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c9168a56723ce4df732020775129d784	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-19800-story.html	Model Donors	Model Donors The famous and/or freakish have long been rendered in wax at the likes of Madame Tussaud’s. Now, for those of the lesser renown who crave immortality, there is the Petersen Automotive Museum. For a mere $20,000 donation, something close to your likeness can be sculpted, costumed and posed in one of the museum’s autos-through-Southern California-history dioramas, there to be ogled by gawking tourists in perpetuity. “It’s a different type of program for raising money,” acknowledges Jim Olson, the acting director of the museum. It’s not easy to miss the Petersen, at Wilshire and Fairfax across from the County Museum of Art on Miracle Mile. The 300,000-square-foot shrine to the automobile, with its radiator-grill facade and monster truck protruding from one side, is administered by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and named for benefactors Margie and Robert E. Petersen, founder of Petersen Publishing Co., which lists Hot Rod among its titles. (A mannequin of Margie will soon repose in the backseat of a 1911 American Underslung Model 50 Traveler.) The museum’s mannequin fund-raising has gotten off to a slow start--no donor has yet come up with the full $20,000 enshrinement fee, so most of the mannequins on display are modeled after museum employees. Only two non-museum individuals are represented--one is Lynne Stalmaster, a Beverly Hills fashion designer who paid considerably less for the privilege at a silent auction. Still, the dioramas have succeeded aesthetically. “Most people think the Petersen is going to be a bunch of cars,” says David Robert Cellitti, the Natural History Museum’s 44-year-old in-house sculptor, who creates the mannequins. Cellitti apprenticed with Katherine Stubergh, a sculptor and minor Los Angeles celebrity who built wax figures for Sid Grauman and other clients. In Cellitti’s workshop in Exposition Park, a completed version of the Three Stooges--a Petersen project--stands next to a shelf of body part molds. It can take several months for Cellitti to complete a Petersen-quality figure; the cost runs from $5,000 to $10,000--though the museum tries to keep the expense down. “David did a wonderful job,” says mannequin-model Stalmaster. “He took great pains to make the representation accurate.” Stalmaster’s mannequin, resplendent in a sequined lavender gown of her own creation, stands before an exquisite midnight-blue 1937 Delahaye Type 135M with wheel wells the size of motorcycle sidecars. “I think it’s wonderful from the standpoint that you never get older,” Stalmaster says of her immortalization. “I won’t get any wrinkles and my hair will always be perfect.
e19a682ef84292cf396678213453c575	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-19801-story.html	L.A. Speak: Web Page Designers	L.A. Speak: Web Page Designers earl n. URL, or universal resource locater, formal name of addresses used on the World Wide Web. rel. dot n. period used to punctuate a Web address. triple-dub n. WWW (World Wide Web) portion of URL address. The L.A. Times earl --https://www.latimes.com-- would be rendered “triple-dub latimes dot com.” bot n. from robotic--automated computer practical joke. “Frankie put a bot in the ‘Sex over Sixty’ chat room that kept asking , ‘Are we having fun yet?’ ” seed v. subtly post information around the Web to encourage users to visit your site. ant. spam v. blatantly advertise or send annoying e-mail indiscriminately. bozo filter n. program that blocks e-mail from undesirables. “I was tired of getting spammed so I got a bozo filter.
14ea0fe073fc38450e7409c812877150	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-19802-story.html	Q & A	Q & A For 20 years, Pyro Spectaculars in Rialto has orchestrated the Rose Bowl’s annual Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza. The 90-year-old company--which will also illuminate the skies over Atlanta ’96--is run by Jim Souza, a fourth-generation pyrotechnist. How many fireworks do you set off at the Rose Bowl? Over 1,000 shells. The show lasts 17 minutes. How much does it cost? Anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000. What’s the most expensive shell? The golden crown kamuro, a Japanese firework that opens up like a giant willow tree and comes down twinkling. It’s around $500. Which do the crowd like best? Ones with whistles and loud noises. And the golden crossette--it’s a shell we’ve built since my grandfather’s days. How’s the hearing? It’s excellent.
3d5656412b6665de6623836f738bd076	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-19806-story.html	Is She the Most Powerful Woman in Sports?	Is She the Most Powerful Woman in Sports? The most powerful woman in sports is on edge, has been all evening. She arrived at the entrance of Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Stadium in a luxury car provided for her as a member of the International Olympic Committee--a perk she still does not seem to be comfortable with after a decade--and had started to make a quick exit. “Will you get in trouble if I jump out now?” she asked the young man assigned to chauffeur her. “Maybe. You’d better wait for the official door opener,” he said. She sighed. And waited. Now Anita DeFrantz sits alone inside the 85,000-seat stadium. She peeks often at her watch, as if to will an early sundown so that the night’s program can begin. The $232-million stadium, which will host the opening and closing ceremonies during the July 19-Aug. 4 Summer Olympics, is scheduled to open officially the next day with a track meet. DeFrantz has been invited to this sneak preview, which also serves to test the stadium lights. For the record: 12:00 AM, Jul. 21, 1996 For the Record Los Angeles Times Sunday July 21, 1996 Home Edition Los Angeles Times Magazine Page 6 Times Magazine Desk 1 inches; 18 words Type of Material: Correction In the June 30 issue, the Page 10 photograph of Anita DeFrantz should have been credited to Times photographer Robert Gauthier. A few yards behind her, at a cocktail party in the stadium’s VIP lounge, are about 200 guests, including IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain and International Amateur Athletic Federation President Primo Nebiolo of Italy. Occasionally, some of them step outside to chat with DeFrantz, who is drinking bottled water. She is cordial but seems distracted. Could it be that she has too many weighty issues on her mind? As a member of the IOC’s inner circle--its 11-member executive board--as well as the U.S. Olympic Committee’s 22-member executive committee, she is the most influential American in the Olympic movement since Avery Brundage, the controversial former IOC president. Brundage, whose sole purpose was to prevent the Modern Games from becoming too modern, would not have made room in his IOC for DeFrantz. Befitting her experiences in the 1976 Summer Olympics as a bronze medalist in rowing--"the noblest sport,” she calls it--DeFrantz is most often linked with two causes: athletes’ rights, including those of professionals to participate in the Olympics, and increased opportunities in sports for women. It is debatable whether women’s soccer or softball would be in the 1996 Summer Olympics without a push from DeFrantz. Harvey Schiller, former USOC executive director, declares that DeFrantz is “the voice of the Olympic movement in the United States.” Anyone who heard that voice trembling with anger on that September 1988 night in Seoul, when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for an anabolic steroid, could not help but be moved. She called Johnson a “cheat” and a “coward.” Since then, she has been a leading proponent of the IOC’s war on banned substances. Concerned that their Olympics would become known as the “Drug Games,” officials from the organizing committee for the Atlanta Games were not in favor of using the most technologically advanced testing devices this summer. DeFrantz insisted, and won. She has backed down from fights with no one--not Schiller, not Samaranch, not Jimmy Carter. Especially not Carter. Sixteen years after the former president ordered the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, costing her a chance at a second medal and countless heartaches as she unsuccessfully sued the USOC to reject his mandate, she went to war when Carter was nominated to participate in this year’s torch relay. He gracefully bowed out, citing a prior commitment. Still, DeFrantz has been so effective and so diplomatic overall that, at age 43 and only 10 years after she became an IOC member, she is being discussed as a possible successor to Samaranch. “I feel Anita is the most respected member of the IOC,” says Jim Easton of Los Angeles, the other U.S. member of the committee. “She comes up with answers that are rational, and everyone knows that there is not an agenda or any baggage behind them. She makes her decisions based on what she clearly believes is best for the Olympic Games.” In that role, DeFrantz estimates that she travels about 250,000 miles a year. Considering her frenetic schedule for the last week, that would be reason alone for her to be on edge tonight. Six nights before, she was at USOC headquarters in Colorado Springs for a planning session. From there she flew to a meeting at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Then it was home to Los Angeles, where as president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation she accepted a $45,000 donation from Mercedes-Benz. A red-eye to Atlanta followed. Or could DeFrantz’s reticence be that she is simply nervous? It is well known within Olympic circles that she and the Atlanta organizing committee have had a stormy relationship, despite the fact that she campaigned hard for Atlanta prior to the IOC vote six years ago awarding the Games to the city, and that she sits on the committee’s board of directors. Still, she does not want to see them fail tonight in their first major test in front of Samaranch: the opening of the stadium. That giant light switch on the infield, which is to be flipped on at sundown, looks a little flimsy. She can just see the jokes in the national press, which is already making snide references to the “Bubba Games.” She looks anxiously at her watch. “Do you have a date?” someone asks. “No,” she says, smiling sheepishly. “But I would like to get back to the hotel in time to see ‘The X-Files.’ It’s the season finale.” not quite two weeks later, with atlanta’s centennial Olympic Stadium having successfully passed the test, DeFrantz is more relaxed. She sits in her office in the red brick, Corinthian-pillared mansion on West Adams Boulevard that houses the Amateur Athletic Foundation--thankful, she says, to take time out to reminisce. The AAF, which promotes youth sports, is Los Angeles’ gift from the 1984 Summer Olympics. With a $232.5-million surplus, organizers contributed $139.5 million to the USOC and $93 million for the formation of the AAF. DeFrantz became its second president in 1987. The walls of her office are hung with photographs of her with Bill Clinton, with Al Gore. There are posters for the Atlanta games and the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. A laminated cover from the Sporting News identifies her as one of the 100 most powerful people in sports, a list she has been on for the last five years. Looming behind her desk is a photograph of her and a teammate rowing on a misty morning on Lake Carnegie in Princeton, N.J. DeFrantz had never even seen a rowing shell until her sophomore year at Connecticut College. While walking on campus one day, she spotted a man carrying a long, thin boat over his shoulder and asked him what it was. He told her it was a rowing shell. The man turned out to be rowing coach Bart Gulong, who told DeFrantz that she and her 5-11 frame would be perfect for the sport. “I’d never been perfect for anything,” she says. Gulong was right. A couple of years later, he told DeFrantz she was good enough to compete in the Olympics. DeFrantz hadn’t even known rowing was an Olympic sport, but she immediately made that her goal. After graduating from Connecticut College with honors in 1974, she faced a choice: the University of Pennsylvania Law School or a Coro Public Affairs Fellowship in Los Angeles. “Here’s what it came down to,” she says. “I wanted to train at Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia instead of Long Beach.” Her coach there, the respected John Hooten, was never fooled. “She said she wanted to be a Philadelphia lawyer,” he says, “but I think she just liked the sound of it.” He was, however, fooled by her talent. He thought in her first year at Vesper in 1974 that she might eventually become a good rower. By the time the U.S. Olympic team was selected in 1976, she had become a great one. “She was the best starboard [right-side rower] in the country,” Hooten says. “She was in the seventh seat [the bow], which is very difficult because it requires you to be very smart and precise but also very aggressive.” DeFrantz rowed seventh seat for the U.S. Olympic eight-oared shell with coxswain in Montreal. The U.S. women finished third for the bronze medal behind the East Germans and Soviets. Hooten figures they would have finished second if the Soviets hadn’t gotten a lane that was sheltered from the wind. “For the U.S. team, the conditions were like ‘Victory at Sea,’ ” he says. “They were so exhausted that one of them, Marion Grieg, collapsed on the medal stand. But I never heard Anita whine. All she said afterward was that she wanted to come back in 1980 and win the gold.” Hooten encouraged her, but didn’t believe she could do it unless she moderated her schedule. While training for the 1976 Summer Olympics, DeFrantz was in law school and working nights at the Philadelphia police headquarters interviewing suspects. “I took a risk of either not graduating or not making the Olympic team,” she says, “but it was a valuable experience because I learned to talk to all kinds of people.” DeFrantz was admitted to the Pennsylvania State Bar in 1977 and went to work as a staff attorney for the Juvenile Law Center of Philadelphia. She also served on the board of directors of the Vesper Boat Club, the U.S. Rowing Assn. and the USOC as an athletes’ representative. She also became a trustee of Connecticut College. “She told me one day in 1978 that she had to miss a practice,” Hooten says. “I said, ‘Anita, you can’t continue to do all of this and still row for me.’ She said, ‘I know, but this one is kind of important. I have to testify before the Senate.’ ” She was lobbying on Capitol Hill for passage of the Amateur Sports Act, which clarified the USOC’s role in amateur athletics. Hooten once made her bring him a note signed by a senator to verify that she had an appointment with him. Despite her crush of commitments, Hooten believes, DeFrantz would have somehow won a gold medal in 1980. “If I had to line up everybody I’ve ever coached and rate who was strongest, who was tallest, who had the most leverage, I wouldn’t put Anita at the top in any individual category,” he says. “But she had a presence in the boat. I learned from her that some athletes have this will to win, this aura about them, that things are going to go their way and they’re going to make it happen.” In January 1980, while attending a friend’s birthday party, DeFrantz heard on television that President Carter had called upon the USOC to boycott the Summer Olympics in Moscow as one of the sanctions against the Soviet Union for invading Afghanistan. She was stunned. “He didn’t understand what the Olympic Games were,” she says, still angry 16 years later. “They don’t belong to a country. They’re a celebration in a country, but they belong to the world. He reduced the Olympics to the status of a trade embargo.” Her words were more stinging at the time. A Sports Illustrated reporter had asked, “What do you think about the fact that we are boycotting?” She snapped: “What do you mean we? Where were we when I was out on the lake in the winter freezing my butt off?” Believing reason would prevail, DeFrantz took on the president before the USOC. Carter was concerned enough about her influence to send Vice President Walter F. Mondale to argue for the government. Spellbound by her passionate words, USOC members listened as she told them that they knew the right choice but needed only the courage to make it. They gave her a standing ovation. Then they voted her down. “They were medical miracles, guys who could walk upright without a spine,” she says. She showed hers by becoming the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the USOC. Again, she lost. “I got hate mail and hate phone calls. People were coming to my door claiming they were sympathizers and I knew they were from the FBI. I was a mess. I was depressed, I was exhausted, I was sick. I had a dark shadow over me. I felt I had let the team down by not getting them into the Olympics.” The team felt not at all let down by DeFrantz. “She just never gave up,” says Carol Brown, a rowing teammate enlisted by DeFrantz to fight the boycott. “We’d run up against another obstacle, and I’d say, ‘Hey, it’s not worth it.’ But Anita would say, ‘No, there’s one more chance. Let’s try this.’ ” Even with the distractions, DeFrantz made the team in the four-oared shell with coxswain in 1980, and while the U.S. rowers did not go to Moscow, they did travel to Europe for competitions. In Germany, the team presented her with a plaque that read: “Our sincere appreciation to you for your dedicated commitment to our Olympic cause.” Showing it off, she says now, “It made me proud ... but I still would rather have had a gold medal.” one morning in june, defrantz stands on the football field at Compton Community College as 18 busloads of fourth- and fifth-graders arrive from around the city for the AAF’s annual two-week “Learn and Play Olympic Sports” program. “Come meet Sam the Eagle,” the announcer tells the children. “You remember--no, you might be too young to remember--Sam was the mascot for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. This is also a chance for you to say hello to Anita DeFrantz, president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation.” The children ignore DeFrantz and head straight for the strutting, yellow-feathered, big-beaked Sam to exchange high-fives. If DeFrantz’s feathers are ruffled, it does not show. Here, at the grass-roots level, is where she believes she serves best. About 8,000 children from 42 elementary schools throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District will participate in the program this year. It starts in the classrooms with a curriculum, provided by the AAF, that uses Olympic history to help teach social studies, geography, languages and mathematics. “Then they get to come out and play some of the sports they’ve learned about,” DeFrantz says. Neither sports nor social activism is new to the DeFrantz family. She is a descendant of slaves, the great-great granddaughter of a Louisiana plantation owner from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France and one of his female servants from Africa’s Gold Coast. Their son, Alonzo, was educated and then emancipated by his father. When Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, also a former slave, began organizing newly freed blacks in 1877 to move to the prairies of Kansas, Alonzo David DeFrantz became the movement’s secretary-treasurer. One of his sons, Fayburn Edward DeFrantz--Anita’s grandfather--became director of the Senate Avenue YMCA in Indianapolis. The “Big Chief,” as he was known, was not content to merely change the nets on the basketball hoops. After church Sunday afternoons, he organized “Monster Meetings” and invited as speakers some of the day’s most prominent African Americans, including W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, George Washington Carver, Paul Robeson, artist Hale Woodruff and the NAACP’s executive secretary from 1931-'55, Walter White. Anita’s father, Robert David DeFrantz, and mother, Anita, met at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he was head of the university’s NAACP chapter and she was among the first African American women to integrate on-campus housing. “Our parents made sure that we were always aware,” DeFrantz says of herself and her three brothers. “They drove us once to a town about 20 miles away where the Grand Dragon of the KKK lived. There was a sign there that they knew was about to be taken down. It said, ‘Nigger, Don’t Be Here After Dark.’ They just wanted to make sure we saw it before it was gone. I was only 4 or 5 at the time, but I never forgot it.” Robert David was eager for his children to become active in sports. “My father wanted one of my brothers and me to be the first African Americans on the U.S. Olympic swimming team,” Anita says. Robert David, who died in 1984, no doubt would be sad to learn that his goal is still out there for some other father’s child to achieve. There are, however, more opportunities than when Anita swam at the Frederick Douglass Park pool in Indianapolis in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. A swimming instructor at the public park for African Americans fielded a team, but because the pool was open for only a couple of months in the summers, it was folly to think that the swimmers could compete against white kids who swam at country clubs. When the instructor left for another city, the team folded. Later, at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, Anita DeFrantz found plenty of sports for African Americans, but none for girls. “I joined the marching band. That’s the closest I got to the field of play.” She gestures at the Compton football field. “That’s why it’s fun for me to give these kids the chance.” DeFrantz excuses herself to join some of the 896 students from eight schools gathered today. “Say hello to Anita DeFrantz,” the announcer repeats. “She’s from rowing, the noblest sport.” during international Olympic committee sessions, the 104 members sit according to the order in which they were elected. Before she was named to the executive board and placed at the front of the room, DeFrantz sat two seats from Prince Albert of Monaco and five from Princess Anne of Great Britain. In the IOC directory, Prince Albert lists his address as Palais Princier, Monte Carlo. Princess Anne lists hers as Buckingham Palace, London. DeFrantz lives in a modest, two-bedroom, two-bath California bungalow on a side street in Santa Monica. She jokingly calls it her “urban estate.” She was elected to the IOC in 1986 because Peter Ueberroth wasn’t. Tired of law because it “was more about cleverness and making money than truth, justice and the American way,” DeFrantz came to Los Angeles in 1981, at the behest of Ueberroth, to serve as a vice president of the organizing committee for the 1984 Summer Games. Her primary responsibility was the athletes’ village at USC, but she was called upon to meet bigger challenges. After the British government approved a South African runner, Zola Budd, as part of its team because her grandfather was English, DeFrantz was assigned by Ueberroth to stave off a threatened boycott. As a result of her efforts, only Soviet sympathizers Ethiopia and Upper Volta among the African countries did not attend the L.A. Games. That further impressed the IOC, which had awarded DeFrantz the Bronze Medal of the Olympic Order for her leadership role in the fight against the USOC boycott in 1980. When one of the two IOC members from the United States, Julian Roosevelt, died in 1986, DeFrantz was on the short list to replace him. Samaranch backed Ueberroth, but other committee members resented the unflattering references Ueberroth had made about them in his autobiography, “Made In America.” They insisted on someone else. That someone was DeFrantz. “I’m glad I was elected,” DeFrantz says. “But Peter would have been a wonderful choice and should have been a member.” But DeFrantz fit better into Samaranch’s big-tent approach to the IOC, which under his stewardship was attempting to shed its reputation as a bastion of elderly, rich, powerful white males. DeFrantz, then only 34, was the first black elected to the committee from a non-African country, the fifth woman and hardly rich. Today, there are still only seven women among the 104 members, but as recently as 1994 two served on the 11-member executive board. “In a way, it surprises me that she has risen so fast,” says Hooten, her former rowing coach. “I think of the IOC as a bunch of old fogys. Now there is this very young woman who has become one of the most powerful persons in all of sport. At the same time, I’m not surprised at all. She’s just about the most effective person I’ve ever been around at committee meetings. I’ve been to some rather stormy meetings, and there is one solid voice of reason at the center of the whole thing. That’s Anita.” Despite her diplomatic skills, DeFrantz is considered no one’s yes woman--not even Samaranch’s. After she opposed him once on an issue, Samaranch asked Alfredo La Mont, the USOC’s director of international relations, if DeFrantz were loyal. “I told him, ‘Mr. President, loyalty has nothing to do with it; she does what she thinks is best for the movement,’ ” La Mont says. “He told me he respects that.” Far more of her battles have come with the USOC. She took an oath to be the IOC’s representative in the United States, not the other way around. When some USOC officials felt in 1994 that she had carried her independence too far, they discussed removing her and Easton from the USOC’s executive committee. When the USOC’s president, LeRoy Walker, heard about it, he angrily put a stop to the talk. Evidence of DeFrantz’s unapologetic approach is seldom seen in the media. Indeed, she tried unsuccessfully to prevent her objections to Carter serving as one of this year’s torch-bearers from becoming public. “I didn’t want it to become a big issue,” she says. She has been criticized by some for stepping a little too carefully to avoid political rockslides, which have been known to bury outspoken IOC members. But those who know DeFrantz well contend that she prefers to confront her foes face to face rather than have them read her opinions in the newspaper. Says former USOC executive director Schiller, now president of Turner Sports in Atlanta: “She and I had a very, very direct relationship. If she didn’t like something, she would pick up the phone and say it. And vice versa. She was particularly outspoken when she didn’t think there was enough minority representation on the USOC staff. She is a strong, strong willed person.” “Some people within the organization still don’t give her the respect she deserves,” says Brown, her former rowing teammate, who chairs the USOC’s athlete support committee. “She’s not part of the old boy’s network and they know she can’t be bought or coerced. She’s going to speak her mind.” No one knows that better than the Atlanta Olympics committee officials, whom she has tangled with almost from the time they began organizing the Games in 1991. They wanted to add golf to the program and hold it at the Augusta National Golf Club, which historically had not been particularly welcoming to African American or women (The club admitted its first black member in 1990 and still has no women.) DeFrantz balked. The committee backed down. They have fought on a number of issues since, mostly about money. She believes that they have spent too much of their $1.7 billion budget on themselves and not enough on the 10,000 athletes who will compete. “They didn’t want to hear from me,” she says. “I realize now that I should have ignored that and asserted myself more. The Games will be OK. But they could have been more than OK.” Considering her position within the IOC and the USOC, there is little question that DeFrantz is the most powerful woman in international sport. But when asked about that, she seems almost insulted: “So what? I don’t have anything particularly glorious to say about it.” She does, however, discuss speculation that she might someday become IOC president. “I think about it, but then I remember all the work involved,” she says. “It depends on how courageous and bold I might be when the time comes. I’d be very careful to consider all the challenges.” For all of her power, she surrounds herself with few of the trappings. “She doesn’t have an entourage like some IOC members,” La Mont says. “She has a sense of humor and doesn’t take herself too seriously.” “She’s an ordinary person,” adds Valerie Steiner, a friend for the last decade. “Whoever she is out there in the world, she’s a very easy person to be with.” Even though, Steiner says, she tends toward backseat driving. on this particular evening in June, DeFrantz is eating takeout Chinese food and sipping California red wine at her dining room table. She has given a guest a tour of the house and the garden, which she enjoys tending when she is at home. She removes the cover from a rowing machine on the back porch, admitting that it has been neglected. “Dust,” she says. “Imagine that.” Rowing is for the water, she adds in her defense. For exercise, she hikes, bicycles and plays tennis. When not busy with her numerous causes--Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Fund, Yosemite Institute, KCET, National Conference on Christians and Jews--she reads, plays her bassoon or goes to the movies. She took ballroom dancing lessons after joining the IOC. “I was in Vienna with the IOC in ’88,” she says. “There was a live band. At the time, there were five or six women on the IOC and about 95 men. I realized the chances of me being asked to dance were pretty good. I figured I’d better learn how.” She came home and enrolled in classes at Ballroom Magic in Inglewood. Inevitably, she entered competitions. She has ribbons and medals. “Maybe some day, I’ll have my dancing partner,” she says. She has never been married, but she says that she did come close a couple of times to being engaged. “I saw the light,” she says. “It wasn’t the end of the tunnel; it was a train coming in my direction. I have just about given up the thought of having a child. I don’t know if I’ve given up the thought of having a family.” She says that she is dating someone who has children, but she will not identify him. “I don’t want to scare this one away.” Friends, she is told, are concerned that she has made too many sacrifices because of her work. She considers the possibility for a moment. “I don’t believe people make sacrifices,” DeFrantz says finally. “People make choices. That’s the approach I take. I made a decision to do these things. I believed I could make a difference. I find it fulfilling to work with children. I love kids. I have 3 million of them in Los Angeles.” And for her, in the end, that is the noblest of causes.
