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.

Bohemian Los Angeles

I used to live in Silverlake district in Los Angeles in the 1970s. That was when I started writing poetry seriously. I got an M.A. in psychology, and quit that to start working as a minimum wage typesetter in the San Fernando Valley and then got a better typesetting job at Aldus Type on LaBrea near Wilshire. Aldus did very good work in typesetting for advertising.

I don't remember how but I met Lillian Marks of Plantin Press. I knew she ran one of the three finest print shops in Los Angeles: Plantin Press in Silverlake; Grant Dahlstrom in Pasadena; and Ward Ritchie. I asked Dahlstrom for a job but he said he didn't hire women. I asked Lillian Marks for a job (her husband Saul had died but she kept on the print shop) and for a brief time she gave me a job hand setting type for her. She was very kind, took me to Dawson's bookstore for an event where the fine printers, friends for years since the 1930s, gathered for events. She also took me to a fine printer's club meeting where we sat around a round table having a fine dinner. I admired Marks, Dahlstrom, and Ritchie for their brilliant book work, knew they were the best printers in Los Angeles from the 1930s through the 1970s, and thought they were traditionalists, carrying on the traditions of Renaissance fine printing into our age.

What I loved most was the Plantin print shop: the most elegant, organized workshop I've ever been in with huge hand presses and a cold type machine press. The shop used both hand and machine presses, different from other fine print shops which only used hand presses carrying on pre-industrial traditions. Instead Saul & Lillian Marks named their press about the great Renaisance typographer Plantin and, I thought, carried on beautiful type and book design into the machine era, using an aesthetic that was pre-20th century.

Besides her kindness and encouragement, Lillian Marks taught me how to work. Before working with Lillian, I would procrastinate and then work for hours at a time without meals. She taught me how not to proscratinate and how to start working at 8:30, take a short coffee break, a lunch break, and a late afternoon break--working slowly and steadily throughout the day. Also, after I'd handset a book title, Lillian would make a proof of it, then suggest corrections, so I'd handset another one. We'd do this until she finally felt she got it right.

All I've had to say is a long introduction to "Bohemian Los Angeles," a new book by Daniel Hurewitz, whowrites about Edendale (Silverlake and Echo Park) part of Los Angeles, showing three kinds of bohemian groups who lived there from 1920-1953: gays, artists, and political radicals who are mostly Communists. What affected me the most was chapter 2 about the artists of Edendale. Of course, I was interested to see mention of people I knew--printer Grant Dahlstrom--and also lovely descriptions of printers clubs, but what affected me is that Hurewitz analyzes all the artists and their book arts friends as modernists, bringing a shift in art from that of external appearances to "externalizing a complete personal world .... Since his [sic] work is untraditional in its methods and imagery, his comprenhending audience is often limited to a few friends and 'intiates'" (98). Hurewitz analyzes the modernists visual artists of 1920s and 1930s L.A.: the post-surrealist school of Grace Clements, Lorser Feitelson, and Helen Lundeberg--as well abstractionist Stanton Macdonald-Wright.

Further, young artists such as printmaker Paul Landacre and sculptor Gordon Newell as well as printer Ward Ritchie and librian Lawrence Powell were all inspired by Robinson Jeffers' poetry which "demonstrated how the natural enviornment could offer an artistic vehicle for emotional expression" (102). In fact, Hurewitz shows that California modernists artists as well as poets were inspired by the natural landscape much more the East Cost modernists and poets who were enamored of the machine and the city: Jeffers' looks to the Big Sur nature while Hart Crane writes about the Brooklyn Bridge.

In that same chapter Hurewitz also discusses the political radicalism of Edendale artists of the 1930s, mentioning both Lester Horton, whose dance company I studied with as a young child, who made the most political, multi-cultural modern dance in the country from the 1930s-1950 (Alvin Ailey was one of his students) as well as Mexican muralist Siquieros who briefly worked in Los Angelesin 1932, making three murals working with young LA artists and inspring them. The Edendale artists also headed and worked in the mural departments of the WPA during the 1930s.

