Hometown Hero Cristyne Lawson, Dancer and Dean

Cristyne Lawson

“All I’ve ever wanted to do is dance,” said Cristyne Lawson, the recently retired Dean of the Dance Department at CalArts and a person who has danced with every icon of the American modern dance movement of the 20th century.

Cristyne Lawson’s great grandmother, Ary Shaw McReynolds, moved, with her daughter, Mary McReynolds Stout, and her son-in-law, Rev. Stout, to Santa Monica in 1908.  Rev. Stout had been asked to join Rev. Phillips at the CME Church on Fourth Street and Mrs. Stout would teach English at Prairie View College.

Ary Shaw McReynolds is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery on Pico Boulevard.  The family believed her to be of both African American and Native American heritage.  Also buried at Woodlawn are Lawson’s mother, father, sister, and uncle.

Her mother, Bernice Stout Lawson, grew up in Santa Monica and studied piano with the well-known teacher, Miss Lilias G. Hart. She went on to study music at the University of Southern California and to be a performing artist.

Lawson’s father, Hilliard Lawson, was the first black City Council member in Santa Monica.  He came to California after being thrown out of Vicksburg, Mississippi when his father died.  His mother went to work, as a cook, for the socially prominent Pasadena Jowitt family.  This was Cristyne Lawson’s first introduction to Deborah Jowitt, who became her friend, went on to be the Dance Critic for the Village Voice, and to write glowing reviews of Lawson dancing with Alvin Ailey.

Unlike her father’s racially hateful experiences in Mississippi, Lawson felt “at home in Santa Monica.” She reflected on her childhood saying,  “I have been really lucky. I wasn’t ostracized, as a child in Santa Monica for being black, as children were in so many places in America.  People put more into color than what’s there.

“I felt there was no place that I would rather be.  My friends and relatives all lived within easy walking distance.  I had a bicycle and could go everywhere in the city.  There were no parking lots and no parking meters. Can you imagine how wonderful it was to have the beach coming right up to the grass?

“In the Santa Monica black community, everyone used to go to CME Church, on Fourth Street in Ocean Park, for their social life,” said Lawson.  “Originally called the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, as the country changed its ideas about race, it became known as the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

“I am who I am because my grandmother listened to everything I said and was interested in everything I did.  If I went to a movie, I could come home and act out every part and she would give me unending attention.

“My grandmother took me to Lincoln (Reed) Park for the dance program.  The woman who taught dance at the park was a Ruth St. Denis trained teacher.  I knew then that I wanted to be a dancer.”

Lawson went to Santa Monica High School (Samohi) and then on to Los Angeles High School where they had a dance program, headed by the Wigman dancer, Martha Krogman. In high school she performed with the school’s Orchesis Club and she performed in the movie “Carmen Jones,” starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte.

Accepted to Juilliard, she was a member of the first Juilliard Dance Company. “Coming from Santa Monica, I found New York unreal.  I had to adjust,” remembered Lawson. “I lived at the Dunbar Apartments in Harlem.  Juilliard was still at 125th Street at that time.”

Lawson took a break from Juilliard to go on a worldwide, six-month tour with the Graham Company.  She also worked on Broadway, where she and Alvin Ailey were lead dancers in  “Jamaica,” starring Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalban.  When home for the summer from her studies at Juilliard, she performed in the movie “Porgy and Bess.”

After graduation from Juilliard, she toured Europe with the Modern Jazz Quartet.  It was in Europe that she met her husband, Graham Smith, an Australian architect and a dancer.  They were married 19 years, and had two children.  

It was a telegram asking her to come and help start a new school in Buffalo, New York that brought her back to the states. “At the school, I was choreographing for my own company,  ‘Company of Man.’ We were dancers and film-makers and we made multi-media films.  I also choreographed a dance called ‘The Story of Christ in Vietnam.’ It was the most incredible moment.  We could not have lasted.  It was so completely consuming.”

She went on to become the dean of The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts.   “The school decided artists were the best people to run schools. They felt you had to have done it in order to teach it,” said Lawson.

“The problem with a school like CalArts, is you can have famous people come, but teaching can’t be about ‘you.’  One has to be able to bridge the gap between being an artist and doing one’s own work and at the same time give to the students.

“I’m really happy to be back in Santa Monica.  I’ve been all over the world, but I love Santa Monica. It has changed, but it hasn’t changed beyond recognition.  Ocean Park still has the same feel.”

What Say You? Big Changes Coming to Downtown

Big changes are coming to Santa Monica’s Downtown District. The Exposition Light Rail (Expo) is on schedule to open 2015.   The City has just completed a deal to secure the property between Fourth and Fifth Streets on Arizona, taking over the current sites of both Bank of America and Chase Bank.  The Civic Center Parks are on a fast track and are now in the public planning process.  Plans are being made for freeway capping adjacent to the Civic Center Parks. The California incline is scheduled for infrastructure improvement.  The Santa Monica Pier Bridge is scheduled for infrastructure improvement.  Santa Monica Place reopened August 2010 and is still evolving.  A new AMC Cineplex is planned for Fourth Street.  The City is about to start work on the Downtown Specific Plan, the document that will set the guidelines for the future of the downtown.

