04/14/04

LC040414

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's a landmark home designed by an acclaimed architect. So how
did this rare treasure end up endangered?

Franklin De Groot>> And this is the kind of damage that occurs
when water gets inside the concrete, attacks the steel, causes
the steel to rust.

Val>> And then, don't call them birdwatchers. We'll look at
what happened to three men who became obsessed with setting a
record for birding.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Los Angeles prides itself on being the city of the
future, but it could be on the verge of losing a rare treasure
from the past. It's a Frank Lloyd Wright home that's slowly
crumbling away, yet if you ask most Angelenos where it is,
they'd have no idea. Fortunately, Saul Gonzalez knows the way
and he takes us on a tour of a one-of-a-kind home that is now on
the endangered list.

Saul Gonzalez>> In the hills of Los Angeles's Los Feliz
district high above the din of the city, there's a home like few
others in the world. From the outside, the residence looks
imposing and mysterious like something that's emerged out of an
archeological dig.

Come within and the visitor discovers grand and other-worldly
spaces that make you feel like you've been transported to
another time and place. There are rooms that balance drama and
tranquility, strength and grace. Constructed in 1924 for a
wealthy Los Angeles couple, this is the Ennis-Brown House, an
architectural landmark created by that titan of twentieth
century design, architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Eric Wright>> He was always interested in how he could shape
spaces so that the people inside always had this sense of drama,
sense of mystery.

Saul Gonzalez>> This man can speak with authority about Frank
Lloyd Wright. He is Eric Wright, a noted architect himself, and
Frank Lloyd Wright's grandson.

Eric Wright>> Space within the building was the really
important thing. He had seen a quote from the great Chinese
philosopher Lao Tse which said, "The reality of the teacup is
not the teacup itself, but it's the space within the teacup."
My grandfather saw that and said that's what I've been trying to
do all my life with architecture. The reality of the building
is not the building itself, but it's the space within the
building.

Saul Gonzalez>> If you want to understand why Frank Lloyd
Wright and the buildings he created such as this one are so
revered, you have to know something about the man's philosophy
of design. For Wright, architecture was about far more than
creating spaces to live and work in. It was about the search
for truth, beauty and the perfect union of form and function.
In his quest, Wright drew his inspiration from nature, thinking
about building design in almost biological terms.

Eric Wright>> What he worked with and what he was practicing
was organic architecture. By that, he meant that it was like a
seed of an oak tree. You plant this little seed and, out of
that seed, it's the center, and out of that grows your huge oak
tree, but all the essence is in that seed.

Saul Gonzalez>> The essence of the Ennis-Brown House can be
found in its building material, concrete blocks, each stamped
with an abstract geometric pattern giving the residence its
exotic and ethereal feel. Cast onsite during construction, the
home is made out of over 24,000 of these blocks locked together
like an immense Lego puzzle.

Wright created four textile block homes in the Los Angeles area
during the 1920's, with this ten thousand square foot house the
largest of the projects. Although it's eighty years old, the
Ennis-Brown House seems very much at home in the twenty-first
century, says Franklin De Groot, the Director of the nonprofit
organization that owns and oversees the house.

Franklin De Groot>> Well, if you think about the fact that this
was built in 1924 and you look at the architectural styles of
this house versus what was being built elsewhere, it was very
cutting edge. It was the idea that the house would be something
that would be unique for the area and, in fact, it's proved to
be unique even to today.

Saul Gonzalez>> However, this home, for all its undeniable
beauty, is in jeopardy. Stand on the street below the residence
and you see gaping holes in the building, making the house look,
for all the world, like a fortress that's been struck by cannon
fire. Gaze closer at the textile blocks on the home's exterior
and you find hundreds of them are pitted, cracked and slowly
crumbling away.

Franklin De Groot>> Clearly as time has gone on, the damage has
continued to get more and more pronounced.

Saul Gonzalez>> Earthquakes, particularly the 1994 Northridge
temblor, have caused much of the damage here. However, this
home's chief nemesis has been water, water that over the decades
has seeped into the textile blocks and ruined them from within.
Franklin De Groot showed us some of the damage.

Franklin De Groot>> As you can see, this block is a very good
example of a damaged block. This is the kind of damage that
occurs when water gets inside the concrete, attacks the steel,
causes the steel to rust. The rust, in fact, causes the steel
to expand and the expansion then blows out the side of the
block, cracks it, and eventually weakens the entire structural
system.