Hurewitz brilliantly shows how these young artists creating both modern art and as well as artistic and literary Los Angeles. Lawrence Powell, friend of the fine printers, was the head of the UCLA library, instrumental in creating it into a brilliant university collection. These artists and book people had to create the very arts institutions as LA lacked such intstitutions as well as being the radical innovators of their times. Hurewitz helped me see Lillian Marks, Dahlstrom, Ward Ritchie as modernists, helping me revision my 1970s past. Yes, these wonderful printers carried on Renaissance printing traditions of fine printing but they carried them into the era of machines and artistic modernism of mid-20th century California.

But the artists are only one chapter in the book. He modurewitz is a gay historian, and he focuses on both the gay cultural scene and the culture of the Communist Party whose many activists lived in Edendale. His first chapter is on Julian Eltinge, a successful female impersanator in vaudville who sang in falsetto and who settled in Edendale in the 1910s. Hurewitz argues that Eltinge refused to identify with fairies while his mainsteam mostly heterosexual vaudville audience say his work as refined.

The main argument of the book is first Edendale's modernist artists and then its Communist Party activists both insisted the interior life as important in arts and in politics--and both modernists and Communists affected gay history. The modernist artists broke with Victorian or vaudeville arts of surfaces to express intertior psychic states. Hurewitz tells how the Communist Party actvists fought for minoirtiy rights in Los Angeles, insisting that opressed minorities had cultures and that racial oppression negatively impacted psyches. The last chapter is how Harry Hay--Edendale resident, 30s Communist activist, and actor involved in 30s modernist arts--took all these elements in creating the Mattachine Society, the first homosexual rights organization in the United States.

Hay argued in those early meetings of the Mattachine Society that just as blacks, Mexican-Americans had a common culture, so did homosexuals. Also, Hay inherited from modernists the idea that interior life for homosexuals including sexual life "was indeed a fundamental--if not the fundamental piece of who they were" (269). Further, the interior life led directly to a politics and political groups which demanded civil rights.

Thus Hurewtiz believes these three kinds of bohemians in Los Angeles created the identity politics of the 1970s, but they created it decades earlier up in the hills of Edendale. Rather than a cultural wasteland from 1920-1950, the Los Angeles of "Bohemian Los Angeles" has vital arts and politics that would affect the larger culture of the United States throughout the 20th century. Hurewitz has written a thought-provoking and fascinating book.

One last note. Throughout their marriage Lillian Marks worked in the print shop along with her husband Saul, but during the 1930s Hurewitz says the printers' social clubs were men only. By the 1970s the printers' club had opened up to include women, so when Lillian took me to the printers' club fine dinner we sat and ate with both men and women.

Report from Los Angeles in the Year 2030: Housing

Los Angeles in 2006 had serious housing problems: 90,000 homeless on the streets; overcowded, dangerous tenements which regularly caught on fire or collapsed; apartment prices so high that families gave up to 50% of their income just for a home, unable then to pay for medical care; home prices so high that 80% of families couldn't afford to buy a home within the city's limits; and long commutes through gridlock traffic from homes in the distant suburbs to jobs. At that same time Los Angeles had wonderful architects designing gorgeous homes for decades, but this talent was never tapped to design a more livable city.

This housing shortage was created by 50 years of bad policy. Starting in the 1950s, larger developers and landowners had gotten fifty years of zoning and tax policy in which poor and middle class city dwellers subsidized middle class suburbs. The landlord lobby had gotten zoning laws which restricted apartments from being built for decades. Right-wing Republicans in the early 1950s had attacked Mayor Fletcher Bowron's integrated housing projects as "socialistic," so no new housing projects have been built for 60 years. Instead working-class neighborhods were destroyed: Chavez Ravine was leveled in the 1950s; Bunker Hill in the 1960s.

After factories closed down in South Los Angeles starting in 1970s, City Hall had abandoned this area. Starting in the 1970s, the powerful homeowners' associations across the city had for decades fought apartment and homeless housing from being built in their neighborhoods.In the mid 1990s the powerful landlord-developer lobby, which dominated both City Hall and Sacramento, had a law passed in Sacramento knocking out parts of the rent control laws of Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and other small cities. After rent control law was weakened, rents in these cities skyrocketed.

