09/29/04

LC040929

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Remember Proposition 36? It offered drug offenders rehab
instead of jail. It passed four years ago, but has it worked?

John Lloyd>> Once I got here and found out that there's a
different way of living. It's just a whole new way of living
that saved my life.

Val>> And then, it's been compared to french fries or a pile of
pickup sticks, but now the organ at Disney Hall is finally ready
to do what it was made for: make music.

It's all 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.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Four years ago, California embarked on a grand social
experiment. Voters passed Proposition 36. It offered drug
users the chance to sign up for rehab instead of going to jail.
That was four years ago, and the question is has it worked? I
went to a drug rehab program in Pasadena to see what a
difference Proposition 36 has made in one person's life. John
Lloyd lost twenty years of his life to speed.

John Lloyd>> All speed. I started out with just alcohol, but
speed, pot. It's kind of prevalent everywhere.

Val>> He says the only time he was clean was when he did eight
months in jail, and the day he got out, he made a beeline for
more methamphetamines. I've got to say that, if I were just to
meet you on the street, I would never have guessed that you had
a serious drug problem.

John Lloyd>> There's been a lot of changes. Let me show you a
picture.

Val>> Okay. This is from what?

John Lloyd>> From two weeks after I came in here.

Val>> Two weeks after you came in. Wow. And you weighed how
much then?

John Lloyd>> Soaking wet, maybe 130 pounds.

Val>> In December 2001 nearly three years ago, John came to
Impact, a drug rehab facility in Pasadena. He's here because of
Proposition 36. His alternative? More jail time. So you came
here when?

John Lloyd>> December 12.

Val>> Have you relapsed?

John Lloyd>> No.

Val>> Why not? Because you've tried before? Failed before?
What's the difference?

John Lloyd>> It's a new way of life. I came in so willing
because I had gotten that break that I was like whatever they
say, just whatever they say.

Val>> Because you thought you were going to jail, right?

John Lloyd>> I thought I was going to prison. I've been to
jail many times. Jail is jail. Prison -- I was, you know,
forty years old. I was like I don't want to go to prison.

Val>> John is the kind of drug user voters had in mind for
Proposition 36. He never sold narcotics and he never committed
a violent act. He was just addicted.

John Lloyd>> I'm forty years old and twenty years went just
like that.

Val>> Twenty years on drugs?

John Lloyd>> Twenty years on meth. It went just like that.

Val>> So what has happened in the four years since Proposition
went into effect? Well, a study by UCLA shows that, of those
who entered the treatment in the first year, thirty-four percent
completed the rehab programs. Thirty-seven percent did not
complete rehab, but still made some progress. And twenty-nine
percent dropped out of the treatment programs early on before
getting any benefit. And backers of the initiative say there
are seven thousand fewer drug users in prison because of
Proposition 36, although that's fewer than expected.

Val>> Success or not?

James Stillwell>> Not yet. No, I don't think we're successful
yet. I think it's -- I'd probably give it a "C" at best.

Val>> James Stillwell is Executive Director of Impact and a
former addict himself. He says, at the beginning, nearly eighty
percent of the referrals never showed up.

James Stillwell>> They were coming out of the courthouse, going
over to the referral center, they would make the determination
which program you would go to and then they would call us or fax
us over a piece of paper saying expect these people today or
tomorrow. They wouldn't show up, or when they did show up, they
were so heavily under the influence that you couldn't even
communicate with them.

Val>> The no-shows have now decreased considerably, but
Stillwell says there are other problems. For example, under
Proposition 36, addicts get three chances before they're sent
back to a judge.

James Stillwell>> For an addict, if you tell them going in
that, you know, this is chance number one and you get to fail
two more times before you're going to get in trouble, I'm going
to take the two more times.

Val>> James prefers the more established drug courts where a
judge keeps a close eye on a defendant and jail is a constant
threat. He says drug court success is impressive. More than
seventy percent of those who complete drug court stay clean. Do
you think Proposition 36, in five or seven years from now, will
be as successful as drug court?

James Stillwell>> I don't see how it could be. Not with the
way it's structured.

Val>> And then there is the question of funding. Lael Rubin is
the Proposition 36 specialist at the Los Angeles County D.A.'s
office. She says that the first year of implementation has
revealed an unexpected trend.

Lael Rubin>> What we have found is that those people who were
choosing to enter Proposition 36 treatment are the most
seriously addicted who have been addicted for a very long period
of time and require much more extensive treatment, mostly
inpatient residential treatment. Generally, the people who
would be minimal drug users, they're not choosing Proposition
36.

