and Red Mountain. There was a train. Red Mountain laid claim to servicing miners with brothels, cribs and sin. Things are quite different now.
Today, Randsburg is recreating itself. After its heyday, it was known as a ghost town. Now it strains to straddle the worlds of tourist destination, motorcycle Valhalla and a peaceful isolated town in a diminished landscape where civilized specters remain. Some residents who live there like the area just the way it has been for a generation or more. Most days, it is still quiet and isolated. The only action is the wind whistling through the closed antique shops, crumbling buildings and quaint faded signs. But things are changing.
Call the style of the new Randsburg "abandonment chic." This design requires a delicate balance between the charm of the past and an ironic modern sensibility. "Chic" denotes "up-to-date, contemporary, au courant, trendy, snappy, happening." Now "ironic" is often misused in common discourse, so let's nail it down. The New Oxford American Dictionary opines: "happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this." The modern copy of the past is ironic as it never existed in the way it is being represented today.
New businesses with fresh-painted signs are popping up on main-street. The businesses are located in old, often distressed buildings from Randsburg's raucous past. There are all the attendant inadequate plumbing, electrical and structural challenges. The appearance of the past is seductive though. "Abandonment chic" requires facing down these challenges without obliterating the abandoned town mystique. The citizens there are determined to fight to save their town.
Visitors want to rub shoulders with the restored past, but without the black widow spiders, splinters, lead paint and asbestos from the abandoned past. Comfort is a focus of these entrepreneurs as they recreate an ersatz century old mining camp. They mean to market this historic conceit of the romance of the West that many Americans harbor deep in their hearts.
Antique stores have great appeal for the tourists, if not for the bikers. There is no sissy shopping in cute boutiques for them. These leathered riders spend their weekend attacking the arid land, hills, gullies, arroyos and trails of dust and rock. The general store offers meals of simple hotdog and hamburger fare, great ice cream sodas, and relief from the dry cold winter winds or suffocating summer heat. The store is quaint and friendly, matching the sense we have of a once welcoming vibrant community of the past. There's no room for social problems and civic discord in this fantasy.
Many business owners live in the nearby economic center of Ridgecrest. The struggle for Randsburg is to keep the town open during the week. The real entrepreneurial visionaries want the town to flaunt its abandonment chic seven days a week. "Keep your doors open" might be the Chamber motto, if there were a Chamber.
For the Randsburg merchants of Butte Street, it comes down to a survival choice. They hope for marvelous prosperity like the miners of yore. The jury is out. The town markets itself as a mining camp where the gold now lives not in the hills but in the pockets of the travelers passing through. Extracting that gold is as arduous yet delicate a task as ever the mineral presented miners.
On a Saturday this spring, the serenity of town is split by the rumbling of Harley hogs, four-wheel drive rhinos, the quiet scuffing of footsteps and gentle talk between tourists wandering through the dusty art galleries and shops. They have nothing particular on their shopping list. They like the changing scene for different reasons. For the bikers, it is a welcoming spot of shade, refreshments and camaraderie with other riders on weekend desert rendezvous. For those passing through, disembarking from their air-conditioned cars to find the true romance of the old West, it is a trip into nostalgia with credit cards to bring a piece of the past back home.
The past remains safely encumbered when locked in a quaint artifact.
"Abandonment chic" courts the lost and useless past for profit and gain today. It doesn't always work, but life in small forsaken Mojave mining camps is all about the quality of the journey on the way to survival.
To explore more High & Dry: dispatches from the land of little rain visit desertdispatches.com or the project's Facebook page. We welcome your questions and comments.
Read more High & Dry stories:
High & Dry: Caretaking the Ghosts of Cerro Gordo
In Cerro Gordo, a deserted mining camp in the Sierra Nevadas that dates back to the mid 1870s, the howling spirits of the past continue to haunt the living.
William 'Burro' Schmidt and His Tunnel to Nowhere
High & Dry explores prospector William "Burro" Schmidt's half-mile long tunnel in Last Chance Canyon in the Mojave Desert. Schmidt spent 32 years single-handedly drilling his tunnel through solid granite.
High & Dry: Through a Window Darkly
High & Dry explores how a window -- as seen through the lens of a camera -- can relate to a viewer about memory and time.
¿Quién eres? ¿Quién quieres ser?
Ahora es la hora de poder
¡Si Se Puede! (¡Si Se Puede!)
Con chicas a tu lado
Finalmente tu momento ha llegado
Who are you? Who do you want to be?
Today is your day, listen and see
Yes we can! (Yes we can!)
With chicas on your side
Your moment has finally arrived
The first-ever Chicas Rockeras Southeast Los Angeles camp in Huntington Park was a rollicking success. Just five miles from downtown and four miles from the Long Beach Freeway, the rock camp hosted over 26 children ages 8-17, for a week of band practice and workshops. Held the week of June 15-19, 2015, at Aspire Ollin University Prep Academy, girls learned to sing and write songs with musicians like punk legend Alice Bag, and were coached by Candice Hansen, who's played with, among others, Exene Cervenka from the L.A.-based band X. Other guest artists, like award-winning Trio Ellas and band coach Josie Wreck, performed original music and Salt N' Pepa covers and discussed their career and work with the campers. But this was no ordinary punk rock camp.
"In 2009 I was organizing a lot of community events, punk shows, and fests," said Marin, a member and comadre, of the Chicas Rockeras collective. "But then I saw the film 'Girls Rock' and immediately, thought 'How can we make this happen? I wish I had that when I was a kid.'" Marin volunteered with Rock n' Roll Camp for Girls, Los Angeles for five years, but, she said, "It was time to bring it back home to southeast L.A." Marin grew up in South Gate, and many of the comadres, or co-organizers, in the collective also grew up in the southeast or are from similar working-class Latino neighborhoods.
Based on a sliding scale up to $150 (half of the families paid the full amount and the other half paid between $25 to zero dollars according to income), the camp is based on the Girls Rock Camp Alliance model that build self-esteem and help find their voices by using music education and performance for empowerment and social justice. The feminist and radical effort was started in 2001 in Portland, while the Alliance began in 2007, exploding with new iterations across the country, as far as the United Kingdom. However, since many of those camps cost $400 or more, Chicas Rockeras was far more accessible to many families. Marin said that another thing that sets them apart is that mainstream rock camps are "traditionally a white-dominated scene, [and] the fact that we are focused on being bilingual and creating space for young women of color is unique." The camp was 100% volunteer-run.
The camp was focused on problem-solving and on building critical thinking skills. The entire week was filled with lunchtime singing and dancing, with energized campers gathering each morning to think about their power, their friendships, and their literal voices. "Some the younger girls were nervous to jump in with the older girls," said Marin. "But the older girls, in a very sister-loving way, would encourage the younger girls to jump in and dance. They would also eat together during lunch and ask them about their day. It was beautiful to witness this type of mentoring."
The groups were split into two: the younger set, ages 8-11, were called the Bidis; and ages 12-17 were called the Bom Boms -- both named after Selena's world-famous song, "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom." The band lyrics reflected what girls were learning. In class, they talked about and mapped on a large piece of poster paper what's in their neighborhoods: trees, freeways, paleteros, and schools. Because the southeast has "an intense history of environmental injustices," according to Marin, "it made sense to offer Environmental Justice 101," she said about the week's curriculum. Facilitators Angee and Janeth "covered the history with Exide, and the fact that we don't have access to healthy foods."
The most important lesson, however, was to make the campers proud of who they are. For example, camper Isabel P., who's a reporter for the Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio, said this:
When I walked into camp for the first time I felt ecstatic, my adrenalin was pumping and I just wanted to play drums. The volunteers welcomed every girl with kindness that made me feel like I belong...
After the "Radical Body Love for Young Riot Grrls" workshop led by facilitator Gloria Lucas, one of the campers said, "I love my body!" Volunteers also said they heard girls say, "I'm not ashamed to be round. No soy gorda."
"It was really hard for me not to cry on the spot, it was so powerful," said Marin. "Some of the campers sharing these highlights were nine years old." The growth in the campers, their families, and communities will have positive, and hopefully long-term, effects.
After the workshop, a Bom Bom band called Rotting Glitter wrote these lyrics for their song, "Body is Beauty":
"We won't take this anymore! We have bodies we adore!"
When you watch this clip of them performing, you'll notice they start out on the quiet side, but as the song goes on, the singer's voice grows in confidence until she's screaming into the mic. This song embodies the changes and growth the campers experienced at Chicas Rockeras.
"After the camp, I felt that I had learned a lot, not just with learning a new instrument but I learned a lot about myself, the history of music, and life lessons that can be used in the future," wrote Isabel P. in her article.
The hallway of Aspire Ollin's first floor was covered with pictures of women who rock: Selena, Joan Jett, Jenny Rivera. While the curriculum is derived from a punk-aesthetic, the people at the center of the posters and decorations included many Latinas. Chicas Rockeras' most amazing strength is that they place the students' cultures and aesthetics at the center of the curriculum. To achieve this work in public schools, which are facing massive budget cuts that make teachers choose between having a school nurse and band class, is a minor miracle.
Another workshop I participated in was on how to be an ally. Sitting in a circle of mostly the younger girls and a few adult volunteers, the facilitator thoughtfully asked us to go around and say our name and our preferred gender pronoun. We talked about what a gender pronoun was first. For them it was "she and them," which served as an example of the many ways the campers could identify. We also defined being an ally, as: the way you can check if someone was all right, or if they needed anything.
