Sam Quinones talks about his book, 'Dreamland: The True Story of America's Opiate Epidemic,' the mental health of undocumented youth, former Daily Breeze reporter talks Pulitzer win.
Heroin: US addiction soars in 'quiet drug plague'
Fatal overdoses of heroin in the U.S. have almost tripled in three years. Why has the drug become so pervasive? Where does it come from and how are authorities trying to combat its use?
Los Angeles-based journalist Sam Quinones travelled across North America seeking answers to these questions. The result is a book called Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic.
Read an excerpt below:
Copyright ©2015 by Sam Quinones
Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury
Upcoming reading:
WHAT: Sam Quinones discusses and signs Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
WHERE: Vroman's Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, California, 91101
WHEN: April 23, 2015, 7:00pm
MORE INFO: http://www.vromansbookstore.com/sam-quinones-april-2015
Undocumented youth in California face challenges to mental health care, survey finds
The impass on immigration policy is having a negative effect on the mental health of young, undocumented people in California, according to a new UCLA report.
The survey includes about 550 youth from across California and was put out by the Dream Resource Center, a project of UCLA's Labor Center. The group is a research and advocacy group that seeks to promote opportunities for immigrant and undocumented youth.
A Martinez speaks with Alma Leyva, research coordinator at The Dream Resource Center and one of the lead researchers of the survey. She is, herself, undocumented.
To view the full report: undocumentedanduninsured.org
The Wheel Thing: The greenest of green cars
Wanna drive the greenest, meanest machine? All you need is about $140,000. And maybe a smart phone to place your order.
The American Automobile Association is out with their annual scorecard of green cars, and the Tesla S P85D trumps all others. If you've got the greenbacks to reach this level of green, you'll get dual motors that produce 691 horsepower, a range of 250 miles, and the option of launching from zero to 60 mph in just over three seconds. AAA rated the Tesla tops by a wide margin, finding it full of muscle, yet refined and luxurious.
Bunched up well behind the P85D are a variety of other pure electrics, including VW's e-Golf, BMW's i-3, and the Nissan Leaf. One hybrid makes the top ten. It's Toyota's Highlander Limited. There are a quartet of clean diesels, all built by Germans–the VW Golf TDI, Audi's A7 and A8 diesel models, and BMW's 328d.
The only traditional gasoline powered vehicle in the top 10 is Subaru's Outback 2.5i, which uses tricks like turbocharging and continuously variable transmission to squeeze lots of miles out of a gallon. Still, there are quite a few good old internal combustion powered vehicles just below the top 10 on AAA's list, mixed in with the electrics, hybrids and clean diesels.
A couple of key takeaways. There are dozens and dozens of models of cars available now that offer very efficient, very clean motoring, without sacrificing comfort, style or performance. And there's a lot of variety in power packages–good choices among electrics, hybrids, diesels and traditional ICE (internal combustion engine.)
So, it's a pretty good time for folks looking to help out the planet, and save on fuel.
But, there's always something tempting just around the corner. The Tesla X is expected to be released within the next year, with a price tag somewhere around $35,000. Chevy will launch it's all-electric Bolt in 2017, and Audi has an A3 sport wagon with a plug-in hybrid with a total range of 550 miles that should be for sale before the year ends.
New music from Speedy Ortiz, Squarepusher, Greg Holden and more
This week on Tuesday Reviewsday, our new music segment, Alex Cohen speaks with
, News Director at Billboard Magazine and music journalist
.
Shirley Halperin
Artist: Greg Holden
Album: "Chase the Sun"
Songs: "Hold On Tight," "The Next Life"
Notes: Here we have a songwriter whose work you may have heard in commercials for Mazda, Walmart or Coldwell Banker - I'm talking about the song "Home" with this familiar chant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRkntoHkIE
The writer of this song is Greg Holden who in 2012 essentially hit the jackpot with "Home," which he co-wrote and even recorded. And while the success helped him lock in a major label deal with Warner Bros., musically, it also seems to have sidelined him.
"On Chase the Sun," his debut album which just came out, he uses the chant as a crutch all too often and the results are mostly underwhelming.
But what Greg Holden does well also shines through, and that's deliver a great pop hook, like the one in first single, "Hold On Tight."