976b5da2470799f3fa63a11418bbf638	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-19822-story.html	Charge!	Charge! In 1914, when Western Union issued the first credit card, consumer lending was still considered somewhat sordid, the stuff of fancy-pants loan sharks and heartless finance companies attaching next year’s alfalfa crop to pay the note on Farmer Lindquist’s new thresher. That Americans would once shun debt now seems hilariously quaint. We buy boxer shorts on credit. Watery Bloody-Mary brunches on credit. Tickets to “Flipper” on credit. And, when things get really out of hand--such as now, when corporate downsizing has pulled the rug out from under thousands of overextended baby boomers--we use lower-interest-rate credit cards to pay down higher-interest-rate credit cards. This is how Pan Am got into trouble, we admonish ourselves. We really ought to cool it. We don’t. Unsecured debt among Americans floated past $500 billion last year. That’s enough to buy a spit-shined B-2 Stealth bomber for each and every member of Congress, the president, Hillary, Chelsea, Socks and all the purchasers of Roger Clinton’s first album. That $360 billion of this humongous burden was amassed with 2 1/8-by-3 3/8-inch plastic rectangles emblazoned with centurions, holographic doves, Mercator projections of the globe and the logos of everyone from the Rolling Stones to the Sierra Club, says a lot about our faith in mastering the possibilities. Department stores, gas companies and airlines issued credit cards in the ’20 and ‘30s, mostly to promote brand loyalty. The game changed in 1949 with the introduction of Diners Club, the first card that could be used at a variety of establishments. Banks, led by California’s Bank of America, joined the fray; by 1955 more than 100 bank credit cards were offered. In 1958, Carte Blanche and American Express entered the market, the same year that banks--it’s hard to imagine them ever doing otherwise--began charging interest on outstanding balances. By 1984, 71% of Americans between 17 and 65 carried at least one credit card. Last year, Americans used credit cards in more than 10 billion transactions worth $600 billion. Besides the staggering debt we accrue on them--and the extortionate interest rates we blithely allow banks to charge us--credit cards have wormed their way into the very heart of our culture. We literally can’t--and probably don’t want to--get along without them, as anyone who has tried to use cash to rent a car, check into a hotel or even send a Federal Express package can attest. They’ve spawned their own lexicon (“maxed-out”), their own trivia (Q: Whose name appears on American Express cards shown in advertisements? Is he a real person?), as well as opening up new and intriguing avenues of fraud. With routine credit-card purchases on the Internet imminent and the arrival of so-called “smart cards,” which can squirrel vast financial and personal data onto a cunning, thumbnail-sized microprocessor, cash is becoming irrelevant, even unseemly--the medium of exchange of last resort, the coin of the disenfranchised, criminal or eccentric. Credit cards, on the other hand, are the perfect expression of the ‘90s Zeitgeist: bland as a bank statement, powerful as a thunderbolt, they instantly empower and defer consequence. In an age when reality is increasingly held at bay, credit cards offer nothing more--and nothing less--than the illusion of money in the bank.
73b11a5f230651d12db335b54cb3aa10	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-19824-story.html	Succulents, Serenity and the Deep Blue Sea	Succulents, Serenity and the Deep Blue Sea The 1994 malibu fire erased the big rock home of jeannette and ken chiate but it left something behind: their swimming pool. Brick-edged, oddly angled, hemmed in by patchy lawn and eucalyptus trees, it wasn’t beautiful, but it worked. So when they rebuilt their house, a contemporary stucco and glass affair, they kept the pool, and hired landscape architect Pamela Burton to give it a face lift. Burton and her associate, Mary Sager, began simply, by urging the Chiates to lose the trees that blocked their heart-stopping ocean view. “At first I couldn’t,” recalls Jeannette. “After all, they survived the fire!” Next, the designers decided the brick had to go, too. “It needed softening,” says Sager, “to make it more one with the horizon.” But what really changed the pool’s look was its transformation by Malibu Colony Pool & Spa into an “infinity” pond. Instead of a rigid container, the contractors designed it to appear as an open-ended water spill--which flows into catch pools below and is recirculated. They also eliminated the pool’s deep end so that the Chiates could play water volleyball--even if it meant losing a few over the cliff. To enhance the area’s recreational potential, Burton and Sager designed curved walls, “like enclosing arms,” explains Sager, on either side of the pool. Suddenly, there were places to walk and areas for entertaining that hadn’t existed before. Then came the question of what to plant. That was easy, says Jeannette. “I’m from the desert, I live at the beach. I wanted elements of both.” She showed the designers pictures, they drew up a plan, and they all went to Serra Gardens, a succulent nursery in Malibu. For Jeannette, that was the end of any planting plan. “I went wild. I just picked out things I loved.” Her selections included a tall, branching trichocereus cactus that Burton positioned outside the living room as well as other offbeat succulent cousins--aloes, agaves and yuccas--for garden beds and Mexican pots. In her revised compositions, Burton tamed these tough customers with blue oat grass, silver plecostachys and yellow-blooming kangaroo paws. She also placed feathery old olive trees along the entry drive, where blue-green basalt gravel hints at the cool vista beyond. “There’s a serenity, a calm,” says Jeannette, “that wasn’t here before the fire.” The flames showed the Chiates what they had, she adds. “We’re more connected with the ocean now, which is why people live up here--in spite of everything."The sparkling water of this renovated Malibu pool blends almost seamlessly with the Pacific Ocean in the distance. Around it grow plants with striking profiles: rushlike horsetail, pointy agaves, the flowering scaevola ‘Mauve Clusters’ and the mounding succulent Euphorbia resinifera.
f4147365aa0b540df9d0514eb935edb0	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-19829-story.html	That Flattering Flutter	That Flattering Flutter Sometime in the ‘80s, i figured out that seven shades of iri-descent powder and a couple of dollops of waterproof Maybelline made me look more like Boy George than David Bowie. I loved makeup, but I looked better without it. For 10 years, my makeup routine consisted of just lipstick. Then something in me snapped. I found myself over 30, with a small child, a Volkswagen, a flat chest and a blunt cut, living in L.A. I had nightmares in which I was just about to go Birkenstock. The answer to my identity crisis came a few months ago when I was visiting a friend whose 5-year-old daughter received a pair of false eyelashes in her Christmas stocking, a demure pair of black Ardell Sweeties. On the pretext of playing dress-up, I plastered them on, and suddenly there I was: a vixen extraordinaire. My face was brighter, my gaze more voluptuous, my mien both doll-like and dangerous. Moments later, I was peeling down Silver Lake Boulevard, reveling in the feel of the wind in my stolen lashes. The next day, I bleached my hair platinum. I wore my new glamorous look at an extremely glamorous dinner party soon after. There I met Michael Woulfe, who costumed Ava Gardner, and Bob Sidney, who choreographed Rita Hayworth. Together, they sighed at the sight of my lashes. “There aren’t any glamorous movie stars anymore,” Bob said. Michael nodded, expressing pity for my entire generation. “I bet you can’t name one movie star with an ounce of style.” “Sharon Stone,” I said without missing a beat. “Ah, yes,” said Michael, “but she’s the only one.” A couple of months later, I experienced a miracle of miracles, a conversation with Ms. Stone’s makeup artist, Tricia Sawyer, whom I now believe to be the most important person in all of Hollywood. Tricia, trailed by a black cat named Mascara, led me to her garage, where a pirate’s bounty of beauty products is heaped to the ceiling. “When I was a kid, I used to go next door to Wilma Alcorn’s house,” she said, explaining the genesis of her obsession. “She’d sit me on the counter, and I would watch while she ‘put on her face.’ ” Over the next hour, Tricia initiated me into the mysteries of underlashes and overlashes, and how to cut a pair in half and wear them “for the ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ look.” She sent me off to attack my brows and have another go at eyeliner, but I had a bigger mission, a kind of glamour grail: hand-tied silk Wunder Lashes, the Cadillac of facial accessories. I found them at Columbia Stage & Screen Cosmetics in Hollywood, each whisper-light pair nestled inside a heart-shaped plastic case. They looked like something you’d find in the locket of some sad, long-haired poet. Suzette Ashland, a makeup artist whose scary claim to fame is Rodney Dangerfield, gave me a startled, ghostly look from behind the counter when I told her that I would probably cut them in half. “I have something to show you,” she said, opening a copy of People magazine from Aug. 10, 1992. On the cover was a picture of Marilyn Monroe, looking overexposed and frowsy, if no less goddess-like. “It’s a terrible picture,” Suzette agreed, “but you can see exactly how her makeup is done. Marilyn wore the lashes just on the end--like you. And the brown liner, too.” It was true. I got chills and plunked down my $30. The first time I wore my silk lashes I went to see Eartha Kitt perform at the Cinegrill. Though I was in the back of the room, I could make out her lashes as she batted them at a May-December couple and said: “Aren’t you the guy who went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back? And what’s that piece of green apple pie you’ve got with you now?” Afterward, in Eartha’s suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, I got myself even deeper into the mystery. First of all, she disapproves of half-lashes entirely. And $30 lashes? “I don’t believe in paying a lot of money for eyelashes!” she declared, amused at my folly. “Mink eyelashes! Who the hell is going to know that they’re mink?” Before I left, Eartha showed me her stage lashes: 747 Longs. She’s right--cheap lashes really do look great. But my silk lashes will do just fine for now. At night, when I’m dressing for a party, I put on Eartha purring “Mink Shmink,” slip into a pink satin dressing gown and go to work, practicing that special alchemy that women do, the idea being something along the lines of: Va-va-voom! Did you see that girl with the lashes out to there?
7902cc818edfc97c460378d263f8ecdf	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-19830-story.html	A Tall Order	A Tall Order Combine the first names and talents of twentysomething chefs Josiah Citrin and Raphael Lunetta, and what do you get? Their 21/2-month-old California-French bistro, JiRaffe. Best friends for most of their lives, the two teamed up at Jacksons in West Hollywood for two years. Before that, they worked together and independently in France and in the L.A. kitchens of Wolfgang Puck and Joachim Splichal. Now they are back home in Santa Monica, where they grew up, cooking side by side. Citrin and Lunetta had the good luck (or business acumen) to snag a corner space right next door to Abiquiu. The spare, light-filled restaurant features floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides that look out on the street-level cityscape. So many L.A. restaurants focus inward that an actual view--of anything--feels exotic. This one is just that: beach-casual couples walking their dogs, other strollers heading for the Third Street Promenade, ballroom dancers decked out and bound for a nearby dance studio. A first dinner, just days after JiRaffe opened in early April, was so good that I was thrilled. Finally, I thought, a new place I could rave about. But restaurants, as we all know, are changeable. When I went back several times recently, I never had what I would call a bad meal, but I also never had a meal that rang quite as true as that first one. Being able to cook is one thing; running a restaurant is another. And keeping the quality of the food consistent day in and day out may be hardest of all. The truffled artichoke carpaccio that had seemed so surprising and delicious the first night, a swirl of thinly sliced artichoke hearts lightly perfumed with truffle oil, is doused with the powerfully scented oil. The lovely tomato and goat cheese gnocchi strewn with snap peas and a medley of picture-perfect spring vegetables in a pale pink sauce, now comes with a ragtag collection of vegetables, mostly zucchini chunks. Chilled pea soup, poured into a shallow bowl until the seared scallops are submerged, appears thick as porridge, dull in flavor. And the mixed mushroom salad, a fluffy mound of frisee, sauteed wild mushrooms, crunchy homemade croutons and shaved Parmesan, tastes a bit tired, just a little greasy. Still, there are some high notes. The basket of buttery brioche is just as irresistible on later visits (and helps to keep hunger at bay when the food is slow to arrive). The pork chop, one of the best dishes on the menu, is every bit as good as it was the first time, a big, juicy chop caramelized at the edges and served in a sweetly seductive cider sauce. Peppered beef is excellent, too, sliced rare, with the strong bite of cracked peppercorns, accompanied by a stacked potato cake and fabulous sauteed spinach leaves. The duck breast, with its marvelous ribbon of fat and crisped skin, doesn’t have as much flavor; but I do love the fluffy golden couscous dotted with bits of dried fruit. Whitefish encrusted with an ochre-colored Moroccan spice paste sharply scented with cumin, and served with a graceful carrot ginger emulsion scattered with sugar snap peas, is wonderful. Another night, thinly sliced swordfish is garnished with preserved lemon and Parmesan shavings: a terrific appetizer. These are imaginative, truly interesting dishes. I only wish there were more of them on the menu. Bass wrapped in potato “scales” takes a real technician to pull off; the danger is that by the time the potatoes are bronzed, the fish is overcooked. That’s exactly what happens both times I try it. It’s harder to fathom why the perfectly cooked salmon with pureed parsnip falls so flat. With only two or three specials each night, everything on the regular menu should be terrific--but it’s not. I’m convinced that Citrin and Lunetta are talented enough to make their own restaurant work; they just need time to grow into it. But with prices fairly moderate, no one is going to feel too disappointed at the glitches. We know they can cook. They just have to learn to pull it off every night. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) JiRAFFE CUISINE: California-French. AMBIENCE: Sleek corner bistro with loft. BEST DISHES: swordfish with lemon, spiced whitefish, grilled pork chop, peppered beef. WINE PICKS: Marimar Torres Chardonnay, Green Valley, 1993; Marques de Murrieta, Rioja Reserva, 1990. FACTS: 502 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 917-6671. Closed Monday, and Saturday and Sunday at lunch. Dinner for two, food only, $50 to $65. Corkage $10. Valet parking on 5th Street.