Val>> And that has major financial implications.

Lael Rubin>> As you can imagine, inpatient residential programs
that treat the seriously addicted are much more costly and,
frankly, the money is not really there.

Val>> Supporters are worried about future funding. Proposition
36 is funded for only five years. After 2006, it's uncertain
and the state's budget problems could mean severe cutbacks.

Lael Rubin>> We don't want to be in a situation of saying this
grand experiment failed because there wasn't sufficient money to
handle it.

Val>> Of course, the success of Proposition 36 also depends on
the quality of the rehab programs. Take Impact here in
Pasadena. It has one of the best reputations and highest
success rates. In fact, the residents here call it "the Harvard
of recovery". Although James Stillwell is critical of
Proposition 36, he's still glad it passed.

James Stillwell>> I'm speaking now as a recovering addict, not
as the director of a treatment program. Anything that's going
to introduce somebody into another way of life other than the
one they're living can't be a bad thing (laughter).

Val>> That is certainly John's attitude and, regardless of the
long-term success or failure of Proposition 36, he is determined
not to relapse. John is now working at Impact as an admissions
specialist and he's been clean for nearly three years. If you
could talk to the voters who passed Proposition 36 --

John Lloyd>> -- Thank you. You saved my life.

Val>> And, of course, the whole idea behind Proposition 36 was
to relieve our overcrowded prisons, so the question is, if a
drug user stays clean and sober, will he also stay out of
trouble? That's a question UCLA researchers will answer next
year.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> Aviation pioneer, Burt Rutan, achieved a milestone today.
His aircraft, the Spaceship One, made the first of two flights
needed to win the X-Prize. Here's what's at stake.

Peter Diamandis>> We've put together a ten million dollar cash
purse and it's going to be offered to the first private team who
can build a spaceship and carry three adults, fly a hundred
kilometers, sixty-two miles, up into space, come back down and,
the important part is, make the trip again within two weeks.

Burt Rutan>> We're going to safely send three people to space
multiple times in this little craft. This little thing that
costs less than one percent of what the costs would be in a
government developed program, probably half a percent. We take
this mated pair of a spaceship and a launch airplane and we fly
much higher than airliners fly. We go to fifty thousand feet.
We release this into a glide and, in a few seconds, the pilot
throws a switch which turns on a rocket that accelerates him at
three and a half Gs straight up to sixty-two miles altitude,
which is a hundred kilometers. Isn't that cool?

Val>> Last year, Southern California suffered from some of the
worst wildfires in state history and, this year, conditions are
shaping up to be nearly identical. But it's not just hot, dry
weather that makes for a fire hazard. Conditions are made even
worse by an insect called the bark beetle. The beetle is barely
visible to the naked eye, but it's destroyed twelve million
trees just in the San Bernardino Mountains. David Garcia talked
to the forest biologist who believes the bark beetle has met its
match: nature.

David Garcia>> After years of killing forest land from Southern
California all the way north into Alaska, after devastating
forest fires, loss of life and homes, with billions of dollars
in damage, the bark beetle itself is being destroyed. It is a
natural destruction and a clear demonstration of nature's own
ability to heal. Dr. Reese Halter, President and founder of the
Global Forest Science Foundation, has done the research and
discovered the good news.

Dr. Reese Halter>> It appears to us that Mother Nature is in
the throes of rescuing her forests. She's doing this because of
several factors that are working in concert. Number one, the
big trees, the really big old Ponderosa Pine trees, have either
been water-stress drought killed or pine bark beetle killed.
The beetles are running out of their main food source. So what
happens then is that they look for new homes.

What's remaining on the land are mostly smaller Ponderosa and
Coulter Pines. They provide way less suitable habitats for
these beetles to find a home and breed and also their food
source is significantly less. There are less sugars and other
foods in the tree that the beetle can use to breed. So what's
happening is the beetles are running out of their food source
and, in concert with that, Mother Nature has about eighty
species of predator parasitic insects and microbes that take
about four or five years to catch up to the natural populations
of beetles that are killing the trees and the trees are gaining
strength.

We've had a little bit more, slightly more, moisture in the last
wild compared to the last three or four years. The temperatures
this summer are slightly lower and these are playing into
allowing the few standing pine trees the ability to access water
in the soil and that's giving them a defense mechanism to
manufacture their gooey pitch, which is also a strong defense
mechanism.

