The Canyon Chronicle-January 20, 2023 (Vol. 1, No. 1) -www.thecanyonchronicle.com

Modern Mesa Craftsman

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Live in a true work of art. In the exclusive area of The Mesa, up a gated drive, rests a heavenly new home, built by a master builder. You can feel the quality, with the hand of an artisan cabinetmaker showing in every piece of wood. Open the hand carved front door, and you are home. The spacious foyer with high beamed ceilings leads you to a grand living room, with a wall of glass opening to stunning vistas, with a huge fireplace, to warm you. The dining room welcomes a crowd, to allow for revelry into the night. The open kitchen looks across the huge great room, towards another fireplace, a large flat yard, a covered patio, and an arbor graced patio. The bedroom wing has 4 Jr suites. Past a tower central hall your sanctuary awaits. The primary suite embraces with a roaring fire, doors open to the canyon views, and the palatial, marble bathroom with deep soaking tub in a tower nook, is your ultimate destination. A 1200 sq ft, lower bonus room is yours to create. Outside the flat yard goes on forever! There is space for gardens, playing, meditation, or just sitting and watching the clouds go by. Privacy, space, peace, all close to the canyon cafes, shops, the beach, the Westside, and the Valley. Topanga is the perfect small town next to the big city. This is a house as Tolkien once described… “’a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep, or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all’. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness.” This is your perfect place.

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New Year’s Day, 2023: Our local creek here on Oak finally kept flowing and I can see it from the deck showing a little “Heart Rock” love. Good job, all my Sister Rain Chanters! You musta been belting them out, same as Bill and me. Despite all our Rain Joy, we are putting down our pompoms for a sec and heeding the issued flood and wind watches: Staying off the roads ‘cuz rocks be rocks; Charging all our batteries ‘cuz trees be trees and are not a good mix with power lines. —Jane Terjung

Welcome 2023!

Months earlier, as we were building the lineup for the first issue of 2023, we had hope and some indication that we’d get rain this winter but not quite like this. We write this as the first storms passed through last weekend. On Monday enough sunshine held its own giving Birdie and me time for a walk with Tom Cat. What Birdie sees in Tom or he in her is beyond my comprehension.

Obviously, like every other media outlet, we were deluged with photos taken by locals that lead our News section with a two-page photo montage and Eric Fitzgerld’s return of the Fernwood Rain Report. (Pages 4-5). Our cover photo is by our newest Bonnell neighbor, Amber Lincoln. She and her family visited the Old Canyon mudslide while Jimmy Wylie revved up his backhoe and joined forces with the L.A. Dept. Of Public Works to clear the road... kudos to those heroes who quietly live their lives until it comes to helping out their community in an emergency. Other folks who captured the rain were Jane Terjung, Roger Pugliese, Joeseph Rosendo and Caltrans who also take pretty good photos while blowing up boulders. There are also reports on sinkholes in the Topanga area, School Road for one.

Are you as confused as we were about local government? It is complicated but Annemarie Donkin gives us a brief primer about the difference between City and County government and how they both affect us. (Page 6) In it, she also highlights the all-volunteer Topanga Canyon Town Council (TCTC) (onetopanga.com) that facilitates communication between us and our government. It’s an easy civics lesson you’ll be glad you read and will maybe inspire you to explore all of the resources the county offers.

Our feature story is by Karen Moran, who grew up among the “Nature Boys” here in Topanga and gives her take on what it was really like as a child growing up among them. (Pages 8-9).

Paula LaBrot recently came back from the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to find that the future commuter will be flying above the freeways sooner than we thought. (Page 13)

In the arts scene, we are so lucky to have the Topanga Canyon Gallery (TCG) but, sadly, we hear they may be looking for a new space at a price they can afford; the space next to Topanga Creek Market has been sold. TCG’s current exhibit runs until Jan. 29, but who knows after that? Can you imagine no more Gallery? No more Studio Tour in June? It would be a major loss to the community.

Once the rains subside, Sarah Spitz, our newly arrived Out & About arts columnist, suggests you visit the current LACMA exhibits, Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, 1938-1945, and Afro-Atlantic Histories, charting the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies in the African diaspora across the “Black Atlantic.” (Page 10)

Speaking of impressive: the Topanga Actors Company (TAC) has officially contracted with the Los Angeles County Library system to produce four plays within 12 months at the Topanga Library. Their next staged reading, Heroes, is scheduled for Jan. 28-29, 2 p.m. at the library.

Finally, this is Miles Erickson’s retirement of The Long Distance Listening Party. As we knew he would, he got a real job writing comedy. We’re sorry to see him go but look forward to Miles landing that Ween interview for us. Thanks Miles.

—Flavia Potenza

Publisher / Editor

Flavia Potenza

Creative Director

Nira Lichten

Senior Reporter

Annemarie Donkin

Advertising Manager

Jenise Blanc-Chance

Creative Consultant Eiffel Nazaryan

Contributors

Linda Ballou

Joel Bellman

Pablo Capra Kathie Gibboney Sarah Spitz

Paula LaBrot Kait Leonard Amy Weisberg Kim Zanti

Copy Editor / Distribution

Ellie Carroll

Contact US editor@thecanyonchronicle.com General inquiries: info@thecanyonchronicle.com

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The Canyon Chronicle is an independent community newspaper published bi-weekly by Canyon Media, Inc.©2020. All rights reserved. thecanyonchronicle.com

Thanks to Jimmy Wiley with his backhoe (in background) and La County Public Works, everything is open on Old Topanga Canyon Road. In foreground, a pensive Rick Provisor ponders effects of the storms. The Trash Warriors collected trash and assessed storm damage on the Boulevard on Sunday. Roger Pugliese notes that Caltrans has been doing a good job keeping the Boulevard open.

