KCET Feed

[CLOSED] Exclusive Tickets: Spotlight Awards

2013-05-23T22:09:10Z

We have 5 pair of tickets to giveaway to the Spotlight Awards 25th Anniversary Celebration on Saturday, May 4th at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at 7:30 p.m. Spotlight is a nationally-acclaimed scholarship and arts training program that culminates with an Gala Performance.

Although tickets for this event are not being sold, you can enter for a chance to win through KCET! Either leave a comment below telling us you want to attend or subscribe to our newsletter. Current newsletter subscribers are automatically entered for a chance to win. The giveaway ends at 4PM on April 30th. Winners will be contacted at that time, so make sure you check you email. Click here for official contest rules.

Good luck!

Local And Seasonal: Fava Bean, Prosciutto, and Pecorino Romano Salad

2013-05-23T21:39:10Z

On a recent trip to the farmers' market, I was talked into buying five pounds of fava beans. It was a true communal effort. The farmer selling favas saw me eyeing the giant, green pods and offered them to me for one dollar per pound -- but only if I purchased five pounds. Upon hearing of this deal, a fellow market goer began stuffing beans into her bag, but quickly had to ask for a larger container. "You should do it!" she said. "Favas tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, and Pecorino cheese make the best spring salad." She seemed to know what she was doing so I started filling up my own bag.

One of the reasons we hesitate to buy fava beans is the fussy preparation that they demand. Favas grow in pods, like other legumes, but the individual beans are also wrapped in a second, inner coat of tough, bitter skin. Unless favas are extraordinarily young, we must peel them not once but twice.

Enlisting kids (and any assortment of friends or family members) to help shuck the beans cuts down on the time it takes to prepare them. Inside those pods there are three to eight beans resting on a velvety surface. Pop them out and then toss them all into salted boiling water for a quick blanch, which will loosen that pesky second skin. Once the skin wrinkles and the beans float to the surface, drain them and let them cool. Try using a fingernail to pinch open their final coat, and then squeeze out the brilliantly green fava beans.

You can eat the shucked and peeled beans just as they are, savoring their slippery, grassy glory, or enjoy them with a splash of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. Many simple fava bean recipes come from the Mediterranean region, where the legume has been cultivated since at least 3000 BC. Romans sauté favas with onions and pancetta. In Morocco and throughout southern Italy, favas get smashed into a vibrantly green take on hummus. This is a brilliant use of late-season favas, which tend to be starchier and chalkier than the young ones. At least for now, while the beans are still small and tender, they're irresistible in a salad with curls of Pecorino Romano cheese. Thank goodness I bought five pounds.

Fava Bean, Prosciutto, and Pecorino Romano Salad
Serves 4
This spring salad may look dainty, adorned with curls of cheese and jewel-like beans, but it is packed with intense flavors: salty cheese, chewy cured meat, and bitter watercress greens. I like to compose the salad in layers so that those flavors don't get muddled and each bite is unique and surprising.

2 pounds fresh fava beans in their pods
1 small shallot, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 bunch watercress
4 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 ounces Pecorino Romano, or other salty, firm cheese such as Cotija or Parmigiano
4 to 6 thin slices prosciutto
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Shuck, blanch, and peel the fava beans according to the method outlined in the article above.

Prepare the salad dressing by combining the shallot, lemon juice, vinegar, and ¼ teaspoon salt in a small bowl. Set aside for about 10 minutes or until the shallot softens slightly, and then whisk in the lemon zest and extra-virgin olive oil.

Place the watercress and parsley leaves in a large bowl. Pour about ¾ of the dressing over the greens and use your fingers to evenly coat each leaf. Pour the remaining dressing on the fava beans and sprinkle them with ¼ teaspoon salt.

Using a vegetable peeler, make long, thin shavings of Pecorino cheese.

To serve the salad, place a handful of dressed greens on each of four plates. Add a spoonful of fava beans, a few curls of cheese, and a piece of prosciutto. Place another handful of greens atop this layer. Add more fava beans and curls of cheese, letting them fall down the sides. Season the salad with several grinds of fresh black pepper.

Need Solar Energy? There's a Printer For That

2013-05-23T21:30:00Z

Australian scientist Scott Watkins shows off a flexible printed solar cell | Photo: Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium

A team in Melbourne Australia has developed a way to create inexpensive solar cells using a standard industrial printer, offering the possibility of incredibly cheap photovoltaic cells -- but there are a couple of reasons not to declare the solar revolution over.

]]> Engineers at the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC) have found a way to use an industry standard, $200,000 screen printer to make photovoltaic cells the size of an A3 sheet of paper, using semiconducting inks. (An A3 sheet is 11.7 by 16.5 inches, about the same size as a page in your local weekly tabloid newspaper.) The team's new printer, essentially the same as is used for commonplace applications such as screen-printing t-shirts and posters, can make a solar cell of that size every two seconds.

VICOSC is a collaboration between Australia's national science agency the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), The University of Melbourne, Monash University, and industry partners.

In a press statement, CSIRO scientist Scott Watkins waxed lyrical about the potential applications of his team's new manufacturing methods and their newspaper-sized solar cells. "There are so many things we can do with cells this size," said Watkins. "We can set them into advertising signage, powering lights and other interactive elements. We can even embed them into laptop cases to provide backup power for the machine inside."

In this video, Watkins expands on the theme a bit:

The large size and speedy manufacture of VICOSC's solar cells is the good news. The bad news? The organic compounds that make up the semiconducting "inks" aren't very efficient at converting solar energy to electrical power. According to VICOSC, its printed thin-film solar cells can put out between 10 and 50 watts of electrical power per square meter of solar cell. That broad range means these cells have an efficiency of between 1 and 5 percent, far below the output of solar panels that are readily available on the open market these days.

What's more, the lifespan of these cells might be shorter than their more efficient counterparts: organic semiconductors tend to break down relatively quickly in use.

Still, it's a promising technological advance, and incremental increases in efficiency and longevity are likely forthcoming. In the meantime, even at 5 percent efficiency cheap solar cells could do wonders if they're added en masse to building surfaces, billboards, and -- seeing as the cells can be made translucent -- tinted windows.

And as Watkins points out, the printed cells don't necessarily have to stand on their own, but could conceivably be an add-on for traditional silicon PV panels. "The different types of cells capture light from different parts of the solar spectrum. So rather than being competing technologies, they are actually very complementary," says Watkins.

In other words, a five percent efficient solar cell might not be all that exciting. A printable layer you can laminate to a standard solar cell to boost its efficiency from 20 to 25 percent? That's got our attention.

Wildfire in Death Valley Contained, Scotty's Castle Closure Remains

2013-05-23T20:47:37Z

A palm tree grove destroyed by the Scotty's Fire. | Photo: National Park Service

A wildfire that broke out Tuesday near the popular tourist destination of Scotty's Castle in Death Valley National Park has been contained, and the damage is less extensive than had been feared, but the castle and its immediate evirons will stay closed until everything's back to normal. That's according to a Thursday update from the National Park Service.

]]> The Scotty's Fire, as it's being called, actually scorched only about 15 acres of Grapevine Canyon near the 90-year-old Mission Revival building, mostly in a riparian area forested with introduced palm trees as well as the canyon's eponymous grape vines.

CAPTION | Photo: National Park Service

Firefighting crews from the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service joined in the effort to contain the fire this week, and some will remain on hand to put out hotspots and monitor the site for the next week or so. Scotty's Castle Road is closed from the turnoff to Ubehebe Crater -- which remains open -- to a point three miles east of the castle. The Castle itself will stay closed until water and power can be restored.

Like SoCal Wanderer on Facebook and follow @SoCal_Wanderer on Twitter.

Native American Values, Health, and Green Access in Southern California

2013-05-23T20:30:17Z

Native Americans inhabited most of what is now California for more than 10,000 years before European contact. There are nearly 170,000 Native American residents throughout the nine counties of Southern California, with more than 30 federally-recognized Native American tribes, according to 2000 census data. This is almost certainly an undercount, because many people who have indigenous ancestors are of mixed racial or ethnic backgrounds and may not be categorized as Native American in official counts. Many Native Americans also belong to tribes or groups that have not yet been recognized by the federal government, including the Acjachemen or Juaneno people.

Some members of Native American tribes live on reservations, while others live among the general population. The following map shows Indian reservations in Southern California and access to green space. Native Americans do not enjoy equal access to green space, parks, and recreation.

Click to enlarge. Source: The City Project, Healthy Parks, Schools and Communities: Green Access and Equity for Southern California

In many counties, the overweight and obesity rates for Native Americans are among the highest for any racial or ethnic group. Across the region, 44% of Native American fifth, seventh, and ninth graders did not meet minimum physical fitness standards in the 2007-2008 school year, compared to 41% of students in California.

Native Americans are also economically disadvantaged. The median household income for Native Americans in Southern California is $36,462, compared to $42,896 for all people in the California. Twenty one percent of Southern California's Native Americans live in poverty, a level that is 50% higher than the total of 14% of all people living in poverty across the state.

Click to enlarge. Source: The City Project, Healthy Parks, Schools and Communities: Green Access and Equity for Southern California

]]> Native Americans, working with The City Project, helped stop a toll road that would have devastated the ancient village of Panhe and San Onofre State Park. Several other state parks are sites of Native American cultural resources, encompassing historic Native American villages, religious and ceremonial areas, and thousands of Native American burial.

The Native American Heritage Commission (NAHC) is the "trustee agency" for the protection and preservation of California's Native American cultural resources under state law. The NAHC is greatly concerned about maintenance and security in parks, including state parks. Without adequate maintenance and security, Native American cultural resources may be vandalized or destroyed, erasing an important historic link with indigenous California and the natural environment. The NAHC supports "cultural preserves" to provide a higher level of protection for Native American cultural items and burial grounds.

