MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2012
Volume 11 Issue 127
Santa Monica Daily Press A LEGEND PASSES SEE PAGE 10
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THE FOND MEMORIES ISSUE
Swimming with a lot of heart Local nonprofit teaches children with special needs to swim, thrive SUNSET PARK Displacement.
GOT IT!
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com Kids hunt for eggs during the 20th Annual Peter Rabbit Day Easter event at Douglas Park on Wilshire Boulevard hosted by the Santa Monica Junior Chamber (Jaycees) on Saturday morning. The festivities included face painting, egg and spoon racing and talking emergency vehicles.
L.A. looks to revive mythic past with streetcars ANDREW DALTON Associated Press
LOS ANGELES Half a century after the last of the lost Pacific Electric Red Cars rumbled through Los Angeles, a move has begun to return streetcars to downtown LA. With a route chosen by the city and an environmental review begun, the proposed four-mile Broadway-to-Figueroa loop is a modest project compared to the region’s subway extensions and freeway expansions, but would provide a link between the key spots of the downtown renaissance and a symbolic link with the city’s mythologized past.
Los Angeles once had a thousand miles of streetcar tracks. Along them ran the Yellow Car Line and the more famed Red Cars, and since they gave way to freeways in the early 1960s they’ve become a symbol of the city’s lost intimacy and identity, celebrated by politicians looking to restore transit glory and by films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” While the streetcars of memory are invoked often — the city’s soon-to-open Expo light rail line has Red Car tickets etched into the concrete at its final stop and city leaders on a recent test run shared memories of riding it — the proposed downtown project would be a far more
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direct restoration, starting with the route itself. “Virtually every bit of this alignment is on streets that have historically had Red or Yellow car lines,” said Robin Blair, director of planning for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. While boosters are quick to point out that the new cars would be thoroughly modern, sleek and environmentally sound, nostalgia is their biggest emotional selling point. “Everyone has a story about themselves or their parents or somebody riding these SEE STREETCARS PAGE 12
It’s the property that keeps boats, and people, floating in a body of water. It suggests that since two objects cannot exist in the same place at the same time, one will inevitably push the other out of the way. Swimming is the act of controlling that displacement. Sinking occurs when one succumbs to it. Mikey Flaherty, a swimming instructor and executive director at the Santa Monica nonprofit Swim with Heart, makes sure her students never sink, a goal made more challenging by the population of swimmers that she chooses to teach. Flaherty and her instructors work with students with special needs, be they physical or cognitive, teaching them the skills they need to conquer the water, to displace rather than being displaced. It’s an important distinction for children who have so often been displaced themselves, looked at as different or fragile by their peers and the world. The water is a “magical place,” Flaherty said, one that can act as a great equalizer for children who have difficulties in other areas. “It levels the platform. Failures on the land are victories in the water,” Flaherty said. “It gives them a sense of independence.” MIKEY
Flaherty is no stranger to victories in the water. The accomplished swimmer attended the University of Southern California on an athletic scholarship while studying to get her degree in psychology and childhood development. She was on track to try out for the SEE SWIM PAGE 14
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