Topline:
Preparation is key before you go on a hike, whether you are an experienced or amateur hiker.
Why it matters: Hiking can be dangerous. Just ask Rob Klusman, who is the president of Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team. He said his volunteer-run outfit conducts on average 100 operations a year.
What we learned: Carry a whistle and a mirror and wear bright clothing. Keep reading to find out why.
To the rest of the world, Los Angeles is all about the beaches. To some of us tried-and-true LAists, the mountains are our temples. They're the place for quietude, where you get inside your head, and in the best way possible — get a little lost.
But we can all imagine how dangerous it can be, how one false step or a small lapse in judgment can quickly put us in a jam. Those kinds of scenarios are not just theoretical to Rob Klusman, president and a member of the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team, one of eight officially sanctioned mountain rescue outfits in L.A. County.
Klusman said his team on average conducts 100 or so operations each year. "Safety is relative," he said. "But you can always be prepared."
For starters, Klusman pointed to a checklist of 10 essential items that you should always have with you on a hike, which you can read below.
Klusman also notes a few everyday things you can easily pick up for your next mountainous adventure:
"You blow a whistle, it doesn't take very much energy," Klusman said. "The sound from a whistle carries a very, very, very long way. It can be heard from hundreds and hundreds of yards away. A shout probably can't be heard over a running stream or over the wind, or over more than about 20 or 30 yards."
"If you can reflect the sunlight off of a mirror, [it] can be seen from six, eight, 10 miles away from the air quite easily," said Klusman. "On a search and rescue operation, I was able to signal a National Guard helicopter with a little simple mirror. And they came straight to where we were because they're like, 'Oh, we see the flash.'"
"You know, people are very small and some of these big mountains you can blend in and not be seen on the ground or from a helicopter," Klusman said. Wearing bright color clothes could get your noticed more easily.
Klusman said it's vital to always tell someone — a friend or a family member — where you plan to go and when you plan to return, so that they can get help if you don't show up.
"There's a misconception that people have that you have to wait 24 hours before reporting somebody's missing. That's not true," said Klusman. "If somebody's overdue and it's been four or five hours since they were supposed to come home, notify the authorities right away and we can initiate a search and rescue for them."
Hiking in the mountains always comes with danger, and in winter those risks can grow exponentially. Since just 2020, 10 people have died on Mt. Baldy alone. The body of a missing solo hiker who went out in the recent record-setting storm was found this morning. And this month, three people were rescued by Klusman's group after they were able to camp overnight in terrible conditions because they had the right equipment. That group carried a whistle and had left a detailed itinerary with family members.
Before making any trip, be sure to check conditions where you plan to go and the skill level you need to trek in the area you're visiting.
Always plan for the worst and hope for the best. Carrying a few extra items can save your life. At a minimum, always carry the "10 Essentials":
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Topline:
The Los Angeles Field Recording Club has launched a map that they describe as a “living sonic archive of Los Angeles,” and they’re looking for contributions.
To see (and hear) the map: Visit the L.A. Field Recording Club’s website — there are already a few recordings to get things started.
What kind of recordings are accepted: The club lists “birds, traffic, water, people, machinery, footsteps, or something unexpected” as examples of what they’re looking for. You can use anything to record, from fancy microphones to your phone.
What’s field recording: They’re long-form recordings meant to capture the sounds made in a specific place. It’s often done in natural environments, but you can do it anywhere. Crowded bars, busy freeways, even parking lots are all fair game — in fact, one of the first recordings on the map is from the eighth floor of the Americana at Brand’s parking lot.
Field recording as meditation: “There’s a certain fluctuation of sound happening — a pulse you might say — in this city," L.A. Field Recording Club founder George Jensen told LAist’s Robert Garrova. "Once people sit and be still for a moment, they hear it.”
How to field record: Some basic tips from this radio producer:
To contribute to the map: If you have recordings you’ve already made, or want to go out and submit some of your own, you can send them to the club's email, lafieldrecordingclub@gmail.com, by following the instructions in this post. You can also bring the files to one of the club’s meetups.
