02/21/05

LC050221

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City
of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It may be small, but it's being asked to carry a big load. Can
Palmdale Airport relieve the strain of LAX?

Mike Antonovich>> The mayor is attempting to jam everybody at
LAX and LAX, as we like to say, unlike panty hose, doesn't
expand.

Val>> And then, he's a designer, an artist, an architect, an
inventor, and he does it with a unique flair, but can he change
the way we build our homes?

All that 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.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> We all know how crowded LAX is and the plans there are to
expand, but many say other airports will also have to expand,
like Palmdale about seventy miles northeast of LAX. But will
Palmdale Airport be able to attract travelers? As Toni Guinyard
tells us, airport officials there are eager to spread their
wings.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> Routine comments made at the airline ticket
counter --

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinayrd>> -- are far from routine here. Palmdale
Regional Airport has only one airline offering passenger
flights. This is it. Las Vegas-based Scenic Airlines. With
its nineteen-seat aircraft shuttling passengers nonstop to North
Las Vegas, Scenic Air represents the beginning of a new era at
Palmdale Regional Airport. Scenic began service to and from
Palmdale in December 2004, more than six years after the last
commercial airline to provide service here closed shop in 1998.
The problem then? The airlines did not make a profit. The hope
now? The growing population in the Antelope Valley would prefer
to fly out of Palmdale rather than drive to LAX or Bob Hope
Airport in Burbank to catch a flight.

Steve Watkins>> We live by Big Bear, so it was about an hour
and a half drive down here. But it's an hour and a half to get
to about any airport from where we're at, so it's nice being out
here.

Brandon Eaton>> We're starting with Scenic. I think that, with
their success which I think is going to happen, I think the
other carriers will seriously look at Palmdale. I do believe
honestly that this community is going to support the service and
I think this flight kind of shows it.

Nancy Wilcox>> It's just so quick and it's so convenient.

Toni Guinyard>> Passenger Nancy Wilcox lives in North Las
Vegas. Her daughter, Connie Lockwood, lives in Lancaster.
Would you consider flying out of LAX or Burbank or Ontario?

Nancy Wilcox>> I've done that before. I've flown into Burbank
and Connie has had to drive down there to pick me up and this is
much closer.

Connie Lockwood>> I fly for sure from now on. I mean, it just
makes sense and it just gives you the feeling that I'll be home
in just a short time and I don't have to deal with driving the
I-15. It's just fantastic.

Toni Guinyard>> They are comments fit to be used on travel
brochures, the type of responses supporters of expanded airline
service are hoping for. But by all accounts, many of the
passengers on this flight understand their support of Scenic
Airlines could decide the success or failure of commercial air
service here. They understand this is business.

Napoleon Matias>> It might be just a trial thing and see how it
goes and, if it goes well, they might add more flights to
Arizona or other western states.

Edmund Meyette>> I think people are looking. I think that the
officials are paying attention to how this is going to go over
or if it's not going to go, if it will be profitable.

Toni Guinyard>> A passenger even described Palmdale Regional
Airport as one of the Antelope Valley's best kept secrets. But
at a time when elected officials are busy debating how best to
ease congestion at LAX, Palmdale Regional Airport is back in the
spotlight.

Connie Lockwood>> I could see why the Los Angeles people may
not want this to become a big hub because, if this really takes
off and goes, I could see other airlines trying to come into the
area too for friendly competition, as it were, and it just makes
sense that this could be a big political issue.

Bernard Parks>> "We need to make sure all four of our airports
work with one system."

Toni Guinyard>> The second debate of Los Angeles city mayoral
candidates made it clear that this is already a big political
issue.

Richard Alarcon>> "The bucket is full. You cannot paint the
bucket to make it better. We need more capacity, we need
another bucket, we need another airport."

Bob Hertzberg>> "It is a regional system, but I would argue
that the regional system should be one that is five county-
based."

Toni Guinyard>> Los Angeles World Airports, the department of
the city of Los Angeles, operates LAX, Palmdale, Ontario and Van
Nuys Airports. At issue is Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn's
eleven billion dollar master plan to modernize Los Angeles
International and how best to utilize the other regional
airports.

Antonio Villaraigosa>> "We can invest much of that money, about
eleven billion dollars, at Ontario Airport and Palmdale where
the growth in the region is."

James Hahn>> "Yes, Ontario is a great airport. We built a
great new terminal there, but it's not being used. We need to
force these airlines to use an airport that we've already used
and we're also very interested in developing Palmdale."

Mike Antonovich>> The mayor is attempting to jam everybody at
LAX and LAX, we like to say, unlike panty hose, doesn't expand.

Toni Guinyard>> Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich
has been vocal in his criticism of the LAX expansion plan and
outspoken in his support of expanding Palmdale Regional. The
airport is in the district he represents.

