The Brief

When wildfires broke out earlier this month, Alexandra Chun watched the news in horror.

“You just feel so helpless,” she told LAist. “The city is burning up, and your friends are losing their homes.”

Chun, a veterinary technology student at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, also feared for the safety of farm animals in fire-threatened areas.

And so, when her school put out a call for volunteers to help make accommodations for animal evacuees, Chun readily signed up.

Alexandra Chun, a veterinary tech student at Pierce College.

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Pierce College has a vast, longstanding teaching farm. The campus made room for about 225 more animals, including horses, alpacas, goats, sheep, chickens, and pigs evacuated from this month’s wildfires.

“Pierce has offered this service to the community for decades,” said farm manager Marcie Sakadjian. “As a college, we actually prepare this facility year-round in case there is any kind of natural disaster — be it fire or mudslides.”

An alpaca evacuated during the fires is currently being housed at Pierce College.

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On Day 2 of the fires, Chun and nearly three dozen student volunteers worked through the night to build more pens for the animals.

“By the time we left,” she said, “the horses were really calm and peaceful. I felt at ease knowing they were comfortable.”

Nicole Peterson, another veterinary technology student, helped out by keeping the animals hydrated. With a hose, she kept their water buckets filled to the top.

Nicole Peterson, a student in the veterinary technology program.

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Identification numbers for evacuated animals held at Pierce College.

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Since she lives nearby, Peterson would come by to help every day. Now that the Palisades and Eaton fires are nearly contained, many of the animals the students cared for are heading back home.

This change is bittersweet; Peterson had grown fond of a potbellied pig named Thomas. He liked to hide and dart out from the hay when she called his name.

Why Pierce College is a safe haven 

Students who major in agriculture can choose from various tracks like the pre-veterinary program, registered veterinary technology and equine science.

College administrators said students in these tracks learn a lot of skills that can be put to use in an emergency, making them ideal volunteers for wildfire evacuations.

Marcie Sakadjian, farm manager at Pierce College, and her staff of agricultural technicians and student workers.

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Farm manager Sakadjian, herself a Pierce graduate, listed a few that came to mind:

• How to catch, halter, and restrain.
• How to notice an animal is not feeling well, and how to respond.
• How to triage medical issues.

“We also teach basic veterinary skills, like giving vaccines,” Sakadjian added. Her students also learn that “when animals go home, we can't just put another animal in that stall or corral.”

“We have to thoroughly clean it out, which takes a lot of work,” she said. “You have to remove all of the feces, urine, bedding. We have to disinfect it. And then we can bring another animal into that housing.”

Before the emergency evacuations, Peterson took a class on urban farm techniques and another that taught her “all the breeds of horses and cattle and goats and pigs.” This knowledge, she said, gave her “the confidence to be able to step up and be a volunteer.”

When the animals came in, she became an extra set of eyes. If she noticed that an animal wasn’t drinking water, or if they had any cuts or bruises on their bodies, she shared that with the farm’s staff.

Animals from a ranch that had to be evacuated during the fires are currently being shetered at Pierce College.

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It's not all stress

Janet Peña is an agricultural technician on the farm and another Pierce alum. On top of caring for its goats, she assists in many of the hands-on student labs.

“Working with these animals can sometimes be a little bit intimidating,” she said. Her goal is to make sure students feel safe — and that they’re having a good time.

There are plenty of opportunities to do that.

The maternity barn at Pierce College.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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New born goats at the maternity barn at Pierce College.

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Peña and Sakadjian took LAist to a maternity ward on the farm, where baby goats were being born. On Monday morning, a goat named Hopper gave birth to four kids. Peña named them Jalapeño, Jynx, Jocelyn and Jorge.

“Every year, we pick a letter,” she explained. “That's how we determine, within the flock or the herd, how old everybody is.”

The maternity was full of baby goats, cuddling with each other or huddled under a heating lamp.

Janet Peña holds Juniper.

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Peña has to bottle-feed Juniper.

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One kid, named Juniper, was alone in her own stall.

She experienced some developmental issues in utero, Sakadjian said. Unlike most baby goats, who can stand and walk around immediately after being born, Juniper’s legs wouldn’t hold her up. Peña has been helping Juniper strengthen her legs by placing her in a box, which keeps Juniper from splaying them out.

As a result, Juniper’s mom has rejected her — “she smells like me,” Peña explained.

Peña has been bottle-feeding Juniper. Her legs are still a little wobbly, but every day, she’s getting stronger.

Walk through the automatic doors at the Carson Library and you’ll see on your left a 1973 painting called "Dominoes" by John Riddle.

Riddle, a prominent Black artist, has worked in the L.A. County Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and has been collected by Jesse Jackson and Roberta Flack.

Riddle's work was previously owned by the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in West Adams. Over two decades, the company’s art director, William Pajaud, an L.A. artist himself, carefully collected hundreds of pieces of Black art. Each piece in the collection, Pajaud said, would be a chapter telling the story of African Americans in the U.S. The collection included oil paintings, watercolors, and sculptures in clay, wood and metal.

