Sunday Afternoon in North Hollywood: "Play Me, I'm Yours" Piano at El Portal Theatre

We were driving up Lankershim in North Hollywood this afternoon and stopped when we saw the "Play Me, I'm Yours" piano in front of El Portal Theatre a couple of blocks north of Magnolia.

Luckily, just at that moment, people who actually could play the piano, and play it very well indeed, had just come by to begin a really nice set.

In the last couple of summers we've seen all sorts of funky "Play Me, I'm Yours" pianos all over New York City, and now they are all over Los Angeles, too.

"Play Me, I'm Yours" is public arts project by British artist Luke Jerram that has been touring internationally since 2008. For three weeks beginning April 12, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) brings this public art installation to various locations in Los Angeles, including the NoHo Arts District,

hosted at El Portal Theatre. Thirty pianos, designed and decorated by local artists and community organizations, and are available for everyone to play, in celebration of acclaimed conductor and pianist Jeffrey Kahane’s 15th anniversary as the LACO music director.

We're grateful we got to see this piano played by someone who actually could play and hope we can see some more street pianos around town while they're here in L.A.

Saturday Afternoon in the Hollywood Hills: Picnic at Forest Lawn Memorial Park

It's always fun to go to a funeral of someone you didn't like. We had that pleasure yesterday afternoon and decided to make a picnic of it at the kitschy Americana necropolis of Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills.

Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln presided over the downfall of our picnic by freeing the ants.

Still, the surroundings were quite cheerful and festive.

The patriotic murals are to die for.

We're grateful to the Kim family for bequeathing us the view of this beautiful statue.

Many stars are buried here, but we noticed only Stan Laurel, who is apparently entombed in this wall.

At our age, we had to wonder whether it's worth it to drive all the way back to Woodland Hills on the 101 or whether we'd simply be better off just staying put.

Thursday Morning in Canoga Park: Breakfast at Shadow Ranch Park

It was a chilly, overcast morning but we were determined to have breakfast outdoors and took our oatmeal and iced tea from Starbucks at the Fallbrook Center over to Shadow Ranch Park in Canoga Park (some people will say it's still West Hills).

As the L.A. parks department website notes,

This two story ranch house in Canoga Park is a remembrance of the ranching days and agricultural past of the San Fernando Valley. The large structure located in Shadow Ranch Park is a hybrid of traditional, Southern California styles: rancho adobe construction having been reworked and remodeled with redwood additions and architectural details and components.

The ranch today is a shadow of its once industrious past. This prosperous ranch in the west San Fernando Valley began as a wheat farm under the leadership of Issac Van Nuys and his San Fernando Valley Homestead Association, eventually organized as a wheat enterprise called the Los Angeles Farm and Milling Company with Albert Workman as its superintendent. After 1869, Workman purchased the 9,000 acre ranch himself, and also cultivated another 4,000 acres outlying his property. At one time, there were seventy barns on the Workman Ranch and a thousand head of cattle. Wagon trains carried the harvested wheat to Los Angeles.

The entire west end of the ranch house was one large room, over forty feet long, in which approximately seventy workers could sit down to eat. The center of the house was the family dining room, and the east rooms held a parlor and an office. Today, the residence stands on approximately 13 acres of the original ranch property.

The Workman Ranch and the residence have special notoriety in Los Angeles history; the ranch house grounds are purported to be the site of the first eucalyptus trees planted in Southern California. The story of eucalyptus at the Workman Ranch is that Albert Workman himself imported eucalyptus seedlings from his native Australia, planting them on his ranch in the early 1870s. As local legend explains, these trees are said to be the parents of all eucalyptus trees in Southern California. The Workman Ranch was later renamed “Shadow Ranch,” supposedly in tribute to the tall eucalyptus trees planted by Albert Workman and the shadows they cast on his residence.

The main ranch house was restored in 1933, and, during the 1950s, the complex of structures served as a private girls school, called “Robinayre School for Girls" and dormitory called "The Little House." Today, Workman’s residence is owned by the City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation and Parks, serving as a community center and open daily to the public. The residence was declared Cultural-Historic Monument #9 by the Los Angeles City Council on November 2, 1962.

Sitting on a bench with our breakfast, we read from The Ghost Hunter's Guide to Los Angeles about how the ghost of Albert Workman "refuses to part" with all that's left of his once-grand domain. Workman's ghost paces the floor at night and can be seen at the windows, an old man in a straw hat, gazing out a second story window amid the soft glow of candlelight.

But he didn't join us at our breakfast bench this morning. We're still grateful we had a nice time at Shadow Ranch Park.

