03/18/05

LC050318

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 --

Roads blocked, shelves going bare, driveways covered with mud.
A firsthand account of the struggle to get out of Ojai.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> This is Santa Ana Road, a road that
bypasses the main drag out of town. It's now coated in mud from
smaller landslides that led to this. I don't think we'll be
getting out this way either.

Val>> And then, the locations are spectacular and the music?

[Film Clip]

Val>> Beautiful sounds in historic sites.

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>> It will only take a few more inches of rain to make this
season the wettest on record. That means more rain than we've
had since they started keeping track of it back in 1877. Some
areas have been hit harder than others, like the small town of
Ojai north of Los Angeles. It's a picturesque artist community
and a weekend getaway, but recently getting away from Ojai has
been the challenge. Life and Times reporter, Stephanie O'Neill
Noe lives in Ojai. She filed this personal account of January's
floods.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> This is Ojai and I love living here. I
mean, really, look at this place. What's not to love? Orange
groves that line our roads and neighborhoods, acres and acres of
ranches that expand into the landscape, spectacular sunsets that
paint Topa Topa Mountain pink, a downtown that attracts
Angelenos in droves to our shops, spas and farmers market, and
the Los Padres National Forest in my back yard literally.

My grandparents, Jack and Edith Emil, immigrated here from
Pennsylvania back in the 1940's and, with all the family visits,
it felt like home even before I moved here several years ago.
So when I file my stories for Life and Times, the commute to
Hollywood is a small price to pay. That is, until it becomes
nearly impossible.

The storms were severe. For my family, a peek out our own
window offered a precursor of community-wide damage. First, a
mini mudslide blocked our lower drive after devouring a chunk of
the main drive. Then from this hill, a much larger mud flow let
loose, wiping out our horse pasture.

These are photos taken the morning of the slide by our friend,
Bettina La Plant. As you can see, the mud left no way out.
There are three of us stuck on the driveway. Fortunately, my
husband and I had moved our horses out of the pasture to our
upper corral a day earlier. Unfortunately, I now have to shovel
horse manure for five horses twice a day. No small task, I
assure you.

[Film Clip]

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> And while eventually we were able to
move two cars off the property before the drive fully crumbled,
my husband's beloved 1969 Land Cruiser remains trapped with no
way out.

But it's hard to complain about my circumstances. Throughout
the Ojai Valley, tales of more serious destruction are
everywhere. Ojai natives, Marlin and Crystal Clark were among
those hardest hit. They had just moved into this home near
downtown Ojai when the storm unleashed its fury. Crystal was
awakened by a phone call from her mother.

Crystal Clark>> And when she called me that morning, she said,
you guys, it's coming. Just get out of the house. Pack what
you have to and get out.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Within minutes, floodwaters from a
nearby creek filled the neighborhood. This video taken by a
friend of theirs shows the initial destruction.

[Film Clip]

Marlin Clark>> Unfortunately, the water blew through one of the
kids' rooms here and then, throughout the whole house, it was
just tossing stuff. It was unbelievable inside how it actually
moved furniture around.

Crystal Clark>> Flipped the refrigerator on its back.

Marlin Clark>> Yeah, it actually flipped the refrigerator over.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Those appliances that didn't float
away, they pulled into the front yard in hopes of saving them.
But their new furniture and many personal possessions are gone
for good.

Crystal Clark>> I think there are two chairs left. The table
went downstream. The pool, I think, is six or eight feet deep.
This stuff here, it will be a long time before it's hard like
this because right now it's just silt.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> The storm's effect has left no one in
the valley untouched. Each day we locals now get trapped in
traffic tie-ups that make the 405 look like a dream drive. The
forty-five mile an hour speed limit is a thing of the past as
Caltrans crews work to repair this portion of roadway at the
Arnez Grade, now the only way out of town. And, believe it or
not, this traffic flow is an improvement over the three to four
hours it took last week to drive fourteen miles. Think about
it. That's about as long as it takes to drive from Los Angeles
to Stockton.

>> It's crazy. Your life depends on how soon you can get out.

>> It was a three-hour commute to take my daughters to school,
which is about twenty-two miles normally. Then since then, it
is varied from an hour to get them to school to two hours,
depending upon whether the flagman is operating or not.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Traffic so slow, in fact, that I could
actually walk along with the cars and interview drivers like
these guys who've been attempting daily to get to work.

