SoCal Minds

Prime time for fans of Twain, football, Roy Rogers

From ALOUD, CalArts & the Autry

Let's do a quick dash through some literary, artistic and collectibles matters of note around the area: For those who can't get enough dish about one of America's greatest homespun writing master, Laura Skandera Trombley, president of Pitzer and one of the preeminent scholars on the topic, will take on the dark, troubled last years of Mark Twain in a free talk downtown at 7 tonight; space is limited and reservations are required. For those Lakers, Dodgers, Trojans or other sports nuts who want another artistic view of the athletic world, the folks in Valencia provide an excellent shout-out for prominent alum Catherine Opie and her now open LACMA exhibit on high school football (as exemplified by 'Josh, 2007,' shown at right, from the Eugene Sadovoy Collection). And lastly, while lots of attention got paid to the fate of the taxidermied specimen of horse-flesh known as Trigger, the folks over in Griffith Park ay they just couldn't pass up nabbing stuff at a recent auction of Roy Rogers memorabilia and they're posting about it and the legendary cowboy on their blog.  

Can 'social fabric' of once-chaotic Skid Row be restored?

From ALOUD

With the prodding of a talented, consumate, compassionate scribe like Steve Lopez, the public and politicians finally took action in 2005-6 about the violent, chaotic and dangerous situation that had developed around Los Angeles' Skid Row. More police and other kinds of help went into the area, overrun by drug dealers, thugs, criminals, sex workers, the mentally ill and homeless. In the midst of the chaos, Lopez also told the tale of the remarkable Nathaniel Ayers, the street musician and Skid Row denizen who became the protagonist for the wonderful book and movie, 'the Soloist.' What has happened to the area since -- and can art and culture help rescue and revive Skid Row? That topic and more will be explored in a free, public program in downtown tonight at 7 for which reservations are required. Featured will be a panel of activists and advocates, especially those involved in public arts programs that aim to 'reweave the social fabric' of Skid Row.

Click here for more info, to RSVP for Skid Row program

3 uneasy dispatces from the 21st century tech frontier

From UCLA, Zocalo & ALOUD

How's that internet thingy working out for ya? Skip the Wasilla twang but don't ignore the discomfited query. Along with the glories of 21st century technology, there's clearly a great deal of unease or unrest accompanying Web 2.0 and it certainly will show up around this metropolis this week. On the Westside at 7 tonight, authors Susan Jacoby ('Age of American Unreason') and Nicholas Carr ('The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains') will kick around in a free, open conversation -- for which reservations are required -- the possible connections between digital culture, anti-intellectualism, fundamentalism and U.S. education. Phew.Then in downtown at 7:30 Wednesday night, artist Salomon Huerta (shown at right) and art critic David Pagel will take on in a free, open conversation -- for which reservations are required -- 'Ego, Destruction and Facebook,' exploring artistic process and modernity. And on Thursday night at 7 in downtown, William Powers (the 'Hamlet's Blackberry' author, shown at left) will hash out with book critic David Ulin in a free, open conversation -- for which reservations are required -- how contemporary life might better be conducted in the omnipresent shadow of ever-changing technology.

Click here for more info on Jacoby, Carr session tonight

Click here for more info on Huerta, Pagel session Wednesday night

Click here for more info on Powers, Ulin session Thursday night

A buzz on updating bee data, fears on ice caps, seafood

From UCR, ALOUD & Zocalo

Man may be king of the beasts but the evidence abounds that his environmental conduct can be just this side of beastly, though there are worries under way about species from bees to fish and the oceans as a whole:

• For all the buzz about the decimation of bees around the globe, what's really known about man's best winged-friend, the key ally in the cultivation of myriad kinds of invaluable crops? Scientists have collected almost 1 million records on various kinds of the little buzzers in 10 databases scattered across the U.S. But the accuracy and usefulness of all that information will get a boost from experts in Riverside, who will cooperate with scientists across the region (including at the UCs in Berkeley and Davis and at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum) and the country to double-check, scrub, organize and centralize all the bee info. The aim is to ensure that experts, in examining valuable records that have been collected on the insects for as long as two centuries, can best predict the risks to bees and their 'pollination services,' in the face of climate change, habitat loss and other threats.