When Golden State Mutual Life Insurance shut down, the company sold most of the best pieces at a private auction in 2007, with some selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. L.A. County was able to acquire about 120 works, including Riddle's piece.

To keep the works accessible to the public and free of charge, county officials chose four public libraries and three community centers to show the work. Earlier this year, the county arts department created a new website with a map to make them easier to find. The locations include the Golden State Mutual historic building in West Adams, plus:
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Libraries

• Carson Library (Carson)
• A.C. Bilbrew Library (Willowbrook)
• Masao W. Satow Library (Gardena)
• View Park Bebe Moore Campbell Library (View Park/Windsor Hills)
  

Community centers:

• Curtis Tucker Behavioral Health Center Health Services (Inglewood)
• Willowbrook Senior Center Aging and Disabilities (Willowbrook)
• Mark Ridley-Thomas Behavioral Health Center Health Services (on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Campus).

“All of these are county-owned spaces that are available, accessible to the public and to patrons to be able to live with the works, learn about the works, see the works, learn about the works,” said Kristin Sakoda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.

Dominoes by John Riddle. The painting was part of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance collection but is now part of the Los Angeles County Civic Art Collection.

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As you walk past the checkout desk at the Carson Library, toward the teen section, you’ll see another remarkable piece from the county’s holdings. It’s a two-foot-tall sculpture made from one piece of mahogany. It’s called "The Embrace" by artist Elizabeth Catlett, whose work is in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, among many other institutions. Catlett depicted two people hugging, their faces and bodies fused together, their eyes looking at the viewer.

Detail of El Abrazo (The Embrace) by Elizabeth Catlett.

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In the auction catalogue for the Golden State Collection, Catlett wrote: “I still work figuratively, trying to express emotion through abstract form, color, line, and space. I attempt to reach out to ordinary people who have little or no experience or understanding of art principles, and extend to them what I may feel about a subject."

Ancestral Fragments by Stanley Wilson.

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Meanwhile at A.C. Bilbrew Library, north of Compton, there’s a piece by Charles White, who lived in L.A. County for decades and mentored many artists in the region. His paintings and drawings in the 1960s took on the issues of the Black Civil Rights Movement, and that led well-known Black Americans like Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt to buy his art.

County officials are hopeful that the communities around these neighborhoods enjoy the art’s benefits, including “mental health, in our education, our youth development, our sense of inclusion and belonging,” Sakoda said.

When I lived in the UK, I worked on a BBC television show about birding. It was a strange experience as I couldn’t exactly book guests — “Hello Mr. Sparrow, could you be on location for an interview at 2 p.m.?”

So instead I spent a lot of time with the crew climbing up mountains with a large tripod on my shoulder. Did you know there’s a bird in the Scottish Highlands whose plumage turns white in winter to blend in with the snow? (It’s called a ptarmigan. Don’t pronounce the p.)

But it did mean I was attuned to British bird calls. I could hear something and pronounce solemnly: “Ah yes, that’s a lark. And that one's a chaffinch."

Moving to LA meant learning a new set of bird calls

When I moved to the U.S., however, it was a whole other story. I really didn’t recognize any of the bird calls. They were all so different. I just shrugged and figured they were part of the backdrop. But one day recently, a woman told me about a free app and said it was life-changing. "Hmm, I’ll see about that," I thought.

Merlin bird app

It’s called Merlin, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and it’s kind of like Shazam for bird calls. As in, you click it, and it tells you what bird song you can hear around you. When I opened it in my backyard for the first time, a whole orchestra of bird sounds opened up around me. I admit: it was kind of life-changing.

Of course it first picked up a crow, which I know only too well, given its loud, raucous sound. But then it identified a house finch. Huh. Who knew they were in my backyard? And as I listened closely, I realized … I knew that sound! It’s the first thing I hear when I wake up at dawn, lovely and melodic.

The house finch, awakening the day.

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Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

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So now when I open my eyes in the morning, I say, "Good morning, house finch, communing with fellow beings alive on a vibrant California morning!" It kicks off my day, although I guess I’ve been reading too much Mary Oliver.

The backyard birds you're probably hearing right now

But then other birds I didn’t know would pop up on my phone during the day, with names as intriguing as their calls: the spotted towhee, the orange-crowned warbler, or Cassin’s kingbird.

I mean, they do realize they’re in a backyard in Los Angeles, not some estate in Georgian England? My favorite for a while was the dark-eyed junco. Now we’re talking romantic heroes. Imagine him slyly popping across the apple tree limbs to call to you. Dark-Eyed Junco, at your service.

Dark-eyed junco, at your service.

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Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

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Meet Swinhoe's white-eye, a non-native bird spreading across SoCal

And then there’s Swinhoe’s white-eye. Which sounds a little like an eye ailment, but there you go. It’s a tiny bright yellow bird with a white ring around each eye. So cute! I first noticed them when there were a bazillion of them in a tree outside my house. It was such an unusual sight that I mentioned it to a woman walking her dog, and we stood there, oohing and aahing, until we both realized we’d oohed a little too much, and it was time to go.

Swinhoe's white-eyes are not native to SoCal, but are thriving.