Expo is expected to bring thousands of people into Santa Monica’s downtown to shop, to eat, to play.  It is both hoped and expected that people who currently drive to Santa Monica will decide it is more convenient and more fun to take Expo and leave their cars at home.

 “Moving people in, through and around downtown, accommodating pedestrians, and encouraging bike riders are key concerns for downtown,” according to Kathleen Rawson, CEO of the Bayside District Corporation.  “Responding to issues of homelessness and taking care of homeless people used to be the highest ranked issue in the downtown community.  Now it’s parking and traffic.”

Downtown Santa Monica is a local, regional and international destination.  More than 60,000 people will come just to skate at the Ice Rink and thousands more will come to watch the skaters and to admire the decorative art.  Portraits of Hope, an internationally acclaimed non-profit that helps children deal with trauma through participation in public art, decorated the Ice Rink.

Events in the downtown are the responsibility of the Bayside District, as is the Ambassadors program.  Ambassadors, wearing logo shirts, greet visitors, answer questions about where to eat, give directions, escort employees to cars on late work nights, connect lost objects and owners, remove graffiti, and keep a record of all their interactions – over 170,000 in the past year. 

Santa Monica’s Police Chief Tim Jackman said, “Much credit goes to the Ambassadors for the decrease in the downtown homeless population.  Santa Monica’s homeless population is down about 23% citywide and over 27% in the downtown area.  The Ambassadors have done a good job of connecting homeless people to City Services.”

Councilman Bobby Shriver, a nationally recognized thinker and problem solver in the movement to ‘End Homelessness’ agrees, saying, “When it comes to addressing homelessness, Santa Monica is the regional leader.”

Bayside District is the public-private company responsible for planning and managing the downtown.  They are funded by a downtown property assessment, a portion of the business license fees, and revenues from special events, such as filming.  Bayside’s total annual budget is now approximately $5 million.

“Bayside gets $200,000 from the City for services through the Public Landscape Division for Promenade maintenance,” said Assistant City Manager Elaine Polachek, when asked about City support for Bayside. “Although the Ambassadors, may report problems more quickly than in other parts of the City, when it comes to ‘fixing potholes’ they go into the regular queue with the rest of the City.  The City benefits directly from business license fees, parking revenues and sales tax dollars.  We also benefit because the Promenade is a draw for tourists and the City relies on tourism for revenue.”

Given the importance of downtown and the scale of the planned new projects, City Staff is preparing for a Council study session to present an overview of all projects, recommendations on how to co-ordinate and manage the proposed projects, and recommendations for a process for public participation.  The study session will be held late January or early February 2011 at City Council.

The number and scale of the proposed projects brings us back to how are going to move people in, through and around downtown.  But it’s not people that create the slow moving traffic and the lack of parking spaces, it’s the cars they drive. Doing Expo right will get people from the Los Angeles region out of their cars and into Santa Monica by light rail.  Bayside District, working with the City, will need to create a welcoming environment, with fun and easy options for getting around town to change how everyone, visitors and locals, get through and around downtown.  

“It will take time to create an infrastructure for bicycles and time to change a general mind set,” Chief Jackman noted.  “But, during the City Manager’s talks with neighborhood groups, biking was a top issue and so our direction to create the infrastructure for bicyclists is clear.” 

The goal is to make the downtown work in a way that is good for the downtown, for our neighborhood business districts, and for the whole city.   The success of our goals will be measured by; the number of visitors, the ease of getting around town, financial benefits and even-handedness, and the use of planning and architecture to define the character of Santa Monica.   

With thanks to the Bayside District for starting Santa Monica’s ‘Buy Local’ program, let us remember the ‘Buy Local’ slogan, “Santa Monica First” and guide the changes to come without changing our core values.

What Say You?




Hometown Hero: Arcadia Bandini

Arcadia Bandini

I wish I could time travel, sit with Arcadia on the porch of her home on Ocean Avenue, and talk about her life.  I would tell her that her gifts to the city have given shape and meaning to Santa Monica.

I can only study the accumulated facts and imagine what it might have been like to be the daughter of a prominent Ranchero family in Alta California; to witness the change to Statehood; and see the transformation of California. 

Arcadia’s aesthetic and social vision set a standard for Santa Monica.  Palisades Park, originally named Linda Vista, was her vision and she donated the land from Colorado to Montana for the park.  Then, the company she co-owned with Nevada Senator John Percival Jones donated the land from Montana to the northern end of the city to complete the park.

Arcadia was born in 1827, the daughter of Juan Bandini and Dolores Estudillo, a prominent and powerful family who owned Ranchos in San Diego.  In a decision, not unusual for their time and the standing of their family, Arcadia was married, at age 14, to a business acquaintance of her father’s, Abel Stearns. 

Stearns, born in Massachusetts in 1799, had come to Alta California to make his fortune.  He became a Mexican citizen, which required converting to Catholicism and speaking Spanish.  As a Mexican citizen he could then hope to achieve both social and political standing.

Dona Arcadia Bandini de Stearns and Don Abel Stearns lived in “El Palacio” on the corner of Main and Arcadia Streets, near Olvera Street.  The 1860 census lists their household as having 19 members living in the over 20,000 square foot residence – Abel Stearns, Arcadia Bandini, Refugio Bandini, Arcadia’s sisters, nieces, nephews, distinguished guests, secretaries, servants, painters and laborers.  