Elan Steinberg, RIP

It's very sad to read of the passing of Elan Steinberg, the former head of the World Jewish Congress, in today's New York Times. Although we didn't know Elan that well at Brooklyn College, we took a few classes together and sat next to each other in men's health ed first semester. We remember him as very smart, intense but friendly, kind and thoughtful and outspoken, the kind of person at school you basically just see in passing and make small talk with but who you know is really cool.

His accomplishments are almost uncountable, and he would stand up to anyone, no matter how powerful, for what he believed was right. Practically irreplaceable, he will be missed by many people all over the world. This what Douglas Martin wrote in the Times:

Elan Steinberg, who brought what he called a new, “American style” assertiveness to the World Jewish Congress as its top executive, winning more than $1 billion from Swiss banks for Holocaust victims and challenging Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations secretary general, over his Nazi past, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 59.

The cause was complications of lymphatic cancer, his wife, Sharon, said.

As its executive director from 1978 to 2004, Mr. Steinberg was a key strategist for the congress as it grew bolder under a younger generation of Jews. He helped organize the research, hearings, press leaks and lawsuit that led the Swiss banks to agree to pay $1.2 billion to Holocaust victims in the late 1990s.

He also ruffled feathers. Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told The New York Times that he applauded the congress’s “persistence,” but worried that the Swiss might begin to see Jews as “their enemy.” He said the congress’s crusade “fed into the stereotype that Jews have money, that it’s the most important thing to them.”

Even Simon Wiesenthal, the relentless hunter of Nazi war criminals, questioned the congress’s new aggressiveness when it threw itself into the Austrian presidential campaign in 1986 to try to defeat Mr. Waldheim, who was ultimately elected. Mr. Waldheim had hidden his membership in a Nazi military unit linked to atrocities.

Mr. Wiesenthal argued that Mr. Waldheim was “an opportunist” but not a war criminal. He worried that the congress, by inserting itself into Austria’s internal politics, was undoing years of patient work toward reconciling young Austrians and Jews.

Mr. Steinberg countered that electing Mr. Waldheim would stain all Austrians. “In the whole world it will be said that a former Nazi and a liar is the representative of Austria,” he said.

The tough stance was a departure for the congress, which was formed in 1936 in response to the rising Nazi threat in Europe and whose headquarters are now in New York. Mr. Steinberg himself used the word “strident” to describe his approach in taking the once-staid organization into quarrels, as it did in 1985 when President Ronald Reagan, alongside Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany, visited a German cemetery in which Nazi SS soldiers were buried.

“For a long time,” Mr. Steinberg said, “the World Jewish Congress was meant to be the greatest secret of Jewish life, because the nature of diplomacy after the war was quiet diplomacy. This is a newer, American-style leadership — less timid, more forceful, unashamedly Jewish.”

Mr. Steinberg steered the congress in opposing the presence of a Carmelite convent at the site of the Auschwitz death camp and championing former slave laborers under the Nazis in their fight for compensation.

When Steven Spielberg was making the 1993 film “Schindler’s List,” he wanted to shoot scenes inside a building that had been part of the Auschwitz camp, Mrs. Steinberg said. As she recounted the episode, Mr. Spielberg went to the congress and conferred with Mr. Steinberg, who told him, “You cannot film on the graves of Jews.” Mr. Spielberg instead built a replica of the building.

“Whenever Jews were in danger, or Jewish honor offended, he vigorously yet elegantly spoke up,” Elie Wiesel, the author and Holocaust survivor, said in a statement read at Mr. Steinberg’s funeral. “Whenever Jewish memory was attacked, he attacked the attacker.”

Elan Steinberg was born in Rishon LeZion, Israel, on June 2, 1952, to Holocaust survivors. He grew up in the Brownsville and Borough Park sections of Brooklyn and was a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and Brooklyn College. He received a master’s degree in political science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, then taught there.

He joined the congress in 1978 as its United Nations representative, and rose to executive director — first of the American section, then of the world body. Menachem Rosensaft, the congress’s general counsel, said Mr. Steinberg was instrumental in persuading the Vatican and Spain to recognize Israel.

Mr. Steinberg resigned in 2004 but remained a consultant to the congress’s president, Ronald S. Lauder. He was vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.

In addition to his wife, the former Sharon Cohen, Mr. Steinberg, who lived in Manhattan, is survived by his children, Max, Harry and Lena Steinberg, and his brother, Alex.

