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Life & Times Transcript
02/02/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- The Chino Valley's wide flat landscape is ideal for farming, but now some people are eying it differently. Nathan de Boom>> So we're going to see this huge transition from really cows to cars, pastures to pavement, and it's going to be -- I think we're kind of on the cusp of a really changing landscape here in southern California. Val Zavala>> And then, they're the Energizer Bunnies of the space program. These two Mars Rovers just keep rolling along. What are they teaching us about the Red Planet? 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>> Today we take you to the Inland Empire where a twenty-first century land grab is happening. Dairy farmers are discovering that their milk cows can be cash cows. Is that good news? Not for everyone. Sam Louie takes us to the Chino Valley where dramatic changes are happening. Sam Louie>> For the past fifteen years, Tom Alger has been running one of the Inland Empire's well-known dairies. His thousand cows are milked twice a day with the milk sold to milk producer, Altadena Dairy. The job of a dairyman is exhausting. Tom and his crew work every day from sunup to sundown. Tom Alger>> We get up about 5:30. We start feeding cows at 5:30. We're done about 9 or 9:30 with the feeding chores. The milkers come in at 9:00. They milk until about 4:00 and then we start again at 3:30 and start feeding and doing the same process again in the afternoon. Sam Louie>> The tradition started with his father. Tom Alger>> My dad was a dairyman until I was about twelve and then he decided, for health reasons, to stop the dairy. It was always a dream of mine and, when I was about thirty-five, we started it and it's been great ever since. Sam Louie>> Tom would also love to pass the dairy on to his sons, a third generation of Algers, but the only way he can do that is to say goodbye to southern California. Tom leases this one hundred acres of land and the property is now in escrow, soon to be sold to a developer. Tom Alger>> Everybody is either selling or in the process of selling or has moved already, and it's time to leave. Sam Louie>> The landowner has given Tom two years' notice. He's already bracing for the difficult transition, knowing he'll have to leave California which has gotten too expensive for dairy farming. Tom Alger>> This is where I grew up. This is where my family is growing up, where my friends are. I'm fifty years old. It's kind of scary to start new in a whole different area of the country. Sam Louie>> While dairy farmers like Tom move out of the area, dozens of developers are moving in. The Inland Empire cities of Chino, Ontario, Corona and beyond are seeing dramatic growth as single family homes sprout up and squeeze in right next to existing dairies. As recently as five years ago, the dairy industry here in the Inland Empire was a billion dollar business. Nowadays that revenue has been cut in half and some experts predict that it could disappear altogether if development continues at its pace. Nathan de Boom>> We've seen basically a gold rush when it's come to land development here in the Chino basin. I think, if you're to go east of Los Angeles, this Chino Valley area is one of the last large tracts of really undeveloped flatland in southern California. Sam Louie>> Nathan de Boom is head of the Milk Producers Council which represents the region's dairy farmers. Nathan de Boom>> We're seeing a huge land rush and a lot of our dairy farmers are selling out. A lot of them are in escrow agreements. In fact, I think if we look at all the dairies here in Ontario and Chino, about seventy-five percent to eighty percent of them are in escrow right now and being scheduled to be developed. Sam Louie>> de Boom says that, at its peak back in the early 1980s, Chino Valley's concentration of dairies made it the largest milk-producing region in the country with about four hundred fifty dairies. Today, there are less than two hundred. Nathan de Boom>> What we're going to see in the next five to ten years is, in the same area where we have over a hundred thousand cows, we're going to have over a hundred thousand people. So we're going to see this huge transition from really cows to cars, pastures to pavement. Sam Louie>> But the change can no longer be avoided. Syp Vander Dussen is a real estate broker. He works with the dairymen when they're ready to sell to the eager developers. Syp Vander Dussen>> There's probably about half a dozen that are very aggressive and very interested in this area. Sam Louie>> Vander Dussen says that he's a former dairyman himself. He's watched the Inland Empire transform itself from a rural landscape into what he considers an urban oasis. Syp Vander Dussen>> It's just a wonderful area to live. Freeways all around, access to everything that a person could want. We're two hours from San Diego, an hour from Los Angeles. We're an hour from snow. We're an hour from the beach. The Inland Empire is exactly that. It's becoming an empire. Sam Louie>> And milk producers are discovering that dairy cows can become cash cows. Over the past ten years, the price of an acre of good land has gone up tenfold. Syp Vander Dussen>> That land sold for fifty to sixty thousand dollars an acre. Today, on a typical two to three year transaction, we're looking at a half million dollars per acre. Bill Van Leeuwen>> My barn used to