Photo by Amber Lincoln

PHOTO BY JANE TERJUNG

Oh, Didn’t it Rain!

Fernwood Rain Report

By Eric Fitzgerald

After quite a few dry Januarys, we finally have a juicy one. A series of potent winter storms rolling off the Pacific Ocean has all our waterfalls roaring from a season that has now reached 20.28 inches of rain as of January 15th. The rainy season runs from October 1st to September 30th. On average we usually get 18.57 inches of precipitation over the course of the entire rain year but here we are, only half way through January and we’ve already received more moisture than we do in an entire average year, with the wettest month on average—February—still ahead. The averages for my NOAA approved weather station here in Fernwood span 26 years.

By contrast the Civic Center in Los Angeles has only seen 12.18 inches of the wet stuff to date. Our higher totals can be explained by the orographic lift provided by Saddle Peak and the other Santa Monica Mountains that encompass our now verdant canyon.

PHOTO BY GARY DANNENBAUM

Above, Mudslide in the 600 Block of Old Topanga Canyon Road looking north.

Right, Mudslides and treefalls closed Old Topanga Canyon Road on Jan. 5 to Jan. 6.

PHOTO BY JOSEPH ROSENDO

PHOTO BY GARY DANNENBAUM

Property owners on Old Canyon had damage to their car when this oak fell.

Jan. 5: Caltrans hard at work. The Boulder on TCB was exploded later that night.

CALTRANS

PHOTO BY ROGER PUGLIESE

Rock Fall on Topanga Canyon Blvd. at 2-mile bridge at MM: 1.2.

LA County vs. City of Los Angeles—How Government Works in Topanga

By Annemarie Donkin

Why Topanga voted on Nov. 8 for the County Supervisor and not for the Mayor of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County’s population is larger than all but eight states, has a budget of nearly $40 billion and is run entirely by a five-person Board of Supervisors.

Topanga is located in the County’s Third District and Lindsey P. Horvath is the newlyelected Supervisor. The Supervisor and her staff are the direct representatives for the community of about 13,000 residents known as “Unincorporated Topanga” and the Topanga Town Council (TTC) is the main liaison with the County.

Los Angeles County

According to lacounty.gov, the County of Los Angeles has the largest population (10,047,926 as of Dec. 2021) of any county in the nation, and is exceeded by only eight states. Approximately 27 percent of California’s residents live in Los Angeles County.

The Board of Supervisors, created by the State Legislature in 1852, is the governing body. The five Supervisors are elected to four-year terms by voters within their respective districts. The Board has executive, legislative and quasi-judicial roles.

The Board of Supervisors appoints all department heads other than the Assessor, District Attorney and Sheriff, which are elective positions.

Traditional mandatory services provided by the County include law enforcement, property assessment, tax collection, voting, public health protection, public social services and relief to indigents.

Among the specialized services are flood control, water conservation, parks and recreation, and many diversified cultural activities.

There are 88 cities within the County, each with its own city council. All of the cities, in varying degrees, contract with the County to provide municipal services.

Additionally, more than 60 percent of the County—2,600 square miles—is unincorporated. For the one million people living in those unincorporated areas, including Topanga, the Board of Supervisors is their “city council” and County departments provide the municipal services.

According to the LA Forward Institute, “Los Angeles County makes the decisions about every aspect of our local public and mental health systems, social services and safety net programs, felony prosecution, local jails, child protective services and foster care, services for people who are living without shelter, property tax assessment, sales taxes, the operation of the Metro regional transportation agency, oversight of all public school districts, and even the policing, firefighting, parks, and libraries of approximately half the cities and all of the “unincorporated” areas of LA County. Its $36.1 billion budget is bigger than those of all but 15 states. Compare that to L.A. City, which has a budget of just over $10 billion for a population nearly half the size.”

The LA Forward Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the educational arm of LA Forward. It makes local government accessible and advances political accountability through public education, strategic research, and leadership development. Find their comprehensive guide to the County and

City of Los Angeles at https://www.la101.guide/ what-is-the-difference

Guide to County Services

To inform the public of available services, the Board of Supervisors ordered “A Guide to County Services:” https://lacounty.gov/newsroom/ publicinformation/guide-to-county-services.

The City of Los Angeles

The City of LA is in a category of its own. According to the LA Forward Institute, it’s the second biggest municipality in the United States, with a population of more than four million. It operates massive police and fire departments, libraries, public works, parks, sanitation disposal, street services and more, in addition to housing and planning departments.

“The City also has control over all water and electricity provision within its borders through its publicly owned utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (with its own budget of $6.1 billion), the Port of LA (through which $297 billion in cargo passed in 2018), and LAX airport (serving 88 million people annually),” the LA Forward Institute posted.

