Theater, Hollywood: post-moderism as radicalism

Last night I went to see Tom Stoppard's play "Travesties," at the Open Theater Company, one of my favorite theater companies in Los Angeles at their small space in Hollywood. Open Fist did a wonderful job on Stoppard's 1974 play about the meetings in 1917 Zurich between Dada poet Tristan Tzara, Communist leader Lenin, Irish novelist James Joyce, and bourgeois pro-war minor British consular employee named Henry Carr. Stoppard's play recreates a time when modern artists such as Tzara were passionately anti-war and even revolutionary. It's good to remember that when modernism in arts is often seen as part of some non-political museum.

The story is told by Henry Carr, a minor British consular figure, who was in Zurich in 1917. The play starts with Carr in 1974 writing his memoirs of the famous people he knew in Zurich in 1917, and as we find out Carr's memoirs are highly inaccurate. Throughout the play Carr portrays himself as head of the British consulate in Zurich with a servant named Bennett who is a radical, but we found out toward the end of the play Carr has been untruthful. In reality Bennett was the head of the consular service while Carr was a minor figure there. Stoppard's postmodernist play asks what is real? How truthful or how much of a liar is the elderly Carr's memoirs about 1917?

In history Carr did know Joyce in Zurich. The two were involved in Zurich with a production of Oscar Wild's play "The Importance of Being Earnest," where Carr played the lead Algernon and Joyce was theater manager. Historically after the play Joyce and Carr argued; then both men sued each other in the Zurich courts. Joyce made Carr into a stupid figure in his novel Ulysses he was writing at the time. In Stoppard's play Joyce and Carr start arguing and suing each other as this part of the play follows history. But Stoppard has taken huge hunks of Oscar Wild's comedy "The Importance of Being Earnest," and brilliantly adapted it to his play about 1917 Zurich, so Stoppard's play is a demented version of Wild's play. So Stoppard is using postmodernist appropriation in his play.

In the first section of the play Carr, who was proud of fighting in the trenches of the war until he was invalided, argues with Dada poet Tristan Tzara who is against the war. Here Carr is the bourgeois voice of rationality, patriotism, and belief in fighting for King and country. Carr defends his fighting for one's country while Tzara said that the causes of the war were all lies. So this play questions the reasons for fighting in a war. In the second part of the play Carr argues with Joyce over money from the play as well as arguing over the war. Carr still defends his fighitng in the war and asks Joyce what is he doing during the war. Joyce answers, "I wrote Ulysses." Also Joyce and Tzara argue over art. Joyce believes in the artist genius who revolutionizes art while Tzara attacks art as a category that is rationalist dealing with truth or beauty.

The final section deals with Lenin who hears about the Russian Revolution and plots his way to get back to Russia. It turns out that Carr never knew Lenin and Lenin left by train before Carr ever talked to him. In this section Lenin's wife talks about the art that Lenin liked which was mostly 19th century art like Beethoven. According to Lenin's wife Lenin was opposed to most modern art and even when going to see Gorky's The Lower Depths, a left-wing play about poor people in Russia, detested the new modern acting style. Carr argues that as a bourgeois who also detested the modern in art he had much in common with Lenin who also disliked the modern in art. Surprise surprise.

Stoppard uses the postmodern style to reclaim that period of 1917 when one could take sides: pro-war or anti-war. Artist or revolutionary or revolutionary artist. Again, when postmodernism is seen as some weird elitist art practice, it's good to look at Stoppard's brilliant thought-provoking play.

WACK Feminist Art Show Disappoints

I just went to see the feminist art show WACK at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles, and returned really disappointed.

I had already gone to the panel associated with the Los Angeles women art show at the Municipal Art Gallery, and heard Cherie Gaulke say that at the Women's Building in Los Angeles they should have had childcare. My friend Helen Million-Ruby, who had two kids and attended the first Feminist Studio Workshop in 1975 at the Women's Building at Los Angeles, had at the time fought along with others for childcare at the building and lost. So it was encouraging to heard Gaulke finally agree that, yes, there should have been childcare. Helen Million-Ruby, who is working class, was the first one I remember to articulate that working class women weren't being heard. Helen criticized an art performance by Barbara Smith where Smith had a poor woman from McArthur Park go sit in the gallery while Smith sat in the park. Helen said she felt torn up inside because she thought the art piece objectified the poor woman.

In the late 1970s then many other women criticized the Women's Building for not encouraging a diversity of racial, ethnic and working class voices--these were women refusing any modernist masternarrative and instead asking for postmodernist diversity of voices. In one review of WACK Judy Chicago had been quoted say, yes, women's art should include a diversity of racial, class, and ethnic voices. So I came to WACK with high hopes that art exhibit would have racial and class diversity implicit in postmodernism.

It didn't. Before I spell out my disappointments, I must say there were some good pieces in the show. After hearing for years of Ana Mendieta, I got to see some of her haunting pieces of a female body raped or a female body's impression on the ground. I also was introduced to Spiderwoman Theater, a Native American Woman's Theater group. The videotape about them was excellent, mixing in footage of their riveting performance along with interviews of group members. I also got to know Lorraine O'Grady as Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire doing her stunning performances about art world racism. I also learned from the juxtaposition of European as well as U.S. artists that many themes such as the body art and practices such as working collectively were international.

The show did have some of my old favorites from the 1970s: Womenhouse, the brilliant original installation that Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro, and their art students did in a old house on themes of domesticity in 1972; and Faith Wilding's wonderfully powerful performance poem "Waiting" about female passivity.

But as I left I realize there wasn't one working class voice in the whole art exhibit. Not one. . There was a section called "Labor" which had the Berwick Street Film Collective's videotape "Night Cleaners," supposedly about organizing of women janitors in a union in 1970s London. "Night Cleaners" had shots of silent cleaning women working without any narration for long periods--the tape silenced her and objectified her. The film never explained how the unionization efforts were going. At that time there were almost no films on working class women's strikes, but "Night Cleaners" did not inform but was dreadful and dreadfully dull. The film reminded me of a film by the African filmmaker Osmane Sembane's Black Girl about a African woman working in France as a maid who never spoke a word in the film but only had French voices in the film speaking about her, but Semane was making a film critiquing the oppression of the African woman. The Berwick Street Film Collective, three men and one woman, seemed to be collaborating in oppressing their subject. There was another piece by Mierle Laderman Ukeles where she seems to be washing down steps in a performance piece where she played at work. The other pieces in "Labor" seemed to be second rate pieces about mothering including Mary Kelly's Post-partum Document which was a very obsessive, tedious rendering of her baby's fecal smears, vocal utterences, and drawings.

I've spent years writing about American working class literature. In 1996 I wrote an article about literature of the textile trades in the United States in which I traced a history of four generations of writings about garment workers starting with Sarah Savage's 1815 novel The Factory Girl. If American working class women since 1815 have produced over a 170 year history of writing about garment trades, surely WACK's curator could have found some working class women artists in the 1970s instead of imposing a modernist masternarrative that silenced working class voices.

The curator could start by looking at the work of Helen-Million Ruby, who along with other mothers/artists--Jan Cook, Christie Kruse, Gloria Hadjuk, Suzanne Siegal, and Laura Silagi-- formed a women's art collective called Mother Art who did a monthly long series of art performances titled By Mother at the Women's Building in Los Angeles about mothers and art in 1977. Then Mother Art got a grant to do performances in laundromats since Million-Ruby wanted to bring art to where every day women were. I saw them perform in the Silverlake laundromat. They timed their piece to last a wash-dry cycle, strung up a clothes line, and hung up their art pieces including a wonderful poem on material by Valene Campbell. Mother Art's Laudromat art performances were brilliant.

WACK did include "Where We Were At" Black Women Artists, detailing how they took their art into the community but I wanted to see black women artists art work which wasn't in the show. At the same time Latinas such as Linda Vallejo at Self-Help Graphics had an Artmobile in which they brought their art to schools in East Los Angeles. Including more black women and Chicana artists including the women artists of Self-Help Graphics would have improved this show. Other than two large murals by Judy Baca, in the four hours at the exhibit I saw no other art pieces by Chicanas. In 1977 Sybil Venegas wrote an essay in ChisemArte, the Chicano/a literary art magazine in L.A. about Chicana arts Barbara Carrasco from Los Angeles, Etta Delgado from San Jose, and Las Mujeres Muralistas from San Francisco. Patssi Valdez and Diane Gamboa are two astoundingly original Chicana artist who participated in ASCO, the avant-garde group's performances and other work, in the 1970s and early 1980s.

During the 1970s in California Chicanas were in their painting exploring new imagery based on indigenous forms; making large history paintings in public murals; creating performance rituals for Day of the Dead which spread across the country, and reinterpreting iconographic women like Virgin of Guadalupe in their painting; participating in avant-garde group ASCO's performances and photos. Barbara Carrasco, Las Mujeres Muralistas, Diane Gamboa and Patssi Valdez, as well as Helen Million Ruby all came all were working class and developed intensly brilliant innovative work--including them in WACK would have improved the show.

