How will the looming fiscal cliff affect California? Then, five women have been elected to the US Senate. We'll look at the role of women in government and why there is a lack of women recognized as geniuses throughout history. Plus, we'll take an early look at who's expected to get Academy Awards nominations this year, we'll check in on a local group offering parenting classes for new dads, we'll check in with two L.A. college sports superfans about the USC vs. UCLA football game this weekend, and much more.
What will the fiscal cliff mean for California?
When it come to the fiscal cliff, it's California that's peering over the edge. A report by George Mason University shows our state will lose over 225,000 jobs through the end of next year if Congress doesn't act.
That's more than anywhere else in the nation, and the gross state product will shrink by $22.6 billion. As we look down off that cliff, what specific parts of the state would be hurt the most?
Kimberly Ritter is an economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.
The year of women in US government
Five women were elected to the Senate last week, bringing a total of 20 female senators to the chamber. They include Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Deb Fischer (R-NE);
There will be nearly 80 women in the House, and with a crop of new female governors, many are calling this the year of the woman.
For a look at the role women will be playing in Washington, we're joined now by L.A. Times columnist Meghan Daum.
Why is there a lack of female 'geniuses' throughout history?
Close your eyes and think if you can name 10 recognized geniuses. Now, are any of them women?
Of course there are musical geniuses, like Mozart. Albert Einstein is a star in the science world, and then you have the politically brilliant like Nelson Mandela. But when it comes to geniuses who are women, the list gets pretty barren.
Sandra Upson, managing editor of Scientific American Mind, authored the article “Where are the Female Geniuses?” which examines why most of history’s revered minds are male.
Upson explains that the guidelines used to determine a genius is actually quite a complex process, but that most psychologists really look at exemplary accomplishments to determine who would be considered a so-called genius.
According to that definition, it would seem that there should be a long list of female geniuses throughout history, starting with Marie Curie. However, Upson posits that while most people would name Marie Curie as a noted female genius from history, there is definitely a lack of knowledge of women who might accompany Mrs. Curie on that list. Upson claims that there were many institutional barriers facing women in the past that prevented them from having the opportunity to excel in various fields.
Women, though, were not only excluded from advanced education or professional realms, they were also accused of mental and physical frailty that hindered success. Upson mentions that by looking at certain fields that are less measured by physical involvement or institutional success, like writing for example, you can start to see larger numbers of prominent women.
Upson adds that women have been thwarted in their efforts because of time. Time eaten by “kids, family, the usual, right? And there’s some of that still today,” Upson cites. “One of the problems here is that they talk about a leaky pipeline. At every stage, starting from early education, up through high school then to college, grad school, and on to becoming professors and so forth, there is just attrition. They lose women. These women are just falling off the track.” Unfortunately, women are in their key reproductive years in their 20s and 30s and in those same years, they are being pressured to lay the groundwork of their careers.
However, coming up on the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the Education Amendments of 1972, which forbids gender discrimination across the board, it is clear that recently women have made strides in their contributions to society. The Olympics saw dramatic increases in female participation and women were a definite presence on the world stage.
Despite the many steps forward socially, rigid gender roles are still internalized, Upson explains. She noted that on Twitter, a few days ago, she saw a father who posted a castigation of his child for not understanding activity classification being restricted as strictly a boy’s activity or strictly a girl’s activity.
The activities, including things like playing with Legos or playing kitchen, were identified by the child as both female and male activities, which was considered by the teacher to be a failed attempt to correctly complete the assignment.
Upson says, “It is just crazy to see and think that these attitudes of what is a male activity and what is a female activity ingrained in children early on, is just terrifying. I hope that this is not a reflection of common education practices, but who knows.”
Jenna Kagel contributed Web copy to this story.
Rumors and predictions for the 2013 Academy Awards
Just when you thought all the campaigning was over here comes The Oscars. The awards nominations won't be announced until January 10, 2013, and the statues won't be handed out until February 24, but voting for nominees begins next month and the star-making machinery is shifting into high gear.
