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.

Gifts from a Thousand Villages

For holiday gifts I went to the 2nd annual Fair Trade Crafts Fair at the Echo Park Methodist Church. To be labled "fair trade" a business or co-op has to be certified that it pays a decent wage and has decent labor practices. This year I'm trying to buy as many presents as possible either fair trade or from my local farmer's market.

At the church I first went to the table for Ten Thousand Villages, a non-profit store in Pasadena that has wonderful handcrafts from all over the world. I bought some fair trade coffee from East Africa and also rose soap made by traditian Indian soapmakers at from the Palm Rural Center, which provieds adequete housing, water, medical assistance, and education for Indian children. Ten Thousand Villages is, I believe, the first fair trade store in Los Angeles and also has an online catalogue where they sell a dazzling array of fairly traded hardcrafted goods from around the world including wonderful ceramics, book ends, furniture, pillows, jewely, musical instruments, purses, planters, hammocks, photo albums, and much much more. Ten Thousand Villages is a non-profit program of the Mennonite Central Community.

Next I went to the Cafe Rebelion table which had Zaptista coffee and honey produced by indigenous Indian co-ops in Chiapas, Mexico; at this table I bought some honey as a gift. The coffee is organic and shaded meaning they don't grow it by cutting down all the trees, destroying habitat for birds, but keep trees up so the coffee has shade and the birds still come to the area. I've previously bought the coffee which is very good. Throughout Central America and southern Mexico there is a movement to have fair trade shaded coffee grown in co-ops run by the producers and then sold in the United States--a very good movement to support.

After buying Zaptista honey I went to the table for the Garment Workers Center where I bought two utterly beautiful hand-woven beaded bracelets. A little card enclosed in both bracelet boxes said, "This product was made by 'Chanita,' a group of Tzutjul women in Santiago Atitlan, Guatamala, and marketed in the U.S. by UPAVIM." Each card told who made the bracelet: one was made by Elisa and the second by Delores. This is the first time I'm learning which co-ops and even which person has made what I've just bought. I like that a lot.

The Garment Workers Center works in downtown Los Angeles to empower 90,000 garment workers who make an average of $3.28/hour. They labor to get the workers better wages, enforce the state's work codes, and het better job conditions. The Center also sell online seven different fair trade gifts baskets to make money. "Start the Day in a Groupmet Way" has wild rice pancake mix, syrup, coffee, tea and cacoa. "Hot and Spicy Cooking" has hand crafted kitchen utensils, spices, olive oil and a farmers market bag.

Finally, I went to the table for Revolutionary Associaton of Afghan Women (RAWA) and bought a lovely hand-woven black-and-red wallet for a gift. The enclosed card explained that the wallet was made by the RAWA Income Generation Project. RAWA gets Afghan women and girls to make gifts which they then sell so the women and girls have income.. Founded in 1977, RAWA is the oldest Afghan women's organization. In the Talibian Era they ran underground girls' schools within Afghanistan. Now they run schools, medical projects, and orphanages. For over 25 years they have worked for peace, freedom, democracy, and women's rights in Afghanistan. RAWA has some of the bravest women on earth.

Saturday was the Fair Trade Festival but Sunday I always go to the Hollywood Farmer's Market, a reincarnation of the medieval fair in the heart of Hollywood! I headed to the ceramicst Kathryn Browne to buy two dark red mugs as a gift. Browne is a wonderful ceramicist, influenced both by great California pottery like Bauerware and Asian pottery. Last year I bought an elegant white vase for my hostess in Washington D.C. who loved her vase.

Next I went to one of three soap tables to buy handmade soap made by My Beautiful Soap & Company in Simi Valley, California. Each soap is made of different natural ingrediants and each has a wonderful smell such as peppermmint. After the soap table I headed to the section of tables for bakers, and stopped at the Old Town Baking Co. table (they are from Fontana, Ca) and bought a lemon bread loaf and a banana nut loaf as gifts. The baker had a made different loaves, and I asked him which one was his favorite. He said, "lemon," so I bought one of those. He was telling me he didn't use any sugar but just natural fruit purees to sweeten his loaves. The ingrediant list looked terrific with no chemicals at all. So I had a happy time with the ceramicist, baker, and soapmaker tables!

