What Say You: The Stone Whisperer

The stone whisperer is what Vermonters call Hiram. A Vermonter descended from the Abenaki, an Algonquin tribe, he taught himself to build the stonewalls that make him so respected in this community. “The hardest part is letting the rocks be what they are, because they’re not going to fit the way we want them, they’re going to fit the way they want. It took me a long time to learn that.”

If the stonewalls are the iconic image of old Vermont, wifi is still in its future. There is definitely no wifi in my cabin at High Lake (and no phone and no cell phone reception). However, the beautiful, historic Morrill Memorial Library is in Strafford, a few miles away, through forests of oak, maple and birch and past open meadows with grazing horses, and all Vermont libraries have wifi.

With no Vermont address, no Vermont phone number and no one to vouch for me, the librarian loaned me the “Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”. It was a perfect book to read on the screen porch overlooking High Lake.

On the way to the library is Rose’s farm stand. I’d want to go in, but no one would be there. One day I saw people inside, went in, introduced myself, and said how glad I was they were open.

“Open, what do you mean?” asked Rose. She then told me the door to the screen porch was always open. I should help myself to whatever fruits, veggies, home made pies and whatever else I wanted and leave my money on the table. Are you in shock yet?

When I returned to the library to check email again and to return the book, there was a small group of people sitting around the fireplace. Looking at the gray and white haired men and women I thought, at first, they were all elderly. They were discussing “The Reader”, a book I had read, and I shamelessly eavesdropped. There was a white haired man who well remembered WWII and there were people many years younger with gray and white hair. Vermonters, at least in this part of Vermont, don’t color their hair no matter what age they are when they go gray. I stopped thinking about hair and dual-tasked, answering email and paying attention to their comments on the book. When they were leaving I confessed my eavesdropping and told them I had learned a lot from listening to them. They protested that I should have joined them and invited me to their next meeting.

I miss Santa Monica, my friends, my neighbors, the beach, everything that’s fun and interesting and great about Santa Monica. But it wasn’t that long ago that Santa Monica was so much easier to navigate than it is now. We had fewer rules and, even though it’s hard to believe, we had more people, yet we had less traffic.

I know we can’t make Santa Monica into rural Vermont. Nor do I want that. But I wonder if we couldn’t reclaim some of the personal, some of the helpfulness that we seem to have discarded when we made the hyperspace leap to hip and cool. Those are the kind of thoughts you have when you spend two weeks in the quiet of the forest on a lake with water clean enough to drink.

It’s early morning. The mist is clearing. The ducks are still here, and the herons, and the hawks. For any of you who wonder whether this is time travelling or vacationing, the next ‘What Say You’ will have a Santa Monica byline.

Hometown Hero: Mark Gold

“I was a loud mouthed planning student at UCLA in 1986. Dorothy Green, the founder of HTB, was a guest speaker and she asked for volunteers. I was working toward my Environmental Science and Engineering Doctorate at UCLA’s School of Public Health and I threw myself into fieldwork on public health, storm water pollution and sewage pollution issues. Dorothy then offered me the organization’s first paid job.Her amazing act of trust and faith set me on the path I have followed ever since. Dorothy became my role model, my mentor and the closest of friends.” Mark Gold, now the Executive Director of Heal the Bay. (HTB)

HTB became a constant driver of water quality improvement in the Santa Monica Bay and in California. California established criteria for water quality protections: requiring monitoring, public notification of water pollution and, most importantly, setting standards to protect public health.

The Federal Beach Act of 2000 followed the California model and both HTB and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) worked with EPA to implement the Act. HTB, NRDC and the Santa Monica Baykeeper have also worked with the State and Regional Water Quality Control Boards on regulations (called TMDLs) that set standards for reducing bacterial, pathogen and trash pollution of the beaches and ocean. “Due to the TMDLs, water quality, at local beaches, during the summer, is much cleaner than it was 5 years ago. Winter is a longer term success, as we clean up fecal bacteria and toxic metals, that’s the last piece of the puzzle in healing the Bay.”