Greg Holden sings a lot about not taking life for granted, he encourages looking beyond material possessions for a deeper appreciation of the small things. He credits this awareness to a trip he made to India and Nepal a couple years back. Traveling through some of the poorest areas fof the world, Holden says in its devastation, it was "incredibly inspiring."
It's worth noting that he was born in Scotland, spent his formative years in the U.K. and moved to New York in 2009, so he is indeed a proper world traveler and that's served his music well. On this album, there's straight up pop, hints of folk and you can hear the sort of tambourines they sell in Indian markets. Even Americana manages to seep through on the album's closing track "The Next Life."
Artist: Mike Viola
Album: "Stairway to Paradise"
Songs: "Stairway to Paradise," "Dr. Feel Blue"
Notes: Today's theme is the sideman, the writer behind the scenes, singers who aren't full-time frontmen but instead put their talents to use elsewhere in the music making process.
Among them is the incredibly versatile Mike Viola, who currently plays guitar with Ryan Adams and also had a hand in the production of his latest Grammy-nominated album. Also, this EP is being released by Ryan Adams' Pax-Am label.
He's one of those musicians who's had bits and pieces of mainstream success. Prior to this stint, Mike wrote a couple of songs that you may have heard of, including like the theme to the 1996 movie, "That Thing You Do."
Mike had also cut his teeth in the '90s east village scene in New York City, slinging power pop like nobody's business in the band Candy Butchers. 20 years on, he's perfected the very tricky art of making music this simple and unadorned sound so magical.
Classic post-Beatles pop. That's the territory of Big Star with a psychedelic pastiche. That's been Mike Viola's wheelhouse for two decades now and it's why musicians know who he is and respect his work so much.
Consider this: today everything tries to dazzle you, but this is straight up rock music, and even with a twisted message, it's undeniable.
Chris Martins
Artist: Speedy Ortiz
Album: "Foil Deer"
Songs: "Raising the Skate," "Puffer"
Notes: Massachusetts four-piece Speedy Ortiz are from Northampton, and a direct line can be drawn from '90s neighbors Dinosaur Jr. to what they do. Their new album "Foil Deer" owes much to that era, and they've opened for the likes of the Breeders and Thurston Moore on tour. But for all of the sour vocal notes and harsh guitar jags, they're carving out their own space in modern indie. That's thanks to the vision of singer, guitarist, and songwriter Sadie Dupuis. She's got a way with words and a deal-with-it approach to feminism that squares with youth influencers like Rookie Magazine and Beyoncé.
Sadie taught writing at UMass Amherst in the band's early days, and counts Pynchon and Plath among her lyrical influences. But she changed up her pattern for this album. She says she looked at her older LPs and got the sense she'd been putting herself in bad situations for the sake of good material.
So, to write Foil Deer, she exiled herself to her mother's woodsy home in remote Connecticut. The songs came to her while running and swimming-so, from a lighter place. That doesn't mean they don't sound dark, though. Take the song "Puffer," which to me sounds like Speedy Ortiz' take on a Gwen Stefani, Pharrell collaboration.
Artist: Squarepusher
Album: "Damogen Furies"
Songs: "Stor Eiglass," "D Frozen Aac"
Notes: It's still a piece of cake to recognize the sound of Squarepusher. Tom Jenkins is 40 now, has released 15 albums since '96, and it probably goes without saying that the electronic music playing field has opened up hugely over the past decade. The English legend still owns his lane: micro-chopped drum n bass, screwy jazz arrangements, abstracted New Wave melodies. That mix set him apart from hallowed peers like Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin, and now it plays like an ex post facto reaction to the poppy contemporary rave scene. His new LP, "Damogen Furies" is mostly harsh and dark. He says he aims to "explore as forcefully as possible the hallucinatory, the nightmarish, and the brutally visceral capacities of electronic music."
After listening, I believe him.
You could read this as some sort of statement against festival EDM, but I prefer to break it down two ways:
- This is Squarepusher continuing to come into his sound. He made "Damogen Furies" entirely on a software system that he designed, and recorded each track in a single take. It's a new challenge to his ability, and an affirmation of his veteran status.
- Electronic music's underground, in which he's a god, had overall been tending toward nasty territory. Guys like Arca, Oneohtrix Point Never and Haxan Cloak make wonderfully abrasive electronica, and this fits in.
Former Daily Breeze reporter talks Pulitzer win
The prestigious Pulitzer prizes in journalism were announced Monday, and the big winner in the local reporting category went to a Southern California publication.