Here with a look at the first wave of awards activity is John Horn, who writes about the business of Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times.
USC program trains counselors to help students in military families
By one count, close to 100,000 California public school kids have at least one parent serving in the military. Advocates say educators have done a poor job supporting these kids at school through the stressful times before, during, and after military deployments. That’s changing.
The Beal family of Westminster is ready for the change. Corey and Rita Beal recently moved into their new house in north Orange County. Their three kids are settled into their rooms, the four floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are up in the living room, but their wedding pictures aren’t hung yet.
Rita Beal says there’s really nothing new about moving into a new house; the family's lived in “over a dozen in the last 10 years,” she said. Husband Corey has served in the U.S. Army for 13 years. In that time the family has lived on and off military bases.
On this day the Beals did something they haven’t done very often - walking together to pick up their second grade daughter from school.
With his infantry unit, Corey Beal deployed twice to Iraq and Afghanistan. He saw combat. Six of his friends died. So did many more from the unit. But he said he realized early that deployments are the toughest part of his servicebecause of the strain it places on his family. His wife says the kids’ schoolwork has suffered.
“Our daughter that we’re picking up now only in second grade, seven years old, but the differences between what the requirements were in school back in New York, last month, and just up the road in Cypress, four months, six months ago are all completely different,” she said.
Their two older boys have had a particularly rough time with the moves. Teachers and principals who lack an awareness of military life haven’t helped. When her oldest son was seven years old, she said, a public school teacher in Washington State told the entire class that one student was absent because his father had been killed in combat. The school was on a military base. Nearly every other student in the class had a father in the same unit.
Rita Beal said that experience shocked her into a commitment to educate schools about military culture and the stress of deployment on families. At the school her kids attended last year, she formed a PTA committee and organized a Veterans Day event.
“We had a wonderful flag celebration during Veteran’s Day last year. We actually donated a new flag,” she said. “My husband’s command sergeant major he would like to perhaps present it personally. He we’ve also got a lot of soldiers at the unit who’d love to come down.”
When the Beals reached their daughter’s new school, 7-year-old Cecilia ran up with a waist-high hug. She wore a Halloween carnival mask.
When asked how many schools she's attended, the girl replied, “about two, I mean three,” she said as Rita corrected her. “This is number four."
Few schools or districts keep a tally of students with parents in the military. Administrators in Orange County, where the Beals live now, are beginning to try.
“So that the schools are serving and helping the families as they adjust,” said Richard Riegel who’s the head of student services with the Orange County Department of Education. “It can also coordinate services to perhaps have parent support groups, children support groups.”
His office is creating online courses for educators to help them military deployment cycle, understanding military culture, and family dynamics.
Riegel gives a lot of credit to the University of Southern California’s Ron Astor, who teaches social work at the masters level.
On a recent day Astor led a class for nearly three dozen graduate students at USC’s San Diego County satellite classroom. Personnel from the Navy and Marines told students about resources available to help military families. In breakout groups, they also talked about Veterans Day activities in the schools they work in.
The grad students counsel the children of military families in 140 schools in Riverside, Orange, and San Diego Counties. Their faculty mentor Ron Astor said the experience resonates with them because these days, fewer than one percent of Americans have served in the military, compared with nine percent during World War Two.
“I believe it’s a debt that’s owed by civilian society for the 10 years where they have been a little bit business as usual while this very small group has been carrying the war on their backs,” Astor said.
Astor wants to grow the program. He recently published a set of guides for parents and educators based on his research from the counseling program. He’s also working with school district officials who’ve requested social work interns to help their students.
Voice therapy and training wards off illness that rob voices
When Carol Ann Susi shows up to work, her colleagues expect to hear a lot of yelling.
That’s because she earns her paycheck by playing the overbearing Jewish mother, Mrs. Wolowitz, on the hit CBS television sitcom, “The Big Bang Theory.”
Susi’s character never appears on camera. Instead, audiences only hear her as she communicates off-screen with her fictional son, Howard Wolowitz, mostly by hollering at the top of her lungs.
