Mary Jones, the city librarian you should know about; jellyfish get the spotlight at the Aquarium; showering with Sanden Totten;
Sister Corita Kent, creator of LOVE stamp, world's biggest selling artist
"Sister Corita, the rebel nun, the joyous revolutionary, as artist Ben Shahn called her, came of artistic age and into raised consciousness in the 1960s — a decade of war and of culture-bending forces." So opens April Dammann's new "Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography," from Angel City Press.
Kent's prints, made both during and after her time as an Immaculate Heart sister in the L.A. Catholic Archdiocese, made her one of the most prolific mid-century pop artists. She was on the cover of Newsweek and compared to Andy Warhol. Her work includes the LOVE stamp, which by 1985 had sold more than 700 million copies.
John Rabe spoke with Dammann about Kent's life and works:
When did she start making art?
She was discovered to have artistic talent as a kid in parochial Catholic schools in Hollywood, and it was encouraged by a couple of the young nuns, so she was making art from an early age. But really, the nuns in her order — the Immaculate Heart of Mary — they all became teachers, and so she began teaching in schools, even in Canada for a time. But her art developed in graduate school, studying art for an MFA. She discovered silkscreen process early on in her study and began making multiple prints of beautiful, original silkscreen, while teaching at Immaculate Heart College.
Tell us more about her serigraphs.
She would draw subject matter from the commercial world around her — advertisements, slogans — but also from the Bible. So she would turn messages that were to draw us toward, maybe, General Mills cereal into something like 'The big G stands for goodness,' and that could sell Cheerios, but to Corita the big G was God. And so she would try to infuse the spirituality into everything she did, but with fun and incredibly bright color.
And the Archdiocese was not in love with this.
This was a terrible time for the nuns of this order in Hollywood. They were a progressive order, they were liberal, and the Vatican II reforms came along; Sister Corita and her sisters, this was made for them. But it was Corita's luck to have the most conservative archbishop in the country. Cardinal McIntyre was their male authority in the hierarchy in the Los Angeles church, and he would have nothing of reform for these nuns. He became angry, he called them bad women and he threatened to make them suffer, and he did make them suffer.
(Cardinal McIntyre at 1961 ground-breaking ceremony at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica shaking hands with Patricia Kennedy, with Sister Mary David and Mother Mary Ancilla. LAPL/Herald-Examiner collection)
McIntyre eventually dismissed all of the Immaculate Heart teachers. Was this turmoil the reason she vacated her vows?
You know, she's been asked that question, and to the day she died she said "I can't tell you exactly why I left, but that kind of turmoil, seeing the suffering of my sisters — I really had to get out of there."
For much more, click on the audio to hear John's entire interview with April Dammann. And go see the Corita Kent exhibit at PMCA which opens June 14.
Drought: Science reporter explores naked truth of Navy Showers and Space Baths
Sanden Totten, KPCC's science reporter, took one for the team the other day. Took a shower, that is.
With his girlfriend holding the mike and the stopwatch, Sanden tried a Navy shower - using water only when needed (wetting hair, rinsing), and shutting it off when not needed (lathering hair, scrubbing between toes).
Find out how much water he saved compared to a regular shower, and then hear his interview with an astronaut to find out how much water, it turns out, he wasted.
Patt Morrison remembers the 1986 LA Public Library fire
In December, one of L.A.’s biggest arson fires gutted the huge DaVinci apartment complex. Mayor Garcetti said the fire caused up to $90m damage, and another official said, it "could have been a lot worse. Wind change, different atmospheric conditions, it could have been a $200m fire."
Tuesday, after a 6-month investigation, they arrested a suspect, who has pleaded not guilty.
The torching of the DaVinci was the biggest unsolved arson downtown since the LA Public Library burned on April 29, 1986. That’s a day Off-Ramp contributor Patt Morrison remembers well, and I spoke with her about it on the west steps of the library.
(The library burns. Credit: LAPL/ Security Pacific National Bank Collection)
We rode with Angelyne in her hot pink Corvette, and now you can, too!
Earlier this year, I had a surreal experience, when Angelyne - the most famous person to be famous for being famous -- took me for a ride in her hot pink Corvette. Angelyne turned out to be a great interview, as Off-Ramp listeners heard.