Mike Antonovich>> All we're asking him to do is be realistic
and approach this on a regional basis so that our regional needs
will be met and not some political power play that benefits a
handful of people at the expense of the citizens of Los Angeles
County.

Toni Guinyard>> Mark Thorpe is Director of Air Service
Marketing for Los Angeles World Airports.

Mark Thorpe>> My job is to attract airlines to the airports in
our airport system. My role at Palmdale is to try and attract
service to that airport. The only challenge is that the
airlines have looked at this as one big monolithic market.
They've looked at it as, you know, if you just fly into LAX and
everybody can catch flights at LAX.

Toni Guinyard>> In selling airlines on providing service to
Palmdale, Thorpe emphasizes the drive time to and from LAX as
one of the area's explosive population growth and business
development.

Art Alonzo>> Oh, boy, when I first came here, everything closed
at six and there wasn't much (laughter). I've seen a whole lot.
It's really grown leaps and bounds over the years.

Toni Guinyard>> In a study commissioned by Los Angeles County,
consulting firm, Tri-Star Marketing, concluded there are enough
residents in the area -- 600,000 -- and enough demand that
Palmdale Regional could support service to several hub cities
including Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Phoenix and San Francisco.

Mark Thorpe>> I use the phrase "chicken and egg situation"
quite a bit. It is in a sense that, if you talk to the
airlines, the airlines say we'll bring in flights when we see
revenue, when we see people traveling in and out of that
airport. The traveling public says we'll fly in and out of that
airport when we see the flights that we want.

Toni Guinyard>> What Thorpe calls a chicken and egg situation
is the challenge he faces not only at Palmdale --

Mark Thorpe>> The next step or the next goal for us is to bring
an airline in to provide nonstop service to a major connecting
hub in the United States.

Toni Guinyard>> -- but also at Ontario International Airport.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> The two-terminal complex opened in 1998 is
capable of handling ten million annual passengers --

Mark Thorpe>> Ontario is really the airport that we see
becoming the second large hub international airport.

Toni Guinyard>> -- while developing Palmdale as a regional
airport.

Nancy Pinkston>> Sure. We hope that other airlines will take a
look and start flying out of here.

Connie Lockwood>> I'd like to see how this plays out and I hope
that more and more people use it and that they're able to put
more flights on so that it's more consistent.

Toni Guinyard>> But for now, Palmdale Regional passengers will
have to make do with the only commercial air service being
offered for the first time in a very long time, flights by one
airline going to and from one destination. I'm Toni Guinyard
for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> It's been sixty years since allied forces in Europe
liberated Jews from Hitler's concentration camps. And with
these passing years, more and more important to document their
experiences. But a new short film called "Memory and Videotape"
shows how the survivors' stories are being preserved forever.
It's part of the Veritas Collection. The filmmaker is Ray
Greene.

Ray Greene>> Memory for most of us is something we carry around
inside of our heads.

>> "Inspired by the filming of Schindler's List, Stephen
Spielberg established survivors of the Shoah Foundation."

Ray Greene>> Memory is how we know who we are. If we had no
memories, we would have no identity. The same thing is actually
true of memories that we encode in videotape. If we didn't have
the interviews on tape, we would have no memory of the events
that we record and that would interfere, it seems to me, with
our identities not simply as Jews, but really for all of us.

>> "Welcome, welcome to the Foundation. Follow me, please.
The Foundation was established in 1994 and it was essentially an
outgrowth of the movie "Schindler's List". Stephen Spielberg
was in Poland and he literally had survivors approach him on set
wanting to talk about their life experiences in the war. He was
so moved by that experience that he wanted to do something about
it and he did. He established the Shoah Foundation charged with
the mission of collecting testimony from survivors and other
witnesses of the war."

>> "Half of my body is always there."

>> "Now in eight and a half years, a little more at this point,
we have collected nearly 52,000 testimonies worldwide. That's
in fifty-six countries and thirty-two different languages that
will take you over thirteen years to view and that's twenty-four
hours a day. We're now focusing actually on our new mission,
which is to overcome intolerance, prejudice and bigotry through
the educational use of the Foundation's visual history."

Emile Hart>> My name is Emile Hart and I'm working here as a
volunteer at the Shoah Foundation for the last eight years. The
memory for me is, well, I don't have to go far. When I wash my
hands or something, the number reminds me every day of my
experience.

>> "Well, that will be fun. I'll meet him."

Emile Hart>> Mr. Spielberg made fifty thousand tapes. When you
think of it and when you listen to all of them together, it's
all the same story. To get rid of the race. You see it in
Yugoslavia where the Serbs killed the Muslims, you know, and in
Rwanda or wherever. They're killing hundreds of thousands of
people, women and children, for what? Why?