“To grossly overgeneralize, the County is responsible for social services to people while the cities are responsible for shaping the physical landscape. But the answer to whether something is the City’s responsibility or the County’s is usually “it depends.”

Often the answer is different depending on which city you’re in and whether they’ve contracted out certain functions to the County. Or the answer is both—especially when it comes to matters like transportation where there are municipal and county agencies working in tandem. Or homelessness, where cities deal with shelter and housing issues while the County is mostly responsible for services and there’s a joint LA City-LA County agency— Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which has all the challenges you might expect from an entity which has to answer to multiple political overseers.”

The Topanga Town Council

Since its inception in 1977, the Topanga Town Council (TTC) has been serving an ever-growing and ever-changing community. It became a nonprofit California corporation whose function was to act as an informational conduit between the town and local government officials.

As an all-volunteer organization, the TTC serves as the main liaison with the L.A. County

Third District Supervisor’s office.

“We have no Mayor or official City Council,” wrote Carrie L. Carrier, President of the TTC. “Everything we have, including the Town Council, is grass roots-based. We do not receive any regular governance funding. We operate like every/any other civic-minded nonprofit with a mission to communicate and promote community concerns and interests.”

Carrier explained how Topanga, as an “unincorporated” community, is governed.

“Making matters somewhat more confusing for folks is that communities like Topanga are officially “census-designated places,” but they have not incorporated into separate municipalities with their own tax base and governance structure. We’re a little too small to incorporate, though the “dream” of doing so remains because it would give us more control over certain things like public safety and the response to homelessness.

Of course, because our tax base is so small, we wouldn’t have sufficient funds to do much, but the dream remains! Due to a lack of having an “official” local voice, the Topanga community (and other similar areas that constitute “communities” or “neighborhoods”) began forming local town councils as nonprofits but not governing bodies, to help organize and communicate local concerns to our County Supervisorial, State and Federal representatives.

“That’s what the Topanga Town Council does. We formed/incorporated as a nonprofit “civic body” to act as a local organizing body/ clearinghouse for local community concerns that we distill into a message and share with our elected representatives at the County, State and Federal levels. We operate as a totally open/ accessible nonprofit that any member of the public can participate in (and whose meetings folks can attend) for free.

“We hold 10 public meetings per year at which residents can meet with our County/State/ Federal representatives and share their concerns. If we receive a critical mass of complaints about a particular issue or concern, we will issue a summary statement of the issue and the prevailing concerns, as well as some potential solutions that may be palatable to residents based on the feedback that we receive from them and local businesses and nonprofits.

“We are all unpaid volunteers with significant experience in local public and community affairs. Anyone can volunteer for the Town Council, and anyone who resides in Topanga or who owns land here can be nominated to the Board, with elections every four years.”

Board members must attend most public and private meetings and take an active leadership role in running one or more local programs (e.g. pollinator protections, emergency preparedness, wildlife habitat conservation, composting, trash, sustainable/nontoxic vegetation management, or policy advocacy for residents/businesses).”

Carrier added that they have liaised for decades with the County Supervisor in helping to convey and resolve local community concerns in conjunction with other local nonprofits, including TCEP, TASC, the Canyon SAGES, Arson Watch, the Firesafe Council, the Topanga Chamber of Commerce, Topanga Animal Rescue, and CERT. OneTopanga.com is an online program of the Topanga Town Council. For information or to join a meeting: onetopanga.com.

(Above) Emil and Karen’s father, Cyril “Cy” Wood building second story of the cabin. Cy and Keith Titmus (Vera Wood’s brother) bought 40 acres with the intention to build family homes at the top of Red Rock Canyon. Cy decided to build in Hondo Canyon instead, and Keith moved to the San Fernando Valley.

(Top right) Karen Wood as a child at the topof Red Rock with the Santa Monica Mountains in background.

(Right) Emil Zimmerman in loincloth and sandals above raising an old shed to the second story of a new extension to the stone cottage. Back row: Vera Wood, Iky DeWitt, Doreen “Doi” DeWitt holding baby Billy DeWitt. Front row: Lynn Wood, Karen Wood, Betsy DeWitt. This is when Vera, Nora and Herta Ware were sharing a car and their kids were often together. Circa 1955.

The Nature Boys, the Nature Girl

By Karen L. Moran

Arecent feature article about the Nature Boys in The Topanga New Times struck a personal chord in me. As a lifelong resident of Topanga (since 1949), I knew and experienced a very different side of the Nature Boys than the article suggested. They were not hippies, dropouts or squatters. I lived through that era, too, as the counter-culture of the 1960s and ’70s came to claim land in Topanga as if it was free and open to all. As a young woman, I regularly woke up to strangers who had moved onto our family’s Old Canyon Road property—in a van, truck, teepee or tent—to set up camp. These counter-culturalists created stress for families in the canyon who had worked hard to establish homes and ranches. This was the beginning of fences here.

• •

•

The Nature Boys, by contrast, were just that—young men living in the wilderness and off the land, making their way in the world through hard work, creative enterprise and enlightenment following the second world war. The “Hippies” of the 1970s were largely about taking; the Nature Boys of decades before were contributing to canyon families and culture.