“I’m screaming when I do Mrs. Wolowitz,” Susi says. “That’s what I do. That’s her character…the whole thing is yelling. That’s the joke.”
But all that screaming is no joke when it comes to Susi’s vocal health. Until recently, all that scripted yelling would cause her voice to go hoarse and leave her struggling to talk.
“I used to not speak over the weekend because we always tape our show on Tuesday,” she says. “So Saturday and Sunday I’m not talking to anyone because I really needed to keep my voice.”
But that did little more than delay the inevitable hoarseness that followed her work sessions.
Susi’s doctor eventually prescribed her more than a dozen voice therapy sessions at Cedars-Sinai’s Outpatient Voice Program where – like at similar voice centers throughout the Southland – a growing number of actors, singers and regular folk - such as school teachers and lawyers – are seeking help for overused vocal cords.
On a recent morning, therapist Robert Dowhy guided Susi through one of her final appointments. He began with warmup exercises that relax her vocal cords and allow her to breathe in a manner that reduces voice strain.
“To minimize the risk of injury to a muscle, you want to first relax the muscles that are tense and then warm up and stretch them,” Dowhy says.
First, there are stretches that required Susi stick out her tongue as far as it could reach in every direction. Next were a set of trills, where she attempts to roll her “r’s” like a native Spanish speaker. Then came a series of “pitch glides” in which she sings letters of the alphabet to musical notes Dowhy played on a piano.
Nationwide, voice therapy like this is gaining mainstream traction, thanks in part to recent high-profile cases of voice illness among singing superstars. In the past 18-months, British soul-singer Adele, who underwent surgery for a vocal cord hemorrhage, country singer Keith Urban who had vocal polyps removed and singer/songwriter John Mayer who’s in continuing treatment for a vocal cord lesion known as a “granuloma.”
Experts in the field also say that technology is moving voice medicine to the forefront. Fiber-optic cameras that can diagnose tiny vocal cord injuries and improvements in laser surgery are encouraging many with such with problems to seek treatment before they suffer permanent damage.
“Voice medicine has come such a long way in the past ten, 20, 30 years and moving faster and faster as more young docs are getting interested in it,” says Joanna Cazden, a colleague of Dowhy’s and author of the book, “Everyday Voice Care: The Lifestyle Guide for Singers and Talkers.”
“There’s really a lot that a combination of good medicine and good rehabilitation therapy can do."
Cazden says while vocal function is comprised of complicated physiology, maintaining vocal well-being is quite simple. It involves healthy habits such as such as keeping well-hydrated, which allows your vocal cords to vibrate without irritation; avoiding late night eating, which can cause acid reflux that burns your throat lining and limiting cell phone conversations while in your car, which causes voice strain.
“The other primary recommendation is to get some good training,” Cazden says. “It doesn’t need to be therapy if there’s nothing actually wrong with your voice.”
Voice training, she says, can teach you to widen your inflection range by bringing energy to your voice. Cazden says that in turn offers your vocal cords a chance to relax and stretch as you speak.
And, she says, it offers the added benefit of making it easier for your audience to tune in to your talk – whether you’re speaking before a classroom or a courtroom or whether, like Susi, you shout for a living before a live television audience.
“It’s a big, big difference because now I feel as though…there really is no pressure on my throat anymore,” says Susi who says she hopes her new voice skills will pay off with even more acting roles.
Can a training course help a man become a better father?
That old cliche that a baby doesn’t arrive with an instruction manual might not be as true now as before. There's a flourishing industry of parenting books, DVDs and online resources. But how often do new fathers do the reading and research?
In an attempt to engage men, fatherhood training classes are popping up across the Southland.
At one of these “Parent Cafe” trainings in Highland Park, men gather in a small conference room. The class is not so much about basics, like diaper changing or sleep techniques. Ray Estrella Jr., who initiated the 12-week training course at the American Indian Family Partnership where he works, says it’s about active paternal engagement.
