The latest on the Sherpa fire, how threats to the blood supply stream are determined, when a gathering doesn't name a higher power where people place their faith?
Sherpa Fire: Firefighters face exhaustion amid extreme heat
A wildfire in Santa Barbara County has grown to more than 4,000 acres overnight and has put 270 homes in danger. The Sherpa Fire has only reached 5 percent containment, and to make things more difficult, crews have a hot weekend headed their way.
“The heat really wears on the fatigue of the firefighters," Raj Singh, spokesman for the South Central Sierra Interagency Incident Management Team, told Take Two. He said that firefighters have the know-how to deal with wind and other fire behaviors, but the heat on top of the heat of the fire causes greater physical exhaustion.
Overnight winds hampered containment efforts, but Singh said crews are taking advantage of the still daytime air to prepare for the wind's return this evening.
“We’re just taking advantage of those conditions and building those containment lines, and using that natural barrier to hopefully prevent future fires in that area,” Singh said.
About 1,200 firefighters are working to combat the flames, and more are on their way. While Singh said that the crews are taken care of in terms of basic needs at the incident command center, people can also show support by donating local postcards.
"If some of these fire crews have already been on the road on other fires and come directly here, they haven’t been home in several weeks, maybe a month," Singh said.
To donate postcards, deliver them to the incident command center or give them to fire crews you spot in the area.
The Sherpa Fire broke out Wednesday afternoon in the Refugio Canyon area of Los Padres National Forest.
Click the blue button at the top to hear a full update on the Sherpa Fire from the incident command center.
How does the FDA develop bans against blood donation?
In the wake of the Orlando shooting, gay men who wanted to help the victims were angry.
They were angry at the decades-old FDA policy that prevented them from donating blood because of the fears over spreading HIV.
But how does the FDA develop policy about who can donate blood, and how does the agency adapt over time?
Take Two chats with Dr. Alyssa Ziman, director of transfusion medicine and clinical laboratories at UCLA.
When God seems silent: Communities make sense of tragedy through love and togetherness
Vigils and services have been held across the country this week in remembrance of the 49 people killed in the Orlando shooting on Sunday.
As candles blow in the breeze, and placards call for peace, the spectacle bears a striking resemblance to a service one might see in a house of worship.
When a gathering doesn't name a higher power, however, in what or whom do people place their faith?
For answers, Take Two spoke to Brie Loskota, executive director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California.
There have been many religious services after the shooting last Sunday. There have also been vigils where no one faith is mentioned, but they look a lot like something you'd see at a church, or a temple, or a mosque. How would you describe those particular gatherings?
I think in any gathering you’d think about them as ritual moments where communities are trying to make collective sense of what it means to be them. What are their core values? What it means to be human, to place some context around the suffering that has taken place and to give hope and transformation to the people who have to continue to move forward and live.
The reason that we see groups coming together is because communities and individuals need meaning, and rituals provide a way to affirm the core values and the things that were lost in the violence that they’re mourning.
Is that it for the individual typically? Because what happened is senseless, I’m trying to find some sense in this world?
Meaning and healing. There’s no way to think about how you move forward with trauma if you don’t think about collective healing. Healing only happens — really — in a community.
Trauma research will tell you that when people gather together to counter violence and when people gather together to mourn, it’s the gathering together that helps people overcome trauma. If we think about it in spiritual terms, it has an important way for us to reconcile what happens in the world with who we think we are.
What are some of the key themes that stand out to you when you see these gatherings?
Love. Overwhelmingly, it’s people with an outpouring of love. The idea that we can overcome hate with love — I think — transcends every religious tradition and every system of making meaning in the world.
People want to feel loved and affirmed because of who they are. It deisolates people. Sadness, depression: all of these things are made worse when people are alone. So this creates an occasion for people who — maybe — live their lives quite a bit alone, who maybe don’t have communities and support to come together and be affirmed as part of a collective because they showed up.
It’s a very hard thing to grapple with the notion, ‘how do we do this to us?’ How do people do this to other people? And the only real answer that people can come up with is [to remind themselves that] there are so many more people who believe in the transcendent powers of love and forgiveness and healing and community and making the world a better place.
Sunday's tragedy was a major blow to Orlando's LGBTQ community. It was an act committed by a man who claimed to be a follower of Islam. These are two groups of people who this nation has had a long and rocky history with. As we move forward, and people turn to their communities or their individual faiths to cope, what advice would you give?
The first is to recognize that the Muslim community and the LGBT community for many people are one and the same, and those people are uniquely hurting right now as well.
For myself, what I’ve done to tap into a sense of compassion, I just went into my box of cards, and I pulled one out and wrote it to the community of Pulse. I just wrote them a condolence card. Imagine what it would be like if the community of Pulse — the community where this all happened — if they got ten cards, one-hundred cards, one-thousand cards for every bullet that was fired in hate. So perhaps those small acts of affirmation will be the fuel that propels us to make society better.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
If you would like to send a letter to Pulse, address them to:
1912 S Orange Ave, Orlando, FL 32806
(Answers have been edited for clarity.)
Shanghai Disneyland opens for first visitors
A slice of the happiest place on earth is now open in China. After years of planning, Shanghai Disneyland opened to visitors Thursday.
Take Two spoke with Keith Sharon, reporter for the Orange County Register, who is in Shanghai covering the opening.