Topline:
Patrick Stewart, the classically trained stage actor who scaled the Shakespearean canon and added gravitas to a “Star Trek” franchise and the “X-Men” films, has died. He was 86.
Star on stage and screen: While best known as Professor Charles Xavier and Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the “X-Men” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” series and films, respectively, Stewart spent more of his career onstage than in the X-Mansion or on the USS Enterprise.
Patrick Stewart, the classically trained stage actor who scaled the Shakespearean canon and added gravitas to a “Star Trek” franchise and the “X-Men” films, has died. He was 86.
Stewart died Wednesday in Los Angeles, following “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body Dementia, spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak said.
While best known as Professor Charles Xavier and Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the “X-Men” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” series and films, respectively, Stewart spent more of his career onstage than in the X-Mansion or on the USS Enterprise.
Besides playing everyone from Claudius to Macbeth, he often performed a one-man rendition of “A Christmas Carol” and did West End and Broadway runs of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in repertoire with buddy Ian McKellen.
He achieved some of the best reviews of his career when he finally tackled Macbeth for the first time. The production, under the direction of Rupert Goold, debuted in May 2007 at England’s Chichester Festival Theatre, switched to London’s West End and then moved to the Brooklyn Academy of Music before transferring to Broadway in 2008.
Stewart’s performance earned him his sole Tony Award nomination. The Times of London said his Macbeth was “an enthralling creation of frailty, appetite, egotism and grim humor.” The Daily Telegraph said he had turned in “a truly great performance” and The New York Times said it was “a must-see.”
“Nearly 50 years I’ve waited,” Stewart told The Associated Press in 2008. “I learned it when I was 14. I memorized all the soliloquies just because I thought they were great. And they stuck, so I didn’t have to learn those bits of the play, which is a blessing, because learning lines has now become the one curse of this job.”
Raised in Mirfield in Yorkshire, a working class corner of northern England, the future 24th century commander of a starship grew up without a bathroom in his house.
Stewart joined an amateur drama group at 12 and memorized Shakespeare for fun as a teen. He won a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, launching a career as a character actor.
He was bald since he was 19 — alopecia runs in his family.
His father, a former regimental sergeant major in the British Army, was prone to outbursts of “repeated violence against my mother,” as Stewart wrote in a newspaper piece. “Violence is always a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”
In his memoir, “Making It So,” Stewart wrote about how he and his older brother Trevor braced for the nights when their dad came home drunk and angry, and attacked their mother. “Sometimes it was with an open hand, other times a closed fist. Always he aimed for her head.”
The son would later became a patron for Refuge, an organization that provides shelter for domestic abuse victims.
“The stage would prove to be a safe space, a refuge from real life in which I could inhabit another person, living in another place and time,” he would write.
Stewart was accepted into the Royal Shakespeare Company and stayed for 14 years, playing everything from Mark Anthony to Henry IV to Shylock to Oberon. “People who were not in the company would say to me, ‘Give it a break. Why don’t you go somewhere else?’ And I would say, ‘To do what?‘” he told the AP. “Telly?”
Stewart eventually left to look for more varied work, including the 1981 film “Excalibur.” He had just done a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1987 when an interesting offer came along. “I found myself in Hollywood shooting a syndicated science fiction series, which I was assured would fail.”
It didn’t, of course. Thanks to Stewart’s rich baritone and noble bearing, the “Star Trek” franchise ran for seven years, 178 episodes and produced four feature films. He was known for his slogan “Make it so.”
His adoration for Shakespeare would serve him well when he began to play Jean-Luc Picard, a 24th century starship commander.
“There is a formality to the way they speak and comport themselves that remind me of numerous Shakespearean situations I’d been in onstage. I should play Jean Luc, I realized, as if he were a character in ‘Henry IV,’ which is about brave men,” Stewart wrote in his memoir.
Despite the Borg and Klingons, Stewart still managed to make room for blank verse. He established the Paramount Shakespeare Company, a workshop on Saturday and Sunday mornings for any actor interested. (Stewart revisited Picard in the TV series “Star Trek: Picard.”)
