04/23/04

LC040423

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Senior citizens blazing a trail where no others have gone
before, but what's in it for retirees when they go urban?

Leonard Ellsworth>> I'm on a fixed income, right? But I still
survive here. I couldn't do that like in Burbank or Los Angeles
or Glendale. It's too high over there.

Val>> And then, he wrote songs about a troubled America and
became a folk music legend, so how did Woody Guthrie also wind
up with an FBI record?

Those stories and more straight ahead 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 and other cities are trying to revitalize
their downtowns by attracting young hip singles, those creative
professionals with no kids who love lattes and loft living. But
one town in the high desert is taking a very different approach.
Instead of yuppies, they're saying give me your retired, your
elderly, your seniors on social security. I went to Lancaster
to learn more about this unusual downtown development strategy.

Lancaster, about an hour's drive north of Los Angeles, but
chances are you've never driven through its downtown. Once you
do, you can't miss signs of what helped build Lancaster, but the
era of aerospace is over and planners hope to usher in a new
source of life. The key are folks like this gentleman. That's
right. Lancaster city officials are betting the future of their
downtown on the elderly.

Steve Malicot>> Well, it's pretty exciting. The city of
Lancaster is really working very hard to develop this, what they
call the downtown site.

Val>> Steve Malicot is head of Lancaster's Chamber of Commerce.

Steve Malicot>> They've torn down a lot of the old apartments
that were here that were in disrepair, some of the old houses,
and their redevelopment plan includes a Senior Center. We have
one over here now, but they're going to continue to work that,
and it's really going to be a very nice area particularly for
seniors.

Val>> The idea is simple. There is already a post office,
library, museum, Metrolink station and Senior Center, all within
walking distance. Why not build plenty of affordable senior
housing and make it a Mecca for the retired? Frank Roberts is
the Mayor of Lancaster. How did you decide that would be your
strategy?

Frank Roberts>> Well, we know that the population of this
particular region and lots of regions of California are aging
and it's because we live longer, we have better healthcare --
I'm sure that must be the reason -- but it wasn't too many years
ago that sixty years old was kind of an old person. Now I'm
seventy-two and I feel like I'm going to live another twenty
years at least because I do everything I want to do and that's
happening.

Val>> We stopped by the Senior Center just a few blocks off the
main street. One of the busiest rooms was the pool room.
Leonard Ellsworth is the kind of person Lancaster wants more of.

Leonard Ellsworth>> It's great country here. You know,
especially you go shopping, you can go anywhere, you can drive
anywhere. It's not like Los Angeles.

Val>> Statistics show that, over the next fifteen years, the
number of residents over sixty in Lancaster and Palmdale will
nearly double, a fact not lost on City Planner, Mark Bozigian.

Mark Bozigian>> There are restaurants, there are pharmacies.
It's more of an older type of downtown feel to it, fifties,
sixties, seventies. So it's more of that quaint downtown feel,
the mom and pop shop.

Val>> Which they feel comfortable with.

Mark Bozigian>> They would feel comfortable. I mean, a lot of
communities try to build a fake downtown, if you will, to
replicate it. Well, we have a real downtown, so we're just
putting housing with it.

Val>> Affordable housing is the key to attracting seniors.
That's why ground is already broken on this 116-unit apartment
building. Soon this -- will look like this.

Mark Bozigian>> That will be a gorgeous, gorgeous Tuscan style
villa type of apartments and they'll start at $560.

Val>> $560 a month for a brand new apartment?

Mark Bozigian>> Brand new apartments, absolutely gorgeous,
brand new construction.

Frank Roberts>> Most of these senior citizens projects, the
minute they get them started, there's already a waiting list for
the people to get in.

Val>> The Transit Village, as they call it, will mean the
demolition of older homes to make way for new parks, schools, a
childcare facility and youth center, along with refurbished
churches and a spruced-up commercial section. But seniors may
not be the only ones drawn to the new downtown. Just a few
blocks south of the main boulevard, you'll find a new coffee
shop. Inside it looks like a set from "Friends", but its
clientele is of all ages. Mary Faux is a long-time resident of
Lancaster and owner of Perk Place.

Mary Faux>> And I feel right now it's really a place for
everybody. I have the youth that come at night, I have the
business people that come in the morning and then I have the
seniors that come in the afternoon for lunch, sometimes for
dinner. So it's a little bit -- what's cool is that even my
seniors come in here and even with the colors, they have to
think twice, but they still just think it's pretty great.

Val>> She's excited about the plans for downtown Lancaster.

Mary Faux>> Of all the places I thought about doing it in the
Antelope Valley, this was the only place I considered because of
the downtown air. I just love the downtown area. I could have
gone to the west side of Palmdale. It's blooming like crazy,
but downtown is where I want to be.