By far, their biggest contribution to this world was health. They

advocated for the vegetarian way and contradicted the claims that meat and potatoes and white bread were the only American way. The nature boys were health nuts. So was my father [Cyril “Cy” Wood]. My family was the only vegetarian family in Topanga during my entire childhood. So, naturally, the Nature Boys were drawn to our company.

One in particular, Emil (pronounced ‘ay-mull’) Zimmerman came to live on our land every summer. Arriving from the Amazon Rain Forest, where he’d live in the jungle during the winter months, he brought two large boxes of Brazil and hazelnuts, one for our family, one for himself. Emil also brought the tools to get those nuts out of their shells: a nutcracker, a hammer and a small hand pick. In return for living in his car on our property, sleeping out under the stars each night in our private corner of the world, he spent his days helping my father build an extension on our small, one-room cabin. He, in particular, was a “fruitarian,” subsisting only on fruits, nuts and berries. He would arrive from the jungle when our patch of boysenberries bloomed, and leave the canyon for Brazil after the harvest.

Slowly but surely, several other Nature Boys would come to meet my father—Gypsy Boots, Maximillian, Jim Baker, among others. We also met the one and only Nature Girl, Anne-Marie Bennström.

Emil was a soft-spoken, humble, easy-going, six-foot-tall physical specimen with shoulder-length golden hair. He walked around in a loin

cloth. Gypsy Boots was determined to produce the first “energy bar” and open the first health juice bar with mixed drinks he called “smoothies.” He did both. Maxi was short, stocky like a wrestler and participated in weightlifting competitions in Venice. Anne-Marie was a Swedish blonde beauty with a gorgeous body and a degree in chiropractic medicine. Long before Jane Fonda or Suzanne Sommers, she developed exercise programs and tools, and opened a world-famous spa, today’s Ashram in Calabasas. • • •

When school let out each year for summer break, there was Emil. Oh boy! I loved watching him work, helping me crack open nuts and going on picnics with him and our neighbors up in Hondo Canyon at the lake. I was a very quiet, shy child, but he was easy to talk to and learn from about the outside world. One summer, I asked about the sandals he was wearing. He told me that he suffered some bone deformities from growing up in a small, Russian village during Stalin’s reign of terror. He was a Russian Jew whose family had escaped the pogroms in the 1920s-’30s.

He told me about soup the villagers made from stones and bark, and they would add dirt or soil for flavor. Maybe there would be a potato or two, sometimes. In other words, they were starving to death. Emil was given two left shoes to make do and scarcely had enough clothes to keep himself warm. I recall him being tall and strong, but I could tell that his posture and legs were affected. He recalled when one of the larger women in the village froze to death one night. The villagers took her body and boiled it until the fat came to the top and then they made soap from it.

I remember being stunned by this information. I felt rich by comparison. And he thought of us that way, as well. We had only 25 acres of land in what was then a remote area with a cabin without a roof, but by comparison, we had everything.

My parents were part of an early enclave of Topangans who inclusively welcomed artists of all kinds. One year, Emil brought me a ukulele. He then very patiently taught me how to string it, tune it and play it. I learned my very first song, “You Are My Sunshine,” and sang it to my elder sister early one summer morning. I then started singing to the sycamore trees, playing the piano and writing songs. Mom drew portraits of Emil and Anne-Marie, as she found them both so strikingly beautiful. Emil could commune with the animals in the canyon, consistent with the artist enclave we were part of. Anne-Marie was a ball of pure energy with bright eyes and an ability to inspire us to be stronger, fitter children. She was a true star-catcher.

The last time I saw Emil was in 1970. I had moved back to the canyon from Key West with my two small children after my divorce. Emil stopped by with his niece. They were on their way to Florida. He suffered terribly from arthritis in his later years and had become somewhat crippled. He died a few years later from cancer. He attributed these health issues to his early village life in Russia, a time of mental and spiritual terror, malnourishment and economic struggle.

About the same time, Mom [Vera Wood] and I went over to visit Anne -Marie at the Ashram in Calabasas.We had a lovely time, and she encouraged me to pick myself up after the divorce and get back in the saddle. For me, she was a mentor and example of a woman who had manifested her dream. She came to see us decades later at the family cottage on Old Canyon Road, a place that had always reminded her of her own childhood home in Germany. She seemed to know that my mother was not long for this world and left with a portrait my mother had painted of her long ago, tucked under her arm.

Girl and Me

On a 2015 trip to the Smithsonian with my husband, Ishmael, I walked into the “Inventors Trademark Hall of Fame.” There, to my surprise, was a photograph of Anne-Marie, being honored for inventing the “B” on the ball, a way of exercising on a ball that is now standard in many gyms. When I returned home, I gave Anne-Marie a call to let her know I’d seen the award and how wonderful it must have been for her to be recognized. We said our goodbyes and she died shortly thereafter.

I’m sharing these memories so that you can see how the Nature Boys were real people, whose contributions were based on encouraging the best of humanity, and building businesses of integrity. The Topanga Historical Society, the Chamber of Commerce and the Trash Warriors, the Community House, and Theatricum Botanicum, among others, are all building blocks that hold the community together. To me, they refer back to the role the Nature Boys played in contributing to their world to make it a better place. I was lucky to know them.

Karen L. Moran’s memoir of life in Topanga, “Forever TOURMALINE,” will be released in spring, 2023.