Instead of capturing a brilliant post-modernist diversity, the curator at WACK included a lot of the work that was second rate and repetitive. Nobody I knew in the 1970s was particularly interested in the body as a medium, but the show's modernist masternarrative put body as medium as an important theme and WACK had a lot of this work. While Mendietta's and Wilke's use of the body as medium was innovative, a lot of work on this theme in WACK wasn't.

For example, one large wall had Eleanor Antin obsessively photographing her nude body front, side, and back for over a month and recording her weight as she dieted. This piece wasn't a critique of obsession with weight but a very tedious presentation of the obsession itself. Another dull videotape had a silent woman woman brushing her hair--that's it. The message is that much feminist art is about young white women obsessed with their bodies, their individuality, and their narcissism. Yes, in the 1970s, feminists thought picking up a videocamera as empowering, but when women began exploring this medium, they come up against problems: a video camera can be used to objectify others; it can be used to produce narcissism; it can be produce tapes which are derivative or trite or repetitive.

And what about painting. Though there was good painting in WACK, the paintings usually made a feminist point in the curator's modernist masternarrative. At Womanspace, the large collective women's gallery before the Women's Building, many painters were exploring a diverse grouping of ideas in both figurative work and abstractions, yet almost none of these paintings were in WACK. Many second generation women abstract-expressionist painters were finally reaching national audience in the 1970s after two decades of painting but Joan Snyder was only one of these painters represented. I would have liked to see the wonderful paintings of Grace Hartigen, Helen Lundeberg or Helen Frankenthaler.

Two painters who should have been included in WACK are Ruth Weisberg and Tomie Arai. Weisberg in her painting was pushing her art into marvelous explorations of Jewish themes from the Bible to the Holocaust to the 1970s--yet another innovative voice. Many women of color in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles made murals with working class perspectives such as Tomie Arai's "Wall of Respect for Women" in New York's Lower Eastside that spoke of sweatshop work, strikes, and need for better housing. But again middle class art critics ruled out muralism as not "feminist" as they ignored this art form usually made often by working class artists and for working class communities.

Also, the thematic groupings of the show were confusing. Ana Mendietta's work like much other work in the show was exhibited in the "Goddess" section but it could have been also fit in the "Body as Medium" section.

Too bad this show missed postmodernism, missed its chance to really record the great diversity of feminist art in the 1970s, missed the crisscrossing of many diverging arguing voices. Many feminists disagreed with Judy Chicago's ideas that feminist art should have central imagery based on female sex organs. Feminists argued over the need for childcare. Some women of color artists argued that feminism was not relevant to them. An historical show would have been better, showing both the "mainstream" of 1970s feminist arts and then it's feminists critics. We're still have to wait for that show. That show would have hot, angry, diverging, arguing beautifully different viewpoints--that would be the postmodern show we need.

Los Angeles Women I Find Inspiring

I'm going back on Friday to the Studio for Southern California History to see their exhibit on
Los Angeles women's history and I want to add some names of women I find inspiring to their timeline of Los Angeles women's history:

1. Ina Coolbrith was a niece of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith who moved to Los Angeles
in 1850s where she published poetry in Los Angeles Star and California Home Journal establishing literary career before she was 20. She moved to San Francisco and became first important woman poet in California in late 19th century.

2 Mary Austin- During the late 19th century writer she trained herself as a naturalist of Southern California writing the first great book about the Southern California deserts Land of Little Rain in 1903 and was a New Woman of the turn of the century.

3. Rose Pesotta-She was an organizer for International Ladies Garment Worker's Union who organized the first large-scale strike of Mexican-American and Jewish garment workers in 1933 to kick off the decade of unionizing in Los Angeles in a city which was notoriously anti-union.

3. Alice McGrath - She was a young Jewish-American woman who during World War II was
dedicated activist in the fight to free the Chicanos falsely imprisoned in Sleepy Lagoon; she
inspired the role of the young Jewish woman activist in the play and movie Zoot Suit

4. Ann Stanford was a poet and long-time English professor at California State University at Northridge. During the 1960s and 1970s she published numerous books of her own poetry as well published first anthology of women's poetry in English from medieval times to the 1970s.

Los Angeles Woman Have a History

The Studio for Southern California History is the first space in Los Angeles devoted to the city’s history, and opened an exhibition titled “Los Angeles Women: A Record of Experience,” also the first historical exhibit about L.A. women.

I went to the opening celebration of the exhibition on January 13. Victorian Bernal in the Studio’s newsletter Proofs says that “this budding organization devoted to Southern California history that is neither museum, archive nor library. … If we ‘read’ history at the library, ‘see’ history in museums, and ‘learn’ history in school, it makes sense to ‘make’ history in a studio.” So this particular Studio has an exhibition full of interactive exhibits so we the visitors could help in the making of history.

Across the left wall was a 45’ mural of Women’s History Timeline divided into Global, National and Local dates, and below was where the visitors could add names to the timeline. The first name was new to me: La Brea Woman, a 9,000 year old skeleton found in the La Brea tar pits. The only human found in the tar pits, La Brea woman had a skull with features similar to present day Chumash Indians and was found near a grinding stone and a domesticated dog. The traditional women’s task for Chumash and other Southern California Natives was grinding acorns into mush for their staple food.

The timeline’s second two names I was familiar with: Toypurina, a Tongva shaman who in 1785 led a rebellion of Tongva people against the San Gabriel Mission; and Biddie Mason, who in the 1850s walked with her Mormon slave master to Los Angeles, sued for her freedom which she won, and became a leading mid-wife and property owner. Toypurina and Biddie Mason are two amzing women! As I walked slowly looking at names on the timeline I mostly learned new names but also saw some names I knew as well as saw themes emerging in this herstory.

Southern California women had a long history in fighting racism as I saw in two more names: Modesta Avila had in 1889 fought the railroad who wanted to take her land; Carlotta Bass had used her newspaper The California Eagle to fight for rights for African-Americans from 1912-1952. Women here also were feminists for over a century. I learned that Caroline Severance had in 1866 founded with Susan B. Anthony the Equal Rights Association, moved to Los Angeles in 1873, and worked for women’s suffrage for decades. Writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman while living in Pasadena in the late 19^th century wrote some great feminist short stories such as "The Yellow Wallpaper," which is considered one of the greatest circa 1900 fictions by an American woman.

Women here have been leading environmentalists for a long time: wealthy Pasadenan Minerva Hoyt had persuaded Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936 to establish Joshua Tree National Monument while Aurora Castillo had in the 1980s founded Mothers of East Los Angeles that fought for environmental justice for East L.A defeating the building of a prison. Also women here had long struggled for labor rights, including Dorothy Healey in who 1933 organized Mexican and Japanese berry pickers in El Monte into a union and a strike. In the 1940s courageous organizer Luisa Morena organized Mexican and Jewish cannery women into a union.

But besides reading and learning from the timeline, I contributed by adding the name Mary Foy in the late 19^th century. For a few years I have been having my students research Los Angeles history and literature; Rita Ramos from East Los Angeles College had turned in a terrific paper about Mary Foy, Los Angeles’s first woman librarian and one of its first high school teachers in the 19^th century. Foy was also a feminist who fought for women’s suffrage. Ramos had found out that librarians didn’t know who Mary Foy was, and found that terrible. She taught me about Mary Foy, and I added her name, one of many Los Angeles women who broke into previously male profession as teachers, professors, businesswomen, politicians etc.

Other visitors had added names—we were all making history in this wonderful exhibit which taught me so much.

Also the exhibit includes an art piece that was an homage to the 1972 Womanhouse art installation that galvanized a generation of young artists and writers including me. Feminist artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro had gotten their women art students to make installations in the rooms of a to-be-demolished North Hollywood house. Though I didn’t see Womanhouse, I did hear Chicago and Shapiro give a talk and show slides of Womanhouse—it was astounding. Sandra Sider in Art Spaces Archive Project describes the bright pink kitchen created by Vicki Hodgetts, Susan Frazier and Robin Weltsch:

the insides of the drawers featured collages of exotic locales that represented the fantasy travel that might have been in the minds of women trapped at home in their kitchens. There were also several portraits of notable women, such as Angela Davis, with definite political overtones.* Visitors especially noticed the spongy sunny-side eggs fastened to the ceiling that morphed to breasts as they went down the wall and then became eggs once again as they approached the stove. The breasts were soft and could be squeezed by visitors

Later on I met Vicki Hodgetts who did the sunny-side egg/breasts on the ceiling. After that I got involved with the city’s first women’s art gallery called Womanspace. That really was the building of my career as a writer and feminist.

At the exhibit in 2007 Kesa Kiva had gotten middle school girls to create a “Girl House Project,” a small dollhouse associated with a large art installation of a girl’s bedroom the middle school students had made about a girl being sexually harassed. The 2007 dollhouse was being exhibited in part as homage to the 1972 Womanhouse..

The exhibit will run through the end of May 2007. The Studio is located at 525 Alpine, Suite #103, Hours:
Tuesday - Saturday, 12 - 6 p.m. and by appointment.