By 203 the progressive housing coalition had gotten the city in principle to adopte an $100 million/year housing trust to build afforable housing but it was chronically underfunded under Mayor Hahn. Mayor Villaraigosa adopted the idea of "smart growth," building apartments, townhouses, and condos around subway and light rail stops. The Mayor funded the "Affordable Housing Trust Fund with $100 million for the first time ever and has done so for two consecutive years." He also got a 2nd $100 million for established a sub-section of the Trust Fund million and 2,000 housing assistance vouchers to house the homeless.

By 2006 nearly 5,000 affordable housing units were built in the City of Los Angeles. Developers began building these urban villages in Hollywood, Koreatown, downtown, and Pasadena. Also Tom Gilmore led other developers to convert empty downtown offices into apartments and lofts. Despite these positive acts, the housing crisis just got worse. 5,000 new units did, however, next to nothing to solve the problem.

In 2007 a small number of homeless started what came to be known as the pots and pan marches to end homelessness. First 10 marched on Wednesday afternoon. The next Wednesday 100 marched, banging pots and pans. By the 4th march, 1000 were marching, the TV was coving the pots and pans marchers, and their leaders met with Mayor Villaraigosa. By the 8th march, Villaraigosa had deliverd 1000 trailers for the homeless--this act nearly split the pots and marchers who demanded homes for all 90,000 homeless.

They decided to let families with children and the seriously ill take the first 1000 trailers, and upped their demands: real homes including geodesic dome villages for all 90,000 homeless; small centers for the mentally ill which had been promised decades earlier after the huge state mental ill hospitals had been closed down; subsidies for first and last month's rent for all homeless with jobs to get them immediatley off the street; rehab centers for all homeless with drug programs. The mayor stalled, offering only homes for 20,000 people, so the pots and pans marchers expanded to Santa Ana, Van Nuys, Sacramento, San Francisico, and San Diego.
The final pots and pans marches had 100,000 marching, so Mayor Villaraigosa agreed to tall their demands to "End Homelessness Now" in 2008.

Also in 2008 the End Tenement Now coalition began in the middle of the pots and pans marches to give Tours of Tenements taking TV news crews along with hundreds of people into apartments showing off dangerous wiring; lack of heat; rats and cockroaches; falling down ceilings; holes in walls; lead in ceilings. End Tenement Now then set up their Tour of Tenement exhibition with huge photos highlighting tenement horrors on City Hall lawn.

They demanded Mayor Villaraigosa hire 500 new city housing, inspectors, the City Attorney vigorously prosecute slumlords, the city fully fund the $100 million housing trust/year with $100 million/year. End Tenements Now also demanded that the city change zoning laws to legalize garage apartments as an emergency measure, and rezone many areas for multifamily dwellings. The landlords counterattacked, saying conditions were not as bad as End Tenements Now alleged. End Tenement Now started its own pots and pans marchers to the city buildings with marchers carrying huge blown-up photos of rats, holes in walls, ceilings falling down, etc. Getting how action from the mayor, End Tenement Now had a live-in in City Hall which resulted in 300 arrest.

Then Mayor Villaraigosa announced he would hire the housing inspectors, increase prosecution of violators of the law, legalize garage apartment and change zoning laws. Villaraigosa said he couldn't get the money to fund affordable housing until End Tenement Now got a favorable majority on the City Council to agree with the mayor to have all new developements pay fees into the Housing Trust as well as a small tax on all hotel rooms in the city. For the first time affordable house would be subsidized. Also, End Tenement Now got the Villarigosa to hire some of the best architects in the city to design the affordable housing.

After Villaraigosa lobbied in Sacramento to end all subsidies to new suburbs and rezoned Los Angeles to allow aprtments along all proposed subway/light rail lines, he became known as the Housing Mayor. He was easily re-elected in 2008, and then started Los Angeles great housing construction boom with city, state, and federal monies. Apartments (50% affordable) were built within 1/2 mile along rail lines, subway lines, and rapid bus lines across the city. Apartments were built over stores along main avenues such as Pico Boulevard, Exposition Boulevard, and Wilshire Boulevard. These were the Apartment Zones. Of course, all the new apartments were 100% green with solar panels, recyling & graywater systems. Mayor Villaraigosa won a 3rd term in 2012, and continued building housing in what was known as the great housing boom of 2008-2028 when thousands of new apartments were built.