What I really like is knowing who made my gift! I am happy that as the fair trade movement grows they are including more information about the co-op who produced the items. That's great. So when I buy someting I feel more connected to the makers of it. It does really feel like I'm buying gifts from a thousand villages! Trade Jo's now has Fair Trade Coffee which I'm beginning to buy, so I will go beyond buying fair trade gifts to making fair trade puchases all year long!

Where to Buy:
Beautiful Soap & Company www.beautifulsoap.com for soap

Cafe Rebelion: www.caferebelion.com for honey and shaded coffee

Garment Worker Center: www.garmentworkcenter.org for fair trade gift baskets

Kathryn Browne Pottery: KBPOTTERY.com for pottery

Revolutionary Associaton of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA): www.rawa.org
www.afghanwomenmission.org for information and
www.cafepress.com/rawa.meena for a t-shirts, mugs, buttons etc.

Ten Thousand Villages: www.tenthousandvillages.com, 496 So. Lake Ave, Pasadena,
for fair trade handcraft from around the world.

Los Angeles in the Year 2106: some ideas

LA Times had an article December 14 that the History Channel had a competion asking seven architectural/design teams from Los Angeles plus one from Harvard to design LA in the year 2106, a century from now. History Channel is running the same competition in New York and Chicago as well as Los Angeles. One hopes the NY's and Chicago's ideas are better because LA's architects aren't very imaginative.

A panel of judges at Los Angeles County Musuem of Art gave the $10,000 prize to Eric Owen Moss Architects. Eric Owen Moss proposed filling the Los Angeles river with more water as well as making the area around the Los Angeles River in downtown Los Angeles a green belt with parks, gardens, houses and hotels for neighbors as well as tourists. The team also wanted to add housing "on both sides of the river, merging the historically Latino Boyle Heights with a burgeoning downtown." Eric Owen Moss's idea is good but it's hardly new. For over a decade Friends of Los Angeles River (FOLAR) has worked hard to transorm the river the concretized Los Angeles river by building parks, bike paths, and agricultural lands along the 30-mile length of the river. I'm all for making the LA River a greenbelt as well as apartments and houses just past the parks--rather like apartment houses on both sides of Central Park in New York--but Eric Owen Moss should have said it was building on FOlAR's ideas.

Eric Owen Moss's proposal is just for one small part of a huge city, so it fails for not rethinking a city. George Yu architects had a landscape with "man-made hillocks, gullies, and purifications" systems to catch rainwater that is linked up to reserviors. A good idea but also not a new one. Andy Lipkins's TreePeople has been arguing for barrels to catch rainwater all over Los Angeles. So far both Eric Owen Moss and George Yu are just recylcing ideas that Los Angeles's environmental leaders have already proposed.

The LA office of EDAW/DMJM Deisgn had a disaster scenario: it imagined global warming causing a 25-foot rise in sea land, obliterating Long Beach and San Pedro as well as making a new waterfront. Thanks but no thanks. Any serious ideas about the city has to ward off environmental disasters not give in to disasterous environmental planning.

Three of the proposals were sheer science-fiction. Griffin Enright Architects presented "Aerotopia" where mass transit is airborne through a wide gride of linked circles. These people need to come down to earth to see more practical mass transit ideas. Xefirotarch and Imaginary Forces imagined a mutation which produced "Chlorofilla," a plant that can be made into buildings and has intelligence. No such plant exists, so forget about "Chlorofilla." Office of Mobile Design's also thought of buildings made of "biomatter" watered by desalinated water. The biomatter buildings are lving things "that can adapt like plants to changes in climate or time of day." Ok, that's interesting, but "biomatter" seems to require mutations of plants like "chorofilla." These three proposals are failures. Yes, I'm all for imagination, but silly ideas like intelligent plants or air-born transporation just are tinkering around with straws.