“Most of our dads are new dads. They have no idea of what being a father is,” Estrella says. The course emphasizes concepts like “being responsible, being caring, being trusting.”
Estrella points out that the training is a place for men to meet and share their struggles, joys, and fatherhood questions with other dads. It's also the place where experts offer tips and best practices. Francisco Oaxaca, director of public affairs at the child advocacy non-profit First Five LA, is a big supporter of these fatherhood trainings (his organization funds many of them).
“We know that anyone who has children is doing the best job that they can," he says, "and we’re hoping that these programs are making it safe to say, 'you know what, I would like to learn more and do more and be more as a parent.'”
The role a father plays in a child’s early years is crucial, says Oaxaca, who bases his argument on mounting academic research. “Studies have shown how important the role of fathers is in terms of helping male children learn how to control their emotions and act in social situations, and helping female children have better self esteem, and better control of their emotions as well.”
Oaxaca also points out that, given the incredible ethnic and racial variety of Southern California, the trainings have to be culturally sensitive to the fathers' backgrounds. Ray Estrella Sr., a trainer at the American Indian Family Partnership, refers to his own family history to illustrate the point.
As a Pascua Yaqui Indian, Estrella grew up in a large family in Arizona. He lost contact with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins when his parents moved to California for better opportunities. Estrella sees this pattern among many immigrants whose experiences include losing their family network.
“The need," he says, "is to try and hold the familes together, to teach them to become better families based on old traditional values. Values that we learned from our ancestors about the importance of family, the importance of honor, the importance of taking caring of your family.”
Francisco Oaxaca of First Five LA insists that most families could use some support because of what he describes as “today’s reality” of child-rearing - in which fathers are not the sole breadwinners. “Today we see dual-income families, we see even more and more cases where the female parent is the primary breadwinner and the male parent is staying at home taking on that role.”
Arnold Carle, who tells his story in the radio feature, believes the training he received at the American Indian Family Partnership helped him understand how to be a better and more engaged father because it helped him “see things in a different way. I’m more understanding about the way a family should be.” That seemingly small realization has helped Carle become a more active and engaged presence in his 18-month-old son’s life.
Here's a sampling of fatherhood training centers:
Young Dads Program, Friends of the Family, 15350 Sherman Way, Suite 140, Van Nuys. Call Robert Santos at 818-988-4430 or visit www.fofca.org.
Project Fatherhood, Operation Life, 7143 Baird Ave., Reseda. Call 818-705-3140 or visit www.operationlife.org.
Fatherhood Journey (American Indian Partnership), Rudy Ortega Sr. Park, 2025 Fourth St., San Fernando. Call 818-336-6105 or visit www.pukuu.org.
24/7 Dad Youth Speak Collective, 444 S. Brand Blvd., Suite 201, San Fernando. Call Mateo Ozelotzin at 818-890-2928 or visit www.youthspeakcollective.org.
SPIRITT Family Services, 2000 Tyler Ave., South El Monte (Spanish). Call 855-714-8800.
Bienvenidos, English and Spanish, 501 South Atlantic Blvd., East Los Angeles. Call Hugo Garcia at 323-268-5442 or email hgarcia@bienvenidos.org.
Positive Parenting for Padres (Spanish), The Help Group Child & Family Center, 15339 Saticoy St., Van Nuys. Call Rubi Rodriguez at 818-267-2738 or visit www.thehelpgroup.org.
UCLA and USC fans look ahead to Rose Bowl game on Saturday
As the USC and UCLA football teams gear up to play this weekend, fans are already excited for the match. We'll have two dedicated fans in to talk about the importance of the game, the history between the two teams and what this means for them and their families this upcoming weekend.
Can new coach Mike D'Antoni turn the Lakers' season around?
The Lakers have a new coach and it's not Phil Jackson. Despite rumors he'd return as head coach, the team announced late last night that Mike D'Antoni will take the helm.
D'Antoni has agreed to a 3-year contract worth $12 million. For more on this I turn to my co-host A Martinez who is also the host of Lakersline on ESPN LA 710.