11/03/04

LC041103

Coverage of Town Hall Los Angeles speakers on Life and Times is
made possible by a grant from The Boeing Company.

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

This is the recurring image of Election 2004, long lines at the
polls. But how does democracy in action look to foreign
observers?

Lin Chieh-Yu>> It's quite amazing. Such a kind of polling
station is almost impossible to happen in my country.

Val>> And then, a side of Jane Goodall you've never seen. The
esteemed scientist talks about stuffed animals and why she
became an activist.

[Film Clip]

It's all coming up 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.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> It's over. No more political ads, no more direct mail,
no more polling. But there's one thing that will last for years
and years and that's the impact of the decisions that
Californians have made. Toni Guinyard takes a look at the
aftermath of Election 2004.

Dick Cheney>> "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the President
of the United States."

Toni Guinyard>> The voters have spoken, electing President
George W. Bush to another four-year term in office, but the
early headlines tell the story of a nation divided and of a
state clearly deciding the fate of sixteen ballot measures. So
now we look back, explain and analyze what happened and why.

Jaime Regalado>> It was an extremely passionate as well as
divisive and polarizing race. There were so many issues at
stake.

Toni Guinyard>> Regalado is Executive Director of the
nonpartisan Pat Brown Institute at Cal State Los Angeles. He
says it should come as no surprise that voters in California
showed up at the polls in near record numbers.

Jaime Regalado>> If you get a galvanizing political race at the
top of the ticket, and this presidential race was that, one that
polarizes, one that's easy to define in terms of the primary
issues, that cut across class lines, cutting across gender
lines, but also involve youth, then you're going to get a higher
turnout than normal.

>> "I need you to sign on this line sixteen."

Toni Guinyard>> Many voters throughout California were unaware
they were under the microscope. They were being watched. The
voters, the poll workers and the election process all being
scrutinized by monitors, observers looking for voting
irregularities after lessons learned during the 2000
presidential election.

Reports of problems were phoned in here, the Election Protection
Coalition Command Center in downtown Los Angeles. It is the
heart of an election day monitoring effort by the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund. Attorneys, law students and trained paralegals
worked inside to respond to what was taking place outside at
polling places throughout Los Angeles County.

Erica Teasley Linnick>> We have poll workers calling the 1-866-
OURVOTE hotline asking us questions about things that are going
on in their polling sites, which shows us that poll workers need
more training and they need help as well.

>> "And I'll call the Registrar right now."

Erica Teasley Linnick>> We tried this election protection
program to respond to some of the problems that we had back in
2000 and we want to make sure that voters sort of get their
confidence back.

Toni Guinyard>> Winning that confidence will take some work,
the volume of calls an indication of the work yet to be done to
restore voters' faith in the election system.

Jaime Regalado>> You had many more people watching the polls,
watching the process, basically from day one.

Toni Guinyard>> Also watching the process, a group of foreign
journalists. They were hosted by the International Visitors
Council of Los Angeles, given a front row seat to observe the
election process.

Eugene Low>> Voting is such a grassroots activity. People get
out and there are people who are actively knocking on doors and
encouraging people to vote.

>> "And you're registered?"

>> "Absolutely."

>> "Fill out the thing and then I'll take a look at that."

Savita Patel>> I think that people are really passionate about
politics at an individual level. They might not be crazily well
informed about maybe what's the nitty gritty of Iraq, but
they're concerned and they're really concerned about who their
leader will be.

Toni Guinyard>> Opinions and observations from Singapore, New
Zealand, Pakistan and Nepal, an outsider's view of United States
elections from reporters and producers who are concerned about
how the presidential race will impact the relationship between
their countries and the United States.

Eugene Low>> I think there is some concern that, I think, the
United States is so focused on Iraq right now that I think parts
of Southeast Asia might be kind of off the radar because the
United States doesn't think about relations with Southeast Asia
as much.

Dennis Donahue>> What we really hope is that they will have the
opportunity to come to understand the United States better.
We're focusing on the elections with this program, but we're
also looking at the broader issues. International relations,
international economics, social and cultural life in the United
States.

Toni Guinyard>> The journalists seemed amused by the casual
atmosphere at this polling place near Marina del Rey.

Lin Chieh-Yu>> It's quite amazing. Such a kind of polling
station, it's almost impossible to happen in my country.

>> "This is what America is all about."

Toni Guinyard>> The Taipei Times producer had his picture
taken to document this decidedly Southern California experience,
a polling place in a garage, a barbecue for voters, the food
donated from nearby businesses, a stark difference from anything
he'd seen before on election day.

Lin Chieh-Yu>> The polling station in my country is very highly
secured and usually the government used the primary school's
classroom as the polling station. Police are there and the
governmental officials are there and people cannot walk around
unless they have ID to prove himself has the right to vote.