1e995a1d633b7d079efbe61088a7aca5	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-38865-story.html	A Warrior’s Game	A Warrior’s Game The students have gone home and the fragile April sun has dropped behind a jagged, snowcapped horizon on the Blackfeet Reservation in northern Montana. Jonson and Kyle Running Crane, cousins, wander into the high school gym and climb into the upper deck to get a better look at three men playing catch with a ball the size of a large cantaloupe. Six-year-old Kyle tugs at a piece of green gum. No, he says, he has never seen this game. Seven-year-old Jonson nods his head in agreement. They watch the men run up and down the court, leaping high and hurling the white ball into a goal about twice as large as the one used in hockey. Dan Foster stops play, picks up a ball and clutches it firmly in both hands, their knuckles scarred. “The ball is precious,” he tells the players. “Always take care of the ball.” For Foster this is something of a mantra that reflects not just the game’s strategy but a larger philosophy. Foster, an Oklahoma Cherokee, is director of mental health at Blackfeet Community Hospital in Browning, a town of 1,170 people. He and his wife, Becky Crawford-Foster, also a psychologist, and their three children have lived on the reservation for two years. When addressing his players, he walks up to them or asks that they move in closer. He chooses his words carefully, often pausing between sentences. He doesn’t blow a whistle. He never shouts. If you were choosing sides for a pickup basketball game, you would want Foster on your team. Although he is 46 years old and his ponytail is graying, he still has the spring and build of an athlete. Six feet two and 225 pounds, he has only put on 20 pounds since college. Off the court, he smiles easily; he has a natural gift for putting people at ease. On the court, though, he is grim-faced and tenacious, moving swiftly with powerful strides when open, battling hard in a crowd of swarming bodies. There is a similar dichotomy within this game, team handball. “It’s part roughness, part finesse,” Foster says, explaining why he was drawn to the sport in 1971 while serving in the Army. He was training as a wrestler, attempting to qualify for the Pan American Games, and after practice he would drift over to watch friends play team handball. They invited him to do drills, and he found himself drawn to the contact, the calculated brick-wall picks that can knock the air out of an opponent, as well as the grace, catching the ball on a dead run, leaping straight up and hanging weightless in the air, waiting for the precise moment to cleanly fire off a shot. Popular in Europe (and increasingly in Asia and South America), team handball is played over two 30-minute halves with six players and a goalie on a court somewhat larger than that for basketball. The object is to throw the ball into the goal and prevent the opponent from doing the same. More contact is allowed and required than in basketball. It is water polo without water. Just before leaving the military, Foster was invited to compete with an all-Army team at the national team handball tournament. He caught the attention of the U.S. team and was invited to train for the 1972 Olympics in Munich, but a month before the Games, he brokea bone in his foot and ended up serving as an alternate. For 11 years, Foster played on the U.S. team, competing in such countries as France, Germany and Argentina. In 1994, John EagleDay, a member of the Bannock tribe in Idaho, asked if he would coach team handball for the Native American Sports Council. The sports council had been a dream of EagleDay’s for 15 years. A former college football and rugby player, he worked eight years counseling Native American community college students in Washington state and developed youth leadership programs that incorporated ancient native games. He was searching, he says, for a way to integrate traditional Native American games into the contemporary world of sports. He envisions the council having two functions: to develop Native American athletes for Olympic competition and to train coaches to conduct community sports programs. In doing so, he hopes to revivify the spiritual role sports played in native cultures. By January, 1993, he had put together a board of directors (including Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and 1964 Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills, among others) and had raised enough money so that he could approach the U.S. Olympic Committee with a proposal. “What I said, I don’t recall. I believe the spirit was moving,” he says. “I believe it was a time and place . . . to come to an understanding that the sovereign tribes of this continent have been excluded for too long in allowing their communities to have access in an official way to the opportunities that could be provided through the Olympic Committee.” A year later, the committee voted unanimously to welcome the new organization, establishing it as the only voting member representing an ethnic group. Over the last two years, the council has sponsored camps in distance running, archery, wrestling and baseball. It also supports individual athletes in other sports, but it is through team handball--selected partly because council officials saw components of traditional Native American games--that it has found its greatest success. Last year, the council recruited 30 Native American athletes--primarily basketball players--for a weeklong team handball camp. None of the recruits had ever played the game. The best players were called back for four more days of practice before traveling to Atlanta to compete in the nationals, where amateur clubs, collegiate and military teams engage in a fierce three-day tournament. To the shock of handball veterans, the NASC Sports Warriors won the Division II gold medal, defeating Air Force Academy in the title game. Even in such a fledgling sport, this was a miraculous accomplishment. “There was a point in the final minutes of the championship game where I looked at that team, and they were all as one,” says Mike Cavanaugh, executive director of the U.S. Team Handball Federation. “They were moving on defense exactly like you want a team to move. You can work months on trying to develop that and not even come close.” One member of the team, Mike Jones, who was working as a truck driver at the time, was chosen for the U.S. national program, which scouts the tournament for talent. Of the 30 athletes on the national team, 16 are chosen for the Olympics. Cavanaugh, who is on the selection committee, had Jones ranked 12th. A knee injury and disciplinary problems for missing practices, however, resulted in his suspension from the program last December. Jones will return to the Sports Warriors as an assistant coach, but Foster knows that without his dominant play, others will have to step up this year. There will be a handful of returning players from last year, but most will be novices. The athletes in the Browning gym this day have never seen team handball. Foster, who also plays on the team, runs the Browning players through a series of drills. Since there are too few to scrimmage, they must learn the game in bits and pieces. It is the equivalent of learning basketball by shooting free-throw shots. They practice passing the ball against a wall to get a feel for its size and texture. They shoot from each corner. They run up and down the court, passing the ball back and forth. In a matter of days, Foster will take five players from the reservation to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, where they will practice for a week with other Native American athletes in preparation for the national championships in Oklahoma City. “They will do fine,” he says. “Of course, that’s a prayer.” On the Blackfeet reservation, it is the time of ice melting from rivers. Small pockets of old snow drip slowly into the earth along north-facing shadows. Trumpeter swans float epically, heads held high, on swale ponds. Soon the geese will pass on homeward journeys, and first thunder will roar upon the high plains. April’s warmth comes as a blessing, for winters here are long and harsh. In 1884, hundreds of people died. The last of the buffalo had been killed in the Sweet Grass Hills, and the Blackfeet, made wards of the U.S. government, were allowed to starve. Many were buried on a barren crest that came to be known as Ghost Ridge. Others were left in the brush near Badger Creek, and when spring came, the bodies fell on top of one another and were swept away by water. There’s a tale of how, one day that winter, a bear came through camp. The animals, too, were starving, and the bear was chasing wolves. The people followed it to the top of a nearby hill, where the bear transformed suddenly into a rock, ending the starvation winter. Only about 1,400 of the Montana Blackfeet, known as the Pikuni or Piegan tribe, remained. Some still pray and make offerings to the rock shaped like a bear. Today, unemployment on the reservation approaches 60%. Only 30% of those employed earn more than $7000 a year. The high school dropout rate is 42%. Alcohol continues to entice and numb and create its own Ghost Ridge. (Throughout the country, in areas served by Indian Health Services, the mortality rate caused by alcoholism was 447% higher than for the general population during 1990-92. Accidents were 168% greater, suicide 42% and homicide 34%.) It is impossible to underestimate the emphasis on high school sports on the reservation. On the hardwood stage in Browning, thousands of people gather to cheer for the Running Indians basketball team. Before the school was required to travel great distances to compete, caravans of fans would follow them to games in nearby towns, while others listened to radio coverage. In cross country, no Montana school in modern history has dominated a sport the way Browning has. Between 1971 and 1992, the boys’ team won 17 state titles, including 11 in a row. During that same period, the girls’ team won eight state titles. The boys’ basketball team takes the home court wearing war bonnets. Runners braid eagle feathers into their hair for important races; football players paint their faces. High school sports is a fleeting moment of honor, a chance for courage and cheers, a level playing field when there are few others. No matter how much is wrong with your life, you have this moment in the sun. For many, though, it is followed by darkness. “All the cross country champions, where are they?” asks local educator Darrell Kipp. “Why aren’t they on the Olympic team? Why didn’t they make it to college?” Kipp, who has a master’s degree in education from Harvard, runs the Piegan Institute, which develops schools in which only native languages are spoken. Born on the reservation, he has observed the rise and fall of Native American athletes for years. “If you take people and you beat out of them their language and their sense of being an Indian, and you take everything valuable that they feel as Indians and rip it out of them, then what do you have?” asks Kipp, staring out the window of his office in downtown Browning. “You have a brown body left with nothing in it, and it’s standing over there on the corner sucking on a wine bottle. We become people unable to hope. There’s a reality here and it’s a very blunt one. It’s right across the street.” Across a potholed intersection from Kipp’s office is Ick’s Place, where the regulars huddle in back around a bottle. Among them is Carlin No Runner. His name belies his ability. No Runner, 29, ran on four state high school cross country championship teams, then went on to compete at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., before returning home. He still loves to run, loves the feeling of movement, the rhythm of his feet upon the ground. Sometimes he takes off over the knuckles and knolls of prairie between Browning and his home seven miles away. And sometimes he dances at pow-wows, losing himself in the pounding of the drums and his heart, the rhythm of his feet upon the ground. He thinks about his dream, mostly forgotten now, of running in the Olympics. His eyes move slowly as he looks up. “Maybe,” he says, “I can still do it.” In the still-quiet late April dawn of boulder park in Colorado Springs, on land once inhabited by the Utes, Dan Foster stands in a circle with 20 Native American athletes. The previous day, at the airport in Great Falls, Mont., a security guard demanded to search his bag, which contained a pipe and other sacred items that are not to be touched except when offered in prayer. Foster pleaded with the guard not to handle them, to put the bag through the X-ray machine instead. The guard, unlike those at every other airport Foster has traveled through, would not oblige. He dug through the bag and, in doing so, contaminated it. For Foster, who has endured the piercings of the Sun Dance on his chest and back, it was as if the guard had ripped out the pages of a family Bible that had been handed down for hundreds of years. As the players stand together in the park, John EagleDay begins speaking about the Ghost Dance. Prior to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, representatives of many tribes gathered in Nevada to pray for the return of all that had been swept away. One man, Buffalo Short Bull of the Dakota tribe, had a vision that as people gathered in the circle, they should grasp hands by interlocking their fingers. “In this way, you may want to let go, but I’m not going to let you,” EagleDay continues. “It is a symbol of the determination at the dance to never let go of each other. Let’s put our hands together. Interlock your fingers.” The players grasp hands. “This circle is too strong now. It can never be separated. . . . This is going to be our victory, our determination never to let go.” In addition to Foster, the players in the circle include: Shel McLain, 25, of Colbert, Wash. Foster saw him play in a basketball tournament in Browning two years ago and invited him to the camp. While playing professional basketball in Germany this year, he saw a team handball game on television. This gives him more background in the game than some of his fellow players. Francis LaPlant, 18, of Browning. As a junior, LaPlant played basketball at Lodge Grass High School on the Crow reservation, where there is a mighty tradition that has produced legendary players like Elvis Old Bull and Jonathan Takes Enemy. Earlier this year, LaPlant was one of eight Montana players chosen to compete in a national prep tournament in Phoenix, Ariz. He currently lives with his aunt and uncle outside of Browning; his mother is two years into her recovery from alcoholism. His stepfather, a man he idolized, was stabbed to death three years ago. LaPlant’s dream is to play college basketball. Ronnie Ledesma, 21, of San Jose. His mother is Italian, a gynecologist. His father is Native American, a cop. Ledesma was a starting guard last season at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He has never faced discrimination, he says, because most people don’t know his ethnicity. “I get asked a lot if I’m Filipino.” Mike Marquez, 19, of Fresno. He was supposed to be on last year’s team, but he was shot in a drive-by. When he arrived at the hospital, he showed no vital signs. There must be a reason, he says, why life was taken away, then given back. That wasn’t the case for Cody Berry, a participant in last year’s program, who was murdered last December. Dale Johnson, 27, of San Jose. At 6-2, 245 pounds with a ponytail flowing down his back, he was the heart of last year’s team. He was introduced to the sport by Darin Williams, an assistant coach and starting goalkeeper. Williams met Johnson while refereeing a basketball tournament: he tossed Johnson out of the game for unruly behavior. Williams, who runs the NASC team handball program in Fresno, was impressed by Johnson’s tenacity and asked him to give the game a try. In his life, Johnson has overcome alcohol, the suicide of a brother and a two-year prison term for assault. He plays a key inside position called circle runner. EagleDay ends his story of the Ghost Dance. A player offers a prayer and then Foster, in a crystal voice, sings a Lakota song that says to look for the coming of the spotted eagle, a helper who will protect them. In their first practice, it is difficult to see how this team can come together in a week. Balls slip through hands, passes soar high and wide and end up in the bleachers. Movements are not fluid, and footing is uncertain. Foster, though, remains undaunted about how far the team has to go. The players must learn not only the rules, techniques and strategies of the game, but gain a sense of unity and purpose as well. In the past, EagleDay was concerned that Foster was “a little too Zen.” But Foster is convinced that the most important quality he can convey as a coach is a “love of the game,” and the way to do that is to relate the sport to the players’ lives. “I want you to really concentrate on the ball handling when you’re tired,” he tells the team during a break. “There are going to be moments like at a Sun Dance or some arduous ceremony, where you think you’re not going to make it. You’re going to make it, you’re going to be fine.” Later, at a team meeting, he describes the camp’s larger purpose: ‘Each of us represents the tragedy, the challenges, the opportunities, the difficulties, the joy and sorrow of our communities. By the end of this week, you’re going to know one another as handball athletes, but more than that you’ll know each other as Indians. Winning and losing take care of themselves if we take care of ourselves, if we walk in a balanced way and take care of each other.” Practices are twice daily. By the middle of the week, the team’s improvement is marked. They are beginning to understand Foster’s dictum that “the ball is precious.” Of all the metaphors Foster employs, the image of the ball is central. It must be protected and cared for. For Foster, the ball represents many things: On a poetic level, it speaks to a sense of balance and proportion, but on a practical level the team that controls the ball usually wins. As the week progresses, the passes are more crisp, the shots more accurate. Catches are being made on the run and movement occurs with purpose. The players are learning patience. Ideally, players would have been brought in for several of these camps, and the team would have competed in tournaments before the national championships in Oklahoma City, now days away. The problem, however, is funding. It is difficult to find corporate sponsorship for a group and game few people know about. Although the council is trying to establish a base of tribal, private and USOC funding, so far most of its annual budget of about $100,000 a year has come from the council’s chairman, Gene Keluche, who has poured $300,000 of his own money into the program. This year, the council allocated $20,000 for team handball. Shortly after arriving in Colorado Springs, EagleDay tells the staff there isn’t enough money to take the entire team to Oklahoma City. When Dale Johnson is sidelined by a knee injury, he decides to return home. He says it would be too difficult to watch the team without being able to play, but he also knows it will cost the program $30 a day for him to stay and even more to travel to Oklahoma City. Foster, though, is convinced the squad needs Johnson even if he doesn’t play. He is the squad’s most spirited player. EagleDay, though, concerned that Johnson needs to see a doctor, allows him to leave. The chaos begins at the Oklahoma City Airport. In order to save money, some of the players have been assigned to a Days Inn, while the rest of the team will stay at the Marriott, the tournament headquarters. An assistant coach threatens to leave if the matter isn’t cleared up. EagleDay, who was in charge of the arrangements, has not arrived, and so coaches and players decide to crowd together in rooms at the Marriott rather than be split apart. Arriving at midnight, EagleDay is furious that some players are sleeping on floors. He also is upset to find some of the assistant coaches still awake, seated in the bar drinking soft drinks and watching a big screen television. When EagleDay chastises the staff, another assistant coach threatens to leave. The following morning, it is discovered that tournament officials have not received the players’ registration forms and fees. As the players gather in the hotel lobby to catch a bus to their first game, they have to fill out forms. Some do not have the $25 fee, which EagleDay provides. Only after the team arrives at the state fairgrounds, where the competition is being held, do the players regain focus. They gather outside the building near a locust tree, and EagleDay prepares an altar upon the ground. He kneels, faces east and rolls sage into a ball with the palms of his hands as the players stand around him in a circle. He places the sage in a rock bowl and ignites it with flint, fanning the sparks with an eagle feather given to him many years ago at a Sun Dance. He offers smoke to the four directions, to Mother Earth and Father Sky. Foster sings a song of prayer as EagleDay carries the sage in a clockwise direction to each player so they can lave themselves in smoke. When the smudging is complete, the players move forward and tighten their circle. “We’re serving our people,” EagleDay tells them. “We’re helping our people get healthy. With the strength we put out there today, we show them what’s in our hearts.” The first of the day’s three games is against Knight Magic, made up of crisp-cut former members of the U.S. Military Academy team. This is their eighth year of playing together. Ronnie Ledesma scores the first goal, hurling the ball hard into the left corner of the net. Shel McLain, though, comes limping off the court with a twisted ankle. He will say nothing, but it will remain painful throughout the tournament. NASC mounts a 5-1 advantage before Knight Magic ties it at 6-6, then 7-7, 8-8, 9-9, 10-10, 11-11 and finally 12-12 with 10 minutes left. In the final moments, Knight Magic moves ahead and wins 16-14. As the NASC team gathers after the game, the loss heaves more frustration on top of discord. Foster senses that after all the work to unify them in Colorado, the team has become disjointed. He tries to speak above the whistles and shouts: “Earlier this week, with all the hugs, I talked a little about love, the love between warriors for each other. We have lost the game, and if we lose every game--it’s not that I don’t care, I don’t like to get beat--but I can live with losing...I want us to be brothers, warriors together through thick and thin.” Across the court, Capt. Vic Lindenmeyer of Knight Magic knows that his team was fortunate to win. He sees what the NASC players have lost sight of in defeat. “For them to come to this tournament last year and place with such little time to prepare, that’s unheard of in this sport. It shows great potential. Most people here have dedicated themselves for years to become great players at this sport.” There is more chaos in the second game. Foster is unaware of a scheduling change, which has moved the starting time up. Some players have not arrived when the game against the Colorado Pioneers begins. Colorado has players from Norway, Yugoslavia, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Germany and placed four players on the current national team. But then something happens. In basketball, it is known as “Indian ball,” the fast-paced, improvisational, at times reckless version of run and gun. The Sports Warriors open up a fastbreak offense. They pass long, attack, hang in the air and find their rhythm. The missing players arrive and enter the game without disrupting the flow. NASC defeats Colorado, 20-19. The momentum carries into their next game, a 25-19 victory over the Oklahoma Force. Knight Magic, the Pioneers and the NASC Sports Warriors end the day with 2-1 records. Only two teams from each pool can be slotted into the Division I competition; because NASC won its games by the fewest points, they will play in Division II tournament. Foster has mixed feelings. While it would be a step up for the team to be included in the more competitive Division I, he is uncertain whether it is ready for that level of competition. The next day, they defeat an all-star team of Alabama players and beat a national team of deaf players. The two wins move the Sports Warriors into the gold-medal game against the New York City Handball Club. Some members of the New York team have been together 15 years. All but one immigrated to the United States from Europe, where they learned the game. It will be a test of experience versus youth. The final day, and more chaos. As the team loosens up, Ronnie Ledesma, one of the leading scorers in the tournament, has not shown up. Players say he wasn’t in his room all night. EagleDay is on a cellular phone trying to track down Ledesma. Two other players were out past midnight. Throughout the tournament, some on the squad have complained about their playing time; others think Foster should be on the sidelines coaching more than on the court playing. “We’ve come through a long journey,” Foster tells the team before the game. “There have been tough times, but we are tough people. This is our chance to win gold. . . I want a strong heart, a lot of confidence.” Ledesma comes running into the building just as the game begins. He says he spent the night with a friend. NASC takes a 5-1 lead, but the New Yorkers maintain their poise and make no wasted effort as they move into the lead. The Sports Warriors stay close but cannot catch up. Midway through the second half, New York goalie Konrad Juszkiewicz blocks a one-on-one penalty shot. He lifts his right forefinger into the air, then throws his hand down hard, ending the swing with a clenched fist. NASC becomes frustrated. Their shots have no fire, their feet seem heavy. Last year, with each score against them, they grew stronger, more determined. Players on the sidelines stood rather than sat, shouting encouragement not criticism. This year is different. New York wins 21-14. NASC gets the silver. Their frustration culminates in disappointment. Foster, who is exhausted, feels he has let the team down as both player and coach. There can be glory in defeat, bravery in standing unified, he says, but this has not been the case. Foster accepts the blame: “I will no longer be the head coach of this national team,” he tells them. “I’ll support you any way I can, but I won’t be playing with you fellows again. I’ve seen mature men pouting. I’ve seen mature men chewing on each other. For me, this is hard. This is sad. If someone didn’t get a medal, you can have mine.” EagleDay moves the team outside, to the locust tree. Once again, he prepares the altar, and the players gather in a circle. “Don’t let go of how much we care for each other,” he says. “In this relationship that we have now, as we’ve gathered in a circle, locked together to each other, this circle is a symbol of our journey. I didn’t finish the story the other day, the story that says, ‘Never let go of each other. Don’t let go of yourselves. Don’t let go of your dreams.’ ” It is the story of the Ghost Dance. “This man, when he returned home from the dance, he told his people, ‘Brothers and sisters, we have to hold on. We have to lock up.’ And when they went to Wounded Knee and saw the adversity ahead of them, he said, ‘This is something we can endure only if we’re together.’ And when the soldiers massacred the people, they put them in a huge common grave. Some of the people they couldn’t separate, they couldn’t get their hands apart. This circle is strong, this circle is committed. . . I’m going to take the smoke around the circle--no beginning, no end. It just goes.” * In northern Montana, the snow still falls, and trumpeter swans will soon continue their journeys north. Francis LaPlant, who scored his only goal of the tournament in the final game, returns home and graduates from high school, still hoping to go to college in the fall. Foster returns to his work as director of mental health. Awaiting him is a letter from Indian Health Services saying he is spending too much time away from the job and must curtail his outside activities. Darin Williams, the assistant coach and goalie, flies home to Fresno but soon will be traveling to Atlanta, where he will be on the support staff of the U.S. team handball squad as it competes in the Olympics. EagleDay flies to Greece, representing the USOC at an international sports conference, allowing him to extend the reach of the Native American Sports Council. There was bitter disappointment in Oklahoma, he says, but the design is never perfect and must constantly change. For one player, the journey has not yet ended. About 300 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, in a cemetery at the edge of a small Missouri town, dogwoods are in bloom. A cardinal flickers in and about the pines and oaks, paying no attention to Shel McLain as he searches for his father’s grave. He was 9 years old the last time he was here in El Dorado Springs, wedged between dark-suited aunts and uncles as his father was laid to rest on a summer day. McLain wasn’t certain what would happen to him and his two brothers. He hadn’t seen his mother, a full-blooded Cree, since the age of 3, when his father came for the children and whisked them out of Canada, away from her drinking. “I’m not sure how legally he took us,” McLain, says. “I think he was wanted for kidnapping. It was never a healthy relationship. She was an alcoholic, and he was abusive.” They had traveled from town to town, mostly in Montana, leaving no forwarding address. He remembers long trips in his father’s cream-colored Ford station wagon when he would awaken in the night and lean forward from the back seat, place his head close to his father’s and gaze emptily at the center stripes flickering through the headlight beams. Sometimes he would say nothing before easing back to sleep, feeling safe wrapped within the sedative hum and thump of the highway passing beneath him. Despite his father’s faults, McLain remembers him as a kind man, a history teacher. He was 59 years old when he died. He was a World War II vet, and he wore a cowboy hat and snakeskin boots. His eyes were clear and bright. His hands were gentle. He listened to the Sons of the Pioneers. McLain stops suddenly when he sees his father’s marker just off a dirt path that scribbles its way through the cemetery. He stands at the foot of the grave, his lean 6-foot-4 frame stretched tall, head held high, black hair combed straight back, a beads-and-bone choker around his neck, hands clasped in front of him. He takes three quick, sharp breaths for strength or, perhaps, containment, then steps slowly to the marker, which frames a photograph of his father. McLain kneels and gently wipes the stains of raindrops from the square jaw of a still-young face. It is getting dark. McLain says nothing. McLain never found a groove during the tournament, partly because of the ankle he injured in the first game. Perhaps next time will be different. Shortly before leaving for Colorado Springs, he had driven his girlfriend to a waterfall in Washington, where he laid three dozen red, white and yellow roses upon white satin and sang a song he had written, partly in Cree, as a proposal of marriage. He and his fiancee are looking at graduate schools in Atlanta, where the U.S. team handball program is based and will train for the 2000 Olympics. The game made an impression on him, and, if given the opportunity, he says, he may give it a shot. The game has given him a new dream. The circle never ends. The journey that took him from this cemetery 16 years ago now delivers him to fading twilight and dogwoods in bloom, to ties of blood that run through generations, to this good-and-bad man buried beneath greening grass. To memories of long-ago places that appeared in headlights. He spends some time with his father. He tells him about this woman he loves, this dream he has found. He softly hums a song, “Amazing Grace,” and then he says goodbye.