Native American cultural resources are included in other parks and in schools as well. For example, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument includes the area originally occupied by the Gabrieleno village of Yaangna. University High School in Los Angeles includes the site of Kuruvungna Springs, a village of the Gabrieleno people. Puvunga, a Sacred Site for the Gabrieleno as well as the Acjachemen or Juaneno people, is located at what is now California State University at Long Beach. Putiidhem is located at what is now Junipero Serra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano. Puvunga and Putiidhem are part of the annual Ancestor Walk.

Robert Bracamontes writes,"I am Acjachemen, Nican Tlaca, indigenous to this land. For us the land gives us food, a place to play peon, a place where we are put to rest in peace, a place for ceremony, a place where life and culture are one. Some have viewed the land as something to steal, to make great profit from by taking and selling it for selfish ownership. We need our land back, we need to protect it for future generations. I hope those of you speaking about helping realize this is not a novel or a movie. This is not about a movement. This is about a living breathing tribe thousands of years old. It is about all of my living relatives, my Ancestors, and the new lives entering the world today. We cannot think that History is not a continuous fluid event. I am Acjachemen. Bob Black Crow."

Tribe Circle | Photo by Ricardo Duffy

Top: Kuruvungna Springs. Photo by The City Project

What It's Really All About: Solar For The 99%

2013-05-23T20:30:00Z

Volunteers from SunPower install panel on a Palmdale rooftop | Photo: GRID Alternatives

Though rooftop solar is starting to make inroads into California's less-affluent communities, most of the state's millions of low- and moderate-income residents still have to pay their utility bills without much help from the sun. But a non-profit solar installer is trying to change that a little bit at a time. Last week, that "little bit" was two struggling households in Palmdale.

]]> The nonprofit GRID Alternatives, based in Oakland, works to bring rooftop solar to economically disadvantaged communities throughout California. On May 16, the group installed rooftop systems for two families in the desert community of Palmdale who had been faced with some difficult choices this summer: pay increasingly expensive utility bills, or contend with the desert's increasing summer heat. Now, with help from GRID Alternatives, a team of students from the University of Antelope Valley, and the firm SunPower, which donated labor and solar panels, Palmdale residents Benjamin and Cynthia Leh and Marsha Furman will have things a little bit easier heading into summer.

According to one city official in Palmdale, residents will be paying much more to keep cool this summer, and that's a problem. "Recently, Southern California Edison announced that they may have another rate increase starting in June, increasing rates a total of 13.9 percent in comparison to where they were in October," said Ben Lucha, an administrative analyst for the city, who points out that rooftop solar can make a real improvement in his neighbors' quality of life. "This type of relief, which during the summer can make the difference between trying to [endure] the heat or turning on their cooling systems in their homes."

The Lehs and Ms. Furman are like a lot of older Americans: contending with decreased income and related hardship. Confined to a wheelchair following a stroke, Benjamin Leh is cared for full-time by his spouse Cynthia. Their neighbor Marsha Furman is a semi-retired widow living on a fixed income. In other words, they're in the same boat as an increasing number of their fellow Californians, and they have a lot of other things pressing on their monthly budgets in addition to mounting utility bills.

According to Palmdale city officials, the new solar arrays on the Leh and Furman residences will cut those homes' utility bills by around 90 percent, freeing up a bit of cash to spend on other necessities. "This program makes a difference for the families and households that need relief the most and otherwise would not have the means to participate in alternative resources, low and moderate-income households," said Palmdale Housing Coordinator Terri-Lei Wheeler. "Instead of paying higher and higher utility bills, households can direct their limited finances to medical, food, clothing, and other vital health and safety needs."

As we've reported here before, Californians on the bottom end of the economic ladder are the most vulnerable to dislocation by climate change than the state's more affluent communities. That includes direct vulnerability to increased heat. It's typically the poor, the elderly, and the disabled who succumb to heat waves through dehydration, hyperthermia, and lack of social support networks.

We can't fix economic inequality with solar panels, but we can use them to help ameliorate the worst effects of that inequality. GRID Alternatives is doing good work in that regard, installing about 8.5 megawatts worth of solar for 3,000 struggling families. The group estimates it's saved those families $80 million in utility costs. That's $80 million those families can spend on other necessities. What's more, he group estimates it's provided training to 11,000 solar installers, and kept 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

We write a lot about fairly abstract concepts here at ReWire. Everything from arcane partisan politics to quantum mechanics to the workings of our Byzantine power grid comes up for discussion here. But the heart of the burgeoning renewable energy revolution, the really important stuff, is stories like this. Thanks to new rooftop solar panels, and to the good work of GRID Alternatives, two households in Palmdale will have things a little easier than they did, and they're lightening their burden on the planet besides.

And that's what it's all about.

Irvine Is California's Fastest Growing City

2013-05-23T19:31:45Z

Photo: .mused™/Filckr/Creative Commons License

Irvine is Southern California's fastest growing city, according to new census data. It grew at a pace five times the Southern California average, with its population leaping to nearly 230,000, or 4.2%, from July 2011 and July 2012.

Real estate agents say that the Orange County city's schools are the biggest draw, according to the Los Angeles Times. More growth is expected for Irvine, with its population nearing 300,000 by 2035.

New construction has also continued to increase with more than 1,400 new homes sold last year in Irvine Co. developments. That's up from 774 sold the year before.

Irvine also boasts the lowest violent crime rate of any U.S. city with more than 100,000 people.

Other fast growing cities in Southern California include Corona, with a 2.1% leap and Lake Elsinore at 2.1%. In the Los Angeles County, growth change typically remained under 1% with the exception of Santa Monica, where the population jumped 1.2% between 2011 and 2012.

KCET Receives 15 Southern California Journalism Award Nominations Presented by the Los Angeles Press Club

2013-05-23T19:13:01Z

Investigative News Program, SoCal Connected Earns 11 Nominations;

Southern California Arts and Culture Series, Artbound Garners Four

Burbank, Calif. - May 23, 2013 - KCET, the nation's largest independent television station serving Southern and Central California, is proud to announce that it has received 15 nominations for the 55^th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards presented by the Los Angeles Press Club. The station's nominations include 11 for its investigative news program, SoCal Connected and four for its transmedia arts and culture series, Artbound. The 55^th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards will be presented on June 23 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

The 55^th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards nominations for KCET include:

NEWS

SoCal Connected - "Courting Disaster"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Justine Schmidt, Co-Executive Producer; Karen Foshay, Producer; Jennifer London, Correspondent; Michael Bloecher, Editor

SoCal Connected - "Prop 37"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Rebecca Haggerty, Co-Executive Producer; Dina Demetrius, Producer; Cathy Hue, Associate Producer; Jennifer London, Correspondent; Michael Bloecher, Editor

SoCal Connected - "Orange County's Homeless"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Rebecca Haggerty, Co-Executive Producer; Karen Foshay, Producer; Cathy Hue, Associate Producer; Brian Rooney, Correspondent; Michael Bloecher, Editor

FEATURE

SoCal Connected - "The App Economy"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Rebecca Haggerty, Co-Executive Producer; Angela Shelley, Producer; Alicia Clark, Associate Producer; Brian Rooney, Correspondent; Alberto Arce, Editor

SoCal Connected - "History Political Ad Campaigns"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Rebecca Haggerty, Co-Executive Producer; Rick Wilkinson, Producer; Benjamin Gottlieb, Associate Producer; Judy Muller, Correspondent; Alberto Arce, Editor

INVESTIGATIVE

SoCal Connected - "The 'F' Word"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Justine Schmidt, Co-Executive Producer; Dina Demetrius and Rebecca Haggerty, Producers; Latya Pandya, Associate Producer; Jennifer London, Correspondent; Alberto Arce, Editor

SoCal Connected - "Family Ties"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Rebecca Haggerty, Co-Executive Producer; Karen Foshay, Producer; Benjamin Gottlieb, Associate Producer; Vince Gonzales, Correspondent; Jack Moody, Editor

SPORTS

SoCal Connected - "Head Games"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Rebecca Haggerty, Co-Executive Producer; Angela Shelley, Producer; Alicia Clark, Associate Producer; John Ridley, Correspondent; Jack Moody, Editor

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS OR FEATURE

Artbound - "Date Farmers"

Juan Devis, Executive Producer; Bruce Dickson Director/Producer; Drew Tewksbury, Managing Editor; Justin Cram, Creative Director

SoCal Connected - "Geena Davis and Women in Media"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Rebecca Haggerty, Co-Executive Producer; Kat Keeney, Producer; Val Zavala, Correspondent; Jack Moody, Editor

TALK/PUBLIC AFFAIRS

SoCal Connected - "Season 5: Orange County's Homeless/Paula Poundstone"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Rebecca Haggerty, Co-Executive Producer; Karen Foshay, Producer; Brian Rooney, Correspondent; Val Zavala and Madeline Brand, Anchors

SoCal Connected - "Season 4: Big Oil/Kickstarter"

Bret Marcus, Executive Producer; Justine Schmidt, Co-Executive Producer; Karen Foshay and Rick Wilkinson, Producers; Vince Gonzales, Correspondent; Val Zavala, Anchor

FEATURE DOCUMENTARY

Artbound - "Episode 1"

Juan Devis, Executive Producer; Bruce Dickson Director/Producer; Drew Tewksbury, Managing Editor; Justin Cram, Creative Director

ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

Artbound - "Gerald Clarke, Jr.: The Contemporary Indian Experience Through Art"

Juan Devis, Executive Producer; Drew Tewksbury, Managing Editor; Gordon Johnson, Writer

WEBSITE, NEWS ORGANIZATION, EXCLUSIVE TO THE INTERNET

Artbound

Juan Devis, Executive Producer; Bruce Dickson Director/Producer; Drew Tewksbury, Managing Editor; Justin Cram, Creative Director

ABOUT KCET

On-air, online and in the community, KCET plays a vital role in the cultural and educational enrichment of Southern and Central California. KCET offers a wide range of award-winning local programming as well as the finest public television programs from around the world. KCET currently produces the Emmy®, duPont-Columbia and Peabody Award-winning~SoCal Connected, a hard-hitting prime-time nightly television news program that examines the issues and people of Southern California. Throughout its 48-year history, KCET has won hundreds of major awards for its local and regional news and public affairs programming, its national drama and documentary productions, its quality educational family and children's programs, its outreach and community services and its website, kcet.org. KCET is a donor-supported community institution. For additional information about KCET productions, web-exclusive content, programming schedules and community events, please visit kcet.org.