They have a website

www.socalstudio.org/

Making Ugly LA Look Beautiful: photographer John Humble

Wednesday afternoon I went to the Getty Center to see John Humble's amazing photographs of the Los Angeles River. I like the Getty because the whole museum on the hill has these white stone buildings along with elegant sculptured gardens carefully placed on a hilltop site with the stunning view of Westside and then the Pacific Ocean--almost a stereotypic view of "beautiful" in L.A.

Humble got a grant from the NEA in 1979 to photograph the city for its bicentennial. He was given a mandate "not to document Los Angeles stereotypes and cliches bot to show the city few had care to photograph." One gallery of the Getty are full of Humble's street scenes, usually show the flat lands non-beautiful non-cliched stucco buildings such as his photo "1553 8th Street, Los Angeles," that juxtaposes a three-story white stucco building with a Yuban coffee billboard, a liquor store sign, cars, and a man standing on the street corner. Just your average ugly L.A. street scene.

But the gallery that held the photos of the Los Angeles River were different. Here Humble took what most people think as the epitome of ugly--a concrete river--and made dazzling photos. He does capture the natural beauty of birds, boulders, trees down by the riverside of the river in the Valley and also near Los Feliz where it has soft bottoms. He has awesome shots using bridges and concrete as sculpture surrounding the river near downtown.

But the most amazing photos were of the river in Vernon, which I always thought was the ultimate industrial wasteland armpit of Southern California made up largely of factories. Vernon is know for its slaughterhouses, particularly Farmer John's slaughterhouse, and a particularly awful smell that wafts north to East Los Angeles.

Here south of downtown Humble's great photos shows the river has broadened out in a really big flow. One lovely photo of Vernon is like an Impressionist painting where everything is bathed in white: the river is white water, the banks and buildings are white, the sky is white. Another photo of the river in Vernon has a sculpted sky full of brooding dark clouds overlooked the orange of the setting sun shining its last lights on the river. Humble as turned this concrete river through factory land into photos of astounding beauty. The show lasts until July 8.

Some of Humble's river photos are online at
http://www.johnhumble.com/river.htm.

On Phillip Roth's American Pastoral

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George Herms at FarmLab: Artists Reclaim Polluted Site

Yesterday, Friday, I went to the noon salon at Farmlab, an art-research gallery near the Cornfields in downtown Los Angeles to hear George Herms, one of Los Angeles leading sculptors, talk. I got of the Goldline train at Chinatown, and walked up a mile to Farmlab, turn into gallery where the food is being set up in long metal containers. I get in line to get my lunch. As usual the food is excellent: a fine green salad, white rice, a fish stew, and a bean dish. After chatting a while to the man on the left at the label, artist Lauren Bon introduced George Herms as the speaker in today's salon. She also said that as part of Farmlab she wants people to get to know each other by eating together--that is an excellent idea!

George Herms stood up to speak. He held up a tattered paper with the word "salon" on it, and then said he looked it up in his grandfather's dictionary, seeing various meanings including "saloon." He told us that he was a fan of Not a Cornfield, the art piece planting of acres of corn on the railroad junkyard called the Cornfields in order to redeem the sight. Lauren Bon and her Not as a Cornfield collaborators then transformed themselves into Farmlab, a six-month art- research project in a warehouse across the street which investigates art projects to redeem other trashed out sites in Los Angeles. Herms said he was asked to join so he went from being Fan-in-Residence to Artist-in-Residence.

Herms is quite wonderful and inspiring, from his combination of humility and brilliance. He said his work takes industrial junk and finds a second life for it as art in his sculptures called assemblage. He has been doing his assemblages for over 30 years in Los Angeles, transforming junk into whimsical, amusing, charming sculptures. He had done a number of assemblage sculptures in public spaces in Los Angeles. He said he is going to be Pied Piper leading the 40 or so salon members next door to the Garden of Brokenness exhibit next door. Herms put on a thin wooden piece shaped like a guitar around his neck, had chimes dangling from him, and blew into a metal horn as he started leading us all out the door. He was indeed a moving sculpture we all followed--a sculptural Pied Piper leading us into the gallery next door.

In the middle of the gallery the artists had erected a large wooden circle which many people could stand on which the artists called a carousel. Many of us walked on it. I sat down on a couch. There was furniture scattered randomly on the carousel: chairs, a couch, and tables. Hanging above the furniture was Herms junk sculptures. While Herms made the junk sculptures, Lauren Bon said she choose the furniture. In the middle was a circle of water along with camera obscura images of the Los Angeles River and music arose from the carousel. Alongside the carousel were junk cars outfitted by blooming plants. The Garden of Brokenness starts with a broken place, transforming some of the junk there into art of the garden. The Garden is a collaborative piece created by Herms, Lauren Bon, gardener Jaime Lopez Wolters, and composer Jeremy Mage as a proposal for the Confluence River Park for a new park on a site which is now a concrete river underneath a concrete bridge covered by graffiti.

The carousel seemed to say to be that when we redeem junked out sites like the Confluence Park, we shouldn't impose some ideal image of landscape or "tidy municipal geometry." Instead we should turn some of the junk at the site into art. Herms calls himself an environmentalist, transforming industrial trash into sculptures. That to me is an imaginative way to transform many sites in Los Angeles.

What was wonderful about the carousel is that sitting on the couch I was encouraged to talk to my seatmate, a young man named Steve. I was sitting in a sculpture that encouraged conversation. Bon said that Farmlab had proposed the naked carousel (just the bottom) for many other park-potential sites so the community could come and furnish the carousel the way they wished. To me that mean a democratic way for building parks in Los Angeles by asking communities to come to discuss how to turn their local trashed out site into a park. Art, democracy, and a carousel all flourish by the river as Herms, Bon, Wolters and Mage have constructed an amazing exhibit that led us come near the river to eat, talk, listen to others, see art, and discuss.

Also, since neighborhoods differ, the creators of the Garden of Brokenness wanted to set up empty carousels in a brownfields site, ask the neighbors to come and discuss around the carousel how they want the park to develop. So the Carousel is supposed to be a site for discussion of how the neighbors want the park to develop. The Garden of Brokenness is people coming together in broken urban spaces to begin to talk how to heal such spaces. So that's a magnificent way to begin to heal the broken city of Los Angeles, brownfields by brownfields, small trashed out space by trashed out space. Instead of turning over the spaces to city or state bureaucrats, instead asking the neighbors to come down to talk around the carousel. Farmlab is one of the most important art spaces now in Los Angeles.

Last week I read the Los Angeles Times headline "A Permanent Drought Seen for Southwest" and was also reading Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain, the first and greatest book about the deserts in Southern California. What a coincidence! The newspaper talks about how scary this news is and how states and communities might soon start fighting again about who gets the water.

In contrast, Austin isn't scare of the desert. Her book was published in 1903 after she had lived in and studied the Southern California deserts--the Tejon pass area of the southern San Joaquin Valley, Owens Valley, the Mojave Desert--for 14 years. She calls this region "The County of Lost Borders," and says, "Not the law, but the land sets the limit." In her beautiful prose she shows how plants, animals and humans have adapted to the desert and the limits that the land sets. More than that, her humans have a passion for the desert. More than that the Paiute Basket Maker Seyavi makes beautiful art out of the desert plants: Seyavi is Mary Austin's model for being an artist in the desert who bases her art on the lands there.

Living in Los Angeles as I read Austin I reflect on how my city has ignored if not erased even the knowledge that the region is a semi-desert with a river. What river? most people who live in L.A. ask. It's a river for the desert, I say. What seasons, most people ask here, being unaware that we have seasons. In the second page of her book Austin wonderfully describes the three seasons we have: the heat from June to November; the rains from December through March; and from April to the hot season again, blossoming, radiant, and seductive."

The Los Angeles River as Our Commons

Yesterday I went on the bus tour of the Los Angeles river put on by Friends of the Los Angeles River (F.O.L.A.R). At our first stop we walked a dirt path down to the river first the the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin in the San Fernando Valley. We stood on the south side of the concrete bank but below this stretch of the river was wide, shallow, full of birds, and with a dirt bottom. So many birds flew in and out of the river. We were right north of the Sepulveda Dam, and right south of the Wildlife Refuge around the river where a thicket of trees goes right down to the river itself. The wooded area of the river just north of us is what the river must have looked like 300 years ago.

The river here is beautiful but also retains the idea of space around river being used for the common good. Just north of the Sepulveda Dam was the only place parkland are on both sides of the river that include athletic fields, parks, a wildlife reserve, a fishing lake, and Tillman Sewage Treatment Plant. Here the river is allowed to flood over the parklands, restoring the underground aquifer. We walked down to the river itself, getting a closer look at the birds and the dam. Here all is peaceful as if we weren't at all in the center of a huge city. Jenny Price, our tour guide who is a environmental writer who graduated from Yale, told us that when the river floods here, the water seeps into the dirt which cleans of it of toxics and then it replenishes the aquifers in this natural flood control. So having parkland on both sides of the river serves not just the public need for parks but also helps clean the river as well as prevent flooding damage to homes.