It turned out Angelyne was already a big fan of public radio, and offered to help us during the next fundraiser. I suggested she let a listener have the same experience I had, and she readily agreed.
(Anthony Friedkin/LAPL L.A. Neighborhoods Collection)
So, we've put together a unique KPCC auction experience.
Angelyne will give a ride to the winner in her 2015 Corvette (there's just room for one passenger), and then meet the winner's companion and me for drinks and dinner, compliments of Group 1933, which has established a long list of "refined drinking locations" across Los Angeles in the last few years.
Most recently, Group 1933 rehabbed the historic La Cana in North Hollywood. It was a restaurant built in the shape of a giant barrel; now, after sitting derelict for decades, it's the very popular Idle Hour bar. We gave listeners the first look at the Idle Hour after the renovation in a piece that went viral on the internet.
You and your friend will have drinks and dinner on the house with Angelyne and me at Harlowe at 7321 Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, "a place out of time, a floor-to-ceiling tribute to Hollywood's Golden Age."
(Harlowe interior. Image courtesy Group 1933)
Big thanks to Angelyne and Group 1933's Bobby Green for generously supporting the KPCC Auction! Every dollar you bid goes right back into KPCC, so Off-Ramp can give you fabulous experiences on the radio, so please be generous, bid high and often, and don't miss out on this unique Only in LA, quintessential Off-Ramp evening.
Meet Richard Turner: magician, expert card shark, and blind (Video)
Richard Turner’s stage name is The Cheat, and for good reason: you could never beat him in a card game unless he let you. For him, it’s just a footnote that he’s completely blind.
“I started losing my sight when I was nine. Then during my teens and twenties, my vision was what’s called 20/400. Legally blind is 20/200, so I was twice as low as what’s considered legally blind in the State of California and then the degeneration continued until the point where the retinas were completely destroyed,” says Turner. “And so now I have no actual vision.”
But losing his sight didn’t slow down Turner at all. He started practicing with cards obsessively in his teens — often for 10 to 20 hours in a single day — and never stopped.
“Obsessed is an understatement,” says Turner. “When I’m in a car, my card table’s on my lap. When I’m walking around, I always have cards in my hand. So I was able to practice in just about every scene and situation that you could imagine, because cards are small.”
Now, he’s considered one of the best card mechanics in the world. He’s performed all over the world, on television, and was inducted in The Magical Castle’s Hall of Fame.
When Turner was first sent to a school for the visually impaired, he was rebellious. He refused to learn braille and never has. Instead of using a cane, he holds hands with his wife or has others place a hand on his shoulder so that he can be discretely guided. It works so well, he says, that people often don’t notice he’s blind.
“He’ll do shows and people will have no idea that he can’t see. I know a lot of that’s skill because they’re in awe and a good portion of that is that he’s an excellent performer, and he knows how to draw the people in, and he knows how to manipulate them to where he wants their attention to go,” says Turner’s wife, Kim. When people finally do realize he’s blind, she says, “they’re just flabbergasted.”
Now, Turner says that losing his sight is what drove him to become such a skilled card performer. If working with cards hadn’t become such an enormous challenge, he probably would have taken a different path.
“When I first thought of losing my sight, I was mad, but it turned out to be a gift from above,” says Turner. “When I look at my life, sixty years later, I realize that provided me the ability to reach my goal of becoming a card performer, card shark, card mechanic, card magician, whatever you want to call it.”
A documentary about Turner’s life called “Dealt” is scheduled for release next spring. Visit the film’s website for more information.
Song of the Week: 'Call me up' by Cotillon
This week's Off-Ramp song of the week is "Call me up" by the Los Angeles band Cotillon, fronted by singer songwriter Jordan Corso. "Call me up" comes off Cotillion's self-titled debut, out now on Burger Records.
Like it? Cotillion is playing live at the Echoplex on June 4 with a slew of other Burger bands. Buy tickets here.
The Archivist Files: Why the woman who started LA's branch libraries was fired
Pop quiz!
Who is L.A.'s City Librarian? (Answer below.)
Don’t know? Don’t feel bad, most people don't know his name. But 100 years ago, the whole town knew the librarian’s name, and the reason is in the city archive.