The show gave him a higher visibility, which led to more work, including roles in the films “Conspiracy Theory,” “L.A. Story” and Broadway, where he starred in “The Tempest,” “The Caretaker” and David Mamet’s “A Life in the Theater.” He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in June 2010. Stewart was also an ambassador for the International Rescue Committee.
In July 1992, he and supermodel Cindy Crawford were on the cover of TV Guide’s “Top Turn-Ons,” based on a readers’ poll. In his memoir, Stewart wrote: “Absurd.”
Stewart was first introduced as the character Xavier in the original X-Men trilogy, appearing in three films from 2000 to 2006. He later returned in four more movies before Professor X’s death in 2017’s “Logan.” He reappeared in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” in 2022.
He also showed off his comedic chops aboard Seth MacFarlane’s Starz show “Blunt Talk” for two series and voiced Poop in “The Emoji Movie.” He made appearances on “Robot Chicken,” “Futurama” and “The Simpsons” (in one episode, Homer loses his hair, and Stewart tells him it’s great to be bald.)
Later in life, he proved Internet-savvy and found new fans with his humor, posing in a bath in a lobster suit and triggering memes when he posted a photo of him picking apples. When he was mistakenly outed as gay by a British newspaper, he said it was a nice change. “At least I didn’t wake up to the internet telling me I was dead again,” he tweeted.
He married Brooklyn songwriter and singer Sunny Ozell in 2013, with the actor’s “X-Men” co-star McKellen officiating. Stewart later tweeted a photo of the newlyweds in a ball pit.
He also is survived by two children, a daughter, Sophia, and a son, Daniel.
Topline:
Businesses impacted by the Lineage warehouse fire can apply for up to $30,000 in city grants to help pay for equipment, tools, marketing support and customer outreach.
What's available: Applicants may be eligible for up to $30,000 for equipment — pertaining to kitchen use, automotive tools, technology hardware upgrades or software — and $15,000 for marketing outreach — including for physical promotion on billboards, social media advertising, window displays and physical printed materials.
What isn't covered: Grants cannot be used for employee wages, salaries, benefits, rent, utilities, credit obligations, lease and loan payments.
How to get in touch: Funds through the Business Stabilization and Layoff Aversion program are limited to brick-and-mortar businesses within the city of L.A., and do not include unincorporated East L.A. (For services available in unincorporated East L.A., contact the L.A. County Department of Economic Opportunity at (844) 432-4900 or email osb@opportunity.lacounty.gov).
Businesses impacted by the Lineage warehouse fire can apply for up to $30,000 in city grants to help pay for equipment, tools, marketing support and customer outreach.
Funds through the Business Stabilization and Layoff Aversion program are limited to brick-and-mortar businesses within the city of L.A., and do not include unincorporated East L.A. (For services available in unincorporated East L.A., contact the L.A. County Department of Economic Opportunity at (844) 432-4900 or email osb@opportunity.lacounty.gov).
Applicants may be eligible for up to $30,000 for equipment — pertaining to kitchen use, automotive tools, technology hardware upgrades or software — and $15,000 for marketing outreach — including for physical promotion on billboards, social media advertising, window displays and physical printed materials.
Grants cannot be used for employee wages, salaries, benefits, rent, utilities, credit obligations, lease and loan payments.
The city program is funded by a $1 million grant award from the U.S. Department of Labor and is currently accepting applications.
The application is a two-part process. It involves an initial online submission followed by an in-person business needs assessment with the city’s BusinessSource Center. The application is available in English and Spanish. No deadline has been set.
The city advises applicants to review eligibility requirements. Applicants must be a brick-and-mortar business in the city and show documented proof that they were fiscally impacted by the fire.
Eligibility information and supplemental documents include having your employer identification number and business tax registration certificate, as well as documentation illustrating impact, such as a profit and loss statement, sales reports and four months of bank statements. For the full list of required documentation, click here.
You can fill out this form to let the city know what you need help with, or send an email to resources@lacity.gov with questions or concerns about the application. A document with frequently asked questions about the program is also available in English and Spanish.
The post LA businesses affected by the Lineage fire can apply for grants of up to $30,000 appeared first on LA Local.