With gratitude to Eileen Delehanty Pearkes for facilitating this series. Find her at: edpearkes.com, author of “The Geography of memory: Reclaiming the Cultural, Natural, and Spiritual History of the Snayackstx (Sinixt) First People.” (Rocky Mountain Books)

Portrait of Emil Zimmerman, by Vera T. Wood, 1946, Pastel

“Nature Girl” Anne-Marie Bennström, Photo courtesy BeyondWords-Publishing

Karen L. Moran, with Pico, the family pet, is in a place of happiness and joy.

Art in Service of the Spiritual

By Sarah Spitz

The rain closed down the gallery last weekend but you still have time to see works by local artists celebrating nature’s gifts at Topanga Canyon Gallery through January 29. Debbi Green’s “La Tierra” blazes with exuberant takes on majestic trees, radiant flowers, billowing branches against blue skies and bursts of brilliant color. Kate Browning’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” takes a more interpretive look, one that feels less celebratory, perhaps even a bit melancholy. She renders her exotic flowers, black skeletonized trees, fading roses as if in motion, with the poignant sense that the life bursting out of them will soon become part of their demise. Support your local artists; these works are available for sale at the Gallery.

But come down from the Canyon and into the City for a while. There’s much to be seen at LACMA!

Abstraction in Service

of the Spiritual

I took a morning to view two exhibitions, “Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, 1938-1945,” the first comprehensive museum exhibition of this group; and “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” charting the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies in the African diaspora across the “Black Atlantic.”

LACMA is displaying 100 carefully selected works from the larger show of 400 objects that originated in Brazil and has traveled to Houston, Dallas, The National Gallery in DC and here.

The Transcendental Painting Group (TPG) came together as

a loose collection of artists in New Mexico whose manifesto declared they would strive “to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new concepts of space, color, light and design to imaginative realms that are idealistic and spiritual.” Most of the market and art critics of the time were centered around the East Coast and with the onset of World War II, the group didn’t last long or garner much attention. But their paintings continue to demonstrate how abstraction can be used in service of the spiritual.

In fact, in 1986 LACMA pioneered a look into this group and other artists with its landmark exhibition “The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985.”

“Another World” features 80 works by 11 artists, including four from LAMCA’s own collection by Emil Bisttram and Raymond Jonson, two of the founding members of the TPG, as well as Ed Garman and Agnes Pelton.

Of these, it was Pelton’s work that most drew me in. She has a Southern California connection, having spent her last 20 years in Cathedral City after living for a decade in a windmill on Long Island, where she began studying Theosophical writings about spiritual emancipation that would influence her work for the rest of her life.

But how to describe paintings by a visionary symbolist, whose abstract work expresses her inner spiritual experience? Sometimes with muted earth tones, often with deeply saturated colors, set off by golden or burnished frames, using botanical and biomorphic shapes with the desert sky, landscape and light as her guiding forces.

Where several of the other artists express themselves in abstract

geometric compositions, Pelton’s motifs include floating ovals, golden stars, shiny lines, abstracted mountain peaks and light radiating from within symbolically significant shapes and colors.

“Another World” is a calm and inspiring exhibition, maintaining a technology-free environment (no digital audio tours) to complement the meditative nature of the works on the walls.

“Afro-Atlantic Histories” features objects from the 17th through the 21st centuries, expressing and analyzing the ebbs and flows between Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe and it’s is a stunner, even downsized from the original. Sometimes smaller is better, to allow for the impact to really be absorbed.

For gut-wrenching impact, you need only to look at Kara Walker’s “Restraint,” a 2009 graphic etching of a silhouetted young girl’s profile, wearing a collar with forked objects emanating from it front and back, attached to suspended wires with dangling bells and a medieval-looking blade-like instrument near her mouth. It is shockingly brutal.

In the same gallery, Arthur Jafa’s “Ex-Slave Gordon” is a disturbing sculpture, based on a renowned photograph that was used to rally support for the Union war effort in 1863, that viscerally attests to the whippings Gordon was subject to. Adding another dimension, Gordon had been further dehumanized as merely a symbol of the cruelty of slavery, in the original photo entitled “The Scourged Back.” Jafa gives Gordon his individuality back by adding his name to the sculpture’s title.

While slavery was what forced the transatlantic journeys of Africans, the exhibition is organized around six themed galleries, depicting voyages, everyday lives, enslavement and emancipation, the rites and rhythms of their lives, portraits of unsung heroes as well as leaders, and images of resistance and activism.

The one image that towers over all others and dominates the gallery is “Ntozakhe II (Parktown),” a 2016 photograph by South African artist Zanele Muholi. It is a larger-than-life, pure, deeply black woman whose headdress and toga mimic the Statue of Liberty, presenting a troubling and complex reconsideration of the meaning that Lady Liberty represents.

For more information: lacma.org/ gettickets; or call the ticket office for advance bookings: (323) 857-6010.

Sarah A. Spitz is an award-winning public radio producer, retired from KCRW, where she also produced arts stories for NPR. She writes features and reviews for various print and online publications.