Mary Jones was the librarian for the public library system from 1900 to 1905. She was fired mysteriously, and a special commission of city council members held hearings to find out why. The transcripts for those hearings are in the city archives.
Councilman Arthur Houghton: “I am merely asking questions, Mr. Mayor, and I will be fair and impartial. That is my attitude”
Mayor Owen McAleer: “Well, if you do, you ought to go to heaven”
Houghton: “I wouldn’t leave Los Angeles for any place so remote”
The story began in March 1905 when, without cause, Mary Jones was relieved of her position by the Board of Library Commissioners. Shortly after, Mayor Owen McAleer removed four of the five commissioners, also without an explanation.
(Owen McAleer, L.A. Mayor 1904-06. LAPL/Security Pacific National Bank Collection)
Jones took her case to the various women’s groups, which complained to the mayor’s office. The local press, including the L.A. Times, covered the story for months.
"Association at Portland Denounces the Removal of Miss Jones from Post - Wants Politics Barred"
Demand for Public Hearing in Jones Dismissal Case; Representatives from Every Woman's Club in the City Will Attend the Woman's Mass Meeting This Afternoon at Club House to Outline Plan of Action"
— Los Angeles newspaper headlines, c. 1906
(The L.A. Public Library was housed at City Hall from 1888 until 1928. LAPL/Herald-Examiner Collection)
Hearings began January 24, 1906, and moved to the city council chamber in the old city hall because of the crowds.
The first thing the city council members looked at was why the mayor fired the library commissioners. But Mayor McAleer was a hostile witness. He claimed the commissioners misled him about alleged mismanagement at the library, and so he’d removed them. He denied any involvement in Jones’ firing, then he walked out — never to return.
So now they turned to Mary Jones’ firing. She had been the first librarian trained by the New York State Library School. She began our branch library system, starting in Boyle Heights, and installed an African-American librarian in the Arroyo Seco branch. She questioned the board’s no-bid supply contracting, and supposedly raised her voice and threatened to quit if a funding or salary request was denied.
Those were the accusations, but at the hearing, several library commissioners described a secret lunch meeting at Al Levy’s restaurant between the library board and the mayor.
(Undated photo of Al Levy's Restaurant. LAPL/Security Pacific National Bank Collection)
Over lunch, the commissioners said they got the mayor’s support in removing Jones and replacing her with local historian and writer Charles Lummis. The transcripts reveal more chicanery: despite their alleged concerns about her, the board gave Jones glowing performance reviews year after year; they rejected a modest increase in Jones’ salary, but paid Lummis a greater salary without objection; and Jones was fired just before a change to the civil service rules took effect that would have made it harder to fire her without cause.
Not shockingly in 1906, several library commissioners said on the record that they preferred a man to be in charge of the library system.
Paper: Women Librarians and the Los Angeles Public Library, 1880–1905
For her part, Mary Jones was a quote machine, telling the L.A. Times, “Those directors seem as crazy after a man as though they were a board of old maids.”
The council’s final report concluded that they could prove no wrongdoing by the Library Commission, in part due to the mayor’s lack of cooperation. The council restored the fired commissioners to their posts, and Charles Lummis remained the city librarian for the next five years.
Mary Jones left L.A. to work in Berkeley and Bryn Mawr, returned to help set up the new L.A. County library system, retired in 1920, and died in 1946.
Pop Quiz Answer: John Szabo (below) is the current L.A. City Librarian.
(LAPL)
L.A. City Archivist Michael Holland contributes occasional looks into the city's archives for Off-Ramp, and writes for Alive!, the city employee newspaper.
Behind-the-scenes at the Aquarium of the Pacific's new sea jellies exhibit
"They're sort of like nature's lava lamp, right?" says Dave Bader, the Education Director at the Aquarium of the Pacific. I'm talking with him in what the Aquarium calls "Jelly Land," where employees raise and care for the aquarium's sea jellies.
It's all part of the Aquarium's new exhibit on sea jellies, which opened last week. Visitors will get to see purple striped jellies, jellies that light up in the dark and jellies they can touch.
Jelly Land is a huge, noisy, fluorescent-lit room surrounded by water tanks of nearly every shape and size. If you're used to seeing sea jellies in stark, dramatic lighting, Jelly Land takes some getting used to – some of the smaller, more translucent jellies are easy to miss at first.
