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Life & Times Transcript
06/07/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- With images of this wildfire still burned in our mind, is this any time for cutbacks in firefighting? Peter Brierty>> The federal government has to look at this from their perspective, but on our front country here, we have upwards of ninety thousand properties and, on any weekend, we'll have a couple hundred thousand folks in our mountain communities. Val Zavala>> And then, did you bother to vote? Do you even care who won? We asked an expert to dissect the results of the election. It's all straight ahead 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. With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. Val Zavala>> Is this the time to be cutting back on fire protection just as the summer months are heating up? Well, like it or not, the cuts are here along with some good news and some new fire regulations that will affect every homeowner in California. Roger Cooper has the story. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> It's that dangerous time of year again, the months when southern California braces for the sight of smoke plumes in the air and flames in the forest. We're back in fire season. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> Fire season 2003 looked like this, and San Bernardino County fought some of the biggest and most destructive fires in its history. Almost a thousand homes burned to the ground, six people died, and more than forty thousand people had to be evacuated down from the mountain, a feat accomplished in twenty-four hours flat. So where do we stand this year? The picture, according to fire officials, is mixed. On the one hand, a giant new firefighting airplane may be swooping down on fires. And on the other hand, federal cutbacks are in the works. The federal cutbacks involve the San Bernardino National Forest. The U.S. Forest Service plans to field fewer fire engines this year. Instead of twenty-five fire trucks, there would be about twenty on weekends and only about fifteen on weekdays. The San Bernardino Sun railed against the cutbacks in an editorial, saying "A federal plan to reduce the state's firefighting attack capabilities by up to fifty percent in some cases is dumbfounding." But the fire chief for the San Bernardino National Forest, Mike Dietrich, explains the cuts this way. Mike Dietrich>> We've made a conscious decision based on our budgets that we have available to us to reduce not the staffing per se, but their coverage levels. We're still staffing the same number of fire engines except five days per week instead of seven on the San Bernardino National Forest. We still have the same number of hotshot crews, the same number of aircraft, the same number of dozers, as we have had in prior years. Roger Cooper>> That's for federal crews. Will state fire agencies follow suit and cut back? Mike Padilla is Chief of Aviation for the California Department of Forestry, the CDF. Mike Padilla>> Well, CDF is not. CDF is looking at continuing with its staffing and maybe even increasing it. We look at our responsibilities down here to maintain them at the highest level of preparedness and resources available to fight fires down here. Our season is starting and we want to be ready for it. Roger Cooper>> And how about Los Angeles County? Deputy Chief John Tripp of Los Angeles County Fire says the federal cuts could leave a gap to be filled. John Tripp>> Well, that presents a challenge to us. With them reducing their resources, that puts a little bit more on us, so we've been talking about that, briefing our commanders, that if they see while they're in route that they have a large working fire, that they know that those resources that we may have been relying on are not going to be there, so we're going to be asking for additional resources to take their place. Roger Cooper>> And in San Bernardino County, Fire Marshall Peter Brierty says local fire agencies have been meeting to discuss their response to the federal cuts. Peter Brierty>> On any weekend, we'll have a couple hundred thousand folks in our mountain communities and we're going to bring our own resources up to various levels that we can maintain and make sure that we protect the public when they're using the mountain areas. Roger Cooper>> Federal officials argue that they can staff up fire engines again in the event of a big fire, but some local officials fear that, in the time it takes to staff up, small fires will become big fires. Staffing and budgets will be a challenge, but the good news is the appearance of something that's hard to miss. It has to be the largest flying fire truck in the world and it has taken years and millions to get it to this runway. Sam White>> We've been working this for over three years. We have forty million dollars of our own money invested in this project. Roger Cooper>> A company called Evergreen Aviation International has taken the seats out of a 747 Jumbo Jetliner, put in big tanks, and turned it into a firefighting super tanker. It's capable of dropping immense payloads on fires, some twenty thousand gallons, seven times the capacity of the largest Forest Service tanker now flying. The super tanker can lay down a drop that's twenty-five thousand feet in length, or a series of shorter drops on different fires. Sam White is the Senior Vice President with Evergreen. Sam White>> There is a real need to revamp aerial firefighting and we believe this is the answer, to be able to disburse twenty thousand