LA Regional Food Bank, barometer of poverty ... UCLA Anderson: years of hard times ahead ... Great Wall mural restoration in Valley ... Rabe blows shofar for Rosh Hashanah ... MoLAA's Pacific Standard Time exhibit shows Mexican influences ...
LA Regional Food Bank as poverty barometer
The latest US Census numbers show more Americans are living under the poverty line than at any time in the last 52 years, when they started keeping track of the statistic. This was no surprise to Michael Flood, head of the LA Regional Food Bank, who met Off-Ramp host John Rabe in the warehouse of the Food Bank's South L.A. headquarters.
Want some good news? KPCC listeners are approaching 1,000,000 meals for families in need across Southern California through our partnership with the food bank. You're making a difference. That partnership continues in our upcoming membership drive.
Here's the statshot from the US Census Bureau's latest report:
– Real median household income in the United States in 2010 was $49,445, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2009 median.
– The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009, the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate.
– There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009, the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.
Jim Meskimen makes good 1st, 2nd ... 75th impression with "Jimpressions" one-man show
UPDATE: Off-Ramp talked with impressionist Jim Meskimen in the fall of 2011. The latest edition of "Jimpressions" is July 21st at The Acting Center, 5514 Hollywood Blvd.
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with Jim Meskimen, YouTube sensation, actor and man of a thousand voices, including Robin Williams, Kirk Douglas, Charleton Heston, Woody Allen, Droopy Dog, President George W Bush and Harvey Keitel.
FIDM's "Fabulous" shows best of fashion museum
Aspiring painters go to the Louvre, student architects go to the Ennis House, and young fashion designers can go to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising's museum in downtown Los Angeles, home to thousands of pieces of clothing, dating back centuries. FIDM curator Kevin Jones showed Off-Ramp's John Rabe the museum's newest exhibit, a ten-year retrospective. (Listen for the fashion fetish that became a collector's dream.)
Great Wall of Los Angeles gets revamped
The Great Wall of Los Angeles in Van Nuys is one of the longest murals in the country. Stretching for over half a mile, the wall tells the most complete history of Los Angeles it can — from ice age fauna all the way to the baby boom. This project began when Judy Baca, once the director of the City of Los Angeles mural program, saw the greater potential in a stark concrete wall.
"This would be a wonderful site in which we could bring all the diverse communities of Los Angeles to one place," Baca said. "We could begin to produce a narrative work that was the collective history of the diverse peoples of Los Angeles," Baca said.
The wall was part of an effort by the Army Corps of Engineers to concrete every existing arroyo in an attempt to control flooding of the L.A. River. When the job was finished, the city was left with expanses of concrete walls; or blank canvases.
Baca said the Corps contacted her in 1976 and the first 1,000 feet of the mural were finished by 10 artists who had the help of 10 students each. The students were from different neighborhoods and had varying ethnic backgrounds, but all of them came from the juvenile justice system.
Their offenses ranged from truancy to attempted murder, but taking on a project of this magnitude created a sense of comradery, Baca said.
"We were able to instill a sense of pride and cooperation between the different youth who had a history of interracial warfare and gang warfare," Baca said.
The mural was created over the course of five summers and Baca got swept up in the process: "It gets to be something beyond your thought and it takes on a synergy that you become part of."
Sections of the mural include depictions of pre-historic California, McCarthyism, Chavez Ravine and the birth of rock and roll.
Last weekend, the 35-year-old mural was restored to its former glory. Carlos Rogel is the project manager for the wall's restoration. He was working on the dedication panel for the artists and volunteers who had contributed to the mural since 2009.
"When I first saw the piece I was very moved by the size of the piece, by the quality of the work," he said. "It was just like this huge task and to think this was done by 400 youth with minimum resources…"
His favorite section is the painting of Albert Einstein holding an atom.
"It's a beautiful representation of what Einstein's contribution to humanity could have been," Rogel said.