The team at the Daily Breeze newspaper in Torrance was commended for an investigation into corruption at the Centinela Valley Union High School District.
The win is a boon for local news - especially for a publication with just five reporters. Rob Kuznia is one of those reporters, and he joins host Alex Cohen.
'Projection' at Sunset Pacific motel blurs the line between dream and reality
Take Two host Alex Cohen was driving down Sunset Boulevard in the hip Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake when she was stopped dead in her tracks by a sea of white.
White palm trees, an entirely white billboard and the old, dilapidated Sunset Pacific motel — nicknamed the Bates Motel — every square inch of which was colored white (take a look at her slideshow above).
This sea of white is an art installation titled "Projection," by French conceptual artist Vincent Lamouroux, presented by Please Do Not Enter.
One of the project's organizers, Nicolas Libert, spoke with Take Two about the ephemeral installation, the eco-friendly whitewash being used and how Vincent Lamouroux wanted to blur the lines between dreams and reality.
Please Do Not Enter invites the public to the first official viewing of "Projection" on Sunday from 3 to 6 p.m. For more information, visit Please Do Not Enter's events page.
The history of rock and roll billboards on the Sunset Strip
These days, when musicians want to get the word out about new albums or concerts, they head to Twitter, Facebook or send an email update.
But before social media was around, there was a different, more visual method: the billboard.
The Sunset Strip was home to hundreds of hand-painted billboards advertising bands, new albums and concerts.
While they were considered ads, one young photographer saw them as much more. Robert Landau was a teen when he began to take pictures of billboards promoting the Beatles, the Doors, Bruce Springsteen, Donna Summer and so many more.
A new exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center titled "Rock and Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip," showcases his work.
Alex talked to Robert Landau, along with painter Enrique Vidal about the era when the painted billboard was the king of the Sunset Strip.
'Our Kids' book looks at wealth gap in Ohio town and the US
We start with the American dream. It's a simple idea: Everyone has an equal chance to make it in life through grit and determination.
Sometimes, though, hard work just isn't enough.
Glaring examples of inequality exist throughout the United States: from access to healthcare and education, to housing and income. While every parent hopes their child will do better than they did, it turns out many young people today - specifically, poor kids - have fewer chances than mom and dad.
Author and political scientist Robert Putnam explores the state of life in the land of opportunity in his latest book, "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis."
Putnam begins "Our Kids" with a look back at his home town of Port Clinton, Ohio, which he compares to a scene from A Prairie Home Companion.
"When I grew up it was kind of like Lake Woebegone on Lake Eerie," Putnam told Take Two. "Nobody very rich, nobody very poor. In terms of social class, it didn't much matter what your dad did...or how much money you had, in terms of your chances for getting ahead in life," he said.
About 80 percent of Putnam's classmates ended up doing better than their parents: in education, employment and income. "Kids from the wrong side of the tracks did just about as well as kids from the right side of the tracks," he said.
Fast forward to today, and things are much different in Port Clinton.
"The factories that employed the working class kids in my graduating class have all vanished, so the working class such as it was in Port Clinton is now mostly jobless. And their kids, living in double-wides and, really, with no prospects...they're living lives of desperation," Putnam said.
"On the other hand," he added, "along the shore of Lake Eerie, there is now essentially one long gated community with million dollar homes. And the kids growing up on that side of town, they drive BMWs to high school."
Putnam views Port Clinton's growing wealth gap as typical of what cities, big and small, are experiencing across the United States. But, in "Our Kids," he takes readers into the lives of poor kids and rich kids across the country to illustrate that there's more than a wealth gap going on.
"It's a wealth gap, it's an income gap, it's a parenting gap, it's a family-structure gap, it's a schooling gap," Putnam said. "Over the last 30 years, there have been growing gaps in all sorts of ways that affect kids chances for moving up the ladder."
Robert Putnam visits Zocalo Public Square in Santa Monica on Tuesday. Click here for more information on attending the public event.
Read an excerpt from "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis," by Robert D. Putnam:
My hometown was, in the 1950s, a passable embodiment of the American Dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for all the kids in town, whatever their background. A half century later, however, life in Port Clinton, Ohio, is a split-screen American nightmare, a community in which kids from the wrong side of the tracks that bisect the town can barely imagine the future that awaits the kids from the right side of the tracks. And the story of Port Clinton turns out to be sadly typical of America. How this transformation happened, why it matters, and how we might begin to alter the cursed course of our society is the subject of this book.
