 |
HOME |  |
SCHEDULE | |
PROGRAMS | |
KIDS & FAMILY | |
LOCAL | |
SUPPORT KCET | |
ABOUT US | |
SHOP KCET |  |
| About Us | Contact Us | |
 |
|
 |
          |
|
|
 |
 |
||
|
|
Life & Times Transcript
01/18/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- She's taken a little-known office and turned it into a position of power. What makes Laura Chick tick? Laura Chick>> I'd prefer not to annoy people, but it just seems to be part of my job. So I guess my attitude is, okay, well, get out of my way. Val Zavala>> And then, its three billion mile journey has ended, but the real work of the Stardust mission has just begun. These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> Her job is to make sure that your tax dollars aren't being wasted and she's made headlines doing just that. Her name is Laura Chick and she is Los Angeles's City Controller and a call from her auditors is enough to make any city department very nervous. Toni Guinyard spent a day with this sixty-one year old dynamo. [Film Clip] Toni Guinyard>> She's a one-time stay-at-home mom turned political force. After more than a decade in Los Angeles city politics, Laura Chick is where she wants to be with exactly what she wants the most: power to change city government. Laura Chick>> I'm the person going around City Hall and throughout the city asking the following two questions and answering them: How are we doing and how can we do it better? Toni Guinyard>> Chick is the Los Angeles City Controller. She describes herself as a pit bull, a taxpayer watchdog keeping her eyes on how the city spends its money. Laura Chick>> It's been far too long since someone shined the light of day in some of the dark corners of Los Angeles city government. Toni Guinyard>> Audit by audit, meeting by meeting, Chick is out to change how you view what it is she does. She'd love nothing more than to talk about her granddaughter, Morgan, but people inside city politics see her tougher side. Chick is talked about with both respect and disdain. You anger a lot of people. Laura Chick>> Yeah, I do. I annoy a lot of people, I think. Toni Guinyard>> Annoy, anger. You really get under their skin, yet you continue doing it. Laura Chick>> Well, here's the very core reason why. Because I don't work for them. I work for the people of Los Angeles and I don't think I'm annoying them. I don't think I'm angering them. I think actually I'm doing my job the way they want me to do my job. So the people I'm annoying, I'm sorry. You know, I'm actually -- Toni Guinyard>> -- are you really sorry, though? Laura Chick>> Well, I'm not sorry enough to stop doing what I'm doing, but, you know, I'd prefer not to annoy people, but it just seems to be part of my job. So I guess my attitude is, okay, well, get out of my way. Toni Guinyard>> And that's the classic example of Laura Chick on Laura Chick. She is aggressive and makes no apologies for being so, not now or when she was on the City Council. [Film Clip] Toni Guinyard>> She first ran for a city council seat in 1993 when she was forty-nine years old. Prior to being sworn into office, Chick raised two daughters, spent six years managing a family-owned clothing store, earned a Masters degree in social work and then stepped into the political arena. She served two four-year terms on the City Council, a position she says had clear restrictions. Laura Chick>> On the City Council, you have to have eight votes to do anything. You have to get permission. You have to get votes. You have to get along. If you step out of line too much, they'll kill you. I mean, you won't get anything accomplished. You won't get anything for your council district. Toni Guinyard>> After serving on the Los Angeles City Council, Chick walked away with the ultimate insider's view of City Hall politics and how the city of Los Angeles does business, the good and the bad. But that's just one of the reasons why she decided to run for the office of Controller. Laura Chick>> As I watched charter reform and the public voting to change the city charter and I watched that new power of performance audits being given to the Controller's office, I said to myself, "Oh, I want to do that." Toni Guinyard>> Chick was elected City Controller in 2001 and, with eighty-two percent of the votes, she was re-elected in 2005. The audits earned her a reputation and caught the attention of the news media. Laura Chick>> I have been accused of being a media hound. I have been accused of, you know, getting too much good press. But I have to tell you, I absolutely understand the power of the media and I need to get the message out to the public. If I can't get people to pay attention to my audits, then they're not worth the paper they're written on. Toni Guinyard>> When Laura Chick talks, people listen most of the time. On a Monday morning at a park, Chick scheduled a news conference at the climax of a trio of audits of the city Department of Recreation and Parks. Laura Chick>> "I mean, it is outrageous that we have swimming pools that kids can't use." Toni Guinyard>> You could count the number of reporters on one hand. Does that frustrate you when no one listens? Laura Chick>> I think it's one of the big challenges for elected leadership to try and get the message out and it's very difficult to predict what media will and will not cover or what people are going to pay attention to. Toni Guinyard>> Her quest to find waste and get people to pay attention has left Chick in a somewhat awkward position. Laura Chick>> My audits have caused distress to people who have been to my home for dinner, but I can't and I will not turn away from publishing reports that are negative because they might be about someone I know and like. Is there anyone sacred that I would never touch? No, I