ABOUT SOCAL CONNECTED

SoCal Connected, winner of a Peabody and two duPont Awards, 17 Emmy® Awards, 19 Golden Mikes, 41 LA Press Club Awards, two Gracie Awards, and three regional Edward R. Murrow Awards, including Best News Documentary and Los Angeles Magazine's "Best New Local TV Program" of 2009, airs nightly at 5:30 p.m. with encores at 10 p.m. exclusively on KCET. For more information, to view episodes online or to leave comments, please visit www.socalconnected.org.

SoCal Connected is made possible through the generous support of The Ahmanson Foundation serving the Los Angeles community since 1952; Jim and Anne Rothenberg; the Maddocks Brown Foundation; The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation; The California Endowment and UCLA.

ABOUT ARTBOUND

Artbound is an award-winning transmedia arts and culture journalism series that explores diverse artistic practices throughout Southern California. The web site features articles and short documentaries from more than 40 innovative artists and culture curators across 11 counties in the region. Each week, articles are voted upon by readers, and the fan favorites are produced into weekly videos that will air on the television series. Since its launch in May 2012, Artbound has earned critical praise and prestigious honors, including two Golden Mike Awards for "Best Entertainment Reporting" and "Best Internet News Reporting;" "Best Short Documentary or Special Program" from the National Entertainment Journalism Awards presented by the Los Angeles Press Club; and L.A. Weekly's 2012 Web Award for "Best Art and Culture Website." For more information, please visit www.kcet.org/artbound.

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Virginia is for Chicano Art Lovers

2013-05-23T19:00:12Z

A professor who was selected for a week-long seminar on teaching European Art had a bio that listed courses that she teaches. One class was Chicano Art and Muralism. What made me curious about Professor Andera Lapage is that the art historian is a faculty member at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, far from Los Angeles, or any urban core. After an initial phone call, there was no doubt she has done enthusiastic research to understand the context of Los Angeles murals and Chicano Art. Her course uses Cheech Marin's collection as a contemporary catalyst, Judith Baca's Great Wall of Los Angeles as the anchor of monumental theme, process and practice, and cites David Alfaro Siqueiros' days in Los Angeles as the start of an art movement. Furthermore, she reasons Siqueiros' time in Los Angeles influenced his process as much as the muralist changed the role of murals in U.S. cities. Writing on the Wall had to know more:

Ed Fuentes: Of course the burning questions is, what was your path that brought Chicano Art to a town where the burial site for General Lee is the most visible form of public art?

Andera Lapage: I became interested in Chicano/a muralism as it related to my study of Mexican muralism and Los Tres Grandes, and specifically David Alfaro Siqueiros. I knew that Siqueiros painted street-side murals in Los Angeles in the early 1930s, but came upon a manual that he published in 1951 entitled "Cómo Se Pinta Un Mural" in which his experiences in L.A. feature prominently. The manual is part autobiography, part technical manual, and part manifesto. Siqueiros' goal was to provide a practical guide so that his version of political and socially-engaged mural painting could be exported around the world.

Initially, I began looking at the Chicano/a murals to see if the manual had any impact on their creation, or the artists who produced them. While I am still interested in that line of investigation, I came to realize -- perhaps more importantly -- that Siqueiros' time in Los Angeles changed his artistic trajectory, especially in relation to his ideas about the moving perspective and the use of photographic projection.

These ideas are central to Siqueiros' artwork and featured prominently in his writings, and it seems that he first became interested in these artistic techniques during his stay in Los Angeles -- he says as much in "Cómo Se Pinta Un Mural" and other writings. I wanted to spend some time in Los Angeles to try to understand the specific atmosphere of the city and its people that changed the path of Mexican muralism.

Once I spent time looking at the Great Wall of Los Angeles, and then many community murals, I became less interested in the connection between Mexican and Chicano/a murals, and was captivated by the uniqueness and artistic vibrancy of the Chicano/a murals. I wanted to share this important and understudied aspect of American art with my students at Washington and Lee University.

]]> Lexington is not a place one would expect a Chicano Art course would be taught, and so well attended. Are your students familiar with the subject, or has this course been a major introduction of those works?

Washington and Lee students are a diverse group, come from different backgrounds, and draw upon a variety of life experiences in the classroom, yet they seem to be united by a desire for intellectual exploration and cultural expansion. A few students were familiar with Chicano/a art before entering the classroom, but the vast majority had no prior knowledge of Chicano/a art whatsoever. Many had never heard the word Chicano before. All but one or two were unaware of The Great Wall of Los Angeles. Even the students who had some experience with Chicano/a art had no idea about the extent and impact of Chicano/a muralism throughout California and beyond.

While most students did not have a background in Chicano/a art, Chicano/a studies are featured throughout the Washington and Lee curriculum. English Professor Deborah Miranda has been teaching Chicano/a literature at Washington and Lee for quite some time, and many of the students enrolled in my class are Latin American and Caribbean Studies minors who have or will spend time studying Chicano/a literature and history as a part of that curriculum.

The town is conservative, and I understand the Confederate flag still waves in some places. How difficult or easy was it to negotiate your syllabus with various chairs?

This course was met with overwhelming enthusiasm across the university. In fact, when I submitted the proposal for the course, the dean of the college sent me a personal note expressing her enthusiasm about the class and the opportunity for students. The class ended up filling past capacity (with a long wait list).

The Staniar Gallery director, Clover Archer Lyle, sought and was awarded funding for the associated exhibition of Chicano/a art ("Chicanitas: Small Paintings" from the Cheech Marin Collection) from a number of organizations across campus -- including the university administration, the art and art history department, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program, and student-run organizations.

When Cheech Marin delivered his lecture about the collection, the auditorium was packed; I saw most of the members of the administration, many professors, hundreds of students, and many members of the Lexington community in attendance. The university-wide support for the study of Chicano/s art was overwhelmingly positive.

This class is one of three that the university chose to document throughout the term, taking photographs, and filming large portions of the content. We were followed from Cheech Marin's visit on the first day of class all the way to the student's final presentations on the last day of class. I couldn't speak for the administration, but my sense is that the support for this class reflects a certain awareness of the timeliness and relevance of Chicano/a studies today.

Clover and I found the local Lexington community to be extraordinarily receptive to the art. I gave a series of lectures on Chicano/a art at the local high school, and then brought those students to the Staniar Gallery for a gallery talk. I also gave lectures about the collection to students from the middle school, and a pre-school class. I have noticed a constant stream of visitors coming into the gallery to see the show. One comment in the gallery guest book reads, "It's about time!"

You have a goal for what students will take away, and that seems to have been met. Has there been any student observation you found enlightening?

My students amaze me every day in the classroom. The list of what they have taught me throughout the term is too long to include here, so I'll mention just a few of the many enlightening student observations. The students were very interested in issues of identity and self-identification as Chicano/a.

One student, Mark Faubion, noted that, "each artist (in the Chicanitas show) presented just one angle of the 360 degree identity of what it means to be Chican@." Mark's statement reflects what many of the students came to believe firmly: you can't slot Chicano/as -- or any other people, for that matter -- into a single category. Students were struck by the multifaceted nature of Chicano/a art. Throughout the term, students were alarmed, saddened, and angered that there were so many elements of U.S. history that are still not being taught in classrooms -- that are still being erased from mainstream education.

To explain my goal for the class, I'll quote the artist John Jota Leaños: "Hold off amnesia." The narrative of The Great Wall of Los Angeles teaches viewers in a clear and linear fashion that the same wrongs have been perpetuated over and over again in our country. My hope is that the recognition of this fact will help students to hold off historical amnesia, and enable them to forge a better, more equitable and more humane future for our people.

How important has The Great Wall of Los Angeles been in setting the mood or tone of your course, or making early 20th Century murals contemporary?

The Great Wall of Los Angeles has been the central focus of the class -- a touchstone. Each day, we started with an examination of one portion of the wall, and then examined community murals with similar themes.

From there, we examined the ways that the same themes are being explored by contemporary Chicano/a artists in gallery and museum spaces. We met for 2 1/2 hours a day, 4 days a week. The students saw a lot of Chicano/a art -- and we had a lot of fun together in the process.

* * *

We asked some students how the class has impacted them, one of which is Anna Paden Carson, a freshman at Washington and Lee University who is from from Roanoke, Virginia. With her father from San Diego, she has a unique "distance" perspective on art from Southern California.

Anna Paden Carson: As a Spanish major, I've always had an interest in the Spanish language and the people of Spanish-speaking countries. Going into this class, though, I had absolutely no idea what the term "Chicano" meant. Although my Dad was born in San Diego and experienced Chicano/a culture throughout his childhood, Chicano/a culture never reached Southwest Virginia.

On the first day of class, I was blown away. After learning about the origins of "El Movimiento" and the Chicano/a movement, I felt robbed from the public education system that I had never even heard the term "Chicano!" After just the first day, I had learned about Cesar Chavez, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and the Great Wall of Los Angeles, all of which I had never heard of before. After the first week of class, I quickly ran to my friends and told them all about what I had learned and about the amazing art exhibit we had in the Stanier Gallery. Shocked, my friends reported that they too had never heard of Chicano.