>> There were a couple of times where I got to the end of the
line and just turned around and went home and forgot about work.
Sort of taking a vacation with it.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> In the grocery stores, there were a lot
of empty shelves because, managers told me, people were
stockpiling in the event the remaining road out of town got
blocked again. Hmmm, good point. After hoarding as many
groceries as I could carry, I decided it was time to find
another way out.

In addition to Arnez Grade, there are four other ways to leave
Ojai. My first try? The Ojai Santa Paula Road through the
upper Ojai Valley. So what is happening up in the road? People
can get through?

>> Well, at this point, it's totally impassable. Can't get
through in a vehicle, can't get through on a motorcycle. You
get by on foot, but that's not really going to help any of these
motorists.

[Film Clip]

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> I decided to see for myself and came
upon this mess and it will be this way for up to six months. On
to Plan B. This is Santa Ana Road, a road that bypasses the
main drag out of town. It's now coated in mud from smaller
landslides that led to this. I don't think we'll be getting out
this way either. The prognosis? Three months before it's
passable.

On to Plan C, the 150 through Santa Barbara which allows you to
travel south on the 101 to Ventura and Los Angeles. Hi. Can we
leave Ojai through this way?

>> No, the road's closed.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Next and final stop, the other side of
Highway 33 which would take me through Taft, then to
Bakersfield, then finally south to Los Angeles. Uh-oh. Hi. Is
there any way we can get out of Ojai this way?

>> No.

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> No. Fearing I'd never get this story
filed and unwilling to get trapped in traffic again, I figured
there was only one certain way to get around it all.

[Film Clip]

Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> For Life and Times, I'm Stephanie
O'Neill Noe trying to get out of Ojai.

Val>> And how are things in Ojai these days? Well, they've
taken 7,500 truckloads of dirt off of Santa Ana Road and traffic
has gotten better, although it's still unpleasant. As for
Stephanie's driveway, she's still got to hike in.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most
interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life
and Times".

Toni Guinyard>> Asians and Pacific Islanders are among the
fastest growing ethnic and racial groups living in the state of
California and this study tells us who they are and how they're
doing. We spoke with Stewart Kwoh. He's the President and
Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center
and he talked about what he calls "the myth of the model
minority".

Stewart Kwoh>> What is surprising is that, when you look at the
data for each individual ethnic group, there's really distinct
characteristics and distinct needs. If you put it all together,
Asian Americans look as though they're doing okay, but there's a
stereotype --

Toni Guinyard>> -- It looks as if they're doing better than
okay in some cases.

Stewart Kwoh>> That's true, like household income. If it's
aggregated, it's slightly above white. But when you
disaggregate it, you find significant poverty. For example,
Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders have much higher poverty
rates than any racial group, so we really have to look at the
individual needs and the individual characteristics of the
ethnic groups.

Toni Guinyard>> Now you have a chart behind you. Explain what
this represents.

Stewart Kwoh>> Well, you can see that the Los Angeles County
poverty rate, the rate of eighteen percent. But with Mongs and
Cambodians, you have fifty-one percent and thirty-eight percent
respectively. So what we're trying to show here is what is the
true picture of Asian Pacific American demographics? Where are
Asian Americans at? And from this information on poverty,
language, home ownership rates, educational achievement, we find
that there are very significant needs in these communities that
the stereotype of the model minority really is a myth, that one
has to truly understand the full picture of the community to
know where it's at.

Sometimes what happens is, with stereotypes, people say, well,
that's fine, you're doing okay. We don't have to look at any of
your concerns or needs. So we really want to draw attention to
the real needs. We certainly believe in showing the progress
that has been made, but we also have to look at the distinct
needs. For example, in the household income, what we've found
is that there are more people per family working in the Asian
American community than, say, white families. We've found that,
when you disaggregated this, the per-person income is lower than
the average in the county.

Toni Guinyard>> Once you get all of this data, what do you do
with it? Who is your target audience and how has this been
received?

Stewart Kwoh>> This can be used by schools, for example, with
language proficiency being very low in the Asian American
community. Asian Americans are almost two-thirds foreign-born.
Almost half of the Asian American families in Los Angeles County
have limited English proficiency. Some of the kids speak
English, but the parents do not. And this is an example where
this really becomes crucial. We have an example where a doctor
told us a story where a young child was dying of cancer and
later died of cancer and the family complained to the hospital
later on that nobody told the mother and father that their child
was dying of cancer. The hospital looked at the records and
what they found was that the physician in charge depended on a
younger brother to tell his parents --

Toni Guinyard>> -- to translate essentially.