Saul Gonzalez>> And what's happened to this one block is
happening all around the house?

Franklin De Groot>> In many, many places in the site.

Saul Gonzalez>> This home is in such jeopardy and considered so
important that last year it was placed on the list of the
globe's hundred most endangered cultural sites by the World
Monument Fund. Eric Wright is pleased that the home's sorry
condition is finally getting attention, saying it deserves to be
protected like a great painting or sculpture.

Eric Wright. I think people have to look at the work of
architects, especially the work of my grandfather, Frank Lloyd
Wright, as some of the greatest expressions of architectural and
creative artistic work in the world.

Saul Gonzalez>> However, Frank Lloyd Wright also bears some
responsibility for this home's current condition. Like many of
his other projects, his design and material choices make his
buildings fragile and difficult to maintain.

Franklin De Groot>> When it rains, this house does leak. It's
just one of the facts that you learn to live with in terms of
dealing with a Frank Lloyd Wright structure.

Saul Gonzalez>> Frank Lloyd Wright homes need constant tender
loving care.

Franklin De Groot>> Yes.

Saul Gonzalez>> Some work has been done to save the Ennis-Brown
House. The Getty Foundation has contributed a hundred thousand
dollars to both stabilize the building -- that's what these
girders are for -- and to conduct site surveys and engineering
studies. However, much has to be done at a cost of ten million
dollars if this architectural landmark is to be restored. The
building's retaining walls and roof need to be repaired and
thousands of damaged textile blocks replaced. Friends of the
Ennis-Brown House are trying to raise the repair money and Eric
Wright is part of the architectural team drawing up plans to
restore the home.

Eric Wright>> I feel a responsibility. I look at it as a
responsibility and people have actually --

Saul Gonzalez>> -- to your family? To your profession? To
both?

Eric Wright>> To both, and to the public. I mean, they need to
see these examples of great architecture. We can't lose them.

Saul Gonzalez>> Franklin De Groot contends that preserving a
building like this is especially important in Los Angeles, a
city that has allowed too much of its architectural history to
vanish.

Franklin De Groot>> We've failed to preserve any of the
trappings of our past. Fortunately, there are still some icons
left in Los Angeles, but many, many of them have been lost.
It's up to us to be sure, here in the twenty-first century, that
we don't lose the trappings of where we've come from, what's so
important about Los Angeles, why it's such a wonderful city.

Saul Gonzalez>> It's important to our civic civilization?

Franklin De Groot>> Yes.

Saul Gonzalez>> Frank Lloyd Wright once said he wished to
create buildings that graced the landscape, not disgrace it.
Friends of the Ennis-Brown House hope the home's damage will be
repaired and it will grace Los Angeles's landscape for countless
years to come.

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Val>> The civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties was
one of the greatest stories of social change in American
history. Major triumphs were achieved for African-Americans,
but now some blacks say the civil rights movement is over and
it's time to re-strategize. One of those thinkers is writer
Debra Dickerson. She has written a provocative book entitled
"The End of Blackness". I talked with Debra Dickerson at the
Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Debra Dickerson, you have written a very iconoclastic book, "The
End of Blackness", and even the cover on the back is
provocative, "Does Racism Work For You?" What do you mean, the
end of blackness? You guys aren't going away (laughter).

Debra Dickerson>> (Laughter) Well, when I told my sister the
title of my book, she said, well, how long do I have?
(Laughter). I don't mean that black people are going to stop
being black and we're going to be human beings and float around
in the atmosphere and not be tied to any particular experience.
I don't mean that.

There's nothing wrong with being black except that the identity
hasn't been updated to reflect where we are now. We're still
sort of being black in the way that we needed to be in 1964
which has to primarily concern itself with white people and
being the people who are oppressed by white people. But we had
a movement, you know. The movement wasn't perfect. It didn't
erase racism.

Val>> The civil rights movement.

Debra Dickerson>> The civil rights movement. It didn't end
racism, but it certainly changed the paradigm and it unlocked
the doors of opportunity. It didn't necessarily open them. So
things are much better and also things are much different. The
obstacles that remain for black people are not the obstacles
that they used to be and we need to reformulate our -- we need
to take some time and say, okay, what are the problems facing us
now and what are the proper solutions? Because they're not the
same problems and solutions that we faced in 1964 and before
that.

Val>> So you're saying that traditional black leaders like
Jesse Jackson and so forth are working on an outmoded model of
ethnicity?