By 2012 downtown became a residential neighborhood again, particularly as the homeless population shrank as they moved into first trailers and Geodisdic Dome villages and then into new apartments. Supermarkets were built downtown, as the city helped developers reconvert more downtown offices into apartments. Throughout the next 16 years apartment houses and parks were built downtown which again became the hub of the city.

The city still had zones of 1-story houses, which were quite exspensive, but most people by 2016 began to appreciate the many amenities of the new urbanism: good rapid transportation; gyms and childcare on site; even cafeterias and cafes in some larger apartment buildings.

The city also had three new kinds of housing starting in 2010. Ecovillages were mulutiple -story apartment buildings which were small utopian communities. Often the members of the EcoVillage tended nearby urban orchards, community farms, or farmer's markets. Second, small blocks transformed themselves into a Village Green, a couple of acres of 2-story townhouses and 1-story houses set amidst parkland with no streets; garages with cars hidden behind the houses.Thirdly, EcoColonies were built from 2016-2030, large developments which had both small community gardens as well as housing

By 2030 Los Angeles had finally enough housing for all its residents. Homeless was a small hardcore of 500 alchoholics. Tenements were a horror story from the past. It had taken 24 years to build enough new housing to make it once again afforable within Los Angeles the green county.

Report from the Los Angeles in the Year 2030: Transporation

In the 1950s Los Angeles led the country in its devotion to the car
and its assoicated illnesses: suburban sprawl, air pollution; growth of ugly strip malls and fast-food restaurants; gated communities; extrmeley long commutes. By 2006 traffic girdlock was spreading throughout the city. 2007 was the last year in the Age of the Car, but even the years leading up to 2007 people were beginning to question the car. The 2008 Saudi War where gas prices doubled in two weeks led to huge re-evaluation of the Angeleno's dependency on cars. With the doubling of the gas price, millions could no longer afford their cars.

The Bus Riders Union struggle in the late 1990s and early years of 2001 caused improvement in bus service. The Red Rapid redesigned buses were introduced 2004-6. A small program giving junior college students subusdized bus passes for a few dollars per semester at Los Angeles Trade Technical College and Los Angeles City College was extended to 8 communities colleges in Los Angeles involving 150,000 students. Discounted bus passes were also given to seniors. The next year the program was extended to give discount bus passes to 250,000 low income people. Also a smart card was introduced citywide: anyone could buy a smart card and use it on any bus system.

The bus discount bus program was success, so bus service was expanded to serve another 1/3 million riders. The ugly bum-proof bus benches, aimed at getting rid of homeless people by making it impossible to sit, were replaced by comfortable bus benches and bus shelters. After the 2008 Saudi War when gas prices doubled overnight
another million people switched from cars to buses. By 2010 a million more people were riding the bus yet traffic was still in gridlock on city streets and the freeways.

In 2007 Metro, the city rapid transit, was building two light rail lines: the Exposition Line from downtown to the beach as well as the Gold Line Extension East through East Los Angeles. Mayor Villaraigosa in 2007 got the money for the subway extension down Wilshire to the beach. In 2008 two lines were being built from downtown to the beach: the Exposition Line and the Wilshire Line. As the Wilshire subway to the beach was being built, people demanded not subways but more light rail.

The 2008 Saudi War convinced the majority of Angelenos that LA needed an expanded light rail system, so the system was expanded from five light rails to 10 lines: 5 going north and south and five going east and west. These ten lines were connected up with the Metrolink, the suburban commuter train system. Between 2009-2020 Los Angeles was spending more money building rapid transit rail line than any city in the nation.
When finished in 2025, Los Angeles has the most modern, efficient rapid transit system in the nation. The fast train built from LA International Airport to downtown was faster than anyone in the world--even Shanghai's. Angelenos were rightly proud of their clean, beautiful new rapid transit system.

The city expanded bike paths from its increased number of parks and along the rivers and creeks, so thousands of people bicycled, particularly among the youth. The Bicycle Kitchen, started around 2003 at the EcoVillage and then moved to near Los Angeles City College, taught bicycle repair skills and expanded into a chain of 10 bike kitchens, giving teens an alternative to cars along with basic mechanical skills. Bike clubs became popular, sponsoring more Midnight Rides regularly around the city. Every public and most private building had its bike rack.