The Harvard Graduate School of Design's students created "Nephopolis--City of Clouds," which has L.A. covered by a mist created by household desalination. Interesting, but I'd go with Andy Lipkin's catching the rainwater we have before trying any expensive desalination projects.
Finally, the team of Roger Sherman Associates and City/Lab had the most intruiging idea of using the city's many neighborhoods as its "inherent DNA " proposing "a landscape of radically different zones affording to each-his-own range of living styles." That sounds promising, but we need more details, particularly how to help neighborhoods retain traditions while becoming safer with an improved economy.

What strikes me is that none of the eight had any real innovative ideas. If one wants innovative ideas, read The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City by Robert Gottlieb, Mark Valliantos, Regina M. Freer and Peter Dreier. Gottlieb, Valliantos, and Dreier are urban studies professors at Occidental College while Freer teaches politics at the same college. They helped organize a conference in 1998 which got community activists and academics together discussion the history of LA's social reform movements. Then they got a group of grass-roots activists, academics and policy makers to work together from 1999 to 2000 to create a grass-roots plan how to develope LA--that work became the book The Next Los Angeles.

This remarkable book includes in its first 50 pages the first history of progressive movements in Los Angeles in the 20th century, then an analysis of the 1992 civil unrest, and next an analysis identifying a political agenda that would both lessen inequality as well as improve the enviornment. Lastly, he Appendix has 30 pages of recommendations called "A Policy Agenda for the Next L.A." These planners saw clearly than greening the environment had to be combined with social justice--only this double vision of ecology with justice can improve the city.

The Next Los Angeles in its 30 pages of propsals deals with issues the 8 architectural teams never touch:
1. housing for a city with a tremendous lack of decent, affordable housing;
2. the urban environmental for a city which has few parks; polluted industrial lands and toxics in housing; polluted air; pollution in oceans and springs; horrid traffic jams and lack of decent rapid transporation etc.
3. food and nutrition including ending hunger in Los Angeles as well as ensuring a healthy food supply for all
3. improving the schools
4. expanding democracy
5. expanding worker's rights in a city with sweatshops and thousands working at low-wage jobs
6. economic development in a city with large acres of extremely poor neighborhoods.

The 8 architecture/design teams only dealt with a few issues of the urban environment but ignored the other seven issues and never connected with the history of LA, its huge number of ethnic groups, or its social activists. Oh well. If History Channel starts a national debate about how to improve the cities, they have done well.

In L.A.: a wonderful hand bookbinder, a great bookstore

A 1/2 mile from my house in Los Angeles is a hand bookbinder who does exquisite work and a great bookstore. Near the intersection of Larchmont and Melrose Avenues a few doors west of Larchmont at 5720 Melrose is a shop with a sign saying The Bindery with many books and a hand press in the window. A sign on the front of the Bindery says enter in the rear (there is a doorbell for seniors), so I went around the rear, opened up a metal gate in a vine-covered fence, descended a few steep steps and into the Bindery (M-F 10:00-6:30 pm; Sat. 11-4:00; 323-962-2109) to discover the workshop based on love of books.

The shop owner, Charlene Matthews, is a hand book binder. She does fine book restoration: restores and repairs old books; makes one-of-a-kind book cases; creates one-of-kind artist's and photos books; and does silkscreens. My thick Oxford English Dictionary (OED) had lost its back cover, and Matthews did an excellent job repairing my OED, even adding my initials to the binding. She showed me some of hand-made book cases, which are just lovely and specially designed for each book.

Matthews metal presses are fascinating: She has two job backers presses for working on a book's spine and four book presses to press a book flat. The walls of the Bindery have bookshelves of fine hardbound books for sale. I picked up quite a few unusual art books and novels there. At her shop she gives classes in hand bookbinding for LA Book Arts and also holds her own private bookbinding workshops. She had a website (http://www.charlenematthews.com) which illustrates some of her elegant book arts: her books are regularly exhibited in art shows. Her one-of-a-kind photo books are really wonderful! What's fascinating about Matthews' work is that she carries on a 500-year old tradition of book binding but also creates post-modern one-of-a-kind bookworks for the 21st century.

