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Life & Times Transcript
12/26/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- He's a California born and raised national treasure and everything he touches is a work of art. Sam Maloof>> I think that a little part of me goes into everything that I make and I wouldn't let it go if I didn't like it. I really wouldn't. Val Zavala>> And then, he doesn't pull a rabbit out of his hat, but what he does is just as amazing. Meet the man they call the Math-A-Magician. 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>> Welcome to this special edition of Life and Times. Tonight we bring you some of our favorite stories all about people who have a remarkable skill or talent. We begin with a man who has a way with wood. Riverside is dotted with historic landmarks. The centerpiece, of course, is the beautifully restored Mission Inn. But there are also Victorian homes, churches, the courthouse and the train station. But you'll have to drive a good little ways outside of Riverside to see a most exquisite home by a master woodworker. Toni Guinyard introduces us to the world-renowned Sam Maloof. Toni Guinyard>> Enter the workshop of Sam Maloof and you step into a world in which the creativity and talent of one man challenges the image of art that serves a function. Sam Maloof>> I have hundreds of things in my mind that I want to do and I just design as I make them. Toni Guinyard>> His medium is wood. His art is pieces of furniture. Sam Maloof describes himself simply as a woodworker, but even to the untrained eye and the unskilled hands, one glance and somehow you just know calling Maloof a simple woodworker is an understatement. Sam Maloof>> I think that a little part of me goes into everything that I make and I wouldn't let it go if I didn't like it. I really wouldn't. Toni Guinyard>> We visited Maloof just days after his ninetieth birthday. Sam Maloof>> I work about nine or ten hours a day six days a week. I like every piece that I make. I don't have a favorite. I really do not. But I think this is the best, then I do something else and I think that is the best. It's like a mother who never picks one child out as the favorite. They're all favorites. Toni Guinyard>> Every room in his home from corner to corner, ceiling to floor, is filled with his work. The twenty-two room house once sat in the path of the 210 Freeway extension. Declared an historic landmark, the house and workshops were relocated to Alta Loma. Sam Maloof>> So we moved it in pieces. I built this house in pieces. Toni Guinyard>> It's what Maloof does: build. Sam Maloof>> I design all the chairs to fit me and I'm not that tall, but they seem to fit everyone. Toni Guinyard>> How much does a Maloof chair go for? Sam Maloof>> Well, when I first started, I thought thirty-five dollars was a lot of money and then fifty dollars was a lot of money. Toni Guinyard>> So what would a chair go for today? Sam Maloof>> I get -- well, for my rocking chairs, depending on the kind of wood, my rosewood ones go for around forty-five thousand and I have a lot of orders for it. Toni Guinyard>> At times, Maloof seems stunned by his success and a little embarrassed. Sam Maloof>> And I just shake my head at it. Toni Guinyard>> The making of a Maloof original is a meticulous process that begins and ends with Sam, but a select few others have a hand in his creations. David Wade, Mike Johnson and Larry White make up the team Maloof calls "the boys". [Film Clip] Sam Maloof>> Everything that I make, I put it together and then I rough-shape and they do all the really hard work. Larry White>> When Sam puts these pieces together, he kind of does a preliminary shaping on them and the joints are rough and chunky and we go in and start working on it and refining it. Sam Maloof>> They know how I work. I want a hard line here and I mark it. But I'll start it. David Wade>> It's all hand-sculpted and he allows us the time, you know, to do it right. You can follow the hard lines around the chair and there's just a lot of hand-sculpting. I think we did forty-eight pieces last year and we usually do about one a week. Larry White>> Usually when Sam signs a piece, that's kind of, more often than not, the final act or close to it. Because of the way Sam works, they are one of a kind pieces, so they all do vary just a little bit. So every now and then, one will really sing. [Film Clip] Larry White>> When you're putting wood together, we can read it pretty well in the raw stage. But when you put it together and finally get the finish on it, it morphs into another thing. David Wade>> This is always our favorite part. After working a piece for sometimes, you know, two or three weeks, the reward is putting the finish on it and really seeing the wood come up. Mike Johnson>> The nice things about this job is that I feel like the people that we're working for really appreciate what we do and they cherish what we do and they consider them as heirlooms. Toni Guinyard>> Sometimes the heirlooms make their way back home to Sam Maloof. Sam Maloof>> Well, some of the early pieces I grounded and then later I hard-lined. Really the hard line started at the chair that I made for a very dear friend of mine who was a principal violist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He said, "I want a chair where I can sit very straight and have very good lower back support and I want it where, when I bring my bow down, I don't hit an arm or anything." So I designed a chair. I've never made another. It's the only chair