Val>> Whether Lancaster's metamorphosis succeeds will also
depend on two other important services. One is medical care and
the other is police protection. Mayor Roberts says medical care
is not a problem.

Frank Roberts>> There's any number of doctors' offices
available to them, I guess, in walking distance, but of course,
the main thing is we have the large major hospital, the largest
one and the only real major hospital in this region, and it's
the Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center.

Val>> As for safety, Lancaster's crime record has not been the
best, but once again, Mayor Roberts is confident.

Frank Roberts>> We are going to be putting another group of
deputies on the streets through Baca, who is the Sheriff of this
county, and we do California Contract Cities through Lee Baca,
so we'll be having about another third more deputies around.

Leonard Ellsworth>> How about Los Angeles? Take one of those
cities. There's plenty of crime there. Actually, this is a
nice community. Besides, we've got the sheriffs. They're
there. When I had my bypass, right? I called 911. I had to do
it by myself. They were there within about five minutes. Saved
me.

Val>> So how will Lancaster with a population of 130,000
finance this $125 million dollar project? The key, they say, is
public and private partnerships and Lancaster is known for being
developer-friendly.

Mark Bozigian>> We welcome development here. We fast-track
development and we try to partner with quality developers. We
look at it as the city can't do everything on its own and the
Redevelopment Agency can't, so we bring in partners.

Val>> They also have plenty of sales tax revenues coming in
from big-box stores that are proliferating on the west side of
town. While Wal-Mart may spark a battle in other cities, not in
Lancaster, who will have two of them soon.

Mark Bozigian>> And those type of big-box uses or large
retailers generate sales tax which allows us to fund projects
like this and public safety and such --

Val>> -- so there's no conflict or clash between these two sort
of areas of town or styles?

Mark Bozigian>> No, not at all.

Val>> So what will downtown Lancaster look like in five to ten
years?

Mary Faux>> Oh, I think this will be the place to be. The
ambience will be here. The atmosphere will be in this area.

Mark Bozigian>> People are living so much longer and the baby
boomers are getting to be in their sixties, and the baby boomers
have a much different expectation for retirement than probably
their parents did and they're going to expect more activities,
more city types of services, more socialization, coffee shops.
They're much more active, so, yeah, we think it's a great mix.

Leonard Ellsworth>> I live in an apartment, but I'm on a fixed
income, right? But I still survive here. I couldn't do that
like in Burbank or Los Angeles or Glendale. It's too high over
there. The rent's too high.

Val>> You're staying put?

Leonard Ellsworth>> Oh, yeah, I'm staying here. This is God's
country.

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Val>> At the height of the Great Depression when scores of
people were looking for some new promised land, Woody Guthrie
arrived in Los Angeles with a guitar and a trunk full of songs.
Today he's remembered as a folk music legend, but as it turns
out, the real Woody Guthrie was a lot more complicated than the
friendly country boy he seemed to be. A new book tells the
story. It's called "Ramblin' Man". The author is Ed Cray and
he tells Philip Bruce a few of the things he learned about Woody
Guthrie.

Philip Bruce>> Ed Cray, a lot of people think they know what
Woody Guthrie was all about. There's a hobo poet laureate
strumming a guitar up there, but you say there was a lot more to
him than what we've seen.

Ed Cray>> There's a great deal more. First of all, Woody
Guthrie was not born poor. He was born into middle class. His
father was a very successful real estate agent in Okemah,
Oklahoma. Woody, though not a good student, went through high
school, didn't graduate, came out of high school with having two
classes that profoundly impacted him. One was tenth grade
English class where he learned how to put the commas and spell
and semicolons. The other was a class in typing. Woody Guthrie
was a speed typist.

Philip Bruce>> A skill that came in handy, I assume, later on.

Ed Cray>> Considering that he also had his logophilia, this
love of words, yes, it was a great asset.

[Musical Clip]

Ed Cray>> Woody wrote about poor people. He wrote about the
poverty he'd seen. That's what gave birth, in fact, to "This
Land". It was an anecdote to the saccharine streams of Irving
Berlin's "God Bless America".

[Musical Clip]

Ed Cray>> Ultimately, he came in 1937 to California and he saw
the farmworkers' plight. Now these were the Okies, the Arkies,
as he called them, the "Texicans".

[Musical Clip]

Ed Cray>> It was that vision of California, the different
vision than the Chamber of Commerce put forward, that
radicalized him and he became a very major advocate of
farmworkers in organizing. Well, the people who were organizing
the farmworkers were communists supported by liberals of all
stripes and persuasions. John Steinbeck, for example, organized
the John Steinbeck Committee to aid farmworkers. Woody worked
with Steinbeck. He worked with any number of people in
Hollywood whose names resonate to this day. Lewis Milestone,
John Garfield, John Huston and, of course, the legendary now
Will Geer, Grandpa Walton on that television show.

