Suicide by train and one man who survived ... Why are transit-riding iPhone users being punished for Apple's fight with Google? ... Real food in Altadena ...
Altadena goes back to basics, opens doors for foodcrafters
The view from the door of the Mariposa Creamery looks like an urban homesteader’s paradise. Canning jars line the shelves, homemade cheeses ferment in a glass fridge, and a 6 week-old goat named Poppyseed, stumbles around the room, waiting to be fed.
Opened less than a year ago, this is the Institute of Domestic Technology, and it’s an up and coming epicenter for foodcrafting.
Founded by Joseph Shuldiner and located on the Zane Grey estate in Altadena, the Institute draws people from all over California for workshops on cheese and bread making, coffee roasting, pickling and canning. Shuldiner says he founded the Institute to help people rediscover “the lost arts of Home Ec.”
This morning, Certified Master Food Preserver Kevin West is working with about thirty pounds of ripe, red cherries. He's teaching a class how to pickle them. He is also turning them into fruit leather in a food processor.
Why Altadena?
According to Shuldiner, "Altadena is this unpretentious epicenter of what’s happening in food. All this stuff is not happening in Santa Monica, where you would think it would, or the West Side. It’s happening in Altadena, which still, people say, 'now where is Altadena?' You know - people don’t know, and I love that part.”
Donna Barnes-Roberts has lived in Altadena for 25 years. "We’re an unincorporated township; we are not a city, so we don’t have an extra layer of regulation on top of us, so we go by county rules," she says.
Because it is unincorporated, more restrictive zoning laws don’t apply, so it is legal to keep chickens, pigs, goats and even llamas in your backyard. Altadena started as a wine-growing region, and throughout its history, farmers raved about its granitic soil.
“It’s sort of like we get the early dirt, and that early dirt is really great for growing stuff, " says Barnes-Roberts. "Plus, we get about twice the rainfall as the LA basin, because we’re up against the mountains. And at certain times of the year, the clouds will just sort a stick up here and they hang about and they dribble on us,” she laughs.
In the spring of 2010, Joseph Shuldiner and his friends started a farmers market in Altadena, but it was underground. No one was certified, it was held in someone’s front yard, and you needed to sign a release form to get in. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when they decided to shut it down.
He still had dozens of friends who kept animals in their backyards, baked their own bread, and grew fruits and vegetables, but couldn’t legally sell their wares because they weren’t certified. In August of 2011, Shuldiner started the Institute, and its reputation spread.
“Loma Alta Park approached me and said ‘Oh, you know, the town really wants a farmers market - we’ve never had one.’ So I decided to make everything sort of permitted. I’m incubating these businesses. For people who’ve never gotten a health department permit, for people who’ve never gotten their Certified Producers Certificate, we’re hand-holding them and showing them how to do it."
This new Altadena Farmers Market is so legit, it has even appointed an “Assistant Secretary of Urban Farming.” That’s Elizabeth Bowman, a graduate student at Antioch University. Her job is to help everyday people realize their urban farming potential, get their certification, and help find creative solutions to whatever barriers are keeping them from getting to market.
One vendor, identified as Rishi, heard about the farmers market from Shuldiner and started selling fresh vegetables and Mexican honeysuckle that he grows in his backyard. He says he started growing organic food for himself because it was so much cheaper than buying it in stores.
"I just started growing it myself and kind of got crazy with it," he said. "I took out all the lawn and landscaping in my whole yard. We're just growing on 5,000 square feet. We got chickens, we got rabbits, we got a beehive. Hopefully we'll get some goats."
Shuldiner hopes the Altadena Farmers Market goes beyond organic broccoli and kale and inspires others to realize their farming potential.
“We’re going to map the city and as these urban farmers join our market, we’re going to carve it out: 'this person has one-eighth of an acre in their backyard that they’re growing and they’re selling in the farmers market.'' He plots it on a table and adds, "We may become a couple acre communal farm that happens to be a few square feet here, a quarter-acre there, but when you add up fifty of those, we’ve just started a farm in the middle of the city. It just happens to be in fifty different locations."
The Altadena Farmers Market runs Wednesday afternoons in Loma Alta Park.
Suicide by train: A growing trend in SoCal
In 2010, Ron Iseli was fired from his job and faced eviction from his apartment. “I refused to be homeless. I would rather kill myself than be homeless,” says Iseli. When the money ran out, Iseli went to the Hollywood and Vine metro station and jumped in front of a moving train.
Reporter Charles Fleming interviewed Iseli in his piece about train suicides called, “The End of the Line,” for July’s Los Angeles Magazine. “2012 is already on track to be one of the worst years on record,” say Fleming. In 2010, there were 16 fatalities just on the Metro alone. The following year reached a death toll of 14 people, and in 2012, that death toll has already been matched.