After (the first) four weeks of this incredible class, I finally realized what kind of impact it had on me. This class, the art, and the class' content lit a fire in me to learn and tell the history that isn't normally in the textbooks and taught in class but is just as important. For example, to learn from the Great Wall that 500,000 Mexican Americans were deported to Mexico during the Great Depression disturbed me. I firmly believe that you can't change the future unless you know and learn from the past, and I hope that through different mediums (textbooks, art, history classes, etc.) people will learn the rich history of the Chicano/a movement and that it will become more common knowledge.

Ed Fuentes: Did it create a connection to your language studies?

I absolutely feel like I have become emotionally invested in a larger cultural institution. Although I am white, I feel like I can now better understand the difficulties of being "attached" to two different cultures. I am now more empathetic with immigrants, descendants of immigrants, etc., and truthfully, this class has helped to alter some of my political views on immigration. I've found that many classes in college really alter the way you think and stick with you, and this one is no exception. This class and its content will influence me for years to come.

Now more than ever, I want to perfect my Spanish so I can communicate with an ever-growing population of Spanish speakers. Rather than learning for scholarly reasons, I want to learn for personal interest.

Top: Cheech Marin in gallery with W & L students. All photos: Washington and Lee University

Clean Energy From Wind Turbines On Kites? Google Thinks So.

2013-05-23T18:58:35Z

A Makani Airborne Wind Turbine launches in Alameda, CA | Photo: Makani Power

It sounds like a flight of fantasy: mount wind turbine generators on gigantic kites, then fly them a thousand feet off the ground to generate power. But one company pushing this literal "blue sky" concept got a huge real-world vote of confidence recently: Google bought them.

]]> Google's acquisition of Makani Power is still in the works. The buyout hit the renewable energy trade press suddenly this week after a feature story in Business Week describing the search engine giant's science-fictiony Google[x] research arm, which is also responsible for the self-driving car and Google Glass projects.

Makani Power's website seems to be suffering under heavy traffic in the wake of the BusinessWeek story, but the working models of its tethered flying turbines seem to do better under pressure. The Makani Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) is essentially a "flying wing"-style light aircraft, tethered to a ground anchor by a composite fiber cable. When the AWT is aloft, small wind turbines mounted on the blade-like wing convert the energy of the air rushing past the wing into electrical power. That power is conducted down the tether to a ground station.

In standard operation, the AWT is designed to loop in large more or less vertical circles at the limit of its tether, somewhere between 800 and 1,950 feet off the ground. If the wind slackens, the AWT's turbines serve double duty as propeller engines to keep the unit aloft. Having gotten promising results with a 30-kilowatt model of the AWT, Makani is working on a 600-kilowatt version. Acquisition by one of the richest tech companies on the planet can only help.

Multiple exposure image shows AWT in its looping flight path | Photo: Makani Power

Regular readers of ReWire may well wonder whether this type of wind turbine offers less potential threat to birds and other wildlife. The short answer? We don't know. The AWT wing is designed to resemble a standard wind turbine blade in an aerodynamic sense, and so it can be seen as a single-bladed wind turbine without a pole. Deploying the AWT at 1,000 feet or more above the ground will reduce risk from the blade to birds that don't usually fly that high, but then there's the added danger from the tether as well, which could move fairly quickly in its upper reaches and not be all that visible. Makani's tests are being conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area on open lands, but the company's long-term goal is offshore deployment. That means wildlife injured by the AWTs would fall to the ocean, and detection by wildlife biologists tallying the technology's impact would be essentially impossible.

But that's handwaving on ReWire's part. If the technology advances, we'll be interested to hear what the biologists have to say. In the meantime, Makani's tech is pretty interesting for its gee-whiz factor alone.

There's A Craft Beer Explosion Happening In The South Bay

2013-05-23T18:21:10Z

Photo: John_Wainwright/Flickr/Creative Commons License

Do you hear that low rumble? That's the sound of the South Bay, exploding with unbelievable craft beer breweries. It started slow at first, with a few noticeable blips on the Los Angeles beer radar, and has steadily jostled its way into the spotlight. With half a dozen breweries, some just emerging now, centered primarily around Torrance, there's no denying it anymore: sand, sun, surf and suds go together really, really well.

Perhaps the most recognizable name in the South Bay craft beer scene is Strand Brewing, having opened way, way back in 2010 by friends Joel Elliott and Rich Marcello. The pair were among the first serious brewers (forgetting, of course, that they had little idea of what they were getting themselves into at the time) to set up shop in the South Bay, operating out of an industrial park in Torrance. It took a couple of years, but now Elliott and Marcello are brewing in the back of that same Torrance industrial space, slinging from the taps in the front from Thursday to Sunday and beginning a bottling operation on the side. Soon, you'll be able to find Strand's Beach House Amber and Atticus IPA on beer store shelves all over Los Angeles.

El Segundo Brewing, another South Bay craft beer staple, underwent a similar journey. Owner Rob Croxall left an aerospace career to try his tongue at brewing pale ales and IPAs. Alongside certified beer expert Tom Kelley, Croxall managed to pull together the funding for a space just south of LAX, and together the team has quickly been expanding across the Southland. Most of their beers are hoppy and dry, with a solid bit of bitterness that shows off their stronger alcohol percentages. You can now find El Segundo brews in bottle form as well, especially their slightly beguiling White Dog IPA. Brewed with a 50% wheat mix, the beer still feels light and hoppy, with lots of citrus playing around on your tongue.

Of course, no South Bay beer discussion would be complete without Henry Nguyen, the theologically-minded brewer behind Monkish Brewing. Their taproom hidden inside a Torrance business park (sound familiar?) has been open for just over a year, serving elevated Belgian-inspired ales. Nguyen is a quiet guy, preferring to leave the strong sales pitches behind and opt for word of mouth instead. Things have paid off, as evidenced by the hundred-plus accounts they service, from Lancaster to Corona Del Mar. You'll find beers brewed with rosehips at their weekend tasting room, alongside traditional Belgian tripels and red ales.

The most anticipated South Bay arrival has undoubtedly been Smog City Brewing, whose taproom opening last weekend was packed to the rafters with beer bloggers, other brewers, and curious drinkers who have been following the label from account to account around Los Angeles. Originally brewed on the sneak, using extra space found on the Tustin Brewing system, Jonathan Porter (then the head brewer at Tustin) began crafting the legacy of Smog City a few years ago. Their Groundwork Coffee Porter won gold at the 2012 Great American Beer Fest, and every beer bar worth a damn in L.A. has long been after their exceptional XPA. Their now-open taproom can be found (hint, hint) inside an industrial park in Torrance, running twenty taps at a time of their more commercially available beers, as well as some one-off tasters that are still being tinkered with.

The next great brewery that's taken over a Torrance industrial space is The Dudes' Brewing. Under the guidance of Jeff Parker, Strand's first brewer, Dudes' Brewing is looking to go big -- and fast. You'll already find their popular double IPA at beer events all around Los Angeles, but with their 30 barrel brewing system (that's 1.5 million gallons of beer) The Dudes' is set to become one of the region's biggest breweries once they reach capacity. There's also talk of a barrel-aging program and an early canning line, so that the rest of the land can come face to face with The Dudes and their laid-back beers.

Not to be forgotten is Brouwerij West, which brews and bottles out of Palos Verdes. While there's no taproom as of yet, owner Brian Mercer has gained a loyal following for his subtle blonds and saisons, plus the seriously fruity Dog Ate My Homework, which verges on blackberry overload. You'll easily be able to spot one of Brouwerij West's 500ml bottles on the store shelves because of their inventive and artistic labeling. If you want to stand out in the crowded South Bay field of breweries, that's certainly one way to do it.

There are lots of great ways to stay up to date on the craft beer offerings that are emerging from the South Bay. You can check them out at a local craft beer destination (one that also serves fantastic sandwiches, perhaps), pick up a bottle from your local bottle shop, read about them in the newest beer-themed paper, or -- better still -- head down to their taprooms, sample some brews and bring home a growler for later. You might even be able to take a bus there, if you ask nicely.

'The Happy World of Huell Howser'

2013-05-23T18:16:39Z

Did you know that Huell Howser once hosted a show with Grand Ole Opry star Minnie Pearl? He did back in his Nashville days, and one of the more popular segments from "The Happy World of Huell Howser" featured the birthday party of Porky, the Pet House Pig, from Powderly, Kentucky. That's the focus of the clip below, and that should probably be temptation enough for Huell fans. (Really, how often do you get to see a pig wearing a party hat?) But before you click on the video, know this: The theme music and intro graphics to "The Happy World of Huell Howser" are perfect -- folksy and cheerful but just "off" enough to hint at how strange vintage Huell can get.

Watch the full clip here:

Some highlights (and there are so many):

1:38 -- The dystopic, vaguely threatening commercial for Commerce Union Bank.
3:53 -- The revelation that Porky the Pet House Pig does, in fact, eat pork, because he doesn't realize he's eating his fallen brethren.
4:15 -- Porky drinks a Pepsi from a glass bottle.
5:06 -- The revelation that Porky is basically a shut-in who's only been outside for about 20 minutes.
6:25 -- Minnie Pearl identifies a story taking place "when trailers first came out."
6:52 -- Huell admits, "I made the mistake of getting kissed by a bear one night!" And then the clip does, in fact, cut to a furry bear.
9:13 -- Another commercial for Commerce Union Bank that seems to have sprung from the mind of David Lynch.

Read previous "Retro Huell" posts:

See more on Huell's official YouTube page. And if you haven't yet, take a moment to sign Huell's memorial page.

NASA Attempting To Make Space Pizza

2013-05-23T17:56:31Z

Photo by thepizzareview

When a new technology is introduced, it takes awhile for it to reach its full potential. Something like chewing gum, created roughly 5,000 years ago, didn't really find its true way until the last few decades. The hammer, the first of which dates back to 2.4 million years ago, probably reached its culmination only hundreds years ago. The automobile's still probably a few hundred years from finally being able to run on garbage and fly.