Philip Bruce>> But did he ever get pulled up in front of
Congress or any authorities like some of these other people you
mentioned?

Ed Cray>> No, he did not, and the reason was pretty simple.
The FBI which did track Woody -- Woody has an FBI record. Oh,
it's about forty pages long and it's silly. It's a waste of
your dollars and mine. I mean, somebody told the FBI that Woody
Guthrie was a hidden saboteur whose job was to dynamite
something. It was ridiculous, it was just absolute nonsense.

[Musical Clip]

Philip Bruce>> But his politics were to the left of most people
of the country at that time, were they not?

Ed Cray>> Oh, certainly. Not decidedly to the left. He was
what, in the jargon of the times, the Communist Party called a
fellow traveler, what later the McCarthyites would call a "com-
symp".

Philip Bruce>> Not a member, but a communist sympathizer.

Ed Cray>> Yeah. Never a member of the party. He was too
undisciplined. He was never asked to be a member because you
couldn't tell Woody Guthrie to do anything. He wasn't going to
sell the Daily Worker on the streets of Brooklyn, but he
certainly sympathized with the aims of the Communist Party in
the United States, as he made clear, because Woody Guthrie was
intensely patriotic, an intense American patriot.

[Musical Clip]

Ed Cray>> The FBI realized that Woody was sick. By the early
1950's when this Red Hunt was in full cry, Woody was already
quite ill.

Philip Bruce>> In fact, he was developing Huntington's Disease
which his mother had died from. Is that right?

Ed Cray>> Yes, exactly. That later would, in fact, this nerve
disease destroyed him. The mind always worked. That's one of
the great cruelties of this disease. Woody spent the last
thirteen years of his life in hospitals. They couldn't do a
damn thing for him, but his mind was always working.

Philip Bruce>> Do you think he would have been surprised that
people still remember him nowadays? Was he aware of his legacy?

Ed Cray>> No, he was not. Woody was in some ways a very modest
man. He wrote songs and never copyrighted them. He felt that,
if you sang one of his songs, you did him a favor. He wasn't
looking for immortality.

Philip Bruce>> What about money?

Ed Cray>> He never made much. In fact, any year now the Woody
Guthrie Foundation earns more from Woody's tunes than any one
year that Woody made in his entire adult life.

[Musical Clip]

Philip Bruce>> Well, the book is called "Ramblin' Man: The Life
and Times of Woody Guthrie". Ed Cray, thanks so much for
spending some time with us.

Ed Cray>> Thank you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Life and Times
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Val>> It took only 150 years, but Los Angeles's Chinese-
American community finally has a museum dedicated to its own
unique experience. The museum opened last December, but within
just a few months, it has tripled in size. It now occupies all
of this historic Garnier Building. I took a tour of the museum
right before its grand opening.

The Chinese-American Museum is housed in the Garnier Building.
It was built in 1890 by a French settler, but for decades it was
leased to Chinese merchants, religious and civic groups and it
is the last surviving structure from Los Angeles's original
Chinatown. Sonia Mak, you are the assistant curator of the new
Chinese-American Museum. It must be really exciting.

Sonia Mak>> Yes, it is.

Val>> And one of the most gorgeous exhibits is one by Tyrus
Wong. Tell us who he is in case people don't know.

Sonia Mak>> Tyrus Wong is an early well-known Chinese-American
artist and he's ninety-three.

Val>> Ninety-three years old and still painting?

Sonia Mak>> Yes, and is sharp as a tack. In the last thirty
years of his retirement, he's been designing and building and
flying his own Chinese traditional kites at Santa Monica Beach
once a month.

Val>> At age ninety-three?

Sonia Mak>> At age ninety-three, yes.

Val>> But he had an amazing career. It started very young.

Sonia Mak>> Absolutely. It was a talent that his father
encouraged from very early on. You can see in his work
throughout this exhibit that he's always drawn on traditional
Chinese painting styles at the same time that he's fused what
he's learned at art school, at Otis.

Val>> And people may also know his work because of his work in
film. Disney pictures, right?

Sonia Mak>> Right, right. "Bambi" is an important Disney film
that he actually designed the backdrops for. So if the
backdrops in "Bambi" remind you of Chinese landscape paintings,
it's because of Tyrus Wong. You know, beyond his work as an
animator and illustrator, he's also worked as a production
illustrator for Warner Bros. and he's painted murals and
decorated restaurants.

Val>> People have probably seen his work and not even realized
it.

Sonia Mak>> Exactly. You know, one of the things that he's
mentioned to me about his long career as a commercial artist was
that, amazingly, he was actually protected from a lot of the
discrimination in the movie and entertainment industry by being
an anonymous commercial artist. We wouldn't dream of opening
this museum without having included Tyrus Wong. He's very close
to us. He's very close to our hearts.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Now, Sonia, you also have a wonderful collection of
photographs which documents the history, of course, of Chinese-
Americans, yes?