L.A. County has some of the highest train fatality rates in the country and one of the highest for presumed suicides by train. It’s something every engineer has to deal with. Fleming says, “They know that they couldn’t have stopped the train, and yet, they are haunted by this idea that maybe something could have gone differently and this wouldn’t have happened.”
Often, the last thing that happens when the train hits a body on the track is, “the person turns and locks eyes with the engineer,” says Fleming. That was Ron Iseli’s last memory before the train struck him. He woke up with the train right on top of him, and his very first thought was, “Oh boy, I can’t even do this right.”
He was rushed to Cedars-Sinai hospital and went under for two days. When Iseli woke, he said, “I knew that I lived for a reason.” Before the incident, Ron was an atheist, but lying in the hospital bed, he got a sense that there was something watching over him.
The main regret Iseli has is not taking the train engineer into account. He planned his suicide for months and didn’t want to kill himself in his apartment where his roommate would find him. Instead, Ron thought the best way for him to go was to jump in front of a train. Charles Fleming says, “They may not have any concept that when they’re doing this—when they’re ending their lives in this way—that they’re affecting anybody but themselves.” Ron says he hopes the engineer who was driving the train can forgive him.
Ron Iseli is now managing a transitional house a mile away from the Hollywood and Vine metro station where he tried to commit suicide. He’s helping others recover from their addictions.
Showdown at Shepherd's Bush: 3 runners who helped save the Olympics
In Showdown at Shepherd's Bush: the 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners who Launched a Sporting Craze, LA-based sportswriter David Davis tells the now largely forgotten story of American Johnny Hayes, Canadian Tom Longboat, and Italian Dorando Pietri, the most famous runners in the world in their time. Their rivalry in the run-up to, during, and after the 1908 Olympics in London created a marathon craze, and helped ensure the fledgeling Olympic movement survived World War One. Here's an excerpt from David Davis' book:
The earliest practitioners of the marathon race ... were pioneers of endurance. They were seen as super-human or crazed or both. They had to be in order to survive roads so dusty that their lungs were clogged; shoes so thin that mere slips of leather separated their bloodied feet from rocky, uneven surfaces; training methods so archaic as to invite permanent physical damage... At the 1908 Olympics in London, when all of about 50 marathons had ever been raced, a man collapsed and almost died in front of 80,000 stunned spectators, including the Queen of England. The moment turned Dorando Pietri, from Italy, into one of the most famous athletes in the world... Two of Dorando's opponents, Johnny Hayes and Tom Longboat, became equally famous. An Irish-American lad straight out of the tenements of New York City, Hayes was a Horatio Alger character sprung to life, championed by none other than President Theodore Roosevelt. Tom Longboat's record-smashing victories and controversial losses made him the most legendary Canadian athlete until Wayne Gretzky came along... Their legacy can be found in the exuberant spirit of contemporary marathoning, a global phenomenon that attracts elite athletes and weekend warriors alike, and one that inspires all of us to keep moving.
Anime Expo in LA this weekend
Thousands of fans of anime and manga (Japanese animation and comics) descend on Los Angeles this weekend for Anime Expo, the biggest convention of its kind on the continent. They meet Friday through Monday at the LA Convention Center for costume play ("cosplay"), screenings, karaoke competitions, and more.
A few years ago, Off-Ramp toured Anime Expo with Charles Solomon. Here are some of the highlights.
Will the new iPhone update leave transit advocates behind?
Earlier this month Apple announced that yet again, the iPhone as we know it will change. SIRI--the talking robot that helped Zooey Deschanel get tomato soup delivered--is scheduled for an update. There's a "do not disturb" switch so your sleep won't be interrupted by a 3am Facebook invite... but among all the new bells and whistles, Apple's taking something away: transit directions. Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson reports on the uproar that's created.
Currently, when an iPhone user wants to get from one place to another, they can use an app called Maps: it comes on the iPhone preinstalled and incorporates Google's mapping technology. When the iPhone updates to the new operating system this fall to iOS 6--that app changes dramatically.
There's turn by turn driving directions, live crowd-sourced traffic reports... beautiful maps. But if you're not driving and want (or need) to take public transit, you'll be offered a list of other apps with transit directions. That change has spurred dozens of angry blog posts, hundreds of snarky comments and a petition. Michael Smart is a transportation studies professor at UCLA. He owns an iPhone--and he really likes Maps' transit features:
"One thing that's really useful about it is it's built into Google maps so all of the destinations that you might actually want to go to are already built into the way finding feature of the transit app," said Smart. "If you want to take transit--you wanna go somewhere. It's really useful to be able to search for the activity you want to do and have the map show you how to get there."