One girl of about seven, with a hand that was always in the air, asked, "What does 'gay' mean?" "That's a great question," said Povi-Tamu, the facilitator who also works with the local social justice group Black Lives Matter. "Let's figure it out." Our teacher went up to the white board and drew three lines with the words "boy" and "girl" at each end. The first mapped out who they like to spend time with, the second was what activities they thought each gender enjoys, and the last was what gender is written on their birth certificate. The girls took markers and drew marks where they belonged along the spectrums. The group discussed these ideas respectfully, and no one was shamed or punished for asking questions.
This was yet another great camp moment, one that many of us never thought we could have, even as adults. What's even more exciting is that conversations like these are happening in southeast L.A., a set of communities that do a lot with limited economic and educational resources. The children in our communities hold precious lessons learned at home that teach them to be inventive and resilient, to thrive in the face of bigotry embodied in toxic factories, the expansion of dangerous freeways, and overcrowded schools that frequently fail to serve them.
In 2010, the median income in Huntington Park for a family of four was $34,000, while 31.7% was under the age of 18, compared to 25% for the state. These are normal statistics for the southeast and, in opposition to what some might think, conditions that generate ingenuity. Children are natural artists, full of energy and ideas, a resource in which the southeast is rich.
Chicas Rockeras is the kind of group that all families, politicians, nonprofits, and teachers should know about and support immediately. Like the Southeast Los Angeles Colectivo, like the Alivio Open Mic, like Communities for a Better Environment, Chicas Rockeras is made up of people from the southeast and their allies who are stepping up and organizing their communities, not waiting for anyone to come and save them.
It is the younger people, a few years out of college or a few years into the workplace, from southeast L.A. County who are the organizers and participants at the numerous art projects, programs, and events blossoming in the region. If foundations that support programs like AVID, for instance, are interested in investing in that expanse of the county, they should support groups like Chicas Rockeras Southeast Los Angeles, run by those of us who see promise and talent where others only see poverty.
In their work and behavior, the campers identified and gained confidence, power, friendship, love, and encouragement. "I also learned some valuable skills," added Isabel, the camper who is also a reporter, "such as leadership, team work, collaboration, and communication skills." If Isabel could articulate these skills, there's no telling what she'll be up to when she grows up.
The need for a program like this is clear. The music and art programs in Los Angeles Unified, like many other school districts, have been cut drastically, pitted against other basic needs like an on-site nurse.
The bilingual camp will return next year with just as much energy. The 35 volunteers, who spanned everything from punk rock drummers to PhD students, will also be back because the project was close to their hearts.
"That was me when I was that age," said one woman during an after-program meeting. Almost every adult in the volunteer circle nodded in agreement. Most people in the room related to the campers at that age: introverted, questioning, yet brave and curious. The local families were really supportive of the camp. "That surprised me," said Marin, "there's no way, growing up, my tía would have sent me to a 'Rock camp? Que es eso, que rock!' But times change."]]> On the day of the final showcase, the camp theme song is played again, in a set of roaring final performances at the American Legion in South Gate. Pastel-colored paper lanterns adorn the ceiling, and under their glow, the stage is packed with singing campers and teachers. The audience is a sea of waving arms in the air, an auditorium jammed with parents, siblings, and abuelos. Everyone, from Ph.D. students, punks, and baby siblings cheer on the campers' big final numbers.
Let the student songs be rallying cries for all of our young people to be this supported in their creativity. May our schools vibrate with affirmation and song.
To support Chicas Rockeras Southeast Los Angeles visit their website and look out for their fundraisers like Ladies' Rock Camp, upcoming shows, and awesome mixed tapes. Watch more campers rocking out on the CRSELA Facebook page.]]>
She wondered how "the constant references to Hollywood, the apocalyptic landscape, the plastic surgery, and, of course, how every occurrence, natural or otherwise, seems to be a referendum on the California Dream," have made -- or unmade -- Los Angeles. To get the conversation going, Miranda asked Lynell George (currently an arts and culture columnist for KCET's Artbound) and Josh Kun (director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's The Norman Lear Center) to think aloud about the rhetoric of Los Angeles. Miranda invited me to join their conversation.
Our back-and-forth took several days, less spontaneous than a conversation over drinks and probably a bit more polemical. But that's only right. We ought to be angry about the ways in which Los Angeles is conventionally mistaken, even by those who lives are centered here. (See any recent lifestyle piece in the New York Times for hilarious examples.)
We should recognize that the failure to see the city as it is has been the precondition for 40 years of failed public policy in Los Angeles toward immigrants, the incarcerated, the homeless, and the working poor, as well as commuters, homeowners, and powerless voters.
Lynell George sees the connection. "It seems to me," she wrote, "that really seeing Los Angeles -- what it truly is -- is tied inexorably to the future of the city, its possibility. We have to ask ourselves, what makes us feel rooted here and why? What makes for a life here? That would require that we make an effort to consider what we need for a stronger, more cohesive city that has never really quite been able to just 'be.'"
Kun took note of the injustice that comes from misreading L.A.
The choice to not understand L.A. -- and it is a choice -- is part of what allows gentrification to happen, that willful arrogant ignorance that neighborhoods are just there for the taking, that there are no brutal social costs to opening a Whole Foods near Skid Row, to whitewashing (waxed beard and man-bun washing) Highland Park, to instituting what Guillermo Gomez-Peña once described (talking about similar transformations in San Francisco's Mission district nearly 20 years ago) as "multiculturalism without people of color."
And Miranda offered a new orientation in the L.A. story. The demographic bulk of the city's non-Anglo population, she believes, has unmade Los Angeles as the Pacific outpost of the Midwest and remade the city as the northernmost capital of the tropics.
Yet for me, as the child of South American immigrants, California was never the West, it was the North. And it was never the last stop. It was the first. It was the beginning. And, in my mind, it still is -- as it has been for entire generations of Latin American and Asian immigrants for whom Los Angeles has served as entrance, not exit. In my mind, the idea of California as the extreme reaches of the West sometimes feels like charming creation myth, one that doesn't really apply to a room full of Japanese Peruvians eating acevichado rolls in Torrance.
We haven't yet learned to speak the language of the Los Angeles that is coming. It's a post-sprawl city, where "sprawl" had been the clichéd label for the city's multi-centered urban form. It's a post-diversity city, where "diversity" talk is both a sign of Anglo anxiety about the new people living next door and a word of self-congratulation about not being too anxious. Los Angeles is post "middle-class" as well, having been made into a city of struggling working-class aspirants below and a crust of oblivious wealth above.]]> What better "post" city can we imagine? What will describe a place self-defined as "suburban," "middle-class," and "diverse" now that those categories no longer adequately describe who we are, but no better rhetoric is at hand to take the measure of Los Angeles?
How about "unexceptional" and "ordinary" as substitute language? Perhaps what we are searching for is a rhetoric of greater humility toward the "everyday-ness" of Los Angeles that would contain less lament over the city's inability to meet the extravagant demands of our desires?
If L.A. is imagined as either a disappointing heaven or an unsatisfactory hell, then the city's representation may be seductive and glamorous, but it's just another gaudy entertainment, best witnessed while lightly sedated.
Lynell George offered a striking example of this kind of misreading (one that goes back to 1939).
There is a moment in John O'Hara's novella "Hope of Heaven," when the screenwriter/novelist protagonist, Jim Molloy, suffers through a monologue by a wannabe novelist who is fascinated by L.A. -- or rather this vision of L.A. as a place for the outlandish. "I'm writing a novel about Los Angeles. ... The really fantastic thing is the crystallization of the ordinary, cheap ordinary American. ... Fantastically ordinary, cheap, commonplace."
I like that. Los Angeles is "fantastically commonplace." Los Angeles is not "the great exception" to ordinary American places. Los Angeles is not a place without a history, apart from circumstance and nature. Los Angeles is (and was) a colonial city, a captured city, a city of fragments, a city of edges, a city of amnesiacs, an anxious city, and a city of careless belief and so little faith.]]>
Currently, four cities -- including San Francisco and Los Angeles -- and the state of New York have plans to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next few years. Other cities across the country, surely, will follow. And while the argument over whether or not a nationwide minimum wage hike should be instituted is set to become a hugely divisive point in the upcoming elections, the reality is that sooner or later, we're going to get a minimum wage hike.
The biggest question confronting most folks who won't have their own wages increased -- which is to say, most of the workers in America -- is "how is this going to affect me?" A new study from Purdue has a few answers.]]> The most widely-cited result from the study is that the prices at fast food restaurants -- which are referred to as "limited service restaurants" in the literature -- will increase by 4.3 percent. If you want a real-world example of that, basically take the various Dollar Menu items available at the assortment of fast food joints and add a nickel to them. That's very feasible!
(The study also says that bumping up the minimum wage to $22 an hour would raise the average price by 25 percent.)
But, to me, what's most interesting about the study is this note towards the end of the summary, pointing out that restaurants may try to counter the cost associated with the higher minimum wage by maintaining the same price and shrink the amount of food they're offering instead:
The other way to look at this if you don't want to raise the prices is to examine the impact on product size. As expected, a hamburger would be much smaller.
This is a good thing.
The hike may be an inadvertent "life hack" to provide the country with more appropriate food portions. If fast food companies lower the portion size on their fries and sodas, and maybe stop the culture of just throwing any damn thing on a bun, well, that's only good news.