Toni Guinyard>> So you're impressed with the voter turnout?

Frans Padak Demon>> Yeah, I am very impressed with the voter
turnout and, you know, people are very, very pleased to come to
the polling stations.

Toni Guinyard>> What the journalists did not see were the long
lines and patient voters at this polling station miles away.
Nor were they, or many of the voters in this school gym, aware
they were standing shoulder to shoulder with homeless voters,
people determined to exercise their right to participate in the
process.

Charles Cunningham>> I don't think that they really look at us
as people. You know, they look at us as nuisances or whatever.
That's the way I think they think about us because they're
always looking down on us.

Toni Guinyard>> So your answer is to go to the polls?

Charles Cunningham>> Yeah. Go to the polls and try to solve
your problem by voting.

Edward Sanford>> I believe a lot of people take it for granted.
You know, they say, well, I'm not going to vote because they're
disappointed. They go and vote and things don't turn out the
way they expected it to turn out, so who gives a hoot?

Gretchen Heidemann>> A lot of them think, well, why vote? It
doesn't matter. What difference will it make in my life? Will
it help me find a house? Will it help me get a job tomorrow?
Probably not. But we know that there are issues on the ballot
that affect them and, by not being a part of the process,
they're letting someone else make their decisions.

Toni Guinyard>> So as we look back on Election Day 2004, it
will be remembered by some as the day the world watched as
President George W. Bush won a close one. It will be remembered
by others as the day they got a chance to vote for the first
time in a very long time. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and
Children.

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Val>> It's rare when an anthropologist becomes a household
name, but Jane Goodall is a rare woman. She grew up watching
"Tarzan" movies and vowed that she would go to Africa. Now at
age seventy, she's still on the road. Jane Goodall spoke
recently at Town Hall Los Angeles and talked with David Okarski
about her remarkable career.

David Okarski>> The Los Angeles Hotel where Dr. Jane Goodall is
about to address Town Hall is a long way from the Gombe National
Park in Tanzania. There in 1960, she saw a chimpanzee strip
leaves from a twig and use it to fish termites from a nest.
That simple observation shattered the scientific thinking that
only humans make tools. You just called yourself a rebel. How
so?

Jane Goodall>> Well, I suppose that like from the very
beginning, I did things not in the traditional way. You know, I
didn't have a degree before I went to study the chimpanzees, so
I did it all wrong. I gave them names instead of numbers and I
dared to give them personalities, minds and feelings. I went to
Cambridge and I was told there's no time for a BA, but go
straight for a PhD. You know, on an on, I've always done things
backwards.

David Okarski>> Her 1999 book, "Reason for Hope", and a
documentary film of the same name tell how Jane Goodall rose to
international prominence as a scientist, then transformed into a
tireless world traveler promoting animal welfare, conservation
and peace. How did you get from that point to this?

Jane Goodall>> It happened at the very specific moment when
there was a conference on chimpanzee behavior bringing together
all the different people who'd studied chimps across Africa. I
realized that, my goodness, the chimps' habitats are going, the
chimps are vanishing, they're being horribly treated in
captivity. So I went into that conference as a scientist and
came out as an activist.

I began traveling in the rainy states of chimps in Africa
promoting conservation and realized that so many of Africa's
problems were really caused by the unsustainable lifestyles of
the developed world. So I began traveling more extensively
there and developed a program to give young people hope because
I found so many were hopeless. It was that program, "Roots &
Shoots", that brought it to the attention of Kofi Annan of the
U.N. and he asked me if I'd be a messenger of peace.

"Roots & Shoots" is a symbolic name. Roots make a firm
foundation. Shoots seem tiny, but to reach the light, can break
through a brick wall. If we see the brick wall as all of the
problems we have inflicted on this planet, the environmental
ones, the social ones, crime, drugs, war, terrorism, it's a
message of hope. Hundreds and thousands of young people around
the world can break through and make this a better world.

David Okarski>> She's a harsh critic of war.

Jane Goodall>> My objection to war is because of this
devastating harm to everything that I love and, therefore, it
seems so important to find ways of doing things that aren't
exposing young people to be torn apart by bombs and guns of
whatever nationality. So it's just a whole general repugnance
of this way of solving problems.

David Okarski>> And yet, some of your studies of chimpanzees
led you to believe that somewhere in our DNA there may be a
predilection for behaviors that are at least very much like war
in the chimpanzee world.

Jane Goodall>> I think it's probably very true. Chimpanzees
can be brutal and it's a shock when we discovered that they have
a dark side just like us. But they also have very strongly
developed compassion and love and altruism in that society. So
if we have inherited from an ancient primate past, we've
inherited the dark and we've inherited the loving. So it's
really up to each one of us to push one out, one down, and to
develop the other.