"They're just sort of pulsing through the water. They have no brain, no heart – very simple nerve nets, very simple organisms and yet there are just a number of different species. They live in all different habitats," says Bader. "[They're] just beautiful, amazing creatures."
Although sea jellies are relatively simple organisms, the raising and upkeep of sea jellies is complex work. The aquarium gets its supply of jellies from other research centers and aquariums in the area. As they do in the ocean, the aquarium's sea jellies start out as polyps. They look like tiny, almost microscopic specks at this point.
"We get them to settle on little petri dishes," says Joshua Wagner, who works in the sea jelly program. "In this form, they actually clone themselves. They'll breed asexually and make a whole bunch of different, genetically identical polyps."
But polyps, alas, aren't jellies. When Wagner wants the polyps to change, he has to trick them into thinking the season's changed to winter. He moves them to a colder box, cueing them to shoot off smaller jellies. Within a few weeks, the jellies are full grown and on display (watch them move in these animated GIFS).
As you might expect, working with sea jellies means getting your fair share of stings. Wagner says he gets stung almost every day, but nothing worth sending him to a hospital. His worst sting came from an Indonesian sea nettle. "The immediate feeling is like if you run your arm into a cactus," he says. "And then it itched for two days after."
The Aquarium of the Pacific's Sea Jellies exhibit is open now. Check the aquarium website for hours and info.
GIFs: five types of jellyfish you can see at Aquarium of the Pacific
Jellyfish don't have hearts, brains or eyes – but their colors and shapes make for great GIFs.
Here are five species of jellyfish you can check out at Aquarium of the Pacific's new sea jelly exhibit, which opened last week.
Another fun fact: jellies are 95 percent water.
Find out how and why jellyfish sting from our BrainsOn podcast.
Source: Aquarium of the Pacific. GIFs by Maya Sugarman.
1. Spotted Lagoon Jellies
Lagoon jellies, also known as spotted jellies, live in lagoons and bays in the South Pacific. These jellies host symbiotic algae in their tissues that provides food for the jelly via photo synthesis. Because of this, lagoon jellies often swarm together to follow the sun across a body of water for maxium exposure.
In addition to receiving food from the symbiotic algae within its tissues, this jelly also actively preys on plankton. Unlike most jellies which have long trailing tentacles, the lagoon jelly only has thick oral arms for prey capture. Lagoon jellies are about four inches wide on average, but can reach up to a foot in diameter.
2. Japanese Sea Nettle
The Japanese Sea Nettle can range in color from gold to red with dark stripes radiating from the center of the bell. Though the bell of this species doesn’t get as large as other nettles, the oral arms and tentacles can grow longer than ten feet. These jellies thrive in sub-tropical temperatures of 54 to 77 degrees fahrenheit, in waters near Japan.
3. Moon Jelly
Sometimes found in enormous swarms (a jelly swarm is called a smack) in shallow bays and harbors, this billowing jelly is a transparent with short, fine tentacles. The moon jelly can reach 16 inches in diameter, and it has four fringed oral arms for transporting food. This moon jelly is easily recognizable by its four large, horseshoe-shaped reproductive organs in the middle of its bell. Though they can grow fairly large, moon jellies can be preyed upon by other types of sea jelly.
4. Indonesian Sea Nettle
Indonesian Sea Nettles have fine, thread-like tentacles and frilly oral arms that reach about 3 feet in length. Their pale-colored bell has darker reddish-orange coloration at itsedge. Their sting is dangerous to humans. Indonesian Sea Nettles are found in China, Indonesia and the Philippines.
5. West Coast Sea Nettle
Pacific sea nettles (also known as West Coast sea nettles) live near the surface of the water column in shallow bays and harbors in the fall and winter. In spring and summer they often form large swarms in deep ocean waters.
These jellies are carnivores, feeding on other jellies and a variety of zooplankton including larval fishes and eggs, comb jellies, other jellies, and pelagic snails. As they move through the water with both oral arms and tentacles extended, their tentacles stream below, above, and alongside the bell creating a large surface area with which to capture prey.
Visiting My Friend's Place - homeless center inspired Miley Cyrus' Happy Hippie Foundation
It's easy to make fun of Miley Cyrus. Just Google "bunny costume" and "twerk."