Stewart Kwoh>> Yes, to translate, and that brother was supposed
to tell his parents that his sister was dying of cancer. He
couldn't do it.

Toni Guinyard>> So he made a choice.

Stewart Kwoh>> He made a choice not to tell them. That was a
tragedy and yet a lot of hospitals, a lot of places in our
society depend on the young child to translate for the parents.
That's just not right. Now by bringing this information to
hospitals, to schools, we can hopefully urge the authorities to
provide that language proficiency, to allow people to
communicate and to understand what is happening in their lives.
So this type of program allows for information to be shared. It
allows schools, hospitals, law enforcement, businesses, elected
officials, to truly understand each community and each ethnic
group. There are a lot of common issues, but there are a lot of
distinct issues and needs as well.

Toni Guinyard>> If you could, give me a few statistics that
came out of this study that you think the general public needs
to be aware of.

Stewart Kwoh>> Well, in the state of California today, there
are 4.8 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. That is,
in the whole state. In Southern California, over fifty percent
of all the Asian Americans live and reside. So there's over two
million or two and a half million Asian Americans in Southern
California from San Diego to Los Angeles County. In the Bay
Area, the Asian American percentage is highest, so Asian
Americans now have become the second largest racial group in the
whole Bay Area region, surpassing Latinos in the year 2000 as a
whole. So this kind of unique information is not readily
available. People don't understand that there's been a huge
growth in the Asian American community.

Toni Guinyard>> An incredible growth.

Stewart Kwoh>> Yes. And there's over twenty distinct ethnic
groups each, as I said, with unique characteristics and distinct
needs. So what we're trying to draw attention to are those
common issues of language, but there are very unique issues of
poverty, language proficiency and other characteristics.

Toni Guinyard>> And finally, what would you like Southern
California to do with all of this information now that you have
compiled it?

Stewart Kwoh>> We want the public to understand who their
neighbors are. We want the various agencies, hospitals and
schools and law enforcement to truly understand what are those
unique needs in each community. It is very unfortunate, but
sometimes we see people through stereotypes and there's really
no room for stereotypes in this diversity. We really have to
understand who people are and then we can get to know them and
get to work together to deal with our common problems.

Toni Guinyard>> Mr. Stewart Kwoh, I feel as if I know you a bit
better and thank you so much for spending a little time with
Life and Times.

Stewart Kwoh>> Thank you, Toni. I really appreciate it.

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

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

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

Val>> Have you ever wanted to step back in time to an era when
civilized people sat around in elegant salons and listened to
the music of harpsichords and violins? Well, you can relive
that era today. In fact, I did a little time-traveling when I
stepped into the Ebell Women's Club on Wilshire Boulevard and
listened to some music from centuries ago.

Its arched portal beckons. Once inside, it's like meandering
through an Italian villa. This Sunday afternoon, people have
gathered to hear a cappella masterpieces from the late fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries by Italian, Spanish and English
composers.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Performing today is the Orlando Consort, a visiting
quartet from the Early Music Center of Great Britain. They're
known not only for their voices, but for their musical
scholarship and authenticity.

[Film Clip]

Val>> This concert is one of a series called "Music in Historic
Sites" sponsored by the DaCamera Society of Mount St. Mary's
College.

Mary Ann Bonino>> It comes from the Italian Musica Da Camera,
which was the original term for chamber music. In the
seventeenth century, they wanted to distinguish chamber music
from music in a church, music in a theatre, and chamber music
was music in a home, in a small room. It was a form of
entertainment.

Val>> Mary Ann Bonino founded the DaCamera Society in 1973.
She has the enviable job of choosing the artists and the venues
for twenty-five concerts a year.

Mary Ann Bonino>> Well, today we have the Orlando Consort which
is a vocal quartet which specializes principally in music of the
Renaissance. They're four of them, each fine singers, but they
also are a terrific ensemble.

[Film Clip]

Mary Ann Bonino>> They know how to really connect with an
audience and they engage them in ways that only somebody with
that kind of background and a great British sense of humor can.

[Film Clip]

Val>> The Orlando Consort adds another element to their
performances. They intersperse the music with bits of history,
readings from letters, like this one about the Black Plague and
a supposed remedy for the horrid disease concocted by the king's
physician.