Heading out of the Bindery back to Larchmont, if I walk a block east on the corner of Gower and Melrose is Astro Burger with a sign saying "vegetarian." Inside they do have burgers, fries, and shakes but also a long vegetarian menu, as the owner claims invention of the veggie burger. The veggie burger deluxe with avocado is terrific along with fried zucchini (cooked only in healthy oils) as Astro is a rarity: a fast food health conscious burger shop.

Refueled by a veggie burger, I walk back to Larchmont, start south two blocks. In the 2nd blook on the westside is Dawson's Bookshop/Michael Dawson Gallery at 535 No. Larchmont (W-Sat 10:00-5:00, 323-469-2186; www.dawsonbooks.com), one of Los Angeles two oldest bookstores (the other is Vromans in Pasadena). I head off the street off the walkway into the huge brick building with racks of books in front and the photo gallery in the back to enter a booklover's bookstore.

Dawson's not only sells books but has made Los Angeles book history. Starting in 1905, Ernest Dawson had his bookstore in three locations downtown, specializing in books on LA, California, and Western America. The second generation Muir and Glen Dawson, both superb mountain climbers (Muir is named after John Muir while Grant had a mountain named after him) moved the bookstore to its present generation, published books (including a wonderful photo book of the Victorian houses on now demolished Bunker Hill), and were closely connected with L.A.'s three great fine printers--Ward Ritche, Grant Dahlstrom, and Plantain Press (I worked for a short setting hand type at Plantain Press when I was a young poet).

Michael Dawson, the 3rd generation and an expert in photography, established in 2000 a photo gallery specializing in California photography. The current show, Scott B. Davis's "Los Angeles Night" photos running until February 3, has erie lonely portraits of the nightime city. Dawson's wonderful website has a photo section which has selections from many previous photo shows, and is an education in Western photography. Photo exhibit after exhibit have exposed amazing and distinct photographers--both historical and contemporary.

The bookshop also has LA Salons on Saturday afternoons, the next one Saturday, December 9, at 2:30, featuring the book Picturing Los Angeles with its authors Jon and Nancy Willman, long-time Angeleno documentary filmmakers. At a previous L.A. Salon this year I heard Peter Richardson speak about his book American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. I've long been a great admirer of McWilliams, a 1930s radical writer, lawner and civil rights actvisit; he is also best historian of Los Angeles whose book Southern California: An Island in the Sun has been an inspiration to generations of writers in this city.

Of course, browsing Dawson's is also a great experience. I've bought some of my most treasured L.A. books there such Mary Antin's autobiography; Antin was the first great environmental writer of Southenrn California. Last weeend I got Charles Jenck's Hetereopolis: Los Angeles, the Riots and the Strange Beauty of Hetero-Architecture, a fascinating recent book about this city's new amazing architecture in response to the 1992 riots. Jencks was the writer who first defined the idea of post-modern in architecture. So Dawson's like the Bindery is rooted in the best of past book traditions pushing forward into the new century. Visiting both the Bindery and Dawsons in one afternoon is indulging oneself in the best of LA's book arts!

Larchmont Village in Los Angeles: Designed for Walking

Los Angeles is a series of villages. My apartment is between the Western Avenue, part of immigrant Koreatown village, and Larchmont Boulevard village, the shopping area for the Windsor Square/Hancock Park village. This area was built from 1900-1930s between Wilshire and Beverly Boulevard as wealthy suburbs with mansions for the downtown Anglo business and political elite. With integration starting in the late 1960s, Asian, Hollywood, Jewish, Latins and Blacks bought some of the two-story huge houses. Neighbors from the mansions south of Boulevard or the 1-story houses and apartment north of Beverly go to Larchmont Village's shops or cafes. Larchmont Village has two wonderful characteristics: it is a street (not a mall) built for walkers and it has great looking apartment houses. People actually do stroll here.