like that that I've ever made. Then I made the cabinets for music and then a music stand for him. I promised him I'd never make another chair like it. He died when he was only seventy-two or seventy-three. He had a heart attack playing tennis, and he gave them to me in his will. Toni Guinyard>> Maloof's clients range from United States presidents to struggling wanna-bes and everyone in between. He's never had formal training in woodworking, yet his hands know how to talk to the wood and it in turn does what he asks it to do. [Film Clip] Toni Guinyard>> The source of his inspiration is and continues to be his late wife, Alfreda. Sam Maloof>> She was the heart and soul of what I did. Toni Guinyard>> They married in 1948. He started making furniture and she managed the business. Sam Maloof>> She saved every letter, every sketch. At one time, I thought "It isn't fair to you. I'm just barely making enough that we can live on." She said, "Sammy, we can do it. I know we can do it." It was her love and what she thought I could do that kept me going. Toni Guinyard>> Alfreda Maloof died in 1998. Sam Maloof remarried in 2001. His wife, Beverly, is working to raise funds for construction of the Maloof Foundation Education Center. It will house galleries to showcase the works of established and up and coming artists. It will also provide space for lectures and workshops. Sam Maloof>> I try and answer every question that they throw at me. "How do you do this?" I don't have any secrets at all. Toni Guinyard>> He just wants to make sure his love for the arts lives long after he's gone. The Sam and Alfreda Maloof home is open for tours twice a week, giving all of us a chance to share in the Maloof magic. Sam Maloof>> I still can't believe it. I still kind of pinch myself. Here, the last five or six years, I think that Freda's looking down and laughing and saying, "I told you we could do it." That's the way it is. 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>> For any of us who have ever struggled with algebra or even geometry, you won't believe the person you're about to see. He's a human calculator and he can do in a few minutes what you or I couldn't do after a semester. Art Benjamin>> "In fact, I'm going to add two to the fifth for all of these." Val Zavala>> His name is Art Benjamin. His full-time job is teaching at Harvey Mudd's award-winning math department. Art Benjamin>> "And therefore, the total number of one. . ." Val Zavala>> But this professor has a double life as a magician, a Math-a-Magician. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Tonight he's performing. He's getting ready to astound people with a dazzling talent for tabulating. The Benjamins are headed to a school a few miles away in Laverne. It's Math Night at Oak Mesa Elementary School. The room is packed with parents and their kids, bright but restless kids, just the kind of audience Professor Benjamin likes. Art Benjamin>> "I am a Math-a-Magician." Tonight at this program, it won't be just a show. It will be a show-and-tell. I don't want them to come away thinking how smart I am. I want them to come away realizing how smart they are. Val Zavala>> One of his first tricks is easy. He gives young volunteers calculators and he starts squaring numbers, racing the calculators to the answers. Art Benjamin>> "Another three-digit number, please. 653 squared is 426,609. 4-2-6, 6-0-9. Good. Another three-digit number, please? 408 is 166,464. 1-6-6, 4-6-4." As a child, I was attention starved. I would do anything to get attention. I was hyperactive. Let me say that up front. I was ADHD. I would still describe myself as an ADHD adult. "One more three-digit number, please? 999 is 998,001. Thank you very much." My father was an accountant by day and an actor-director by night in a community theater in Cleveland, Ohio. My mother was behind the scenes. She was taking care of us backstage and never got up on the stage herself, but she was always our best audience. Val Zavala>> His audiences have grown since then. When Professor Benjamin took a sabbatical in Australia, he ended up on Australia's morning show. >> "Good morning, welcome." Art Benjamin>> "Nice to be with you." Val Zavala>> Among his mental gymnastics, taking any date of the year and naming the day of the week it fell on. >> "What day of the week was 1847, July 7?" Art Benjamin>> "That was a Wednesday." >> "That is amazing." >> "That's good, that's very good." >> "So we can all do this, right? Randy, what's your birthday?" Art Benjamin>> "What year?" Randy>> "1958, third of July." Art Benjamin>> "Okay, that was a Thursday." >> "1958, third of July is a Thursday. Come on, please, how do you do that?" Val Zavala>> He also performs for adult audiences at the Magic Castle or before groups like this one at a conference of high-level professionals. Art Benjamin>> "Let me try to take this one step further. I'm going to try to square a four-digit number this time. Now you can all take your time on this. I will not beat you to the answer on this one. If each of you would call out a single digit between zero and nine, that will be the four-digit number that I'll square. Nine - seven - five - eight. This will take me a little bit of time, so bear with me. 95,218,564? Thank you very much." Val Zavala>> But tonight is kids night and here's one of his favorite tricks. It's called The Magic Cube. He asks the volunteer to choose any two-digit number. Art Benjamin>> "Krystal, what number would you like? 48, she says, right. The other thing, Krystal, I'll ask you to