Mark’s community contributions include his 18 years as Chair of the City
of Santa Monica Environmental Task Force. The Task Force has been the incubator for much of the important environmental work done in Santa Monica. The Green Building program, water conservation, storm water infiltration, and Measure V all started with the Environmental Task Force. “Being on the Task Force allowed me to learn from the people who are experts in green energy, sustainable building practices, sustainable landscape and climate change.”

Santa Monica is now working to implement green infrastructure that captures stormwater and infiltrates it back into the aquifer. “The Beach Green is a great example. People are always there, playing and picnicking and it keeps polluted water out of the Bay. The public loves the Beach Green. Bicknell Street is another example of green infrastructure that captures and infiltrates rain water, improves air and water quality, and provides habitat while fulfilling its basic use as a street. All Santa Monica streets should be green streets.”

“We have focused successfully on City policies and it is past time for us to tap into the energy and commitment of the residents and the business community. I went to SAMOHI; my son is going to SAMOHI. It’s great to be a part of a community for that long and I know the talent and resources that the community is ready to bring to environmental and sustainability issues.”

“Polluted runoff remains the largest source of pollution to our nation’s coastline. I was fortunate enough work on the first ever health effects study on swimmers at urban runoff contaminated beaches. We found that people who swam at runoff-contaminated beaches were far more likely to get stomach flu and upper respiratory illness. That epidemiology study was truly impact science – science that changes the way decision makers make decisions to protect public health and the environment,” Mark said during a commencement speech he delivered at UCLA urging the graduates to get involved.

“My experience at Heal the Bay has demonstrated that science combined with activism can have a beneficial impact. Yet, never in my lifetime, has there been greater American disdain for science with such tremendous potential local, national and global consequences.”

Heal The Bay. http://www.healthebay.org

What Say You: “Stadium to Sea” LA Marathon 2010

Do you dream of being a Marathoner? The time is now to buy your (eco friendly) running shoes. LA Roadrunners, the official training program for the LA Marathon starts its 27-week training program on September 12. 2009. Registration online begins September 1, 2009 for both the LA Marathon (www.lamarathon.com) and LA Roadrunners (www.laroadrunners.com).

For the first time in the LA Marathon’s 25 year history the victors, and the anticipated 25,000 other racers, will cross the finish line in Santa Monica, at the sea.

“Stadium to the Sea” is the historically evocative and geographically descriptive title of the 2010 LA Marathon, Dodger Stadium, home of the LA Dodgers, and the site of the historic shame of the Chavez Ravine evictions will be the starting place for the March 21, 2010 Los Angles Marathon.

Along the route, up to 1,000,000 fans will line the streets to cheer on runners as they run past the famed neighborhoods and iconic sites of Los Angeles, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. The proposed course has runners entering Santa Monica on San Vicente at 26th turning south on Ocean Avenue to Pico and then continuing south on Barnard to approximately Ocean Park Boulevard. The race will end with celebrations and a festival in the beach lots. The Council has approved allowing the Marathon to come to Santa Monica but the final racecourse is still to be negotiated between the cities and the race organizers.

In keeping with the City commitment to sustainability, the 2010 LA Marathon has announced it will be the world’s first major-city marathon to achieve green certification with the Council for Responsible Sport (ReSport). Bruce Rayner, Chief Green Officer for Athletes for a Fit Planet, worries about “green wash” (the practicing of talking an environmental talk, but not walking an environmental walk) promotes the ReSport certification process establishing standards race organizers and athletes must meet. “I’d like to see the day come when athletes demand that event organizers and the companies that support them are environmentally responsible.”

Green certification will be complete after ReSport officials observe the race day for ridesharing and the use of public transportation, beach cleanup, the use of bio-diesel power generators, compostable paper cups, no plastic goody bags, and recycling throughout the event. Marathon organizers say this will do away with a staggering 50,000 plastic bags and nearly 1,000,000 pieces of paper.