Sonya Fe has known Baca for 35 years and contributed in the mural's early stages. Fe was pregnant at the time so instead of painting, she created drawings to be turned into blueprints for the wall's mural. Now, Fe's working on the restoration and is responsible for the "iron horse" section, which depicts a train moving into Native American territory and destroying their way of life.
It wasn't until this year though that Fe saw the mural first-hand. "I was overwhelmed," she said."It's a beautiful mosaic of work."
Fe said her favorite part of the mural was that it shows a side of history that's often overlooked in school or textbooks.
Raul Gonzales from Boyle Heights said he's honored to be a part of the 2011 restoration.
"I've never seen so much history in one wall," he said.
Angel City Jazz Festival
On Off-Ramp this week, we featured just one band -- Todd Sickafoose & Tiny resistors -- from the many appearing at the 2011 Angel City Jazz Festival. Check out the link for even more, and the venues they'll be playing at across LA through Oct. 2.
Project Avanzando gives migrant farm workers an opportunity to learn
Only a third of California's farm workers have a high school diploma or more, and another third only have an elementary school education. With funding from private donations and the U.S. Department of Education, Project Avanzando helps farmworkers get their GEDs.
At eight sites around Southern California, the group organizes transportation and childcare, and provides six months of tutoring, six hours a week. This month at Wilson High School in Long Beach, 65 students received their diplomas. Sometimes, though, just attempting to make changes can upset the balance at home. Rebecca Schoenkopf followed the process from math lessons to caps and gowns.
Project Avanzando’s director, Patricia Feliz, tells of one woman who wasn't coming to class, and when she did, she was often unprepared.
“It turned out her husband had left her, she wasn’t sure if she was going to be homeless the next week, the husband was threatening to have her kids taken away from her because she wasn’t home with them at night,” said Patricia. “She was here in class and I just told her, you know what, you are probably one of the most intelligent people I know!”
It was easier for Antonia Zapata. Her husband was resistant but he came around — with a push from his mother. Zapata works as community liaison for a school in La Puente, so getting her GED wasn’t a matter of bettering her finances; it was a matter of personal growth.
“My husband was really upset with me going back to school and leaving the family aside,” said Antonia. “Even sometimes in the Hispanic families, they feel that they’re superior to the women, so he didn’t want her to be more superior than him. No, he’s not upset any more and now he’s even proud of me and tells me that he’s proud, and he even sometimes helps me with the homework.”
Jorge Cazales, 19 years old, was inspired by his mother, Francisca Florez, after she went through Project Avanzando last year. He's now getting his GED after dropping out, and wants to go on to college and medical school. He wants to be a doctor.
Cazalez recalls his mother’s decision to become a student, “She got really sad because I dropped out of high school. One day she just got tired and said, ‘If you’re not going to get your education, I’ll go get my education.’ When they come here, they see all the hardships, that they get the minimum wage, sometimes even less. They’re treated like they have no rights, but she says she didn’t care about that because she came over here to get me a better life for me and my sister. She says it’s worth it to go through all that.”
Powerful letter calls Downtown rail project into question
This is the story on the power one letter has over local government, when it's written by the right person. Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson talked with transit advocacy blogger Damien Newton about that letter, and how it threatens to put on hold the Downtown Regional Connector, one of the LA County Transit's most ambitious rail projects.
Hearing and Learning to Play the Shofar
UPDATE: We're reposting this segment for Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sunset on Wednesday, September 28.
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The Jewish month of Elul begins at sunset on Monday, August 9th. Every day during Elul, until Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, observant Jews will want to hear the shofar, the animal horn.
Michael Chusid, Angelino and author of "Hearing Shofar: The Still Small Voice of the Ram’s Horn," joins Off-Ramp host John Rabe in the Crawford Family Forum to teach us about the shofar ... and teach John how to play it.
COME INSIDE for a link to Michael's book.
Author Michael Connelly tells Stoltze: DNA evidence is a time machine
KPCC's law and order reporter Frank Stoltze talks with cold case LAPD detective Rick Jackson and crime novelist Michael Connelly.