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01/13/06
Announcer>> This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
The deer were part of the landscape long before these spiked fences went up. Guess which one is in danger?
Margaret Finlay>> When the deer are in kind of the front part of the properties, cars will go by and they will scare them and they'll end up trying to leap over the fences and will become impaled on the fences.
Val Zavala>> And then, from iPods to Puccini. What happens when you raise the curtains on "Tosca" for teens who have never seen an opera?
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>> You've worked hard on your lawn and your garden and then what happens? Deer come along and start munching on your roses. That's why some residents of foothill communities have put up spiked fences. Only one problem. These fences have proven fatal to deer. Sam Louie takes a look at the conflict between humans and wildlife. A quick word of warning. There is a photo that some people may find disturbing.
Sam Louie>> It's dawn and, as sure as the sun rises over the San Gabriel Mountains, deer make their trek from the hillsides and canyons and down into the neighborhood of Duarte. They come to graze and forage for food. Sometimes just one, sometimes in small groups. Development here in Duarte has exploded in the past twenty years. What once was the deer's natural habitat has been replaced by several hundred homes.
Margaret Finlay>> Probably the food is easier to get here. I know that there are a variety of people that have fruit trees here. There are a variety of fruit trees, so they come down and they get the tasty stuff. They have been in our back yard and they definitely like eating the flowers on tomatoes.
Sam Louie>> Margaret Finlay is the mayor of Duarte. Deer have always been in danger of getting hit by a car.
Margaret Finlay>> He must have hit there and then it just carried on right here, but he ran away into the bushes.
Sam Louie>> But now there is a new hazard. These spiked fences. They're made of steel or iron and are anywhere from three to six feet high and they have triggered a controversy in Duarte and other nearby cities. Why? Because these fences can be fatal to deer.
Margaret Finlay>> When the deer are in kind of the front part of the properties, cars will go by and they will scare them and they'll end up trying to leap over the fences and will become impaled on the fences. Just in this particular area here, I personally have seen it about five times in the last year and a half.
Sam Louie>> Some of these impalings were caught on camera. A word of warning, though. These photos may disturb some viewers, especially children.
Margaret Finlay>> It's horrible. It's writhing in pain and it's still alive and it's breathing and some of its intestines are sticking out. It's one of those things that I don't ever want to have to see again.
Sam Louie>> So officials in nearby foothill cities took action. Duarte, Monrovia and Arcadia have all outlawed spike-topped fences for new homes. In November, Duarte went even further. It proposed making the ordinance retroactive, meaning existing homeowners with these types of fences would have to get rid of them.
Margaret Finlay>> We just want there to be a level of awareness that will make people say, "Gee, my home could be harming wildlife in the area." I just don't think people are aware of it.
Sam Louie>> But the ordinance failed after homeowners complained about the cost, so existing fences are allowed to stay. Julie Davey is past president for the Homeowner's Association in Duarte.
Julie Davey>> Well, that is a concern because some of the people said it would cost up to two thousand dollars to take those spikes off and flatten that wrought iron fence and some of the people who are retired or on fixed incomes, that could be a hardship.
Delmer Hinton>> This is an azalea. That's about as high as the azalea grows, for this variety anyhow.
Sam Louie>> Delmer Hinton has lived in Duarte for the past thirty-five years. He says the deer used to eat all the flowers and plants in his front yard.
Delmer Hinton>> Then they got to the point that they would eat all of the foliage. Roses are one of their most delightful delicacies. They go up and down these streets and nip off what they want along the street.
Sam Louie>> But what Hinton wanted was to stop it from happening on his property. He was among the first to put up a spiked fence. He built it fifteen years ago and has never had a problem.
Delmer Hinton>> As long as the gate is kept closed, I haven't seen anything in here.
Sam Louie>> So basically you're saying you don't think your fence would affect these deer?
Delmer Hinton>> Well, it hasn't these last fifteen years. They've made no attempt to jump either the front or the back.
Sam Louie>> Davey says a hunting ordinance used to keep the number of deer under control.
Julie Davey>> At one time, they allowed bow hunting in the canyon and that was banned about four or five years ago by the City Council. Since then, we have seen a lot more deer. I just think they're multiplying and they like our lawn and our roses a lot better than they like the brush in the canyon.
Sam Louie>> Davey says the impaling happens only under certain situations and forcing all homeowners to get rid of their spikes is the wrong way to go.
Julie Davey>> They're not everywhere. The deer are in just certain areas and also the impalements have been in one particular area where there are spiked fences on both sides of the street where the deer have no place to go.
Sam Louie>> Duarte city officials have decided to wait one year before making any more recommendations. During that time, they're looking at ways to help homeowners remove their spikes and hoping to end a pointed controversy.