Mr. Rosensaft told another story to illustrate his friend’s mix of grit and wit. Mr. Steinberg was negotiating one day with the French culture minister to recover paintings stolen from Jews during the Holocaust. The minister huffed that Mr. Steinberg knew nothing about art.

“You’re right,” Mr. Steinberg said. “I don’t know anything about art. I’m from Brooklyn. I know about stolen goods.”

Our love and sympathy go to his family and friends.

Arizona Republic Covers Richard Grayson's Fundraising in Campaign to Replace Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona's 8th Congressional District

The front page of today's Valley and State section of The Arizona Republic has a story on fundraising among candidates in the special election in Arizona's Eighth Congressional District for the seat formerly held by Gabrielle Giffords.

The article began:

Ron Barber, the Democratic congressional aide who was wounded alongside former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in last year's shooting rampage, has raised more than double the money raised by each of three of the Republicans competing for her House seat, records show.

Campaign-finance reports were not available for a fourth Republican candidate, state Sen. Frank Antenori.

Figures were also unavailable for Green Party candidate Richard Grayson.

The fundraising numbers may take on outsized importance in the highly compressed time frame for selecting a replacement to serve the remainder of Giffords' term.

Friday Night in Echo Park: Bear in Heaven at The Echo

After a non-traditional L.A.-style Passover seder (led by Episcopalians), we were driven to downtown Echo Park tonight to see Bear in Heaven at The Echo on Sunset. We last saw the Brooklyn-based trio at a free show at South Street Seaport on July 9, 2010 and tonight's show was even better.

We're a bit fartootzt from jet lag even though Arizona and California are currently in the same time zone, so as we did last time, we'll just aggregate some people who know what they're talking about, like Corinne Feinberg at L.A. Music Blog, who said Bear in Heaven's

psychedelic and experimental music style was magnified and perfectly paired with the live show they put on at The Echo. As compact of a black box venue as The Echo is, the band flooded the stage with spontaneous dance moves and rock-rolling rhythm that overflowed onto the audience, along with the sporadic smell of the fog machine.

Bear In Heaven is on tour promoting the April 4th release of their fourth album, I Love You, It’s Cool. Although the majority of their performance focused on tracks from the new album, the band tapped into the nostalgia of seasoned fans by dusting off some shelved songs from previous albums. Whether they were playing recent or retro pieces, Bear In Heaven performed at the same height of enthusiasm throughout the entire set. Even when the drummer, Joe Stickney, missed one of his cues, the band jokingly pointed to him in a poke-fun manner before their second stab at the song.

The group’s passion for the music they write oozes from their bodies as if their instruments were an extension of themselves. You can tell they love what they create and that it’s more of an opportunity to have fun while on stage than work. The way John Philpot would spontaneously break out into what could only be described as unrehearsed dance moves, it was apparent that Bear In Heaven’s music is what genuinely appeals to them. They create a soundscape that reflects the musical world they themselves groove in.

Every member of Bear In Heaven belongs on that stage with instruments in tow; that is their happy place. They barely waited for the applause to grow after finishing their set before returning to the stage to play two more songs. Neither the audience nor the band wanted the show to end, but like all good things, it had to.

Grimy Goods echoed the praise, calling Bear in Heaven's show at the Echo

a stunning set in support of their new album, I Love You, It’s Cool, set for release this April. The dashing trio burst with plenty of psychedelic beats and riffs that kept fans twisting in their skinny jeans. Front man Jon Philpot, enamored the crowd with his bowie-esque vocals as the band kept fans engaged with their sweet textured swirls and sugary layers.

We're glad that Bear in Heaven did older songs too, like our favorite, "Lovesick Teenagers" (courtesy of Hipster73):

The Echo is a cool venue, funky and intimate, with a really nice L.A. feel. We're grateful that this night was different from all other nights

and that we're in town with friends and that we got to see Bear in Heaven again and hear their awesome new songs from I Love You, It's Cool, which Ian Cohen at Pitchfork said was

admirable in large part because its ambitions are every bit as subtle and difficult to quantify as its pleasures-- you don't have to call it "adult indie," but it feels like conflicted indie rock for adults.

We're definitely adults around here.

(Video courtesy of cpscott513)

Friday Morning in Burbank: Landing at Bob Hope Airport

Ever since the first time we landed in Burbank on a Southwest flight from San Jose in late April 1998, after we finished our two month artist residency at Villa Montalvo, we've always loved the view of the mountains when we first walk off the plane. We used to visit much more often but have been away for six years. It is nice to be back in Southern California again.