The most rigorous economic and social history now available suggests that socioeconomic barriers in America (and in Port Clinton) in the 1950s were at their lowest ebb in more than a century: economic and educational expansion were high; income equality was relatively high; class segregation in neighborhoods and schools was low; class barriers to intermarriage and social intercourse were low; civic engagement and social solidarity were high; and opportunities for kids born in the lower echelon to scale the socioeconomic ladder were abundant.
Though small and not very diverse racially, Port Clinton in the 1950s was in all other respects a remarkably representative microcosm of America, demographically, economically, educationally, socially, and even politically. (Ottawa County, of which Port Clinton is county seat, is the bellwether county in the bellwether state of the United States—that is, the county whose election results have historically been closest to the national outcome.3) The life stories of my high school classmates show that the opportunities open to Don and Libby, two poor white kids, and even to Jesse and Cheryl, two poor black kids, to rise on the basis of their own talents and energy were not so different from the opportunities open to Frank, the only real scion of privilege in our class.
No single town or city could possibly represent all of America, and Port Clinton in the 1950s was hardly paradise. As in the rest of America at the time, minorities in Port Clinton suffered serious discrimination and women were frequently marginalized, as we shall explore later in this chapter. Few of us, including me, would want to return there without major reforms. But social class was not a major constraint on opportunity. When our gaze shifts to Port Clinton in the twenty-first century, however, the opportunities facing rich kids and poor kids today—kids like Chelsea and David, whom we shall also meet in this chapter—are radically disparate. Port Clinton today is a place of stark class divisions, where (according to school officials) wealthy kids park BMW convertibles in the high school lot next to decrepit junkers that homeless classmates drive away each night to live in. The changes in Port Clinton that have led to growing numbers of kids, of all races and both genders, being denied the promise of the American Dream—changes in economic circumstance, in family structure and parenting, in schools, and in neighborhoods—are surprisingly representative of America writ large. For exploring equality of opportunity, Port Clinton in 1959 is a good time and place to begin, because it reminds us of how far we have traveled away from the American Dream.
June 1, 1959, had dawned hot and sunny, but the evening was cooler as 150 new graduates thronged down the steps of Port Clinton High School in the center of town, clutching our new diplomas, flushed with Commencement excitement, not quite ready to relinquish our childhood in this pleasant, friendly town of 6,500 (mostly white) people on the shores of Lake Erie, but confident about our future. It was, as usual, a community-wide celebration, attended by 1,150 people. Family or not, the townspeople thought of all the graduates as “our kids.”
Don
Don was a soft-spoken white working-class kid, though no one in our class would have thought of him that way, for he was our star quarterback. His dad had only an eighth-grade education. To keep the family afloat, his dad worked two jobs—the first on the line at the Port Clinton Manufacturing factory, from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and the second, a short walk away, at the local canning plant, from 3:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. His mom, who had left school in the 11th grade, “lived in the kitchen,” Don says, making all of their meals from scratch. Every night, she sat down with Don and his two brothers for dinner. They got used to eating hash, made by frying up everything left in the house with potatoes. The boys were in bed by the time their dad got home from work.
They lived on the poorer side of town, and did not own a car or television until Don went off to college, by which time 80 percent of all American families already had a car, and 90 percent had a TV. Their neighbors drove them to church every week. The family had no money for vacations, but Don’s parents owned their home and felt reasonably secure economically, and his dad was never unemployed. “I didn’t know that I was poor until I went to college and took Economics 101,” Don recalls, “and found out that I had been ‘deprived.’”
Despite their modest circumstances, Don’s parents urged him to aim for college, and, like many other working-class kids in our class, he chose the college-prep track at PCHS. His mom forced him to take piano lessons for six years, but his true love was sports. He played basketball and football, and his dad took time off from work to attend every single one of Don’s games. Don downplays class distinctions in Port Clinton. “I lived on the east side of town,” he says, “and money was on the west side of town. But you met everyone as an equal through sports.”