five hundred gallons of product on target at night when a fire is dormant. Roger Cooper>> Evergreen brought its 747 super tanker into San Bernardino recently for a demonstration drop, hoping to convince state and federal fire officials that it's a tool they need. Making a slow pass at just five hundred feet, it was water bombs away. [Film Clip] Sam White>> As you saw today, really what we're doing is we're bringing the rainstorm to the fire. What we're trying to do is introduce a lot of humidity in the firefighting environment and choke that fire of oxygen. Roger Cooper>> Fire officials who saw the demo are intrigued, but want to see more testing before committing to use the plane. Mike Padilla>> I think it's a great tool for the future. I think the potential for this in being a new and exciting firefighting tool is good for California and good for the western United States. I think we have to give them a shot at it and let's put it on a fire and see what it will do. Mike Dietrich>> Pretty impressive technology and, of course, with any new technology, we have to look at the merits and what it can do out on the ground. John Tripp>> There's still some data that we have to look at. How much water was actually on the ground where the source of the fire is, at the fuel level? Roger Cooper>> Evergreen hopes to get a contract to demonstrate its super tanker on a real wildfire this August. By the way, it hasn't gone unnoticed that the fire season and the hurricane season overlap. Evergreen is exploring a theory that a drop so big onto a hurricane could take it down a category. Another change coming up across the state this fire season will impact homeowners and their brush clearance. The required clearance boundaries around homes this year are being pushed out. Peter Brierty>> Defensible space has been traditionally thirty feet from your house, your structure, out into the wild land urban interface. Look at any vegetation within thirty feet of your house and what's happened is, we've taken a second look at that and the California Department of Forestry, our partner in this area, has said, well, let's move that out to a hundred feet. Roger Cooper>> Fire officials are always hesitant to predict what kind of fire season we'll have, but the good news so far is that -- Peter Brierty>> We've had two very, very good years of rain and, although that's good for us in the spring where the plants are nice and green and not as likely to burn, as we move into July and August, as they start to dry out, we're going to have an abundance of fuels, what we call our light flashy fuels, that are going to cause some problems for us and we need to be very careful about those. Roger Cooper>> As for those dead trees you've heard so much about in our mountains, the massive effort to cut them down and remove them continues, but it will be well into next year before the project is complete. Meantime, it's fire season in southern California and firefighters and equipment are standing by, including a giant plane that would love to make a big splash. In San Bernardino, I'm Roger Cooper 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>> Voters might have been apathetic about yesterday's election, but political analysts always find something interesting in the tea leaves. Toni Guinyard talked with USC's Sherry Bebitch Jeffe about yesterday's election results. Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Well, I think what it showed us was that this is still a traditional Democratic primary electorate. Phil Angelides is the traditional Democrat. He has the support of the Democratic establishment. He's got the support of the activists, the labor unions and the teachers. Ideology trumped the perception that Steve Westly would make a better race against Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ideology, Phil Angelides, trumped electability or perceived electability, Steve Westly. Toni Guinyard>> Governor Schwarzenegger made it clear that he didn't particularly care who the Democrats voted to run against him for governor. Why do you think that is? Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> From everything that I have heard, there is joy in Mudville today over the victory of Phil Angelides. It appears to me that the Schwarzenegger campaign much preferred running against Angelides, again, a traditional Democratic liberal, than Steve Westly who is very close in terms of his plans, in terms of his ideology, to the governor. There's very little difference between them. They're both moderate, business oriented politicians. Toni Guinyard>> What are your thoughts on any of the other state races? Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> I thought that the Jerry Brown election night extravaganza was a kick. Toni Guinyard>> A kick? Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> I think it's going to be interesting to see him campaign yet again. I think it will be interesting if he wins to see how he relates not only to Governor Schwarzenegger, but to the President of the United States. This guy is beyond gadfly. He could be a real irritant, a thorn in the side of Republican leaders if he so chooses. He says he's not going to do it. He's going to stick to fighting crime and being a good Attorney General and the State's attorney. We'll see. I mean, Jerry Brown has been around a long, long time and old habits die hard. Rocky Delgadillo had no name recognition, none beyond the city of Los Angeles, and that's very difficult. He didn't have a whole lot of money. Brown didn't need a whole lot of money. I thought that Delgadillo ran a credible race and he ought not to be ashamed of the thirty-seven percent or so of the votes that he achieved his first time out. Again, a politician with high name recognition, with long and deep roots within the Democratic party, with the trust of the Democratic party activists and the primary electorate, that Rocky Delgadillo never had a chance to gain to begin with. Toni Guinyard>> Your comments on the low voter turnout. Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Oh, I mean, the message is very clear to me. Enough is enough. I mean, voters are really fatigued. There is an election fatigue. The end of 2006, we will have had ten elections in six years. I mean, I would sue for cruel and unusual punishment, quite frankly. Toni Guinyard>> We're tired of going to the polls? Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> We're tired not only of going to the polls, but going to the polls as we did in the recall and thinking that things are going to change. Arnold Schwarzenegger has promised he's going to be bipartisan. There's going to be harmony. Special interests will not be able to buy the state capital. Oh? Very little has changed. The Democrats were not engaged by, were not enthused by, their choice for the Democratic nomination for governor and Governor Schwarzenegger was virtually unopposed in the Republican primary. We knew that the turnout was going to be low. Toni Guinyard>> But not this low. Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> We didn't know that it could be an historic low. Toni Guinyard>> Two initiatives on the ballot, Proposition 81, the library. Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Yeah, that surprised me. Toni Guinyard>> Why? Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> I thought it would narrowly pass and I think, again, it was a message from voters saying, "Oh, no, no, not any more bonds and not any more earmarked bonds. Let's back off from this spending and start adding things up and defining priorities a little bit better." Toni Guinyard>> Proposition 82? Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Same thing to some extent. "Oh, no, not any more ballot box budgeting." Toni Guinyard>> This is about children, preschoolers, education. Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Yeah, it's about education and I think there was an understanding there that you can't solve the vast problems we have with regard to California's educational system by simply earmarking money only for pre-kindergarten education. Beyond that, I do think that the arguments made by the No on 82 campaign, one of which was education problems are too big simply to focus money on one aspect of education, really resonated with voters in a way that the Yes on 82 arguments didn't. I also think that there's a little bit of perversity in this, maybe egotism in this. You couldn't convince voters that it would simply tax the rich because every one of us believes that someday we're going to be rich and we don't want to be taxed. Toni Guinyard>> Do voters have a reason to go to the polls in November? Do they have a reason to pay attention to what's being said from now to then? Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> Even looking at it as a straight partisan standpoint, Democrats have a reason to go to the polls because particularly among activists, among labor unions, the teachers, the nurses, all of those groups that were beaten about by the governor in 2005, they do want to get rid of Arnold Schwarzenegger. They would like a Democrat governor. For Republicans, there is a reason because whether or not they're totally behind Governor Schwarzenegger -- and there are still some questions in the conservative ranks -- Phil Angelides in particular is an acme to them. They don't want a Democratic governor. They don't want to see the legislature and the governor's office in the control of Democrats again and they don't want a perceived traditional Democratic liberal beholden to labor unions and the like in the governor's chair. Toni Guinyard>> Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, as always, you make me think about these things. Thank you so much for spending a little time with Life and Times. Sherry Bebitch Jeffe>> My pleasure, as always. 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 a classic patron of the arts, but her taste is anything but classical. It's contemporary. Specifically, contemporary music like Philip Glass and John Cage. Why such unusual taste? Vicki Curry sat down with Betty Freeman to find out. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> This piece of music is named Freeman Etudes. Composer John Cage wrote it for one of the most influential people in music you've never heard of, Betty Freeman. She's a patron of contemporary music and, over the past forty years, she's made more than four hundred grants and commissions to at least eighty musicians. Betty Freeman>> Oh, I support it, but I also love it and I don't understand why everybody doesn't. Everybody that I read about or that I know about is an avid collector of contemporary art, but very few people have that same response to contemporary music. Now why is it, I can't figure out. Vicki Curry>> Betty Freeman has always loved music. She studied classical piano as a child, but it was the music she heard in college that changed her life. Betty Freeman>> I went to school in Boston and I went to all the Koussevitzky concerts at the Boston Symphony and he played a lot of contemporary