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Corcoran Collection © 2022 Heirs of Aaron Douglas/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

By Miles Erickson

t is with the greatest reverence that with this issue, Long Distance Listening Party comes to an end, at least in its current form. I’ve begun another venture that deserves to be prioritized at this time but hope to continue here whenever I can, especially if that Ween interview ever materializes. So this isn’t necessarily a goodbye to me, just to Long Distance Listening Party.

LDLP has been a big part of my life over the last year. This newspaper has been a platform for me to interview some of my most highly respected artists and musicians and led me to finding therapeutic catharsis through sharing and joking about some of the more difficult times in my life. At its height, it led me to questioning the existence of extra terrestrial life. Also, there was a time when I think I accidentally uncovered a criminal conspiracy but we’ll let that one lie.

To put it more succinctly, this column has been a means for my own personal growth, both to document it and enable it.

Okay now, I’m going to turn off my “President resigning after a sex scandal” voice and talk with you all about some music one last time.

I’ll leave you all some advice: next time you see an article titled something like “Topanga Elementary to take Children on Thanksgiving Charitable Field Trip to Skid Row,” maybe check to see if the piece was written by me before writing your local councilman.

I love you all dearly. If you’d like to keep an eye on my next project, I invite you to follow me on Instagram @mygumsarebleeding.

Long Distance Listening Party, Vol.23

This playlist is available on Spotify, search my username, Mileserickson-354.

• I Sat by the Ocean, Queens of the Stone Age

• Here She Comes, Rosa Maria

• Midnite Blues, The Detroit Cobras

• The Start of Something, Voxtrot

• Sing Sing, Ultra Orange, Emanuelle

• Wolf Like Me, TV On The Radio

• This Magic Moment, Misfits, Ronnie Spector

• Exactly Where I’m At, Ween

I Sat by the Ocean, Queens of the Stone Age. “I Sat by the Ocean” and the album it belongs to are probably the best things Josh Homme has done outside of his desert sessions. It’s kind of a shame that, aside from maybe “No One Knows,” none of their other songs are quite catchy enough to be #1 hits, because most audiophiles will tell you that they’re kind of the last great rock band. Also, one time I was at a party and Josh Homme covered for me after I spilled some beer on someone’s equipment, so I kind of owe him a good review.

Sing Sing - Ultra Orange, Emanuelle. This is one of those lightning in a bottle collaborative albums. I’ve talked about it before when discussing “Don’t Kiss Me

Goodbye,” but it’s the kind of greatness none of the members where able to replicate in their solo careers, sort of like Velvet Underground and Nico. Also, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this song is about being a prisoner in your own relationship and it’s named after one of the most infamous maximum security prisons in the US. Wolf Like Me, TV On The Radio

Great song, I don’t understand any of the lyrics, which is fine when the song is super catchy chorus earworms, but when it gets into the super long break and you realize there’s another three minutes to go, it becomes a problem.

This Magic Moment, Misfits, Ronnie Specto. Anyone who’s surprised that the Misfits did an entire album of ’50s Doo-Wop covers probably doesn’t know a lot about the Misfits. Their entire aesthetic is based off of the idea, “What if the Monster Mash was a person?” Like if a WWE wrestler had an entirely different family that his wife didn’t know about but that other family was the Munsters. This cover is basically noise rock with a really distinct melody; it would be really easy for this song to get lost in a muddy fog of rock noise but they don’t stray too far from the original composition, so I’d say it actually improves the song as opposed to hindering it.

Miles Erickson is a recent graduate of CalArts, published author, and currently enrolled in a prestigious, 4 year, student loan repayment program but just got a job to pay it off...someday.

Old Wisdom For a New Year

By Joel Bellman

Since my Christmastime column was a bit less than festive, I want to try and begin 2023 on a positive and upbeat note. Most of us are by nature eternal optimists—some would call it delusional, but I like to think of it as aspirational—and the new year always presents a fresh opportunity for us to improve ourselves. We start out with the best of intentions, but we’re too often doomed to fall short, hence the familiar internet meme: “I”m opening a gym called ‘Resolutions.’ It will have exercise equipment for the first two weeks and then turn into a bar for the rest of the year.”

There have been times, though, when selfimprovement was a way of life, not just a handful of quickly forgotten New Year’s resolutions. I was reminded of this in a recent Hanukkah gift from my brother, a facsimile edition of McGuffey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition ©1920. McGuffey’s Readers had been a great favorite of our late father’s, an English professor, though more for their concept than their content. They were America’s first popular textbooks in the 19th century, originally written by Scottish immigrant and professional educator William Holmes McGuffey in the 1830s for primary school students through the 6th grade. They have reportedly sold an astounding 122 million copies, falling somewhere just behind Shakespeare, the Bible, and Webster’s Dictionary. The last official revised edition was just over 100 years ago, and they’ve now passed into the public domain, still in print and freely available online.

It’s a poignant irony that the books that taught millions of Americans to read, that were intended to set a national standard for literacy, reverence for learning, and formation of moral character are now effectively marginalized as fetish objects for home-schoolers and religious fundamentalists.

On one level, it’s easy to see why: McGuffey Readers fit right in with the aggressive back-tobasics/prayer-in-schools movement that surged in the ’70s and ’80s as a reaction to perceived ’60s permissiveness, opposition to “forced busing,” and political potency of wedge-issue culture wars. We still see it in Florida’s “don’t say gay” legislation, a coast-to-coast right-wing campaign to dial back “woke” educational curriculums and ban

“inappropriate” books, and hysteria over “critical race theory.”