be right there, our parlor, then we had cows in a circle around it. Sam Louie>> Bill Van Leeuwen cashed out two years ago. Bill Van Leeuwen>> I guess it's just a matter of time when everybody lets go of something, but it was very difficult. Sam Louie>> The former dairy farmer near Corona sold forty acres to a developer for more than ten million dollars. Bill Van Leeuwen>> The prices of land around here are just absolutely unbelievable. We certainly didn't get the top of the value, but we certainly did it at the time when it worked for us to make that move. Sam Louie>> So the sixteen hundred acres that once grazed the open land in front of Bill's house have been replaced with this. Bill Van Leeuwen>> They're building a hundred nineteen homes and they're all single family dwellings. Across the street there, they're building a high school that will house four thousand students. Next to that is a junior high school and beyond that is a new grade school, so that will serve all of these homes here. I think everybody likes to own a piece of America, so I think it's a very positive thing. Sam Louie>> But not everyone is profiting. For some businesses, the disappearance of dairies spells doom. Bernie Gabrieles>> Well, for a tank like this, it's a four thousand gallon tank, so this one's probably worth ten thousand dollars right here. Sam Louie>> Bernie Gabrieles has been in the dairy equipment and service business for almost fifty years. This past December, he laid off almost all of his thirty employees. He's now busy selling his inventory. Bernie Gabrieles>> The handwriting is on the wall, so it's something that we've had make the adjustment. Like I say, I would like to keep doing it, but we just weren't able to keep going any more. [Film Clip] Bernie Gabrieles>> I like the way the water falls. It makes a lot of good noise. Sam Louie>> But Bernie is making a transition, selling locally produced top-quality fountains. Bernie Gabrieles>> I'd like to keep, you know, selling fountains. That's something we started in August or July of last year and something I very much enjoy, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make a living doing that. So that's something that remains to be seen. Sam Louie>> And what remains to be seen for Tom Alger is what life will be like in Texas. That's where he has decided to move his family so the family tradition can live on. Tom Alger>> If my sons weren't interested in the dairy business, I probably wouldn't do it. But they really like the dairy. They love working with me on the dairy. I love working with them, so we're willing to take our roots and move to another part of the country. Sam Louie>> And as suburban development spreads across the Inland Empire, it's clear that dairies are a dying breed and the area's claim to fame as the nation's largest concentration of dairy farms will soon be another chapter in Chino Valley history. I'm Sam Louie 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>> How often is it that a gadget that's supposed to last for three months lasts for two years? Well, thanks to the engineering geniuses at JPL, two Rovers on the surface of Mars are still going strong two years after they've landed. Jeffrey Kaye has the story about what they found and what it means. Jeffrey Kaye>> For two years, a pair of NASA robots have been exploring the inhospitable surface of Mars, surviving sub-zero temperatures, punishing terrain and the vehicles' own expected demise. The Rovers, really mini science labs, arrived on the Red Planet in January of 2004. When they rolled onto the Martian surface, scientists and engineers had scheduled them for only a three-month mission. But the Rovers, one named Spirit and the other Opportunity, have left their predicted life spans in the dust and kept on rolling. Jim Erickson>> The vehicles have really surprised everybody. Jeffrey Kaye>> Jim Erickson is Project Manager for the nine hundred million dollar Mars Rover Expedition. Jim Erickson>> They've been doing a great job. They've proven to be far more capable and more long-lasting than any of us ever dreamed of. I mean, I was one of the more optimistic ones that thought that, gee, we might get six months out of these things. Jeffrey Kaye>> NASA engineers expected the Rovers, which rely on solar panels to generate onboard electricity, would eventually sputter to a stop and die as they received less sunlight during the short cold days of Martian winters. But back on earth, the Rovers' operators learned how to adapt and keep the power flowing, as Erickson explained to NewsHour producer, Saul Gonzalez. Jim Erickson>> Once we lasted long enough to actually understand how these vehicles worked, we would find new ways of keeping them in the position of having more power. We would park the Rovers every day sort of on the most northerly tilt that we could find to face the solar panels closer to an upright position where they'd get the maximum efficiency from the sun that they could. Jeffrey Kaye>> Spirit, the first of the two vehicles to arrive on the Red Planet, has journeyed more than three miles from its landing site in the Gusev Crater. Opportunity, which landed in a vast flatlands area called Meridiani planum, has racked up over four miles on its trip. Together, the Rovers' cameras have sent back nearly a hundred forty thousand pictures. Working on opposite sides of Mars, the twin robots' instruments have probed and analyzed rocks and soil all with one primary mission: to look for signs that water, an essential building block of life, once existed on the planet's surface. Matt Golombek>> We found compelling evidence that Mars was warm and wet at a time when life started here on earth. Jeffrey Kaye>> Matt Golombek heads the Rover Project's science operation team. He says his claim of a once warm and wet Mars is based on the geology the Rovers have encountered, particularly Opportunity. Matt Golombek>> The evidence from Opportunity is unambiguous, I would argue (laughter). It shows rocks that are evaporites. Effectively, they form when sea water evaporates away typically in hot and dry climates and leaves behind the minerals that are in solution in the water, and the rocks that we found at Meridiani are tell-tale signs that liquid water pooled and sat at the surface for significant periods of time at about three and a half billion years ago. Jeffrey Kaye>> Scientists are uncertain about how much water Mars had in its past and where it was. Matt Golombek>> One possibility is that you had groundwater table that fluctuated locally and that created the environment in which the materials were deposited. There was no ocean elsewhere and it may have been intermittently wet and dry. Another interpretation that's possible is that you actually filled up the northern plains and you had an ocean that was kilometers deep (laughter) on Mars at that time. Jeffrey Kaye>> Many scientists believe Mars still holds much water in the form of ice below the surface. Beyond the hunt for clues to water, the Rovers are also sending back valuable information about present-day Martian weather patterns and the planet's more recent geological history. As Opportunity and Spirit continue their journeys, Mission personnel are increasingly adventurous about where they send the Rovers. Jim Erickson>> We've expanded the envelope of what we would consider to have the Rovers actually even do. Instead of the nice flat gentle perch with some rocks on a terrain, we now fully expect these things to do up-slopes, into sand dunes, you name it. Jeffrey Kaye>> But the robotic explorers are starting to show their age and ailments, from a bad wheel on Opportunity to a worn-out rock-cutting tool aboard Spirit. Jim Erickson>> So it's sort of like we're into middle age, we're looking forward to old age and we're trying to make it a nice graceful old age. But at the same time, we really want to wear these things out. Our whole goal is to get as much bang for the buck as we can. Jeffrey Kaye>> Erickson acknowledges the Rovers could go dead at any moment, but he believes they still have many more Martian miles to travel. Jim Erickson>> In the end of their days years from now, they'll be creaking down to try and get that one last glimpse into a new crater, and that's the right way for them to go. Saul Gonzalez>> Years from now? Jim Erickson>> Well, we'll see what happens. We've gone two years. You always say that the best prediction of the future is the past, so I wouldn't be surprised to see these things a year or two from now still moving around. Jeffrey Kaye>> In the days ahead, Spirit's on its way to investigate a geological feature dubbed "Home Plate". Opportunity, meanwhile, is steering a course to the edge of a large crater named "Victoria". I'm Jeffrey Kaye 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. Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week, "A Good Woman", stars Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Wilkinson. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> We're joined this week by film critics Andy Klein of City Beat and Valley Beat, and Jean Oppenheimer of New Times. Well, Andy, was "A Good Woman" any good? Andy Klein>> Uh, no (laughter). I shouldn't say it was no good. It wasn't very good. This is another adaptation of Oscar Wilde's classic play, "Lady Windermere's Fan", which has been done about a dozen times or probably more. Best by Ernst Lubitsch in 1925 and everyone should rent that. But in this version, they've changed it and some of the changes are okay. They've moved it up to the 1930s, they've made Lord and Lady Windermere into Americans presumably to accommodate the casting of Scarlett Johansson as Lady Windermere and also Helen Hunt as the "other woman" in the story. This is a sort of combination farce melodrama. I thought Scarlett Johansson acquitted herself okay, as well as Stephen Campbell Moore who plays her potential lover. But for me, Helen Hunt was the real weak point here. She's done good work, but she's so miscast as this sophisticated world-weary kind of woman that, every moment she was on the screen, all my suspension of disbelief just disappeared. Larry Mantle>> Jean, did you agree? Jean Oppenheimer>> No, I didn't. I actually thought that Helen Hunt did a pretty good job. I always think of her as a very contemporary actress and I don't think she was great in this film, but I think she was quite good. On the other hand, I didn't think Scarlett Johansson did a good job at all. To me, she flounces about. I mean, her voice, the way she recites her lines, trying to be very girlish. I just didn't think she could carry it off at all. The way she walked, the way she sort of stuck her chest out, all these things were things that I think she saw as being girlish, but which didn't work to me. I do want to say that Tom Wilkinson was wonderful in this film and I think he had very good chemistry with Helen Hunt and, of course, it's hard to beat