David Okarski>> You've always had a very special relationship
with God and with religion and many people would not expect that
of a scientist.

Jane Goodall>> It's strange, actually, because right from the
beginning I found it was so easy to reconcile science on the one
hand and religion on the other. And the more we learn about
this amazing planet of ours and the universe and the
interconnection between the two, you know, the more mysteries
there still are. We'll never solve them all. The more wondrous
it is, the more I feel the presence of some great spiritual
power and that there is a meaning to our life on earth. I just
feel, for myself anyway, that I'd better try and do my very,
very best with this gift of life and the tremendous gifts that
I've been personally given.

David Okarski>> Are you still a vegetarian?

Jane Goodall>> Oh, absolutely. I became a vegetarian just like
that. I mean, most of my decisions in life just seem to come
like that. I was eating meat. Chimpanzees eat meat. And then
I read Peter Singer's book about intensive farming and, you
know, suddenly a piece of meat on my plate, unless it was from a
free-ranging animal or chicken or something, it symbolized for
me fear, pain and death and I didn't want to eat that.

David Okarski>> Must one be a vegetarian to be a friend of the
earth and of animals?

Jane Goodall>> I think what's really important is to eat meat
that's come from like happy cows, free-ranging creatures that
graze on the grass, hens that peck about in the farmyard.

David Okarski>> Did you bring Jubilee and Mr. H. with you on
this trip?

Jane Goodall>> I have Mr. H. He's in my bag behind me.
Jubilee is too old.

David Okarski>> The rebel scientist and messenger of peace
never goes anywhere without Mr. H. His tail makes him a toy
monkey, not a chimpanzee.

Jane Goodall>> The world is too big for Mr. H. and me alone, so
Mr. H. Junior is to help so that people can help to spread this
message. This is how Mr. H. used to look, exactly like that.

David Okarski>> Mr. H. Junior is for sale on her website,
janegoodall.org. All proceeds go to the Jane Goodall Institute.
How much longer will you continue to travel at this pace that
you keep up?

Jane Goodall>> This crazy three hundred days a year? It
depends on my body. You know, the world is so big and, if you
can go somewhere with a message of hope for young people --

[Film Clip]

Jane Goodall>> Everywhere I go, so many young people have lost
hope because they feel we've compromised their future. We have
four reasons to hope. The human brain. There are solutions out
there to many problems. People are beginning to realize the
kind of lifestyle that's unsustainable and try to leave lighter
footprints.

Then there's the resilience of nature. We destroy a place and
we can make it beautiful again or give it time and it will do it
itself. Animals species on the brink of extinction can be given
another chance, like the California condor.

And then there's the tremendous enthusiasm and dedication and
excitement and courage of children all around the world who are
busy changing the world as we speak.

And finally, what I call the indomitable human spirit. There
are people out there doing impossible things and yet they don't
give up. It can be people like Nelson Mandela who came out of
twenty-three years of imprisonment with the amazing ability to
forgive so that he could lead his nation out of the bloody
raging of Apartheid.

How can we give up when we have such capability in our own
species for the noble and the good and the loving? You know,
we're going through moral evolutions and we've got a long way to
go. We're not just beginning spiritual evolution. We had it
and we turned our backs on it in the West and I think we're
coming back to it again.

David Okarski>> Jane Goodall, thank you very much for taking
the time to talk with us today.

Jane Goodall>> Thank you.

Val>> Jane Goodall was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles. If
you'd like more information about membership or future speakers,
you can go to their website at townhall-LA.org.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> The man you're about to meet raises the term "movie buff"
to a whole new level. He has amassed a collection of more than
six thousand films and he's found them everywhere from basements
to attics and even chicken coops. As Toni Guinyard tells us,
his big challenge now is what to do with this amazing film
collection.

Murray Glass>> I became a film buff and, to some degree, a film
historian and archivist and I just plain and simply love films.

Toni Guinyard>> On any given day, Murray Glass can be found
surrounded by film, sandwiched between ceiling to floor shelves,
housing reel after reel of 16mm films valued at one and a
quarter of a million dollars.

Murray Glass>> I have a library which goes back to before the
turn of the last century, films which were made as early as the
very earliest ones in the 1890's and on through the silent era
and the early sound era and up to and including films which were
made for television.

[Film Clip]

Murray Glass>> It also includes classics from all over the
world, from Germany, from England, from Italy, Japan, Russia and
elsewhere.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> The collection of six thousand three hundred
titles in all make up the M.G. Film Library. While Glass is a
chemist, collecting, renting out and caring for these films is
his life's work.

Murray Glass>> See this splice over here? That's what I
detected and you look at it and see if it's okay and, if it's
okay, you just continue. I have a very extensive collection of
Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Charlie Chaselow,
Hardy and many others. I just love particularly silent comedy
because I think that the works of some of these artists have
never been equaled, much less surpassed.