But Cyrus is serious about her charity work. She just started the Happy Hippie Foundation, to rally "young people to fight injustice facing homeless youth, LGBT youth and other vulnerable populations." Cyrus founded HHF after a visit last summer to a homeless youth center called My Friend's Place.
(Miley Cyrus, thumbs up, with My Friend's Place staff. That's ED Heather Carmichael in the front row, hands on knees. Courtesy My Friend's Place)
Every day, 100 homeless youth between the ages of 12 and 25 - most of them products of our troubled foster care system - come through My Friend's Place, on Hollywood Blvd between Bronson and the 101 in the heart of gritty Hollywood.
KPCC Photographer Maya Sugarman and I toured the center last week, and executive director Heather Carmichael told us Cyrus' tour started a "little bit of a whirlwind" that saw one of the center's clients accept Cyrus' VMA award and make an impassioned speech, and that brought $240,000 to My Friend's Place to pay for food, clothing, and arts programming.
Our tour started at the "safe haven." It's a big busy room that could be the lobby of a youth hostel. A bank of microwaves heat up cheap, calorie-rich food ("We're not farm to table," Carmichael says), there's wi-fi, and dozens of young people moving around in what Carmichael calls "organized chaos."
This is the first point of contact. Carmichael says, "this is where young people come on a daily basis to get their basic needs taken care of, and to have a safe place and sense of community while they're trying to figure out how to move forward." Here, there are no cops rousting the kids and no pimps trying to prostitute them. Here, they can get a shower, four items of clothing, and food ... not to mention every type of social service you can think of, from health care to job counseling.
And here, they can also be kids. Instead of a workout room, for instance, there's a "Cirque" room, created by Cirque du Soleil and Jeunesse du Monde, where young people get exercise, and learn to trust themselves by juggling or walking a tightrope ... and it's no coincidence these are all metaphors for adult life.
My Friend's Place, which is approaching its 30th anniversary, reports that every year it provides services to 1,400 youth, serves more than 30,000 meals, gets 120 into housing and 90 into jobs.
"I leave every day feeling more filled than when I started the day," Carmichael says. "These young people have such courage and commitment and strength, which is often perceived as anger. This group of young people are way stronger than many of us, and given the right opportunity and support, can become our community leaders, and left on the streets, what would we expect to happen?"
A look inside Echo Park's enigmatic Cactus Store
There’s a tiny storefront in Echo Park that glows red and orange at night. Inside, there are dozens and dozens of cactuses.
The Cactus Store opened its doors this past December. It's home to some of Los Angeles’ rarest and most bizarre cactuses. Carlos Morera and his uncle John Morera make up half the team that runs the store.
Why cactus? John Morera is a lifelong plant fan — he's collected bonsai and rare succulents for decades. He passed that interest along to his nephew. "They're these plants that basically survive the harshest conditions in the world. And they grow magnificently at the same time — with such little resources," said Carlos, who has a background in design. "They're incredibly intelligent plants."
The cactus is sourced from different collectors around the world. Carlos and his uncle regularly make trips to remote farms in the California desert near the United States-Mexico border to stock their inventory. The result is cactuses of all stripes — bizarre genetic mutants, small flowering succulents, and cactuses older than disco.
Carlos reaches for one of the smaller cactuses from the copiapoa genus — he estimates it to be about 40 years old. "It looks like a shriveled, sort of Jabba the Hutt sea urchin with fur on top that looks like it's sort of melting into the ground," Carlos said. "And then [it] has dead and alive flowers on top of it, as attractive as that sounds."
Cactuses pack the roughly 200 square foot space, and a false move can risk getting pricked by a needle. Carlos and John both admit to getting stabbed or scratched almost daily. Carlos's worst injury came from a large ferocactus.
"I walked backwards into it when I was moving a larger cactus," he said. "And it went into the back of my leg, it sort of got lodged there." For a time, the hooked needles started to hurt his nerves. And while the pain's gone, the two spines are still in his leg.
The Moreras believe that when you buy a potted cactus, you buy more than a plant. You buy something that can stay in a family for generations, something with years of history behind it. "If you're in here at night, they definitely have a presence to them. There's a lot of people that think cactus have a consciousness," he said. "They're such intelligent plants, and they've been around for so long."