In Riverside, a cooperative push to upgrade 1 million records on man's best winged-friends

• In downtown tonight at 7, in a free and open conversation (for which reservations are required), a biologist and space scientist will discuss with an accomplished environmental journalist just what may occur when an inevitable consequence of climate change occurs. Peter D. Ward, an astrobiologist who works with NASA, argues that even if the present environmental carnage were to come to an abrupt halt, the rising of the world's seas due to the melting of polar ice caps will not cease. He has conjured some dire scenarios of what may ensure on 'The Flooded Earth,' including the abandonment of a lawless island Miami, guerrilla warfare in Canada and chaos and devastation in spots like Bangladesh. Must it be this way?

Dire scenarios, a call to action about climate change, the 'Flooded Earth'

• On the Westside, three folks who not only know a lot about eating but also sustainability and cuisine will take on a whopper of a topic, asking in a free, open talk (with reservations recommended) on Wednesday night at 7:30 on whether the ravenous destruction of the oceans and everything that lives therein soon will make seafood a culinary delicacy? The Brothers Gold -- Jonathan, the iconoclastic and Pulitzer-winning LA Weekly food critic (shown at right in Rena Kosnett photo celebrating his winning journalism's top award), and Mark, the noted environmentalist and head of Heal the Bay -- will join with Michael Cimarusti, a lauded master chef of seafood and the food force behind the top-rated Providence restaurant.

A whopper of a worry -- will seafood soon be a culinary rarity?

Varied views of black body share an artistic spotlight

From ALOUD

What happens when 30 folks, black, white and biracial, straight and gay turn their minds to what it means to have or to love a black body? A half-dozen panelists will give a sample of the provocative resulting work at a free, public session tonight at 7 downtown. The program will be led by author Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, a native Ghanian, who, for a recent, published anthology, assembled a diverse group of artists, poets, film folk and writers to contemplate not only their own hair, hands, arms, brains, skins and other body parts but why American society has both idolized and marginalized black bodies as part of the nation's complicated, confusing and conflicted views, beliefs and history on race.

Artists, poets, film folk, writers share ideas on what it means to have, love a black body 

*How a dysfunctional dynasty built LA, undid the Times

From ALOUD

To really understand Los Angeles and its evolution, it's vital to know and to come to grips with the Chandler family and their troubled multi-generational legacy. Their exploits in shaping the City of Angels and the Los Angeles Times make up a broadcast soap operatic saga, though the Chandlers' role in politics (see the rise of Richard M. Nixon) and real estate (see the sprawl of the San Fernando Valley) began a century before television's invention when the irascible family founder and Civil War vet Harrison Gray Otis (shown at left), came West. He bought into a local rag, which his son-in-law Harrison Chandler built into a media monolith by advancing the interests both of the city and the Chandler family. The newspaper, fat with ads but lagging far behind in national repute, waited for two generations before Otis Chandler transformed the Times in the 1960s and 1970s into a prize-winning publication. But strife, jealousy and avarice also by this time were built into the institution's bones, as numerous books have detailed in describing the paper's decline in family, then corporate feuds. Longtime Times insiders will give their take on this history in a free, public program downtown on Tuesday night at 7, as the discussion turns to 'The Chandlers and Their Times,' the book by Bill Boyarsky (once the paper's city editor and long its stand-out political columnist), and the PBS-aired documentary by prize-winning filmmaker Peter Jones. The moderator will be Patt Morrison, a Times columnist and KPCC radio host.

In downtown, a discussion, dissection of the Chandler legacy 

*Full disclosure: The Times was the one-time employer, of course, of yours truly, who, by the way, will be tied up in some projects this week, so SoCal Minds will welcome another Times alum for some posting: Nancy Yoshihara, long a denizen of the paper's Editorial Board and an assignment editor in the Features departments, will pitch in and put her sharp mind and fine prose to the site. 

What can Kalahari bushmen teach us about water's value?

From ALOUD

They're an ancient people who have struggled to survive into modernity. But as environmental circumstances alter, could it be that bushmen far away in the Kalahari deserts can offer Americans, Californians especially, crucial ideas about thriving in desperate circumstances connected with drought and water shortages and strife? James G. Workman, author and water policy wonk (shown at right), will drill down on potential responses to our increasingly parched world in a free but reservations required chat Thursday night in downtown with Adan Ortega, a California water expert. Workman will discuss what he learned by studying for his upcoming new book the African bushmen and especially their indigenous wisdom when they were cut off anew from contemporary water supplies by repressive officials in Botswana. Their thinking and survival skills, he says, should inform the 'civilized' world's responses to a global water crisis linked with excess demand, lack of conservation, dwindling supply, climate change and the perpetual, natural, pervasive and persistent cycles of drought. With Southern Californians getting a drip by drip dose of increasing water costs, control and rationing in their already semi-arid and drought affected land, the 7 p.m. session at the Central Library could not be more timely.