Sonia Mak>> Right.

Val>> Where do they come from?

Sonia Mak>> This is a neighborhood stories exhibit and it's a
photography exhibition about the four earliest Chinese-American
neighborhoods here in Los Angeles. The original Chinatown,
Market Chinatown, New Chinatown and China City. Now these
neighborhoods existed concurrently, but some faded away. This
photographic exhibit is about providing visitors with a glimpse
of what those communities once were and how they began.

Val>> I see. So a glimpse into each one of the four is here.

Sonia Mak>> Right, exactly. New Chinatown, which we have
photographs of over there, is the only community that continues
to exist. You know, oftentimes when people ask us about what
this museum is about, oftentimes we say it's about the American
dream from the Chinese-American perspective. But I would say
that it's not only about Chinese-American dreams, it's about
Chinese-American realities.

Val>> Geneva Tien-Witzleben, nice to meet you. You are the
educator for the Chinese-American Museum and this is a wonderful
way to educate people. It's an actual store that existed in Old
Chinatown?

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> Yeah, this is a re-creation of the Sun
Ling Wo General Store and Herb Shop. Not only was it part of
the original Chinatown, it was housed in this actual building
that our museum is in. We have re-created the store to give a
taste of what it was like --

Val>> -- it really looks authentic.

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> Yeah.

Val>> But this is not real? This is re-created?

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> This is re-created, but actually the
artifacts you see in the cabinet are from the late 1890's to the
early 1900's, so these are actual things that were used in the
community donated by community members.

Val>> I see. Were there photographs or something to guide you?

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> Exactly. We have very few interior
photographs, but through oral histories, we know the multi-
purpose function of the space. What was so special about the
Sun Ling Wo store is that it was actually a real hub of activity
in the Chinese community. If you look on the shelves, you can
see that you could buy furniture, you could buy clothing, there
was canned goods. In the herb shop, you could also practice
Chinese medicine.

Val>> An herb shop?

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> Yeah, what was really beneficial for
the Chinese is that they were able to retain part of their
traditional practices here in the United States through services
such as the Chinese herb shop. They could come here and get
prescribed traditional herbs. They could use acupuncture, so
this is a form of medicine that they brought with them.

Val>> And it's coming back these days.

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> Exactly. It's spreading to U.S.
mainstream culture.

Val>> Yeah, we have many people draw upon Chinese traditional
medicine these days.

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> So in this store, we're really trying
to bridge the past with the present.

Val>> Why did it take so long to have a Chinese-American
Museum? It seems so obvious to have one.

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> A lot of it was funding. That's a huge
part. This is an historic building that we're in, so that's why
we are officially a part of the city of Los Angeles. We had to
actually purchase the space that we're in. We really had to
work very hard to acquire all of these artifacts, to talk to
community members and get their stories so we can figure out,
you know, what were all the functions? What were these used
for? What was our history here in Los Angeles?

Val>> What do you hope that it will bring and mean to the
Chinese-American community here in Los Angeles?

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> The sense of really historic and
special occasion for not only Chinese-Americans, but all people
in Los Angeles because we are finally able to sort of take back
this space that was historically ours, that we've established so
much of our history and lives here, and share that with the
general public. I think as people of color in the United
States, oftentimes our history is forgotten and completely
obliterated. So now here's an actual physical space where we
can share that, where we can come and learn about that and
hopefully it will continue.

Val>> Do you hope that it will inspire or trigger Chinese-
American families to come forward with photographs and things
that they may have that you never knew were out there?

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> Right. As the educator of the museum,
our educational philosophy and guiding principle is to really
use Chinese-American history, culture and experience as a
vehicle through which to engage other people with that of their
own. So not only other Chinese-Americans, but we hope that all
the local Latino or Chicano population in the larger El Pueblo
area will make them curious about their own history. How does
that connect to our history as Chinese-Americans? The
international tourists that come through here? We really want
people to feel like they have ownership over this as much as we
do.

Val>> Geneva, thank you so much. That was wonderful. Good
luck.

Geneva Tien-Witzleben>> Thank you, Val.

Val>> The Garnier Building was owned by the city of Los
Angeles, but by a unanimous vote of the Los Angeles City
Council, the city donated the building to the Chinese-American
Museum. Museum leaders were thrilled because this is the last
remaining building from Los Angeles's original Chinatown. And
that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and
Times, thanks 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, this high-tech gizmo could
reduce traffic on city streets, so why is it banned in some
local cities?

>> I haven't ever heard of an accident where somebody on a
Segway has collided with a pedestrian, for instance.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.