Americans have a difficult time controlling their eating habits. Paying an extra few nickels per transaction to help us with portion control is more than worth it.
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Lodi has a reputation problem. (I'm not going to quote Credence Clearwater Revival, I'm not going to quote Credence Clearwater Revival.) Think of it as the breadbasket of the California wine industry. It leads among the state's winegrowing districts in the production of zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, petite sirah, syrah, chradonnay, pinot grigio, and sauvignon blanc. But the bulk of those grapes historically have gone to make bulk wine, California wine, supermarket wine, wine sold before its time, and wines that fed the white zinfandel boom.
Those times have changed, though. People care about what they eat and drink now. While 20 years ago there were only eight wineries in Lodi, now there are 85. Boutique is big. "Many of the sites are families farming for four, five, six generations," Camron King, Executive Director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission, says. "Plus there's an entrepreneurial spirit of 'let's see what we can grow here.'" Turns out what Lodi can grow is 24% of the state's grape crop.
One of the best benefits for future generations is the existence of some of California's oldest producing vineyards. For instance, Bechtold Vineyard features vines 129 years old -- when they call the Cinsault from the site ancient, that's far from advertising puffery. (FYI, the terms "old vines" and "ancient vines" have no legal, authorized standing -- vineyards can use them as they see fit, so beware.) These were planted when Grover Cleveland was president.
The resultant wines are so good that esteemed wineries like Turley, Scholium Project, and Bonny Doon use the fruit. Most of it goes to the vineyard's owner Michael David though, and they make a single site Cinsault bottling, for a mere $25, that's one of the more fascinating wines in the state. It's the lost link between pinot noir (that of sophistication and beauty) and zinfandel (that of richness heading to bramble). Of course, Michael David is most known for its mass market and brilliantly named 7 Deadly Zins -- Lodi at its value-priced best. Lodi can't stop being Lodi.
But that means King is correct when he says, "The quality that's being delivered at the price point -- we think we over-deliver." Such is certainly the case with many of the zinfandels from the region. Since the area is just east of the California Delta it still gets that cooling effect off the Pacific, while remaining quite warm, too. Plus it gets the sandy soils of the toes of the Sierra foothills, which King says, "Is perfect for old vine zinfandel." One great example is St. Amant Old Vine Zinfandel from a 101 year-old vineyard. At just $18 a bottle, it's a berry bomb with a backbone.
Oftentimes, Cortright is in her own videos, doing something, but not in a particularly active way. In "snow2???" (2011), the artist sits in her bedroom in front of the webcam, not really doing much. Then hazy glitchy "snow" effects appear on the screen, making this work something between a vlog entry and an experiment with the manipulation options offered by YouTube. Cortright's work is self-conscious, socially anxious, and rather sensitive. It is feminist, without being overtly so, and social, without being extroverted. If we quantified this using a Myers-Briggs pop psychology acronym, it might be something like INFP or INFJ.
"I find the Internet very democratic, especially because of how good content gets rewarded," says Cortright. "People share it around -- I look at it as a positive thing for sure. And I can post to my thing, then [people] can watch or not. I love how passive it can be."
All of Cortright's videos are two minutes or less, she explains, because online audiences tend to have short attention spans. She also makes physical works that use Internet imagery, creating an uncanny experience as the digital realm migrate to the physical world.
Her digital painting "Night Heat 5" (2010) is simply a very tall palm tree against white satin. Other pieces like "marbles/crystals" (2009) are presented as JPEGs as weird, kitschy arrangements of digital imagery that the Internet and computer programs have to offer, arranged in ways reminiscent of screen savers, rain falling from the sky, or "Pac-Man" blocks traversing the image.
She's also known for her 2007 short video "VVEBCAM," which is funny, in a very post-Internet way. For a little under two minutes, Cortright stares transfixed at the computer screen -- that typical not-looking-into-the-camera gaze that's apparent in selfie culture usually involves the person's randomly darting eyes across the screen, not quite inviting the viewer to look but not rejecting them either. It is this passive Internet gazing at screens that we've become accustomed to through video chats on Skype and FaceTime, or sending selfies via mobile devices. Then clip-art style graphics dance across the screen, as she is presumably adding them onto the image. Cortright tagged this short video with highly searchable terms ranging from innocuous -- cat, Hollywood, Tokyo -- to much more vulgar terms she gleaned from looking at the passive searching patterns of YouTube users.
This video was ultimately banned from YouTube because of the search terms, which seems to encourage a deeper conversation about the pornographic nature of the Internet. Cortright mentions how porn is such a huge part of the Internet and that it's something always at the back of her mind, particularly in relation to working with womens' bodies online. In an interview with Jennifer Piejko at I-D, she discusses the ways that porn is the reason much digital technology changes so quickly: "...it's what gets file sizes down and pushes for better video quality and interesting streaming innovations," she says. The problematic nature of straight porn, for some viewers, is that a woman's body is the object of male desire, as a vehicle for him for sexual gratification. The man's on-screen orgasm often ends a porn video, a visual symbol that he's satisfied, that it was "real," even though the situations are often staged and even choreographed.
Similar porn-inspired themes take shape in the work of L.A.-based artist Charlie White, who is generally fascinated by the commodification of the white teenage girl body while acknowledging how much that sexualization is influenced by porn. In this sense, Cortright's work overlaps with artists such as White because she is directly using the female body in her work. It's something that Cortright is aware of, particularly whenever she chooses to use female bodies in her work.
"It's kind of a shame to me -- it's a bummer -- working with women's bodies, it's so loaded," Cortright says. "I'm very concerned about whether I'm exploiting the girls [I am using] -- but if there's a deep level of care and thought, then I think that's feminist. That's a deep part of feminism -- actually giving a shit about peoples' bodies and feelings."
Cortright's recent solo exhibition "NIKI, LUCY, LOLA, VIOLA" on view at the Depart Foundation in Los Angeles (July 9-September 12, 2015) considers the female body through a variety of women she constructed and blew up to 150 percent of their normal size. The work was created using open-source, screensaver software and purchased virtual strippers, all cast into videos and animations arranged using green screens, Internet painterly landscapes, and obvious synthetic materials. In this way there is a pop art-like aesthetic to Cortright's work -- a sense that anyone could have made these, but instead she did.
Her commentary on the pornographic nature of search terms in Internet culture, as evidenced in the early "VVEBCAM" video, became well-received once it was banned from YouTube. It also became a snapshot of an early Web era, documenting the rigidness and sexism inherent on YouTube.
Yet the majority of Cortright's work could even be seen as more of an Internet pop art, oft-times charming in its consumer banalism. She collects digital detritus and recombines it in uncanny ways. The mundane-ness of GIFS and screensavers, for contemporary audiences, obfuscates the real meaning behind the images that clutter the Internet as a kind of landfill, where low-rez JPG's and BMP's become sediments for future Internet archaeologists to dig up. They're artifacts of the recent past. And her YouTube manipulations utilize a folksy aesthetic, appropriating the visual vernacular of young users who are likely doing the same thing with their sharing abilities, posting for fun and boredom, and then moving on to a shinier distraction, sticking to that post-Internet networked state of being.]]> Artbound recently caught up with Cortright to discuss using the computer as an art tool; encountering "the gaze;" and exploring the "femininities of the Internet."
How did you come to the Internet?
I believe that it's a generational thing, of course. I think that there is some level of impatience [of] working on a computer; I was able to do more with a computer than I could do with my own hand. I could make more sophisticated work. It felt really powerful to me, and it was quicker than using just traditional materials. I liked the unlimited resources. Especially watching my husband, Marc Horowitz, [his work] is so different than mine. He works more in traditional materials. He has to really be strategic about what colors he buys, they're expensive. I'm not used to having color cost money. My brain has been taught not think like that.
Of course, with digital work there is other limitations: sometimes it doesn't have this unique, authentic feel -- or this "physical thing," which is so amazing about physical objects -- but that also doesn't both me either. I make physical objects too. There are ways to make them feel, they can still maintain a certain aura, or authenticity to them. I guess we have this personality type: I work really well alone, sometimes I feel like I can be the most creative alone making my work, just being able to make work on a computer in a bedroom, anywhere in the world, not having to rely on any geographical constraint. I'm drawn to that. For a while, I didn't know -- it seemed really second nature, now it seems like a newer way of working. It's sort of like an affliction in a way. Even if my work didn't have a certain notoriety, I would still be doing the same thing regardless. It's amazing I can make a living off of it. I just work with really basic tools. I just need a computer.
Have you ever taken periods of time completely away from the computer?
I don't think I have. In the past year, I've tried to make some breaks from social media but not from the computer. That gets a little intense. Definitely that FOMO [Fear of Missing Out] thing, I can see it for kids, especially teenagers, it's probably really difficult. Because social media is such a powerful tool but sometimes the pictures look better than whats actually going on. I haven't really limited myself at all. The workflow, I'll focus on one kind of work for a while, whether it's videos or painting. It's difficult to work on more than one body of work. Once I do a session with painting, I'll then take weeks or maybe months off, and then I'll do it again. I guess I kinda work in sessions.
Kind of like recording sessions?
Yes, I guess. I have these mother files -- variations and versions. One file can produce an entire show. Versions of that file.
Do you experience "anxieties of the gaze" both in digital and in real-life spaces?