David Garcia>> And that's a natural defense.

Dr. Reese Halter>> And that's a natural defense mechanism. Now
when the populations of bark beetles get so large and they begin
to run out of food, they do some fairly strange things. First
of all, the beetle populations and their offspring are smaller
beetles. Second of all, they don't fly or disperse as far.
Third of all, there's a terrific amount of inbreeding. So in
essence, the bark beetles are becoming weaker and weaker. I
would say the bark beetle population right before our very eyes
is beginning to implode.

David Garcia>> Apart from just the beetles themselves, the
beetle activity, has climate played any role in this change?

Dr. Reese Halter>> Oh, absolutely. Climate has played a
significant role. Over the last three or four years, we've had
drought and drought-like conditions that have weakened the pine
trees. They can't manufacture their gooey pitch, so they
essentially become sitting ducks, and also the drier conditions
very much favor the beetle because they're able to speed up the
amount of generations. On average, the Western Pine Beetle will
have three generations or thereabouts in a growing season of
about nine or ten months. In the last few summers, this summer
excluded, they were up to as many as five generations.

David Garcia>> What changed?

Dr. Reese Halter>> The slight modifications are a little bit
more moisture over the winter and a little bit throughout our
summer and cooler temperatures and, of course, running out of
food.

David Garcia>> A major risk now is all the timber on the
ground, slash, as it's called, wood that could spark into a
forest fire. The problem is that there are not nearly enough
professional forest crews like these to clear the forest floor
and a proposal is being circulated at state capitols to augment
these crews with prisoners.

Dr. Reese Halter>> Unusual times call for unusual measures and
I think that it's a grand time for Governor Schwarzenegger to
follow Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico's lead in using
proactively prison inmates on the land to clear the debris
behind me and elsewhere on our mountains to begin to protect our
mountain communities.

David Garcia>> Once again, and you cannot emphasize this too
much, this is the most populated forest in the United States,
period.

Dr. Reese Halter>> There are over eighty thousand homeowners
just along the San Bernardino Mountains, so we have -- again, in
a perfect world, this would be a situation for Mother Nature to
recharge her soil and allow some of these trees to naturally
decompose and enrich the soil. But given that we've got such a
high density of homeowners and communities around these
mountains, we've got to take action and we've got to do things
proactively now. There's no use for us to react later on at the
tune of billions of dollars and loss of property and homes and
lives.

David Garcia>> The weeks and months ahead as we transition into
winter will be critical as nature continues to heal itself and,
with a little help from all of us, we can divert a potential
disaster.

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>> The Walt Disney Concert Hall opened to much acclaim in
October 2003, but part of the Hall was unfinished. The huge,
spectacular pipe organ was incomplete. It would take an entire
year before the instrument would finally find its voice. Vicki
Curry caught up with the man who designed the organ that's as
stunning visually as it is musically.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> The giant cluster of wooden sticks is the visual
centerpiece of Disney Hall, but they're not for decoration.
They're the voice of the new pipe organ.

Manuel Rosales>> People always ask me, do the pipes here in the
front play or are they just here for show? These are all real
organ pipes and they each are waiting to play their note.

Vicki Curry>> Manuel Rosales is the man behind Disney Hall's
organ. He's an organ builder from the Silverlake neighborhood
of Los Angeles and began working on the project in the early
1990's. He designed it in conjunction with architect, Frank
Gehry, and the planning process alone took several years.

Manuel Rosales>> We started with the very arrogant attitude
that we would design the organ and we were immediately
confronted with Frank's idea that, no, he would design the
organ. About a year before the process ended, this idea of what
we call the "french fries" came into the picture and we refined
this and fine-tuned it and remodeled and honed it so carefully
that the exact placement of every one of those pipes was known
years ago down to the inch of where they would be and how they
were going to be held up and how it all looked in the final
result.

Vicki Curry>> That's 6,134 pipes at last count ranging in size
from a quarter of an inch to thirty-two feet. I first met
Rosales when Disney Hall opened. At that time, most of the
pipes were still in storage.

Manuel Rosales>> We have a pipe here that's waiting to play C-
Sharp from one of the pedals. And then you come around the
corner and there's more. There are bassoons, there are
trumpets, there are oboes, there are clarinets.

Vicki Curry>> Wow. Six thousand-plus pipes.