Margaret Finlay>> If there's going to be an economic burden placed upon people, we don't want that. That's not the issue at all for us. What we were actually giving some thought to was working with these people and finding some money to go ahead and help them put in -- if they want to go ahead and go this route, then we'll be able to help them with the financial burden that this would place on them.
Sam Louie>> Although only half a dozen deer have been killed in the past three years, it's enough for this community to recognize the need to protect them.
Julie Davey>> It is a problem and it's something that we're bringing up with the city and trying to have the city and the homeowners come to some agreement because, when you live in an area like this where you can see downtown Los Angeles and yet have wild animals right in your back yard, you have to live in balance with nature and I think that's what we're trying to do.
Sam Louie>> So as a community, they understand how important it is to live in harmony with nature, to strike a balance between protecting the deer and the rights of those most affected by them. 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>> Would you believe that Wilshire Boulevard started out as a dirt road through a barley field? And now this sixteen mile thoroughfare has been called the Champs-Elysees of the Pacific. Saul Gonzalez talks with co-author, Kevin Roderick, about how Wilshire Boulevard helped Los Angeles grow up.
Saul Gonzalez>> There are more than ten thousand streets, boulevards, avenues and drives within Los Angeles's city limits. None of them, however, is quite as synonymous with Los Angeles as Wilshire Boulevard. With origins over a century old and stretching nearly sixteen miles from downtown to the Pacific Ocean, Wilshire has long been described as the city's unofficial main street and the Fifth Avenue of the west. Of course, a great boulevard is more than just a ribbon of concrete and pavement. It's also a kind of stage, a place where a city's aspirations, dreams and hopes play out. That's certainly been the role of Wilshire Boulevard in the life and times of Los Angeles.
Kevin Roderick>> The whole story of twentieth century Los Angeles can be told along Wilshire Boulevard.
Saul Gonzalez>> Writer Kevin Roderick tells the tale of this remarkable street in his new book, "Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles", co-authored with J. Eric Lynxwiler.
Kevin Roderick>> Well, Wilshire Boulevard was the avenue on which Los Angeles grew from being essentially an overgrown pueblo city that was confined in this narrow downtown with tight streets that had been put in really for horses and buggies. Wilshire Boulevard was the thoroughfare that allowed the city to grow to the west and sort of encompass this manifest destiny that it had to reach the ocean and sprawl across the landscape.
Saul Gonzalez>> Wilshire carries the name of its founding father, Gaylord Wilshire, a man of enormous ambitions and contradictions.
Kevin Roderick>> Yes. He was a crank, a quack and a visionary all at the same time, which is a Los Angeles kind of person really when you get down to it.
Saul Gonzalez>> The Ohio-born Wilshire reconciled being both an idealistic socialist and ferociously competitive capitalist. He was also something of a snake oil salesman.
Kevin Roderick>> Later on in life, he invented an electric belt that he marketed as the cure-all for everything from baldness to cancer to tuberculosis and he made a ton of money on this at this end of his life. Of course, it was totally worthless.
Saul Gonzalez>> However, in 1895, it was Wilshire who turned a farm field on what's now the west side of MacArthur Park into a real estate subdivision and thus what would become a great thoroughfare was born.
Kevin Roderick>> We are right at ground zero of Wilshire Boulevard. We're at the corner of Wilshire and Parkview Streets and this was the place where Gaylord Wilshire first decided to sell off lots in his former barley field. Right across the street from us was the location of the first house that was ever built on Wilshire Boulevard.
Saul Gonzalez>> Right here on Parkview and Wilshire?
Kevin Roderick>> On Parkview, where the Charles White Elementary School is now, had been the home of General Harrison Gray Otis who was the publisher and editor of the Los Angeles Times at the turn of the twentieth century. He built his mansion there and it became the major selling point for the early Wilshire Boulevard. Other people in the city, important figures, saw that Otis put his house on this new phenomenon called Wilshire Boulevard and said, well, we want to be there too.
Saul Gonzalez>> As it grew over the twentieth century, Wilshire became a showplace for the city's growing wealth and cosmopolitanism, its miles lined with elegant department stores like Bullocks-Wilshire, magnificent houses of worship and swank apartment buildings and office towers. As Wilshire grew west, as it extended west, power and wealth really flowed behind it, right? And it changed the geography of power and influence in this city?
Kevin Roderick>> Yes, it did. I mean, the concept of the west side grew up with Wilshire Boulevard and you had the most powerful people living along the boulevard and in these new neighborhoods to the west.
Saul Gonzalez>> The precursor of all this development, however, was the opening of a grand hotel in the 1920's.