Especially with the webcam videos that I make; at times it's been almost unbearable being in a gallery setting and then watching people watching me. I find it incredibly uncomfortable, and it's very weird for me. I'm always grateful for people who support my work, [but] that's a really hard one for me.
I was always drawn to the Internet. Then they think I'm so weird when I say that because [they say] "you're comfortable posting it to the whole world to see but you don't want to be in a room with 10 people?"
I'm actually not that interested in voyeurism. Other female artists are more interested in that. Sometimes people will throw that word around with me. I am not interested in it at all.
My work isn't live. It's very controlled, I make it by myself, it's my decision to post it, and then I get some information back, you can see the number of views or likes. I see that people are watching it. Then you have this nice support, people are interested in this work. I really love that passive element. I'm not sure if I'm really conditioned to liking that because using that from an early teenager, and getting conditioned in that environment. There are definitely studies that show your brain getting dopamine with likes.
I guess that's a huge criticism that people have with millennials, that they don't know how to interact in real life. It's a bigger question, I guess.
What's so great about online is that if you don't want to watch it, you just close the tab, or you just don't watch it. I used to get some pretty funny comments -- there's literally comments like "WTF DID I JUST WATCH, I JUST WASTED TWO MINUTES OF MY LIFE CAN YOU GIVE IT BACK TO ME." They would watch the whole thing and then take the time to comment. I love my haters. You can't get those two minutes back and you watched this bizarre video, and I think it's really cool and feel really accomplished. You are creating some sort of interaction and commenting. You can have someone's full attention for two minutes, and that's like two weeks in Internet time. People have incredibly short attention spans at this point in time.
People like it, it can be shared around so easily, it doesn't take so much on my part. If they like something then they share it, with their network and their friends -- it doesn't have to be so me. I can post to my thing, they can watch or not, I love how passive it can be.
I find the whole thing democratic, and good content gets rewarded. They share it around -- I find it very democratic, and look at it as a positive thing for sure.
Are you interested in Second Life or the construction of "feminities on the Internet?
I never got deep into Second Life. I think I made an outfit entirely out of water, and then I got bored. It was more about making a full outfit. I remember that it seemed "not scary," but it was like a very in-depth community, and it was very open, but I guess I remember not having the energy for it. This is like an entire other world, I don't think I can dedicate the time to this. Some of my peers have made amazing stuff with Second Life. I guess, at some point I like programs that are a little bit more... I never liked video games or computer games much because there is so much interaction with the outside world. I wanted more of a closed environment, more control. Something that was a big influence on me was Sim City, more gentle things, I think. It's not like interacting with anyone else.
How does porn influence your newest work, "NIKI, LUCY, LOLA, VIOLA?"
With the virtual girls, it's definitely an influence. I wouldn't say that porn is not a major influence on me, but I find all of these issues incredibly complex. I'm still trying to work it out -- I think that it's problematic thinking that there are so many choices that women should be able to make, and porn is usually considered a pretty negative thing. I find it problematic. I'll get a few comments here and there [about] images on the Internet -- people hadn't even seen the work, saying that "this is horrible, they're exploiting women."
I don't want to be judgmental of anyone's decisions to do anything with their bodies. There are a lot of opinions on what women should or should not do with their bodies, what a feminist looks like or how they act.
Definitely with this work, I've been trying to bring up more questions than answers. I don't feel prepared to give anyone answers. With the virtual girls I've been working with, I know I want to accomplish a feeling, in as non-judgmental a way as possible. I'm perfectly fine with the girls being sexy and beautiful. They are gorgeous, fit women. I was even thinking of them as virtual athletes at some point. Very seductive, sexy. In the show, [in] the way they are presented, they are aggressively large. They're not double -- they're 150 percent, they're quite big. I wanted them to be extremely powerful, but they're also really in-your-face. It's such a complex issue. I think people are really confused about it all the time. It's just not a simple thing. There's some very deep ideas about what women should and shouldn't do. And not just men. Women as well.
It's kind of a shame to me. It's a bummer, working with women's bodies, the context is so heavy and so loaded. I find it very confusing. I think I'm very concerned about whether I'm exploiting the girls -- there's a deep level of care and thought, then that's feminist. That's a deep part of feminism, actually giving a shit, about peoples' bodies and feelings.
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Top image: Petra Cortright in collaboration with Roberto Sanchez and Alvaro Nates, 2011.]]>
Jim served on KCET and then KCETLink's Board of Directors for more than 15 years. He was a compassionate philanthropist and remarkable businessman who truly believed in KCET and the mission of public media. His commitment to KCET has never wavered. Jim supported us during the best of times and made the organization better. Most significantly, he supported us during the most challenging of times and made the organization even stronger. We will be forever grateful for his leadership, steady guidance, and generosity.
We will celebrate his life and honor his legacy by continuing to build a 21st century public media organization that would make him proud. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jim's wife, Anne, their children, and grandchildren.
Top Image: Courtesy of Capital Group
On May 29th, 1919, the SS Palo Alto was launched from its construction yard in Oakland, California to serve U.S. forces in World War I. Of course, it was a bit late for the party: WWI ended in November of 1918. So, the boat went back into storage.
In 1929, the Palo Alto was purchased by the Seacliff Amusement Corporation in an effort to turn the ship into an entertainment center, featuring a dance floor, nightclub, swimming pool, cafe, and hotel. They towed the ship down towards the Santa Cruz coastal town of Aptos, lodged it into the bottom of the ocean floor, and constructed a 640-foot pier to it. The attraction opened in June of 1930 but, as this history details, luck wasn't on its side:
A series of storms cracked the hull in 1932. The investors, hoping to cut their losses, sold their beachfront property and the SS Palo Alto to the State of California in February 1936 for $1.00.
And there it still sits today, an attraction to be visited by both humans and great white sharks. In fact, as this great piece in the Mercury News points out, the ship has become a home for various marine animals. While humans can't actually walk the ship, they can stroll the pier and swim in the nearby beach to get a closer look.
The Seacliff State Park is open from 8 a.m. to sunset every day.]]>
Actor and founder of non-profit Green Wish, Raphael Sbarge has written, produced, and directed "A Concrete River: Reviving the Waters of Los Angeles" to capture this moment in time and to help build even more awareness of the waterway's complicated history. Supported by the California Institute of Contemporary Arts, the documentary will premiere on Wednesday, July 29 at Laemmle NoHo 7, at a fundraiser.
"Ask anyone [about the L.A. River] and you'll get a blank stare," said Sbarge. "But ask them if they know the scene in 'Grease' where they race the cars, or remember Arnold Schwarzenegger from 'Terminator' riding down it in a motorcycle, and the light bulb goes off. That's what people know of our 51-mile long river. Surprisingly, many, many long-term residents have never been down to the restored parts of the river, and don't even know it's available. In a city devoid of green space, this is a huge asset."
Sbarge sees his documentary as a "call to action" for residents to step up and help shape the direction of Los Angeles's future via the river. "The funds raised will go directly to support the larger vision of the river's expansion currently under discussion," said Sbarge, who is working with Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR) on the project.
Sbarge first began to delve into the history of the Los Angeles River on his own. He saw an original footage of the massive 1938 floods that took out 6,000 homes and flooded a third of Los Angeles, and even cancelled the Oscars.
This initial jolt piqued his interest, and he was plagued with questions such as: What was this long, concrete L.A. eyesore? Who built it? And why aren't we collecting all the water that runs down the concrete river? His questions eventually led them to FoLAR's door, who had been answering these questions for decades at that point.
Once Sbarge had a handle on the river's current state of flux, he decided it was the perfect time to work on this documentary. "I had heard that Congress was about to have a hearing about the biggest restoration of the river since it was built in 1938. This, plus our drought, plus the United States Army Corps of Engineering's position on rebuilding this aqueduct that eradicated our indigenous wildlife, and the hope of actually reviving this massive concrete waterway was the moment when I knew this story was begging to be told."
Though the drought is worrisome to many in the state, Sbarge sees it also as a catalyst for conversation. "The drought has been a gift to the L.A. River. What we once knew as, 'oh, that weird concrete channel that runs by the freeway' is now becoming that 'that thing that fills up with rainwater -- what are we doing about it?'" said Sbarge. "That's the conversation. Water is the conversation, at the moment, and it is providing us an impetus for change, potentially a 'once in a generation' opportunity is upon us, to really make an appreciable difference in our city."
The documentary makes use of FoLAR's extensive archive, including archival footage and photos. "It's a flimmaker's candy store," described Sbarge.
The short film gives a short history of the river, going back to the Tongva tribes that first lived by its banks, to the Spanish Portola expedition, through the huge explosion and expansion in Hollywood and Los Angeles in the early 19th Century. "We then see original footage of the flood, from 1938, and discuss where the river is headed and what the future will bring," said Sbarge. To add a human element to this story (which is often told on KCET) Sbarge and his team were able to speak to people and organizations who helped shape the history of the river, and even located someone who actually experienced the 1938 floods.
"Los Angeles is about to fight for her own survival -- for water," said Sbarge. "Los Angeles is poised to make a massive $1.3 billion investment in the Los Angeles River. That's $1.3 billion of hope, and survival, and sustainable living for the largest city west of the Mississippi. That's worth picking up a camera for."
The event is 6:30 p.m. followed by 7:00 p.m. screening at Laemmle Theatre Noho 7, 5240 Lankershim Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 91601. Seating strictly limited. RSVP required and suggested tax-deductible donations of $40.00 per ticket. Details here.]]>
As the Malibu Times points out, a good portion of state money is going towards maintenance in Malibu:
$7.58 million for maintenance of the Malibu Pier, Historic Malibu Adamson House and beach access stairway at Point Dume.