Debra Dickerson>> Well, I made a point not to name names in the
book because I knew the conversation would get hung up there.
But let me just say, okay, there are a lot of problems. But
it's just not the same thing to be black today than it was when
I was growing up. I'm forty-four years old. When I went
looking for a way to sort of express myself and to form my
identity and to tell my kids about who they are, it seemed that
my list of options were so circumscribed and mostly
circumscribed by other black people.

You can't do this, you have to support affirmative action, you
have to think the Michael Jackson case is about race when I
happen to think it's about whether or not a crime has been
perpetrated, so --

Val>> -- you have to think O.J. is innocent.

Debra Dickerson>> Right, you have to think O.J. is innocent.
It's like, well, okay, I'm free of white people, but now black
people get to tell me what to do and how to think? I may end up
agreeing with you, but don't tell me that certain opinions are
verboten, that Shelby Steele, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice --
doesn't freedom mean that they get to be conservative
Republicans? So I think it's time to sort of update the black
identity and that's what I mean by the end of blackness. It's
the end of being black in this sort of pre-freedom way.

Val>> Another thing that you talk about are Uncle Toms.

Debra Dickerson>> Right. I think that's the most ridiculous
notion. In 2004, I mean, really, who is keeping this kind of
nonsensical category alive?

Val>> And you're talking about the reference to --

Debra Dickerson>> -- to Colin Powell, to myself (laughter).

Val>> (Laughter) So you've been called an Uncle Tom.

Debra Dickerson>> Right. Condoleezza Rice and all these sorts
of things. It's a mental plantation, you know. The last
plantation is the mind and we're picking cotton. Some of us are
still picking cotton that nobody is processing, you know? So
this notion that there's a group thing -- I mean, either I'm
free or I'm not. The movement was not about the freedom to
believe what some, you know, self-appointed black person tells
me I have to believe. It's the freedom to think for myself and
live with the consequences.

It's the belief in the black community that each individual
black person can be trusted to figure out how to be black in his
own way and that the time has passed where one sort of loud-
mouthed black person can get everybody whipped and get everybody
fired up. That time has passed. Condoleezza Rice, Colin
Powell, Clarence Thomas, they have a right to think the way they
think and they have a right to live the life that they choose,
and nobody gets set up as, you know, Massa, not a white Massa
and not a black Massa. Either you're free or you're not and
you're black or you're not. I mean, there's no such thing as an
Uncle Tom.

Val>> You had an interesting person that you wrote about in the
book and someone I hadn't heard about, a black architect? Is
that right? That was a very interesting situation.

Debra Dickerson>> Right. Julian Abele -- I'm not sure how his
name was pronounced -- who was apparently an extremely light-
skinned black man who I believe lived in Philadelphia. I'm not
positive. This would have been in the 1940's or so. He
believed in sort of being in aracial existence. I think some
people would say he was passing for white. He would have said
that he was just living his life, that he wasn't announcing
anything to anyone. He was one of the most celebrated
architects in the United States. This whole race thing is so
complicated. So here he was living in a time of extreme
segregation, yet he was able to practice as an architect at the
highest level.

There was a whole complicated relationship with the people who
owned his firm and stuff, but he was able to do it. So freedom
on one hand and segregation on the other. Rather than say I
refuse to give my talents to a world that segregates me, he
worked on a great many buildings that he was not allowed to
enter. He designed Duke University and he never visited it
because he would have had to come through the colored entrance
or whatever, if at all.

But my argument is that you can say he was an Uncle Tom from the
luxury of 2004 when no one is going to lynch you for saying
things like that or you can stay cognizant of the fact that
black people would have truly been subhuman if they waited until
they were free to express themselves, to make the most of the
opportunities that they had. If he had said, no, I refuse to
design a building I can't enter, then in 2004 we wouldn't have
this wonderful edifice that this black man built against all the
odds. They make it impossible for me to support O.J. thinking
that he was guilty and say, well, white people have done that so
much and they've gotten away with so much and see how you like
it. That's not our true moral and intellectual legacy.

Val>> But when you say it's a matter of justice, some people
would say, precisely, how fair is it that a huge percentage of
black children or minority kids are in terrible schools, that
they don't have the same advantages? Is that fair?

Debra Dickerson>> No, but to cast the struggle as a racial
struggle seems to me to stymie the conversation.

Val>> You're saying it's an economic class struggle.