dbaa9583dd31ea34882f2ad110136707	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tm-38866-story.html	Don’t Leave Rome Without It: Credit Cards Through the Ages	Don’t Leave Rome Without It: Credit Cards Through the Ages 1750 BC......................................... * The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi sets forth ethics for extending credit. AD 27 * Jesus drives the money changers out of the temple. 1914............................................ * American retailers issue credit cards to wealthy customers. Gas companies follow with “courtesy cards.” 1928............................................ * Department stores issue embossed-metal charge plates. 1949............................................ * Alfred Bloomingdale, Frank X. McNamara and Ralph Snyder form Diners Club at Major’s Cabin Grill restaurant in New York. Their concept--a single card honored by many establishments that are charged 7% of each transaction--becomes the blueprint for the industry. 1958............................................ * Carte Blanche, American Express cards launched. * Elvis gets an American Express card. 1959............................................ * Clerk Joseph Miraglia, 19, goes on a $10,000 spending binge with a Carte Blanche card. “For a month . . . I was somebody,” he says when arrested. 1962. ..................................... * American Express card turns its first profit. 1966........................................... * A group of Chicago banks mass mails 5 million unsolicited credit cards--recipients include teenagers, infants, several dogs and the deceased. The combined loss from theft, fraud and unpaid balances is estimated at $25 million. * American Express introduces the gold card. 1967............................................ * Famous “one word” of advice given to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” is misconstrued by baby boomers as “plastic,’ setting off a three-decades-long credit-card spree. * Sen. William Proxmire warns Congress: “Unless we bring unsolicited credit cards under control, we are likely to produce a nation of credit drunks.” 1973............................................ * Marquette Bank in Minneapolis becomes first bank to charge an annual fee for credit cards. 1976............................................ * BankAmericard, card-issuing association created by the Bank of America in 1958, changes its name to Visa. 1980............................................ * Mastercharge renamed MasterCard. 1982............................................ * France develops microprocessor-equipped “smart cards,” which can store passwords, credit limits--even medical histories. They finally catch on in mid-'90s. 1984............................................ * American Express introduces the platinum card. 1985............................................. * After years of losses, credit cards generate huge profits as cost of money drops for banks while cardholders are charged 18% interest. By the early ‘90s, Citibank’s credit card subsidiary is earning nearly $1 billion a year. 1987............................................. * Director Robert Townsend finances “Hollywood Shuffle” with $100,000 in cash advances on 15 credit cards. 1989............................................ * Rumors surface of an American Express “black” card, supposedly carried by Imelda Marcos and Adnan Khashoggi, with no spending limit and fantastic perks. Amex vigorously denies the card’s existence. * The number of Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express cards in circulation exceeds the U.S. population. 1992............................................ * Barbara Smiley of Los Angeles complains about a $15 late fee on her Citibank Visa bill. She becomes lead plaintiff in a class-action suit challenging fees charged by banks that locate their credit-card operations in usury-friendly states like South Dakota and Delaware. 1993............................................. * Eunice Gail Shores, who lived on $840 a month, dies at age 69 in Denver, $89,000 in debt on 37 credit cards. 1994............................................ * The Rolling Stones sponsor a Visa card. 1995............................................. * After reportedly rebuffing a similar request for a cross-dressing character in “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” American Express provides 254 gold cards to Lizzy Gardiner, the film’s Oscar-nominated costume designer, which she transforms into a floor-length gown. * Irvine police arrest William Everly, 31, on suspicion of fraudulently securing more than 30 credit cards by Dumpster-surfing for discarded applications. * Elvis’ first American Express card fetches $63,000 at auction in Las Vegas. 1996............................................ * The Supreme Court upholds a California high court ruling in the Smiley class-action suit, allowing credit card companies to charge late fees of $20 or more even when state laws stipulate lower fees. Plus ca change . . .
41685234481c3c69a8ad139785fb2c98	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19888-story.html	Different Paths Through the Swiss Alps	Different Paths Through the Swiss Alps I had come to the Engadine Valley at the suggestion of Peter Walker of Ryder-Walker Alpine Adventures in Colorado. Peter has hiked, skied and climbed every corner of the Alps for two decades and spends his summers leading hikers up valleys, over passes and into delightful hidden corners of the mountains of Switzerland. But of all the stunning mountain territory he has traversed, Peter says he considers the Engadine the finest region in Switzerland for hiking, wandering and savoring grand mountain scenery and villages that seem frozen in time. In contrast to the deeply cleft valleys typical of the Alps, the Upper Engadine is a broad, U-shaped trench abutting the eastern border of the country. The valley is open and airy and laced by a succession of sparkling lakes. The mountain walls on either side are carved by glaciers into lateral valleys that offer hundreds of challenging hiking routes. This would be my fourth trip to Switzerland since 1990, including a weeklong trek led by Walker and his wife, Karen. This time I was traveling solo and looking for new territory, a different experience that still featured the awesome drama of the mountains and the serenity of high Alpine meadows. Peter’s passion for the Engadine persuaded me to come here. The Upper Engadine begins at Maloja Pass near the Italian border and runs northeast along the En River for about 50 miles. At a natural geographical break where the Val Bernina slices in from the jagged Bernina Alps to the east, the towns of St. Moritz, Pontresina and Samedan form a triangle of about five miles per side, creating an especially sublime setting of open meadows, forested slopes and snowcapped peaks. Everyone knows about St. Moritz, the winter and summer playground of the rich and royal. In its way, St. Moritz’ posh reputation may discourage visits to the Engadine by people who shrink at the idea of a $300- or $400-a-night hotel room. But St. Moritz is the exception in a vast, isolated region that can only be reached by one of five mountain passes. Away from St. Moritz, prices are more typical of the rest of this part of Switzerland. In fact, I was determined to make this an “economy” vacation in a country where the high cost of travel had been exacerbated by the declining value of the dollar versus the Swiss franc in recent years. I had it all worked out. I would make my base at Pontresina, the hiking center of the Engadine, smaller and more relaxed than St. Moritz. I would make two- or three-day excursions into the mountains, hiking up alongside roaring waterfalls into the high peaks, backlighted by a dazzling sun set in an azure Alpine sky. At day’s end, I would reach a rustic hut or mountain hotel perched on a lofty ledge, eye to eye with the high peaks, have a hearty supper with fellow hikers, share the day’s experience over a glass of wine and sleep soundly beneath the rough wool blankets of the dormitory-style room. After breakfast of sliced meat, cheese and bread, I would set out again, perhaps cross a glacier, see a steinbock with its long tapered horns, rest on a grassy, wild-flowered slope and greet other walkers with the traditional, Gruss Gott! (roughly, “Go With God”) Mountain-hut lodging may be rustic at times, as basic as a thin mattress on bare boards, a wool blanket and a pillow. Bathing and sleeping accommodations can be a little too communal for some travelers. But a night’s stay in a hut operated by the Swiss Alpine Club, which anyone can join, can run as little as $25. Most huts serve breakfast and supper at reasonable rates. The private “berghotels” can be more pricey, but still are only a fraction of the valley resort hotels. Of nearly 40 mountain huts and hotels in the Pontresina area, a dozen are SAC huts. The rest are privately run hotels and restaurants. Many of the hotels have both private rooms, some with bath, and dormitory-style lodging similar to hostels. That was the plan. Here was reality: On the next-to-last day of my visit last fall, I sat at a table by the panoramic window of the Diavolezza mountain restaurant and gazed out toward what I knew to be one of the grandest scenes in all the Alps. And all I could see was an opaque wall of cloud on the other side of the window pane. Pure white-out cloaked the Bernina Alps, from the summit of 13,285-foot Piz Bernina down to the bottom of its glacial skirts outside the window. The mist swirled just enough to offer an occasional teasing glimpse of the lower ridges of the Bernina and its 12,812-foot neighbor, Piz Palu. Then the snowy curtain would slip shut again. The waiter brought my lunch--a pork chop, French fries and zucchini--as I looked around at the empty pine tables. In a restaurant that could easily seat several hundred, I was the only customer. Just a few nights back, this restaurant anchored to a ridge at 9,754 feet above sea level was jumping, the scene of the graduation ceremony for 40 new Swiss mountain guides, families and friends. That had been a perfect Alpine evening, capping one of the few truly sunny days during my 10-day visit. The setting sun sprayed the peaks and glaciers with a golden glow, the sort of scene that inspires poetry and film purchases in bulk. I spent the night in one of the hotel rooms added recently to the Diavolezza. It had the inevitable blond pine wood, dazzling white tiles and a puffy white duvet on the bed. It was impeccably Swiss, with the brisk scent of fresh laundry drying in the sun. The room, with bath and breakfast, cost about $36 in September. For even less, I could have slept on one of the bunks of the Diavolezza’s dormitory. Yet here I was, no more than a dozen miles from St. Moritz, one of the priciest resorts in the world. * But that sparkling evening and morning was the exception on this trip. The rule was drizzle or rain in the valley and snow at higher elevations, which one morning was just a few feet above the roof of my Pontresina hotel. Alas, the weather mostly foiled my quest for a true economy vacation. With all that snow in the mountains--10 feet of it on the high peaks during my stay--nearly all the huts that I had planned to stay at were inaccessible and closed. I was forced to spend most nights in a Pontresina hotel and find alternate activities on the rainiest days. With better backup planning, I still could have economized considerably. Even in the towns, there is housing available that is clean, private and comfortable that does not cost an arm and a leg. These accommodations are often overlooked because they do not make it into the tourist guidebooks or the listings of the Swiss Hotel Assn. One of these in Pontresina was the bright, clean Hotel Garni Alvetern (garni means the hotel does not have its own restaurant). Although I didn’t stay here, I wish I had from the looks of it. The Alvetern offered a double room without bath for less than $50, or rooms with private baths--some with balcony--for $60 to $75. The price included a buffet breakfast. Also, apartments are available in most of the larger towns with a range of rates comparable to those in a U.S. mountain resort. The best way to learn about the types of lodging available is to contact the tourist office in each town by telephone, letter or fax. Addresses and phone numbers are listed in most Swiss guidebooks and are available from Switzerland Tourism. As for dining, most restaurants in small Swiss towns are in the hotels. But many hotels have, in addition to a formal dining room, a separate area known as a Stubli that is akin to our bar and coffee shop. This is where the locals will often go when they eat out. Evening meals in a Stubli can run $15 to $20, including wine and tip, about a third less than in the main restaurant. Once you work through all the semi-familiar schnitzels and wursts and aren’t sure what to order, try an omelet. They invariably are excellent and modestly priced. Also, it’s hard to go wrong with a hearty soup and lots of bread. I had a delicious mushroom and cheese omelet with a glass of wine and coffee for lunch in St. Moritz one rainy day for less than $10, including tip. Another day, a steaming bowl of minestrone, bread and wine in a hotel in Maloja cost about $6. * Despite the bad weather, my expectations of the Engadine were more than fulfilled. The hiking ranges from gentle, level valley walks to Ben Gay specials amid the high peaks and passes. The Engadine is unique because of its Romansch culture and language that survives from the ancient civilization of Rhaetia, dating from pre-Roman times. I learned that about a third of the residents of the canton (a canton is similar to a U.S. state) of Graubunden speak Romansch, Switzerland’s fourth official language after German, French and Italian. Most of those who still speak Romansch live in the Engadine, part of Graubunden. In area, Graubunden is Switzerland’s largest canton, but also the least populous. The presence of another language is not a handicap. The most exposure visitors will have to Romansch is on local maps and signposts. Lakes are Lej rather than the German See, although they quickly become Lago as the traveler nears Italy. Rivers are Ova, peaks Piz, and bridges Punt. I was in the Engadine a full week before I heard anyone speaking American English, a testimony to the fact that annually barely 1% of the visitors to Pontresina are from the United States. These Americans were a couple in the seat in front of me on the bus to Maloja. Their Midwest twang caught my ear. Few Engadiners speak English except in the busiest tourist centers, and I was suffering language deprivation. Eager to connect with a fellow American, I leaned forward to make small talk, asking: How long have you been in Switzerland? Fifteen minutes later, as she headed out the bus door at their stop, the Energizer woman from Des Moines was still reciting an inexhaustible litany of anecdotes of their six weeks in Switzerland. The bus door closed. I settled back in my seat and relaxed, content to listen to the other passengers chatting cheerily in lyrical Swiss-German punctuated by the repeated “Oh-yah, yah-yah.” It was the sound of music. So what do you do when you go to Switzerland to hike and it rains? Well, you hike anyway. The Swiss and the Germans do, with Gore-Tex jackets, hats or umbrellas--and determination. The footing on the trails, in most cases, remains firm. There usually is a mountain restaurant somewhere along the way for drying out and refreshment. Or go shopping--even on a modest budget, even in St. Moritz. There is a great book and gift store called Wega in Schulhausplatz, the center of St. Moritz. One day I took the bus over the Maloja Pass, at the head of the Upper Engadine, and down the other side toward Italy into the Val Bregaglia . Here you can see high granite peaks such as Piz Badile and walk in the largest chestnut tree forest in Europe. Near the Italian border, there is a fine hike up to the storybook medieval village of Soglio, with an Italianate bell tower and a castle that is now a hotel. There are cable cars up to Piz Nair and Corvatsch and a cog railway up to Muottas Muragl above Pontresina, for lunch and hikes and panoramic scenery that flows from Switzerland into Italy and Austria. On my final day in the Engadine, I took one of the mandatory local tourist hikes near the base of the mountain where the Diavolezza is perched. It was a 45-minute walk up to the terminus of the Morteratsch Glacier. The weather was overcast, cold and drizzly. The walking was easy and not crowded. At the end of the trail was the snout of the glacier, grimy in rock dust and pock-marked with stones. Hikers, ignoring warning signs about falling icebergs, poked the melting ice with umbrellas. Afterward, I took the tram up into the mist to the Diavolezza. As I finished lunch, snow began to fall. I went down the tram as the only paying passenger and boarded the train for Pontresina. This seemed a desultory way to end the trip, spending the afternoon alone in the clouds at Diavolezza and thinking about peaks I couldn’t see and trails I couldn’t hike. Now, though, I look back on that afternoon as special. There is something awesome and serene about solitude in the high mountains, even in a modern restaurant in what amounts to a fortress built on the Alpine bedrock. I remember thinking that the snowflakes that were falling then would become part of the Morteratsch Glacier. Someday, maybe someone would poke them with their umbrella down at the mouth of the glacier. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) GUIDEBOOK Entering the Engadine Getting there: Swissair flies nonstop five days a week from LAX to Zurich, the best jumping off point for the Engadine Valley area. (Monday and Saturday flights stop in Geneva. Advance purchase round-trip fares begin at $1,166. American flies direct with one stop, and United and Delta have connecting service, as do numerous European carriers. Various package deals called “Swiss Vacation Planners” can help cut the high price of flying there; call (800) 688-7947 for more information. By train from the Zurich airport to St. Moritz/Pontresina is four hours, with a change of trains in Chur. I used a Swiss Pass during my visit, which is good for all train, bus and lake steamer transportation throughout the country. As an example of price, an eight-day pass this summer costs $220 per person for second class, or $316 each for first class. When two travel together, the companion pays half-price until Oct. 31. Where to stay: The Swiss Hotel Assn. guide contains accommodation and rate information for most major hotels throughout the country, available from Switzerland Tourism (see below). The clean hotel/restaurant I stayed at that sits on a promentory in the Bernina Alps, the Diavolezza (tel. 011-41-81-842-6205, fax 011-41-81-842-6158), cost $36 for a private room last September. In Pontresina, The Hotel Garni Alvetern (tel. 011-41-81-842-6467, fax 011-41-81-842-7516), which looked promising, listed its room rates as $50-$75, including breakfast, last fall. Swiss Tourism also has information on joining the Swiss Alpine Club. For details on apartment or condo rentals, pensions and mountain huts and smaller hotels, contact local tourist offices in individual towns. Where to hike: The Pontresina tourist office has maps and information on hikes in the area, as well as all other recreational activities. More ambitious high mountain treks can be arranged through local mountain guides (contact Bergsteigerschule Pontresina, tel. 011-41-81-842-6444. Tour operators specializing in hiking trips in the region include: Ryder-Walker Alpine Adventures, tel. (970) 728-6481; Mountain Travel-Sobek, tel. (800) 227-2384 and Swiss Hike, tel. (360) 754-0978. The best hiking guide is “Walks in the Engadine” by Kev Reynolds, available from Chessler Books, $19.95; tel. (800) 654-8502. “Footloose in the Swiss Alps” by William Reifsnyder (Sierra Club, $19.95), is an excellent source on the use of mountain huts and hotels. For more information: Switzerland Tourism, 222 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 1570, El Segundo 90245, tel. (310) 640-8900, fax (310) 335-5982. Pontresina Tourist Office, Ch-7504 Pontresina, tel. 011-41-81-842-6488, fax 011-41-81-842-7996.