>> "What I'm going to do now is play a few minutes of footage
for you to give you an idea of what it is I'm talking about."

>> A videotape, in a way, changes when different people watch
it.

[Film Clip]

>> I think about the survivors that I've watched on the video
and then find out that they've passed away.

[Film Clip]

>> You realize that that's just a moment in time captured. You
know, it's sort of like holding two mirrors up to each other
because it's also, in that moment in time, capturing that moment
in time that they're telling us about.

[Film Clip]

>> I don't know if "Memory and Videotape" is the title I would
choose because both of those things feel very static. I just
feel that the work I do is so organic.

>> "This is what we call our robot."

Ray Greene>> Any technology can be used for evil. Any
technology can be used for good.

>> "Behind these glass panels, all of the testimonies are
stored."

Ray Greene>> The video camera is a tool that can be used for
good or for evil.

>> "Our entire archive -- and I'm not very technical -- covers
180 terabytes actually."

Ray Greene>> I think that that interaction, that experience of
looking into a television screen and seeing somebody look back
at you and say let me tell you what happened in my life is an
experience that changes you absolutely irrevocably. The day
will come when Stephen Spielberg isn't here anymore, when I'm
not here anymore, when nobody who works at the Shoah Foundation
will be here anymore, when all the survivors will be gone, but
the 52,000 testimonies have to be permanent. They have to exist
for all time.

Val>> World War II shaped one generation. Vietnam shaped
another. So what influence will 9/11 and the war on terrorism
have on this upcoming generation? That's the question one
student filmmaker at UCLA asked when she made her documentary
"War on Their Minds". Jennifer Glos talked with more a hundred
fifty children before selecting those who would be in the
documentary. The result? A collection of precocious,
thoughtful and at times funny thoughts on war.

>> I went up to my parents one day and I said, "Can I go to
military school?" They said, "Are you crazy? You actually want
to go away and do something like that?" So I went on the
internet and I found this place. It's a great place and I love
everything about the military.

[Film Clip]

>> My parents wanted me to come here because it has great
experience, that the military academy could teach me how to be a
man and things.

>> There's a brotherhood in the military that, I mean, one
person is willing to die for the man beside him and that's
something that I really want to feel.

>> I love having a unity, you know, people telling me what to
do. You can't argue with it.

[Film Clip]

>> Oh, AFI, annual federal inspection. Standing with your
hands behind your back for about two hours where your arms start
to really hurt.

>> I figured if I came here, I'd get a better chance to get
into West Point.

>> I want to be a pilot. I want to fly and go fast. I just
figure, if I'm going to die, why not do it doing something cool?

>> I think the military service is one of the purest ways to
serve one's country. I feel that I am indebted to this country.
I've been in Korea. I've seen how North Koreans are treated by
the government and then I've seen how rich lives the South
Koreans enjoy in a democratic government. Democracy can give
people hope and build up even the lowest people. We as
Americans are too quick to take those freedoms of democracy for
granted.

>> If people like me don't serve in the Army, we won't have
freedom.

>> I'm willing to sacrifice myself so that the terrorists can't
go and kill more innocent people.

>> I love this country. I'm willing to fight for it, I'm
willing to kill for it, I'm willing to die for it.

>> War doesn't scare me. I mean, I hope I never have to go
into war, but if I have to, I'll be ready.

>> I think it was Jefferson who said that to show complete
obedience to the President would be treasonous to the American
people. If a war seems unjust, it is our duty as citizens to
protest that as a democratic nation.

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>> He's been called a creative genius. He's part artist,
architect, inventor and designer. His name is Gregg Fleishman
and he's come up with a whole new concept for shelter, one that
he thinks could revolutionize the housing industry. But his
work is kind of hard to describe. You just have to take a look
at it.

For the past eleven years, his combination gallery and workshop
has occupied a prime corner in the heart of Culver City. Inside
you'll meet Gregg Fleishman, a renaissance man who was here long
before Culver City went through its renaissance. In the front
is a spacious gallery, but just behind the white wall is another
world, a workshop, a cluttered studio where creativity is king.

Everything Gregg Fleishman sets his restless mind to he
transforms. For example, furniture. These chairs are cut from
just one piece of wood, then assembled by hand. No nails, no
screws, no glue.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Oh, my gosh.

Gregg Fleishman>> Now you can sit down.

Val>> That is fabulous. Okay, this is the brake? This is a
tricycle he designed for kids and adults. I got to give it a
whirl. Oh, this feels weird (laughter). You barely push the
steering and it turns. That's great. But Fleishman's most
difficult, most prolonged and most important project is this:
housing. Shelters all made from beveled cubes. His mission is
to revolutionize the way we build. The key, he says, is to find
the perfect basic building block or module, one that's strong
and versatile, versatile enough to build a structure of any
shape or size, something akin to working with life-size Legos.