Today's walk begins and ends at the same place: at the north end of Larchmont where it deadends into Melrose Avenue. A few doors west of Larchmont at 5720 Melrose is a shop with a sign saying The Bindery with books and a hand press in the window at 5720 Melrose. The shop owner, Charlene Matthews, is a hand book binder who does excellent work in book restoration.

Back at the corner of Melrose and Larchmont Avenues I start south through three blocks of antique stores, dentist and realty offices in wooden 1-story former homes. The 1st block has Hans Weisshaar's Rare Violins at 617 Larchmont with a lovely wrought-iron sign over the street that says "violins"; the four-story brick Thai Consulate a few doors down. In the 2nd blook on the eastside is a small building housing the Larchmont Chronicle, the village newspaper. On the westside is Dawson's Bookshop/Michael Dawson Gallery at 535 No. Larchmont (W-Sat 10:00-5:00, 323-469-2186; www.dawsonbooks.com). Dawson's is always a wonderful place to stop and browse books.

The third block on Larchmont on the westside has both practical shops and the not-so-practical: a minimall with a cleaners, shoe repair, and alteration shop; Kasimoff Pianos, which sells German pianos; and Le Petit Retreat, a day spa where one can drop $500 in a afternoon on three different kind of body scrubs! One the eastside is Healing Hands at 414, which has massage (only $60/hour), chiropractor, and accupunture; Barking Lot, for pet supplies; and Chan Dara restaurant, a Thai restaurant with a lovely indoor patio. At Beverly and Larchmont is Koo Koo Roo, a healthy fast food eatery, which features "original skinless flame broiled chicken." The chicken is good as well as healthy--a good choice for lunch.

Once I cross Beverly Boulevard I get to the one main block of Larchmont Village, one of the few blocks in Los Angeles actually designed for pedesterians. Each side of the street is shaded with huge trees, has large stone planters with flowers in them, and even has wooden benches. Now the block is decorated for Christmas with a red ribbon on each tree and red-and-white stripes around each parking meter. This block seems like Italy: most of the shops are small clothing boutiques and cafes with outdoor tables spilling onto the sidewalk. One sees many other walkers here: yoga students carrying their yoga mats going to the Center of Yoga; teenagers from the neighborhood hanging out in the cafes; young mothers with a child going shopping; middle aged and seniors running erands.

While Larchmont's main block has its share of pricey boutiques, there are many practical shops. The westside of the street has a farmer's market selling fruits and vegetables every Sunday 10:00-2:00 pm; the Village Pizzeria with people crammed into the outdoor tables; and a Wells Fargo bank with ATMS. The eastside of Larchmont has a Rite-aid, a chain drugstore -pharmacy with a large newstand in front; a small dry cleaning/shoe repair; Larchmont Village Hardware, where I've gotten vacuum cleaner bags as well as enamel paint to repair my tile kitchen counter; a plumbing store; and Sam's Bagel's, which has huge bagels baked on the premises. Landis General Store is one of my favorite shops: it has everything from pajamas to odd gifts like a folded up travel hat to elegant stationary with lines my mother likes to write letters on.

On the eastside of the street is Chevalier's bookstore with a children's annex with little chairs and tables and huge stuffed dolls include raggedy Anne and Andy perched on top of the high book shelves; the main annex has a good selection of books about Los Angeles, new fiction and non-fiction, cookbooks, mystery novels, and an occasional booksigning. After shopping one can stop at Peet's Coffee &Tea, the only corporate coffee chain worthing going to. Peet's staff take classes in coffee and teas so they're very knowledgeable. I always like the free taste of coffee or tea in a pot of tea or coffee near the cash register; one day I'd like to stop by for the tasting sessions on the weekends.