Neighborhoods were remade for walking with millions of trees planted along the streets, wooden benches and planters put on popular shopping streets, and attractive bus shelters. Many residential blocks by 2006 were using "street calming" devices which made it necessary for cars to go slowly by newly designed stone blockages within the street. New housing developments were designed like the late 1940s Village Green without any trees at all but just parks. In the Village Green the cars were hidden away in garages behind the housing. Some business districts redesigned them themselve as 1 or 2 or 3 block pedestrian way with no cars at all.

By 2030 80% of the people of Los Angeles used rapid transportation as their main way to go from place to place. Yes, people still drive cars, which were either electric or biodiesal after gas prices skyrocketed after the 2080 Saudi War. But after 2008 parking fees had to be paid to park anywhere in the city. The parking fees helped pay for the expansion of the rapid transit city. Yes, a minority still loved their cars as people in the Age of Cars still loved their horses but they had to pay large sums to have cars.

By the way, horesbacking riding became more popular. Up to the 1970s there were horse stables throughout the hills of Los Angeles, but most had been closed during the Age of Cars. With the going of the cars, many stables in the hills were opened. Horebaking riding became a popular sport again, and many busineses near the hills put up hitching posts so horseback riders could ride to the business, hitch up, do their business, and then ride away.

By 2030 so few people were using the freeways the City Council was debating whether to tear down down, recycle the concerete into buildings.

A Report from Los Angeles in the Year 2030: A Green Justice City

From 2007-2030 Los Angeles made dramatic changes both making it a green city and a city dedicated to social justice. Los Angeles as the Green Justice City was inspired Los Angeles' progressive social movements of the 1990s. Tens of community activists, policy analysts, and academics worked together for two years from 1999-2000 to produce ideas from the grass-roots for a new city. In 2001 they presented "A Policy Agenda for the Next LA" based on LA's progressive social movements and then published as the Appendix in the book The Next Los Angeles.

The grass-roots people involved with creating The Next Los Angeles clearly understood that any greening of Los Angeles has to be combined with increasing social justice in the city. They also called for economic development in their report, refusing to see any conflict between a green city and a prosperous one without the hunger, the sweatshops, and the tenements of the late 1990s. They had double vision--justice with ecology. Their vision directly led to such transformations that created the Los Angeles of the Year 2030: from a city whose buildings wasted energy and water to a city composed of 100% green buildings; from a city whose open space was largely toxic abandoned industrial sites turned into a network of parks; from a city with thousands hungry to a population without hunger eating 50% locally produced, organic food.

In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina demolished New Orleans, global warming was finally recognized as a danger for any coastal city like L.A. In 2001 70% of LA's energy came from coal and nuclear power which pollute the environment and contribute to global warming. Secondly, LA is a desert city which stole its water in 1911 from the Owens Valley and still pumped much of its water from hundreds of miles away in 2001.

The Next Los Angles recommend and the city adopted in 2008 a Municipal Buildings Policy to redesign all city-owned buildings including all school buildings to reduce energy and water. In Santa Monica the city had built Colorado Court, a 44-unit affordable housing building which produced its own energy. Colorado Court was the prototype for the green buildings --every building with solar panels on top to produce electricity, greywater system to use water for irrigations, rain barrels to collect rainwater, and recycle bins. In 2008 Los Angeles had adopted the Sustainable Building Act to reduce energy and water use for all new buildings, to use recycled materials, and to reduce toxins in older buildings.

Andy Lipkis from TreePeople, which had planted a million trees worldwide, had in 2006 recommended rain barrels all over the city to collect rain which is then used. The city adopted the Rain Conversation Act also in 2010. By 2030, all buildings in Southern California were green: they produced 90% of their own electricity; they used little water; they recycled 90% of their waste. The remaining 90% of electricity came from the cities' electrical grid using wind and geothermal power. In 2030 the cities' buildings used 0 energy from polluting sources.