The restoration on Malibu Pier will be the most expensive, costing roughly $4.6 million. This will alleviate some of the safety concerns associated with the 80-year-old pier. It's still unclear what will be done to the historic Adamson House that has been on the site since 1928. Point Dume State Park, meanwhile, will get a restored beach access stairway.
The projects start in August or September, barring any unforeseen budget disasters striking the state, but you know how that goes.]]>
"Father Brown" airs Sundays at 8 p.m. It will also be available to stream online for two weeks (for L.A. Designated Market Area residents) concurrent to its on-air broadcast. You can watch the full episodes here.
What mysteries lie ahead for our kindly cleric this August? Check out our show details below:
August 2 "The Lair of the Libertines"
Father Brown and his friends find themselves stranded with a group of hedonists. They soon become desperate to escape, for at Hotel Cuba -- the dish of the day is death.
August 9 "The Truth in the Wine"
When a body is discovered in a vineyard, Father Brown must search for the murderer amongst a group of suspects all seeking to reinvent themselves.
August 16 "The Judgement of Man"
Father Brown becomes embroiled in an audacious art heist masterminded by his adversary Flambeau, who intends to use the priest and his friends to help him settle an old score.
August 23 "The Time Machine"
Father Brown visits Jacob, who is determined to prove that a member of his family killed his father a year ago by using his new invention -- a time machine.
August 30 "The Standing Stones"
A death at the stone circle of a polio-stricken village leads Father Brown to conclude that dark forces are at work and that another sacrifice may be imminent.
The artist's question, which emerged deeply in his work, began long before his adult years. But the inquiry became articulated visually during his education in graduate school. DeVera, a Southern California native from Orange County, graduated from Yale School of Art in 2014 with an MFA in painting and printmaking. He served the United States Marines from 2001 through 2008, taking part in two deployments to Iraq, prior to coming back mainland to pursue his education. These distinct entities informed his work, as well as the rigor of his thought processes. He began his art practice primarily in painting. He considers the works of artists Gerhard Richter and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as writer, W.G. Sebald as informative sources for his artistic process. It was during his years at Yale that he integrated sculpture and installation into his practice and became profoundly interested in equating an object's utility to its vulnerability.
Case in point, the installation entitled "34° 13' 59" N 116° 25' 00.9" W" is named after the coordinates of an abandoned structure on Winters Road in Yucca Valley. The building sits atop Yucca Mesa less than five miles from paved roads. With only its framing and foundation intact, the 600 square foot structure was intended for domestic living. One side of the structure is exposed and torn wide open where visitors can enter. Those who venture in are greeted by two figures formed by layers upon layers of parachute fabric and paracords situated on top of wooden legs from salvaged furniture.
The figures resemble domesticated creatures -- indistinctly, horses or oxen. Their heads, bowed down as if they were grazing. Adjacent to them sits a desk with rusted nuts and bolts, and a dismantled cellphone suggesting the construction of a makeshift detonator. In its compartmental cubbies rests a topographical map, a woven rope and a folded, nylon fabric. Two of DeVera's paintings hang on various areas of the interior -- one painted on metal from Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands off the Pacific Ocean. The other is an oil painting on wood alluding to a digital reading from drone surveillance. Natural elements of the Yucca Valley such as the dust, debris and the desert wind lend a haunting auditory track to this tableau.
"I am aware of the openness of the venture, having installed in an abandoned house that itself was stripped clean of any worthwhile material," DeVera stated. "I fully expected that weather, time and the local inhabitants would eventually run its course, eventually leaving the objects damaged and bare. However, I was still taken off guard at the immediacy of which the encroaching surroundings impacted the installation."
DeVera's work is semi-autobiographical in the same respect as Fluxus artist Joseph Beuys's is, particularly in his body of work "The Pack" (1969). Beuys's work, like DeVera, was informed by his military experience. Beuys also employed a number of utilitarian objects that evoked security and survival to the composition of his installation. The 24 sleds featured in "The Pack" resemble a pack of dogs tumbling out of a Volkswagen van. While at Yale, DeVera's project, "Beast of Burden" was a subject that intertwined the concepts of utility and vulnerability. This piece was the genesis of his inquiry, which later informed his most recent body of work in Joshua Tree. He was interested in showing an object that was greater than the sum of its parts. "Beast of Burden" featured an archetype of a pack animal -- a whale, which the artist assembled with plastic tarps that occupied a 50-by-40 square foot gallery space.
For DeVera, the objects are a means to explore a parallel narrative between man and "beasts." In, "34° 13' 59" N 116° 25' 00.9" W," his principal question of "how did we get here" is pursued by another inquiry -- "who carries the burden?"
The installation presents a reciprocating dialogue between these creatures and the military. As human beings we depend on these creatures for husbandry to nurture and sustain our lives. Likewise, we value, honor and have the same level of dependency on the men and women who defend our country and our well-being. From the multiple tiers of parachute fabric, to the collection of found relics, man and creature co-exist in the cyclical act of nurturing, preserving and memorializing.
The installation revealed itself to be more than just an artwork at face value. It became a potent space where the actions imposed by the desert's natural elements and tracks of local habitants became a test for human interaction and a testament of the human condition. Objects were altered or disappeared. With no security, docents or institutional walls for protection, the sheer defenselessness of the installation became immediately apparent, as curious onlookers or wayward off-roaders who sought any value within it would encounter no resistance in taking an object from it or destroying anything they wished.
DeVera began to accept the vulnerability of his artwork. He routinely stopped by the location daily to check on any movement of the objects. Even after the completion of his residency, DeVera's return to the installation site became a ritual, trekking from Orange County and back to the desert to mend and repair what was unmade. "It became quite an emotional process," stated DeVera.
While the installation remains in a remote part of the area, fragments of DeVera's work that resonate the dialogue of the site are on view at the Joshua Tree art gallery. A painting entitled "Vertebrae" (2015) that sits on top of found furniture resembles the desk installation at the Yucca Mesa site. Another body of work is an untitled mixed media piece consisting of spray paint and a moth that the artist found in his studio at Joshua Tree. JTHAR hosted a reception that featured the works of the artists who received residency. In the gallery, the objects stand as both art pieces and relics representing the installation site.
As word got out about the installation and its vulnerable state, local residents began to checkup on the site. Joshua Tree residents and JTHAR hosts Ruth and Steve Rieman, who own the main house across the studio DeVera occupied during his residency, frequent the site during their morning walks. Random visitors visit the location find a sense of solace and contemplation, listening to the sound of the wind while observing the objects, knowing to respect the space and its contents.
DeVera's work exists in a democratic landscape where it is situated in an area with occupied and abandoned dwellings, creatures, vagrants and other desert dwellers. He never intended the installation to possess a second layer of experience where the objects and its viewers share the space as a sense of sanctuary from the possible harm inflicted by man. In the same regard, his work poses a series of cyclical trials that we take for granted.]]>
For more information about the artist visit here.
"34° 13' 59" N 116° 25' 00.9" W" is open to the public through the end of summer or until its contents have been removed by the area's wildlife.
Directions to the installation:
From the 29 Palms Highway, head north down Old Woman Springs Rd. (247), right on Buena Vista Drive, left on Avalon Avenue, and then left on Winters Rd.
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Top image: "And All the King's Men," (2014). Parachutes, sails, found material, wood.]]>
Rachel Coulson
KCETLink Media Group Receives Two Los Angeles Area Emmy® Awards
News Program SOCAL CONNECTED Wins for Best Feature Segment
Burbank, Calif. - July 27, 2015 - KCETLink Media Group, a leading national independent non-profit public broadcast and digital network, is proud to announce that it has received two Los Angeles Area Emmy® Awards for the 67th Annual Los Angeles Area Emmy® Awards presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The station's awards include best "Feature Segment" and best "Information Segment" for its acclaimed news program SOCAL CONNECTED. The 67th Annual Los Angeles Area Emmy® Awards were announced on Saturday, July 25 at The Skirball Cultural Center Guerin Pavilion in Herscher Hall.
The 67th Annual Los Angeles Area Emmy® Awards for KCETLink Media Group include:
Cara Santa Maria, Reporter
Lata Pandya, Producer; Val Zavala, Reporter
KCETLink Media Group is a national independent, nonprofit, digital and broadcast network that provides high-quality, culturally diverse programming designed to engage the public in innovative, entertaining and transformative ways. With a commitment to independent perspectives, smart global entertainment, local communities, and opportunities for engagement and social action, KCETLink depicts people and the world through a lens unavailable elsewhere in U.S. media. A viewer-supported 501(c)(3) organization, KCETLink content is distributed nationally via satellite on Link TV - DIRECTV channel 375 and DISH Network channel 9410 - and on KCET in Southern and Central California via broadcast and cable, as well as through various digital delivery systems. For additional information about KCET and Link TV productions, web-exclusive content, programming schedules and community events, please visit kcet.org or linktv.org.
"There is great cost to being authentic... We are most authentic when we most closely resemble what we dream of ourselves."
--La Agrado, from Pedro Almodovar's "All About My Mother"
Perhaps its her military background, but Desirey Benavides is a real stickler for punctuality. "I hate being late. I hate it, I hate it. My father always said its better to be a lot early than a little late."