Debra Dickerson>> I'm saying it's a justice struggle and it's
about what's best for America. If you can tell me that it's
best for America, that this hugely identifiable population that
we know, we can point to it, are falling behind academically and
experiencing high levels of social dysfunction, family
disintegration, if you can tell me that it's okay that there are
janitors who could be doctors and welfare mothers who could be
nurses -- that was very sexist the way I put that -- but there
is all this potential and talent that we're not developing. If
you can tell me that that's what's best for America, then I will
stop saying it's a justice issue.

It's not a race issue and I think framing it that way, black
versus white, as opposed to what's best for America -- and I
think in this climate of increased opportunity, black people
have to sort of be big enough to sort of ratchet back the
rhetoric and understand that we're not going to end up picking
cotton again, you know. We can sort of say, yeah, all right,
let's take the spotlight -- you know, my goal can't be to get
you to admit that you're a racist. Even if it happens -- it's
not going to -- but even if it did, how does that fix the
schools in the inner cities?

So it's time to look at the outcomes that we want to achieve.
What's the problem? What's the outcome? What's the strategy
that's going to fix the schools? What's the strategy that's
going to end crime in our neighborhoods? What's the strategy
that's going to lessen, you know, domestic violence in the black
community? Not how do we eradicate racism.

Val>> Debra Dickerson, I want to thank you for some very gutsy
ideas and the courage to say them. Thank you so much.

Debra Dickerson>> Thank you very much. I think it's more the
lack of common sense not to say them, but thank you very much.

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Toni Guinyard>> There are 675 different species of birds in
North America and, every year, grown men and women have competed
against each other to become the number one birder, spotting the
most species of birds. Well, journalist Mark Obmascik follows
three men who have an obsession. They want to be number one.
Their travels are chronicled in the book "The Big Year".

Mark Obmascik>> The Big Year is kind of the Super Bowl of bird-
watching. Of all things to be competitive about, imagine that.
It's a contest to see who can spot the most birds in one year in
North America. There are three guys who just took the brakes
off. They took the brakes off their obsession and went for it
for a year. They're like grownup Tom Sawyers gallivanting
around the globe, traveling an incredible amount.

One guy spent between eight to twelve thousand dollars a month
chasing rare birds. So these guys go by train, by plane, by
car, by helicopter in some cases through the mountains, by boat
just to see as many different species of birds as possible in
North America. It's kind of a feathered version of "It's a Mad,
Mad, Mad, Mad World".

Toni Guinyard>> Now I notice you said "birders". I take it
that "bird-watchers" is off-limits?

Mark Obmascik>> Well, there is a difference. People are a
little bit picky about that. Bird-watching is supposed to be
this passive activity for spinsters and sensible shoes and
bachelor British Army colonels. But birders are the people who
chase. There are hundreds, if not thousands --

Toni Guinyard>> -- wait a minute. Chase?

Mark Obmascik>> They chase rarities. There are hundreds, if
not thousands, of people who will chase rare birds around the
continent. There are internet rare bird alerts set up on web
pages. There are services that will call you in the middle of
the night so you can wake up and catch the next red-eye flight
to, say, Gibsons, British Columbia to catch a Xantus'
hummingbird which just gone blown in by a hurricane from Cabo
San Lucas. It's an addiction.

Toni Guinyard>> You know how crazy this sounds? This sounds
absolutely crazy, but fun.

Mark Obmascik>> Oh, the guys in this contest were pretty
amazing. They were away from home 270 days. They traveled
270,000 miles. They lived for weeks on end on a desolate
Alaskan isle that was 1,700 miles from Anchorage, but only two
hundred miles from Siberia, where they sat and waited for the
strongest El Nino on record to blow in Asiatic birds into North
American air space just so they could count them. 1998 was the
strongest El Nino on record, so there were all these freak winds
that were blowing in these bizarre birds from Europe, in from
Asia, up from Latin America, where they would land.

There are a lot of places in North America that, if a rare bird
lands, within a half hour it's posted on the internet and people
chase. They come from all over just to chase a rumor of a rare
bird. These guys would go -- I mean, they were going to Point
Barrel, Alaska from New Jersey. They would go from Maryland to
Phoenix and get there and the bird would be gone. So they would
hear a report a few days later that the bird had returned and
they would make the same repeat trip. Really expensive last-
minute travel. Run through the airport, Hertz commercial kind
of stuff. Jumping over chairs, shoving your fist in the gate so
that it doesn't close. Just amazing last-minute stuff.