>> "Only the other day, the king's physician, Dr. Fitzpatrick,
announced that he has made a breakthrough. He proposes to make
a mixture of herb and wax, stuffing it into the stomach of a cat
roasted whole and apply the dripping grease from the said
mixture into the patient's armpits and groin. Good Lord Jesus,
if it is thy will that I should fall ill, I beseech thee that I
should be as far away from Dr. Fitzpatrick as possible."

Val>> How did you get the idea for doing this in historic
places?

Mary Ann Bonino>> Well, I think it came out of the days when I
lived in Europe as a student and saw that they naturally did
concerts in historic places. They didn't think of it as
anything special. These were the buildings that were available
and it was such a wonderful experience to hear music in a
beautiful old building or a church, especially when the music
was related to what the building was about.

Val>> There are three hundred historic locations in the
DaCamera Society's database. Over the years, they've brought
live music to the Guasti Villa on West Adams, the Hotel Bel-
Aire, landmark churches, the Egyptian Theatre, Chinatown, and
elegant private homes.

Fluff McLean>> There are some that we return to all of the time
like the Doheny Mansion which is our home base. That's a pretty
spectacular environment with a Tiffany dome of 2,836 pieces of
gold glass and a room filled with marble and other beautiful
decorations. That's a wonderful and small room in which to hear
chamber music.

Val>> The Ebell of Los Angeles was the city's very first
woman's club started more than a century ago. Fluff McLean is
the current President.

Fluff McLean>> And it was founded by a man in 1894 for women
and the purpose was for educating women. And the women that
actually started in the club were professors' wives from USC,
which is really unusual. First of all, you have to realize that
in the 1890's -- we didn't build this then, but when they
started, women did not have clubs. They had, you know, sewing
circles, social groups and so forth. So for us to be able to
put a club together with women and clubs in the same sentence
was quite a step forward.

Donald Greig>> "These singers were also often composers."

Val>> For early arrivals, the baritone Donald Greig gave an
informal talk, a chance to learn a bit about how music has
changed.

Donald Greig>> "A lot of people start on the piano and one's
image of music often, I think, as a musician derives from the
keyboard. Dizzy Gillespie, the famous trumpeter for example,
said he couldn't improvise unless he could see the tune picked
out on a piano. Now for medieval musicians, their instrument
was a hand by which I mean that the notes, the range of notes,
the gamut indeed from gamma, the lowest note, to ut, the highest
note, was written down when they were choir boys probably in
ink. They would have looked at their hand and they would know
that that step sounded like that and then that step sounded like
that. That's their mental image they would have had of music."

[Film Clip]

Mary Ann Bonino>> When you perform this kind of music in an
architecturally appropriate setting, the acoustic is perfect.
There isn't any such thing as one acoustic fits all, but a
special acoustic for chant, a special acoustic for a Mozart
string quartet, a special acoustic for jazz. So each of these
places has a special atmosphere and a special sound.

Val>> And contrary to common impression, chamber music can be
contemporary.

Mary Ann Bonino>> Jazz is now considered a form of chamber
music. It takes place in social settings where people are
eating, drinking and having a great time, very convivial.

Donald Greig>> "The most illustrious Maria asks me to thank you
greatly for the effort you have made concerning the tenor,
Andrea. He wishes to have him and says that he pays tenors
twelve ducats a month, more than he does for any other voice,
obviously because tenors are more skilled than any other singers
(laughter)."

Mary Ann Bonino>> I think as the world gets bigger and more
media-driven, there's a real need for people to come together
closely in a small environment and get to know each other.

[Film Clip]

Mary Ann Bonino>> I'm very optimistic about the future. We
keep getting new audiences and relatively young audiences, which
is a good sign. As I say, how can you beat it in the
combination? It's something beautiful to look at and something
beautiful to hear. When you hear music in a small and intimate
and elegant environment, it takes on a whole other dimension.
It's incredible to be up close to the really great artists and
hear them perform. That's an experience that happens only with
chamber music.

[Film Clip]

Val>> For more information on upcoming concerts by the DaCamera
Society of Mount St. Mary's College, you can go to their website
at dacamera.org. 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.

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

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Are union jobs and good wages a thing of the past? Not if this
man has his way.

>> It is time. It is so long overdue that we join with our
union allies and either change the AFL-CIO or build something
stronger that can really change workers' lives.

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