Kevin Roderick>> And originally it was going to be called the Hotel California and some financial finagling happened and it became the Ambassador Hotel which really changed everything about the stature of Wilshire Boulevard. Wilshire, at that time, was still kind of a country lane, was not fully paved. It was a little unclear what it was going to become, but the Ambassador Hotel all of a sudden made Wilshire Boulevard a nationally famous place.
Saul Gonzalez>> However, Wilshire's rise would have been impossible without the automobile, for it was along Wilshire that much of what's considered Southern California car culture was born.
Kevin Roderick>> Wilshire Boulevard is a Los Angeles phenomenon. It's an automobile age phenomenon. It was the first automobile age boulevard. It's the first place that people became real users of drive-in restaurants. Every main intersection on Wilshire Boulevard had a drive-in by the 1930's. It was also a place where drive-in markets started. Before that, people had to take the streetcar and go to central stores downtown. If you had a car, you could go anywhere you wanted to, you could live anywhere you wanted to and you were not confined to this rail line. Wilshire Boulevard is the ultimate example of that. So I think, in that sense, Wilshire liberated Los Angeles to go out and experience its future.
Saul Gonzalez>> Roderick acknowledges that some stretches of Wilshire have lost a bit of their luster over the years. He's also saddened by how many landmarks have met the wrecking ball. The most recent casualty is the Ambassador Hotel. It's being razed to make way for a new public school. However, Roderick says that the thoroughfare constantly reinvents itself and still casts a powerful spell over Los Angeles.
Kevin Roderick>> There are so many interesting and eclectic things to see along Wilshire Boulevard. The architecture is from so many different eras and it reflects so much about the ambitions of the city through the years. I'll take Wilshire Boulevard even if I know there's going to be traffic jam just because, you know, it says Los Angeles to me more than any other street in the city. You know, we're a city of boulevards, but Wilshire is the one that really tells the story to me.
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>> It's the definition of culture clash, three thousand restless, fidgety teenagers coming to the opera, but that's exactly what happens twice a year here at the Music Center and you'd be amazed at the results.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Backstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. In less than an hour, the curtain will rise and one of Puccini's most popular operas, the tragic story of "Tosca".
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> And outside, an eager audience. But these are not your typical patrons. They are three thousand excited, noisy teenagers, middle and high school students who usually get their music fix from Napster and MTV, but today will be different. Today they will see their first opera.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Twice a year for the past fifteen years, the Los Angeles Opera has invited students to the Music Center for a free performance.
Stacy Brightman>> Not just a dress rehearsal, but the full-on production, full orchestra, sets, costumes, cast, everything.
Val Zavala>> Stacy Brightman is in charge of the Los Angeles Opera's youth program. Their message is simple.
Stacy Brightman>> We are so excited that you are coming to the opera. We can't wait to see you at our opera house.
Val Zavala>> Their dress may be more casual and they may make more noise, but don't be fooled. These kids have been preparing for weeks. The Los Angeles Opera spends several hundred thousand dollars on the program. Teachers must apply and agree to design lesson plans.
Stacy Brightman>> After all of this, after the teachers do their lessons, we've given them all these materials, a gift from us for them to keep, our volunteers go, these kids are ready. They come as one of the most prepared audiences you're ever going to see at an opera house.
Val Zavala>> The house has gone from empty to full and finally the time has come for the curtain to rise. "Tosca" is a classic crowd-pleaser. The setting is Rome, 1900. It's the story of a singer, Floria Tosca. Her lover hides a political fugitive in a church and, over the course of three acts, Tosca is forced to give in to a nefarious police chief who plots to find the fugitive and forces Tosca to give in to his lustful desires.
Stacy Brightman>> The idea is, you know, we want to share a love and knowledge of this art form that brings in all the art forms together, incorporates all the art forms, and there is no better way to bring people into it but literally to bring them into it, to have them experience it in its most grand, beautiful, sweeping fashion.
Val Zavala>> The stage is getting set for the next act and here's something even season ticket holders won't see. The curtains are being left open so you can see the set changes between acts. That's so the students get a chance to see what's going on behind the curtains.
Stacy Brightman>> Any time there's an opera performance, it's an event. It takes so many people, you know, whether it's sixty-five or eighty-five people in the orchestra, another one hundred people on stage, another hundred fifty people backstage, all doing their jobs at exactly the right moment.
Val Zavala>> And what do these first-time opera goers think so far?
Stephanie Mercado>> It's great.
Val Zavala>> Why do you like it?
Stephanie Mercado>> Because you can actually see all the action happening and you can actually feel or sense things that are happening.
Ralph Corrales>> I think the opera was good because, when Tosca killed Scarpia, I think Scarpia actually deserved to die.
Val Zavala>> Was that the most exciting part?
Kenya Darden>> For me, I think that was.
Val Zavala>> What character did you like best and what is she
feeling?