The series itself recognized by the end of the 19th century that Bible-thumping Calvinism, stern moralistic lectures, and reinforcement of white male patriarchal social and political hierarchies, which may once have suited a largely homogeneous Western European population, had grown irrelevant in an increasingly heterogeneous, multi-cultural, diverse and more egalitarian society. But what was also lost as the series faded from wide popularity was the notion that it was worthwhile to impart a working knowledge of a common canon of prose and poetic literature, and to cultivate not just competence, but standards of excellence in reading, writing, and public speaking.

Nowadays, anyone who defends those 19th century virtues of cultural literacy, character formation, and formal communication skills tends to sound either like a fool or a reactionary, partly because for the past 40 years these concepts have been cynically commandeered by the political right. How this happened remains a bit of a mystery, since Ronald Reagan was famously one of our most intellectually incurious presidents,

yet it was during his presidency that conservative intellectuals attained their greatest prominence, and there was serious and robust public debate about a wide range of policy questions. Today’s Republicans, children of the Reagan revolution raised to “maturity” in the era of Tea Parties and Donald Trump, are spoiled and thuggish, defiantly stupid, anarchic bomb-throwing brats, like some kind of weird cross between Ferris Bueller and a murderous Chucky doll.

But the civilizing values that the McGuffey Readers, at their best, tried to instill have not fared much better on the political left. There clearly was no Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee vetting their curriculum, and marginalized voices of BIPOC communities are nowhere to be found in their yellowing pages. What some have criticized as “the cult of the amateur”—the less formal experience and training the better, since by definition it only reinforces white male cisgendered hierarchies—promotes the idea that any of us can do almost anything if we have a strong enough passion for it. Maybe not brain surgery or flying a jet, but becoming rich and famous by live-streaming yourself playing video games on TikTok, or renting yourself out as a living, breathing video billboard for thousands of dollars to millions of viewers as a social-media “influencer”? No problem!

Our problems can’t be solved by assigning McGuffey Readers to today’s students. But I do think it would be beneficial to somehow revive the idea that cultural and actual linguistic literacy matters, that logic, reason, and critical thinking are worthwhile cognitive skills, and that good citizenship, civility, and civic engagement are not only desirable but in fact are essential elements in building and maintaining a functioning and durable democracy.

It’s not easy to wrap all this up in a neat little package of New Year’s resolutions, but I would reduce it to one: my father’s familiar admonition that I heard all my life, a bit of old-country Yiddish wisdom: “Be a mensch.” * I’m trying, Dad. I’m trying.

*a person of integrity, honor, dignity, rectitude; a stand-up guy

The Closing of a Year

Dreams and Fears. Awakes at Night.

Laughter and Smiles.

Frowns and Downs. Wishes and Wants.

Loss and Gain.

The Balance of a Year Of A Life.

The Gift of a Year Of A Life.

To do with what we can. Please Ourselves and Others.

Give as Good as we Get.

But Love is the Constant. The Grease on the Wheel. The Smooth Substance that slows the wear.

Emboldens the Heart.

Embellishes the Gift like the Gilt of a Cake.

And here we are in the middle of it all.

Forgetting and Remembering. Only parts of it. Some for Better and some for Worse.

But it was Our Year. Shared, of course, but Ours!

The challenge of it all. So incremental are our Leaps and Bounds.

Looking Backward and Forward.

It’s all there—Our Time.

Our Soul’s Path etched like a Comet Streak On the Face of Heaven.

By Paula LaBrot

The Computer Electronics Show (CES) was back, live, in full force in Las Vegas for 2023.

This year, the event, which had been virtual during COVID, was its in-person-wild-andcrazy old self, with lots of mind-bending new products on display.

“CES is the most influential tech event in the world—the proving ground for breakthrough technologies and global innovators,” according to the Consumer Technology Association. Here is a roundup of highlights from the show.

Boats

Billed as the Teslas of the Seas, Candela of Sweden and Navier of California unveiled electric powered hydrofoil speedboats that can cruise for over two hours at 20 knots (23mph). Even Brunswick showed off an electric outboard motor for traditional boats. Electric powered boats would be great for the environment, but sailors have big qualms about their range limitations. Running out of juice or having mechanical difficulties 50 miles out at sea is not something a lot of mariners are keen to risk yet.

TVs

The TV I liked the best from this year’s models was the Displace Wireless TV. Samsung and other companies all presented wireless models which are TVs that hang on the wall and only require a power plug. They come with a connect box you can put off in corner that receives and transmits the television signals so you don’t have a tangle of wires to hide. But the Displace TV has another, amazing feature. At 55 inches and weighing 20 pounds, it sticks by suction, to any flat surface you want to place it on. You could put it on a wall or a window… anywhere you can stick it. And the Displace runs on four rechargeable batteries so you don’t even need a plug.

A giant TV was the 97-inch LG Oled Wireless TV that comes with a wireless connector box you can hide and a price tag of $25,000. But that was not the biggest screen. Samsung’s “The Wall MicroLED” TV runs 8K at a mammoth 292 inches! Hey, Weird Al, we are getting closer and closer to “Fred’s 2000-inch TV.”