f5ac66ba35a4bc3b8cbc9d32382e24ed	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19889-story.html	Different Paths Through the Swiss Alps	Different Paths Through the Swiss Alps We took a dark-green train from Zurich to Chur, a bright-red train from Chur to Samedan and, finally, squeezed into a skinny, cherry rail car with wood slat seats and windows open to the warm smell of hay. The little engine whirred up to the Swiss mountain village of Pontresina and dumped us off--me, my husband, Tao, my mom and dad--hiking boots slung over our shoulders. It was summer. We had come to walk the Alpine paths while the wildflowers were in bloom. We had come to celebrate wedding anniversaries (45 years for my parents, five years for Tao and me), 30th birthdays and the end of Tao’s long nights on call as a pediatric resident. “Celebrate everything!” my parents have taken to saying as they approach their 70s. Good health! Good minds! Good teeth! All these things, still good, still here, but who knows for how long? So, Tao and I figured, why wait? We splurged. We had come to be with my parents. We had come to eat chocolate. The secret about eating chocolate in Switzerland is that you burn it off hiking. The secret about hiking in the Alps is the trains. Cog trains, chairlifts, gondolas and even horse-drawn carriages will take you to the top of many peaks. In most cases, you can also ride back down. On our first morning in Switzerland, we clambered into a funicular, a sort of vertical train, that rose gently through a fir forest before ascending steeply above the tree line into fields of gray scrabble, mossy rocks, melting snow. Mountain flowers lined stream beds and spilled out of rock crevices: Queen Anne’s lace, lavender bells, pink alpenrose, tiny blue forget-me-nots each with a dot of yellow sun, wild purple pansies no bigger than a two-franc coin. At the top, we could see the length of the Upper Engadine glacial valley: sparkling St. Moritz lake, para-sailors floating like human kites, a toy village far below. At 8,000 feet, the sun feels hot, the air cool. There are hardly any bugs. Perfect walking weather. Before we could take a step, my dad began scrounging around in his fanny pack for the chocolate. I love chocolate, especially Swiss chocolate, because it lingers smooth and elegant on the tongue. I broke off a piece. The brown and silver wrapper looked suspiciously familiar. A Hershey Bar with almonds. In Switzerland. Not only that, Dad had 23 more bars stowed in his off-brand, roll-aboard suitcase back at the hotel. He had gotten them cheap from a Chinatown sidewalk vendor while visiting my aunties in New York. I had forgotten my dad’s penchant for bulk bargains, and it made me realize how rarely I see him these days. A whole box for $5! Cheaper than one bar of Swiss Lindt chocolate! He exaggerated. He beamed. We walked. Carved wooden signs told how long it would take: Alp Languard, two hours; Pontresina, five hours; Val Roseg, all day. We crossed chalky glacial streams on boulders and plank bridges, the trails leisurely traversing the mountain, in no hurry to get anywhere. This is the big difference between the Swiss Alps and the Pacific Northwest, where we live. In the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges, most of the switchbacks zigzag fast and steep, rushing somewhere beautiful. Hiking in the Northwest, Tao and I inevitably have a destination. Usually the destination is the summit. In Switzerland, the paths amble, gaining altitude gradually. The summit is not the goal. After all, you can ride to the top. So the goal becomes the walk itself. What you see along the way. Who you are with. We were with my parents. And to my parents’ joy, we shared the paths mostly with older people, folks with white hair and curved spines, their faces speckled by the sun and lighted by beautiful smiles. “Bonjour, Guten Tag,” they greeted us. My parents smiled back, commenting on how cute and vigorous the old folks are here in Switzerland. They have lately taken to pointing out cute old folks, perhaps because they delight in the obvious contrast. My parents’ hair is still thick and black, their eyes bright, spines straight. They look a decade or two younger than 70 years and often less haggard than their own kids. But you can never tell if it’s going to be a good day for my dad’s knees. When his knees are bad, he feels his age dragging him down. My mom, at those times, seems to sag a little too. Switzerland, fortunately, is the perfect place to walk if your knees are not so good. In the Alps, every day was a good day. My parents walked for hours. They wore us out. * So the days went. We took the train to different hiking towns, often rode up, almost always walked down, ate hungrily at night, slept deeply under poofy white comforters. Zermatt. Saas-Fee. Murren. Meiringen. Interlaken. Visp. One of my favorite walks was down from Pontresina’s Val Roseg, a snowy glacier mounded like coconut ice cream on a blue plate. For four hours, strolling alongside a gurgling brook and under dappled larches, my mother talked about her old friends in Hawaii, her home 50 years ago. There was Betty, who married a rich guy who was a milquetoast, then ran off two weeks later with an Air Force pilot, dashing if you like the pomade type--and wouldn’t you know it, the milquetoast guy turned out to make a fortune in prefabricated concrete slabs--wartime, you know, they used those slabs for the air-landing slips. So Betty lost out, you see, but only because she was the type to marry for money. My mother stops to take a breath, inhales the cool glacial air. She seems so content, tromping along in her chunky suede hiking boots with the wide red laces, babbling about whatever comes to mind. I wonder why this story surfaces now, here, in Switzerland, and I am reminded that Switzerland was neutral territory during World War II. Ah, the War. Prefab concrete slabs. It is amazing, really, that we can amble happily like this for four straight hours, for two whole weeks. Since we moved to Seattle from the East Coast five years ago, we see my parents only once or twice a year. At their kitchen table in Connecticut, I nag: Watch your cholesterol! Soy sauce is pure sodium! Call the doctor about that cough! Out to dinner in Seattle, they hint--no, they demand--grandchildren. All of this has to do with the passage of time. I do not want them to pass with time. They do not want more time to pass without grandchildren. On vacation, time stops; Switzerland is neutral territory. So we step around the nagging issues and walk on. Mom talks about old times; Dad draws little pictures with magic markers; Tao recovers from residency; I eat chocolate. Mostly we all talk about food. Food is an important part of any travel, of course, but for my family, food is also memory. This is something like Proust’s madeleine, only the smells are more pungent. Fermented black beans and steaming long grain rice, spicy paella at Thanksgiving, my grand mother’s pickled watermelon rind--still good, still crunchy and still in my parents’ refrigerator five years after her death. Growing up, our meals were never bland, even when money was tight. “You can’t take it with you when you die,” my Chinese-restaurant owning grandfather used to say, “So you might as well put it in your stomach.” Food has always been my parents’ one luxury. Now, walking through Switzerland, we talk about the meals we have just eaten, collectively re-creating the tastes even while the food is still digesting. Sometimes gourmet splurges, like halibut in tomato butter with a view of Alp Hitta. Other times, heavenly street food, like charcoal-grilled bratwurst that melts on the tongue like a hot cloud. * A few days before we’re scheduled to return to the real world, Mom insists on a side trip to Lauterbrunnen to see some waterfalls. The falls are actually the convergence of three glaciers, mega-meltdown. That she wants to visit them strikes me as odd as this is not a trip for seeing the biggest, fastest, highest. But we go anyway. Trummelbach Falls are, indeed, spectacular. They corkscrew 4,620 feet down a mountain, gathering force and rock, plowing through pitted caverns. The spray makes the stone stairs slick, so as we walk, Mom clutches my arm and shouts to be heard. She is saying something about how happy she is we were all able to come on this trip together. Yes, I nod, of course, me too. I wonder if these waterfalls, the convergence of three glaciers, have some kind of special significance to my mother. A good friend once told me after her mother died that she felt some peace because even though her mother was no longer with her, in every circumstance, she knew what her mother’s reaction would have been. I will never have that kind of peace. Even when my mother is clutching my arm, shouting at me, I cannot fathom her. I know these waterfalls have nothing to do with Betty and the prefab concrete slabs, but I can’t figure out what they do mean. Perhaps Mom is seeing them as a fountain of youth? Or maybe a fertility pool? Something she read about in an old New Yorker? Or heard from one of my aunties? She shouts again, says she is glad we are hiking now, because in 10 years or so, when she and Dad hit 80, they won’t be able to do this anymore, walk the Alps like this. Probably this is the last time they will come to Switzerland, she says, “The body deteriorates as you age, you know. . . .” This is true, I know, but of course, I say, “Don’t be silly, we’ll be back, look at all these old people with their high-tech telescoping walking sticks--why, they must be in their 90s! Of course we’ll come back.” As I speak, I know in my heart that maybe we will not. Every hike comes to an end. People die. Trummelbach Falls, though, they’ll always be around. My mom knows this, and it is why, I guess, she brought us here. My mom knows that someday, perhaps way in the future, I will stumble across Trummelbach Falls while flipping through magazines at a supermarket checkout or listening to NPR in the car, and I will be reminded of this afternoon, the power of water, the relentless rush of time, how happy she was that we were all here, for a moment, together. Quickly, before Trummelbach Falls start flooding out of my eyes, I concentrate on dinner menus. Remember in Saas Fee, those green raviolis stuffed with Gorgonzola? And then, the veal! The veal in . . . wait . . . how did they prepare the veal? Was it in a cream sauce? A brown sauce? Consomme? Already I cannot remember. I feel panicked. I am afraid I will forget this trip, what it is like to be my parents’ daughter, to walk with them day by day, to argue over which train to take, to break bread and Emmentaler cheese alongside the trail. The veal of just three days ago has already slipped away. We had dessert after that. Fresh figs, candied orange rind, thin slices of fudge with walnuts. We had coffee. We had two weeks together. The memory lingers, like chocolate, sweet and dark and achingly complex. * For specific information on traveling to Pontresina and the Engadine Valley, see the Guidebook to this section’s companion story on the Engadine on L15.
a2b6567e68308a6e828fdbe5361c4379	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19890-story.html	Warning: Renovations May Cause Severe Drowsiness	Warning: Renovations May Cause Severe Drowsiness Say you’re planning a trip and trying to decide among three hotels. Judging from the guidebook entries and advertising you’ve seen, they’re just about equal. But one is bragging about something extra: It’s been renovated just this year. So now you have a winner, right? Maybe. Renovation is one of those travel-industry words with dangerously elastic definitions. Depending on who’s using it, the term can mean anything from an elaborate construction-and-design project to a cursory change of bedspreads, towels and drapes, or perhaps just a bellman leaning an ironing board in the closet and plugging in a coffee pot on a shelf. Even if a hotel has undertaken a truly major renovation project, there’s still potential peril for the unsuspecting guest. An ambitious renovation takes months, often involving disruptive noises and roped-off facilities. But hotels, ever mindful of revenue, are often reluctant to stop renting nearby rooms. Some hotels are careful to warn guests of renovations in progress; some aren’t. And among those who make the disclosure, few reduce rates. Result: Every day, many weary travelers wake to the sound of hammers and saws, or discover that a hotel restaurant is closed. Something like that happened not too long ago, in fact, to frequent traveler Josette Constantino of Heathrow, Fla. “When you got off the elevator, if you turned left, they were doing renovations. If you turned right, there was my room,” she recalls. “All I heard was pounding until about 10 o’clock at night. I finally had to call the front desk and say, ‘Enough!’ ” If you’re a hotelier, you don’t want to hear Constantino saying “Enough!” Constantino is the inspections manager for the American Automobile Assn., headquartered in Heathrow. She oversees annual evaluations of 22,000 hotels in 49 states, the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada. She and other hotel trade insiders suggest that travelers ask a series of questions when they hear the word renovation: Was this strictly a soft-goods upgrade of drapes and beddings and such, or have hard goods, such as furniture, also been replaced? Did the renovation include all guest rooms and public areas? Are all phases of the renovation complete? If not, what hotel services are curtailed? Now is a good time for those questions. During the recession of the early 1990s, hundreds of North American hotels saved money by slowing their maintenance cycles. Now hotels are reaping record profits; a recent survey by lodging analysis firm PKF Consulting found an “astonishing” 20.5% increase in hotel profits nationwide in 1995. Experts say they see a big surge of reinvestment in renovations large and small. “Most of what they call ‘renovation’ in an economy property is really just an update of soft goods--new carpets, new bedspreads and draperies,” Constantino warns. To keep guest rooms presentable, industry authorities say, most busy properties need to replace those items at least every three to five years, more frequently for high-end establishments. (Lobbies and other public areas need updating more often.) Some soft-goods upgrades are merely new orders of the same fabrics and patterns; other involve redesign work. Many hotels make their renovations gradually, working on one floor or wing at a time. The catch there is that fifth-floor guests may find their rooms plush, while sixth-floor customers, paying the same rates, find theirs tired. Less often, hotels schedule “hard goods” renovations, replacing furniture, wall treatments, televisions, other electronics, and sometimes bathroom fixtures. Bruce Baltin, a vice president at PKF Consulting, says that most hotels from the mid-range and above should be doing hard-goods renovations every seven to 10 years. Unfortunately, notes Constantino, many hotels “are spending big dollars on things like swimming pools and restaurants, and not doing anything in the guest rooms. In parts of the Midwest and Wyoming, we’re still seeing some rooms that are just 1950s. Shag carpet. That’s just unacceptable.” Major renovations, the kind that give guests the most pleasant surprises, take place when a new owner or management takes control of a hotel, when the management decides to aim for a more demanding clientele, and sometimes when a hotel chain’s officials decide that a new round of investment will boost occupancy and profits in an old property. Since 1990, for instance, Hilton has staged about $250 million in major renovations in Los Angeles (at LAX), Las Vegas, Chicago (at O’Hare airport), San Diego, Portland and Hawaii (at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island). San Francisco-based hotelier Bill Kimpton has built a West Coast empire through renovation. He finds old buildings, redesigns them from top to bottom, then reopens them as “boutique” hotels, usually with striking design and fewer than 250 rooms. One example is Kimpton’s Monaco Hotel near Union Square in San Francisco, a 1910 building that once did business as the Bellevue Hotel, then fell idle for about eight years. Spokeswoman Sara Ledoux says Kimpton and partners bought the formerly “sort of seedy” property in April 1994, spent an estimated $24 million on interior reconstruction and furnishings, and opened in June 1995, with advertised rates beginning at $145 to $170 per night.
428ea71f4391942b10a11b276decca25	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19891-story.html	Chicago Christens New Art Museum	Chicago Christens New Art Museum Chicago’s new Museum of Contemporary Art opens Tuesday in spacious digs that feature nearly seven times the square footage of the old museum plus a terraced sculpture garden, a cafe and retail space. The new structure is located downtown, just off Michigan Avenue and within walking distance of the John Hancock Center, the historic Water Tower and Chicago’s premier shopping area. In the permanent collection of art (1945 to the present), the museum features works by such artists as Alexander Calder, Rene Magritte, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. General admission to the museum, at 220 E. Chicago Ave., is $6.50 for adults, $4 for students and seniors. Hours are 11-6 Thursday through Sunday, and Tuesday; and 11-9 Wednesday. It is closed Monday. For information: (312) 280-2660.
7026d2d7cd60c9c0fb7bb01cfee1311c	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19892-story.html	The Wyndham Hotels & Resorts chain is...	The Wyndham Hotels & Resorts chain is... The Wyndham Hotels & Resorts chain is lowering its summer rates, between 21% and 56% off regular rates, at more than 65 locations in the United States and the Caribbean. The rates, starting as low as $69 a night, are for single or double occupancy and are good through Sept. 7. Children 18 and younger can stay free in the room with their parents or grandparents. Guests who pay for their stay with a MasterCard will receive a Kodak FunTime 35 camera with 12 exposures (limit one per room). Some of the facilities participating are the Wyndham Palms Springs Hotel ($79), the Wyndham Garden Hotel--Lake Buena Vista, Fla. ($74), the Wyndham Bristol Hotel in Washington, D.C., ($89) and the Wyndham Rose Hall Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica ($99). The lower rates are based on availability and do not apply to groups. Some hotels may charge extra for parking. Some blackout dates apply, depending on individual hotels. Reservations: (800) WYNDHAM. Free for the Asking Germany-bound travelers will want to get their hands on two helpful brochures and a colorful illustrated map available from tourism officials. “Welcome to Germany, Summer 1996" highlights major tourist regions, and “Magnificent Hospitality in Germany 1996/97" provides information on places to stay. Contact the German National Tourist Office, 11766 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 750, Los Angeles 90025; telephone (310) 575-9799. This Week’s Holidays Banking and government offices will be closed or services curtailed in the following countries and their dependencies this week because of national and religious holidays: Monday: Bangladesh, Botswana, British Virgin Is., Burundi, Canada, Cayman Is., Colombia, Ghana, Guatemala, Lesotho, Pakistan, Portugal, Rwanda, Somali, Suriname, Taiwan, Thailand, Zambia Tuesday: Brazil, Neth. Antilles, Zambia Wednesday: Virgin Islands Thursday: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Guam, Israel, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, Tonga, Virgin Islands, Yugoslavia Friday: Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Venezuela Saturday: Czech Rep., Lithuania Sunday: Yemen Source: J.P. Morgan
87ddc8ca39bf6ed03939f930d4f63df2	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19893-story.html	Festivals, Feasts & Fairs	Festivals, Feasts & Fairs SANTA MARIA--In its 105th year, the Santa Barbara County Fair will once again feature a full offering of live entertainment, kids’ attractions, rides and games, exhibits and livestock. This year’s fair, themed “Where Everyone’s a Winner,” is July 3-7, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. daily, at the fairgrounds at Stowell Road and Thornburg Street. $5, general; $2, kids 6-11; free for those 5 and under. (805) 925-8824. PALM DESERT--The annual Independence Day celebration is 5-9:30 p.m. at the Palm Desert Civic Center Park and the adjacent College of the Desert Practice Center. The free Fourth of July event, with the Olympic theme “Carrying the Torch for America,” has carnival games and children’s rides, entertainment on two stages, food booths (or bring a picnic) and fireworks. Fred Waring Drive. A free shuttle bus runs from the Palm Desert Town Center mall at California 111 and Monterey Avenue. (800) 873-2428. TRUCKEE--The Fourth of July isn’t just about fireworks in this community; it also means the annual Camel and Ostrich Races are coming. This year’s races are 1 p.m. July 4 and noon July 5 in McIver Arena at Truckee Regional Park. ($5, general; $3, kids 6-16 and seniors; free for children under 6.) Other holiday events include: A Fourth of July Parade at 10 a.m. downtown; fireworks at West End Beach on Donner Lake; family activities all day July 4 at West End Beach; and a downtown street dance at 9 p.m. July 5. (916) 587-2757. SAN DIEGO--The Broadway Pier is the setting for the Harbor Avenues of the Arts festival, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. July 6-7. Works by more than 50 artists, representing a marine and wildlife theme, are featured, plus artists’ demonstrations and hands-on activities for children. Free. On Broadway at Harbor Drive. (619) 239-1143. MENDOCINO--The Mendocino Music Festival once again brings classical music, jazz, dance and more to Mendocino Headlands State Park, July 9-20. Most concerts take place in the evening in the festival tent, next to the Ford House Museum. The artists at the 10th annual festival include the Arden Trio, Dimensions Dance Theatre, Spanish Soul and the Festival Chamber Orchestra. Tickets: $8-$28. (707) 937-2044.
a719dad45fc511eeb4f10a04649dc416	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19894-story.html	13 Cities on Riviera Now Forbid Begging	13 Cities on Riviera Now Forbid Begging Intent on keeping panhandlers from damaging its tourist appeal, Nice has become the 13th city on the French Riviera to ban summertime begging, the Associated Press reports. The ban, which runs through Sept. 15, makes it illegal for beggars to approach pedestrians in Nice’s downtown and certain designated neighborhoods. Twelve other cities along France’s posh Co^te d’Azur have passed similar laws. They contend that aggressive solicitation from homeless people in the area has driven away tourists. In Nice, police have been ordered not to make arrests but instead to pick up anyone caught begging and take them outside the city limits. Sometime after July 1, beggars will be offered food, bathrooms and medical attention at a shelter now being set up by the city. A week after Nice’s action, the city of Avignon, a popular tourist destination in the south of France, followed suit. Human rights groups have charged that the aim of the bans is to clear streets of the homeless rather than help them.
972232493cf37546dfadd25cadc707b3	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19895-story.html	Vegas Tops List of Tourist Destinations	Vegas Tops List of Tourist Destinations Las Vegas is expected to be the most popular destination for U.S. travelers this summer, the American Society of Travel Agents says. Among members queried in the society’s annual summer survey, 46.8% listed Las Vegas as the No. 1 place for which they were booking travel this summer. In second place was the former reigning hot spot, Orlando (28.5%), followed by New York (23.4%) and Seattle (14.6%).