Kenya Darden>> Tosca.
Val Zavala>> Why?
Kenya Darden>> Anger, misery --
Val Zavala>> -- jealousy?
Kenya Darden>> Disappointment.
Val Zavala>> Have you ever been jealous of somebody?
Kenya Darden>> No.
Val Zavala>> No? Never?
Kenya Darden>> Well, one person.
Val Zavala>> It's time for the dramatic final act. Tosca and her lover, Cavaradossi, are reunited. She has bargained for his life and gotten the police chief to promise that the execution will be a mock execution. She tells her lover to fake his death, but what Tosca doesn't realize is that the evil police chief, Scarpia, has gone back on his word.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> Tosca realizes in horror that her lover is dead. She makes the ultimate decision and climbs to the top of the parapet.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> It doesn't bother you that everybody ends up dying at the end?
Ralph Corrales>> I know that it's fake, but I could go along with it.
Ruben Ruiz>> Floria Tosca fights for her love and, at the end because she couldn't have him, she lived for her music and love. And because she didn't have love, she died.
Val Zavala>> But for some students, the performance isn't over. There's a special treat in store for the kids who had to watch from the balcony. This is not a place for anyone who's afraid of heights.
Stacy Brightman>> We're able to bring our three leading artists and only the kids up in the balcony get to have this kind of, you know, special question and answer time. They really get to feel like they know who the artists are and actually even our Tosca started to speak (laughter).
>> "All right, one note."
[Film Clip]
>> "You notice, or maybe not, when we're singing on stage, we never sing directly in someone's ear ever."
>> "Or you're not supposed to (laughter)."
Val Zavala>> The three leads are a hit on and off the stage, but will this day at the opera make an impact long-term?
Stacy Brightman>> I'm getting college students that are volunteering for us today because it's the same thing. They came as a student five years ago and maybe they got hooked.
Val Zavala>> What will you tell them when you go home tonight?
Stephanie Mercado>> It's going to look like a huge palace with lots of people in it and all the sounds will come to them and they will feel like they're really in it.
Val Zavala>> Do you think you could sing like they could? You could grow up to be an opera singer then.
Kenya Darden>> I know.
Stacy Brightman>> We're starting to actually have that generation of people who can grow up with opera and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to make it possible for people to grow up with opera in Los Angeles.
Val Zavala>> The Christmas season is not just for poinsettias. It's also the time when desert succulents bloom, but if you can't make it to the desert, there's no better place to go than Huntington Gardens in San Marino.
Kitty Connolly>> I love the desert garden in the winter because the Aloes come in bloom. Our garden is one of the largest collections of Aloes in North America. Aloes are from a climate that's a lot like ours. There's a lot of them that come from South Africa, so they have dry summers and wet winters and they are really easy to grow because they're tolerant of dry conditions, so they're very forgiving plants.
They channel water into the center of the plant because all these leaves growing are rose up so they bring all the water into the roots and then a lot of them have succulent reeds that store water in them. They flower really well. One of the things I like about them is they're in flower over a long period of time because they have many, many flowers on each plant. So on this one, the bottom flowers have bloomed and these haven't opened yet. So over the course of weeks, it's going to beautifully be in bloom.
Aloes are amazingly diverse. They're really quite wonderful. Here we have a plant that -- the other ones that we were looking at were more orange and yellow and this one has this beautiful rose color. Here's a flower. It hasn't opened yet, so it's a very deep rose and then, as they open, they turn into this lovely coral. The flowers, as they mature, as a sign to the hummingbird and other pollinators that they're ready, they change their angle and they hang downward so they're receptive for the birds to come up in. So that's a sign as well as the color. This warns them that there's something coming in this one. Now it's ready.
Aloes can be great garden plants. They're not really fast growers, but in your garden, you can fill every kind of need that you have for one. We're actually underneath a Tree Aloe here, so if you want a big plant, you can get those too. They put a lot of energy into their reproduction. We have this sweet little plant that is not all that big, but this flower which is three feet tall coming out of it is because they want to reproduce.
Most people have Aloes that they've gotten as cuttings from friends like you can cut a leaf off an Aloe Vera and get a new plant. These, they produce wonderful amounts of nectar and attract bees and hummingbirds. There's a bee right there going in. The bees transfer the pollen from one plant to another and then the plant uses the pollen to make seeds. So these will each form seeds and it will also reproduce by seeds, so you can get little Aloes coming up in your garden as the seeds spread.
You'd think of deserts as being really harsh, lifeless places, but in fact, there are all sorts of things going on in them. Also, this time of year, it's a wonderful place to visit because it really comes alive in the winter.
Val Zavala>> And the best time to see the Aloes in bloom is now through February. 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:
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