do is to take the back of this marker and point to the squares one at a time in any order you like. As you do, I will as quickly as I can write a number inside of it, okay? So go ahead and point, then move your hand out of the way because I'm going to attack it -- attack the board, not your hand, nothing to worry about. Good. Now the first few squares, you'll notice the number that I write looks fairly random. But right about here, I have to start thinking, so it takes a couple of seconds longer, you'll notice. Right about here, the numbers start becoming a little bit forced and but you'll see what I mean by that in just a moment. Have you ever done this before, Krystal? You're very good. Let's all give Krystal a nice round of applause. Would you choose any row? Would you like row number one, two, three or four? Three, okay. Class, together, 6 plus 21 is 27, plus 12 is 39, plus 9 is 48. The rows are 11, 25, 44, 48, 8 and 23, 33, 48 and 13, 21, 28, 48. Would you choose a column, one, two, three or four? One, okay. Class, 11 plus 18 is 29 plus 6 is 35 plus 13 is 48. Those are 14, 19, 40, 48 and 19, 29, 41, 48 and 4, 19, 20, 48. How about that?" Mathematics is often used in school as exercises in disciplined thinking, organized thinking. You know, put down the two, carry the one, don't ask questions. Whereas, in fact, mathematics can also be used as a laboratory for creative thinking. Not just do the problem, but do the problem many different ways. "I didn't stop there either. I decided that, since this was Krystal's magic square -- Krystal with a "K" -- wouldn't it be great if we could get these four in the corners to add up as well. Check it out here. 11 plus 4 is 15 plus 20 is 35 plus 13 is 48. But did I stop there? No. Krystal, you may have noticed that I put a little extra attention in that corner. I did that so I could get these four squares. 11 plus 14 is 25 plus 5 is 30 plus 18 is 48 to add up. I figured, heck, as long as we got that group of four, let's have a party. We may as well get this group of four. 9, 23, 38, 48 and 6, 27, 35, 48 and 12, 21, 41, 48. But did I stop there? No, I said Krystal wouldn't be happy unless we got this group of four. Now I have to apologize, Krystal. I was not able to get this group of four nor that group of four to add up, but I had to do it that way if I was going to get these four in the middle. I knew that would be important to you. 5, 15, 27, 48. But don't take my word for any of these calculations. Please keep this as a souvenir from me and let's all give Krystal a nice round of applause. Thank you, Krystal, very much." There are usually three or four different ways that you can come up with the answer and I think that that's a valuable life lesson that we could teach the students in addition to the fact that it can actually make the numbers fun. >> I thought it was really, really fun and he was like amazing. I don't know how he did it. >> I think it was cool because he added the numbers up like really fast. Val Zavala>> It's time for this Math-a-Magician's grand finale. He has squared two, three and four-digit numbers, but can he square a five-digit number? He admits that, about half the time, he gets it wrong. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> So what did you think of that when you were watching what he was doing? >> "It was amazing. That's just unbelievable. I don't see how that's humanly possible and it's really good." Art Benjamin>> "And here, by the way, is the real magic in my life." Val Zavala>> And you can be sure that Benjamin's daughters will never shy away from math. Art Benjamin>> Somehow, somewhere, the message gets sent to girls that it's just not a cool thing to do and I will do everything in my power to block those negative messages from getting to my children. Val Zavala>> Do you think girls can be as smart at math or as good in math as boys? >> "Yes." >> "Of course." Art Benjamin>> Anyone can improve their ability with numbers and get close to what I'm doing and have fun at the same time. Val Zavala>> I'm just happy to be able to figure out the tip. 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>> How do you keep a culture alive when a people are spread around the globe? Well, that's the challenge facing the Armenian community after the Diaspora in the first half of the last century. But we found one man who's managing to do it and, as Vicki Curry tells us, Glendale and Armenian dance wouldn't be the same without him. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> It's a Thursday night in Glendale. These people are stomping -- [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Clapping -- [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> And spinning to keep their heritage alive. Yes, Armenian folk dance is alive and well, thanks in large part to this man, Tom Bozigian. Tom Bozigian>> We have some original dances I've never seen anywhere in the world. Those kinds of dances really excite me. Vicki Curry>> He spent twenty years teaching classes to anyone who wants to learn Armenian folk dance. Tom Bozigian>> We have a style of dance that I haven't found any match. It gives me more strength to want to preserve it and to pass it on. Vicki Curry>> Tom Bozigian lives and breathes Armenian folk dance. His passion extends to learning and passing on traditional dances of the region. Tom Bozigian>> I have a home in Armenia. I go to Armenia and research. I go to communities throughout the world. Wherever my teaching takes me, I always seek out Armenian communities. Vicki