According to Arcadia’s grand-nephew, Ricardo Bandini Johnson, “Arcadia was known to be generous and likeable and very close to her family. Stearns was often away- both for business and for health reasons – and did not pay a lot of attention to Arcadia.”

Stearns died, in 1871, at the Grand Hotel in San Francisco.  Arcadia continued running the businesses.  Four years after the death of Stearns, on April 25, 1875, she married Colonel Robert Symington Baker, a wealthy sheep rancher and a prominent landowner.

That same year, Baker started construction on the namesake Baker Block.  Baker wanted a grand home and replaced El Palacio with a 3 story, 64,428 square foot building.  The first two floors were rented for commercial businesses and offices and the top floor was the residence.

An ornate building, it expressed the aesthetics of the ‘Gilded Age’ in which they lived. The large, land grant families: Sepulveda; Reyes; Lugo; Machado; Wolfskill, who donated the land for the VA cemetery:  Carrillo; Pico; Figueroa; Kinney; and Rindge were frequent guests at their famous dances and parties.

Stearns and Baker both spoke excellent Spanish as well as English.  Arcadia spoke only Spanish; at least she spoke only Spanish in public.  It’s easy to imagine that she understood a great deal and probably could speak, at least some, English. It is also easy to imagine that it was to her advantage in business and in society to speak only Spanish.

Baker owned Rancho San Vicente, bought from the Sepulveda Family for $55,000.  The Rancho included all of Santa Monica and its borders were Pico, Sepulveda, Topanga, and the Pacific Ocean.  Two years later Baker sold a portion of the Rancho to Senator Jones for $162,500.  Jones described Rancho San Vicente as the “most beautiful place I have ever seen.”

Baker and Jones filed a Platt map for the first subdivision of Santa Monica.  The 50’ x 150’ lots, located between Ocean Avenue, 26^th Street, Montana Avenue, and Colorado Avenue, sold at land auction for $150 to $300.

Arcadia Bandini’s vision for the city, as well as her business acumen, is demonstrated in the lay out of the Platt map.  Lots were designated for housing, schools, parks, churches, and businesses.  Parks and school sites were deeded to the new City.

Ricardo Bandini Johnson says, “Arcadia and Jones were the main force behind the donations.  Jones however, was mostly in Washington DC, and Arcadia Bandini and Georgina Jones became close friends and partners in the family business.”

Baker had significant health problems. In 1879, with Jones’ encouragement, Arcadia bought Baker’s interest in Rancho San Vicente.  Arcadia Bandini and Jones then formed the Santa Monica Land and Water Company.  They decided to sell large tracts of land north of Montana Avenue - another very successful business move.

In the 1880’s Arcadia built her home on the 1200 block of Ocean Avenue overlooking Linda Vista Park and the Pacific Ocean.  She kept the Baker Block, but mostly lived in Santa Monica.  Many members of the Bandini family continued to live in the Baker Block.

Arcadia’s life was one of business, grand entertaining, and family.  She spent time at her working sheep ranch where there were extensive gardens and opportunities for guests to hunt.  She was a frequent visitor to the beach.

In 1892 Arcadia’s brother Juan Bandini came from San Diego to work with Arcadia and stayed, becoming her most trusted advisor until his death in 1906. He was her closest friend and she deeply mourned his death.

Juan Bandini, in his diary entry on May 26, 1894, wrote,  “After 3:30 had a message that Mr. Baker had died at 2:30 and I went on the 5:45 (He is referring to a train on the railroad built by Senator Jones.).

Arcadia continued to live and work in Santa Monica until her death in her home on Ocean Avenue, September 15, 1912.  Senator Jones, her long time business partner and the husband of her close friend, Georgina Jones, died the same year.

Arcadia Bandini de Stearns de Baker is buried in the Bandini family plot at Cavalry Cemetery on Whittier Blvd. in Boyle Heights, alongside her father, Juan Bandini, and her husbands, Abel Stearns and Robert Baker.

Arcadia Bandini made donations of land, all over the Los Angeles region, to be used for parks, schools, orphanages and other projects that were of public benefit. As there was no facility for veterans of the Civil War west of the Mississippi she donated the land for the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers and Sailors.  (Now the Veteran’s Administration).

Arcadia Bandini’s thoughtful and generous gifts to Santa Monica were instrumental in determining the character of the city. We are the fortunate beneficiaries.

Ricardo Bandini Johnson, the great nephew of Arcadia Bandini, shared his family’s history. I couldn’t have told Arcadia’s story without his generosity.

What Say You. Thought for Food.

Food, wonderful, glorious food now has new meaning and new questions.  Will you pick up your fork and enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday?  Or will you worry if the food you are about to eat is healthy and safe?  Perhaps you will worry that guests at your table will have food rules that will stop them from eating or enjoying the food at your table.  Or you will worry that the food on your table came at the cost of harm to the planet.

Thanksgiving, a favorite holiday of my childhood, had all the fun of a holiday party yet seemed the most easygoing of all holidays.   But it doesn’t seem to me to be so easygoing any more.