Every Tuesday night, after working a full eight hour day repairing air conditioning units, replacing tile, and inspecting damaged electrical wiring, Desirey arrives at least an hour early before her first dancers trickle into the hall of The Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Covina, CA. It gives her enough time to change into a comfy cotton dress and strap on her white sneakers for a brisk walk around the quiet suburban neighborhood. "The doctor says I gotta get enough exercise! I say, Doctor, I'm hauling a 20lb tool belt all day long, doesn't that count?"
After a 30 min walk, she returns to the hall and relaxes into her chair to catch up on her reading. She's reading one of Louise L'Amour's cowboy novels. She's not sure yet if she likes this one. "I like the books where the guy gets the girl. I know life doesn't always work out that way, but that's just what I like. No matter what, I'm still a romantic."
Eventually, the dancers start trickling in, skirts fluttering into the hall, petticoats and crinolines bouncing gleefully across the clean linoleum floor. The guys wear neatly pressed shirts with bolo ties. Their parents and caregivers take up their usual spots to play card games and sudoku while they wait for the next two hours.
Desirey eyes the chirpy dancers from over the edge of her book, already shaping up the squares in her mind, pairing up couples, inserting aids to fill the gaps, sorting through songs that might work for today's particular mix of dancers. At work is an algorithm of intuition that Desirey has developed over the last 15 years as she's come to know each of the dancers as the caller for the Foot Stompers, a square dancing team for adults with physical and developmental disabilities.
For nearly two decades, Desirey has taught participants to square dance and prepared them for performances, including their highly anticipated annual show at the Los Angeles County Fair. On this particular Tuesday night, the participants are especially giddy because they've recently learned that they will be performing at the Special Olympics World Games that are currently taking place in Los Angeles this year.
Desirey observes that this week, like many weeks lately, there will be a shortage of boys. The solution is simple. She'll have to play the boy parts herself. While this role-switching can be difficult for most dancers, disabled or not, (it's almost like learning square dancing all over again) it comes easily to Desirey. She's been doing it for years, even before square dancing became such an important part of her life. In some ways, it is the story of her life.
For nearly half of her adult life, Desirey was, technically speaking, a male.
And in the last 15 years since her sex reassignment surgery, after having traversed an entire spectrum of gender, she's been able to live fully in her own body. No matter what part she's playing, Desirey knows as she has always: exactly who she is. Her lifelong journey in becoming herself has led her to this church hall in Covina, where up to 40 disabled adults gather every week for the same reason: to relish in the act of being themselves.
Desirey lives in Downey, only a few miles from where she was born and raised. Born in Long Beach California, she lived most of her childhood a little ways up the street in Lakewood, the Southern California exemplary model of post war living, where gender roles were as prescribed as its tract home architecture. Her father was a military man, and she grew up to become one herself, joining the Air Force shortly after her 18th birthday.
In her home, the walls are lined with photos of herself and her wife Janet, smiling with arms full of babies, toddlers. No trace of Desirey's former self can be seen.
"I used to build bombs," says Desirey, casually. She specialized in testing gravitational centers of munitions, calculating their pitch and yaw, at what angle and slope they'll drop from a jet.
"Also I've been married three times," Desirey offers. She is self-possessed. Knows the parts of her life that draw attention, evoke reactions. Three times!
"I never wanted that." She adds more candidly, suddenly more reflective. "I always wanted to be like Janet's parents: married one time to one person, for a lot of years. It didn't work out that way."
I say, "Sure it did. You've been married for over 20 years! It just took a while to find Janet."
She's pensive now. "I guess you're right." She looks over at Janet, who's joined us in the living room and now snores softly in her recliner. "Janet love her naps," She smiles lovingly, pink lips and neatly lined eye corners curl upward.
Desiree also never expected to be a mother. Now she raises three young children, Janet's grandchildren that they have adopted together. At age 55, when many women enter menopause and sit for their grandchildren, Desirey is in full feminine flower, attending school recitals, having parent-teacher conferences, treating the kids to family fun at Knott's Berry Farm.
Desirey is without doubt, also a strong woman. Now in her garage, I watch her lug a toolbag that indeed seems to weight at least 20 lbs. She's putting the final touches on the RV before their next trip. She looks completely comfortable in her broken-in, paint-speckled denim overalls and a bright yellow cut off t-shirt. Her make up is subtle, yet expertly applied over her smooth tanned skin.
Desirey is exactly the kind of woman she wants to be. The kind that can use table saws and chains and name every tool in a box and knows exactly how to use each one of them. The kind of woman that can wear a leather tool belt the way some women carry a designer satchel. Desirey happens to be able to do all of this in pretty lipstick, neatly curled eyelashes.
"Janet says to me, remember when you used to come home and get into your dresses, put on your bras?" she laughs. "Now I can't wait to come home and get out of those damn things!" Ah, the pleasures of the underwire.
Like a true feminist, she could burn the bra she worked so hard to earn. But truly, she did work so hard for it.
For years before her surgery, and before hormone treatment was accessible to most gender-transitioning persons, Desirey was doing it "the wrong way." In other words, she was taking regular trips to Tijuana to purchase self-prescribed hormones. Of course, she'd done her homework, read about the proper dosage and gradual incrementation. She knew the risks and side effects and when she was ready, she made an appointment with her doctor. Her instructions to him were specific: she wanted to get some lab work done on her liver to make sure the hormones had not altered or damaged it, and she wanted to start getting ready for her sex-change surgery.
Wide-eyed, her doctor requested the lab tests and referred her to specialists.
She underwent a series of psychological tests and had to get a final approval from a psychiatrist. Desirey was impatient.
"They wanted the whole story about me dressing since I was young, about my marriages and relationships. But I was done! I was done telling it! I was like, look, I didn't just wake up one morning and decide I wanted to become a woman."
Indeed, it was a lifetime process, full of risks, loss and love. Desirey worked hard to make herself the woman she wanted to be, the woman she always knew she was. Simone de Beauvoir famously said that "one is not born, but rather becomes a woman". This feminist banner embraces transgender women as well.
Beyonce, considered a feminist in her own right, sardonically sings "I woke up like this," in her song "Flawless," referring to the obvious construction of her superstar, hyper-feminine persona. The phrase points back to the title and main refrain of the song:
You wake up, flawless
Post up, flawless,
Ridin' around in it, flawless...
We flawless, tell em ladies.
And if you think about it, though the imperfections that seep through the surface, the cracks that manifest in one's constructed identity may cast doubt and uncertainty for some, they also reveal our actual perfection as the beings we are. Flawless. And yes, we all did wake up like this.
When you see Desirey in her lovely petticoats calling to her square dancers, voice perfectly poised filling a hall, and see her Foot Stompers dancers sashaying, taking pleasure in their swinging skirts so they look like great, drifting blossoms, you can catch glimpses of what flawlessness really means.
On the outset, square dancing may seem like an unlikely match for queer or disabled persons. Yet here are Desirey and her Foot Stompers, and they are unfailingly all about it.
Square dancing is part of country western culture that is vested in practicing and conserving rural American traditions that include music, dance, and rodeo. These are often attached to conservative ideologies and lifestyles. However it is in this sphere of American culture that both disabled and queer dancers have flourished in the last 27 years and 32 years, respectively.
For one thing, square dancing is structured around clearly defined gender roles, making it a mismatched pastime for LGBTQ dancers. The boy/girl partner arrangements might seem restrictive, if not downright oppressive, to dancers with more fluid gender identities. Gender-specific calls can confuse both the caller and same-sex or trans dancers. Without adhering to traditional gender roles that have served as the building blocks of square dance and country western culture, it would seem that the whole thing would collapse. The squares would disintegrate. And what would square dancing be without squares?
And yet some gay square dance groups make it work, and others, according to Desirey, use what is called Proper Definition dance calls that take gender out of the equation. Proper Definition does not simply replace gender roles with new names, but rethinks the entire way of looking at the dance squares. Though square dancing called by Proper Definition looks like regular square dancing to the untrained eye, it actually is arranged in entirely different, more complex configurations.
Like with LGBTQ dancers, square dancing isn't an obvious hobby for people with disabilities. The Foot Stompers and the entire national network of square dancing disabled adults, known since 1988 as the U.S. HandiCapables Square Dance Association, started square dancing in the early 1980s. And despite physical and/or cogntive challenges, disabled dancers, or as they self-define, Handicapables dancers, show up 40 strong at this Covina church every Tuesday.
Mathew Suh's mother had been reticent about bringing him to the group. Usually, she explains, he avoids physical contact with others and prefers to be on his own. Square dancing, where constant hand-holding takes place didn't seem like a good fit. This is a common characteristic of autism. Yet despite some of the social limitations, people with autism are gifted in other ways. For example, they can have extraordinarily detailed memories and capacities for deciphering and reproducing complex patterns. These are also Mathew's strengths. He also performs best with structured tasks and environments. Square dancing is as structured as a dance gets, and consists entirely of patterns and arrangements. Mathew thrives here. Though he is one of the newest in the group at nearly five years, he quickly made his way up to the advanced level.
Yet for many other disabled or HandiCapable dancers, the actual structures and patterns are less important than their colorful outfits, or holding their sweetheart's hand, or swapping silly jokes with their buddies. In these cases, the structures of square dance become more amorphous and quickly, squares come to resemble other more organic arrangements. Loosey-goosey rounded shapes that tend to break, or fractal-like spirals that sometimes spin off, more closely resemble the geometries of friendships and fluctuations in human emotions.