The City Council also decided to give startup money in 2008 for factories to build solar panels and rain barrels in South Central, where 50,000 jobs factory jobs were lost in the 1980s. They passed a law that these jobs have to be unionzed with livable wages. In 2006 Los Angeles had the largest manufacturing center in the country, so the new factories to green the city's buildings added onto LA's economy as well as saved Los Angeles money in less spending on water and power. Mass producing solar panels lowered the cost tremendously. The city used state money to have a publicly funded public works project GreeeWorks like the WPA of the New Deal program to retrofit all LA buildings.

Los Angeles in 2006 had many toxic industrial sites as well as less parks than any other major city. The Cornfields, a 32-acre polluted rail yard near Chinatown and the Los Angeles River, had been designated as a new park just north of Los Angeles. In the late 1990s neighborhood activists in Chinatown combined with white environmentalists in Friends of the Los Angeles River to get the Cornfields not developed with factories or shops but set aside as a park. The Next Los Angeles had found out that much open land remaining in the city were toxic brownfields like the Cornfields, so they argued the city should clean the brownfield sites, involving neighboring communities in how these sites will be used after they are cleaned up using the Cornfields as a prototype..

In 2009 the city passed the Brownfields Conversion Act, focusing first on park-poor low-income neighborhoods with brownfield sites that were turned into parks or community gardens. Neighborhood activists got the city to open up more parks as well as get more funding going to parks--both improving existing parks and building new ones. Friend of the Los Angeles River's (FOLAR) plan to green the concrete-river was adopted in 2008, so along the river the city built parks, community gardens, bike paths, walkways, and then housing and tourist hotels on both sides of the park land as Eric Own Moss Architects had suggested in their plan that won the award for History Channel's competition. Beginning in 2010 bike paths were also built across the city that go from park to park. The city went from park poor to park rich.

The Next Los Angeles had argued that the city government should end hunger in Los Angeles, one of the wealthiest cities in the globe. In 2008 the city had adopted a food program with three goals: end hunger in Los Angeles; lower energy costs for making food; and ensure healthier food to lessen diseases caused by obesity and polluted food. In the last few months of 2006 and throughout 2007 people were continually getting sick from contaminated foods produced in industrialized farms and factories.

In developing the new food policies of the year 2008, city historians recalled when the city was much smaller in the 1st half of the 20th century, much of Los Angeles County was one of the richest agricultural lands in the nation including a huge amount of orchards. With water, almost anything grow here. Mayor Villaraigoas announced in 2006 a plan to plant a million trees--but the plan was changed in 2008 to make half of the trees fruit trees, particularly citrus. Once Hollywood Boulevard had orange trees, and again starting in 2010 orange trees were planted on this street. Most fruit trees were planted, however, in residential neighborhoods with neighbor sharing for their block fruit trees. The city also started 20 new community gardens. Fruit trees and community gardens provided food.

For food scarce neighborhoods the city adopted The Next Los Angeles’s recommendations to build "four new full-service markets and four new farmer's markets" in Southcentral L.A. The city also adopted a policy to support small, locally-owned restaurants as well as truck and street vendors. The city offered credit for street vendors and helped them produce clean, healthy food as the project at Mama's Hot Tamales Cafe had first helped street vendors in McArthur Park. Los Angeles ended all subsides to fast-food restaurants. In the omnibus Food Safety Act of 2009 all children who needed it got free breakfast and lunch of organic, locally produced foods. All school cafeterias, inspired by the Berkeley, served organic local produce bought from local farmers. By 2030 1/2 of the cities foods again came from local sources: farms, orchards, or community gardens.

The Metro transportation arranged bus routes to help people get to markets. The city helped out farmers by supporting farmer's markets with using the city's insurance and using city's buildings as spaces as well as letting farmer's markets accept food stamps. Food poisoning was reduced after the federal government adopted stringent new laws policing the food industry and more people shifted to eating local food. Also, the city supported unionization through the food industry, so in 2009-2010 farm workers and restaurant workers were unionized, joining the unions of supermarket clerks in one huge food union. Workers in the food union got livable wages as well as health insurance through the state-mandated health insurance passed in 2009. By 2015 hunger was abolished in Los Angeles as the first goal was met. By 2025 energy transport costs were lessened. By 2030 rates for obesity in the city had reduced remarkably.

The city also made huge changes in its transportation system and in housing, but these two vitally important issues will be dealt with in the next section of the report.