Toni Guinyard>> What is the appeal of this?

Mark Obmascik>> You know, I asked these three guys that
question about a million different ways. What is it about birds
that just prompts these feelings? Finally they got tired of me
asking the question and they finally just said, "Why'd you fall
in love with your wife?" I just concluded that obsession is
really something that you can't put into words. It's just
something that you feel.

Now for these guys, their passion or obsession was birds. That
may not be it for you or someone else, but I think everyone
understands what it's like to have a dream and just go for it
for a year. Take the brakes off, and that's what these guys
did. One of the things that really attracted me to this
competition was that a Big Year is as much about honor and
integrity as it is about winning. I covered politicians for
seventeen years. My job was to find people who lied and to trip
them up. I tried a million different ways to see if these guys
cheated. They never did.

Toni Guinyard>> At the end of the competition, is there
anything more but the notoriety of being able to say I saw the
most birds or I saw the most species of birds?

Mark Obmascik>> No.

Toni Guinyard>> That's it?

Mark Obmascik>> If you win a Big Year, there is no cash prize,
there's no trophy, there's no trip to Disneyland. All you get
is bragging rights which, in the birding community, there's
enough people that bragging rights are a pretty big deal. But
really it's just about the satisfaction of having gone to places
that most people have never gone. These guys lived an amazing
travelogue.

They were in the Everglades at dawn for flamingos. They were in
the North Woods of Minnesota for owls after dark. They were off
the Gulf Stream of Cape Hatteras. They were in Monterey Bay
time and again, one of the richest natural marine environments
anywhere. But they also lived through some of the more
disgusting places. Because they chase birds all over, these
guys got to be some of the world's foremost experts on dumps and
sewage lagoons.

Toni Guinyard>> Is this a sport for folks who are just rich and
have a lot of time on their hands and money to finance it, or
can common folks take part as well?

Mark Obmascik>> Both. In fact, the three people in this
competition, one is a guy who grew up poor in the Bronx and then
scrapped and clawed his way to the top of one of the toughest
businesses anywhere. He's a New Jersey industrial contractor.
He is the guy who spent between eight and twelve thousand
dollars a month on his Big Year.

Another competitor is a guy named Al Levantin who's got a big
spread up on the slopes near Aspen. Now Al's deal was that he
fell in love with birds as a boy in Boy Scout camps. But then
Al, like a lot of these other competitive birders, never does
anything halfway. Al spent a lot of money on his Big Year too.
He spent about sixty thousand dollars.

The third contestant is a guy named Greg Miller who gets
probably more hunts per mile than any man I've ever met before.
Now Greg got so obsessed with finding new birds, he didn't have
much money and he actually went broke. He maxed out five credit
cards. He lived in the Dakotas for three days on nothing more
than a single jar of Jif and a bag of Mr. Salty pretzels. These
guys are driven.

Who do you do a Big Year for? There's no prize, so ultimately
you do it for yourself. One guy told me of birding that
credibility is like virginity. You can only lose it once.
There's another guy who said, if you cheat, who are you
cheating? You cheat yourself.

Toni Guinyard>> These birders sound like very wise folks.

Mark Obmascik>> Well, it's pretty sweet. It's pretty touching.
I mean, part of the story -- I worked some awful stories when I
was a reporter at the Denver Post. I was lead writer for our
Pulitzer on Columbine. I did some September 11 coverage and a
lot of other things where police officers were killed in jail
breaks and young kids we leave behind. I just got really beaten
down by a lot of the front page. I mean, the front page of a
paper is generally man at his worst.

Well, here are three guys who had a dream and they chased it for
a year. They're like little boys. It's just that what they did
for a year is chased a creature that has a brain no larger than
your bellybutton. So they've got this terrific sense, I think,
of humor about themselves. They know that they've surrendered a
piece of their life to this creature and, why they have this
passion, they just can't explain. But obsession, I think, is a
pretty universal thing that a lot of people can understand.

Toni Guinyard>> Mark, thank you so much for spending a little
time with Life and Times, and happy birding.

Mark Obmascik>> (Laughter) Good birding to you too. Thanks a
lot. That was fun.

Val>> And that's our program for tonight. I'm Val Zavala. For
everyone at Life and Times, thanks so much for watching. We'll
see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, your backstage pass to Los
Angeles's newest landmark. Meet the dreamers, artists and music
makers behind the Walt Disney Concert Hall. That's next time on
Life and Times.