Desirey remembers, as many other queer folk do, that LGBTQ didn't always have so many letters. At some point it was LGBT, and before that it was LGB, and before that, there was simply gay, the only term applied to anyone that strayed from rigid heterosexual roles. As we've learned over the years with each additional acronym letter, the diversity of sexual identities and spectrum of gender is expansive and fluid.
Desirey's life has been directly impacted by the addition of each letter. For years, as a transgender queer woman, she found herself isolated within the gay community. The words to describe herself had not yet entered the queer vernacular. She'd been wearing women's clothing, on and off, privately and publicly, in varying degrees for most of her life. Yet, despite clearly not being heterosexual, she didn't quite fit into notions of being gay. For one, she (still male at the time) was attracted to women.
"Most gay clubs wouldn't let you in if you were dressing," she remembers. So she continued dancing and calling as a man. Desirey first started square dancing when she went by Ray, and was married to a woman in a traditional heterosexual marriage that lasted eight years. At some point, she decided she was going to quit dressing forever. She gave away all of her clothes, gained weight to look more masculine, grew a mustache. She decided she was going to be a man.
But she just couldn't stop dressing. Her marriage fell apart. When she started dressing semi-publicly again, her co-workers were relieved. "Thank god, you're back. That other person that was coming in was a real jerk."
And that's when she realized that to be the best person she could be, she had to be her true self.
Unable to return to her formal life, and unable to fit into the gay community as a trans person, she embarked on her journey to becoming herself one step at a time.
She continued attending square dancing groups, calling and dancing as a male, dressing part-time elsewhere. She attended gay clubs but navigated her dressing with caution. She met a woman who initially seemed to accept her until the woman realized that she attracted far more unwanted attention by being with a male dressed in woman's clothes, than with a lesbian partner. The relationship lasted less than a year.
Eventually she met Janet, and for the first time was in a relationship with a partner that fully embraced her. "One night I told her to meet me at the beach, and I showed her a photo album with photos of myself in dress. I said to her, if you want to take this relationship further, you have to know that this is me. It's not a part time thing. I'm going all the way."
Dressed in full cowboy attire, Desirey married Janet in 1995. They ran off immediately after the ceremony to a square dance event. Five years later, after starting hormone treatments, Desirey had her first surgery.
Even though gay circles didn't quite accept Desirey, she continued to support gay advocacy groups, and in 2000 became a member of the Orange County Gay Imperial Court. The Gay Imperial Court is a non-profit LGBTQ organization that "sponsors, supports and promotes charitable and educational programs and efforts that help advance the cause of the gay community." The annually-elected royal court, the Emperor and an Empress, serve as spokespeople for the organization and gay rights in general. Desirey was elected Empress of both the Long Beach and Orange County Imperial Courts.
And yet, despite her coronations as Empress, Desirey was still met with misunderstanding. She recalls that her "Emperor" invited her and Janet to dinner. That night, he revealed his true motive for the invitation. He was confused about what kind of gay person Desirey was.
"Tell me, now that you're a woman, what you really want is to be with a man. That was the point of the sex change, right?"
"No! I don't want to be with a man, I want to be with Janet." She was aghast.
They kept going back and forth as he tried to wrap his head around Desirey's sexual orientation. Eventually, he surrendered and dropped the subject, unable to accept or understand their relationship. In retrospect, she doesn't seem to hold it against him. Only 15 years ago, those were very different times.
Fortunately, things have changed since, and more transgender safe spaces have opened up. Outspoken transgender celebrities, such as Laverne Cox, have been advocating not only for queer transgender folks but also the importance of embracing transgender notions of beauty that don't conform to cisnormative standards. Cox stated (in a response to Caitlyn Jenner's transition):
Now, there are many trans folks because of genetics and/or lack of material access who will never be able to embody these standards. More importantly many trans folks don't want to embody them and we shouldn't have to to be seen as ourselves and respected as ourselves.
Desirey never conformed to anyone's standards of what she was supposed to be. And she never stopped searching, or working at building the life she wanted. The pieces of her life that seemed as if they would never come to cohesion finally started to fall in place when she and Janet discovered gay square dancing.
"It felt like home, it really did." Janet, awake from her nap, agrees. She notes that there's less pressure than in straight square dance, where mistakes are sternly frowned upon. Gay square dance is more tolerant of newcomers and newbies and by the time they found it, they'd also become more open to trans folk.
Desirey, Empress of Orange and Los Angeles Counties, joined the the International Association for Gay Square Dancing Clubs and finally, Desirey was able to wear petticoats at dance, and call in the voice that felt comfortable to her, without worrying about sounding less feminine or more masculine. Her voice is rich and she knows how to apply its to a mic, fill a room, and get the dancers moving.
They still like to go out dancing as often as they can, but only if they can find a babysitter, Janet notes. "And the doctor counts it as exercise!" Desirey is happy to add.
Eventually, Desirey arrived to the Foot Stompers, which provided an additional level of nuance to her already full life. (She'd also joined the International Gay Rodeo Association and competes regularly in rodeo events.) She started calling for dances for disabled adults, and was surprised both by the particularities of calling for this group, but also by their shared experience of being discriminated against and being outsiders.
The language used to talk about disabled persons and LGBTQ, though better than in years past, often seems inadequate, as dichotomizing vocabularies attempt to hardline fluid identities. Gay/straight, woman/man, normal/abnormal are such crude categories to describe the people around us or ourselves.
Most people know of the most visible of developmental disabilities, such as Downs Syndrome, but beyond that, it can be difficult to understand the spectrum of conditions that are not so neatly classifiable. Many functional disabled persons, in fact, could "pass" as "normal," though sometimes a slur in speech, a missing limb, a glitch in a strain of logic, an odd loud laugh in a moment of joyous abandon, might reveal an off-beatedness that hints at the "abnormal." Often people that have little or no interactions with people with developmental disabilities find this kind of difference disconcerting, uncomfortable. An awkward interaction ensues as they attempt to discern the hard line of a disabled persons limitations and personality.
But Handicapable Foot Stompers have no time for this kind of hesitation. They have no time for clumsy dances of personal negotiations. They have to get out there and dance. Likewise, Desirey has no time for lingering gazes that scrutinize her body and mannerisms or attempts to decipher her anatomy and her relationship choices.
Instead, Desirey and the Foot Stompers negotiate differences with curiosity and respect. Desirey remembers that when she was going through her transition, the dancers would sometimes ask her about things they noticed different about her. She'd answer plainly, kindly. They'd accept each new physical aspect of their caller, including her new name, and cheerfully move onto the good stuff that brings them together.
Desirey did, however, notice that when she started calling for HandiCapable square dancers, her phone didn't ring as much as it used to. She received fewer and fewer invitations to call square dances, straight or gay. "There's a stigma about calling for HandiCapables. But I don't care. My kids didn't care."
Desirey hardly thinks of her work with HandiCapables as philanthropic or praiseworthy. "Some people think that me doing this is the best thing since sliced bread. They say I'm earning some real points toward heaven. But you know, whatever. I don't really believe in that sort of thing. But I guess in general I can use all the points I can get."
For Desirey, calling for a group of disabled dancers is just part of what she does. It's part of her life, the way dancing with Janet or getting the kids ready for school is. It's part of what she's good at, like fixing up an HVAC unit or cutting up wooden boards on a table saw.
She gets tired of it sometimes, especially after a long day of work that will be followed by getting the kids ready for bed on a school night. Sometimes after a packed, competitive rodeo weekend out of town, she thinks she might not make it to the Foot Stompers. But she shows up anyway. This is life.
Every Tuesday night, the dancers invariably show up as well. They are creatures of habit that thrive and feel protected by routine. But most of all, like Desirey, they treasure the people that are kind and accepting, and they honor the safe spaces they create together. Truly, for anyone, finding and sharing such a space is valuable beyond compare.
And every Tuesday, she accepts yet another hug from Annie, who "just can't get enough of Desirey who she loves very much." Desirey chuckles and nudges her back into formation for the next song.
It's a Foot Stomper favorite: "It's A Small World."
The thing about square dancing is that its too easy for a square formation to fall apart when a dancer is out of step. In the Footstompers beginners group, it usually takes only a minute or two before the whole thing dissolves into a soft, slow-motion mosh pit of gently colliding bodies.
Desirey stops the group. What happened? Dazed, it takes a moment for the dancers to realize that the formations have gone awry. Where did their original partners go? And how did they get over here and why are they facing in all these different directions? Robert, a veteran dancer that has been pulled into the group to help the beginners, maintains a look of disbelief throughout the entire song. He can't believe it took five seconds for the thing to fall apart. He turns to glare at his buddies and his partner from the advanced group that are chatting and giggling back at their tables as they wait their turn on the floor.
The dancers try again, this time guided by "angels," parents, volunteers and assistants to Desirey, that point them in the right direction, or spin them back to their partners before they fling off course like planets out of orbit.
Near the end of the song, Desirey starts cueing them in for the final set of calls.
Bring it back home, calls Desirey into the mic. The group stands in disarray, like a poorly shuffled stack of cards. Bring it back home, she repeats more loudly. They are completely oblivious. Some of them chat amongst each other, a couple seems to be having a silent quarrel. But most of them are giggling, being silly and having a good time. Bring it back home, she repeats for the third time, her voice booming against the wood paneled walls, before the disheveled cacophony shuffles back into squares.