But the 3-D printer, a machine that "prints" three-dimensional objects, first invented in only 1981, may be but a few short months away from peaking entirely. No, not because of the newly-discovered possibility that criminals can use it to manufacture pieces for their own workable guns, skirting all kinds of laws and safety regulations. That's the down side of technology. The 3-D printer is at its near-apex because, if NASA has its way, soon space travelers to Mars will be able to print their own pizza pies.

Things don't get much cooler than that.

NASA is giving $125,000 of their own money to engineer Anjan Contractor -- pretty much the coolest name ever for an engineer -- who will get the full sum if, in six months, he comes up with a sample version of the 3-D printer that will be able to create food. NASA is so interested in getting the technology up and running because of the inherent culinary limitations that come with space travel.

Traveling as far as Mars, astronauts would need food that has "15-plus years of shelf life," which is where you get into the necessity of those freeze-dried meals. The problem with those are that they are heavily processed and leave much to be desired in the way of nutrients. But with an actual food 3-D printer, the various elements used to print ("ink," if you will) can be stored in powder form, inserted into the printer, and recombined to form an actual food that has the necessary nutrition for those making the journey.

While everyone knows that pizza was chosen as the first printed "space food" because, clearly, all astronauts are stoners by heart -- the second reason being that they were making a sly reference to the song "That's Amore" -- the "official" one they're going with is that the organization of a pizza is a perfect match for the 3-D printer:

With the aid of a "digital recipe" the printer combines powders from various flavor cartridges with water and oil in the machine's mixing chamber. The mixtures then feed into a system of valves, and each "layer" is squeezed out individually: in the pizza's case, the crust comes out first, followed by the sauce, cheese, and protein.

But the benefits of this new tech are not to be relegated only to outside our planet's atmosphere. Like pretty much every other invention that's ever come out of NASA over the years, what works for space can work even better down here at home. The 3-D food printer could be a solution to all sorts of problems, everything from adding shelf life to a more fanciful future that resembles something out of "Back to the Future Part II":

"If you're male, female - they all have different dietary needs. If you can program your needs into a 3-D printer, it can print exactly the nutrients that person requires."

"Personalized meals." Now, that would be an interesting solution to the current problem plaguing us regarding incorrectly-labeled products. Just put in the exact ingredients that you want, press the button, and out it'll come.

Eat better by following KCET Food on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

More Eclectic Art Uncovered in SoCal on New Episode of 'Artbound' Airing May 30 at 9 p.m.

2013-05-23T15:58:58Z

Burbank, CA -- May xx, 2013 - KCET's award-winning transmedia arts and culture series, Artbound, continues its second season with a brand new episode premiering on Thursday, May 30 at 9 p.m. This installment brings unique stories that celebrate the creative spirit of Southern California. Culled from Artbound articles selected by KCET's online audience, these documentary segments include:

Counter Cliché: The Asian and Latino Bi-Cultural Experience - Artist Shizu Saldamando, a visual artist whose work explores a punk rock, Chicano subculture in Los Angeles. Her work begins by photographing her subjects in their natural environments, such as backyard parties in East L.A., which are then recreated through painting on various surfaces, ranging from tablecloths, wood, and even skin, in the form of tattoos.

Domestic Affairs: The Poetically Political Art of Nery Gabriel Lemus - Artist Nery Lemus, who draws inspiration from his experiences as a social worker, creates art that comments on race, gender and domestic abuse.

Pop-Life: Why Melrose Avenue is a Mecca for Graffiti Writers - Artbound hits the streets of Melrose to uncover the history of LA's street art culture that exploded in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This piece highlights the main players in the scene including: Mear One, Axis, Dytch, Lynk and Rakka of Dilated Peoples.

From the Center of the Margin: Contemporary Art Galleries in Downtown Tijuana - Based on a column by Misael Diaz, this video maps the pasajes ("passages") of Tijuana, alleys housing small craft vendors and a burgeoning arts scene that is revitalizing the city.

In addition, beginning Thursday, May 30, Artbound introduces the Los Angeles Public Library and the Library Foundation's 'Songs in the Key of Los Angeles' musical history project. An online bi-weekly series of mini-documentaries that spotlight the world's only collection of Southern California sheet music through a contemporary lens, each piece highlights recording sessions of local artists performing selected songs from the collection. This episode of Artbound will feature the recording session and interview with LA folk-country band, I See Hawks in L.A.

About KCET

On-air, online and in the community, KCET plays a vital role in the cultural and educational enrichment of Southern and Central California. KCET offers a wide range of award-winning local programming as well as the finest public television programs from around the world. KCET currently produces the Emmy®, duPont-Columbia and Peabody Award-winning SoCal Connected, a hard-hitting prime-time weekly television news program that examines the issues and people of Southern California. Throughout its 48-year history, KCET has won hundreds of major awards for its local and regional news and public affairs programming, its national drama and documentary productions, its quality educational family and children's programs, its outreach and community services and its website, kcet.org. KCET is a donor-supported community institution. For additional information about KCET productions, web-exclusive content, programming schedules and community events, please visit kcet.org. KCET is a service of KCETLink.

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Uncovered Olympic Glories: Murals Restoration on the 101 Freeway

2013-05-23T08:00:00Z

As the sun beat down on the earth, heat fizzled from the surrounding concrete, sizzling the temperature a few degrees higher. Perched on scaffolding at the edge of the 101 freeway, artist Willie Herrón III and his assistant Melody Betancourt bake in the sun while wearing hard hats and day-glo vests.

The two are putting the finishing touches on one of Los Angeles's prized possessions, Frank Romero's "Going to the Olympics." Colorful low-riders seemingly chug alongside modern-day speed machines, zooming by at 60 miles per hour. Above them, wrestlers are locked in perpetual combat and a horse whinnies in triumph. Bright, colorful and evocative, Romero's mural is a welcome sight along the somber gray of the city's freeways.

Every so often, boisterous beeps come from the free flowing highway a few inches behind Herrón and Betancourt, as if lending them moral support for the painstaking work. It is all in a day's work for Herrón, the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles' official restorer.

He has been working with conservancy since 2012, bringing back some of the city's Olympic gems from the edges of collective memory and into the windshield purviews of thousands on the Hollywood freeway.

"We thought we could bring murals back to their original glory to create a drive-by gallery," says Herrón, whose extra-bronzed skin is evidence of the hours under the sun he spends with other people's murals. Romero's is the third mural he's brought back to life, after working on Kent Twitchell's "Lita Albuquerque Monument" and Glenna Boltuch Avila's "L.A. Freeway Kids" last year.

Commissioned in 1984, these murals are part of ten pieces created during the Olympic Arts Festival in commemoration of the city hosting the Summer Games. The effort was a milestone in the city's art history, adding credibility to L.A.'s "mural capital of the world" claim while burnishing sheen on the careers of muralists in the city.

An artist and muralist who emerged in the Chicano arts movement of the 70s, Herrón has been restoring his own works for more than 40 years. It was that experience and his generosity, which led Isabel Rojas-Williams, the conservancy's Executive Director, to engage his services in the restoration of the Olympic murals on the 101 Freeway. Herrón 's own "Luchas del Mundo" is part of that historic commission, which the artist hopes to revive last.

"[The Olympic murals are] an important part of our history," says Rojas-Williams, "They speak about something that happened in our city that brought tremendous civic pride."

Sadly, that bright moment in history slowly faded, as graffiti, construction and natural weathering bore down on the works. With no clear plan for preservation and maintenance, the murals slowly decayed.

In 2007, CalTrans began to "hibernate" the murals. The agency coated murals with an environmentally friendly organic material and covered it with gray paint, which could be peeled away once funds are available for restoration.

It is this gray paint that Herrón and his assistant have been peeling away using highly pressurized water shots aimed at a precise angle and specific temperature. After re-touching the colors -- careful not to make it seem too bright or new -- Herrón then coats it with a protective layer that will last another decade. From there, more questions emerge however, "Once restored, who then is going to keep it preserved?" asks Herrón, "I think it's the city's obligation to manage it."

Restoration work is fraught with many difficult tasks. Not just physically and logistically, but also financially, relates Rojas-Williams. The conservancy has been funding their restorations through mural tours, membership and online fundraising. "In reality we're begging everyday from different people." In a 10-day span, Rojas-Williams has met with nine council members and one senator pleading the conservancy's cause. She believes that by preserving these public works of art, the city is paving the way for a richer cultural legacy.

"Murals are the cultural breach between street art and arts institutions," says Rojas-Williams, "If you have a child looking at a mural, he doesn't need much explanation what's going on in that huge painting, which is probably cause for that kid to want to go to a museum or gallery later in life."

Unfortunately, not all of the city's legacies can be preserved. Out of the 10 murals, only seven could be saved. Three murals on the 110 Freeway were irreparable. Richard Wyatt's "James and Spectators" and Roderick Sykes "Unity" were damaged during highway repair. Natural weathering got to Alonzo Davis's "Eye on 84" before CalTrans could.

Nevertheless, the conservancy perseveres, knocking on doors and entreating for dollars and services. Its next restoration is John Wehrle's "Galileo, Jupiter, Apollo", a spacey piece of work that shows the detritus of classical Greek buildings and sculptures float endlessly among planets.

Follow the conservancy's progress on their Facebook page. Learn more about murals in Los Angeles on KCET Departures' publication, Land of Sunshine.

Dig this story? Vote by hitting the Facebook like button above and tweet it out, and it could be turned into a short video documentary. Also, follow Artbound on Facebook and Twitter.

Top Image: Detail shot of Frank Romero's "Going to the Olympics. | Photo: Carren Jao.

The Transformative Nature of David Wojnarowicz's ITSOFOMO

2013-05-23T08:00:00Z

David Wojnarowicz's collaboration with the musician Ben Neill. "ITSOFOMO" is arguably the artist's most fully realized work with film -- bringing to the region has been something of a personal mission. Thursday, the Hammer Museum is hosting a screening of "ITSOFOMO: In the Shadow of Forward Motion."