Curry>> Bozigian was born in Los Angeles, but his Armenian-born father sparked his interest in his homeland at an early age. Tom Bozigian>> It started with the family and my father's side was very, very strong dancers. My grandfather told me about his grandfather dancing dances and explaining dances to him. So really that was very, very exciting to me even while I was young. Vicki Curry>> His family soon moved to Fresno, home to a large and lively Armenian community. Tom Bozigian>> And they would have their dances, their picnics that sponsor affairs, and there I would go and see the dances and learn the dances as much as I could, and that's really how it started. Vicki Curry>> As Bozigian's love of folk dance grew, he also started studying ballet. In 1972, he moved to Armenia to pursue a career. Tom Bozigian>> I wanted to be the only Armenian born outside of Armenia who made the Armenian State Dance Ensemble. Vicki Curry>> But instead of becoming a professional ballet dancer, Bozigian became even more interested in the dances he had learned as a child. Tom Bozigian>> I went to Georgia, I went to Abaranjani, I went to all areas surrounding Armenia to study and get a full effect of Armenian folk dance, but there were some dances I learned that I never saw before, very interesting dances with unique styles. Vicki Curry>> Bozigian's unique range of knowledge reaches beyond the traditional dances. He also teaches a more sophisticated version performed by professional dance companies. [Film Clip] Tom Bozigian>> I'm happy that my training was first folk and then I went to classical ballet. We are going to take the dance from the village and we're going to clean it up. We want an upright body, we want a short teach-you line and they make some beautiful dances out of village dance. Vicki Curry>> But he's also found that some folk dances aren't all that different from ballet. Tom Bozigian>> Natural Armenian women's dance is very close to the classical because of the movement of the hands. The children are taught by their parents. Keep the arms long, keep the neck above the shoulder. We have a thing in this position of the hand where the middle finger and the thumb make a half circle and the other fingers higher. This is a side view of what we call the Yeghnig. Yeghnig is a type of deer. The turning, the flapping, the in and out are all the movements of that animal, its gait, the way it's running, it's hopping, and, over the centuries, the Armenian women have mimicked that. Vicki Curry>> Many folk dances have similar stories. Tom Bozigian>> The Dance of the Goat, the goat's movement in the upper areas of Armenia where we find a lot of shepherds. Over the centuries, a dance has evolved as a result of the way that goat runs. [Film Clip] Tom Bozigian>> The way that goat runs, its gait, the shepherds have mimicked that over the centuries and a dance evolved. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Every year, Bozigian travels to two different areas in the region to research dance styles. [Film Clip] Tom Bozigian>> Regional dance has different styles depending on many reasons, whether it's work, topography, ritual, religion. There were always some different styles. As we go north to the Georgian border where there's a lot of mountains, the mountains have created an upright, straight style, very strong and very sharp foot movement. The plains area of Armenia, especially Yerevan and to the west and all the way to the Turkish frontier, we have shorter steps, not big steps, because you have the room. [Film Clip] Tom Bozigian>> It tells you something about the people from those days. Their dancing was very, very important to keep the original movements. We have good records. We kept good records, but we don't have all the dances. Vicki Curry>> That's why Bozigian has devoted his life to conserving Armenian folk dance. Tom Bozigian>> I go to the villages and I say, "Okay, I have this dance I know. I know you guys do it too." So I demonstrate the dance. "Now how do you do it?" [Film Clip] Tom Bozigian>> Everything is videotaped. I learn the song. We write the song down and musicians also. Vicki Curry>> He's determined to pass on the dances he's learned. Tom Bozigian>> Over the period, I've collected about three hundred dances. Twenty-five percent I've kept and the others have gone the way, you know, to the grave, so we lost a lot of dances. Vicki Curry>> Even though he's committed to saving the heritage of his ancestors, Tom Bozigian isn't living in the past. Tom Bozigian>> Oh, I've seen dances evolve in my time. I've seen them dance where the music has sped up, the dancers are sharper, the steps are sharper, the dancers don't know the story behind it. Oh, I've seen it happen. We have some American Armenian dance, the phenomena in the 1950s, where Armenian kids created dances in dance contests, and those dances still remain. I made one up and everybody does it. [Film Clip] Tom Bozigian>> Dances are passed on. They change. Dances are an expression of the day. They cannot express what they did two thousand years ago. Everything moves on. Vicki Curry>> Bozigian's expertise is in demand all over the world by both Armenian and non-Armenian organizations, but it's also available on Thursday nights in Glendale. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Thanks for joining us for this special edition of Life and Times. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, 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:  | |
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