As we stood on the river bank looking down at birds darting up and down the shallow waters, Jenny Price told us that the history of Los Angeles is the history of its river. The LA basin is surrounded by four mountains--Santa Monicas, San Gabriels, and Santa Susanas, and Verdugos--whose waters pour into creeks all joining up into this 52-mile length as the waters plunge downward to the Pacific at Long Beach.

The river and its tributary creeks provided all the water needed for the city until 1910. Since LA is a flood plain, the river naturally has flooded regularly including huge floods of the 1930s. Then the Army Corps of Engineers put the river into concrete. Developers ruled the city then, seeing only the need to build homes along the river and preventing homes from being flooded. The idea of the river as commons was totally lost. The idea of letting the river naturally flood as good for the ecology was lost except for the Sepulveda Dam basin. Olmstead had created a plan for a long string of parks along the river but that plan was rejected.


Next we stopped at the Glendale Narrows where the river turns right going south through the gap between two mountain ranges: the Santa Monicas and the Verdugos. Just east of the intersection of Los Felix Boulevard and Riverside Drive we walked on another dirt path through a pocket park with bushes, poppies, and trees built in the Glendale Narrows, stopping to eat lunch with our feet dangling out over the riverbank and looking at this other section of the river with a natural dirt bottom. Below us we saw huge tangles of trees, bushes, and boulders that occupy the middle of the river. Here ducks and many other birds cavort.

Around 1990 I went on a river walk right here that F.O.L.A.R. and took a short canoe ride in the river as FOLAR attempted the revive the idea of the river as commons. When I glided around in the back of the canoe, I felt the river enter my consciousness. My Silverlake friends and I would often walk by the river here. In 1995 I took a series of photos here of the the lush rushes, small yellow poppies, and sculptured boulders. Also in 1995 I saw Collage Dance Theater do their Mother Ditch dance right in the river itself with the dancers dancing on abandoned bed springs above the waters with we the audience on its banks.

But at that time the Army Corps of Engineer with regular "cleaning" the river by taking away the plants and boulders until 1995 when they stopped. Now the trees inside the river are taller, the bushes thicker, more boulders and rocks nestle beside them, and there are more birds as nature takes over.

After lunch we walked through the pocket park called the Yoga Park because it had little alcoves to do yoga positions amidst the green bushes and California poppies. During the late 1990s F.O.L.A.R. and Northeast Trees convinced the city to build 7 pocket parks and extend the bikeway. Jenny, our guide, said even though these parks were tiny, they started a major change of consciousness getting thousands to think, of course, we should have a green way by the river. I thought the pocket parks were great, but as a yoga student for twenty years I think few yoga practitioners like to move from site to site to do yoga positions. Instead a few more tables and benches would be good. Many people would like to eat or sit by the river but not on the ground.

We walked down to the pedestrian bridge, then walked over, stopping in the middle, looking at both sides of the river. My companions, Etan and Eileen from Eagle Rock, told me they bike along the bikeway which now extends for seven miles on the far side of the river. We could see a few more people bicycle now and some walkers in this eight-mile stretch of the river with a natural dirt bottom. My spirit is also recharged by a walk by the river here.

Our next stop, the Confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco creek flowing down from the mighty San Gabriel Mountains, was quite different. Only a few miles north of downtown, we walked down by these huge concrete pillars covered with huge colorful graffiti down to the confluence where the river is in its concrete straight jacket. Jenny had us go out into the river itself which was only an inch deep where we walked to get a better look at the confluence of river and creek all enclosed in monumental concrete straight jacket. She said while the river itself is the city's spine, this spot is its heart.

Yes, but the confluence is the bleeding wounded historical heart of Los Angeles. Since the confluence of river and creek was had a rich supply of year-round water, the Tongva Indians sited many of their villages here including the biggest, Yagna, just to the south. The 1761 Portola Expedition sent from Spain said this lush valley by the river was the best place for a village, so they began their pueblo also a little south. But the confluence now is just freeway underpasses, a concrete river, and parking lots--that whole history of this place has been erased as the river was straightjacketed in concrete.

As we stood in the river, Jenny told us a lot of the land surrounding the confluence is owned by different governmental agencies. The city of LA is committed to building a park here, but it's slow going getting the land from there governmental agencies but it has bought a parking lot as its first acquisition. I was glad we had seen the two natural parts of the river first--what it once was and could be--before we saw the Confluence.

Our forth stop was the Cornfields Park where first we stopped outside the chain link fence on the north end. Then the bus drove about a mile to the entrance at the south end. We walked in, saw the many small tree saplings that had been planted, and then walked up to the little mound which had short trees on it and historical plaques in the ground in a circle telling the Cornfields' history: Yagna village right next door; Spanish and Mexican pueblo just south had fields here watered by the zanja madre, the mother ditch; the Yankees built a huge railroad depot and train yards here were thousands of new immigrants poured in.

Below us two teenage boys actually played ball on the grass. No one else though was in the park this sunny Saturday. Nearby Chinatown has no parks--just none. So why aren't hundreds of people here like the elderly Chinese sitting on every bench playing cards and chatting as they do in Portsmouth Square in San Francisco's Chinatown. Because the glacially slow process of park building still leaves the neighbors with next-to-nothing to do here. I say build up a spot on the Cornfields for the elderly Chinese with benches and tables!

Our last stop was at the 6th Street Bridge just south of downtown. We walked through a urine-smelling, trash-lined tunnel under the bridge out into the river again only an inch deep where we walked. On the east bank were train tracks where a train with cars saying it had Chinese goods were heading south to the port. We saw the architecturally wonderful bridges spanning the river both north and south as well as all the graffiti on the concrete pillars of the bridge. The new river master plan has chosen the east, Latino side of the 6th Street bridge as a spot to build another park.

We'd seen more geography of the river as it meanders through its two dirt-bottom sections and its two concrete-lined industrial areas. Jenny argues that putting the river into concrete was wrong for four reasons. Ecologically, the storm drains dump waters into the laden with toxins into the channeled river, increasing the flow and carrying toxins down to pollute the beaches. Before the city was built, only 8% of the rainwater flowed into the ocean but now 80% of it does. Also when the river was allowed to flood its banks, it increased the underwater aquifer. Now it just dumps water into the Pacific Ocean.

Socially, the refusal to build a greenway along the river in the 1930s meant Los Angeles became one of the most park-poor cities in the country, with working class and non-white neighborhoods having the least parks. Chinatown is a good example here--it has no parks at all for 25,000 people. Economically, the city doesn't use cisterns to capture rainwater nor its river water through flooding on parkland but instead spends billions to transport water from far away. Finally, people lost the idea of the river in her lives. I would add that other cities like London or Paris the river is a great unifying force but in Los Angeles we lack that. Instead we have neighborhoods who are divided from one another.

What got lost was not just the river but also the sense of the river as a commons. FOLAR, Northeast Trees, the Chinatown and Latino river activists have labored for twenty years to get LA to adopt its plan to bring back the river; now the city has said, yes, it will commit to having a greenway on the 32 miles the river is within its limits--a huge victory. The city as just issued a Master Plan for the river.

Yet the huge government bureaucracies work at a glacial slowness. We need to engage the citizens more in making the river again our common meeting place. We need to all go down to the river. We should go by then tens of thousands and then talk together what we want for the river. Then hopefully the process of building the parks along the river will be speeded up. Let us all go down to the river.

Anti-war march Hollywood 3-17: Coffins and the Two Figures of Death

Noon I went to the anti-war march in Hollywood on Saturday at Hollywood and Vine Street, on this fourth year I've joined the anti-war marches down Hollywood Boulevard. In that first march the dance group Corpus Delecti danced in torn white rags with white faces as if they were the ghosts of the dieing and the dead of this soon-to-be war. For years later Again the east corner was crammed with people hearing music and speeches from the truck on Hollywood Boulevard. When I got there an inter-racial group of rappers were rapping for freedom.

A few minutes later I took some photos, then crossed the street, and ran into Joan, a fellow instructor at East Los Angeles College. Kent Wong, the head of the UCLA Labor Center, gave a short but powerful anti-war speech. Also students from high schools and colleges spoke briefly as well as the priest from All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, the church which had its tax exempt status investigated for opposing the war, spoke. In between speeches Joan and I, neither of whom are teaching any more at East Los Angeles College, caught up on what we've been doing. It was Saint Patrick's Day, and Joan, who was Catholic, explained that St. Patrick had driven all the snakes from Ireland so the country doesn't have any snakes.

Lots of signs: Topanga Peace Alliance, Episcopalian church group, Impeach Everybody. My favorite sign all day said "St. Patrick, Bring the Troops Home from Iraq." I thought that fitting: if St. Patrick could drive the snakes out of Ireland, hopefully he could also bring the troops home. We heard that despite the horrendously cold weather in Washington D.C., peace people were marching to the Pentagon.