Although none of his closest friends in high school ended up going to college, Don did well in school and finished in the top quarter of our class. His parents “didn’t have a clue” about college, he says, but fortunately he had strong ties at church. “One of the ministers in town was keeping an eye on me,” he says, “and mentioned my name to the university where I ended up.” Not only that, the minister helped Don figure out how to get financial aid and navigate the admissions process. After PCHS, Don headed off to a religiously affiliated university downstate (where he also played football) and then on to seminary. While in seminary, he developed doubts about whether he could “hack it” as a minister, he says, and came home to tell his parents he was quitting. Back home, he stopped by the local pool hall to say hello. The owner, a longtime friend of his dad’s, referred to him as “a future minister,” and a customer asked Don to pray for him—which Don interpreted as signs that he should continue on his path.
Immediately after college, Don married June, a high school teacher, and they had one child, who became a high school librarian. Don had a long and successful career as a minister and retired only recently. He still helps out in local churches and has coached high school football for many years. Looking back, he says he has been blessed with a very good life. His rise from a poor but close-knit working-class family to a successful professional career reflected his native intelligence and his gridiron grit. But as we shall see, the sort of upward mobility he achieved was not atypical for our class.
Frank
Frank came from one of the few wealthy families in Port Clinton. In the late nineteenth century, his maternal great-grandfather had started a commercial fishing business, and by the time of Frank’s birth the family had diversified into real estate and other local businesses. His mother graduated from college in the 1930s and then earned a master’s degree at the University of Chicago. While in Chicago she met Frank’s father, a college-educated minister’s son, and they soon married. As Frank grew up, his father managed the family businesses—fishing, a shopping center, farming, a restaurant, and so forth—and his mother did charity work.
Port Clinton’s social elite has long made the Port Clinton Yacht Club its hub. While Frank was growing up, his grandfather, father, and uncle each served a term as the club’s “Commodore,” and his mother and aunt were elected “Shipmates Captain”—pinnacles of local social status. In short, Frank’s parents were the wealthiest, best educated, and most socially prominent parents of the class of 1959.
Nevertheless, the social distance between Frank’s family and those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder was much shorter than is common in America (even in Port Clinton) today. Frank (who lived only four blocks away from Don) recalls his neighbors as “a nice mix of everyone”—truck driver, store owner, cashier at the A&P, officer at a major local firm, fire chief, gas station owner, game warden. “We played baseball out in the backyard or kick-the-can down at the corner,” he says. “Everybody just got along.”
Despite his family’s affluence, Frank worked summers at the family restaurant, starting at fifteen, scraping paint and doing cleanup work with his high school buddies. And his family carefully downplayed their social status. “If you’re in Port Clinton with a group of boys who can afford a Coke, that’s what you are to order,” Frank’s grandfather had memorably warned Frank’s uncle. “If we’re in Cleveland or New York, you can order whatever you want, but when you’re with kids in Port Clinton, you do what they can do.”
In high school, Frank interacted with his classmates as a social equal—so ably, in fact, that many of us were unaware of his exceptional family background. But signs of it did appear. He was the first in our class to wear braces. In elementary school he spent winter months at a family home in Florida, attending school there. His grandfather was on the school board. Frank’s parents once invited a teacher over for dinner. Afterward Frank chided his mom, “Why did you embarrass me in front of the whole class?” The suggestion that his parents might ever have intervened to try to alter a grade strikes Frank as absurd: “Are you kidding? Oh, jeez, as far as we kids knew, the teachers are always right.”
Frank was an indifferent student, but that didn’t mean his parents neglected his educational prospects. “My life was programmed from the time I was born until I was through college,” he says. “You knew you were going to go to college, and you better graduate.” With financial support from his parents, he attended a small college in Ohio, graduating with a major in journalism. After college, he enlisted in the Navy and for seven years navigated Navy transport planes around the world. “I loved it,” he recalls.
After his naval service, Frank worked for about twenty-five years as an editor for the Columbus Dispatch, until he objected to some personnel decisions and was fired. At that point he returned to Port Clinton, semiretired, to work in the family businesses—the fish-cleaning operation, dock rentals, and the boutique. He had been helped financially through some difficult years by a trust fund that his grandfather created for him at birth. “It’s not a lot of money,” he says, “but I’ll never starve.” Frank’s family fortune has cushioned him from some of life’s hard knocks, but it was not a trampoline that boosted him ahead of his peers from less affluent homes, like Don.
Copyright © 2015 by Robert D. Putnam. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All Rights Reserved.