Topline:
The Trump administration has asked a federal appeals court to quickly weigh in on whether it can temporarily prevent California from counting the ballots of up to 20,000 people it alleges are likely noncitizens after a lower court judge forcefully rejected the request. The Justice Department said in a late Wednesday filing that it’s essential the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issue a ruling as soon as possible due to “irreversible ballot processing occurring on an ongoing basis.”
Why it matters: Carter’s decision was the latest legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to expand federal control over state-run elections in the midterms that will decide control of Congress for the rest of his term. The Justice Department has made similar demands in other states including Washington. Noncitizen voting has been a central focus of Trump’s political messaging for years, although available data indicates it is exceedingly rare.
Why now: The appeal came just hours after U.S. District Judge David O. Carter issued a blistering order against the department’s last-minute effort to compel California to segregate the ballots from its vote count. The department says it believes those ballots were sent to people who are registered to vote even though they are not U.S. citizens. Early voting has been underway in the state for weeks and millions of people have already cast ballots.
The Trump administration has asked a federal appeals court to quickly weigh in on whether it can temporarily prevent California from counting the ballots of up to 20,000 people it alleges are likely noncitizens after a lower court judge forcefully rejected the request.
The Justice Department said in a late Wednesday filing that it’s essential the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issue a ruling as soon as possible due to “irreversible ballot processing occurring on an ongoing basis.”
The appeal came just hours after U.S. District Judge David O. Carter issued a blistering order against the department’s last-minute effort to compel California to segregate the ballots from its vote count.
The department says it believes those ballots were sent to people who are registered to vote even though they are not U.S. citizens. Early voting has been underway in the state for weeks and millions of people have already cast ballots.
Carter’s decision was the latest legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to expand federal control over state-run elections in the midterms that will decide control of Congress for the rest of his term. The Justice Department has made similar demands in other states including Washington. Noncitizen voting has been a central focus of Trump’s political messaging for years, although available data indicates it is exceedingly rare.
Trump blasted Carter’s decision on Thursday morning before heading to a campaign rally in South Carolina.
“California is very corrupt. The elections are extremely corrupt. The judge should not have done that but we’ll appeal that, of course,” he told reporters. Trump added without evidence that there are “hundreds of thousands” and then amended it to “millions, in my opinion” of “bad ballots” in California.
Carter, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, argued that the Justice Department’s demands were a clear violation of the National Voting Rights Act, which prohibits changes to voter rolls or election procedure within 90 days of an election.
Carter also questioned the reliability of the department’s list of names, since both sides agree that an unspecified number of citizens were inadvertently included. He argued that separating the ballots at this point would risk disenfranchising citizens and “wreak havoc” on the election certification process.
Over 500,000 votes have already been processed in Los Angeles County alone, according to court filings. The system also protects voter privacy: Once a vote is processed, it cannot be traced back to the person who cast it.
Carter still has to rule on the federal government’s renewed request for a preliminary injunction, which would bar the state from counting the ballots until the litigation is resolved.
He said Wednesday that if the federal government suspected noncitizens were voting, it could continue to prosecute those cases criminally. Federal authorities have charged over two dozen foreign nationals in California as part of a statewide sweep targeting people officials say have illegally registered or voted in U.S. elections.
The Justice Department has argued that it is in the government’s interest to prevent fraudulent voting before it happens. Federal prosecutors also have said voters won’t be disenfranchised by delaying the tabulation of their ballots while their citizenship is checked — an assertion disputed by county election officials.
The appeal will be the second time that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will consider the case.
The first time was just last week when the Justice Department argued before an appeals court panel that a fast ruling on its request was needed to stop any counting of the ballots.
Although the panel ruled it was premature for an appeals court to get involved before a lower-court ruling, two of the three judges wrote separate concurrences making it clear they wouldn’t support setting aside ballots at this late date. They questioned the accuracy of the federal government’s list of alleged noncitizen voters and argued that to set aside votes risks disenfranchising citizens.
One judge dissented, arguing that federal law bars noncitizens from voting and compels California to vet the potentially illegal ballots before they are counted. The failure to do so, he wrote, would cause irreparable harm to the election.
It’s not clear whether the case will appear before a new panel of judges or the same three that reviewed the case last time.