Click here to learn more, RSVP for program

Go here for Workman's 'Heart of Dryness' site

Go here to see 'Be Water Wise' site founded by moderator 

A pick for the literate: Obama's first year, modern poetry

From Zocalo & ALOUD

Whether it's the Obama presidency or Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary poetry, the A-Z (ALOUD and Zocalo) of free, public talks tonight offers promising fare. Author Jonathan Alter, he of Newsweek note, will talk about the present Administration's 'Promise,' as detailed in his much-praised, insider's chronicle of Barack Obama's first year in office, in an appearance at 7 tonight on the Westside, space limited and reservations required. In downtown, six local literary notables will tackle an unusual, staged public reading of what's termed one of the 'definining poems of the 20th Century,' John Ashbery's 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.' The description and mediation upon the masterwork by the 16th Century Italian Mannerist Francesco Parmigianino (shown at left),  published in 1975, won the poetry Pulitzer, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

On the Westside, an insider journalist's scrutiny of Obama's first year in office

In downtown, a staged reading of John Ashbery's critically acclaimed poem

A fast week ahead for fans of writing, music, dance

From ALOUD, UCLA, CalArts & the Huntington

Think Richard Russo (Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool) on writing. Or Mischa and Merce on dance. Or how about Richard Wagner once and a second time or Huang Ruo on music? Best part of three-day weekends is how they accelerate the work week. So get to the seeing and planning, as Russo's appearance downtown and the first of two Westwide, Ring-related Wagner programs will be this afternoon and tonight. Tickets for a Baryshnikov benefit performance downtown Monday for the Merce Cunningham foundation and REDCAT are going fast. And with a balmy weekend already in the forecast ahead, might be a perfect reason to get to San Marino to see Huang Ruo, an up and coming composer who blends classical, contemporary, Eastern and Western musical traditions.  

Photos: Cunningham, Baryshnikov, l, in 1999 /Robert Whitman; Huang Ruo, r

Seeing scientists as poker pros, crime sleuths, Ironman advisors

From UCLA, ALOUD & Caltech

To anyone foolish enough to underestimate the thrills that can be found in those geeky science and math types, there will be two public repudations in the Southland this week.

• In Westwood on Monday evening, the action starts when the Bruins bring back one of their own, an alum who in 18 years on the Westside earned a B.A. in computer science and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence. Now Dr. Chris Ferguson didn't just go off from Los Angeles to the labs or to Silicon Valley. No, he headed to Vegas and other spots where he turned his card-playing hobby -- which he began as an undergrad and on which he ran collegiate computerized mathematical models -- into $7 million in winnings as a champion pro poker player. The free, public event, which also will be streamed live online, will let the sartorially stylish Ferguson talk about poker, game theory, computer science and life, with four high-powered profs who also were his advsisors bosses, mentors and friends.

In Westwood, Ph.D. alum raises the stakes in unsual lecture  

• In downtown on Tuesday, MIT science writing prof Thomas Levenson (shown at right) will flesh out the little-known, flashy side of Sir Isaac Newton, the scientific giant who also was known for being bookish, asexual and obsessed with alchemy. After making his world-changing findings in physics, astronomy and mathematics, Newton in mid-life bolted from peaceful, pastoral Cambridge to take up in boisterous, bawdy London for what was widely regarded as the sinecure of being warden of the royal mint. But as Levenson will describe it in his free, reservations-required appearance, Newton took his duties gravely and launched into a battle of wits and skulduggery with one of the major crime figures of the day, a counterfeiter named William Chalone. So what happens when a man judged to be one of the greatest minds to ever live takes on an exceedingly clever, mean low-life who wants to break majesty's bank?

In downtown, a detailing of brash side of bookish Sir Isaac Newton

• This being Tinseltown and all, of course, there's no getting around the value of real science in making a zany, comics-based flick just a tad more realistic. So Hollywood, when it needs to figure how Iron Man (nee Robert Downey Jr.) recharges his nuclear-powered chest pack, producers at Paramount turn to a professor of high energy physics -- Mark Wise (as shown at right in photo by Mike Rogers). Phew. And good thing he wasn't distracted by the geeky hijinks that prevailed over the weekend as part of the school's beloved, annual Ditch Day, when all that brain power gets turned to elaborate pranks, mazes, puzzles, scavenger hunts and other fun set on under-classmen by the suddenly vanished seniors.