LA Marathon organizers are guaranteeing to pay the full cost of all Santa Monica City services from the day the contract is signed to the taking down of the last barricade on race day and guaranteeing a substantive community outreach effort to establish services and resolve conflicts for businesses and residents along the route. They are also holding out the promise of more than $20 million in revenue to City businesses, over a five-year period, with a focus on hotels and restaurants.

Santa Monica’s own Heal the Bay, Sojourn Shelter and Our Students Run LA (a regional program which includes PAL members) are already part of the official charities program. In past years Marathon runners have raised more than $1.5 million for charities.

Look for this item to be on the Council agenda in early September as the City discusses short and long-term benefits as well as short and long term impacts, and works out the policies and practices needed to participate in the production of an event of this complexity and magnitude.

Hometown Hero: Gene Oppenheim

When Gene Oppenheim goes grocery shopping in Santa Monica, people often come up to him and stick out their tongues. It’s not a sign of disrespect, it’s because he has been a family doctor in Santa Monica since 1980.

Gene received his M.D. and Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from UCLA. After residency he and his wife, Patricia Hoffman, went house hunting and bought the house they still live in on Harvard Street in Santa Monica.

He decided to open a solo practice and for ten years his offices were on Yale and Wilshire. During those years he also served on the Ocean Park Community Center Board and was a physician for the Sojourn Battered Women’s Center and for Stepping Stone, a center for abused and deserted children. Gene was appointed to the City of Santa Monica Commission for Older Americans and remembers holding a press conference, with then Assemblyman Tom Hayden, but no reporters came! Just as they ended, the reporter from the Evening Outlook rushed in and so they had a redo of their speeches. The next day, the banner headline on the paper read, “Santa Monica Nursing Homes Refuse Medi-Cal Patients.”

At the same time that Gene had his medical office and was doing health care volunteer work, the insurance companies were creating managed care organizations. Gene said, “the work of dealing with the insurance companies was resource and time consuming and doctors formed group practices in order to be as efficient as possible in the administration of their offices so they could focus on the practice of medicine.”

When he looks at medicine today he sees “Wasted money, money that isn’t used for health care. It goes to profits for company executives and stockholders, the costs of underwriting – which are all the expenditures spent by insurance companies to identify only the healthiest people to insure, and administrative costs.”

He saw the managed care organizations as making it more difficult for him to give his patients the quality of care he wanted to provide and he decided to become a Kaiser doctor. “Kaiser is the way medicine should be practiced. It is an integrated system and more efficient. Doctors are on salary and so not paid by the number of patients they see or the number of tests they order. It is a good way for patients to get better care and to save money at the same time.”

His concern for the quality of health care in the U.S. made him decide to join the California Physicians Alliance, part of the National Physicians Alliance. They support single payer health insurance for all Americans as they think it is the only realistic answer to the question of how to deliver high quality medical care and keep the costs of health care from harming the national economy. As part of this group he has visited Congressman Waxman’s office to talk about single payer health insurance. Members of the National Physicians Alliance attempted to testify in the Washington Senate hearings.

All three of Gene’s sons do volunteer work. Jed at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Lucas on Civil Rights and First Amendment cases for Santa Monica Attorney Carol Sobel, and Jonas as a writing mentor for the Virginia Avenue Project. Gene’s wife Patricia currently chairs the Community Corp of Santa Monica, an affordable housing provider and is Chair of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights. She is a former President of the Santa Monica Malibu Board of Education.

Gene remembers looking out the window of a west facing birthing room at Santa Monica Hospital at a spectacular 4th of July fireworks celebration. He is no longer delivering babies, but he continues to practice medicine and to work for high quality health care.

What Say You: Santa Monica Votes for Single Payer

Santa Monica City Council, acting on motions introduced by Council Member Kevin McKeown, voted this year, as they have since 2003, their unanimous support for single payer health insurance. By doing good, they also did well. They voted for all Californians to have health insurance and learned that, if we had single payer in California now, all else being equal, the City would realize a savings of $6.0 million.