Gregg Fleishman>> A good point is that all of this stuff is
onsite assembly.

Val>> Have you gotten any interest from actual builders?

Gregg Fleishman>> I haven't really looked for that. For now,
I'm happy enough to keep working inside the studio. I keep
finding more pleasure to go with it.

Val>> The modules, he said, would be pre-manufactured in a
factory, then taken to a construction site and assembled on
location. It would be a lot less expensive and less wasteful
than traditional construction and the result would be a lot more
interesting than a lot of dull, boxy apartments.

Gregg Fleishman>> I can see, you know, a whole magical world of
crystal and jewel-like housing complexes sprouting up
everywhere.

Val>> And are affordable?

Gregg Fleishman>> Well, you know, affordability is something
that doesn't relate to materials and stuff. You can have
affordable ones and you can have, you know, definitely opulent
ones together. There's some ways of making large plastic parts
nowadays that's quite inexpensive.

Val>> This would be out of plastic?

Gregg Fleishman>> Absolutely, yeah. That's my thought on it.

Val>> The modules could also be packed and transported easily,
then literally snapped together, a godsend for emergency
housing.

Gregg Fleishman>> You know, disaster relief and, you know, Iraq
and rebuilding all of that. Those things keep coming up every
year. There's another disaster somewhere and every year there's
another million homes needed here and there.

Val>> So where did all this unconventional thinking come from?
Here's a hint.

[Film Clip]

Val>> This is the gallery's home video of visiting day.
Students from a nearby school are invited regularly to explore
the gallery.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Here, touching and sitting is allowed, but they aren't
just from any school. These children are from Play Mountain, a
nonprofit alternative elementary school that stresses humanistic
values and imaginative play. It was the school that Fleishman
himself attended as a child which makes sense since it was his
own forward-thinking mother who founded Play Mountain back in
1949.

The bike is a favorite among the kids, but Fleishman also
designed the playground equipment on the campus. You often get
the impression that, for Fleishman, the boundary between work
and play is a blurry one.

[Film Clip]

Val>> The Los Angeles Times article they describe, they have no
hesitation in calling you a genius.

Gregg Fleishman>> Well, yeah, I don't feel that smart myself.

Val>> Fleishman earned a degree in architecture from USC.
Although he's an expert with a router, he's never actually built
a structure from start to finish. So, so far, really all of
this is theoretical. There's not a real life building somewhere
that incorporates your ideas?

Gregg Fleishman>> Right. No, there's not.

Val>> Do you imagine there will be at some point?

Gregg Fleishman>> Well, I imagine the whole world will be full
of these soon.

Val>> Really?

Gregg Fleishman>> Absolutely.

Val>> Fleishman prefers the theoretical world of geometry and
Plato to bricks or plumbing and, when he starts explaining the
math behind the modules, it sounds like this.

Gregg Fleishman>> And eighteen squares are six squares related
to the six spaces of a cube which is, oddly enough, one to the
square root of two, which relates to the forty-five degree slope
of the roof. And eight triangles relate to the eight corners of
the cube. These are at the corners of the cube right here.
These are at the edges of the cube.

Val>> Well, I pretended to understand. Fleishman has worked
for over a decade perfecting his modular construction. He's
getting pretty close to completion, but when it comes to
applying the concept --

Gregg Fleishman>> -- I in no way think that I have the
capability to take this stuff around the world and, very
clearly, I need other people to take it and run with it in order
to, you know, house the world and use it.

Val>> So, hopefully, someone will come in here and go, oh, I
can make a whole subdivision based on --

Gregg Fleishman>> People will have to use a little imagination,
but it might happen.

Val>> Even when he achieves his goal, this architect, artist,
mathematician, carpenter, inventor and designer will never get
bored. He'll, no doubt, move on to new and bigger things. So
you've got bicycles, you've got cars, you've got furniture,
you've got houses. What's next?

Gregg Fleishman>> Well, you know, I figure I could do an
airplane.

Val>> An airplane? Why not?

[Film Clip]

Val>> And if you'd like to see more of Gregg Fleishman's work,
you can check out his website at greggfleishman.com. That's
Gregg with two g's. And that's our program for tonight. 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.

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City
of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

He's one of the five major candidates running for Los Angeles
mayor. What makes State Senator Richard Alarcon stand out from
the field?

Richard Alarcon>> Ah, this is my city. It's my whole life and
I believe I will do a different job than what is being done and
that any of the other candidates are proposing to do. And I'm
not some fly-by-night politician. I worked for Mayor Bradley
for six years, I worked for the city of Los Angeles for sixteen
years, and I was a City Councilman for five and a half. I know
this city. I studied it in college. In fact, I studied
Supervisor Kenny Hahn.

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