How did eating become so complicated?  Food is designed to be
a pleasure as well as a necessity.  It’s purpose is to bring energy, to build strong bodies and good health, and, hopefully, to share joy.

My maternal grandmother knew food as a pleasure as well as a necessity.  In my grandmother’s generation all food was local, all food was seasonal and all food was organic.

Family lore has it that my grandmother was working in the fields on her family’s farm when a man came by on horseback.  She gave him a drink of water, they exchanged pleasantries and, before he left he said, “I’ll be back.  Please wait for me.”

They were married in the old country.  He came to America and she and the first six of their nine children came later.     So eleven was the standard number for dinner.  Often, there were guests.  My grandfather loved good conversation and good music.  If he met someone who could add to the conversation at the table or who could join him, after dinner, in playing the violin, he invited that person home to dinner.

My grandmother loved my grandfather, loved that he brought educated and talented people to her table, and loved music.  Her challenge was to provide enough to eat for everyone who sat down.

It goes without saying that the most important quality of any feast table is the love and care of the people at the table for one another.  It also goes without saying that food and memory are intertwined, memories of our mother’s kitchens, memories of our favorite foods, memories of loved ones around the table.

Now food is about so much more than nutrition and memory.
Every time we pick up our forks we make a choice for our health, a choice for the health of our community, a choice for the health of the planet.   Even the choice not to think about it is a choice.

The first thought is often for health.  Are the fruits and vegetables I’m eating organic?  Do I have to worry about chemical pesticides that present health risks?  Was the meat or poultry sustainably farmed or does it contain hormones and antibiotics that present health risks?  

The second thought is often for the health of the community and the planet.  Is this food local?  Did getting it to my table contribute to the carbon footprint?  Did chemical pesticides leach into the water table and harm the water supply?  Did chemical pesticides get into our rivers and lakes and harm the aquatic life?   Was the food on my table sustainably farmed, not only for my health, but also for the health of my community and the planet?

How do we answer these questions?  Fortunately, information is everywhere today.  In “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” Michael Pollan takes us through the origins of four meals, our choices, and how we got to today’s food dilemma.  Building on the work of her mother, American food guru, Frances Moore Lappe, Anna Lappe’s new book is “Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.” The New York Times magazine devoted the October 10 issue to “Eating Together” in praise of the sharing of community that has been created as an unintended, but welcome, benefit of the organic, sustainable, local food movement.  Magazines in every part of our country, such as Vermont’s “Local Banquet”, DC’s “Flavor” and Martha Stewart’s “body + soul”, cajole and entice us to give thought to our food, our health, the health of our communities, and the health of the planet.

We have much to be grateful for and much to think about as we give our thanks this year for family and friends and life.  Let us also give thought for food. 

What Say You?

Contact Susan Cloke

opinion@smmirror.com

Hometown Hero: Senator Barbara Boxer. American Voter.

Barbara Boxer stood at a makeshift podium in the sand at Santa Monica Beach this past Saturday. Santa Monica Mayor Bobby Shriver stood by her side, along with Councilman Bob Holbrook, Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, actors Hector Elizondo and Valerie Harper, small business owner Richard Chacker, and Sierra Club Western Director Bill Cocoran. The blue of the Pacific sparkled in the California sun.

Senator Boxer talked about her mother’s reverence for voting and about being a little girl and going with her mother into the voting booth. “She’d take me by the hand and we’d go to vote. She would pull the black curtain around the booth. It was so exciting and mysterious and my mother said, ‘Honey, this is what it means to be an American. You have a vote and it’s private.’ And then my mother made a little joke and said, ‘So don’t even tell Daddy how I voted.’

“When my mother passed away I found her citizenship papers and I knew it was a message from my mother about how important it was to her to be an American.”

In startling contrast, Scripps News, in an August 2009 story asks if Senator Boxer's opponent, Republican Carly Fiorina, "passes the Citizenship 101 test? Fiorina, has a spotty California voting record and never cast a ballot in two other states where she lived, according to public records." In June 2009 the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "Fiorina had voted in just five of 18 national, state and local elections in which she was eligible to cast a ballont since she registered in Santa Clara County in 2000, according to public records."

Barbara Boxer not only votes, she leads. Her understanding of the issues was essential to her endorsement by the Editorial Board of the LA Times “for values promoted by this editorial page: individual rights, equality, environmental protection and constructive engagement by the federal government with national economic problems, including the crisis in healthcare.”

To the great benefit of Santa Monica, Boxer understands the crucial environmental issues of our times. She has led the fight to make sure that there is no offshore oil drilling. Boxer was strategic in securing funding for: the South Bay Water Recycling Project, land acquisition in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, land acquisition of the Upper Ramirez Canyon in the Santa Monica National Recreation Area, and the purchase of 15,000 acres to help complete the Backbone trail for the Santa Monica National Recreation Area. (For a more complete LA area list go to Project List)

Her opponent has commented on Boxer’s hair, saying it is “so yesterday.” Boxer says, “It is her policies that are ‘so yesterday.’ My opponent says she wants to drill. We went back through the decades to find the last United States Senator, either Democratic or Republican who wanted to drill off our coast. It takes you back to the ‘80s and S.I. Hayakawa. My opponent wants to repeal the ban on assault weapons. The assault weapons ban was passed by the State of California in the ‘80s."