The march slowly began around 12:45 as the sound truck led the peace marchers down Hollywood Boulevard. To my right a man and a woman were dressed all in black including their faces totally covered by black masks and both held scythes as two figures of Death walked beside me. We continued to Cahuenga Boulevard, then walked two blocks south to the multi-story CNN building, turned right for two more blocks. At Shrader Avenue, we turned right, and marched straight past my favorite YMCA where we waved at the exercisers and peace marchers and children in the courtyard.

We continued to the next block past the Gay and Lesbian Center where a man in a Veterans for peace t-shirt holding a flag in front said it wasn't legal for him to get married. The march continued on back to Hollywood Boulevard, turned left again.. Behind me Veterans for Peace carried row upon row of coffins draped in American flags. Throughout the march groups of student and youth marched together: they had a loud presence. Also the Bus Riders union in their yellow shirts marched in a strong group. Two groups of Asians drummers marched me behind me also.

The next day I went to see the "Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Arts 1980-2006" show at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery Barnsdall Park, and Erica Rothenberg had a wonderful witty pieces up including a church calendar for the year 2100 which included an listing for an alcoholics group and also for an anti-war group.

Four years of marchers. Four years ago when I and 40,000 marchers paraded down Hollywood Boulevard we hoped we just hoped we could stop this war. The dancers tried to make the corpse visible of the people who would be killed in this war. Four years later we marched carrying coffins and accompanied by the two figures of Death in black walking besides us.

Once A Cornfield By the LA River

Today I went to visit the Cornfield, a new park by the Los Angeles river, and also attend the Friday noon salon at Farmlab, a fascinating an art/ecology project at 1745 North Spring Street. I got off the Gold Line train at Chinatown, the stop just north of downtown, and started walking north up Spring Street looking for the entrance to the Cornfield State Historical Park but missed it, so I was walking in the hot sun on this barren dirt as there was no sidewalk.

A little to the west was a 4 foot high chain link fence and then the park with an earth road, a few benches, a green lawn, and lots of flowers. But strangely enough there were no people in the park and no gates. Just me looking longingly at the greenery cordoned off from my by the chain link metal fence. Across Spring Street were warehouses in a treeless industrial belt.

I know a bit of the history of this park, a crescent of 32-acres just south of the LA River. For ten years community groups battled to stop Majestic Realty from developing this area, a Southern Pacific Railroad yard, into a $80 million industrial development. The Chinatown Yard Alliance, a coalition of 35 groups including Friends of the LA River, sued Majestic Realty and the City of Los Angeles; the lawsuit resulted in the state of California acquiring the land in 2001 for a much needed park. The neighborhoods surrounding the Cornfields are made up of Chinese, Vietnamese, Latinos and Anglos who lack parks.

Around 2002 I went to see the Cornfields Park, then filled with dirt, weeds, and railroad junk but we did see the section of the 220-year old madre zanja, the mother ditch. The original Spanish colonialists put their village El Peublo just south of the river, and dug the madre zanja as the communal water source to bring water to their fields. The amateur archeologists who discoved of the piece of the mother ditch helped people redefine this site from industrial wasteland to historically important. Just south I could see the towering beige milling company with a big 1883 on its side, and thought the Anglo settlers must have used river water to mill flour. To the north and east was the LA River; to the east up the embankment was Chinatown. To the south, the gleaming towers of downtown. The site is the historical heart of the city.

I kept walking under the hot sun on the dirt looking at the empty park now with multi-colored wild flowers. After the park had remained a brownfield junkyard for four years, artist Lauren Bon and her collaborators in Not a Cornfields turned the whole park into a work of art by planting acres of corn and native wild flowers. While planting, they held community events from drum circles to rock concerts to Day of the Dead celebrations. They had a ceremony by the Tongva people, the Native Americans whose village of Yangna, the real beginning of Los Angeles, was located 1/2 a mile south. At that time Father Crespi in the first Spanish expedition to see the river said the land by the river was a verdant paradise full of greenery including wild grape vines, rosebushes in full bloom, alders and cottonwoods.

In spring 2006 after Farm Lab harvested the corn , they turned the land back to the State park system, but left behind the native, drought tolerant plants and wildflowers I could now see including White Yarrow, California Poppy, Golden Yarrow, Bush Sunflower, Biglow’s Coreopsis etc. I kept walking in the glaring sunlight, seeing a couple in the park, and then no more people but a circle of what looked like big bales of hay or Cornhenge. Not A Cornfield had composed 31 bales from the harvest and erected this circle of corn bales along with more flowers of purple, white and yellow. It's a beautiful living sculpture, Cornhenge. Across the street I could see Asian women in the parking lot of the warehouse where they worked eating lunch. Why couldn't they eat in the park? No gate, no benches, no tables. The sun glared even more as I cross the street.

I walked past another block and a half of warehouses on my right, park on my left, wondering why no one was in the park, then turned into a warehouse, entered the Not a Cornfield space which was part-gallery with exhibits. I was late, so I promised to return, exited where more exhibits were outdoors enclosed by concrete pillars called Under Spring Street Gallery--I supposed the concrete pillars held up Spring Street above us. Then I entered Farmlab where people were setting out a buffet lunch. The free lunch was wonderful: a fish stew, yucca, rice, a fine green salad, carrot juice, two pies (I took a piece of the apple).

As I ate, I talked to Jamie Wolters, a gardener who planted the corn in Not A Cornfield and now worked with Farmlab. He said a local Chicano youth group contacted them for help in planting a garden near their building on a brownfield site owned by Cal Trans. Farmlab has started growing mushrooms as a way to regenerate brownfields sites, but Cal Trans last week said no garden could be planted on their property. He said they were continuing to develop growing mushrooms to clean up brownfields, hopefully on another site.

Casey Coates Danson presented her documentary "Who's Got the Power" about global warming and its solutions. What struck me was the information that oil and gas get tremendous governmental subsidies but solar panels, which could be used to generate electricity, get much less subsidy. After the question and answer, I asked a Farmlab member where the north gate to the Cornfields Park was. She said, "Right outside the door. It looks like a locked gate, but you can enter there."

Back at the 4 foot chain link fence, I tried two gates. Both were really locked, and I couldn't get through, so I trudged back down the dirt under the even more glaring sun. The park was completely empty. Why does there need to be a metal fence walling a park off from people? Blocks later I did see the south gate, a large opening for the driveway, but it was too late for me to walk through the park.

Back home some Internet research explained why the park, established after a huge community struggle, was now so empty. In the 2005 Arroyo Seco Foundation News, Lewis McAdams, founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River and key activist in establishing the park, said the Cornfields is "languishing, penniless." McAdams blames politicians--LA City Council, County Supervisors, and state legislators--for failing to get state funding for the park.

Further, Kim Benjamin, president of the Chinatown Business Improvement District and vice president of the Historic Cultural Neighborhood Council, suggested a modest plan for "a baseball diamond, soccer fields, picnic benches, a Tai Chi exercise area, and walking tours." He said that nearby Cathedral High School, the Chinese Benevolent Association and local property owners would raise $600,000 to create the baseball field, soccer fields, etc, but State Parks has refused the community's plan. The state said "the department's mission does not allow recreation sports in its parks" because the city's Recreation and Parks Department takes care of sports. The state department spokesman has forgotten than his mission is to be a public servant: to serve that public that asks for a baseball field, soccer fields, and a place to do tai chi.

I remember every park I saw in China had people doing Tai Chi every day, but not in the Cornfields Park right next to Chinatown! In Bejiing the Temple of Heaven was formerly a huge ornate blue temple where only the Emperor worshiped; now the Temple of Heaven, one of the most stunningly beautiful buildings in China, was a park which had thousands of senior citizens doing social dancing, playing instruments, doing group sports like badminton, playing music together. But no sports in the Cornfields.

So next to nobody uses the park. To me that is appalling. The California State Parks Department in November, 2006, did announced that, after it had spent thousands for an eight-month design competition to choose a team to design the park, had chosen San Francisco firm Hargreaves Associates. The Hargreaves Associating winning plan sounds quite awful because it also neglected to include what the community has asked for. Hargreaves should start its design process by talking to the park's neighbors. It was they who struggled ten years for the Cornfields so they should have their dreams in the park.

No wonder it was such an empty park Friday. It should be full of people. Hopefully one day it will be full of people from the neighborhood playing baseball on the field, having soccer matches, doing tai chi, and office workers from the downtown towers as well as warehouse workers and salespeople having lunch at the outdoor benches and tables. It should always have those bales of corne from Cornhenge. It should have walking tours that show the madre zanja, telling of the history of El Peublo. It should have tours telling the history of the Tongva's nearby village of Yangna. It would always have corn growing by the Los Angeles river. It should also have the wild grape vines, rose bushes, cottonwoods and alders it once ahead 230 years ago.

The LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall

I drove to my friend Sara's as she had an extra ticket for the LA Philharmonic matinee concert Saturday, and then drove both of us downtown to the Disney Hall--of course, driving is a convenience. Sara and I bought like to take the bus or subway as much as possible, but I was running late, so I drove--a "convenience" that spews carbon dioxide in the air.