Now at the corner of Larchmont and First Avenue I turn right, walk one block to Arden, turn right again walking through this one residential block of well-kept one-story homes of Hancock Park neighborhood. At Beverly Boulevard I cross the street, turn left, walk one block to Rossmore and then turn right. At the corner I notice on a post a small sign poster saying "War is over if you want it" while across the street is the Wilshire Country Club which covers blocks going east with its golf course. On July 4th the country club has a huge display of fireworks which can be seen from my house 1/2 a mile away, but many neighbors gather at this cover of Rossmore to get an even better and closer view of the fireworks.

Rossmore Avenue is a shaded, tree-lined street with two blocks of elegant apartments, a rarity for Los Angeles. During the 20th century the L.A. ideal was the detached single-story house, so I love to see these rare but beautiful soaring apartments. Most of the apartment buildings on these two blocks are huge and beautiful, but three have particularly gorgeous architecture. The El Royale at 450 North Rossmore has nine stories, a penthouse, and huge carved stone doorways. Built in 1920 by William Douglas Lee in a French and Spanish colonial revival, the El Royale is an historical-cultural monument as are some of the other apartment buildings nearby. Many famous actors from George Raft to Nicholas Cage have lived at the El Royale, while John F. Kennedy once stayed at the Mauretania Apartments at 520-522 Rossmore, which looks like a modern ship sailing off into the street. Built in 1934 by Milton Black after a British ship, the Mauretania does look like a cruise ship with its Art Deco Streamline Moderne style.

After the Mauretania, I like the Ravenswood Apartments at 570 No. Rossmore. Actress Mae West lived here for 48 years in the building owned by Paramount Studios a few blocks away on Melrose (she liked to walk to work). The Ravenswood, with its huge bronze doors, eight stories, and an Art Deco Style, was built in 1930. Continuing up the block I pass the Church of Christ with its Korean signs out front and then the Christ the King Chatholic Church parish house and then the church itself. We pass a little minmall with Mario's Peruvian seafood restaurant and a Radio Shack. Now we're back at the corner of Rossmore and Melrose Avenues with a large Pavilions supermarket with pharmacy across the street.

If one turns right to continue walking east on Melrose Avenue past a minimall with Korner Cafe coffeehouse I hope to soon try. In Larchmont Avenue like Western Avenue I can walk to get the necessities: a supermarket; a Sunday morning farmer's market for fruits and vegetables; a couple pharmecies; a hardware store; dry cleaners and shoe repair shops; many banks with ATMs. But Larchmont has many speicalty shops including two wonderful independent bookstores, a hand book binder, a rare violin shop and a piano shop.

At Lucerene and Melrose is the Greek Seafood Village open M-F 12-9 and Saturday and Sunday 12-10. It's half off before 7:00. My friend Erica who spent a year in Greece says the decor this restaurant has the most authentic decor since most of the restaurants in Greece look exactly like this one; the seafood is pretty good too. One more block and we're back at the corner of Larchmont and Melrose Avenue where our walk began. Larchmont Village shows that if streets are made comfortable for strollers, they will come. If elegant apartment houses are erected, people will live in them for 48 years like Mae West did. If only many more blocks in Los Angeles were like Larchmont Village's designed for strolling with leafy shade trees, wooden benches, and planters filled with flowers.

Greening Santa Monica College I: worms etc.

Santa Monica College (SMC) where I work has showed a commitment to ecology the last 5 years by recylcing and its Sustainable Works education Program but recently its enviornmental paractices and been criticized by students. Before I deal with the criticism, I liked to describe SMC's current practices.

When I started teaching there I was happy to see the blue recyling bins in the cafeteria and the faculty computer room. I've taught in a lot of colleges, but SMC was the first one I taught in using recyling bins. Now in SMC's student cafeteria there are bins for newspapers/paper; cans, glass, and plastic; and waste. According is Madeline Brodie, the college's recyling coordinator, SMC has a "reputation for one of the best recyling programs in the state. " The colleges recyles 85 of its waste, much of it made up of construction waste, but if you leave out construction waste it recycles 65% of campus waste.