Pointing to our beautiful beach Boxer said, “From Humboldt Bay to San Diego, ocean-related tourism, recreation, and fishing generates a $23 billion economy for California every year and 400,000 jobs. So if anybody, any candidate for office says to you that they are for jobs, but yet they are for drilling off our coast, they have launched an attack on 400,000 jobs. They have launched an attack on our health.

“You know what, I want to see the words ‘Made in America’ again, don’t you? My opponent wants to keep the tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas just as she did at HP. I want to see clean energy technologies made in America, for America, exported all over the world. And I want to say goodbye to those countries that don’t like us that are taking a billion dollars a day for oil.

“You’re known by the people you walk with, right? I walk with you. My opponent walks with Sarah Palin; my opponent walks with Karl Rove. My opponent walks with the far right and with big oil and dirty coal. And my opponent is the only major statewide candidate to endorse Prop 23. "

Barbara also has another quality, the quality of compassion. Barbara told a story of a letter she received from a 91 year old Californian, enclosed was a check for $25, saying this was the last check she could send this year. She wanted Barbara to know she was praying for Barbara and for the President. Her address and phone number were under her signature.

Barbara called her to thank her and told her to watch the new TV ads as she thought they would make her feel good. The woman told her she had an ‘80’s Zenith TV that had stopped working. Barbara sent her a new TV.

Issues matter. Compassion matters. Barbara Boxer has earned our trust and our respect with her principled leadership on behalf of California. Barbara Boxer, my candidate for U.S. Senate and, I hope, your candidate as well.

photo credit: Maureen O’Sullivan

What Say You? Hometown Forum: An Evening with City Council Candidates

The ideal of democracy was expressed in real time on Monday night at the Martin Luther King Auditorium in the Santa Monica Main Library. City Council candidates, a field of 15 for 5 seats, answered questions the Santa Monica Mirror had solicited from the community at large and from neighborhood and local business associations.

Mark Gold, of Heal the Bay, asked if Santa Monica could have a self-reliant water supply which he believes would save money and be protective of ecosystems. Candidates Ted Winterer, Kevin McKeown and Terry O’Day, in their responses, said, “yes”, showed their knowledge of the Santa Monica water system and their commitment to sustainability and the environment with their proposals for water self-reliance, storm water infiltration and water conservation.

Santa Monica resident Dana Cleasby asked the candidates if they would support expanding the network of parks in the City. There was a united chorus of support. Santa Monicans love their parks and are rightfully proud of them and Council candidates are Santa Monicans. Candidate Pam O’Connor showed her support and understanding of the park system by including the concept of a network of green streets and the vision of the “City As Park.” Ted Winterer talked about community benefits and fees from development as reasonable sources of funds.

Budget questions highlighted differences between candidates. Candidate Gleam Davis strongly supports Measures “Y” and “YY” saying that Santa Monica residents have high expectations for City services and for City support for education and that the only way we have to ensure that those expectations can be met is for the measures to pass.

Opposition to Measure “Y” came from Candidate Susan Hartley. She expressed her commitment to using City funds to support education but had objections to the language and structure of the measures and stated she would look for other ways to provide funding for education.

Pam O’Connor said that was why it was so important to have transparency in the budget and the budget process, people had to be able to see what had been cut already, what would be at risk if the measures didn’t pass.

Candidates Jean McNeil Wyner, Daniel Cody and Jon Louis Mann also oppose the measures and thought any necessary cuts could be made by actions such as cuts in city staff salaries and other city expenses.

Candidate Bob Holbrook stated that there would have to be choices made between services and fees and he thought it was important these measures be on the ballot –so the voters could express their will.

As questions were asked and answered, candidates demonstrated knowledge and caring. It was wonderful to see the generosity each showed by their willingness to run and to serve. It also became clear Gleam Davis, Bob Holbrook, Kevin McKeown, Pam O’Connor, Terry O’Day and Ted Winterer had the stronger command and the greater breadth of knowledge of the issues before the City.

But having many candidates and many points of view made the discussion sharper and the issues clearer. Susan Hartley combined a lawyer’s attention to detail with her understanding of the budget and a compelling, common sense approach. We could all benefit from Jon Louis Mann’s suggestion for citywide wifi. Jean McNeil Wyner’s idea of having seniors ride free on the Big Blue Bus is an idea that should be carefully considered. Daniel Cody, David Ganezer and Robert Kronovet are all concerned about excessive intrusion of City bureaucracy into business. My local business friends tell me that is a concern City decision makers need to hear. Terence Later talked about the importance of community work. Linda Armstrong’s focus on helping the homeless population out of homelessness is a long-standing and on-going issue in Santa Monica. Jerry Rubin’s advocacy for trees and the urban forest have already made an important contribution to the City.

The questions the Mirror received reflected a shared understanding of what Santa Monicans care about. Education, the importance of taking care of our children, consideration and opportunities for our large senior population, transparency in budget and government decision making, staying on track with our new parks, protecting our neighborhoods, creating real alternatives to traffic congestion, relations between City Hall and City residents, sustainability, environmental stewardship, local businesses, the future of the Santa Monica Airport, the role of development. In their answers the candidates drew on a commonality of Santa Monica, its character, history, and ethos.