Like Desirey's life, the disparate pieces eventually settle into place. The formation is not quite a square or a circle; it's an amorphous polygon that shifts organically and redefines itself, in spite of itself.
After a lifetime of ferris wheels, Alabama swaps, and half sashays, Desirey is also finally home.
Public lands that have been maintained and tailored for use by humans are a strange mix of backcountry and city. When you go there, you're out in the wilderness technically. But at the same time, if you're out in the wilderness with a ton of other people, it doesn't quite feel that way.
This is a problem that Muir Woods, the National Monument in Marin County, is trying to fix.
So many folks in the surrounding area have been making the short drive to this popular destination for hikes and nature walks -- over one million visitors a year, in fact -- that it just doesn't exude the same nature-infused aura it once had. As a result, they're beginning a reservation process to limit visitors.
The reservation system is still up for logistical tinkering and debate, and won't be implemented for at least another two years. But in the meantime, the Parks Department is starting to limit the amount of car parking that's used at any one time. (More than 80% of the park's visitors arrive by car, and there are times when over 1,000 cars have been lined on the sides of the roads.)
In the meantime, just do what I do, and avoid the area on the weekends.]]>
Let's be honest: It has not been a pretty year for the California almond-growing industry. As the drought continues to ravage the state, the nut has become a scapegoat of sorts, with the stat that it "takes one gallon to make one almond" shouted and spread throughout across the internet. A lot of the vitriol may be because almonds have the unfortunate luck of having a easy-to-remember number associated with production. In contrast, one quarter-pound of beef requires about 660 gallons of water, but that statistic is harder to recall.
But the tide may be shifting with a recent series of pieces telling folks to calm down on the almond hate. And now thanks to a new study published in the "Journal of Industrial Ecology," science is showing the crunchy nut in a whole new light.]]> A pair of reports put together by researchers at UC Davis -- first funded by the Almond Board of California and since supported by the California Department of Food and Agriculture -- looked at the carbon footprint of almond orchards. The findings? The footprint is not very big at all.
"We found that one kilogram of almonds results is less than one kilogram of [CO2-equivalent] emissions, 0.9 in fact," co-author Dr. Alissa Kendall, an associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said. "Relative to other nutrient and energy-dense foods, almonds look pretty good in terms of the impact categories we assessed."
To compare, beef has roughly 20 kilograms of emissions for everyone single kilogram produced. Eggs have a two-to-one ratio. Being able to produce more kilograms of material than CO2-equivalent emissions is a pretty big deal.
A big reason for almonds' low footprint has to do with how its by-products are used. The biomass, hulls, and shells from the almonds, once harvested, are often utilized in other capacities, such as feed for dairy cows, or to generate electricity. "If you provide those trees to the electricity system, you avoid the need to produce electricity other ways," Kendall said.
Which isn't to say that all almond orchards are at this level of sustainability. A study from the California Almond Sustainability Program shows that 74 percent of orchards are using their various by-products in sustainable ways, leaving 26 percent of them with work left to be done. These studies, in part, are trying to figure out the exact methods of sustainability that orchards should enact.
So, okay. Almonds are great in terms of carbon footprint. But what about all those warnings about almonds sucking up huge amounts of water during the drought?
Water usage is a big factor in contributing the the carbon footprint of almonds. "[Irrigation water] ended up being nearly a quarter of all sources of emissions, so quite large," Kendall said. Irrigation was only second in terms of its contribution to CO2-equivalent emissions to fertilizer.
But how are consumers supposed to use this information? What's more important, the environmental impact or the amount of water that is being used?
"It totally depends on what choice they're making," Kendall said. "You always want to look at a plurality of environmental impacts, because most of the time there are going to be trade-offs with environmental impacts. So, it shouldn't necessarily change how people think about almonds and water, but it should change how people think about the broader impact of environmental food choices."
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We also examine the superadobe construction techniques of Cal-Earth, whose experimental designs are challenging the ubiquitous cookie-cutter suburban communities in the urbanized southwestern Mojave Desert; Jackrabbit Homesteads and the cultural legacy of the Small Tract Act in Southern California's Morongo Basin; and the eclectic practice of Joshua Tree's "Art Queen" Shari Elf. Closing off the show is a performance by Rodrigo Amarante.
Catch it all Tuesday, July 28 at 8 p.m. on KCET. Watch the episode nationwide on Link TV throughout the week of Monday, August 3. Check local listings here.
View the stories showcased in this special below:
Getting Lost in the Arid Expanse with Diane Best
In her paintings and photographs, artist Diane Best illustrates timeless desert panoramic landscapes of the Mojave.
Date Farmers: Desert Detritus Becomes Chicano Pop Art
The Date Farmers make Chicano pop art; they are desert Rauschenbergs, infusing abstract expressionism with a politically charged, pop culture update.
Incendiary Traces: Drawing the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center
Incendiary Traces led a recent draw-in at the 29 Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center where participants used drawing as a tool for connecting the SoCal landscape to foreign battle zones.
Of Earth and Domes: Hesperia's Cal-Earth Sustainable Architecture
The California Institute of Earth Architecture hopes their Superadobe construction technique may be applied to more traditional contemporary homes found throughout SoCal suburbs.
Jackrabbit Homestead: Artists, Off-Roaders, and the American Dream Writ Miniature
Ever see those old, abandoned cabins in the desert? If so, you encountered one of the last communities of "jackrabbit" homesteads.
Shari Elf: Maximum Creativity at Minimum Wage
Shari Elf,an artist, singer-songwriter, raw foods chef, community builder, self-healer and 'enforcer of goodness,' makes art from discarded and found objects.
Bibimbap is the ultimate Korean rice bowl: a redolent array of vegetables mixed with soybean paste and Korea's signature chili sauce, the pungent gochujang. Often times you'll find nicely seasoned strips of beef in there and a runny egg on top.
It's a dish common throughout the Korean New Year, mostly because it's a convenient and delicious way to get rid of the excess side dishes that accumulate during the festivities. There are of course various regional styles of bibimbap. The cities of Jeonju and Jinju are most renowned for the dish and variations include hot stone bibimbap, soybean sprout, and vegetable-only.
It's a dish that's well-known throughout the Los Angeles area, especially in Koreatown. But who exactly does it best? The list, below.
Jeon Ju
Named after a city in South Korea, this old-school eatery is known for bibimbap served in stone pots. The allure of the pots is much more than just aesthetics; it keeps the rice crisp and parts of it slightly charred. Target the galbi bibimbap, mostly because of the generous portions of marinated beef, layered on top of cucumber, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, soybeans, and the works. On cooler evenings, pair it with soybean paste stew. 2716 W Olympic Blvd #101, Los Angeles, CA 90006; (213) 386-5678.
This food court gem means "Potato Rock" and it is a Korean generalist that might as well be a bibimbap specialist. You'll see soup and noodles on their menu, alongside five -- all really solid -- bibimbap varieties. Their stone pot (or dolsot) bibimbap is the star attraction. The kimchi flavor is lovely and the runny egg on top seasoned with sesame seeds ties it all together. 928 Western Ave # 129, Los Angeles, CA 90006; (213) 387-5581.
Yangji Gamjatang
Located on 6th Street, this eatery has two types of bibimbap: yangjegi (served cold, like a salad) or dolsot (served in a stone pot). I prefer the latter. Both come with a mix of carrots, cucumbers, bean sprouts, seaweed, and egg. Gochujang is mixed in and the dish comes with a lovely array of banchan. 3470 W 6th St, Los Angeles, CA 90020; (213) 388-1105.
Wiener schnitzel is quick and simple to make, though there are a few key moments in the cooking process to focus on. First and most important of all, seek out pasture-raised veal, which has a full, beefy flavor. You can usually count on pasture-raised veal to be free of hormones and antibiotics. It makes up a tiny sliver of the commercial market and can be hard to come by, but it is absolutely worth finding. Second, use a light hand when coating the cutlets in breadcrumbs so as to create a distinct layer that will puff when the meat cooks. Lastly, don't shy away from using the proper amount of butter and oil in the pan -- the schnitzel needs to swim in the hot fat in order to take on an evenly crisp exterior.
Classic Wiener Schnitzel
Serves 2
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 large egg
¼ cup heavy cream
½ cup breadcrumbs
1/3 pound veal eye round, cut into 2 cutlets
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
Lemon wedges, for serving
Parsley, for serving
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Set up your schnitzel dipping station: On a large plate, toss together the flour and ¼ teaspoon salt. In a pie dish, whisk the egg and cream. Spread the breadcrumbs across another plate.
Place the veal between two sheets of plastic and pound the meat as thin as you possibly can without creating any holes. (A meat mallet is the ideal tool, but a wine bottle, rolling pin, or small pot will work). Season the veal with salt and pepper on both sides.
Heat the butter and oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Working with one veal cutlet at a time, dredge the veal in the flour mixture, shaking off any excess, then dip it in the egg-cream mixture, and then coat it gently with breadcrumbs. Place the meat into the skillet, tilting the pan and spooning fat over the meat. Cook until the breadcrumb coating puffs and starts to brown, about 1 minute. Flip, and cook the second side, continuing to spoon fat over the meat. When both sides are nicely browned, transfer the schnitzel to a plate lined with paper. Repeat with the second veal cutlet, using the fat that's already hot in the pan. Garnish with lemon wedges and parsley, and serve straight away.]]>