Thursday Morning and Afternoon in Apache Junction: Social Justice Forum at Central Arizona College's Superstition Mountain Campus

We spent most of the day today at an innovative and informative Social Justice Forum sponsored by Central Arizona College at its Superstition Mountain Campus in Apache Junction. The Social Justice Forum drew its inspiration in part from the well-known words of Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail": "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,"

and it included a terrific keynote address by Dr. Sue Warner, numerous concurrent presentations and sessions on different topics related to the forum's theme, an opportunity fair, discussions about community activism, a film showing, and more (also breakfast and lunch), all for a nominal $10 fee.

The concurrent sessions were held in rooms 442 and 444 on campus, and while everyone had to choose one of two or three during the four blocks of time from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, we got to attend some interesting presentations, starting with attorney Leo Valverde's "The New Face of Poverty" to start.

Leticia Berry, a CAC student who works at the Desert Vista Behavioral Health Hospital and at Parc Place Chandler, an adolescent inpatient treatment facility, delivered a highly informative presentation on the etiology and behavioral symptoms of juvenile sex offenders, their treatment, and how parents can protect their own children.

Another great session featured Dr. Kristen Bishop, a naturopathic medical doctor, leading a discussion on important women's health issues regarding pregnancy and birth -- as a doula, she contrasted various methods of natural childbirth with standardized U.S. hospital births -- and the factors affecting breastfeeding. We've been interested in women's medical care since being involved in an undergraduate campaign to get a gynecologist on the Brooklyn College campus and doing our political science major's seminar paper on the changes going on in reproductive health care back in the early 1970s, and we learned a lot from Dr. Bishop.

At 1 p.m., after lunch and an opportunity fair in which various local organizations of activists from places like the food bank set up tables in the courtyard, we got to hear Dr. Sue Warner, Central Arizona College's chair of Social and Behavioral Sciences, deliver a wide-ranging keynote address titled "The Broken Escalator."

The title came from a video she showed near the end of her presentation, a compendium of varied social justice issues facing the world today, from income and wealth inequality to demonization of "the other" to environmental justice.

As someone who's taught at colleges, law schools and high schools since 1975, we can always recognize a highly effective, inspiring teacher, and Dr. Warner did not merely lecture but skillfully engaged the audience in a thoughtful and provocative discussion.

One of several sessions concerned with LGBT issues -- we missed ones on bullied youth and coming out, affirming churches, and sensitivity training for parents, but we figured that having been active in gay rights for decades, we could learn more at other sessions on less familiar topics -- was a highly interactive presentation and discussion, "Equal Rights: A Call to Action," led by Stacey Jay Cavaliere and Bea Valezquez of One in Ten, an organization we've long admired.

They were master facilitators, funny and warm and intelligent and informative, and they made effective use of group activities, like our discussion using yarn, which effectively tied all the individuals in a varied group together.

A lighter but fascinating change of pace was CAC student Brittni Evans' presentation, "Star Trek: Adventures through Space and Equality," focusing on the social justice issues and messages of equality and inclusion that permeated Gene Roddenberry's original 1960s Star Trek series. (We remember our Midwood High School classmate Neil giving us a petition to sign in the spring of 1967 to stop NBC from canceling it after the first, low-ratings season. It worked, and the show lived long and prospered.)

Another CAC honors student, Jo Beaudry, then spoke on "The Psychology of Hate: Cognitive and Psycho-Sociological Effects of Hate Regarding the LGBTQ Community," a sophisticated presentation involving brain science and cognitive behavior therapy. It was very well-done. We should note that the technology so helpful in these presentations worked pretty flawlessly -- as a college instructor, we know how rare that can be -- thanks to, we think, Cristina Hatler, Melissa Gardner and others involved in the planning for this terrific event.

We had to get to the nursing home to help feed our mom dinner and then do some other work, and so we missed the pizza dinner on campus and the courtyard 8 p.m. screening of Paul Haggis' Oscar-winning film Crash and the discussion afterward. We've seen it a couple of times, first in 2004 in a Plantation, Florida, theater and can see how the movie's L.A.-based interwoven narrative works effectively as a critical reflection instructional tool for diversity and social justice issues dealing with race, gender, and ethnicity.

Speaking of L.A.: although we missed Hanukkah in Santa Monica in December, we're about to leave the backwater of A.J. and head out to spend Pesach in the San Fernando Valley. But we are grateful for everyone involved in making today's Social Justice Forum at Central Arizona College's Superstition Mountain Campus a reminder to us that we don't have to be in New York City, Los Angeles or Miami to find a community concerned with the issues we've been involved with our whole lives.