We walked around the outskirts of the Disney Hall--a very beautiful sculptural building. Then into our lobby and then our seats right behind the orchestra way up high, but I loved our seats because we could really look down at the different musicians, watching them play from out seats up in Paradise. The French movie Children of Paradise said that those who have seats high up in the theater are in paradise--as we were. For a large concert hall the Disney Hall seems intimate and well as spectacular.

Leonard Slatkin was conducting, and his hands did an elegant choreography to the music. The first piece was late 20th century Steven Reich's "Triple Quartet. This is the first time I've heard a Reich piece. His "Triple Quarter" had three triangles of 12 string musicians playing on the stage repetitions of rhythms interspersed with Eastern European Jewish melodies. The second piece was Franz Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat with Yundi Li, a young award-winning Chinese pianist who gave a dramatic performance.

After the intermission the Los Angeles Philharmonic played Gustav Holst's The Planets. Though I'm familiar with the piece, I knew little about Holst. He's English, and oddly combines a fascination with Hindu spirituality and a love of traditional English folksong. He started composing The Planets in 1914 right before World War I started. Though the program notes say the piece isn't about war, I think it as, as it starts with "Mars, the bringer of war," a very aggressive opener with violins marking a beat like soldiers' foots, then booming drums and trumpets. "Mars" really does evoke all the aggressive rhythms of war.

After 'Mars" comes "Venus, the Bringer of Peace," which is gentle and sensuous, with a solo violin and harp. Next comes "Mercury, the Winger Messenger;" just as Mercury is the quick moving messenger of the gods, the music has a solo violin, a form of piano called a celesta, and a two harps as well as the orchestra do faster rhythms. "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" is one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, with this great sonorous melody repeated by different sections of the orchestra--it was just wonderful to listen to "Jupiter" not on record but with a terrific orchestra. Next come the sad "Saturn, Bringer the Old Age," which has both a solemn sadness, an angry clashing protest against old age, and then a peaceful acceptance. "Uranus, the Magician" has that wild energy of other pieces evoking sorcerers.

The last section of The Planets is "Neptune the Mystic" where Holst and the LA Philharmonic capture the peaceful mysticism. The Pacific Women's Choir song the wordless mystical sounds, but as the orchestra played the choir was nowhere to be seen. Where were they? Their beautiful singing seemed to emerge from underneath the stage, so I thought maybe they were below stage, but the effect of the music floating off from nowhere was wonderful.

Sara said she felt richly fed after the concert. So did I. The Disney Hall, the LA Philharmonic's playing, the conductor Leonard Slatkin, the soloist Yundi Li, the program which encompassed 150 years of music--all were terrific. I just wished the Disney Hall were next door to a subway stop, so we could take the marvelous subway home.

Going Carbon Neutral

I've been thinking about reducing the energy I use for a long time in order to reduce my contribution to global warming. Reading GreenLAGirl, an excellent environmental blog, I read about DriveNeutral, a non-profit that sells carbon offsets. Today I went to the DriveNeutral website, and learned I can pay money to DriveNeutral, and they buy on my behalf emmission credit reductions at the Chicago Climate Trust. The Chicago Climate Trust is like a stock exchange where companies or individuals can buy credits to offset the carbon they produce. The Chicago Climate Trust has 3rd party verification that it actually uses to money to buy environmental-sound projects such as forest projects or urban reforestation such as planting trees in the countryside or the cities or building renewable energy sources such as wind farms, solar energy or geothermal.

DriveNeutral had a calculator where I could calculate how much carbon dioxide my driving produces each year. Last year I took the subway twice a week to work, reducing my driving. I own a Mazda Protege which gets 27 miles/gallon. I drive approximately 6700 miles/year (the average American drives 12000 miles/years). At DriveNeutral the calculator said that the 6700 miles I drive at 27 miles/gallon produces 4265 lbs. of carbon dioxide. To offset that I had to pay $28 to offset the carbon, so I did. They will send me my certificate in the mail.

I have an an-electric apartment. Over a year ago I signed up for the Green Energy Program of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. It cost me about $3.50 extra each month, but all the energy for my house comes from green energy sources such as solar, wind, or geothermal, so my house heating my house or using my stove doesn't produce any carbon dioxide. To be truthful, I do have a gas heater but don't know how much carbon dioxide that produces over a year. For the last year I've tried to get my fruits and vegetables at the local farmer's market, but still I buy about 1/2 of my food at the supermarket, so there is trucking involved--I don't know how to calculate that amount of carbon dioxide. So even with heating and stove powered by green powering, I still am producing some amount of carbon from my food and water heater but I don't know how much.

I also flew to China where I had a vacation in 2006. At TerraPass, another non-profit where individuals can buy carbon credits, I calculate that I flew 14,938 miles which produced 6,142 lbs of carbon dioxide.If I buy a $36.95 carbon credit from TerraPass (DriveNeutral does only carbon credits for driving), then I would offset the carbon produced by my flying. Once I buy the $36.95 carbon credit, then I will be near neutral in my production of carbon dioxide.

I must say that going to a website, calculating how many pounds of carbon dioxide I'm producing, then look at the amount of money it would take to offset has taught me a lot: it has made the abstract concrete. At first I couldn't believe 1 round trip to China would produce over 3 tons of carbon dioxide. Now I'm beginning to understand.

If I add up all my carbon produced this year:
4,265 lbs carbon dioxide- driving
14,938 lbs carbon dioxide- flying
?500 lbs carbon dioxide- my estimate for gas to heat water heater & trucking my food
19,702 lbs carbon dioxide- 9.5 tons carbon dioxide produced by me in 2006!

By the way, Executive Director Carlson of Carbonfund says the average American produces 55,000 lbs or 27.5 tons of carbon dioxide/year. There are a number of non-profits--TerraPass, DriveNeutral, Carbonfund--who sell carbon offsets ranging from $8-$11/ton for Terrapass, $10/ton for DriveNeutral, and $5.50/ton for Carbonfund.

If I pay $10/ton for my 9.5 tons, I need to spend $95 to offset all the carbon I produce in 2006. Wikepdia says that $90 can buy 900 trees, and trees are great for getting carbon dioxide out of the air. What I like about this whole process I have to think concretely about the carbon I produce and what my responsibilites for that are? So far I've spent $28, and I'm thinking if I should spend $67 more to go carbon neutral

Recyling E-waste

After I bought my new computer, I still had my old computer parts to dispose of. I didn't want to drop my only computer parts in landfill, since they are hazardous waste, so I needed to find a hazardous waste site for them.

I looked online for sites which accept electronic waste, but the Los Angeles city-run sites only were open Saturday or Saturday and Sunday--not very convenient. I read on Green LA Green, an excellent environmental blog for Los Angeles, that Amoeba record store accepts in Hollywood accepts e-waste, but on a visit their "Big Green Box" was really a very small green box only accepting batteries and cell phones; I did give them my batteries and portable phone. The sales clerk suggested I take any working parts to Goodwill on Vine Street just south of Fountain, which I did. I had two speakers which worked, so I dropped them off at Goodwill.

Still I had to find a hazardous waste-home for my huge old computer monitor and the CPU unit. On Worldchanging Los Angeles, I read about California Recycles, a store which accepts computers and then recycles them. They recycle CRT monitors, TV sets, cell phones & accessories, stereo equipment, DVD & VCR players, computers & accessories, scanners & fax machines, batteries of cell phones and laptop batteries. They say on their website that they want to make electronic waste recycling easy and convenient.

Better yet, they are in West Los Angeles near where I work and also are open Monday-Friday 8:30-5. So I drove there, and gave them my old computer and CPU unit.

The man working there even helped carry my computer monitor into the store as it was too heavy for me. I asked him, "Why do you do with the old computers and monitors." He said some they dismantle and sell the parts while others they fix and resell. They also gave me a certificate that they would erase the hard disc.

California recycles: http://www.californiarecyles.com

The Best Film of 2006: The White Countess

The film takes place from 1935 to 1937 when the Japanese invade Shanghai, destroying 100 years of European power, so I watched the film waiting for all hell to break loose in the end. The White Countess is similar to Casablanca but better. In Casablanca the beautiful heroine has no back history, but that’s not true of The White Countess.

The white countess of the title is Sofia Belinsky, a taxi dancer whose dancing in bars supports her destitute Russian aristocrat relatives—her mother-in-law, her sister-in-law, her aunt, her aunt, and her daughter. Except for her daughter, they all take her money and scorn her as a whore. Her relatives also try to alienate her daughter’s affections.

At one bar she meets Todd Jackson (Ralph Fiennes), a blind former American diplomat who escapes from the world that has disappointed him by hanging out in Shanghai’s many bars. Throughout the film first Chinese and a then Japanese named Mr. Matsuda tell Jackson how much they appreciate his work with the League of Nations on world peace, but Jackson is only interested in opening up his own nightclub where he can shut out the world. The only problem is Mr. Matsuda is the advance man for the Japanese army who plans to conquer Shanghai as well as the rest of China.