Smart said that about seven or eight percent of American use public transit. "We don't have really good data on it but it looks like they are just as tech savvy as non-transit users. They use the internet just as much as anyone else, they make internet purchases just as much as anyone else," he said.
He added "Just from my own looking around the buses I'm travelling around Southern California, it looks like everyone is glued to their phone."
Google Maps is unique among apps in that it combines a lot of different transit agencies. Metro has an app--but it only covers Metro buses and trains. Not Foothill Transit or the Los Angeles City Dash buses.
Imagine you're visiting LA for the first time and you have to get downtown from Burbank airport. Punch the directions into the current Maps app--and you get a list of options: go with transit and you can take a Burbank bus to the Metro Red Line--that'll take about an hour. You can also ride the Metro Local 94 line--no transfers. The trip will last for over an hour and 20 minutes. Or you can ditch Metro altogether and ride Metrolink. The commuter rail system leaves Burbank Airport and travels straight to Union Station. 52 minutes. No transfer.
When the new Maps comes out--you'll have to download an app or two. And there's no guarantee the third party app you download will have all those directions. For the time being--the change has transit agencies a little worried. Steve Hymon edits the Source--LA County Metro's blog. Hymon says like all transit agencies, Metro has struggled to convince people who would normally drive to leave their cars at home and take transit. "I think a lot of people view this technology as a way to overcome that hurdle of getting people out of their cars and into transit," said Hymon. "It hasn't been an easy hurdle to overcome."
Then why did Apple decide to make such a drastic change? Andy Baio, a programmer and writer for Wired, says it's part of a brewing corporate rivalry. "It's not that Apple hates public transit, it's just that they hate Google more than they love public transit," said Baio.
"They don't want to be reliant on any one company. And Google, originally was very much a partner at the time they developed Maps."
But as time went on, Google's own Android phones gained in popularity. Google started to improve its Maps app for the Android--updates like turn by turn directions, 3D features--and not feeding them to Apple.
Google could design it's own maps app for the iPhone--if they wanted to do all that work. But even then--Apple gets the final say before any app is available for download. Google's declined to announce any plans yet.
As for Apple, it might eventually include transit directions--but keeping an app like that takes a lot of resources. It took Google seven years to get where they are today with public transit. And Baio says when come to the maps game, Apple has a tough road ahead no matter which route it takes.
Rabe talks robot rights with Matt DeBord
KPCC reporters have been talking to Southland scientists and engineers and counting down the days until NASA's most ambitious rover yet — Curiosity — prepares to land on the Martian surface. Follow the series online.
So here's the setup: Robot rights are my hobby. I'm completely serious. I've devoted a ton of free time over the past few years — time that could have been spent learning the tango or shooting pool — to pondering the question: Do we treat robots as well as we should? I have well-formed arguments, thick with verbal footnotes and rhetorical digressions.
Despite all that, Rabe isn't buying it. He doesn't think that robots are currently sentient, so why should we worry about this now? Why not just wait until we arrive at what futurists call the "Singularity," when artificial intelligence will figure out how to improve itself in ways we puny humans can't imagine, and deal with the whole thing then?
Because it will be too late! The robots' former masters will, literally overnight, start to look at us as if we were bugs! They could decide to wipe us out! We never had this problem with the animals, and we didn't really get around to thinking that their feelings mattered until the 1970s, when Peter Singer published his influential book "Animal Liberation" (I sometimes call my views on robot rights "Robot Liberation," in honor of Singer, a professor at Princeton).
In fact, the way we look at animals now — as a sentient sub-species — might be how the post-Singularity robots look at us. But it's not like we haven't gained some experience with thinking of robots as our representatives, our emissaries, extensions of who we are. We're about to land another rover on Mars, we've launched numerous probes into the Solar System, and Voyager 1 is preparing to enter interstellar space, making it the machine intelligence built by...us! that's traveled farthest from home. At that's just the science stuff. We can always talk about robot drones being used in warfare and eventually making life-and-death decisions on their own in battle.
When I talk to scientists about this, they get where I'm coming from. They develop an attachment to their creations that contains ethical elements, even if they aren't rationally prepared to say that their robots have feelings.
My debate with Rabe is but the beginning! But maybe you don't agree with me, either. Take it to the comments!
Anime's 40-year old teenager: Yuri Lowenthal
Off-Ramp animation expert Charles Solomon talks with the voice behind the animated characters any ten-year boy knows: Yuri Lowenthal. Lowenthal's believability and flexibility has led to leads in the anime series "Gurren Lagann," "Naruto Shippuden," and "Ben 10."
We've posted the short and long versions of their conversations.