04b9c51244a544db2c0a992de27e5a1d	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19896-story.html	A quiet weekend by the sea proves you can go home again. And again and again.	A quiet weekend by the sea proves you can go home again. And again and again. They say you can never go back. That the quirks of a quiet little beach town that feel familiar and quaint to a resident will only seem inconvenient or even tawdry to a tourist. So we decided to return for a weekend in Ventura, where we had lived for seven years. We headed for a wonderful little three-story motel on the water that we had always wanted to try, and determined to hit as many of our favorite spots as we could, this time as discriminating tourists. We left our Simi Valley house Friday night in two cars, because I had to work Sunday in Ventura and the Amtrak schedule didn’t meet my needs. I always like the moment on the northbound Ventura Freeway when you come to the crest of the Conejo Grade and the Oxnard Plain spreads out like a patchwork quilt of orchards, lettuce and strawberry fields. You get a glimpse of why agriculture is still the top industry in Ventura County, at least for now. If it was hot in the valleys you just drove through, about now it’s starting to cool off. We hadn’t eaten, so we stopped at Ferraro’s, an Italian family restaurant where Betty Ferraro greets customers at the door and offers them a glass of Chianti on the house as they wait for a table. Ferraro’s is not froufrou; the house Chianti has a replaceable cap, the lettuce is iceberg and the bread is packaged. But the entrees are ample, the sauce loaded with garlic and the place is kid friendly. With a container filled with four or five leftover raviolis, we headed to the Inn on the Beach, about five minutes away. Looking right past the lighted sign that said “DO NOT ENTER, TIRE DAMAGE,” I turned in the first driveway to the motel. As my husband, Mike, and our 2-year-old, Matthew, entered through the second drive and I lifted the baby out of his seat, I was surprised to hear a loud hissing noise. When I looked at my rear tire, I knew what the hissing sound was. Our third floor room was lovely, decorated in pastels and large enough that a queen bed and two cribs still left room for a small table and chairs. It was bright, with a large crescent-shaped window over the sliding glass door. And it promised a million-dollar view of the Pacific by daylight. We opened the door onto the fenced balcony and let the cool ocean breeze sweep through the room. That night, the ocean’s calming roar lulled us all into a restful sleep. Going back was going fine. The next morning, my son and I went down a floor to retrieve a glass of orange juice, a couple of cups of coffee and muffins from the complimentary continental breakfast the inn lays out each day--nothing special, but enough to take the morning edge off. Back in the room, the view from the balcony was spectacular, with the Channel Islands rising out of the ocean about 20 miles out on a clear, warm day. We took the punctured tire and headed out for a variation on what used to be our Saturday morning routine. First stop would normally have been the farmers market. But on this day, we left the car at the Four-Day Tire store at Ash and Santa Clara streets, put the kids in the stroller and walked the couple blocks down to the farmers market at Santa Clara Avenue and California Street. Ventura’s market offers dozens of vendors, selling everything from “jazzy sprouts"--that’s beans and sprouts sold by a man who plays saxophone--to organically grown lettuce and fresh pasta. The market was bustling as usual. And the fresh, cold apple juice was delicious on a warm morning. At a triangle-shaped park on the edge of the market, where the Old Time Fiddlers performed such chestnuts as “My Grandfather’s Clock,” a half a dozen kids danced to the music or romped on the grass. It was tempting to stay in the sun and pick up a pastry and coffee from Cafe Bella across the street. But we walked around the corner onto Main Street to Franky’s Place. Mike(CQ), who is a creature of habit, was relieved to see his old favorite, the Santa Fe omelet with beans and chilis still on the menu. Owner Chris Pustina was still there--part of the kitchen crew that morning, but still taking off her apron to greet customers from time to time. * A look down Main Street told us that the old downtown, which includes one of the missions founded by Junipero Serra, was even better than we remembered it. We had feared a city plan to replace the gumdrop-shaped shade trees with palms would leave the downtown looking as though it were trying to be a Santa Barbara imitation. But the young palms, the bright cloth banners advertising upcoming events and new sidewalks inlaid with brick gave downtown Ventura a cleaner and more prosperous feel. It still has plenty of thrift and antique stores, but now there are coffeehouses and even nighttime entertainment to add life. Later, while our baby slept on a blanket on the sand, we three played in the waves and sand. The water, about 65 degrees, was a little cold for a 2-year-old, but he was fascinated with a nearby fisherman. That particular stretch of beach at the end of Seaward Avenue is less crowded than other areas of San Buenaventura State Beach, but the trade-off is in outhouses instead of bathrooms. (Not a problem if your hotel is close.) There are also several restaurants nearby, including Duke’s Burgers, and Joannafina’s, both worth visiting for their food and outdoor seating. A half a mile up the coast, which you can reach with a stroll down a bike trail, is a full-service snack bar and rental shop, where a visitor can rent anything from roller-blades to wetsuits. Another half a mile farther north is the beach at the end of California Street, where there is a great playground, the Ventura Pier and a new pier restaurant now under construction. Rentals are available there too. After another restful night--even with kids in the same room--we returned to the harbor to Lorenzoni’s. There, they make a devilishly rich breakfast sandwich, with fluffy steamed eggs, avocado, tomato or ham, all stuffed in a fresh and flaky croissant. That comes with a nice little green salad for $5.95. We did our analysis there in the sun: Nice, comfortable motel--check. Fun at the beach--check. Good restaurants--check. Still quaint but not tawdry--check. You can go back, we decided. And what’s more, we will. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) Budget for Four Two nights, Inn on the Beach: $242.00 Ferraro’s: 32.40 Pierpont Inn (drinks): 8.00 Franky’s Place: 27.40 The Greek: 54.23 Lorenzoni’s: 21.50 Snacks and champagne: 20.00 Gas: 20.00 FINAL TAB: $425.53 * Inn on the Beach, 1175 S. Seaward Ave., Ventura, CA 93001; telephone 805-652-2000.
a34bc5a9f98581c67cdcb69e75955e6d	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19897-story.html	Fishing Finds	Fishing Finds Below are 10 great billfishing destinations within the U.S. as determined by the editors of Martin, the international sportfishing magazine. 1. Catalina, Calif. What’s biting: striped marlin Season: July-mid-November; peak is September and October 2. Cape May, N.J. What’s biting: white and blue marlin Season: late June-mid- October; peak is mid-August- September 3. Ocean City, Md. What’s biting: whites, blues, sailfish Season: mid-July-mid-September; peak is August. 4. Outer Banks, N.C. What’s biting: blues, whites, sailfish Season: mid- April-early October; peak is late July- August 5. West Palm Beach, Fla. What’s biting: sailfish Season: mid-December-February 6. Islamorada, Fla. What’s biting: the greatest variety and quantity of fish in North America. Season: November- April; peak is December and January 7. Pensacola, Fla. What’s biting: whites, blues and sailfish Season: May- November 8. Venice, La. What’s biting: blues Season: May- September; peak is June- August 9. Freeport, Texas What’s biting: blues Season: June- September 10. Kona, Hawaii What’s biting: blues, striped Season: year- round; peak is June- September
ff2b8f3da2ee780d32eda5cbbafeda3f	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19898-story.html	Billions and Billions of Stars in Middle East	Billions and Billions of Stars in Middle East Griffith Observatory Director Ed Krupp will lead an ancient astronomy tour to Israel, the Egyptian Sinai and Jordan, Nov. 5 to 20. Guests will visit astronomical sites amid Biblical ruins to study the Middle East’s long tradition of sky lore, astronomy and calendar-keeping. The tour will begin in Caesarea, Israel, to see a mithraeurn (an underground room simulating a cave) whose roof allowed sunlight to enter the chamber on the summer solstice; a Roman theater and the ruins of Herod’s temple. In Tiberias, participants will stop at the ancient city gate and synagogue at Tiberias Hammat to view a celestial mosaic with a depiction of the Greek sun god Helios, the 12 signs of the zodiac and the four seasons. At the Canaanite ruins of Tel Hazor, the group will see a pillared temple to Hadad, the sky god of storm and weather. Also on the itinerary is Jerusalem and the Essen settlement in Qumran, south of Jericho, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Participants will visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the hilltop fortress of Masada. In Jordan, guests will visit Petra, Madaba and Amman to see the remains of the ancient Roman city of Jerash. Cost: $5,345 per person, double occupancy, including air fare from Los Angeles, land transportation, accommodations, UCLA Extension tuition and most meals. Contact: Israel Tour, The Sciences, UCLA Extension, 10995 LeConte Ave., Suite 714, Los Angeles, CA 90024; telephone (310) 825-7093. Wine Festival Imbibe in the fifth International Wine Festival in Budapest, Hungary, Sept. 1 to 8. Participants will visit the Buda Wine Market, the Wine Exhibition and Marketplace, the opening ceremony of the exhibition, and attend a performance by the Budapest Gypsy Orchestra and the State Folk Ensemble. In Budapest, participants will take a historical city tour and visit the artists’ village of Szentendre on the Danube River. The farewell dinner at the traditional Gellert Hotel’s Duna Restaurant will be prepared by food and wine professionals. Cost: $2,215 per person, double occupancy, including round-trip air fare, six nights’ hotel accommodations, daily breakfast, two dinners, excursions and sightseeing, cultural programs and participation at the main festival events. Contact: Tradesco Tours, 6033 W. Century Blvd., Suite 670, Los Angeles, CA 90045; tel. (310) 649-5808. Southwestern Parks Cruise up Lake Powell to Rainbow Bridge National Monument on a tour that combines the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks. The tour is six nights, and leaves Oct. 20 from Southern California via motor coach. Guests will stay overnight in Laughlin and Mesquite, Nev.; Williams, Ariz.; Cedar City, Utah; and at Lake Powell in the Wahweap Lodge. Participants will also see a show at Zion National Park’s IMAX Theatre. Cost: $712 per person, double occupancy, including hotels, some meals and transportation. Contact: Main Street Tours, 1751 W. Torrance Blvd., Suite N, Torrance, CA 90501; tel. (310) 212-0791 or (800) 300-MAIN. Say, Cezanne Join members of the Palos Verdes Art Center from Aug. 23 to 27 on an art tour to Philadelphia and New York to see art exhibits. The group will view the Cezanne exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the permanent collections at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Rodin Museum and the Barnes Collection, which has one of the world’s finest collections of French Impressionist paintings. Then the group travels to New York by train for the Picasso and Portraiture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and the Winslow Homer exhibit at the Metropolitican Museum of Art. The Picasso exhibit includes 130 paintings and 100 drawings from his family’s private collection. The Homer exhibit consists of 200 pieces. Cost: $525 per person, double occupancy, including all transfers, two nights at the Wyndham Hotel in Philadelphia, two nights at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York, train to New York and admissions to all exhibits. A portion of the tour cost benefits the Palos Verdes Art Center. Air fare and most meals are not included. Contact: Sharon Ryan, Argo World Travel, 31239 Palos Verdes Drive West, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275; tel. (310) 377-0377 or (800) 651-0377. New Zealand Gardens A 12-day tour visiting private gardens and the annual floral show, the Festival of Flowers, at Christchurch, New Zealand, begins Feb. 7 and returns Feb. 17. The flower festival showcases floral displays on the river banks of the Avon. Participants will also visit the winning gardens of the citywide private garden competition. The tour also includes sightseeing within New Zealand, with visits to other public and private gardens in Auckland, Rotorua, New Plymouth, Wellington and Picton. Cost: from $2,200 per person, double occupancy, including land transportation, accommodations, all breakfasts and some meals, sightseeing and garden visits. Air fare is not included. Optional extensions are available to Sydney, Australia, before the garden tour, and to Queenstown, New Zealand, after the tour. Contact: WorldWise Travel Services, 1739 Franklin St., Suite A, Santa Monica, CA 90404; tel. (310) 829-5334. Native Americans Journeys Into American Indian Territory is offering a series of tours that take guests into several areas of the country--Oklahoma, Arizona, South Dakota and Massachusetts--to learn about the lives, past and present, of various tribes. Participants will camp in tepees and other traditional Native American houses, learn tribal dances, eat native foods, participate in ceremonies and learn traditional beliefs. The journeys are led by anthropologist Robert Vetter. Trips dates are: Massachusetts (Aug. 24 to 26), South Dakota (Sept. 5 to 10), Oklahoma (Sept. 12 to 19) and Southern Arizona (Nov. 4 to 11). Cost: from $300 per person for two-day trips and $700 to $1,200 for longer trips, including lodging, lectures, admission to all events, two meals per day and ground transportation. Transportation to the locations is not included. Contact: Robert Vetter, Journeys Into American Indian Territory, P.O. Box 929, Westhampton Beach, NY 11978; tel. (800) 458-2632 or (516) 878-8655. Equate Ecuador Explore Ecuador Aug. 17 to 24 on an eight-day journey that gives a comprehensive tour of Ecuador’s capital, Quito. Participants also take day trips to Avenue of the Volcanoes, the Ambato Market and the Equator Monument. Trips are made to the countryside to view the Andes and the crafts shops of tiny villages. Cost: $1,483 per person, double occupancy, including round-trip air fare from Los Angeles, accommodations, most meals and land tours. Extension tours to the Galapagos Islands are available at additional cost. Contact: Foley Travel, 4037 Governor Drive, San Diego, CA 92122; tel. (714) 457-2727. Ozarks By Rail Travel by private train through the Ozarks during the fall foliage season on a rail tour Oct. 23 to Nov. 2. The train will travel only during the day, with each night spent at hotels along the route. The itinerary includes a two-day visit to Branson, Mo., to attend shows. The private train originates in St. Louis, and, for the first two days of the tour, will be pulled by a vintage steam locomotive built in 1944. From St. Louis, the train travels south along the Mississippi River, pausing overnight in Poplar Bluff, Mo., and Little Rock, Ark. The train then continues over the scenic White River route through northwestern Arkansas to Branson, then to Kansas City, Mo. Cost: $2,095 per person, double occupancy, including air travel, sightseeing, five shows in Branson, 19 meals, lodging, luggage handling and transfers. Contact: Mountain Outin’ Tours, P.O. Box 70; East Irvine, CA 92650; tel. (800) 844-3985. The Times is not responsible for changes in prices, dates or itineraries. These should be confirmed with cruise lines, travel agents or tour operators.
6e573a935cdc447882cba9f89b2edd3e	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19899-story.html	Wolf Watching	Wolf Watching The spotting scope is aimed like a compact machine gun at the northern slopes of the Lamar Valley, and I, the hapless gunner, am swiveling it around. Trying to find a focus on anything, I wave it back and forth in ever-widening arcs, a full 90 degrees. My companions duck. What’s that I see? A wolf? No, it’s the flecked hat of an obstetrician from Salt Lake City. She’s one of about a dozen of us on an organized wolf hunt through the wilderness. There can be no guarantee of what we’ll see--the wolves are wild and show up when they feel like it--but for my money, it’s worth the chance. At worst, I’ll have to settle for merely seeing shaggy bison, coyotes, bald eagles and elk in the wild, pine-fringed Lamar valley. Wolves were once commonplace in and around Yellowstone, but from the 1880s on, settlers, hunters and even tourists considered them a nuisance. They were systematically eliminated, not just by ranchers but also by a federal program favoring livestock. A 1978 study concluded that despite occasional reports of wolf sightings, the species, canis lupus, had actually been absent from Yellowstone since the 1920s. But in 1995, after a 20-year campaign to restore what wildlife advocates claimed was an essential predator to the Yellowstone ecosystem, 14 Canadian wolves were transplanted to pens in the park and, after an acclimation period, released. In January 1996, 11 more transplants joined them. Local ranchers complained that the wolves were certain to wander out of the park into areas where sheep and cattle would be a convenient and compliant form of fast food. And they were right--the wolves have indeed toured non-park areas of Montana, dining now and then on leg of lamb--but the protests failed to stop the introduction. Packs are now roaming the Yellowstone wilds, and at least four wolf dens are reported to have had new litters this spring. Park officials estimate that, despite a small number of wolf fatalities, there are now 40 or more wolves in Yellowstone, a total difficult to confirm given the elusive nature of the animal. Even with the apparently successful wolf reintroduction in progress, wolves are not nearly as commonplace in the Northern Rockies as they were 80 years ago; nor will the shy creatures probably ever stroll down the road like Yellowstone’s lackadaisical bison. My companions and I have improved our chances of seeing the wolves by taking the Yellowstone Institute course “Yellowstone’s Wolves” from Jim Halfpenny, a biologist of renowned tracking skills, but he’s making no promises. For a few months last summer, wolves put on a show every day just across the Lamar River, and tourists could pull their Chevys over and watch. But we’re not having that kind of luck today. Now, in early spring, it’s harder to find them, and we’re squinting at specks on distant knolls, shifting shapes among the trees. We’re lined up along the Lamar Valley road like a spotting scope firing squad, trying to get a glimpse of a pack that is rumored to be in this area. No one was surprised last year when wolf T-shirts began selling in park stores like ice cream in August. Wolf reintroduction had been hashed over in magazines and newspapers nationwide, and the animal had become a symbol of wildness resurgent, like the grizzly bear. Also like grizzlies, the wolves were not expected to make public appearances. They would likely disappear, biologists said, into the deep wilderness of the Yellowstone plateau, into wild country that sees only a handful of the 3 million visitors who come to the park each year. That suited the biologists just fine. They hoped the furor in the ranching community would quiet down, and the furry Canadian immigrants could begin making new lives out of sight in the back country. As it turned out, that’s not exactly what happened. * The Lamar Valley is in the northeast corner of Yellowstone, with a river running through it and a little-used road that runs out of the park to the small mountain towns of Red Lodge and Cooke City, Mont. The valley is wide and long, with grassy bottoms and forested edges running east to west. A bison herd grazes on the south side, across the river from the road. Elk wander about. Eagles fly, coyotes amble. Bighorn sheep sometimes show up on the crags. Last summer, when the wolves emerged from the woods on the south side of the valley, most of the other wildlife reacted indifferently. The exception was the coyotes, who moved from being the No. 1 elk predator to being No. 2, and now must defer to the wolves, according to biologist Bob Crabtree. There was some hunting by the wolves, but more cavorting. “The predominant behavior we saw was play,” said Rick McIntyre, a National Park Service ranger. “The yearlings were chasing each other, ambushing, having a good time.” It was just what tourists want to see. Cars began to stop along the road; a few at first, and then word got around. Soon there were hundreds. The park had no plan, and no funding, for managing wolf-watchers, but the tourists handled themselves well. “There seemed to be an ethical sense among them. If someone left the main group to walk closer, they would get yelled at,” said McIntyre, who volunteered to keep an eye on things. Late in July, the wolves began departing Lamar, heading into the mountains in search of food, trailing an elk herd’s seasonal migration. “Wolves are, plain and simple, killers,” said Doug Smith, the biologist who oversees the park’s wolf program. Smith was talking to my group in the headquarters of the Yellowstone Institute, a three-room building in the northeast corner of the park, where guests meet and talk. An active pack, for example, may kill about one elk a day. It might also kill an occasional coyote. Yellowstone’s wolves have never been known to attack people, but this is also the land of bison and grizzlies, which can be aggressive when humans enter their space. So if you leave well-traveled areas, consult park rangers about dangers and precautions. For biologists, this is an unprecedented opportunity, watching a species learn how to survive in a new habitat. There are plenty of surprises as the wolves shift about, form new packs and kill off excess elk. Just last week, a wolf died from injuries caused in an attack by another wolf pack, possibly over a territorial dispute, according to rangers. Whenever the weather allows, biologists track the various wolf groups from an airplane. (Some of the wolves also wear unobtrusive radio collars). The Rose Creek Pack, deemed most likely to appear in our spotting scopes, has an interesting history. Released in 1995, a group of three (two females and a male) moved north, out of the park toward Red Lodge. The younger female went off on her own and the other female became pregnant. Just before the eight pups were born, the male was found shot dead, and the female gave birth out in the open, instead of in a den. Biologists, who had vowed not to intervene, decided to. They brought the female and her brood back to the park, and the pups started life in an acclimation pen. After their release, one was hit and killed by a delivery truck, but the others have grown up to form a very active pack, killing about one elk a day, Halfpenny said. Yellowstone Institute program participants sleep in a cluster of old cabins tucked to one side of the Lamar Valley, miles away from the crowds that line up to see Old Faithful’s performances. It’s a bit spartan, but this is a hardy group, quite knowledgeable and ready to brave the elements. During our three-day visit, my group and I had lessons in tracking from Halfpenny, a lecture by Smith and treks around the valley in search of wolves. Not surprisingly, the $115 wolf classes are among the most popular items in the institute catalog, which offers dozens of classes and tours--everything from bird sound identification to the history of Yellowstone exploration. * Later, we were back at the institute, where Halfpenny put on a demonstration of coyote and wolf gaits more acrobatic than a between-the-legs dribble. It was almost enough to make me forget that I hadn’t seen a wolf. Almost, but not quite, certainly not with my 11-year-old son along to remind me with the tactlessness of youth that the whole point of this trip was to see a wolf. Earlier in the day, a woman in the group had described her most thrilling adventure in the wild when she stumbled on an elk carcass marked with signs of a grizzly bear attack. She described how the grizzly must have taken down the elk, and added, with an expression both dazzled and befuddled, “It was the greatest thing I almost saw.” My son rolled his eyes. Several different vendors in Yellowstone offer guided journeys into wolf country. Most of the organized tours are booked up for the summer (call for cancellations, just in case), but winter tours are offered and it is possible to spot wolves on your own. To help increase the odds, rangers recommend calling the park’s wolf hotline ([307] 344-2240) for the latest wolf-sighting information. In June 1996, wolves were appearing to dozens of viewers on the slopes north of the Lamar River, along Slough Creek (ask a ranger for directions or look for a crowd of spotting scopes). Wolves usually rest or sunbathe in the afternoon; the best viewing times for action are usually early morning or evening twilight. * Like the Yellowstone food chain, there is a hierarchy of wolf tourism too. At the simplest level is a three-hour, winter wildlife bus tour offered Wednesdays by Amfac Parks & Resorts ($13 adults), the company that manages park hotels and some of the campgrounds. Guests board a bus at Mammoth Hotel for the journey into the Lamar Valley. The driver is also the guide who may offer intriguing tidbits of information, such as the fact that coyotes follow bison around in snow because bison are so heavy their hooves plunge through underground mouse trails, sending mice scurrying from their hiding places. There is much to see, even from a bus. Coyotes tug at a bison carcass; a bald eagle sits poised on a snag along the river; elk stroll in front of the bus. But you’ll learn a lot and spend even more time outdoors, if you take Halfpenny’s classes at the Yellowstone Institute. His wolf classes book up quickly (the first available openings are for 1997) and it’s easy to see why. He is a biologist of world renown, infused with adrenaline from this landmark reintroduction. He pursues his research projects independently, but agency scientists such as Doug Smith respect him and show up during his courses. The institute sends a lengthy clothing list, and it’s a good thing--some of the classes are winter/spring field events and the weather can go from hot sun to blizzard in a wink. Some light hiking or skiing or snowshoeing may be involved, but there’s nothing to discourage a guest list that appears to be largely people over 40. Whatever their age, institute patrons seem to enjoy the simple, hostel-like facilities--they are an adventurous and friendly lot, and notice when someone (don’t ask me who) forgets to bring his own food. For those who can’t admit that they’re taking a vacation, Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies out of Bozeman offers nine-day work/study programs on the canines of Yellowstone. Biologist Crabtree’s nonprofit institute has a number of ongoing studies, and he incorporates groups of students and so-called ecological adventurers into the fieldwork. In return, students pay for the privilege of data-gathering. YES’ “Wild Dogs of Yellowstone” course ($1,295 per person) focuses on the impact reintroduced wolves have on coyotes and red foxes, their smaller cousins. Participants hike to key vantage points (or ski and snowshoe in the winter) and watch whatever the members of the dog family are up to: eating, playing, howling and courtship. The emphasis is on coyotes, but Crabtree’s researchers have made some key observations of wolf behavior; these are bona fide scientific expeditions. Of course, no one can promise you a wolf, because wildlife doesn’t make appointments. To protect themselves, guides in Yellowstone will downplay the canines--and the park isn’t exactly stripped of attractions without them. But in a candid moment, Halfpenny admitted, “Hey, if you see the wolves, I’m off the hook, aren’t I?” Correct, Jim. Once we’ve seen that gray, yellow-eyed creature going about his business, we could spend the rest of the weekend playing Monopoly--for all anyone cares--and still go home talking about the experience of a lifetime. Like so many of life’s adventures, it works best to approach it with patience and without rigid expectations, knowing that there is much to see and learn even if you don’t see a wolf. Nature seems to respond to that attitude, and when wolves reveal themselves, as they did to my son and me, you feel blessed and humbled. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) GUIDEBOOK Wolf Tracking Getting there: Fly Delta or Alaska, connecting service only, to Bozeman, Mont. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at about $300. In Bozeman, rent a car for the 100-mile drive to Yellowstone National Park. Tour operators: Amfac Parks & Resorts, 14001 E. Iliff Ave., Suite 600, Aurora, CO 80014; telephone (303) 297-2757. The Yellowstone Institute, P.O. Box 117, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190; tel. (307) 344-2294. Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies, P.O. Box 6640, Bozeman, MT 59771; tel. (406) 587-7758. Where to stay: The most famous hotel in Yellowstone, the Old Faithful Inn, is just 100 yards away from Old Faithful geyser. For reservations: Amfac Parks & Resorts. For more information: Wyoming Travel Commission, I-25 at College Drive, Cheyenne, WY 82002; tel. (800) 225-5996 or (307) 777-7777.