So, if offered the choice, would you prefer to give your doctor a State of California Health Insurance Card and have your health care costs be covered with no copayments and no surprises as to what might or might not be included or, would you prefer to keep your current insurance? That choice, according to the organization Health Care For All, is the reason to join with the over 700 professional groups, unions, civic groups, and organizations working diligently and enthusiastically for Senate Bill 810, the “California Universal Health Care Act.”

Originally proposed by former State Senator Sheila Kuehl, twice passed by both Houses of the California legislature and twice vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger, single payer insurance for California has been introduced, in its third iteration, Senate Bill 810, by Senator Leno. Senator, Fran Pavley and Assembly Member Julia Brownley are among the 35 Members of the State Legislature signing on to the Bill.

According to the City Finance Office, Santa Monica could see a potential savings of $6.0 million annually. Here’s what the City Finance Office wrote: “If the City were to pay the entire 16 percent of health care costs under the single payer plan, it would incur $21.8 million in annual expenditures. Projected medical costs for FY 2008-09 for the same salary level were $27.8 million, which indicates an estimated savings of $6.0 million over current medical, dental, and vision costs.”

If that is what the City would save, imagine the potential savings to the State, the Country and to each individual American. How is it possible we can have better health care and save money? To begin to understand that, look at SB 810, California Single Payer Health Insurance, “The California Universal Health Care Act.”

SB 810 describes a State in budget crisis with “one-third of California's State Budget devoted to health care insurance and direct payment costs, an estimated 6.6 million Californians uninsured, 763,000 children uninsured and health plans and insurers competing to construct patient pools consisting of the healthiest segments of the population, leaving higher risk patients to public programs or uninsured.

“The U.S. spends more than twice as much as other industrial nations on health care, both per person and as a percentage of its gross domestic product. Yet U.S. healthcare outcomes consistently rank at the bottom of all industrial nations. One-half of all bankruptcies in the United States now relate to medical costs, though three-fourths of bankrupted families had health care coverage at the time of sustaining the injury or illness. More than one-half of all Americans report forgoing recommended health care because of the cost.” Doesn’t it seem that if we solve our health costs crisis we will also be solving a large part of our national economic crisis?

Here’s what Kevin McKeown said, “Single-payer is the clear answer to our healthcare crisis, allowing each of us to choose private doctors and facilities, but routing the payments through one government plan. There's a reason why existing insurance interests oppose even the partial "public option" proposal: they know that the inefficiencies and administrative overhead insurance companies introduce can't compete with universal single-payer.” What say you?

Hometown Hero: Allan Young Boys and Girls Club

Allan Young got his first job at the Santa Monica Boys Club. He had been named the 1963 “Youth of the Year” and a part time job went with the award. 2009 will be his last year at the Club. He has personally worked with thousands of boys and girls and their families. “I’ve loved every minute of being here. I never felt this was a job. I felt this was my family.”

His dad brought him to the Boys Club in 1955. Membership was 50 cents/year and that included everything the club had to offer. Allan went to Roosevelt Elementary and his dad felt Allan needed to play with kids from all kinds of backgrounds and that his elementary school didn’t give him that experience. “My dad was ahead of his time.”

From his “Youth of the Year” job to being Assistant Athletic Director he continued to work at the Club all the way through high school at SAMOHI and college at SMC and Northridge. In 1966 he was drafted and went to the Naval Dental School and then served, as a dental tech, in both Guam and Vietnam.

When he returned, Cyril Gale, a Santa Monica dentist and President of the Boys Club Board, said he would help him go to dental school. But Allan wanted to work at the club. By 1969 he was the Club’s Athletic Director. In 1977 he became the Executive Director.

There are now Boys and Girls Clubs at Lincoln, Samohi, JAMS, McKinley, and at several Community Corps housing projects. Membership is $10/year for all the club has to offer including: homework labs, tech labs, athletic activities and academic counseling. Allan feels it is a “mistake for the schools or the city to try to duplicate the work of the non-profits.”