Oscar Wilde's one-liners, and the settings are beautiful. I mean, this was shot in private villas in Rome and on the coast, and it's hard to beat that. Larry Mantle>> Our second film this week is the romantic comedy, "Something New". It stars Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Andy, "Something New"? Andy Klein>> This is really better than it has any right to be. It's a standard issue romantic comedy with the hook here being that it's interracial with Sanaa Lathan playing a very high-powered accountant and Simon Baker playing the white guy who's doing her landscape architecture, and you know that stuff is going to happen between them. The joke here is that, as opposed to the clichés that are in every other film like this, he's the one laid-back character who's in touch, you know, with his inner self. He's going to help all the up-tight black people relax and that is pretty clever. What surprised me was just how funny it was. They get a lot of mileage out of what is not the world's most original premise and I went in totally as a skeptic and I really quite enjoyed this. Larry Mantle>> Our third film this week, "World's Fastest Indian", gives us a bio pick with Anthony Hopkins portraying motorcycle racer, Burt Munro. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Jean, this film had an earlier release for Academy qualification. Now it's going wide. What do you think of the "World's Fastest Indian"? Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, Anthony Hopkins plays a real live character named Burt Munro who was a New Zealander and who wanted to set a new land speed record for motorcycle -- not racing, but just sort of like motorcycle driving. He went to Utah for this and he was using an old motorcycle that was called an Indian, hence the title of the film. Hopkins is supposed to play this lovable old coot who's just open to everything in life and everybody falls in love with him. Everybody except me. I found him a bit irritating and boring. A lot of people have really liked this film. He does a good job, but I really just found it -- maybe because I'm not that into motorcycle racing, it just didn't do anything for me. Larry Mantle>> And finally this week, director Lars von Trier's film, "Manderlay". It's a sequel to his earlier movie, "Dogville", but features some recasting. The story revolves around a 1930s era plantation where slavery is still practiced. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Jean, what did you think of "Manderlay"? Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, I went in predisposed to like it because I had really liked "Dogville", which I found to be very provocative, very inventively staged and really very well acted especially by Nicole Kidman and Paul Bettany. But I didn't like the new film, "Manderlay", at all, although it tackles a somewhat similar subject matter. I found it to be tedious, quite offensive in many ways and I didn't think the acting was very good. For one thing, Bryce Dallas Howard who was so good in the film, "The Village", really just to me does not have the emotional weight and complexity that Nicole Kidman, who played the same character in "Dogville", had. I just didn't think she could carry off sort of the conflicts that we were supposed to find in Grace's character. Von Trier's specialty is his camera work which is shaky camera, a lot of close-ups. It really makes me nauseous. I don't like it. In "Dogville", it didn't bother me because I was so taken with the story line and with the acting and with the staging. Here, it's bothersome. I also found a lot of the story, particularly the mindset and actions of some of the black characters, to be offensive. I know that von Trier is sort of equal opportunity when it comes to showing people as being stupid or not likable, but perhaps because of this country's history of racism and the problems I think we still have, that part made me really uncomfortable. Larry Mantle>> Andy, what did you think? Andy Klein>> Well, I actually found it closer to "Dogville". I mean, I have sort of the same objections to both of them, I think, and the same pluses for both of them. Von Trier is a director who I like the most whose films I don't want to see a second time the most. I'll never sit through "Dogville" again even though I admire many of its qualities. The same thing is true here. The film has the advantage of being about forty-five minutes shorter which, given the "Dogville" three-hour length, that's a great thing. But by the end of the film, he's lecturing us and that really bothered me. I mean, the audience for this film knows about American racism and it's great to elucidate certain points in the drama. But kind of at the end, to wrap it up by lecturing the audience on how, you know, just how screwed up they are struck me as way too much. It was just not really as satisfying then, as a whole, as "Dogville" was. Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC and for our critics, Jean Oppenheimer of New Times and Andy Klein of City Beat and Valley Beat, we invite you to join us next week at this same time for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times. Val Zavala>> Of course, you can hear a full hour of FilmWeek every Friday morning at eleven a.m. on KPCC public radio. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you tomorrow. 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:  | |
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