After Jackson wins big at the race track, he opens his bar The White Countess with Sofia Belinsky as it’s tragic, beautiful hostess. Jackson tells his friend e |HMr. Matsuda that his successful bar lacks one thing: political tension. So Matsuda uses his underworld connections to bring all the warring political factions into the bar where they can peacefully carouse . In one of my favorite scenes first a group of Chinese Communist-associated intellectuals enter the bar. Then come in another group of Chinese, the Kuomintang who are warring against the Communists. Outside in Shanghai the Kuomintang and the Communists have been killing each other for years, but inside they peacefully drink side by side. Next come a group of Japanese into the bar, and finally their soon-to-be enemies the Americans. Russians as well as Chinese singers, ballerinas, and comics perform while Sofia Belinsky is the beautiful centerpiece.

At one point Sofia asks Jackson why he has such huge doors to his club as if to shut out the world. She says that her family of Russian aristocrats tried to shut out the world with big doors but it didn’t work. Then I realized this film is as much about 2006 as it is about 1937: it’s about all those people who want to create safe worlds behind big gates. It’s about all those people who once tried like Jackson to improve the world but have given up. The film is about all those like Sofia who live on the edge, without any protections of big gates. The film is about the pettiest of snobbery: the destitute Russian aristocrats snub their neighbor , a poor Jewish tailor.

I read reviews of The White Countess, but most reviewers found it slow going because they didn’t understand that this world of the film was a beautiful soap bubble of 1937 Shanghai in its last days before it was all blown away. Sofia’s relatives desperately want to escape Shanghai for Hong Kong. Through a French connection they get the visas but need $300. Who do they go to for money? Sofia. She goes to her boss Jackson, who has also refused any emotional intimacy with her, thought both are obviously in love with each other. He gives her the money, knowing she will use it to flee Shanghai.

Of course, the Japanese send in troops. Thousands of Chinese flee before the advancing Japanese army. Sofia’s mother-in-law says they got the visas for the whole family to leave except for Sofia: a horrendous betrayal to leave her behind in the war-torn city. In his bar Jackson sees Mr. Matsuda enter, whom he accuses of betrayal. The film is about war and betrayal, but the screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro humanizes all people including Mr. Matsuda. At the end Matsuda tells Jackson to leave his bar to be with the real white countess Sofia, so Jackson goes out, a blind man in a city flooded with refugees, to find Sofia. So the film is also about humanity, courage, trust, and love in wartime. The film asks all of us: do we hide ourselves behind big gates or do we go out into the streets of the war-torn world?

The film is the last by producer Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, as Merchant died soon after the film’s completion. Merchant , who was from India, and Ivory, who is American, have been making splendid films for 40 years, but The White Countess is my favorite of their many films. They saved the best for last.e gi|He

Visiting My Local Mosque

I’m a member of Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA), so when PJA and the Muslim Public Affairs Council had a joint program called New Ground with two speakers from Israel—a Palestinian Taghrid Shbita and a Jew Daphne Banai-- at my local mosque February 24, I went to the Islamic Center of Southern California. Entering the mosque, I saw the large empty room on my left with a wooden floor, but headed to the room on my right which had rows of chairs and a table, a video screen, and a microphone up front. On the wall to my right were twelve colorful posters explain the Five Pillars of Islam and a long wooden rack with small cubicles and a sign saying “please use these racks for shoes.”

The MC, a young woman, welcomed us to the Islamic Center with a quote from Gandhi saying we should all be agents for change that we want to bring about.

Taghrid Shbita, a Palestinian human rights lawyer who is a citizen of Israel, spoke first, telling us the story of Palestinians who remained in Israel. She said that in 1948 the land had 950,000 Palestinians, but 800,000 left, leaving 150,000 including her family. Many of these Palestinians who remained became internal refugees in Israel since 400-500 Arab villages emptied. Her husband’s family, for example, lived in the Arab village Misqi, but fled in 1948, winding up in the Arab village of Tira.

From 1948-1952, houses remained standing in Misqi, and the former inhabitants wished to return, but in 1952 the Israeli government destroyed all the houses. Ever since then, she said, the former inhabitants of Misqi return twice a year and the older generation tell the young where the houses, gardens, and streets stood. In her family her husband’s mother tells these stories to her three children. Her village Tira once had 12,000 acres but because of Israeli land confiscations now has 2,000 acres, so the young generation have no place to build homes when they marry. Her son as well as others would like to live in Misqi, which is an empty place, but the Israeli government won’t let them.

Shbita said that Israel says it’s a democracy with equal rights for everybody but it is also a Jewish state—that is a contradiction. She said that Israel has laws that benefit Jews and discriminate against Palestinians such as the Law of Return, where any Jew from anywhere in the world can go live in Israel as a citizen. She said she has an uncle who grew up in Israel but was away studying in Egypt when the Israeli census took place, not counting him. For decades he has wanted to return home but hasn’t been allowed, so now he lives in Jordan.

She added that Palestinians citizens of Israel face many other kinds of discrimination. Most don’t volunteer for the Israeli army, thus never getting the many benefits army veterans get. For example, her daughter who is not a veteran applied for a job as a part-time sales clerk, and was refused because she wasn’t a veteran. Shbita said she failed to see why sales clerks need to be army veterans. Also, her husband and other family members were on the beach at Natanya when Israel Jews attacked them, saying that the beach was for Jews only and Arabs weren’t allowed. She concluded by saying that this discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel should be ended.

Next Daphne Banai, coordinator of Machsom (checkpoint) Watch, a group of 400 Jewish Israeli women who act as human rights monitors at checkpoints throughout the West Bank, spoke about her being born into a right-wing nationalist Israeli Jewish family. As an adult in Israel she searched out Palestinians to meet and talk with for the first time, and these dialogues changed her life.

As a member of Machsom Watch, she told she and other women go daily to West Bank checkpoints. She said that on December 31, 2003, they watched a 78-year old man with a suitcase and the proper permits refused at a checkpoint. She and her colleagues from Machsom Watch drove him to a 2^nd checkpoint, where he was again refused. She pointed out to the Israeli soldier that the man’s house was in the village right next door to the checkpoint and pleaded they let him cross, but again the soldier refused. Not wanting to abandon the 78-year old man on this freezing night, they drove him to a nearby Arab village, knocked on a door, and asked the people there to give him sanctuary, which they did.

Banai showed us a map on the video screen of the green line, the internally recognized boundary between Israel and the West Bank, and the separation wall that juts into the West Bank. She also showed us another map showing that Israel has partitioned the West Bank into four sections: North, Central, South, and the Jordan Valley. The Israelis don’t let Palestinians from the first three areas cross into the Jordan Valley. She said that Machsom Watch found a 14-year old shepherd boy, who had crossed the line into the Jordan Valley following a sheep, handcuffed and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers, sitting there for four hours.

She showed us a map of the 70 checkpoints; most aren’t between Israel and the West Bank but are within the West Bank. Also she said that the checkpoints have no written rules and Israeli army order change constantly. She said the Israelis have built dirt mounds outside many Arab villages or put gates, so Palestinians can only drive their cars up to the dirt mound or gate and then have to walk the rest of the way to the checkpoint, often carrying heavy suitcases or other loads. Pregnant women and heart patients have to walk or be carried, often standing in line 5 or more hours at checkpoints. She said that one UN report had one year 60 women giving birth at a checkpoint, with 20 having stillborn children. She said us a photo of Arabs carrying an ill man on a stretcher to a checkpoint.

Banai showed us photos of roads on the West Bank: the Jews-only highways are new, empty, and evenly paved while the Palestinian roads are old, broken up, and uneven. She showed us photos of Arab villages caught on the Israeli side of the separation wall, with an Arab market forced to close because they are separated by the wall from their customers or schoolchildren have a difficult walk through gates to school. She said Machsom Watch is against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

Banai said the her group Machson Watch condemns terror attacks on Israeli citizens, but Israel should do so from within the Green line. She maintains that the occupation isn’t eliminating terrorists but breeding new ones.

At the programs end the young MC returned reminding us of Gandhi’s quote that we become change agents, and finished with a quote from the Koran saying that if different nations would have dialogue with each other, it would be good for all.

Jane Austen in Los Angeles

Once upon a time I used to watch TV at night to relax but after I got Netflix, no more. Now I watch films, particularly film versions of Janet Austen's novels: Emma, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and last night, Mansfield Park, the 1999 version.

I like Austen so much because we're at war right now, and she writes about love. She also wrote during wartime--the Napleonic Wars--but focuses not on war but on romance back home. Watching Mansfield Park last night I was thinking how much the novel is like a Shakespearean comedy where seven young people--four women and three men--constantly fall in love to the wrong people, but at the end most have realized their folly and finally paired up with the one they really love or really deserve. Austen's world is very reassuring: love matters during wartime.

In the Mansfield Park film I saw, the heroine, Fanny Price, is born into a poor, large family in Portsmouth, England, but is sent away when she is around ten to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Betram, who live in the huge mansion of Mansifled Park. For the first half of the novel Fanny is snubbed by most of the family because she is poor while they are rich--only her cousin Edmund is kind to her. Her other aunt, Mrs. Norris, lives in the nearby parsonage off Sir Thomas; Aunt Norris always spoils Fanny's two wealthy girl cousins Maria and Julia while she delivers a cruel class snobbery toward Fanny, verbally abusing her. This story 's focusing on class makes it fitting for Los Angeles which is deeply divided into wealthy and poor neighborhoods. How would a poor girl from South Central L.A. be treated growing up in Beverly Hills?