The first Boys Club, started in 1860 by a small group of socially concerned women, was called the “Dash Away Club”. They wanted to create opportunities for the boys they called ‘the urchins’. For over a hundred years the clubs served boys across the US and on US military bases.

Not until 1990, and then only with argument and challenge, did the Boys Clubs of America officially become the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. When Allan came to realize that he “had to change with the times” he met individually with each of the 45 Santa Monica Board Members to get agreement because he didn’t want to go to court over the issue. Now Allen says, “one of the things I regret most was not serving girls sooner. Girls are in every sport and activity and they make the club a better place for everyone.”

This summer Allan is taking twelve, 16-18 year old, teenagers, of diverse backgrounds, to Kenya on a program run by “Free the Children”, a Canadian organization where his daughter works. “The purpose is to teach our kids that they can make a difference. But I believe this experience will change them in a good way. The kids will build a school and the adults will build a medical clinic. Real progress gets made one person and one project at a time: one more school, one more clinic, one more water purification plant.”

Retirement doesn’t mean not working for Allan. He will be at the Pacific Youth Foundation working on global problems of youth, poverty and education. “In Brazil there is an estimated population of 15 million street children. Tupperware employs about 10,000 people in Brazil. Their CEO has talked with us about starting Boys and Girls Clubs in Brazil. That is a project I intend to work on. I intend to keep working on the same issues and toward the same goal of educating children. The only way out of poverty is through education and respect – whether you live in Africa, South America or the US.”

What Say You: The Council on the Budget

‘City Staff scrambles to meet required 5% reduction in department budgets on top of previous 3% reduction.’ ‘Residents worry about safety and services during hard economic times.’ These might be headlines in articles about the City budget debate. While the State is reeling from huge shortfalls and our nation is grappling with bank and corporate failures, high housing foreclosure rates, and higher unemployment numbers, the City of Santa Monica seems to be coping comparatively well in spite of downturns in standard sources of income such as auto sales taxes, hotel occupancy taxes and property sales taxes. How can that be and what is the City going to do about the reductions it needs to make? Here’s how City Council Members answer those questions and what they say about how they’re going to decide where to make cuts. To contact Council Members with your concerns and suggestions email:>council@smgov.net

Ken Genser.

“For me, public process is a very important part of the process. But people have been surprisingly quiet on this issue and that says to me that, at least so far, there are no apparent, major problems with the proposed budget. I feel we need to look at the entire City Budget and make sure it is in the black at the same time fee increases should not be such that make it harder for people, especially young people, to participate and we need to be extremely careful.”

Richard Bloom.

“The City wisely put 8.2 million dollars into a rainy day fund and we now plan to use that fund over a 2 year period hoping that the national economy will recover sooner than that. That will allows us to maintain essential services such as police and fire and keep any necessary cuts as far away from where residents will feel them as possible.”

“We are very lucky that the City is not in the same desperate straits as the other cities in California because our sources of income are so diversified.

Although we do have to make certain reductions and we have instituted a hiring freeze, reduced the use of consultants and limited other expenditures, that is preferable to eliminating services to residents. If the economy remains bad then the next budget cycle will be more difficult.”

Bob Hollbrook.

“This is the most difficult financial year in all my 19 years of being on the Council and we don’t know how long this recession/depression will last. Right now we can do what we need to do with hiring freezes, less frequent rotation of the 600+ vehicles in the City fleet, longer intervals between tree trimming, alley repaving and other non-essential services. My idea of the last place to cut is public safety or services like the public library. We need to get through the next couple of years by relying on the City’s rainy day reserves and by keeping things going so that we protect the people of Santa Monica.”

Kevin McKeown. “Unlike the State we are, at least, partially protected by previous prudence and are able to draw upon short term reserves. I think we need to take this as an opportunity to think through how we can provide needed resources in a sustainable way. We also shouldn’t price out valuable services through fee increases. We wouldn’t, for example want to want to raise fees that would price out the 12 step programs that save lives, increase public safety, and save the city money. We need to keep good programs viable so we don’t lose experienced and dedicated staff and so that we continue to serve the needs of the people of the City.”