We, at the Mirror, want to do our part to support the democratic discussion. The full video of the Hometown Forum is available on the Mirror website. www.smmiror.com Candidate profiles and other election stories are also on the Mirror website at www.smmirror.com Who will you vote for and why? We welcome your comments on the candidates and the election. Send your comments to election@smmirror.com.

I say, VOTE. It’s your city, your right and your responsibility.

What Say You?

Contact Susan Cloke

opinion@smmirror.com

Hometown Hero: Kit Dreyfuss

Katharine, ‘Kit’, Dreyfuss had to choose between being a teacher or a nurse. She won a fellowship to Vanderbilt Peabody to study to be an English teacher. At the same time she was accepted at Yale University School of Nursing. It was 1955 and, wanting to be near her boyfriend, John, who was at Boston University, she chose Yale.

In that choice she set herself on the path to a 46 year, loving marriage and, fortunately for Santa Monica, the path to becoming a beloved school nurse and a leader in education in Santa Monica.

In her twenties, following graduation from Yale and marriage to John, Kit worked as the School Nurse at the Harvard University lab school, Newton High School; in Claremont, as a public health nurse; in Pebble Beach, as a school nurse; back to Midland, where John would teach; in San Luis Obispo as a hospital RN; and Pasadena, where they moved when John went to work as a journalist for the LA Times.

Kit and John, with their four children – Karen, Jim, Kim and Katy - moved to Santa Monica in the late 1960’s. Kit’s first job in Santa Monica was at the Title 1 Pre-School. She added speaking Spanish to her language and nursing skills and worked to educate the children and their families for a successful transition to public, elementary school.

She took care of the colds, fevers, scratches and cuts that are the job of every elementary school nurse in her next job at Franklin. At the school there was an unusual cluster of children with diabetes and she organized ‘the lunch group’ where the children could have a safe place to learn how to manage their disease, cope with being ill, learn how to be good students and, most of all, have fun.

Kit took on the task of speaking to educators about girls and education as part of her commitment to her Women’s Group in Santa Monica. They met every Sunday evening and John was home every Sunday giving the children dinner and everything that parents do on Sunday night so their children will be ready for school on Monday morning. She continued to be active in the St. Augustine By-The-Sea Episcopal Church in Santa Monica and it was the Rev. Fred Fenton, from St. Augustine, who came to her support when she began her AIDS community education work.

Kit was Chair of the Steering Committee of School Nurses when she was the School Nurse at SAMOHI and the first SMMUSD Coordinating Nurse. Kit and the nurses began programs, pioneering and controversial at the time, which are now ongoing traditions at SAMOHI, including a ‘Growth and Development Program’. Kit says, “We put the boys and girls, and any parents who wanted to come, together to watch educational films. Then we divided the boys and girls so that they could ask questions and not be so embarrassed. But I thought it was important for them to be together to learn the facts about the changes that were going on in their own bodies and in each other bodies. I wanted them to be able to talk to each other.”

When there was a budget crisis (doesn’t that sound all too familiar?) and school nurses were threatened, Kit worked to get the first grant for SM Schools from the Santa Monica City Council. That grant started another Santa Monica tradition, the tradition of the City Council granting City funds to the Santa Monica Schools.

Kit says about her work in Santa Monica. “The thing about being the school nurse is that you get to know everyone personally and you end up belonging to the town where you live and I love that.”

Now retired, she recently returned from a trip to Hawaii with her children and their families, including her seven grandchildren. She practices the healthy living she taught her students, rides her bike every day and studies Tai Chi at the Y. On her wall are two silver headed hammers, national awards that she received from winning ergometer sprints when she and her husband rowed crew.

John died six years ago. Kit says, “I had to learn that your husband can die and you can, and should, still have a good life. It was hard.” She and John had first met when he was a student at Midland School where Kit’s parents worked. Her talented and very much in love parents raised Kit and her brother and sisters in an academic, outdoor, music, drama and church filled life and Kit continues their traditions.

Recently, Kit went, as part of the Memoir Club, a writing group of PS1 grandparents, to the park with the other grandparents and everyone’s families. She thought to bring balloons, and on a record breaking hot day, they filled the balloons with water and everyone had a great, and cooling, time. A small story, but emblematic of Kit’s way of always making life better for everyone.

Kit’s advice to us: “Work your head off and be as present as you can.”

What Say You: It’s A Small Town After All

This column is an invitation to a Santa Monica City Council Candidate Forum. It’s a recognition that Santa Monica is ‘on the map.’ It’s the saga of a dress. Mostly, it’s a story of gratitude.

Santa Monica is a City of world famous beaches; known for environmental stewardship; home to renowned chefs and star restaurants and leaders in the locavore movement. From the iconic Palisades Park to the creation of the new Civic Center Parks, from the fun of the Pier to the fun of GLOW - Santa Monica has the chops.

First, let me tell you a quintessential small town story, a story about a dress for a wedding that is really a story about a small town. It was Saturday, I went to the tailor’s to pick up my dress for the wedding of the son of dear friends. The store was unexpectedly closed. The wedding was the next day. What to do?