Medical Innovations

Automotive Hands down, the flying car was the top of my list. Aska’s $789,000 flying car is pending approval from the FAA and hopes to be flying in 2026. It’s powered by electric batteries, carries four people and fits in a conventional parking space. It can fly 150 mph and has a range of 250 miles on a single electric charge.

The BMW iVision Dee is a color changing car that changes the exterior design of the car at the whim of its owner using E Ink’s low-energy segmented display technology. This digital beauty is a compact sedan that recognizes and “learns” its owner. It can sense the driver’s mood, and it can chat to the driver, acting as a road buddy. Instead of a normal dashboard, the car’s entire windshield is the display panel which can give basic info like speed all the way up to virtual or augmented reality overlays to entertain its owner during automated driverless journeys.

The digital innovations in medicine at CES are mindboggling. Ashirase’s wearable navigation system helps visually impaired people walk safely. It is an in-shoe device with a motion sensor that interfaces with a smartphone app. The app uses data from the sensor with map and satellite positioning information to generate navigational instructions which are communicated to the user through vibrations in the in-shoe device.

The ENAD (Endoscope AI Detector) Finder is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based program designed for computer-aided polyp detection systems in the area of colonoscopy to prevent colorectal cancer. It has the ability to detect polyps that may be hard to spot, even for doctors.

The Withings’ connected “urine scan” provides an immediate snapshot of the body’s balance by monitoring and detecting a large variety of biomarkers found in urine. The device sits inside most toilet bowls. Results are delivered to a smartphone app which provides the user with analysis and recommendations on hydration and nutrition, or helps women track their ovulation.

The Valencell fingertip blood pressure monitor looks like a pulse oximeter that clamps to the end of your finger. This little device lets users do away with cuffs that pump up and pinch.

The LG Breeze sleep earbuds use brainwavetuned sound, with the use of different frequencies on each side said to induce a sleep-specific state in the brain.

Wearables

To support workers in physically demanding jobs, German Bionics introduced the Apogee exoskeleton, an AI-supported wearable tool that provides 66 pounds of lower back support, perfect for jobs that require heavy lifting. It aids good posture and its active walking assistance feature minimizes fatigue in labor-intensive sectors like construction and logistics, according to ibtimes.com.

As part of a move away from smartwatches, the Evie Ring by Movano Health, designed for women, has typical fitness metrics. It can also measure menstrual and ovulation cycle, sleep stages and duration, and even mood track.

A Cornucopia of Digital Wonders

From electric roller skates to fantastic virtual reality adventures to cuddly, personality-filled AIdriven robot pets, CES abounds with the fruits of imagination and innovation. This was just a tiny glimpse at the thousands of exhibits on display this year. One thing for sure, we better learn how to recycle batteries better.

AI (artificial intelligence) continues to develop exponentially and is the main technology to watch as far as transforming the realities we live in. For me, though, no robot pet will ever take the place of a real dog snuggled up next to me on a stormy winter night.

Vamos a ver!

Valencell

The wearable Evie Ring is designed for women.

FRIENDS HELPING FRIENDS

Healing Tana

By Claire Denis

Sometimes, even those who inspire us need our help.

One of the reasons those who live in Topanga love living here is because of the close-knit community. When one stumbles or falls, a Topanga friend will often step in to lift them up.

Such is the case now when Topanga local Tana Roller was telling her friends Claire Denis (Cafe Mimosa), Lori Precious (Topanga Bohemian) and Julie McInally that she was greatly challenged with funding the cancer treatments she urgently needs starting in February. That’s when her Topanga tribe stepped into action to create a Go Fund Me crowd sourcing campaign, which to date has raised over half of what’s needed. We’re looking for more generous souls perhaps from the larger Topanga community to rally around Tana and contribute to close the funding gap so Tana can start her treatment.

Our dear friend and Topanga resident of 17 years is a remarkable woman. From her quest called Tribe Credo, it’s easy to see why so many love and care about her: Life is about finding your tribe along the way. Spreading comPASSION and

Friends rally to help their friend, Tana Roller, fund her upcoming cancer treatment.

CONSCIOUSness with grace and poise. Learning from each other and teaching each other while using words that lift the spirit.

In 2004, Tana was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma and rushed into surgery. She was given five years to live but after aggressive treatment,

Tana was considered in remission. In 2017, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 non-Hodgkins follicular lymphoma. Through treatment, Tana was able to keep it from progressing until recently, when it was discovered to have spread.

She has identified a treatment plan to address the urgency of her health situation but the enormous cost of traditional and alternative treatments that are not covered by her insurance are unmanageable and she needs our help. The amount we hope to raise covers a comprehensive three-week in-patient stay at an oncology treatment center and related costs for post-recovery care.

Time is of the essence to begin treatment; the hope is to start no later than Feb 2023. Tana will be the direct beneficiary of all funds raised.

We thank you in advance for whatever you can contribute to help Tana find her way back to vitality in health.

Donation Options

1. Tana Roller’s Cancer Recovery: http://gofundme.com

2. VENMO @tana-roller

Blessings,

Claire Denis, Julie McInally, Lori Precious, Claire Stoermer, aka Team Tana.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TANA ROLLER