Toni Guinyard>> After a half century of spending his life
building his film library and sharing his love of film with so
many others, Glass is ready to call it quits, ready to give it
up.

Murray Glass>> I have reached a point in my life when I feel
that I ought to retire.

Toni Guinyard>> But his retirement has been put on hold until
one issue is resolved: finding a home for his films, and that
has not proved to be easy. You see, Glass is not about to give
up his collection to just anyone.

Murray Glass>> I have a list of universities who have told me
in no uncertain terms that they would love to have the
collection for a teaching tool. Unfortunately, each one of them
pleads poverty and would be very happy if somebody could be
found who would be an angel who would buy the collection and
donate it to their facility.

Toni Guinyard>> So he's on the hunt, quietly trying to find the
perfect buyer.

Murray Glass>> These are one-real subjects. Every film in this
library is on a steel reel and it's labeled. It has a label on
the front and a label on the side telling what it is and a
catalog number so it's easily identified. These are feature
length films, an hour and up, also as with the others on nice
steel reels, fully labeled, front and side, and cataloged.

Toni Guinyard>> Rhoda Glass, Murray's wife, perhaps knows
better than anyone else what this film library represents. She
sees history at her husband's fingertips.

Rhoda Glass>> It's a magnificent collection. It has been
blood, sweat and tears. He's put a great deal of time and
thought. He works six days a week. He always has. And he
knows the ins and outs of the films. He knows the directors,
the actors, the better picture makers, the not so good picture
makers.

Toni Guinyard>> Well, if this collection is so important, why
can't you just donate it and not take any money for it?

Rhoda Glass>> I'd have to ask my financier (laughter).

Toni Guinyard>> And I take it your financier is --

Rhoda Glass>> Murray Glass.

Toni Guinyard>> More than once, Mr. Glass has been asked why he
doesn't just donate his film library to a university. His
answer is economics. He simply can't afford to.

Murray Glass>> If I don't find somebody within the not too
distant future, I'll be compelled to dispose of the library by
auction.

Toni Guinyard>> Do you share his desire in keeping the
collection together?

Rhoda Glass>> Oh, yes. It would be terrible to have it -- it
would be a great loss to the, I won't say the film industry, but
to film history if it were to be disbursed to various and sundry
places.

Murray Glass>> It is my devout hope that somebody will be found
who would be generous enough and flexible enough and practical
enough to get this collection and make sure that it does go to
anyone of -- I have a list of seven different schools which
would be panting to have this collection given to them. My
primary clientele has been, over the years, teachers who teach
classes in film history.

Toni Guinyard>> As much as Murray Glass hopes to keep the
collection intact, he is driven by his desire to keep the films
accessible to the one audience he believes will benefit most:
film students.

Murray Glass>> If it was sold to private collectors, it would
go into private collections and then be screened by the
collectors themselves, maybe for a small circle of friends, but
would be the loss for the purpose for which I originally built
it which is mainly for discovery and teaching.

Toni Guinyard>> It was in a film history class at City College
New York that Glass was inspired by his teacher, avant-garde
filmmaker Hans Richter.

Murray Glass>> As any film history class would be, eventually
we got to the subject of Charlie Chaplin. I mentioned that I
had some Charlie Chaplin films at home, so he said, "Bring them
into class."

[Film Clip]

Murray Glass>> I went home that evening and I took a bunch of
these Chaplin films and pasted them together with Duco cement
and put them on longer reels and brought them into class. We
ran them off and discussed them and then, about a month later, I
got a check in the mail and that was my first film rental.

Toni Guinyard>> The year was 1946. Glass's hobby eventually
evolved into a career when he opened the M.G. Film Library.

Rhoda Glass>> It's part of his body. It's part of his brain.
It can't be repeated by anybody. He's been consulted by people
writing books from all over the world. His name is pure gold to
archivists and he's brilliant in that field.

Toni Guinyard>> A field Glass came to respect over time. He
traces his enthusiasm back to his childhood.

Murray Glass>> My father bought me for my birthday present, one
time when I was about thirteen or fourteen, a toy projector, a
16mm projector, and he bought some films which were basically
just clips out of longer subjects. They called them toy films.
I started collecting those for a couple of years and I just
stopped.

Toni Guinyard>> And now he wants to stop again, this time to do
a little traveling and spend time with his wife, but first he
has to find an angel.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Murray Glass's collection also includes more than nine
hundred books all related to films, cinema or Hollywood. 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 --

It's a shadowy world of backroom clinics and illegal pharmacies.
Is there any way to shut them down?

Jeffrey Kaye>> He went to the shoe store to get drugs?

>> People went to the shoe store to obtain their pharmaceutical
needs, yes.

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