On the website http://www.smc.edu/Recyling is exellent information how the campus reclyces, with different sections and photos on each recyling area: paper reclying; the worms recyling; construction and demolition materials recyling; toner and inkjet cartridges.

As for the paper collected in all the blue bins, student worker Takao Yamzaki empties the blue cans into a dumpster provided by The Paper Depot. The Paper Depot truck picks up and empties the filled dumpsters , and the trucks take the paper to the Paper Depot in Orange, California, where each SMC load is weighed so the college receives credit and compensation. Then the paper is dumped into a huge mountain where a hand sorter removes any confidential paper and then a second person hand sorts it into three categorites--white, multi-colored, and "post office mix"--before baling it. The bales of paper are then sold to such firms as Fort James paper mills, which transforms the bales into toilet paper then sold back to SMC for use in its toilets!

SMC uses worms to recyle food waste. In November 2001 SMC got two grants to buy and install a 16 ft. Vermitech machine, the second of its kind in California. The college also bought 300,000 Red Wiggler worms and put them into the Vermitech--the worms have grown to 500,000. Htakao Yamzaki, student worker, and Sam Martin, custodian, prepare the worms food which is discarded food from the cafeterias, cardboard, and brown papertowels.

When the worm food is ready, the custodian feeds it to the 500,000 worms which dump worm castings into the bottom of the Vermitech where they are "harvested." The gardeners then use the warm castings as fertilizer on campus plants, particulary the hibiscus plants infected with white flies since these particular worm casting fertilizers are supposed to provide resistance to white flies. When I went to the Modern Language Association convention and tried to describe
SMC to faculty from other parts of the nation, I always mentioned our famous worms!

SMC has been demolishing buildings before building new buildings, so it has recycled construction and demoliton matierals. American Waste Industries picks up demolished materials on campus and trucks them to its plant in Sun Valley where the trucks are weighed. One such truck from SMC weighed three tons! The truck then dumps its load onto the "tipping floor" where large items such as plywood, wooden pallets, and large scrape metal are removed. After numerous sortings, 90% of material is removed. Wood, for example, is ground into 2" bits, blended with soil, and sold to landscapers for gardening. The remaning 10% goes to a Sunshine Canyone Lanfill in Sylmar, California, where it is sorted into three sizes, with some sold to landscapers and nurseries. The SMC Grounds Department buys some of this dirt which they used for newly seeded grass areas and for mixed soil blends.

Missed Information, SMC's online newspaper, says that still 30-40% of recylable bottles and cans don't end up in recylce bins but are dumped in trash cans. Many students don't know anything about the campuses recyling, so Sustainable Works, SMC's other important enviornmental program, has students making classroom visits to encourage use of the recyle bins. So the college has the recyling program in place but needs to do more convincing of students to use it.

Sustainable Works, located at 1744 Pearl Street, also does brilliant education work both on-campus and off. It offers nine-week sustainable crew program to about 400 students per year. For a number of years I've have a Sustainable Works speaker come to make English classes to explain that if the students take part in the 12-hour training program on how to have better environmental practices in their lives, they can get extra-credit for my class.

Furthermore, Sustainable Works sponsors the Environmental Lecture Series, bringing some imporant speakers to campus, and a environmental Studies AA degree. They have a Green Business program offering Santa Monica businesses a free assessment how their current practices affect the earth and recommendations how the business can go green. Lastly, they have two gardens in front of its Pearl Street building: one a garden that uses native plants and little water next door to a garden that uses non-natives plants which consume much water. The campus has also had a fine environmental film series.

Clearly the Sustainable Works program and the Recyling Program are both good programs but have functioned independtly. The campus is realizing that it's not enough just to have recyling bins; recylcing must be accompanied by education, so now its beginning to do the education, having Sustainable Works and the recyling program reinforce each other. I'd make a small suggestion. If campus recyling information or even a seminar on recyling isn't part of orientation for new students, then why not? In another blog I'll discuss the recent student criticisms of SMC's practices.