Manuel Rosales>> And you can see them all neatly wrapped, all
in order. Here's an itty-bitty one. It's actually this part.
Why don't you give it a toot?

Vicki Curry>> So just this part is --

Manuel Rosales>> It's this part. There you go.

Vicki Curry>> So the organ is really made up of all these
different pipes that are different sizes, made of different
materials, so that each pipe will sound different.

Manuel Rosales>> And different lengths and different amounts of
air in different locations playable from different keyboards,
paddles and can all be combined at the organist's will.

Vicki Curry>> Because the pipes must be protected from dust and
debris, they couldn't be installed until construction on the
Hall was finished and then the tuning could only take place when
the Hall was empty and absolutely quiet.

Manuel Rosales>> The biggest pipe weighs over a thousand
pounds. Wrestling a beast like that just to get the pipe to say
what it needs to say and sing the tone just as it needs to sing
it is an incredible task. One pipe can take a day or two.

Vicki Curry>> The tuning process took close to a year. Rosales
and his colleagues spent countless hours climbing up a narrow
ladder to reach the four levels of the organ. When I met with
Rosales again at the end of the year, I asked him how it had
been.

Manuel Rosales>> Oh, it's been one of jumping through hoops and
accommodating the schedule of the Hall and finding little bits
of time to work when it's been really quiet when you could be
all alone with the organ. Early on, I got really discouraged
because I hadn't yet unlocked the secret of working in the
acoustics. Now this Hall has excellent acoustics, but like
anything that's complicated, it has a personality. So it was my
job to find the best personality traits and have the organ
capitalize on those aspects of the acoustics that made the organ
sound its best. Now that sounds perhaps a little complicated,
but it takes a long time to do that. It took me over three
months.

Vicki Curry>> The hard work seems to have paid off. Rosales is
happy with the reactions he's received.

Manuel Rosales>> When an organist says "Yum" or "Isn't this
wonderful?" or "Oh, I just love the power, I love the color and
I love the range of sound", that's where our real satisfaction
comes from.

Philip Smith>> I love this organ (laughter). It's great fun,
even if I have to come over at 10:30 at night and practice.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Once Rosales finished building the organ, Philip
Smith took over. Smith is the organ conservator. He keeps an
eye on how it's working and shows guest organists the fine
points of the instrument. So you've got your feet and four
keyboards and they correspond to different sets of pipes at
different levels up above?

Philip Smith>> Right, and combining them makes the genius and
beauty of playing a pipe organ. Because, in essence, many times
you have the same kind of sounds on each keyboard, but how those
are combined because of their position, you have a different
quality of sound for each of them.

Vicki Curry>> Operating this organ involves a lot more than
playing the keys. The organist can open and close shades to
adjust the volume and, at various stops, control the air flow to
the pipes so the organist can choose which sounds to use.

Manuel Rosales>> Sounds that the organist can use is very much
like a palette of colors. Orange, blue, green, horns, trumpets,
violins, diapasons, flutes, and all of that has to be blended
because when the organist sits at the organ, they are reading
the sounds that we have worked on and they are having to utilize
them as we, the organ voicers, have left them.

Philip Smith>> Each one of them has a different name to it, so
you'll have a bombard. But at that very same note, I have a
compat also, and I also have what's called a clarion. Now those
are three different octaves of sound played on the same note. I
may have forty-five different pipes playing right at one time
because you can hear all the levels of pitch. So I've not just
played a single note, but I've played five octaves of sound with
one note.

Manuel Rosales>> This organ has to really support the orchestra
primarily and there's a lot of music written where the organ
part is not a soloist part, but one of a background that either
gives the orchestra a deep base or a fill of sound which only
the organ can do.

Vicki Curry>> For Manuel Rosales, the pipe organ at the Walt
Disney Concert Hall has been over a decade in the making and one
of the most rewarding projects of his career.

Manuel Rosales>> Working in your hometown on something this
fabulous just happens once in a lifetime and to be able to be
the one to put in your dream organ in a dream Hall is just a
fantastic feeling. I think that when people come here and enjoy
this beautiful room and they hear this organ, they will discover
new dimensions of music which they didn't know about.

Val>> The organ will be officially christened in September and
then it will be the spotlight of a series of recitals that go
through May. 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.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Something to ponder while you enjoy your next cup of coffee, the
faces and politics behind the beans.

>> If I don't sell my coffee at a good price, then my workers
will be unemployed and they won't be able to feed their
children, so is it fair? Is it a fair trade really? No.

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