music. I went in every Friday. Tickets for students were seventy-five cents, I can remember. I became passionate about contemporary music. Vicki Curry>> It was a private passion at first. Freeman used her family money to collect art. Artist David Hockney even captured her image in the painting, "Beverly Hills Housewife". Then one day in 1961, a friend in the art world asked her to contribute to the legal defense of a composer named LaMonte Young. Betty Freeman>> So I sent a hundred dollars and I didn't get anything in return. When he got out, he sent me a collection of his records which I listened to and was fascinated. He's somebody who can play one note for four hours, but it's what he does with this one note, with the overtones and the undertones and how he combines it. I became a fan and I'm still a fan all these years. Vicki Curry>> She started working on a concert series at the Pasadena Art Museum and met the composer, Harry Partch. Betty Freeman>> So for the next ten years, I worked almost exclusively with Partch until 1974. I made a movie on Partch. [Film Clip] Betty Freeman>> I got his opera produced at UCLA. It took two years to push that through. I bought his house with him in Encinitas. I loved him and loved his music. Vicki Curry>> It was through Harry Partch that Betty Freeman discovered another passion: photography. Betty Freeman>> I would take still photographs and I'd never taken any, so Partch's assistant, Danny Mitchell, had a camera. He'd set it for me and he'd focus for me on the stage on Partch and on the players and all I had to do was push the button. The pictures came out wonderful. I still use them for exhibit, they're so good, so that started me off. Then I started photographing the composers whose music I liked. [Film Clip] Betty Freeman>> I never asked them to smile because it's very artificial because, when somebody takes my photograph, I put on a smile. I really do, but what I'm really searching for in a photograph is something inward, their inward personality as I sense it to be, and I usually try and wait for them. Usually it happens when they're talking to somebody else or when they're working at their desk and they get that expression when they do go inward and that's when I photograph them. Vicki Curry>> But her love of photography never took away from her support for contemporary music. Betty Freeman>> All my favorite composers were poor. All of them were poor. Steve Reich was driving a taxi for a living. So was Philip Glass in New York driving a taxi. They all were teaching or struggling. Cage was terribly poor. Everybody was in need of money, so I gave just money grants. Then in the 1980s, it changed because they began to get performances and get paid a little bit. They didn't need the money for a living, but what they needed it for, which I realized, one thing was for performances that had to be subsidized, which I did whenever I could, and CDs. As their records went out, they got more performances from the records. That's when I began to commission pieces. Vicki Curry>> Freeman has supported almost everyone of note in the new music world. John Adams, Pierre Boulez, Harrison Birtwistle, Virgil Thomson, Lou Harrison and, one of her favorites, Helmet Lachemann. Betty Freeman>> He's a very difficult composer. He's actually involved in the spaces between notes, not the notes themselves. [Film Clip] Betty Freeman>> I never asked them what they were going to write. I just gave the commission on what I heard as they were planning to write something, but I never asked them what it was for or how long it was for or what instruments it was for or whether it was going to be -- it was completely up to them. I never entered into that ever. So I didn't have many masterpieces, but that didn't matter. That wasn't the purpose of it. The purpose was to keep things going in the contemporary music world wherever I could. Vicki Curry>> And she sure kept things going not only with her grants, but with a series of musicales she hosted in her Beverly Hills home. Betty Freeman>> I remember walking in here in this living room and saying to myself, "Gee, I wish there was someplace I could hear some good contemporary music" because there wasn't any for me in those days. I looked at this living room and said, "Well, I'm the logical person to do it because I have the means to do it and the desire to do it." We had five or six or seven every year with two composers always. Always an established composer and an upcoming composer, not a known composer, but a young composer, and we did that for ten years. People were exposed to contemporary music for the first time, to really good contemporary music. I'm absolutely convinced and have absolutely no doubts about it that, in fifty years, people won't talk about the three B's, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms. They'll talk about the three B's as the great composers today, a Birtwistle, a Boulez and a Beriot. Vicki Curry>> With a champion like Betty Freeman, the contemporary music of today will be the classical music of tomorrow. I'm Vicki Curry for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> A documentary on Betty Freeman will be shown this weekend at the Ojai Music Festival which is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. For details, go to their website at ojaifestival.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. 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. With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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