I looked for a sign in the window, “in case of emergency call….” Nada. I went into adjacent stores, told my story, got lots of sympathy, but no one knew how to contact the owner. I called the President of the Merchants Association. She, alas, had no contact info.

Then I saw the police car, parked at the curb. Remembering that Santa Monica now has beat officers so that local residents and merchants can know the officers in their area, I thought it was worth a try to ask him. But what about taking police time for a personal problem?

“Officer, may I ask a question? It’s a personal question and not a police question and I won’t take your time if you’re busy.” He politely asked what he could do to help. I told my story. His answer, “If I told my wife this story she’d tell me to break into the store and get the dress for you.” We both laughed. He called City Hall, but no luck.

Ready to give up, I called a friend, “Do you have a dress I could borrow?” And I even called a Santa Monica City Council member, who it seemed to me, knew everyone in Santa Monica, “Do you know how I could reach the tailor?”

The end of the dress story is that I got a call from the tailor, “Ms. Cloke, I got your number from the Santa Monica Police Dept.” We agreed to meet at the shop so I could get the dress in time for the wedding.

I was grateful to the tailor. But I was overflowing with gratitude for the sympathy and help I got from the merchants, the Council Member and the Police Department. I realized Santa Monica may have a worldwide reputation but is still a small town where people help each other with the small stuff.

The question for me is, how to make sure that we keep the small town ethic. I think one part of the answer is leadership. We are blessed with many wonderful leaders in our neighborhood, civic, educational and philanthropic organizations. We have City Council Members who give out their phone numbers, answer calls on Saturdays, and are here to help people.

In a little over six weeks, Santa Monicans will be voting to fill the five open seats on the City Council. There will be many ‘meet and greets’, candidates will be knocking on doors, residents will be getting fliers in the mail. And, the Santa Monica Mirror invites you to meet all the City Council Candidates and to hear their answers to the questions of the day.

The event is called “Hometown Forum.” It will be held in the MLK Auditorium at the Main Library, on Monday, October 11. Candidates will be there at 6:30 p.m. to meet-and-greet and the Q&A will begin at 7 p.m.

The forum questions for candidates will come from community organizations and individuals, not from the editorial board of the Mirror. You can send in your questions for the candidates to election@smmirror.com And, of course, the Mirror will have information about the candidates and the election from now until Election Day and after.

I’m hoping we elect people who are committed to environmental stewardship, to protecting our beaches, to building parks, to the quality of our schools, to our civic organizations, to our educational organizations, to our neighborhoods, and to our local businesses, to making City government work for the people of the city, and to never losing the small town ethic.

What Say You?

Hometown Hero: Anna Cummins

Anna Cummins, marine educator, environmentalist, recalls, “The creek next to my house was my favorite place to explore. One day, following the creek far north of my house, I saw horse manure from a stable draining into the creek. It was the first time I connected what happens on the land and what happens in the ocean. I was nine and it was my first ‘aha’ moment.”

Cummins recounts a later, serendipitous, ‘aha’ moment. “I was living in Europe and I got lost in Paris and went to a bookstore I knew how to find. In the bookstore I got invited to a film. I went only because I had nothing better to do. The film was Design Outlaws. It was about the environment and I walked away from the film thinking, this movie makes such sense, why aren’t we choosing to live this way?

“For the first time I thought about being an environmentalist as a career. I went to grad school at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. At the World Oceans Conference 2002 Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Foundation spoke about the massive quantity of plastic waste in the North Pacific Gyre and the harm it causes.

“I learned about petroleum based plastics and how they leach chemical additives, which are endocrine disrupters, such as phthalates, and BPA. These chemicals are linked to reproductive disorders and other health issues. Marine organisms ingest the photodegraded plastic particles resulting in the disruption, and in some cases breaking, of the food chain. The food chain we depend upon for life.”

Cummin’s next ‘aha’ moment came in a Montana Avenue coffee shop. She saw people with their plastic water bottles and all the plastics being used in the coffee shop when biodegradable materials could easily serve the same purpose. Cummins said she thought, “If these people knew the effects of their behavior, they would want to make different choices.

“Many people have the perception that water in plastic bottles is safer to drink than tap water. The beautiful image of a mountain stream on the bottle leads us to believe the water comes from a pristine source. The idea that we’re taking good care of ourselves by carrying around plastic water bottles has become the standard, but it’s really been a very effective and false marketing campaign that we’ve bought into.

“We’re becoming walking experiments – without giving our consent. The chemicals in plastics affect us in ways that we neither know nor understand. What we need to do is to adopt a precautionary principle. The manufacturers should have to prove that the chemicals are safe as opposed to what happens now, which is to take products containing those chemicals off the market only after it is proved that they have harmful health effects.

“I became overwhelmed with the feeling that everything I do is harmful to the environment and I was feeling hopeless,” Cummins said. She started working at the Algalita Foundation, and in 2008, she crewed for Captain Moore, crossing the Pacific Gyre on the Oceanic Research Vessel Alguita. For a month she collected surface samples over a 4000- mile ocean area.

“We studied lantern fish, small deep-sea fish that live about 1000 feet down and surface at night to feed,” she said. “They mistake photodegraded plastic particles for food and that’s relevant to us because the lantern fish are prey for tuna and other fish that we eat. We are now just beginning to understand the health threats we bring to ourselves with our own plastic waste.”