052a3cb5d5afceaffa15993556d9a165	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19901-story.html	Explosion, Collapse and a Lake	Explosion, Collapse and a Lake If old Mt. Manzama had oozed instead of erupted, there would be no Crater Lake. But 7,000 years ago, the big mountain (Oregon’s largest, some geologists believe) blew up big time, resulting in a crater, a lake and a national park. The cataclysm was a long time coming. Volcanic material had been building up in Mt. Manzama for half a million years before exploding with a force estimated to be 50 times that of its more recently active Cascade cousin, Mt. St. Helens. After a hellacious firestorm, the volcano’s walls collapsed. The resultant six-mile wide caldera gathered rain and snowmelt, and eventually filled to a depth of 1,932 feet. Today, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in America and the seventh-deepest lake in the world. Because the huge, mesmerizingly blue oval has no inlets or outlets, and because not much vegetation grows along its shores, little organic material enters it. The lake has a clarity that amazes. Sun rays can actually penetrate 400 feet below the water’s surface, causing algae to grow. Crater Lake’s depth is one reason why it is such a resplendent blue. Another reason has to do with the physics of light waves: Longer light waves in the red, green and yellow part of the spectrum are more readily absorbed near the lake’s surface than are the shorter blue-hued light waves, which penetrate farther into the lake to color the water molecules. Pick your blue--azure, aquamarine or cobalt--or simply conclude that Crater Lake has a blueness beyond words. For more than half a century, the biggest disappointment to Pacific Crest Trail hikers was that the famed path (33 miles through the park) offered no views of the big, blue lake. (Here was the rare national park where driving was a better way to see it than hiking.) In 1994, a new length of the PCT was built on the crater’s rim, and it delivers the long-sought lake views. As more hikers discover it, this new beautiful stretch of trail will probably become the park’s premier footpath. If you can’t spare the time to walk all of the new stretch of the PCT or just can’t wait to get to those lake views, I recommend beginning your walk at Rim Village. The PCT leads through a forest of white bark pine and mountain hemlock while serving up glorious panoramas of the water-filled caldera. Two must-see attractions on the lake rim are visited by the trail--Discovery Point and Watchman Peak. From Rim Village, PCT uses an old roadbed constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1916; this road was the park’s first Rim Drive until the present road was relocated farther away from the rim in the 1930s. At Discovery Point, a plaque honors prospector John Hillman, first explorer to see Crater Lake in 1853. PCT follows the rim to the shoulder of Watchman Peak. Join switchbacking Watchman Lookout Trail for the steep ascent to the summit. (Watchman is in the snow belt, and sometimes snow keeps this trail closed until late July or until the park trail crew can clear a route to the top.) The old fire lookout, built in 1932, offers great views of the lake and surrounding back country. Interpretive panels help to identify park landmarks. Access: Begin from the trail head at the west edge of Rim Village. * An equally memorable walk in the park is the one on Wizard Island, a small volcano dome thrusting up in the western corner of the lake. To take this walk, you must endure two more pleasures--a hike from the crater’s rim down to the Cleetwood Cove boat landing and a fun boat tour of the lake that drops off hikers on Wizard Island. Cleetwood Trail, even if it didn’t lead to the tour boat dock, would be a popular trail because it’s the only one that leads to the lake. Expect company: About 500 people a day descend the mile-long trail to Cleetwood Cove. While the path begins on one of the lowest routes on the crater rim, it’s nevertheless quite steep. The path drops down slopes forested in Shasta red fir and mountain hemlock, offering lake vistas from occasional openings in the forest. At the trail’s end is the boat dock and a lakeside picnic area. During the summer months, two-hour guided boat tours embark from Cleetwood Cove. The concessionaire-operated tours depart on the hour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from early July to early September, weather permitting. Tour boats circle the water-filled caldera and stop at Wizard Island, where you can disembark. Remain on the island until the next tour boat or the last tour boat of the day. Wizard Island may have been named for its resemblance to a sorcerer’s cap, but Crater Island would be a more appropriate name. The isle is a true crater (a small opening through which lava erupts); Crater Lake, in contrast, is a collapse-caused depression known as a caldera. From the Wizard Island boat dock, the trail climbs for a few hundred yards, then forks. The left fork leads a half-mile over lava blocks to Fumarole Bay, a popular, but extremely cold (55 Fahrenheit or less) swim spot. The right fork switchbacks its way past scattered white bark pine to the summit of the circular cinder cone. Crater Lake views from the island summit are memorable. Access: Follow Rim Drive 4 1/2 miles east from the north Rim Road junction to the large Cleetwood Cove trail head parking area. (Note that Rim Drive becomes a one-way road just east of this parking lot.) (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) Pacific Crest, Cleetwood Cove, Wizard Island Trails Where: Crater Lake National Park Distance: Rim Village to Discovery Point is 2.6 miles round trip; to Watchman Lookout is 5 miles round trip. Terrain: Rim of ancient volcano. Highlights: America’s deepest lake, Oregon’s only national park. Degree of Difficulty: Moderate Precautions: Snow often lingers through July; use caution on crater rim. For More Information: Crater Lake National Park, Box 7, Crater Lake, OR 97604; tel. (503) 594-2211.
61d246a773496babcd877ac752595ede	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19902-story.html	On the Bus, By the Bus, For the Bus	On the Bus, By the Bus, For the Bus If you’re the type of traveler who needs an exact itinerary, guaranteed arrival times and privacy, Green Tortoise probably isn’t the bus tour company for you. However, if you’re flexible and informal, it may just suit your style and budget. Green Tortoise describes its U.S. and Mexico tours as self-service vacations for adventurous people. The buses carry up to 38 passengers, who average 20 to 35 years old. During the day, the passengers ride the buses, making stops to cook, swim, explore caves, climb mountains, raft, hike and visit towns. At night, they sleep on the bus on thick, foam mattresses fitted with sheets. If the bus is not traveling that night, passengers can camp in the wilderness. San Francisco is the departure point for most of the tours. Green Tortoise maintains a guest house at 494 Broadway; dormitory beds are $12 to $15 and double rooms, $29 to $36. They also maintain a hostel in Seattle at 715 2nd Ave. North. Coast-to-coast tours between San Francisco and New York or Boston are from $279 to $379 one way, plus money to put toward group meals, and range from 10 to 14 days. The eastbound route will operate until Sept. 27; the last westbound departure is Oct. 16. Green Tortoise transportation between San Francisco and Seattle costs $49 one way. Between San Francisco and Los Angeles, it’s $30 one way. Rates may rise during the peak summer schedule. Three-day Green Tortoise trips from San Francisco to Yosemite this summer or fall are $99, plus $21 for the food kitty. Six-day Northern California Redwoods and Parks Loop tours are $199, plus $51 for the food fund. Nine-day Grand Canyon adventures are $329, plus $71 for food. There are also several departures on a 16-day National Parks Loop tour that departs San Francisco and visits Idaho, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Monument Valley, Lake Mojave, Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park. The tour includes rafting on the Colorado River. The price is $499, plus $121 for the food fund. A 30-day Alaska expedition departs San Francisco July 26; cost is $1,500, plus $250 for a food fund. This fall there will be nine- and 14-day Baja California tours--$249 and $349, plus $51 or $71 for the food kitty, respectively. More information is available from Green Tortoise Adventure Travel at 494 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 91433; telephone (800) 867-8647. * The publishers of the “Let’s Go” guidebooks, which are researched annually by Harvard and Radcliffe college students, have introduced six map guides that are now available in bigger bookstores. The cities covered are Boston, London, Paris, San Francisco, New York City and Washington, D.C. The 20-to-36-page pocket pamphlets include fold-out regional, city and transportation maps, plus overviews of entertainment, sightseeing, restaurants and accommodations. They are lighter and smaller to carry than guidebooks, but not as comprehensive. For example, the “Let’s Go Map Guide to London,” which sells for $7.95, includes 36 pages packed with details on what to see, how to get around, entertainment and restaurants, but it offers only six suggestions for budget accommodations in one of the most expensive cities in the world. In comparison, the 672-page “Let’s Go: Britain and Ireland” costs $16.99 and includes 60 suggestions for economical lodgings in London.
9b7fc8e204bf9d007fb8faf9585dfd2d	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19903-story.html	Discounts, Freebies Are Calling	Discounts, Freebies Are Calling The Handlery Hotel in San Diego has created a Young at Heart senior program that offers a discount package with the following: lodging for two for $99 per night (regular rate is $188); tickets for the Old Town Trolley (valued at $16 per person); a water aerobics class; tickets to a first-run movie, including beverage and popcorn, at a nearby theater complex; continental breakfast; and cookies and milk at bedtime. The offer is valid through Dec. 31 on a space-available basis. Tickets for other popular San Diego attractions, many of which offer senior discounts, can be secured by the hotel on request. For reservations and information, call (800) 676-6567. * The Sheridan Inn, in Escondido in North San Diego County, offers discounts for guests over 55. Double rooms with two queen beds are $55 (regular rates range from $59 to $64). Prices include breakfast daily, plus a selection of cookies, coffee or tea each evening (Sunday through Thursday) at 8. Guests can also borrow video movies for free. For brochure or reservations, call (800) 258-8527. * Thundercloud Resort at Big Bear Lake is offering discounts to seniors for stays of one week or more. A standard guest room that accommodates four with two queen-size beds is priced at $295 per week or about $42 per day. Family suites, which include fireplaces and kitchens, are priced at $470 for one week. The offer is valid through Sept. 30 on a space-available basis. For information, call (800) 732-5386. * The Butterfield Bed & Breakfast Inn, located in the old gold mining town of Julian, 160 miles south of Los Angeles, is offering a senior package for members of the American Assn. of Retired Persons or travelers over 50. The package includes a suite with fireplace for two nights, full breakfast, dinner for two in the Julian Grille and a country carriage ride. The regular price for this package is $330 for two, but is reduced to $199 Sunday through Thursday. Add $130 for weekends. For a brochure or reservations, call (619) 765-2179. * Senior visitors to Northern California’s South Bay area will receive 10 days of free parking at the Villa Hotel in San Mateo in addition to discounts on hotel rates. San Mateo is adjacent to San Francisco International Airport. Seniors over 55 also receive a free continental breakfast and airport shuttle service. For a brochure or reservations, call (800) 341-2345.
3766adfcabf27bfcd8431d3a9a3f4091	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19905-story.html	A Flowery Ride	A Flowery Ride Friends and I recently visited Lompoc to ride the Ocean Avenue bike path mentioned by Maria La Ganga (“Full Flower Power,” May 26). The 10-mile ride through the flower fields is fun, and you don’t have to be in shape for the Tour de France to make it all the way to the beach. The road is flat, with a constant ocean breeze to keep you from getting overheated. The scenery is rustic and magnificent. Unfortunately, we were stopped four miles from our destination by a roadblock. The military was launching a Titan missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base. [But] we were rewarded with the awesome sight of the missile as it roared over the mountains. A word of caution for parents: The breeze from the beach makes for a constant head wind when riding toward the ocean. The winds plus a 20-mile round trip could be too much for little children. BLAINE SMITH Los Angeles
667f66224e7d0be0abefb4660e6236f1	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19907-story.html	Rosarito, Again	Rosarito, Again Regarding Cecelia Hubbard’s letter defending Rosarito Beach Hotel (Letters, June 9): We went for a long weekend but lasted only one night. The room was dirty, the food was greasy and the service stank. Also, there was a strange odor in the lobby. When we went to dinner, we discovered that the odor came from the kitchen. We travel often and we travel well. We know what’s good, and Rosarito Beach Hotel isn’t. SUSAN REVIT Playa del Rey
4fa79bfc9f88a149f9c3f988b8186c61	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tr-19908-story.html	Strangers on a Train	Strangers on a Train Can you stand one more anecdote on whether to talk to strangers on trains? More than a decade ago, on a train ride through Belgium, my parents and I struck up a conversation with an older woman from Rotterdam. She spoke beautiful English with a hint of a clipped British accent. After a lively chat, she rose for her stop and noted, “If I sit with you another hour, I’ll be speaking bloody American.” ANNE RIFFENBURGH South Pasadena
2cb02ccaa6d237a7c40ad448fba456e1	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tv-19787-story.html	Bagdad Cafe (Showtime Tuesday at 5 p.m.)...	Bagdad Cafe (Showtime Tuesday at 5 p.m.)... Bagdad Cafe (Showtime Tuesday at 5 p.m.) Percy Adlon’s adorable 1987 comic fable set in a ramshackle motel-restaurant on the edge of the Mojave Desert features a triumphant teaming of of the Rubenesque Marianne Sagebrecht as a stranded German tourist and the formidable C.C.H. Pounder, as the cafe and motel’s proprietor. With Jack Palance as a memorably comic permanent guest of the motel. The Love Parade (AMC Monday at 12:15 a.m.) Jeanette MacDonald made her 1929 film debut in this lively, sophisticated Ernst Lubitsch-directed Ruritanian operetta, which teamed her with Maurice Chevalier. Singer Lillian Roth and comedian Lupino Lane are the film’s notable second leads.
e054508597cb836446a0cbf14fcf2c7f	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tv-19788-story.html	For the Boys (CBS Sunday at 8...	For the Boys (CBS Sunday at 8... For the Boys (CBS Sunday at 8 p.m.), a rousing story of a pair of star USO performers, played by Bette Midler, nominated for best actress, and James Caan pulls out every stop imaginable. Midler’s singing is terrific, but the 1991 film, entertaining as it often is, tends to go over the top. Whispers in the Dark (ABC Monday at 9 p.m.) stars Annabella Sciorra as a psychiatrist so turned on by her patient’s sexual fantasies that the steaminess heats up her own life. But this analyst is such a dull, passive reactor that you can’t figure out what writer-director Christopher Crowe has in mind in this 1992 release. With Anthony LaPaglia, impressive as a crazed cop. Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing (KCOP Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 5:30 p.m.) announced the coming of age of an important film maker with something urgent and uncomfortable to say. On the hottest day of summer and against the faintly surreal backdrop of one small neighborhood in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant area, writer-director Lee has created a series of abrasive incidents, trivial by themselves, that, combined with soaring heat and in a climate of oppressiveness, finally ignite. Swoon (KCET Friday at 11 p.m.), Tom Kalin’s 1992 historic-erotic picture of the 1924 Loeb-Leopold murder case succeeds with the microcosm bringing to life the thrill-kill pair and their dangerous liaisons but gets more strained and arch when it switches to the macrocosm: the homophobic social prejudices unleashed by their capture and trial. Part 2 of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 Olympia (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.), the great, eternally controversial documentary on the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Hitler’s Germany, concentrates on the less popular sports. A work of poetic visual splendor, the film captures the self-control, endurance and strength of the athletes.
0d064dc06b1c1063c0af695993c8b8f8	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tv-19798-story.html	SHOWS FOR YOUNGSTERS AND THEIR PARENTS TOO : ‘Popeye’ visits TBS; the Fourth comes alive on Disney; A new friend for WB’s ‘The Parent ‘Hood’	SHOWS FOR YOUNGSTERS AND THEIR PARENTS TOO : ‘Popeye’ visits TBS; the Fourth comes alive on Disney; A new friend for WB’s ‘The Parent ‘Hood’ Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, Ray Walston and Paul Dooley star in Popeye (TBS, Sunday at 9:50 a.m.), a 1980 musical about the famous sailor from the comic strip. Directed by Robert Altman and featuring songs by Harry Nilsson, the film has Popeye going to the village of Sweethaven in search of his father. For ages 5 and up. ** Following the live-action version, TBS presents A Popeye Special (12:20 p.m. Sunday), a mini-marathon of Popeye cartoons. For the family. The Disney Channel offers A Far Off Place at (Sunday at 7 p.m.), about a game warden’s daughter, a city boy and a native Bushman making their way across the African desert to escape murderous poachers. For ages 10 and up. In “The Paw That Rocks the Cradle” on The Parent ‘Hood (WB, Sunday at 7:30 p.m.), Nicholas has everybody worried because he is constantly talking to an invisible friend. Robert agrees to let him keep a stray dog, hoping it will replace his imaginary friend. Singer Nancy Wilson guest stars as a school psychologist. For ages 10 and up. ** The Disney Channel celebrates Independence Day on Thursday in a variety of ways: A rabbit fights for justice and saves the world from evil in The Adventures of the American Rabbit at 1 p.m. The super-bunny is a superhero on roller skates. For ages 5 and up. All About The Statue of Liberty at 2:20 p.m. is a collection of live action, animation and still photography featuring children’s opinions about Lady Liberty. For ages 5 and up. America’s folk heroes are saluted in Festival of Folk Heroes at 2:30 p.m. For the family. The Statue of Liberty comes alive for a 10-year-old boy bored with school in My Friend Liberty, at 5 p.m. Johnny goes on a dream adventure when the Statue of Liberty comes to life and leads him on a historical tour of New York. For the family.