don't have rules like that. I have the opposite. I have to go where the audit takes me. Toni Guinyard>> Among the places the audits have taken Chick and her thirty-member audit team are inside Los Angeles World Airports, the Port of Los Angeles, and the Department of Water and Power. Laura Chick>> There's something I found in all that absolutely was wrong and that was the way in which multi-million dollar contracts were being awarded to private sector companies. Toni Guinyard>> Those findings have had a huge impact inside City Hall, but a Los Angeles Times article based on the DWP's payment for bottled water is what really struck a nerve with the general public. Laura Chick>> The idea that they are touting our good quality of water and spending over thirty thousand dollars a year to buy Sparkletts bottled water for their employees, there's something very wrong with that picture. Toni Guinyard>> Chick decides which departments will be audited based on risk assessments for liability, reports from whistleblowers and sometimes simple requests. And there is a rhythm to what she does. Audit, make recommendations, track implementation of the recommendations, and sometimes circle back and do it again. Laura Chick>> But there's a very specific reason why I do that. Because I don't trust them. Toni Guinyard>> She has her sights set on city pension funds, the fire and police departments, and the Departments of Transportation and Building Safety. But it's her focus on the Los Angeles Unified School District that's getting the most attention. Laura Chick>> I'm asking. Okay, send me all of these audits for the last five years, but more importantly and what I'm really interested in, send me what you've done in response to those audits. Toni Guinyard>> Are you determined to do that audit whether the district wants you to or not? Laura Chick>> Well, I'm not going away. Toni Guinyard>> That from a woman who describes herself as a very nice person who can be tough as nails. Laura Chick>> They keep saying, "Go, girl", Atta, girl. You know, we are so happy that you're there. At least we can count on you to tell the truth." That really makes me feel good. It makes it all worthwhile. Toni Guinyard>> I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> The idea is mind-boggling. Launch a spacecraft no bigger than I am out into space, have it travel billions of miles and intersect with a comet, then come back to earth and deliver comet dust safely to the ground. Well, that's the mission of Stardust and it was an unqualified success. The Stardust mission began in February 1999. A rocket launched a satellite with a unique mission: return to earth seven years later with dust from a comet two hundred forty million miles from earth. And how do you capture comet particles? With this. A material called aerogel. It looks like some special effect from a movie. Don Yeomans>> This is silicon dioxide that's 99.8 percent nothing. Val Zavala>> What does it feel like? Don Yeomans>> Well, it doesn't feel like anything. I can't feel it. It's just like smoke, solid smoke. Val Zavala>> Really light and very delicate. Don Yeomans>> It's unbelievable stuff. Val Zavala>> But it's real strong? Don Yeomans>> Yeah. It's very strong. You can actually collapse on it very tough. Val Zavala>> Don Yeomans is a comet scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab in La Canada. Don Yeomans>> It's very strong. Val Zavala>> Strong enough to capture cosmic particles while traveling thirteen thousand miles an hour. And by the way, in space, that's the slow lane. Once in orbit, the spacecraft circled the sun twice to get in synch with the comet. It took five years of orbiting before the spacecraft rendezvoused with one of the oldest features in our solar system. Finally in January 2004, it sent these images back. And how big is this comet? Don Yeomans>> Oh, about three miles. It's roughly spherical. It's made up of water, ice for the most part, and imbedded dust particles and it's a very weak structure. That was one of the major conclusions from the Stardust mission is that there were cliffs of about a hundred meters tall and this material would stand up much like a soufflé would stand up. You can poke your hole into a weak soufflé and you can have some pretty high ridges, but it's very weak material. The type of weakness we're talking about is very loose snow. Val Zavala>> And while sailing through the comet's surrounding dust, the tennis racket-like probe filled with aerogel opened up. Don Yeomans>> It comes in just like shooting BBs into a styrofoam cooler. The dust particles come in at six kilometers a second, roughly six times the speed of a high-speed rifle shot. These dust particles that are about the size of particles in cigarette smoke come in and they're captured by this very under-dense material and held without being broken up. Val Zavala>> Now for the trip home, but not before the other side of the aerogel panel pocketed some regular old stardust just for comparison. The return trip would take two years. You have to have a lot of patience to be a comet scientist. What was your biggest fear about what might go wrong? Don Yeomans>> Well, space is a very hostile place, of course. You've got particles that could take out the spacecraft at any time. You've got instrument problems that can't be fixed in the laboratory. You have to try and fix them through the radio system of the spacecraft. And there were some problems with contamination of the lenses of the telescope, but they were fixed by actually turning the heaters on and disbursing some of the contaminants that actually laid down on the lens of the camera. So all of this was done remotely and successfully and the mission went like clockwork. Val Zavala>> And on January 15, 2006, the final stage began. The spacecraft approached earth and released the capsule containing the comet dust. The capsule, without any propulsion of its own, was drawn toward the earth, reaching speeds of twenty-nine thousand miles an hour, faster than any space object has ever re-entered the earth. The friction raised its temperatures to forty-nine hundred degrees. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> This is how the capsule looks through infrared cameras. In a previous mission, the parachute failed to open and the capsule came crashing to earth. Now hundreds of scientists are praying that this time the parachute would work. >> "We have confirmation of the main chute opening (applause)." >> All stations, the chute is open. We're coming down slowly." Don Yeomans>> That was the release of all the anxiety and the applause in the control room and the scientists -- Val Zavala>> -- I know all you scientists can be awfully restrained. Don Yeomans>> (Laughter) Well, I don't think so. Not in this case. The scientists were extremely happy. They were yipping as well and the navigators were going nuts, so it was a good time here at JPL. Val Zavala>> The capsule's cargo is microscopic. Most of the particles are about one-tenth of the width of a human hair and scientists from around the world will be cutting them into even smaller pieces as they study these clues from our cosmic past. Don Yeomans>> These comets, of course, are the bits and pieces that make up the outer solar system from four and a half billion years ago. So if we understand the makeup of these particles and the temperature environment under which they formed, we understand how the solar system formed some four and a half billion years ago. Val Zavala>> So it's really like an historical record. Dan Yeomans>> It is. In more ways than one, it's an historical record as to how the outer solar system formed and we're going to archive some of these particles in the curation facilities at Johnson Space Center so that, in ten, fifteen or twenty years from now when our instrumentation is that much better, we can pull out some other particles and subject them to these additional tests and analyses. Val Zavala>> Scientists will be comparing these samples from the very outer reaches of our solar system to materials in meteorites that come from the inner solar system. All this will add to our knowledge of what space was like when our solar system was in its infancy. Don Brownlee>> "We did this mission to collect the most primitive materials we could in the solar system. I mean, we went to a comet that formed at the edge of the solar system. It's the same class of body as the planet Pluto, except it was smaller and it was well-preserved. It formed far from the sun under very cold conditions and we're confident that it was made out of the initial building blocks of our solar system." Joe Vellinga>> "The real touchdown is when we open it up and get the aerogel grid removed from the canister and hand it off to the science team who will be looking at it and figuring out how many particles we really did capture." Val Zavala>> As for the spacecraft, it propelled itself away from the earth after dropping off its cargo and is headed back toward the sun awaiting further orders. Don Yeomans>> The spacecraft is healthy. There is additional fuel and there is an announcement of opportunity for future missions. I would be surprised if someone didn't propose to use this healthy spacecraft to swing around the earth and retarget it for yet another comet. Val Zavala>> The total miles traveled on this mission? Nearly three billion. And how long would it take you to drive that far at seventy miles an hour nonstop? A mere four thousand, eight hundred ninety two years. Add a few hundred years if you're on the 405. I'm Val Zavala for Life and Times. Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> She's more than an artist. She's a visionary. June Wayne revolutionized print-making. Now at age eighty-eight, her influence is still being felt. We thought we'd open up the Life and Times Vault and take a look at a June Wayne retrospective offered by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Patt Morrison is our tour guide. Patt Morrison>> This is the art of June Wayne. Meticulous, exquisite, always original. She was a child in Chicago when she found art in a crayon box. By the time she was fifteen, she'd left high school out of boredom and, by the time she was seventeen, she had had her first solo exhibition. I'd like to ask about your artistic acuities. I read that, at the tender age of thirteen, you noticed that the comics are composed of colored dots which, in later years, would become pop art and of course very lucrative. What was it about your vision that even at that tender age you could see these quantum qualities that we're talking about? June Wayne>> Fortunately for me, I was nearsighted (laughter). I would read the funnies. You know, I would be on my stomach on the living room rug. I was a lot younger than thirteen at the time and I noticed that to get a green, you see there are all of these blue and yellow dots, and orange was yellow and red dots, all this kind of stuff. So I began making pictures out of dots. It had a considerable impact in two ways, one on the style with which I would work that everything would be broken up and coming together. The idea that large things are made of small things and that small things can make large things. These were very impressive ideas to me when I was a child. Patt Morrison>> The depression that ravaged so many millions of lives nonetheless gave artists the chance to create with the Works Project Administration and June Wayne was among them. When World War II began, Wayne came to