Most people don't know this work. Instead, they know "A Fire in My Belly (A Work in Progress)." A four-minute excerpt of footage archived under this title was exhibited in 2010 at the Smithsonian Museum, as part of "Hide/Seek", an exhibition exploring portraiture in gay and lesbian art history. A fundamentalist Catholic organization complained about an image of a crucifix covered in ants. Smithsonian officials removed it, igniting a storm of protest.

David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" Original from ppow_gallery on Vimeo.

There is an inverse relationship between controversy and understanding. When an artwork becomes an art controversy, you can be sure that the one thing the public won't get is a real conversation about the work's difficulty. Its difficulty will be flattened out be people taking what they feel to be the right position on not the art, but the issue. The conversation becomes about what is right, and not what makes the work challenging, and vulnerable to attack. (This is the subject of my book "Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art.")

When the story of the censorship of "A Fire in My Belly" broke, people at the Fayles Library, which houses Wojnarowicz's papers, and PPOW, which manages his estate, made every version they knew of available. The curators of "Hide/Seek" published a guide to these versions, attempting to correct the strange effect of this censorship on public awareness of Wojnarowicz's work with film and video.

In all of that controversy, I don't recall seeing any meaningful discussion of how we should see "A Fire in My Belly." We learned that it was not finished -- but we never learned why. The "Hide/Seek" guide to versions of the work in fact concludes with the disclaimer, "We do not know why Wojnarowicz never completed 'A Fire in My Belly.'"

Just about all of the footage that appears in the various versions of "A Fire in My Belly" appears in "ITSOFOMO." Where "Fire in My Belly" is silent, "ITSOFOMO" is distinguished by a sonic landscape of music, noise and voice. "ITSOFOMO" incorporates a lot of the cinematic material from Wojnarowicz's archive -- including another never-completed film he was making in memory of Peter Hujar. I think "A Fire in My Belly" was never meant to be finished. That at some point, Wojnarowicz wanted his films to be part of something else, something more alive and dynamic than a movie.

In its original incarnation "ITSOFOMO" was a live performance. Wojnarowicz read his work alongside multi-channel projections of his film while Ben Neill performed an original score for his "mutantrumpet," along with live percussion and computer controlled electronics. Their collaboration was a formal, poetic meditation on acceleration. It was a reading of the politics of time inspired Paul Virilio's observations arguments regarding speed, violence, capital and technology in "Pure War."

Wojnarowicz worked on films with other artists -- Richard Kern, most notably. It is actually somewhat atypical that a film of his would be single-authored. "ITSOFOMO" is much more characteristic of his practice in that it is a full-on collaboration with another artist -- a musician. David Wojnarowicz cared a lot about how things sounded. You can hear this in recordings of his readings. They are performances. The power of his writing is focused and amplified by his distinctive voice. His voice is penetrating -- not in the way of a sharp whine, but in the way that water can penetrate a wall by soaking it. His voice is profound and seductive -- it saturates "ITSOFOMO's" viewer.

After Wojnarowicz and Neill toured the performance (they performed "ITSOFOMO" at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1990), Neill worked with his collaborator to fix a record of the event - producing an audio version of the performance. The screening at the Hammer synchronizes that recording to a four-channel projection of the artist's films (consolidated onto a single screen). As far as I know, this synchronization of "ITSOFOMO's" image and sound hasn't been done on the West coast since 1990.

In 2011, I showed a twenty-minute single-channel version of this work to students at UC Riverside. I was a little nervous: there are some glimpses of naked men -- photographs from porn magazines. The things Wojnarowicz describes are difficult. It is confrontational. "ITSOFOMO" is perhaps one of the most intense works of art produced during years that the AIDS crisis cut through the art world. I was asking a lot of my students.

But not one student complained -- not to me, not to the department, or the college. Far from it. Two years later, students still ask me about it. They want to know where they can see it. Something about Wojnarowicz's work translates the hardest parts of yourself into a form you can share, without compromising the difficulty those experiences and feelings. One student wrote "that film we watched in class is probably one of the most powerful things I've ever seen/heard." Another emailed me after she talked about it with her friends and reduced them all to tears. They cried together. She asked me: Could she show it to her family? Another student wrote to me that say that he thought that "art didn't do anything" until he saw "ITSOFOMO."

This is why the controversy about "Fire in My Belly (a Work in Progress)" has always bothered me. "Fire in My Belly" is just a bunch of notes, unfinished thoughts. It is raw material that was actually put to very effective use in other work. Wojnarowicz's impact on people is impossible to measure. His writing turns people out. "ITSOFOMO" drops you into the world of that writing as if it were baptismal water. It is a transformative work. It isn't right that when people think of Wojnarowicz's film, they think of something that really doesn't represent his work in the medium.

"ITSOFOMO" resonated with my students because it binds its audience together in a shared sense of exposure. His work had that capacity then, and it has that capacity now. Weirdly, it feels contemporary each time I see it.

Tonite, I will introduce "ITSOFOMO" with Cynthia Carr, author of "Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz," and Ben Neill. The screening will be followed by an informal reception surfing which Carr, Neill and I will talk with the audience about their experience of the work, and answer any questions that we can.

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Top Image: Screenshot from "ITSOFOMO."

[CLOSED] Stand Up Planet! Event

2013-05-23T00:01:04Z

This giveaway is closed. Thank you to everyone who responded! We'll notify you with check-in information tomorrow morning, May 23, 2013.

'Don't Tax the Sun!' Riverside County Slashes Solar Power Plant Fee

2013-05-22T23:30:17Z

Former California desert | Photo: Shayan Sanyal/Flickr/Creative Commons License

Riverside County has cut the fee it wants to charge for utility-scale solar power developments in the county by two-thirds, following a contentious campaign by the solar industry to get it rolled back. In a 4-1 vote Tuesday, the county's Board of Supervisors reduced the fee from the $450 per acre per year, which was first proposed in 2011, to $150. The vote settles a legal battle between the county and solar developers.

]]> Soon after the Board of Supervisors approved the $450 per acre fee in November 2011, two solar trade associations -- the Independent Energy Producers Association and the Large-scale Solar Association -- sued to block the levy, calling it an "illegal solar tax" and claming the fee violated a state law prohibiting new taxes on solar facilities until 2017.

The solar groups even staged demonstrations in Riverside to oppose the measure, trucking supporters into town wearing t-shirts saying "Don't Tax The Sun." At the time, ReWire thought this was a PR coup: a clear slogan, four syllables long, and to rebut it you'd need to get all nuanced: "Don't privatize public lands for solar without providing some compensation to local government" just doesn't have the same ring.

PR brilliance aside, the argument that the fee was an illegal tax is now moot: Tuesday's supervisorial vote seals the deal on a settlement approved by Riverside County Superior Court judge Craig Riemer last week that ends the groups' suit. Under the terms of the settlement, the solar groups drop any right to challenge the fee's legality.

Aside from lowering the per-acre cost, the new fee structure also removes a local hiring incentive baked into the original law. Under the old setup, companies would have received a $1,500 credit toward the fee for each local person they hired for the project in question. That credit has been removed from the new rule.

The lone "no" vote was provided by County Supervisor Jeffrey Stone, a business owner from Temecula whose colorful antics we've covered here in the past at KCET. A bit counterintuitively given his previous pro-business political positions, Stone pointed out the damage that unbridled solar development might do to the county's considerable but not particularly fungible scenery. As K Kaufman reported Tuesday in the Desert Sun, Stone said of his vote:

"These panels are going to blanket the eastern portion of this county so when you drive from the windmills to Blythe you are going to see a sea of black panels that is going to be obtrusive to Riverside County. "I don't think we're getting appropriate revenue to mitigate the obstacles to what is supposed to be a scenic highway. "

Stone called for a slightly higher fee and a citizen referendum on the issue.

It's unsurprising that this issue would come to a head in Riverside County first: the county is essentially Ground Zero for the Obama Administration's public lands solar policy. Of the 285,000 acres across the west designated as Solar Energy Zones (SEZs) by the Administration's Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, more than half (147,910 acres) is in the Riverside East SEZ, which spans the eastern half of the county from Joshua Tree National Park to Blythe..

The fee was initially proposed in part to recover costs to the county for increasing essential services to the very remote areas slated for solar development, as well as to make up the likely loss in revenue from decreased tourism when people decide to visit less industrialized parts of the desert. No funds have yet been collected from solar facilities: an unrelated but similar $600,000 franchise fee paid to the county by First Solar for that company's Desert Sunlight solar facility near Eagle Mountain has mostly gone to paying legal fees related to the suit by the Independent Energy Producers Association and the Large-scale Solar Association.

Wind Industry Depends On Tax Credits More Than Other Renewables

2013-05-22T22:55:36Z

San Gorgonio Pass wind turbines | Photo: Gillian/Flickr/Creative Commons License

A federal analysis of renewable energy tax credits indicates that wind power generation is significantly more dependent on federal tax breaks than all other forms of renewable energy. According to a study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the renewable energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), which Congress renewed in January, is likely to boost wind power capacity about 35 percent by 2016 while solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources would increase at about the same rate with or without the credit.

]]> The PTC was the focus of intensive lobbying by the wind industry in the months before Congress extended it as part of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA), which despite its name was passed on January 1, 2013. Wind power companies qualifying for the PTC receive 2.3 cents in tax credits for each kilowatt-hour their turbines produce. Despite pressure for a four-year extension, the PTC is now set to expire at the end of the year.

Wind gets most of the attention from the PTC, but aside from solar -- whose developers rely on a different tax credit program that reimburses construction costs -- the PTC applies to a whole range of renewable energy technologies including geothermal, hydroelectric and related technologies, several different kinds of biomass including landfill gas and municipal solid waste, tidal power, wave energy, and ocean thermal energy.