273ef64784d081ebf4dc77487f665ac9	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tv-19855-story.html	Four-Star Films : ‘Love Me Tonight’	Four-Star Films : ‘Love Me Tonight’ The opening sequence of Rouben Mamoulian’s exquisite 1932 landmark film, regarded as the first screen musical in which songs and dramatic action are truly integrated, exemplifies why Mamoulian was one of Hollywood’s major innovators and stylists. The film begins with a symphony of sounds and images of Paris at dawn. By the time Maurice Chevalier (center) opens his tailor’s shop and sings--a little later on--Rodgers and Hart’s “Isn’t It Romantic?,” the refrains repeating and building until we reach the balcony of late-sleeping princess Jeanette MacDonald (right), who completes the song, Mamoulian has transported us to a world in which everything is possible--even a princess falling in love with a tailor. With Myrna Loy (left) (AMC early Wednesday at 12:15 a.m.) Other selected four-star films airing this week: America, America / Bravo, Monday, 9 a.m. and Saturday, 8 a.m. A Hard Day’s Night / AMC, Monday, 7:30 p.m. Follow the Fleet / AMC, early Tuesday, 2:15 a.m. A Matter of Life and Death / Bravo, Wednesday, 5 and 11 p.m.; Thursday, 11:15 a.m. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance / TNT, Thursday, 6:30 p.m. Ride the High Country / TNT, Saturday, 10 a.m.
d54df31154a67dd47d6d3aae0092b872	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tv-19856-story.html	‘Wigstock: The Movie’	‘Wigstock: The Movie’ Part concert film, part documentary and totally fun, Barry Shils’ 1995 release captures the good cheer, outrageous humor and high energy of downtown Manhattan’s annual Labor Day “drag” extravaganza. Among the countless entertainers are the musical trio Deee-Lite, L.A.'s Jackie Beat, RuPaul (pictured) and recording artist Crystal Waters (Cinemax early Monday at 3:10 a.m.).
2758383dc0d3eaf56c6974e389b878c7	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tv-19857-story.html	‘An Awfully Big Adventure’	‘An Awfully Big Adventure’ Based on the Beryl Bainbridge novel, this 1995 British film has its share of life-in-the-theater shenanigans, and some of them are flavorful. Set in 1947 Liverpool, it’s about stage-struck 16-year-old Stella (Georgina Cates, right), who becomes an assistant stage manager for a theater company run by the imperially effete Meredith Potter (Hugh Grant, left). Peter Firth (center) also appears. (Cinemax Wednesday at 11:30 p.m.).
af4aa11ed6ecc937c661ccd2c88a53ab	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-30-tv-19858-story.html	‘Clueless’	‘Clueless’ Effervescent, unflappable and supremely pleased with herself, Cher (delightfully played by Alicia Silverstone, left with Stacey Dash) is the comic centerpiece of “Clueless,” a wickedly funny 1995 teen-age farce from writer-director Amy Heckerling that, like its heroine, turns out to have more to it than anyone could anticipate. “Clueless” is a shrewd modern reworking of some of the themes and plot lines of Jane Austen’s beloved “Emma.” (HBO Saturday at 8 p.m.).
50c1321b2661811510c03af85a928397	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-03-mn-20778-story.html	Man Won’t Be Retried in Repressed Memory Case	Man Won’t Be Retried in Repressed Memory Case Six years after his daughter’s recovered memory helped convict George Franklin Sr. of murdering her childhood friend, San Mateo County prosecutors announced Tuesday that Franklin will be set free today because they do not have enough evidence to retry him for the 1969 murder. San Mateo County Dist. Atty. Jim Fox told reporters that his decision not to retry Franklin after an appellate court judge threw out his 1990 conviction last year was “very difficult.” Prosecutors still believe Eileen Franklin-Lipsker’s recollection of the murder, Fox said, but “do not believe we could meet our burden in a jury trial.” Franklin’s attorney, Douglas Horngrad, said the prosecutor’s decision vindicates his client, who has always maintained his innocence. “George has been in prison or jail for six years, seven months and four days” since his arrest, Horngrad said. “It is an absolute travesty and a tragedy. George is going to get out of jail tomorrow and put his life back together. This has been a Kafkaesque experience for him.” Horngrad declined to say whether Franklin will file suit against the state for wrongful imprisonment, but said his client will “consider all his options” after taking some time to put his life back together. Prosecutors said that testimony given by Janice Franklin, Eileen’s sister, in a court hearing last month was particularly damaging to their case. Janice Franklin said that she and her sister had been hypnotized before their father’s trial to enhance their memories of events surrounding the death. In 1989, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker, then 29, told investigators that she had suddenly remembered watching her father molest and murder 8-year-old Susan Nason, who lived on the same block in Foster City as the Franklin family. Franklin-Lipsker said her father picked her and Susan up in his Volkswagen van in September 1969 and drove them to a remote spot. There, Franklin-Lipsker recalled, her father molested Susan in the back of the van before smashing the girl’s head with a rock because she would not stop crying. Susan’s body was discovered three months after she disappeared, under a mattress near a reservoir several miles from her home. In dramatic testimony, Franklin-Lipsker said that the memory of the incident returned to her as she watched her own daughter, who was close to Susan’s age, at play in their Canoga Park home in 1989. Largely on the basis of Franklin-Lipsker’s memory of the crime, Franklin was convicted of first-degree murder in 1990 and sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole. It was the first time that repressed memory testimony was used to convict someone of a crime. Such memories have since come under widespread criticism as unreliable, and psychology experts are bitterly divided over their authenticity. The case against Franklin began to unravel in April 1995, when U.S. District Court Judge Lowell Jensen overturned his conviction, saying he had been denied a fair trial. Jensen faulted the trial judge, Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Smith, for refusing to let defense attorneys introduce newspaper articles about Susan’s murder that they said could have provided Franklin-Lipsker with details of the crime that she later claimed to have dredged from repressed childhood memories. Jensen also said that Smith should not have allowed Franklin-Lipsker’s testimony that she visited her father in jail and that he had pointed to a sign that said “conversations are monitored” when she pleaded with him to confess to the murder. The prosecution portrayed Franklin’s silence as tantamount to a confession. The jury was not told that the prosecution arranged Franklin-Lipsker’s visit. But even after his conviction was overturned last year, Franklin, 57, was kept in jail. Prosecutors filed several appeals of Jensen’s decision, all of which were rejected. Also, Franklin-Lipsker had told investigators in 1990 that she remembered her father committing two more murders, Horngrad said. Her memory of one of the murders was so sketchy that investigators could not link it with any unsolved crime. But early this year, Horngrad said, prosecutors considered charging Franklin with the rape and murder of 18-year-old Veronica Cascio, who disappeared from her Pacifica home Jan. 7, 1976. Franklin-Lipsker identified a picture of the teenager, whose body was found on a Pacifica golf course. She told prosecutors that she remembered witnessing her godfather, Stan Smith, rape Cascio and seeing her father murder her. But Franklin’s defense attorneys uncovered evidence in May that Franklin was at a union meeting at the time of the murder. DNA tests of semen found on Cascio proved that neither Franklin nor Smith could have raped Cascio, Horngrad said. The final blow to the prosecution came with Janice Franklin’s testimony about being hypnotized before testifying against her father. In California, testimony influenced by hypnotic suggestion is inadmissible. It was not until Tuesday, however, that prosecutors formally abandoned their efforts to retry Franklin for the Nason murder. Prosecutors hung on as long as they did, Deputy Chief Dist. Atty. Stephen Wagstaffe said, because “this is a case where six years ago, 12 people in our community determined that there was enough evidence to convict, and we have not changed our view that the evidence was valid and appropriate.” Wagstaffe said it is “heartbreaking” that Franklin will go free. “I don’t think we’ll ever see a case like this again, nor do we want to,” he said. Horngrad said Franklin’s life was destroyed by his daughter’s charges and his murder conviction. “He’s been flattened like a pancake” by his years in prison, Horngrad said. “He lost everything he had earned in the world. He lost his house, his reputation, his liberty--all his worldly possessions. “The broader lesson here is that you cannot--nor should you--charge someone criminally, deprive them of their liberty, based on so-called repressed memory,” Horngrad said in a telephone interview from Idaho, where he is vacationing. During his murder trial, witnesses portrayed Franklin, a father of five, as a bizarre character. Janice Franklin testified during the first trial that her father had physically and sexually abused her. Leah Franklin, who divorced him in the 1970s, also testified that her husband was physically abusive. Judge Smith called Franklin a “wicked and depraved” man in sentencing him to life in prison. Franklin’s defense did not contest the prosecution’s portrayal of their client as a man obsessed with child pornography. But Leah Franklin, after testifying against her husband in the 1990 trial, later said that she did not believe in the concept of repressed memory or in her daughter’s account of Susan Nason’s murder. A made-for-television movie and two books were written about the case, including one by Franklin-Lipsker. Fox said the San Mateo County prosecutor’s office contacted both Franklin-Lipsker, who now lives out of state, and Susan Nason’s parents, who still live in the same Foster City home, before announcing that Franklin will not be retried. “They are terribly disappointed with this decision, but they absolutely understand it,” he said.
2fbcecb08308cfd74c4d10f5625e9c1a	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-07-mn-22011-story.html	2 Killed as Engine Parts Pierce Cabin of Delta Jet	2 Killed as Engine Parts Pierce Cabin of Delta Jet Pieces of a failed engine ripped into the cabin of a Delta Air Lines jet as it sped down a runway Saturday, killing a mother and son and forcing the pilot to abort the takeoff. Flight 1288 was headed to Atlanta carrying its capacity of 142 passengers and five crew members, said Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta. In addition to the fatalities, seven people were injured, at least one seriously. The 8-year-old MD-88 jet was 1,500 feet down the runway when passengers reported seeing smoke from the left engine, Bergen said. Delta spokesman Bill Berry said pieces of the engine pierced the fuselage after the engine caught fire, killing a mother and son in the cabin. “At this point we believe it was a major failure of the engine,” Berry said. The dead were identified as Anita S. Saxton and Nolan Saxton, 12, of Scottville, Mich. No age was available for Anita Saxton. The victims were seated in row 37, very close to the engine, Berry said. Airline officials were investigating whether a bird or other outside object may have caused the engine fire. “At first I thought it was a blown tire until I saw the engine flying off the runway,” said Jean Paul Menard, a passenger traveling with his wife and 11-month-old child. “It was the front part of the engine. I seen the smoke and I just wanted to get my family off of there.” Mark Sullivan, a spokesman for East Hartford, Conn.-based Pratt & Whitney, which manufactured the engines for the McDonnell Douglas plane, said the company believes a fan blade in the front of the left engine failed. Broken pieces of the blade probably penetrated the fan case and debris went flying, Sullivan said. “We believe that is what happened. But we have not confirmed it because we haven’t examined the engine,” Sullivan said. The plane’s engines, located on each side of the rear fuselage, are the Pratt & Whitney-made JT8D-219s. In May, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended to the FAA that certain Pratt & Whitney jet engines be inspected for cracks. Sullivan said the JT8D-219 was not among those to be inspected. The NTSB’s recommendation stemmed from an incident Jan. 30 at LaGuardia International Airport in New York City in which an engine on a Delta Air Lines Boeing 727 failed, throwing several parts through the engine covering. The crew halted the takeoff and passengers were evacuated without injury, the board said. At least 30 passengers on Saturday’s flight were evacuated using slides. The remaining passengers used the stairs. Five of the injured were taken to Baptist Hospital. The NTSB said it was sending investigators to the crash site.
8f3064e04cb182400c956c70e8bde2ef	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-07-mn-22049-story.html	2 Killed as Engine Parts Pierce Cabin of Delta Jet	2 Killed as Engine Parts Pierce Cabin of Delta Jet A Delta jet engine blew apart and ripped into the cabin packed with holiday travelers as the plane sped down a runway Saturday, killing a mother and son and forcing the pilot to abort takeoff. Delta Flight 1288 was headed to Atlanta carrying its capacity of 142 passengers and five crew members, said Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta. In addition to the fatalities, seven people were injured, at least one seriously. The 8-year-old MD-88 jet was 1,500 feet down the runway when passengers reported seeing smoke from the left engine, Bergen said. Delta spokesman Bill Berry said pieces of the engine pierced the fuselage after the engine caught fire. “At this point we believe it was a major failure of the engine,” Berry said, adding that there was no indication of fire in the cabin. The dead were identified as Anita S. Saxton and Nolan Saxton, 12, of Scottville, Mich. No age was available for Anita Saxton. The victims were seated in row 37, very close to the engine, Berry said. Also on board were Nolan’s brother Derrick Saxton, 15, and his sister Spencer Saxton, 9. Both were in good condition late Saturday at Sacred Heart Hospital. The hospital did not release the exact nature of their injuries. “At first I thought it was a blown tire until I saw the engine flying off the runway,” said Jean Paul Menard, a passenger traveling with his wife and 11-month-old child. “It was the front part of the engine. I seen the smoke and I just wanted to get my family off of there.” His wife, Brenda, said part of the engine burst through the fuselage. “There was part of it that went through to the other side,” she said. Bill Schmitz, 65, of Mission Viejo, who was unhurt, said, “We kind of thought it was just a routine deal up in first class. But it was far from routine. . . . When we finally got out, we looked over there and we saw that the rotary blades out of the jet motor had blown and had sheared the plane just like a can opener.” Mark Sullivan, a spokesman for East Hartford, Conn.-based Pratt & Whitney, which manufactured the engines for the McDonnell-Douglas plane, said the company believes a fan blade in the front of the left engine failed. Broken pieces of the blade probably penetrated the fan case and debris went flying, Sullivan said. “We believe that is what happened. But we have not confirmed it because we haven’t examined the engine,” Sullivan said. Of Delta’s fleet of more than 500 planes, 120 are MD-88s. “I am not aware that the MD-88s we have used have had any problems,” Berry said. The plane’s engines, located on each side of the rear fuselage, are the Pratt & Whitney-made JT8D-219s. In May, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended to the FAA that certain Pratt & Whitney jet engines be inspected for cracks. Sullivan said the JT8D-219 was not among those to be inspected. The NTSB’s recommendation stemmed from an incident Jan. 30 at LaGuardia International Airport in which an engine on a Delta Air Lines Boeing 727 failed, throwing several parts through the engine covering. The crew halted the plane’s takeoff and passengers were evacuated without injury, the board said. Schmitz, 65, a retired sales executive, called a daughter in Pensacola to report he was all right, so the family was never worried about him, said daughter Sharon Schmitz, who was at her parents’ home in Mission Viejo. Bill Schmitz had logged more than a million miles flying during 35 years of business travel for Hallmark, she said, but this scare was a lesson. “We always took for granted that he’d come home to us. This made us realize you can’t take that for granted,” Sharon Schmitz said. In June 1995, a fire that destroyed a ValuJet plane at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport was found to have been caused by a compressor disc in a JT8D engine that shattered and cut through a fuel line. A flight attendant suffered burns in the incident and six passengers were injured. Berry said the Delta MD-88’s left engine underwent routine maintenance before it was installed in January. He did not elaborate. At least 30 passengers on Saturday’s flight were evacuated using slides. The rest use the stairs. Berry said he didn’t know if passenger injuries were caused by the engine fire or people trying to evacuate the plane. Five of the injured were taken to Baptist Hospital. One was treated and released and one was in serious condition with a fractured leg. Three others, including a 3-month-old girl, were in good condition. The plane was scheduled to fly on to Boston from Atlanta. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board were investigating. Delta has had two other fatal accidents since 1985. On Aug. 2, 1985, a Lockheed L-1011 crashed at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, killing 137 people. On Aug. 31, 1988, a Boeing 727 crashed and burned on takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth, killing 14 people. Times staff writer Ken Ellingwood contributed to this story.
773f791f4936248c2a63f834a10e67bb	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-08-fi-22178-story.html	Is There Really a Point to Pepsi Aircraft Offer?	Is There Really a Point to Pepsi Aircraft Offer? PepsiCo. is offering hats, jackets, bikes and other “Pepsi stuff” to people who earn points by saving empty beverage containers. To win a T-shirt, for instance, takes 80 points, or the equivalent of 40 two-liter Pepsi bottles. But the Web site designers at Delta Designs in Anaheim, perhaps taking one of Pepsi’s television ads a touch too literally, are setting their sights on what is supposedly the biggest prize of the promotion: a Harrier jet that costs 700 million points. In a Web site designed to spoof the Pepsi campaign, the wags at Delta encourage Web surfers to send them Pepsi bottles and cans in an effort to pool resources and win the jet. Accumulating 700 million points is mathematically possible--Pepsi said it will issue 7 billion points during the course of its campaign. But the company insists that the Harrier jet spot was a joke. “I’d say it’s a great spoof on a spoof,” Brad Shaw, a Pepsi spokesman, said of the Delta Designs site. “But rather than redesigning their garage to get a jet, they should rent a warehouse for all the T-shirts and bikes they’ll be getting if they do send in 700 million points.” There doesn’t appear to be much chance of that. Kerry Garrison, director of Web technologies at Delta, said nobody has sent in any Pepsi bottles or cans yet, and those collected by Delta employees form a rather small pile. According to an odometer-style counter built into the site, Delta has 699,991,150 Pepsi points to go. The site can be viewed at https://www.700million.com * Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and atgreg.miller@latimes.com.
7575a83ebd8397e478b404ded878f2d7	https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-18-ca-25515-story.html	Sounds of Hot Jazz Stay Warm : Harry James Band to Play at the Mission	Sounds of Hot Jazz Stay Warm : Harry James Band to Play at the Mission Art DePew says he “flipped” the first time he heard Harry James play; as a boy, he did everything he could to imitate the great jazz trumpeter. In the ‘60s, he became a James sideman, his dream come true. But DePew never dreamed he’d someday be front man for the Harry James Orchestra--and responsible for carrying on the James sound. “Harry James had a luscious, saccharine quality when he played,” says DePew, who will lead the 17-piece orchestra Saturday in the Mission San Juan Capistrano courtyard as part of the mission’s “Music Under the Stars” series. “He’d take a beautiful melody and put a blue note to it, with this nice vibrato . . . lushness and sweetness. He poured his heart out when he played a melody, really wore his heart on his sleeve. But Harry James had an exciting, driving, punchy style [as well]--he was a very, very good hot jazz player.” That’s hot, not cool. “Chet Baker is a cool player,” DePew continues. “We don’t play that way. They don’t pay me to sound like Miles Davis, either. It would sound awfully dumb if I was playing with no vibrato, and slightly out of tune, like Davis and some of the be-boppers.” With vibrato, then, DePew and company will play such Harry James hit tunes as “You Made Me Love You,” “One O’Clock Jump” and “By a Sleepy Lagoon.” DePew was born in West Palm Beach, Fla. His father, a minister who had been a missionary in Africa, allowed him to play with dance bands on Saturday nights as long as he played in the church orchestra on Sunday morning. Following a three-year stint at the Juilliard School of Music in the 1940s, DePew toured briefly with the Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller orchestras, then settled down with the Harry James and Lawrence Welk orchestras, for four and eight years, respectively. James died in 1983; for a time, there was no James band. Joe Graves, who also had been a James sideman, was the first trumpeter brought in to revive the James sound, but dental problems proved his undoing. DePew, a youthful 71 and a resident of the San Fernando Valley, is in his ninth year fronting the group. He shuns the term ghost band, possibly coined by Woody Herman and referring to orchestras that persist in the absence of their original leaders. (Herman’s own band, the Thundering Herd, surely qualifies.) “The term is negative,” DePew says. “But let’s look at the band we have. At a recent show I asked, ‘Would everybody who played with Harry James when he was alive please stand up.’ Eight or nine of the guys stood up. So what is a ghost band?” Good question. It might also be an apt description for a band whose heyday was the 1930s and ‘40s and that is now relatively invisible, and that may or may not survive beyond the next wave of nostalgia. * DePew is well aware of the big bands’ obscurity: “If you listen to your radio, your ordinary AM, you’ll look far and wide to find more than one or two stations playing what I call adult music. They’re playing the least common denominator, the kids’ music. We come from an era of complicated harmonies and counter-rhythms, of music much more mature in concept. “When Elvis and the Beatles came along, they put the lid on that era. Big bands were still out there, but you couldn’t hear them on the radio. A massive teeny-bopper market was setting commercial tastes. . . . The record companies signed as many rock ‘n’ roll artists as they could, and that left no room for big band jazz.” DePew hopes nostalgia isn’t all that keeps the big bands alive. “Certainly it’s been a declining market,” he allows. “The Harry James Orchestra hasn’t had a hit record since 1945. . . . But there’s good music, and there’s the other kind. “Good music is always good--Mozart and Beethoven are good no matter what happens commercially. The grosses a big band earns are not the same as some guy with a voice that turns your stomach at $50 a head plus parking. . . . Yet the Count Basie Orchestra, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, I’ve heard a long time they’re coming back, and the fact is, they’ve always been here. “The people who grew up with this music are now in their 60s and 70s,” DePew notes. “But we played recently, and a whole gang of young people went wild--they’d never heard anything like this. They’d heard about it. . . . I think we have tremendous potential.” * What: The Harry James Orchestra. * When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday. * Where: The Mission San Juan Capistrano courtyard, 31522 Camino Capistrano. * Whereabouts: Exit the San Diego (405) Freeway at Ortega Highway (74); go west. Turn right onto Camino Capistrano. * Wherewithal: $5-$7. * Where to call: (714) 248-2047.