California. As an illustrator for the aircraft industry, she found a curious beauty in the confluence of art and aeronautics technology and soon after found the same appeal in science and biology. In World War II, you worked as an aircraft illustrator. Not Rosy the Riveter, but Eileen the Illustrator. How did that influence your later work? June Wayne>> Very, very powerfully in that, in order to do it, I had to learn a great deal about the rules of perspective and that, as soon as you projected the image in perspective, you had to start tricking the outside to make it look right because the rules wouldn't make it look right, you see And that lead me to consideration of vision and how we look. I went into the idea of optics just because perspective wouldn't hold. What was it that made it look right? And that caused me to start looking at things a different way. Patt Morrison>> In time, she found that, to create a certain optical effect, there was only one way to do it. A lithograph. A print made from a drawing on stone. But the art of lithography was lost in this country, so Wayne traveled to Europe to study with its masters. And in 1959 back in Los Angeles, Wayne founded her own studio, the now fabled Tamarind Lithography Workshop, and lithography in the United States was reborn. The physicist, Sir Fred Hoyle, used the term big bang derisively to describe the origins of the universe. And yet here we are sitting at the big bang, Tamarind Studios, the big bang of lithography and print making on the west coast for the last forty years. How did that come about? June Wayne>> Well, I had been making prints in Europe and that was in the late fifties and the Ford Foundation at that time was looking for a policy of what they should be doing with their money in the visual arts. We had quite an interchange on what the foundation should be doing. I said, "For instance, American artists do not have the artisanal resource. We don't have foundries. We don't have weavers. We don't have printers to work with us in lithography and all this kind of stuff. And so eventually he said to me, "Well, tell us what we ought to do" and I did and they did and then we did and this whole print-making thing just burgeoned. Patt Morrison>> Throughout the 1960's, two hundred artists trained at Tamarind. But in order to teach them, Wayne had to put her own art, her own inventiveness, on hold. Then after ten years, she passed the workshop on to the University of New Mexico and turned back to the world of her own art. She found inspiration in the smallest worlds and the biggest, the human genome project and the space program. As science and technology have evolved, so too has June Wayne's art. You've always been intrigued by the sciences, by Sputnik, by the structure of DNA, by magnetic fields and by subatomic particles and you coined the phrase "quantum aesthetics" to describe this aspect of your work. It's science on a small scale. June Wayne>> Well, for one thing, I'm only five-feet three. Patt Morrison>> So you're a quantum yourself (laughter). June Wayne>> I'm a small quantum myself. It's a good phrase. It's at least forty years that I have been interested in the interplay between the aesthetics of science and the aesthetics of art. Very often you see the image developing out of the modules which transmit energy from one to another. I try to make the invisible possible to see. Everything is a form of energy, not just mental and social energy, but also genes and magnetic fields and particles and all of that. Maybe this kind of thinking is what gives my art its look. Patt Morrison>> Let's take a virtual walk through some of your work. The Palomar Suite which sounds like a lovely composition of music. June Wayne>> It was intended as a tribute to all of the observatories. There are so many in them. I did the series on Palomar, a tribute to it as though I was looking at California from space. And I think it is the most California-like images I've ever done because the colors are the wonderful colors that we get out here, thanks in part to pollution, you know. So this suite is one in which you really have to say which is the detail and which is the feel. Patt Morrison>> You have a long history of political activism in women's issues and women's vision, the Joan of Art seminar, the Dorothy series about your mother and her life, Rosalynn Franklin, the scientist who was cheated by her own death out of a piece of the Nobel Prize for DNA. What is it that so engages you about women in art and science? June Wayne>> The fact is that I was born a girl and I had to live my life as we all do. It was fine when I was a little girl being an artist, but if you want to be a professional, then that was the game for boys. But there were many other ways. When I was working as a designer in New York, the problem of the kinds of services my boss expected as part of my working day. Of course, that would never happen today if it hadn't been for feminists. But in those days, you ran and you knew how to get around the desk pretty fast (laughter). Patt Morrison>> Is there a quality of day-in day-out heroism to women who just lead their lives? June Wayne>> I think every person who gets up in the morning and makes it through the day without being hit by a brick is a hero and I don't think I was anymore heroic than anybody else (laughter). Life is difficult. Val Zavala>> June Wayne has donated a large collection of lithographs to Rutgers University where she's a Visiting Professor. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> 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. Sponsored in part by:  | |
|
Home | Features | Arts | Health/Science | OC Edition | L&T Blog | Archives | About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use |