Fanny seems to withstand this class cruelty well, growing up writing stories to her far-off sister Susan; she has a sense of herself, her own values, and is spunky. Actually she's the spunkiest character of all. Her Aunt Norris is petty class snob while her other Aunt spends her life sitting in a chair with a lapdog and taking opium. Fanny's cousin Tom, the oldest son, devotes his time to dissipation, gambling and partying in London, while her two female cousins Maria and Julia are spoiled, vain rich girls. Only cousin Edmund, the second son who wants to be clergyman, has any sense of ethics.

The patriarch, Sir Thomas, tries to be both stern and kind but is distracted by problems with plantation in Antigua. Edmund says to Fanny once that all this wealth comes from black slavery. Fanny is the only one who begins to question slavery to Sir Thomas, the only one to articulate an abolitionist position. Again, the film puts Fanny as the only one who has clear sight, recognizing that the family's luxury is based on violence and horror. Again, this seems a good film for L.A. with it's long history of racial segregation.

While Sir Thomas is away, a young wealthy brother and sister--Henry and Mary Crawford--move nearby, befriending the people at Mansfield Park. Fanny, who is in love with Edmund, silently watches pretty and elegant Mary Crawford flirting with Edmund. Fanny watches Henry Crawford flirt with both her cousins Julia and then Maria, who is engaged to a wealthy boor Mr. Rushworth. Fanny is always the poor outsider. but she keeps her cool. The young people decide to put on a risque play Lover's Vows, but Sir Thomas's unexpected arrival puts a stop to the play, ending Maria's budding romance with Mr. Crawford.

Maria suddenly marries Mr. Rushworth to escape from her detested father while Henry Crawford decides to court Fanny Price, falling in love with her and asking her to marry him, but she refuses him, not trusting his character. Sir Thomas, on hearing this, orders Fanny Price to marry Henry Crawford, saying this is her only chance to have a good marriage, but she bravely stands up Sir Thomas, saying she won't. I really admired Fanny at this point. To punish her, Sir Thomas sends her back to her poor family, as if she was some trinket that displeased him so he could return it. Fanny returns to live in her family's overcrowded tenement. It's as if our heroine was dispatched back from the Beverly Hills mansion to live in the ghetto.

Fanny hears that Edmund has announced his engagement to Mary Crawford; Henry Crawford follows Fanny back to Portsmouth, asking her to marry again, but she refuses. She just doesn't trust him, telling her sister she thinks he's a rake. Fanny is a heroine, refusing the easy way out of poverty, sticking to her conscience. Well, would you trust a Beverly Hills playboy courting a poor girl living in a South LA neighborhood?

At this point, the eldest son grows very ill from dissipation, and is near death at Mansfield Park, so Fanny is summoned back to the mansion to nurse him. At Mansfield Park, Henry Crawford seduces Maria, and they both run away. This produces a terrible scandal in 1806--adultery, a broken marriage, divorce. The family is horrified--the oldest son Tom is near death while the daughter Maria is utterly disgraced. Mary Crawford can't help but show her pleasure that Tom may die, leaving her fiance Edmund a wealthy heir. Edmund is horrified about her money-grubbing attitude, careless of his elder brother's life or death, and renounces her.

Tom does recover. Edmund discovers he loves Fanny, proposes, and accepts. He's going to be a poor clergyman, probably living in a poor cottage, not a grand mansion, but he and Fanny totally love each other. Aunt Norris is sent to live with the disgraced Maria in a cottage: it is fitting that the two snobs get to spend their life together. Austen seems to be saying that Fanny Price is made a better person because of the hard times she had to undergo. For Los Angeles, 2007, that's a pretty good idea: hard times can build character, and in the end we can find people who love us.

At film's end a character said that Sir Thomas ended his plantation in Antigua and found other business ventures, so the film seems to be saying the English are better off without slavery and class snobbery. Los Angeles like England would be better off without racism and class snobbery and with more true love, so Mansfield Park is the novel and film we need now.

• 1999: Mansfield Park, film directed by Patricia Rozema, starring Frances O'Connor as Fanny Price and Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund Bertram (interestingly, he also featured in the 1983 version, playing one of Fanny's brothers). This film alters several major elements of the story and depicts Fanny as author of some of Austen's actual letters as well as her children's history of England.

My New Computer with Windows Vista

My computer, a 2001 Dell with Windows Millennium—a terrible, outdated operating system-- crashed February 13, 2007, so February 16, 2007, I bought at Fry’s Electronics a new computer: a Gateway GT5408 with Vista Premium. At home I set up my computer (with my brother’s phone help) all by myself over three days! Friday afternoon I hooked up all the parts, got onto the Internet through my EarthLink DSL line, but ran into a few problems. I couldn’t figure out where the plugs plugged into on the ViewSonic monitor, so I called up ViewSonic. While I was on hold, I saw the plugs right underneath the front of the monitor—problem solved.

Second, both the monitor and the speakers had identical green audio plugs to plug into the CPU, but the CPU only had 1 green slot for audio. The print manuals didn’t help. I emailed Gateway. Also the machine came with a 60-day trial of Office 2007 Home and Student, but I when I tried to register it, I found it they gave me the Canadian version, which wouldn’t accept my registration form because I refused to include a Canadian zip code, so I emailed Windows.

I also had a 60-day trial for McAfee Security Center. When I started that program, they said I needed to update it, which I did, opening up window which ordered me to register right then. When I clicked Ok to register, the window disappeared, leaving nothing. Finally, I just gave up on Day 1.

Day 2 I returned to my machine, got an email back from Gateway regarding my problem with audio plugs which only provided me with a link with their large online manual, which did not provide a solution. My new computer had an Easy Transfer center to help transfer documents from the old to new computer, so I plugged in my little flash drive, a tiny drive with all the documents from my old computer, started Easy Transfer, got to a window which included flash drive icon, clicked it, and it didn’t work. I felt frustrated.

Moving on, I decided to set up my printer—a beloved Canon Pixma MP780. I put in the Canon CD set up disc into the CD slot, and got the message that my printer was incompatible with my Windows, so please contact Canon. The kind Canon tech woman spent about 45 minutes on the phone with me helping me to download a driver and three programs for my printer; at the end of the downloading my printer did work! Despite the frustration, I felt I had made progress, but was tired so quit for the day.

Day 3 my brother, who has been hearing reports on all my problems, calls me up, telling me Windows Vista has anti-spyware and Firewall, so it’s better to use those rather than McAfee’s anti-spyware and Firewall. So after some time searching, turning things on and off, I turned on Windows Vista Spyware and Firewall, and turned off the McAfee versions, since I only need one. Then I downloaded Mozilla Foxfire, my favorite browser. My brother told me to use Google anti-popup, so I downloaded the Mozilla/Google toolbar with anti-popup. I also downloaded AVG free anti-virus. Now my computer feels protected by good programs.

A few minutes later I’m online when I get a message from McAfee telling me my computer isn’t protected, and stopping me from doing anything. I close the computer down, start it up again, and go to Amazon.com reading the reviews of McAfee—mostly negative. Then I uninstall McAfee. McAfree has given me problems from Day 1, so I don’t need it. .I still don't know how to transfer all my documents, so I decided to stop by Best Buy later that day asking how much Geek Squad will charge me to do a transfer.

As I explore the computer, I opened up the window that says “computer,” giving a picture of my drives—reminding me of a similar window on my old machine that I used when I wanted to use my flash drive. I get inspired to again try transferring my documents, so I plugged in my flash drive into the USB port. I now see the flashdrive on the computer window. Wonderful! I open it up. There are all my documents. Even better. Now I open up “Documents” on the new computer, and start dragging all my documents folders from the old to the new. I open one of my old folders but on the new computer. It opens. I’ve done the transfer! I’m thrilled! I don’t have to pay anybody any money!

After three days of having very low audio sound, I realized that the sound was only coming from the monitor but not the speakers. I had plugged the monitor audio jack into the green plug, but plugging the speakers’ audio jack into the green plug gave me good sound. Hurrah. I put a music CD into the CD slot, but now the music is good and loud. Great. I feel so terrific that, despite all the frustrations, I’ve set up my new computer—the printer works, DSL works, the old documents are on new machine, the audio works.

Day 4 I finally get an email from Windows with a link to download the correct version of Office 2007, which I do. Now it all works!!!! I also feel more confident about my computer skills, and I’m beginning to learn how to use Windows Vista and Office 2007. I also learned that the problems I had were not mine: 1) the manual's unclear instructions caused the problem with the audio plugs; 2) a mistake giving me Office 2007 Canada made it impossible to register; 3) McAfee had some glitch keeping me from registering; and 3) incompatibility between Windows Vista and my printer. But I hung in there, and with help from my brother, phone calls & emails, all problems were solved.