Comparing the PTC's effect on different renewable energy sources across the board is a bit of an exercise in comparing apples and oranges. Aside from the fact that solar doesn't qualify, the PTC treats the energy sources it does include differently. Wind, geothermal and closed-loop biomass facilities get the premium credit rate of 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, while other technologies get 1.1 cents.

Still, it's undeniable that in the EIA's reckoning, the PTC will have a disproportionately larger effect on wind development than on any of the other technologies it covers. Here's a graph from the EIA comparing their projections for renewable energy development. The "AEO2103" column for each year is the EIA's projection without the PTC; the "American Taxpayer Relief Act" column includes the PTC.

Image: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Compared to wind, which the PTC would boost in generating capacity by about 34 percent by 2016, the tax credit's effect on other technologies is almost negligible.

The wind industry will likely cast these figures as evidence that wind is the most effective PTC investment in terms of results per dollar. There's some validity to that argument. But the figures also point up a difference between wind and other forms of renewable energy: investment in wind is a bit of a gamble in ways that other forms of renewable energy are not.

If you put up a solar panel, that panel will generate power when the sun's out. Cloud cover will cut down output, but that's generally by a predictable amount on a predictable number of days per year. During the day, the sun's default condition is "on." With biomass and geothermal energy, if you build and maintain your equipment properly you'll generate power. Hydroelectric power is subject to some long-term uncertainty in these days of changed rainfall patterns, but on a day-to-day basis it's essentially rock solid.

Wind isn't like that. You can put up the most reliable turbine in the world and maintain it flawlessly, and if the wind slackens you don't produce power. If the wind gets too strong for your turbines, you don't produce power. Outside of a few very specific areas like the San Gorgonio Pass in Riverside County, wind is fickle and unpredictable.

Look at it this way: we used to have an entire global industry that was run completely on wind power, and that industry -- marine shipping -- abandoned wind power en masse without a second thought as soon as there was an alternative.

The Production Tax Credit doesn't make wind any more reliable. It just sweetens the payoff for those days when the wind does blow and the turbines generate power. It's no accident that the PTC might well boost wind power generating capacity far more than it would more predictable forms of renewable energy.

Without that tax credit -- which could amount to $132 a day for a 2.5 megawatt wind turbine even if it produces only at 10 percent of its rated capacity -- building many of those turbines just isn't worth the investment. The wind industry said as much last year, to Congress and to the rest of us.

Wildfire Closes Scotty's Castle in Death Valley

2013-05-22T22:45:23Z

Scotty's Castle | Photo: "Mike" Michael L. Baird, flickr.bairdphotos.com/Flickr/Creative Commons License

A fire of unknown cause is burning near the historic Scotty's Castle in Death Valley National Park, and part of the park near the castle has been closed to visitors while crews try to get the fire under control, hopefully by the end of the week.

The fire, which was sparked around 4:00 P.M. Tuesday, is burning in an area of heavy brush in a canyon north of the Castle in the Grapevine Mountains.

]]> According to Park spokesperson Cheryl Chipman, the flames have reached as high as 70 feet and have consumed more than 25 acres of brush. Though the popular and historic Castle has not been damaged so far, fire crews have had to douse an outbuilding with water after wind-driven embers landed on it.

Photo: Death Valley National Park

The Castle, built in the 1920s for mine investor Albert Mussey Johnson, is one of the Park's most popular tourist spots. Tours of the Castle have been canceled until the area is safe and water and power are restored. A few backcountry roads north of the Castle have been closed as well: if you're visiting the Park in the next few days, be sure to consult with a ranger before planning your travels. And don't forget that the Furnace Creek campground is closed for upgrades, though there are other options available on a first-come first-served basis near the newly revamped Furnace Creek Visitor Center.

And hopefully, the popular organ concerts at The Castle, an annual tradition each June, will happen as scheduled.

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Ron Galperin to Be Next L.A. City Controller

2013-05-22T19:12:14Z

Attorney Ron Galperin will become the next Los Angeles city controller thanks to a comfortable defeat of termed-out Councilman Dennis Zine, according to final election results released today.

Galperin, 49, is an attorney who sits on two volunteer city commissions, one focused on revenue efficiency and the other on quality and productivity. He said that as controller, he will have a 10-point plan focused on recovering fees that often go uncollected in the city, reining in "runaway" contracts with outside companies that go over budget and making use of city assets such as two asphalt plants with "excess capacity" that he said could be better marketed to other cities.

"We've had some real serious problems and we've got to get ourselves out of it," he told ABC7 during his election night party. "You can be in any elected position in the city of L.A., and if the finances are a mess, then nothing gets done."

]]> In the March primary, Zine, who positioned himself as an experienced City Hall veteran, finished a few hundred votes behind Galperin, who touted his "outside" perspective.

Galperin will take over the controller's job from Wendy Greuel, who fell short in her bid for mayor.

The 65-year-old Zine spent the last 12 years representing a west San Fernando Valley council district and was a Los Angeles Police Department officer for 33 years.

"It's a commitment to the people, it's a commitment that you really care about the city, you care about the people," he told Channel 7 at his election party. "And as a council member for 12 years, I've learned a lot about government and I wanted to apply that to the controller's office."

In the latest update to the city charter, the controller's job, which pays $182,200 a year, was revised to focus more on conducting audits of not only financial matters, but of anything the controller thinks deserves closer inspection. Though the controller can only make suggestions to the City Council, audits by former officeholder Laura Chick played a role in swaying public opinion on a failed solar panel ballot initiative sponsored by the Department of Water and Power and drew attention to a backlog in processing DNA rape kits.

California Wine: Margerum Amaro -- When Bitter Is Better

2013-05-22T19:08:09Z

There's the old saw "It takes a lot of beer to make good wine," but Doug Margerum, owner of and winemaker at Margerum Wines, suggests, perhaps, a new saying: "It takes a lot of Amaro to recover from prodigious good wine consumption." Margerum first got interested in Amaro -- the bitter yet beloved Italian digestif -- at wine events. "A lot of sommeliers drink a lot of Amaro, especially Fernet-Branca," he says. "But my interest in Amaro really peaked visiting Italy and tasting homemade Amari. After a huge meal and staying up all night and indulging, the evening always ended with Amari." He knows he is on shaky medical grounds, but wants to insist the Amaro helps settle one's system. If nothing else it shows the insight of the Italian culture with their words for love (amore) and bitter (amaro) so close in sound they're practically a slip of the tongue.

Back in the States Margerum decided he wanted to make his own. For his first batch he started with Sangiovese grapes from his Cent'anni project, but that's just the beginning, as you have to be part apothecary to make Amaro. Recipes are prized and passed down generation to generation in Italy, and can contain over 20 botanicals, from angelica to zedoary, with gentian, lemon verbena, and wormwood in between. Then you need to add some bark and roots, and perhaps citrus peel. "We made small, medium, and large test batches, and I'm talking about the quantity of herbs," Margerum explains. "It was like the Three Bears -- one had too much, one had too little, and then what was just right? I've been doing it for five years now, so the process is pretty consistent, slightly modified over time."

He also uses a solera system to age and even out the product. "I drain it off and put new stuff in, so it's always full," he says. The barrel-aging mostly takes place outdoors as that helps "maderize it. It can be one-hundred during the days and in the thirties in the nights, and that really ages the wine." Since Amaro is nothing if not complex, those deeper, richer flavors work to the drink's advantage. Plus at 23% alcohol for Margerum's latest batch (earlier batches have been a bit higher), the drink can take a bit of a "beating" milder unfortified wines can't. No matter, Margerum's Amaro isn't as bitter as some of in the wide-ranging category (Fernet-Branca often leaves tasters sputtering expletives, for instance).

And while Margerum still likes his Amaro neat after an evening of eating and drinking, he's also partial to the Margerum Manhattan, which is on the cocktail list at the Intermezzo and Wine Cask, which he co-owns in Santa Barbara. Adding Amaro to cocktails was certainly one of the trends at Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans last year, and while Averna and Nonino and Montenegro are all delicious, it's fun to have a U.S. brand to enjoy. "Even my dad, a Manhattan drinker in his late eighties, who has been drinking them for sixty years the same way with Angostura bitters, now drinks them with Margerum Amaro," he states. "It really fleshes out a Manhattan ... also, he gets it for free."

How Ralphs Is Using Rotten Food

2013-05-22T18:43:31Z

Photo by i5design

Quick: Head to the nearest refrigerator, whether that's in your place of residence or place of employment. Open it up and take a glance at what's inside, making sure to account for everything on the door shelf, inside any of the crispers, and all that long-neglected stuff way in the back. Now realize that, if recent studies are accurate, half of that food is probably going to be thrown away.

How does that make you feel?

(Note: I don't mean that half of that specific food will be thrown away; just that half of the food produced in the world is wasted.)

Not very good, most likely. Especially when you consider the massive number of people on the planet going hungry every single day. While the specific numbers for people starving aren't easy to ascertain, the general consensus is that approximately one billion of the world's near seven billion people are malnourished. That's one in seven people. And yet, still, half of the world's food is thrown away.

Now, this edible food destruction has mostly to do with poor refrigeration and inadequate shipping methods, both of which are problems without any quick solutions. The next best thing to solving those conundrums, then, is finding a way to get some kind of positive output from the massive amount of unused items. At the very least, it would make the 1,452,946,287,969,816 gallons of water used yearly on crops that are never eaten be a number that's a little easier to swallow. And a successful attempt to use these spoiled foods has come from an unlikely source in our own city: Ralphs.

Instead of funneling foods that expire on the shelf into landfills to simply rot away, the grocery store chain (along with their supermarket partners Food 4 Less, both of which are subsidiaries of Kroger Co.) have started shipping their unused items to a 59-acre site in Compton where some real technological magic happens.

Rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of how their new contraption works, I'll let the L.A. Times piece describe the delicate process:

[I]t is dumped into a massive grinder -- cardboard and plastic packaging included. After being pulverized, the mass is sent to a pulping machine, which filters out inorganic materials such as glass and metal and mixes in hot wastewater from a nearby dairy creamery to create a sludgy substance... From there, the mulch is piped into a 250,000-gallon staging tank before being steadily fed into a 2-million-gallon silo. The contraption essentially functions as a multi-story stomach. Inside, devoid of oxygen, bacteria munch away on the liquid refuse, naturally converting it into methane gas. The gas, which floats to the top of the tank, is siphoned out to power three on-site turbine engines.

And, viola: Power is created. According to a spokesperson for Kroger, the electricity created through that process can amount to 13 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to power more than 2,000 homes in California in that same year.

Which isn't to say that Kroger, Ralphs and Food 4 Less will be acting that altruistically. A company that size doesn't spend untold millions of dollars and man-hours developing such a process without making sure it will benefit them monetarily. And in this case, the benefit is quite clear: They're putting that energy back into their stores, cutting down on their energy costs. On top of that, the money it costs to haul excess food to the landfill will also be drastically reduced. Meaning, Kroger is going to be reaping the benefits from this machine of theirs (officially called an "anaerobic digester") for years to come.

There are some ancillary benefits for us: Methane emissions should be fewer because less food will be rotting away in the landfills, but that will be hard to calculate; a more direct positive outcome for the area is that the machine produces a sludge that can be used to fertilize roughly 8,000 acres of soil. So all good things around, even if the electricity being created doesn't go back into the city's own power grid. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a downside to any of this at all, from an environmental or public relations standpoint.

Your move, rest of the grocery store industry.

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Going Green With Friends: How To Host a Sustainable Potluck

2013-05-22T18:02:22Z

Photo by whitneyinchicago

Ah, the humble potluck. As someone who loves to have friends over, but is too lazy to take on the task of feeding a group of people any larger than my immediate family, it's pretty much my go-to when it comes to entertaining. And I love going to other people's potlucks; perusing the variety of dishes on hand, determining what to have for my first and second (and sometimes third) course, and invariably overeating are all part of the fun for me. I enjoy finding out how each dish was prepared and, provided I'm on my game that day, showcasing one of my favorite recipes.

The problem with potlucks is that they often fall victim to conventional expectations. Green salad and mac and cheese are almost de rigueur and, while there's nothing wrong with these old standbys, they don't necessarily take advantage of the best the season has to offer. So, always eager for a green challenge to foist upon my friends, I decided to host my own "sustainable" potluck this past April. The rules were simple: Dishes should be made with local, in-season ingredients (pantry items like flour, olive oil, etc., excepted). Fortunately for all of us, spring in SoCal provides a bounty of fresh ingredients -- artichokes, asparagus, lettuce, snap peas, wild mushrooms, scallions, along with many items you wouldn't get until summer in other parts of the country -- so I knew we'd have plenty to work with. I also requested that the food be brought in reusable containers. Besides taking on dessert and drinks myself, I didn't assign main dishes, sides, appetizers, etc., figuring that we'd end up with an assortment of good stuff and the categories didn't much matter.

I ended up with a smallish group of adults and kids, and the following menu: Black bean, corn, avocado and red pepper salad with lime dressing, purple cabbage and carrot salad with crumbled almonds, fresh bread and cheese with raw pistachio pesto, and my own sweet potato pudding cake (sweet potatoes aren't really in season by spring, but I still had some in the back of the crisper drawer, where they keep well). We ate, drank, complimented each other's culinary skills and shared recipes. Grown-ups and tykes alike chowed down and leftovers were scarce -- a sure sign of success. And despite the lack of a traditional "main dish" (i.e. meat), everyone left with a full belly.

If you decide to host your own sustainable dinner party or potluck this time of year, some great recipe options include green garlic aioli with roasted new potatoes, herb and ricotta cheese souffle, strawberry salsa and black beans, and cherimoya smoothies.

KCETLink Names Wendy Hanamura as Chief Digital Officer to Help Navigate Digital Future

2013-05-22T16:31:44Z

Gary Dauphin elevated to vice president overseeing digital production, editorial and product teams

BURBANK, CA--May 22, 2013--KCETLink, the new national independent public media organization formed by the merger of KCET and Link Media, announced today it has named Wendy Hanamura as Chief Digital Officer. Ms. Hanamura will oversee a diverse team of developers, producers, designers, video makers and editors charged with creating media that engages audiences across multiple platforms. She will be based at KCETLink's digital lab in San Francisco, Calif.

Led by Ms. Hanamura, previously Link TV's vice president of strategy and general manager, KCETLink will develop new digital products that offer uniquely valued content to younger, more diverse audiences in Southern California, across the United States and internationally. She will also spearhead the development of branded multiplatform content for sponsors and partners, creating new revenue streams to complement the organization's existing mix of philanthropic and individual donations.

Also announced today, Gary Dauphin will be elevated from director to vice president of Digital. Since his arrival at KCET, Mr. Dauphin has not only increased the organization's portfolio of digital products, newsletters, websites and social media experiences, but he has also significantly expanded the organization's digital audience, with unique visitors to KCET.org increasing 396% from March 2010 to March 2013. Under his leadership, KCET.org has also evolved beyond a compendium of broadcast listings into a fully-fledged editorial and community experience that offers extensive coverage of Southern California food, lifestyle and politics. In his new role reporting to Ms. Hanamura, Mr. Dauphin will manage the creative, development, and product teams in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

KCETLink productions will continue to maintain the distinct services and editorial voices of KCET and Link TV, while also exploiting the ability to share resources and programming--that educates, inspires, and entertains--across multiple screens and distribution channels. Many existing projects already take full of advantage of multiple on-air, online and mobile distribution platforms. These include the groundbreaking web-first series Artbound, which explores the arts across Southern and Central California; Ballot Brief, an acclaimed online electoral guide that includes interactive maps and guides, as well as comprehensive funding databases detailing campaign contributions; the family of LinkTV News apps, which deliver global news and documentary video to smartphones and tablets; and the upcoming Stand Up Planet, a multiplatform digital series that will harness the universal language of standup comedy to change the conversation about global poverty.

"We are pleased to have such a strong team in place with Wendy at the digital helm to identify opportunities for digital expansion and help contribute ideas for sustainable growth for the organization," said Al Jerome, KCETLink's Chief Executive Officer. "Gary's contributions to our digital evolution are remarkable and we're pleased to have him navigate new strategies and take advantage of the emerging technologies on the media landscape under Wendy's direction."

Ms. Hanamura has a long track record of leading teams that create powerful media for multiple platforms--from television to tablets to phones--bringing new ideas to life, formulating creative plans and overseeing multi-functional teams through funding, operations, branding and marketing of major initiatives.

"KCETLink is uniquely positioned not only to create important, risk-taking content, but to drive and measure that content's impact on audiences," Ms. Hanamura said. "We're already experimenting with new series, new ways to engage audiences, and present media across new platforms. Inspiring viewers to engage in social change has always been what drives me."

Added Dauphin: "The task at hand is to attract new audiences, create new digital experiences, and forge more meaningful relationships with the communities we serve as public media. The question of how to best use media to connect with the communities around us has always animated my career, and I'm excited to be able to continue that work at KCETLink."

About Wendy Hanamura

Ms. Hanamura was also executive-in-charge of Link TV's World News App for iPad and ViewChange.org--mobile and web platforms that employ innovative search technology to deliver high impact videos and articles from around the world. Funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ViewChange brought together more than 500 of the world's best videos about solving the problems of global hunger, poverty & disease--and included an online film contest, television series and semantic web platform. She currently leads the creative team producing Stand Up Planet, a comedy-reality transmedia series looking at global health and poverty issues through the lens of standup comedy in the developing world.

Ms. Hanamura began her journalism career at Time magazine, and has been a correspondent, reporter, producer, writer and network executive for World Monitor Television, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), CBS's San Francisco station, KPIX-TV, and 's KQED-TV and the national satellite channel, LinkTV. Her favorite project remains Honor Bound: A Personal Journey, a documentary about her father and his storied unit, the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

She written and spoken extensively about the future of media and news and ways to harness powerful stories for social good.

Ms. Hanamura is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University where she majored in East Asian Studies and Visual and Environmental Studies.

About Gary Dauphin

Gary Dauphin, an award-winning writer, editor, consultant and digital manager. Prior to joining KCETLink, Mr. Dauphin held senior leadership positions at a number of national web properties, including founding Director and Editor-in-Chief of AOL Black Voices, General Manager and Editor-in-Chief of Africana.com, and Editor-in-Chief and Site Manager of BlackPlanet.com.

He also has worked with a number of non-profits and media organizations on technical and strategic issues around digital content and community, including NPR West. Over the last two decades Mr. Dauphin has written extensively on new media, film, politics, and visual art for wide variety of print and online publications, including Bidoun, The Root.com, Vibe magazine, the Village Voice (where he was a film critic from 1995 to 2001).

Mr. Dauphin is a graduate Yale University, where he majored in Cinema Studies.

ABOUT KCETLink

KCETLink, formed by the merger between KCET and Link Media, is a national independent, nonprofit, digital and broadcast network that provides high-quality, culturally diverse programming designed to engage the public in innovative, entertaining and transformative ways. With a commitment to independent perspectives, smart global entertainment, local communities, and opportunities for engagement and social action, KCETLink depicts people and the world through a lens unavailable elsewhere in U.S. media. A viewer-supported 501(c)(3) organization, KCETLink content is distributed via satellite on DirecTV 375 and DISH Network 9410, in Southern and Central California via broadcast, as well as through various digital delivery systems. KCET and Link TV are services of KCETLink. For additional information about KCET and Link TV productions, web-exclusive content, programming schedules and community events, please visit kcet.org or linktv.org.