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Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

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When I researched them, I was surprised to find they’re not native to SoCal. They’re actually pretty new to the area. There were just a handful in Orange County 20 years ago, probably having been brought over from Asia as pets and escaped. And now, they’re thriving and have spread everywhere from Baja to San Luis Obispo. Who knows where they’ll end up next? If anyone sees a chartreuse cutie in New York, let me know. It'll probably be very tired.

Yes, you can see I’ve become slightly annoying with my newfound bird interest. I’ll be asking my family what they want for dinner, and I’ll say, “Wait, is that the spotted towhee?” and turn to my phone, and my teenager will wrest it out of my hand and say, “Mom, be in the present!” Which is right. But my morning serenade as the birds come online one by one and greet the new day — well, that’s as present as you can be.

During a life cut short at 34, musician Elliott Smith left traces of his legacy in many cities, perhaps most notably in Los Angele

Writer Jamie Fisher spoke with some 140 people for her new book Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith.

Even though some of Smith’s painful struggles with addiction and mental health took place in L.A., Fisher said his time in the city wasn’t all bad.

“He was always very suspicious of artifice and then I think he found himself enjoying it more than he thought he would,” said Fisher, who worked as a researcher at the New York Times Magazine for a decade. “He liked how big and expansive the city was: you can just kind of vanish into L.A.”

Smith moved to L.A. in the summer of 1999. He died here about four years later. But in that time he cut some deep grooves into the city, in places from Los Feliz to the San Fernando Valley — if you know where to look.

Snow White Cottages

Take the Snow White Cottages in Los Feliz, lovingly named for their fairytale-like architecture, where Smith once lived.

Fisher said the cottages were run down when the musician moved in. One of her sources said a raccoon threw a roof shingle at Smith’s head.

“It was more of an apartment than a house really. And it was this little community that was tight knit at the time,” Fisher said.

The Roost

On Los Feliz Boulevard, just across the 5 Freeway, is the beloved dive bar The Roost in Atwater Village, a joint Smith memorialized on his album Figure 8 — as a fade out on the track "In the Lost and Found (Honky Beach)/The Roost."

“It’s just this little nod,” Fisher said. “He was always folding the places and people he loved into his music.”

Back in the ‘90s, the place was more of a working-class joint, and one of the more overlooked bars Smith had a penchant for, Fisher said.

“One of the bartenders there who really loved Elliott owns it now,” Fisher said.

Largo

Then, of course, there’s Largo at its old Fairfax location. Fisher said it was a huge part of Smith’s life starting in the late ‘90s, when he spent late nights playing piano with fellow musician Jon Brion.

New Monkey

Motor on over to Van Nuys for New Monkey, a music studio Smith founded where artists are still recording to this day.

Fisher said you can also find equipment that was used to record his final album, From a Basement on the Hill.

Fisher said Smith put the studio together at a point when he was struggling with addiction, in the last years of his life.

“It was really hard for him to write music, but buying broken equipment and repairing it and putting the studio together was something he could focus his energy into,” she said.

Smith wanted New Monkey, Fisher said, to be a place where musicians could affordably access some of the best recording equipment available.

As Smith lived with addiction and other personal issues, he was mentoring younger musicians and making a lifelong impression on artists such as Jim Fairchild from Modest Mouse and Grandaddy, and Aaron Espinoza from Earlimart.

“He was so generous with his time,” Fisher said. “He would show up to Earlimart shows and stand right in the front row and make them all extremely nervous.”

Fisher said she’d braced herself for writing the last chapters of the book about the final years of Smith’s life.

In 2003, Smith died from two stab wounds in his chest — and the case is still open.

Fisher said that despite his addiction and mental health struggles, she was surprised by the many “moments of light” during his time in L.A., from his love of cooking to his mentorship of other musicians and his work on New Monkey.

Figure 8 wall

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Courtesy FMLY used with permission

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The go-to spot for fans to remember Smith is still standing in L.A. — the Figure 8 wall in Silver Lake.

The mural of bending red and black lines famously became the cover art for the Figure 8 album.

More than two decades after his death, the wall is still alive with new memories.

“There’s always new notes from people saying, like, Elliott saved their life or quoting their favorite lyric or saying they wished he was still here,” Fisher said.

President Donald Trump is canceling nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity-focused initiatives.

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget described the funding cut as focused on “the most harmful government spending.”

Most of the cuts are focused on services for immigrants, including nonprofits that serve refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the country illegally. The administration says the funds are no longer necessary because illegal border crossings have diminished considerably.

A White House press release announcing the funding rescissions notes that some of the organizations are led by people who worked in the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump’s move was condemned by Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican in a tough re-election campaign and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Collins said in a statement that the action came without warning or consultation. She also said she would work to address with colleagues “these illegal actions.”

“Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers,” Collins said. “OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding.”

Typically, Congress can review the president’s proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump made that all but impossible by announcing them with just five days left in the federal fiscal year. The Government Accountability Office says the maneuver, known as a “pocket rescission,” is illegal.

Collins called it the latest attempt by OMB to “undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse.”