In the middle of the Pacific Gyre, Marcus Eriksen, Cummin’s crew mate, made her a blue ring out of discarded plastic fishing lines and proposed. Anna asks, “How could I say no to that?" They decided, when they returned to land, to launch an awareness raising project. Ericksen made a raft out of discarded plastic bottles, the Junk Raft, and sailed it from Long Beach to Hawaii and Cummins was responsible for all land support, for making speeches, and for publicity.

They also took a Junk Ride on bicycles down the Pacific Coast from Vancouver to Tijuana to talk about plastic and how people could make a difference by being conscious of the effects of their choices. Cummins and Eriksen spoke at elementary and high schools, universities and city councils all along the way.

“In 2009 Marcus and I started the 5 Gyres Institute with the goal of exploring the subtropical gyres to study plastic in the world’s oceans and to bring the issue to an international audience because it is a global problem.”

Anna Cummins tells of being inspired by the work of other environmentalists and how that offsets her feelings of hopelessness. “I believe that knowing the problem means having the responsibility of choice. The knowledge is not a burden but a privilege. Why would I not make a choice to protect the natural world?”

What Say You: Fable Farm

Barnard, VT. Fable Farm community dinners are every Thursday throughout the growing months. Members of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) get together at the Fable Farm’s gardens, next door to the iconic white church and just down the road from the General Store, est. 1836. All of Barnard is invited to share an evening meal of tasty pizzas, baked in an outdoor oven they built themselves. Local musicians play on guitars, drums and violins; children climb the trees; dogs romp in the garden; and every one eats together at the outdoor picnic tables. CSA members go home with their weekly share of the crop. www.csacenter.org

In the early 1900’s Barnard was a popular tourist destination. Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson lived at Twin Farms in Barnard and New Yorkers took the train from New York to Woodstock, VT and then came up the hill to Barnard for the clean air, the drinking water quality lake, the green of the woods, and the delicious produce from the local farms.

One hundred years later, a new generation of entrepreneurs has come to Barnard. They’ve come without money, but with a concept of building community and creating economic stability, through a new paradigm of sharing the production and the enjoyment of the food the community eats.

Christopher and Jon Piana, call themselves ‘salvage’ farmers because they bought a heater for their greenhouse, so they could extend the growing season by starting plants early and in a protected environment, and an engine for their roto-tiller, but everything else they use for farming is reused, something someone has given to them, something made from materials that would otherwise be discarded.

They farm on property they don’t own, with the generous permission of people who have land they live on part time and of farmers who live here year round. The member’s weekly share changes month by month. Right now there is an abundance of corn, garlic, zucchini, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, fennel, cabbage, beets, kale, onions, leeks, and herbs. Everyone is invited to help themselves to the sunflowers and cosmos and herbs growing in the gardens.

The first year twenty families joined, providing enough capital for, literally, ‘seed money.’ In a few years time, in a City with a population of under 1000 people, CSA has grown to 65 families, each pay between $400 to $550 annually and some families pay, not in cash, but in work on the farms.

The Pianas hope to build much more than an organic food co-op. They are consciously working to recreate a new cultural archetype. “Industrial agriculture is both hugely polluting and hugely alienating”, says Christopher. “Our agricultural adventure is healing for all of us. Eating healthy food is essential to how we feel every day. More than that, food is powerful because it cuts through the current right/left paradigm. Every one needs food.”

The Pianas and the members of the Barnard Community Supported Agriculture are not unique to Barnard. They are part of a nation wide, but locally organized, movement to grow community and healthy relationships through sharing the production of organic food. Fable Farms is now 3 years old. CSA groups have been on the East Coast for about twenty years. Currently, California and New York lead the nation in CSA and related groups. www.localharvest.org

Willing Workers on Organic Farms, an organization, started in New Zealand, makes it possible for people to travel all over the world working on organic farms. Like the Fable Farms community, these are people who are seeking to create a new paradigm – one that ‘relocalizes’ agricultural production and connects producers and consumers, one that doesn’t rely on petro-chemicals, one that is transitioning from oil as the primary energy source to an economy based on solar and other forms of sustainable energy. www.wwoof.org

Fable Farm has workers this summer from Maine and from Rome and from Paris. The farm workers get tents to live in, they share in the food they produce, eggs from the farm’s hens, goat’s milk and grains, and they are invited into the community of Barnard. “Whether they’re new to farming or old hands, it doesn’t make a difference, every willing hand helps and it’s invigorating to us and to the community to have people come here from all over,” says Christopher Piana. “But the real truth is that we wouldn’t be successful if it weren’t for the spirit of the community in Barnard.”

Santa Monicans share in the creation of this new paradigm. We support relocalization when we go to meet our neighbors and buy our produce at any of our four, weekly farmer’s markets. We support the transition from an oil-based economy when we buy produce that is not grown with petro-chemicals, the organic produce. Santa Monica connects producers and consumers at community gardens and through our garden sharing programs. In doing so we become a part of a worldwide movement that is entirely local. http://www01.smgov.net/farmers_market www.smgov.net/comm_progs/gardens

Here’s to the fruits of summer and to the bounty of all our gardens.