Interview highlights:
On what's in the park:
"It's, I believe, four times bigger than the park in Anaheim, but the resort is 963 acres and that includes two hotels, a lake, a park, a Downtown Disney-type area, and the park itself so it is a huge, vast, expansive development here in Shanghai."
On the mood of Opening Day:
"It was amazing. We saw all kinds of emotions. The first guy they let in was really great. He sprinted down the middle of Mickey Avenue, which is their equivalent of Main Street USA. He was jumping up and down, thrusting his finger "number one!" into the air, and then he made a left turn quickly because he wanted to get on the TRON ride first. His name may never be recorded for history but he was the first. We saw people crying because they were so happy. We saw kids dancing in the street because it was open. It was truly an amazing event."
Does it feel like Disneyland?
"It feels like the evolution of Disneyland. It feels like Disneyland took what they had learned over their history and put it all here. When you walk in this park, the first thing you see is that giant castle, which is the biggest in ...the Disney universe, the Enchanted Storybook Castle, it includes a restaurant, a walking tour where you go up a spiral staircase, and a ride that goes underneath it that features all the princesses in the Disney pantheon."
On the areas that are more Chinese:
"In the areas between the lands, it looks like gardens. The middle of the park is called Gardens of Imagination. Also what they've done is they've taken the characters from the Chinese zodiac calendar—the rat, the dragon—and they've used Disney characters to show those characters in Chinese—and so we saw the Chinese people gravitating toward those areas because they were familiar with those characters."
On the business relationship between Disney and the Chinese government and cooperating on piracy:
"What they're trying to do is do it better. That's what we've heard from talking to people—that the knock-off amusement parks and merchandise just can't live up to what Disney can do when they put their minds to it, so they're trying to make bigger, better, wider, higher events and instances than the knock-offs."
On the significance of the Shanghai Disneyland opening to Southern California:
"What they're trying to do here is what Walt Disney tried to do in Anaheim in 1955: He found the perfect middle-class community to train to become amusement park-goers and amusement park enthusiasts, and what they're trying to do here is take the most populated city in the most populated country in the world and try to do the same thing.
To listen to the full interview, click the blue audio player above.
Henry Rollins on his latest role as a villain among villains
Henry Rollins just might be one of the hardest working guys in Southern California.
He first came to fame as the front man for the legendary California punk band Black Flag:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsbvo5GVK10
In the decades since, he's hosted numerous radio shows; he has a podcast. Heck, he even writes for LA Weekly.
Well, now Henry Rollins is a serial killer.
That is, he plays one named Bernard in a new film called “The Last Heist.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4wIVPUb7yY
Rollins himself recently sat down with Take Two's Alex Cohen to talk about his new role.
With a film like this one, you’ve got some dialogue, and I’m sure there’s plenty of actors out there who would go to the library and take out every book on the psychology of every serial killer known to man. My gut tells me you’re not that guy. What’s your technique?
Here’s what’s unique about my life: I’ve met a lot of people. In my line of work, I’ve met more people than any president. Coming from the kind of music I come from, where anyone can walk up to you and talk to you — and everyone does — I’ve met all kinds of people. I’ve met killers, I’ve met the rich, the poor, the insane, the lovely, the repulsive; and so I have a lot of the human types to draw from.
So with this guy, he needs to disarm people with charm, so I tapped into a few people I’ve met — especially a pedophile who I had met in my youth. He would hang out at a movie theater I had worked at, and he was always trying to get me to come over to his place. As far as his physicality; the way Bernard moves around, he’s a bird. Some birds, everything’s amazing when they look at it. And that’s what Bernard does; you pull a gun on him and he’s like, ‘Whoa, a gun. I’m going to take that from you.’ He has no fear of death at all.
You can hear more from Henry Rollins by clicking the blue play button above.
(Answers have been edited for clarity.)
The fate of the tiny Pacific Pocket Mouse
For years, scientists thought that the Pacific pocket mouse went extinct in the 1980s. But as it turns out, there were still a few of them left in Southern California.
In an effort to increase population numbers, scientists have just released them into Laguna park.
On of those researchers is Debra Shier, she's an Associate Director of Applied Ecology at San Diego Zoo Global. Here she is talking about the little guy.
And as she explained to us, this tiny mouse can have a big impact on the local environment. And she began our conversation by describing the Pacific Pocket Mouse.
(click on the blue arrow above to hear the interview)
Colorado River Aqueduct at 75: The project that fed SoCal's growth
Seventy-five years ago today, water from the Colorado River reached Southern California for the first time.
It came via the Colorado River Aqueduct— a massive feat of engineering that took 35 thousand workers more than eight years to build.
Before the Colorado River Aqueduct was built, Southern California was got its water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which was completed in 1913.
But less than a decade after water began to flow from that first aqueduct, it was clear that the rapidly expanding Southern California region was in need of a new source of outside water.
Enter the Colorado River.
This 1938 film from the Metropolitan Water District tells the story of the construction of the Colorado River Aqueduct.
The 242-mile aqueduct made its first deliveries to the thirteen cities that originally made up the Metropolitan Water District. Pasadena received the very first flow of water on June 17, 1941.
The aqueduct helped feed the growth of Southern California and today remains as an essential source of water for the region.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Jon Christensen, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Senior Fellow, Journalist-in-Residence, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability