latimes--2020-02-17--So many languages, so few books: Libraries struggle to reflect places they serve

Jennifer Songster roved the crowded aisles of the small mom-and-pop shop , riffling through books in Khmer , the official language of Cambodia .
Outside , the streets of Phnom Penh bustled .
The air was thick and humid .
Beads of sweat trickled down her face .
She hadn ’ t flown for 20 hours to marvel at Angkor Wat , the largest religious monument in the world , or stroll the white-sand beaches of Sihanoukville .
Instead , she spent eight sweltering days in the Cambodian capital on a five-figure shopping trip .
Songster works at the Mark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Library , home to one of the largest public library collections of Khmer ( pronounced Ka-mai ) books in the United States .
She and fellow librarian Christina Nhek had traveled more than 8,000 miles on a mission that faces libraries across the country : to serve the readers of rapidly changing cities .
The task is neither cheap nor easy .
But it is crucial , particularly in Southern California — home to burgeoning immigrant populations who speak scores of languages and have information needs that range from simple to sophisticated .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a dozen shops .
She juggled dollars and brightly colored riel at tiny cash-only operations .
She wandered the aisles of the sprawling Cambodia Book Fair .
By the end of her foray , she had shipped home 950 pounds of books , 75 CDs of Cambodian music , 14 posters and three wooden puzzles of the stout , curvaceous Khmer alphabet .
The price tag ?
More than $ 14,000 .
“ We need to have materials they want , ” Songster said , as she recounted the journey the pair took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a part of our community .
...
The library is there to serve the community , and so it needs to reflect it.
” Few systems send their librarians as far afield as Long Beach has , although Los Angeles Public Library staff members regularly travel to the Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires , LIBER Barcelona and Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara — the second-largest book fair in the world after the Frankfurter Buchmesse .
Libraries throughout the country especially struggle to broaden collections for their youngest readers .
Children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with diverse languages and characters — not just rosy-cheeked , English-speaking , blond girls and boys with straight , married parents .
At the Madison Public Library in Wisconsin , for example , librarian Beth McIntyre vowed to spend the entire easy-reader budget “ on books with nonwhite characters and with no animals.
” But it was a struggle to use up that money , because “ there just wasn ’ t enough published.
” That , she said , is a real problem .
“ Literacy depends on children ’ s desire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , past president of the American Library Assn .
“ They must have access and be aware that books reflect their culture and language .
… [ But ] the percentage of the children ’ s books released each year by a person of color or on a multicultural theme has remained unchanged for 20 years.
” This matters now more than ever , because the United States — and Los Angeles County in particular — has changed dramatically .
In 1980 , 65 % of Los Angeles County residents spoke English at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent data available , that slice of the population had dropped to 41 % .
Over the same time frame , the percentage of Spanish speakers rose from 21 % to 37 % .
The top 10 languages spoken in the county also shifted between 1980 and 2018 .
Nos .
1 through 4 remained the same : English , Spanish , Chinese , Tagalog .
But Nos .
7 through 10 changed from German , Italian , Armenian and French to Hindi , Farsi , Vietnamese and Japanese .
Armenian rose from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which L.A. City Librarian John Szabo said is reflected in LAPL operations .
“ When you think about the Armenian population , ” Szabo said , “ you think of Little Armenia in East Hollywood , you think of Glendale .
...
But Sunland-Tujunga has a growing Armenian population .
And so we have an Armenian-speaking staff member , at least one , there , and we have [ an Armenian language ] collection there.
” But being aware of demographic shifts is just the first step when operating libraries in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Asian and Iranian populations .
Understanding the differences within those communities is equally important .
“ It ’ s not just about , ‘ Oh , there ’ s a Latino population within this neighborhood , therefore , we have to have lots of Spanish-language books , ’ ” Szabo said .
“ In one neighborhood , it might be a third- , fourth- , fifth-generation Latino community .
Whereas , in another community there might be many more newer immigrants , where it ’ s important to have the materials in Spanish.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ orange-and-yellow Mark Twain Branch is a quieter , more orderly version of the neighborhood it calls home : Cambodia Town in Long Beach .
Free-standing bookcases of volumes in Khmer line up neatly in front of the library ’ s Spanish-language collection .
Outside on busy Anaheim Street , the Mekong Center , home to Little Phnom Penh Jewelry , is hard by La Bodega # 4 .
Homeless people push carts holding all their earthly possessions .
With 467,000 residents , Long Beach is California ’ s seventh-biggest city .
More than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cambodian descent , the largest concentration of Cambodians outside of their home country .
In the 1950s and ’ 60s , students from Cambodia arrived in Long Beach as part of an exchange program ; many settled permanently .
The population boomed after the 1970s “ killing fields , ” a campaign of terror and genocide by the Khmer Rouge that left nearly 2 million Cambodians dead and forced thousands to seek refuge in the United States .
Since it first opened in 2007 , the Mark Twain Branch has made great strides @ @ @ @ @ @ @ population .
Songster and Nhek survey the community to figure out what its members want to read .
Nhek grew up speaking Khmer and is one of two branch staffers fluent in the Southeast Asian language .
But Khmer materials are hard to come by — which is what sent the two women on an international book hunt .
Today , in the Cambodia Town branch , about 5,000 of the library ’ s 63,000 books are in Khmer , more than any language other than English .
“ At our professional conferences @ @ @ @ @ @ @ associations , you go to the exhibit hall and talk to the vendors , ” said branch library services manager Cathy De Leon .
“ And every time I ’ d ask the vendors , ‘ Do you have Khmer ?
’ they ’ d be like , ‘ Nope .
Can ’ t get it.
’ “ We couldn ’ t get anyone to get those materials for us , ” she added , “ so the best solution is to go out and get them ourselves.
” Chandara So , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 with his wife and baby , said he ’ s impressed by Mark Twain ’ s growing collection , its weekly storytelling sessions in Khmer and how the branch offers American-born Cambodians a glimpse into their culture .
“ They learn a lot about their country , ” So said , “ and about their motherland.
” This fiscal year , Peggy Murphy will spend $ 16.2 million buying new materials for the 73-branch Los Angeles Public Library system : traditional books , audio books , e-books , comic books , electronic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Murphy is the collection services manager , and she oversees a vast system that actively purchases materials in English and a dozen or so other languages .
“ Our goal is to become the nationwide , premier Spanish-language collection in the country , ” she said .
“ And when somebody wants to know something about a Spanish collection , they ’ re going to took at the Los Angeles Public Library and say , ‘ That ’ s the truth.
’ ” Stocking the shelves of city libraries from Sylmar to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The system as a whole buys books from vendors and book fairs for distribution to branches that want them .
Branch librarians survey their clients and order books that interest their vastly different communities .
There are official selectors responsible for developing the system ’ s collection in non-English languages — for Chinese and Japanese and Korean , for Farsi and Russian and Thai , nearly a dozen in all .
Spanish has four selectors .
“ We don ’ t just decide that , OK , this branch needs Farsi , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the temperature of the branch , ” Murphy said .
“ That ’ s why the selectors keep in contact with the branches .
... We take the temperature of the whole system , and we really try to see , is there an increase , is there a decrease , is there a new language coming in ?
” Selectors are people like Lupie Leyva , a born-and-bred , code-switching Angeleno with wavy brown hair , Hello Kitty tennis shoes and a gold Virgen de Guadalupe necklace .
Leyva has managed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ library system since 2011 , and she attends the Guadalajara book festival each year .
Her Boyle Heights branch is decorated with Mexican folk art .
A blue “ Citizenship Wall of Fame ” honors residents in this predominantly Latino and strongly immigrant neighborhood who have achieved legal status .
Most of Boyle Heights ’ residents hail from or have roots in Mexico , which is an important consideration when buying books , because there are differences in vocabulary , culture and interests among Spanish-speaking countries .
“ The Spanish that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Leyva said .
“ In the past we used to rely a lot more on things published in Spain , but now we ’ re lucky that there ’ s a lot more in Latin American publishing.
” Self-help volumes published in Mexico are popular with Leyva ’ s patrons .
Most popular teen and children ’ s books in Spanish , however , are translations , such as Robert Beatty ’ s “ Serafina , ” a series about a girl who lives a secret life in a basement , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Snowy Day , ” a picture book about a black child who wanders his neighborhood after the first snowfall .
Leyva has seen a resurgence in Latino and non-Latino parents wanting their children to be bilingual readers , and “ that ’ s brought up more of a demand for books in Spanish.
” Since Proposition 58 passed in 2016 , repealing restrictions on bilingual education , she ’ s lost track of the city ’ s dual immersion programs .
On an afternoon in September , about 10 excited , chatty students @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Spanish-language Book Club met at the Benjamin Franklin Branch to discuss “ Sonrie , ” the Spanish translation of Raina Telgemeier ’ s autobiographical graphic novel “ Smile , ” about life from middle to high school .
Vanessa Vazquez , a former program and policy development specialist for the Los Angeles Unified School District , asked them in Spanish to tell her what happens in the story .
Vazquez , in a Natalia Lafourcade T-shirt and jeans , red lipstick and multicolored huaraches , struggled to remember the Spanish word for “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rescue .
“ Desmayo , ” he said .
“ Gracias , ” she responded .
For 10-year-old Pablo Hernandez , reading in Spanish isn ’ t all that hard ; he ’ s a native speaker , after all .
Sometimes he gets stuck on long words “ that are new from fifth grade.
” But he has his eyes on the LAUSD Pathway to Biliteracy Award , given to fifth- and eighth-grade students who demonstrate excellence in English and another language .
His mother , Juana Guerra , said having her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ helped their bilingualism evolve .
“ They ’ re learning to speak more clearly in Spanish and are focused on having a bilingual future , ” Guerra said in Spanish .
Reading the language “ is necessary to be a professional , to understand and converse with people who speak Spanish .
”

Jennifer Songster, senior librarian at the Mark Twain Branch of the Long Beach Public Library, returned from a grant-funded trip to Cambodia with more than 1,000 books to add to the library’s Khmer collection.
Jennifer Songster roved the crowded aisles of the small mom-and-pop shop, riffling through books in Khmer, the official language of Cambodia. Outside, the streets of Phnom Penh bustled. The air was thick and humid. Beads of sweat trickled down her face.
She hadn’t flown for 20 hours to marvel at Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world, or stroll the white-sand beaches of Sihanoukville. Instead, she spent eight sweltering days in the Cambodian capital on a five-figure shopping trip.
Songster works at the Mark Twain Branch of the Long Beach Public Library, home to one of the largest public library collections of Khmer (pronounced Ka-mai) books in the United States. She and fellow librarian Christina Nhek had traveled more than 8,000 miles on a mission that faces libraries across the country: to serve the readers of rapidly changing cities.
Advertisement
The task is neither cheap nor easy. But it is crucial, particularly in Southern California — home to burgeoning immigrant populations who speak scores of languages and have information needs that range from simple to sophisticated.
Songster scouted for books in more than a dozen shops. She juggled dollars and brightly colored riel at tiny cash-only operations. She wandered the aisles of the sprawling Cambodia Book Fair. By the end of her foray, she had shipped home 950 pounds of books, 75 CDs of Cambodian music, 14 posters and three wooden puzzles of the stout, curvaceous Khmer alphabet. The price tag? More than $14,000.
“We need to have materials they want,” Songster said, as she recounted the journey the pair took 13 months ago. Cambodians are “a part of our community. ... The library is there to serve the community, and so it needs to reflect it.”
Few systems send their librarians as far afield as Long Beach has, although Los Angeles Public Library staff members regularly travel to the Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires, LIBER Barcelona and Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara — the second-largest book fair in the world after the Frankfurter Buchmesse.
Libraries throughout the country especially struggle to broaden collections for their youngest readers. Children’s librarians constantly hunt for books with diverse languages and characters — not just rosy-cheeked, English-speaking, blond girls and boys with straight, married parents.
At the Madison Public Library in Wisconsin, for example, librarian Beth McIntyre vowed to spend the entire easy-reader budget “on books with nonwhite characters and with no animals.” But it was a struggle to use up that money, because “there just wasn’t enough published.” That, she said, is a real problem.
“Literacy depends on children’s desire to read,” said Loida Garcia-Febo, past president of the American Library Assn. “They must have access and be aware that books reflect their culture and language. … [But] the percentage of the children’s books released each year by a person of color or on a multicultural theme has remained unchanged for 20 years.”
This matters now more than ever, because the United States — and Los Angeles County in particular — has changed dramatically.
In 1980, 65% of Los Angeles County residents spoke English at home; by 2018, the most recent data available, that slice of the population had dropped to 41%. Over the same time frame, the percentage of Spanish speakers rose from 21% to 37%.
The top 10 languages spoken in the county also shifted between 1980 and 2018. Nos. 1 through 4 remained the same: English, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog. But Nos. 7 through 10 changed from German, Italian, Armenian and French to Hindi, Farsi, Vietnamese and Japanese.
Armenian rose from No. 9 to No. 6, which L.A. City Librarian John Szabo said is reflected in LAPL operations.
“When you think about the Armenian population,” Szabo said, “you think of Little Armenia in East Hollywood, you think of Glendale. ... But Sunland-Tujunga has a growing Armenian population. And so we have an Armenian-speaking staff member, at least one, there, and we have [an Armenian language] collection there.”
David Turshyan, right, leads an Armenian class in the International Languages Department at the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Advertisement
But being aware of demographic shifts is just the first step when operating libraries in the U.S. county with the largest Latino, Asian and Iranian populations. Understanding the differences within those communities is equally important.
“It’s not just about, ‘Oh, there’s a Latino population within this neighborhood, therefore, we have to have lots of Spanish-language books,’” Szabo said. “In one neighborhood, it might be a third-, fourth-, fifth-generation Latino community. Whereas, in another community there might be many more newer immigrants, where it’s important to have the materials in Spanish.”
The interior of the angular, orange-and-yellow Mark Twain Branch is a quieter, more orderly version of the neighborhood it calls home: Cambodia Town in Long Beach. Free-standing bookcases of volumes in Khmer line up neatly in front of the library’s Spanish-language collection.
Outside on busy Anaheim Street, the Mekong Center, home to Little Phnom Penh Jewelry, is hard by La Bodega #4. Homeless people push carts holding all their earthly possessions.
With 467,000 residents, Long Beach is California’s seventh-biggest city. More than 10% of the population is of Cambodian descent, the largest concentration of Cambodians outside of their home country.
Staffers from the Mark Twain Branch of the Long Beach Public Library traveled to Cambodia and shipped home Khmer-language books, CDs, posters, puzzles and other materials. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In the 1950s and ’60s, students from Cambodia arrived in Long Beach as part of an exchange program; many settled permanently. The population boomed after the 1970s “killing fields,” a campaign of terror and genocide by the Khmer Rouge that left nearly 2 million Cambodians dead and forced thousands to seek refuge in the United States.
Since it first opened in 2007, the Mark Twain Branch has made great strides toward serving the city’s Cambodian population. Songster and Nhek survey the community to figure out what its members want to read. Nhek grew up speaking Khmer and is one of two branch staffers fluent in the Southeast Asian language.
Long Beach is home to the largest Cambodian population outside of the country itself. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
But Khmer materials are hard to come by — which is what sent the two women on an international book hunt. Today, in the Cambodia Town branch, about 5,000 of the library’s 63,000 books are in Khmer, more than any language other than English.
“At our professional conferences, like the California and American library associations, you go to the exhibit hall and talk to the vendors,” said branch library services manager Cathy De Leon. “And every time I’d ask the vendors, ‘Do you have Khmer?’ they’d be like, ‘Nope. Can’t get it.’
“We couldn’t get anyone to get those materials for us,” she added, “so the best solution is to go out and get them ourselves.”
Chandara So, who moved to Long Beach from Cambodia in 2019 with his wife and baby, said he’s impressed by Mark Twain’s growing collection, its weekly storytelling sessions in Khmer and how the branch offers American-born Cambodians a glimpse into their culture.
“They learn a lot about their country,” So said, “and about their motherland.”
Collections services manager Peggy Murphy poses for a portrait in the International Languages Department at the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
This fiscal year, Peggy Murphy will spend $16.2 million buying new materials for the 73-branch Los Angeles Public Library system: traditional books, audio books, e-books, comic books, electronic databases and magazines, among other items.
Murphy is the collection services manager, and she oversees a vast system that actively purchases materials in English and a dozen or so other languages.
Books in Korean sit on the shelves in the International Languages Department at the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
“Our goal is to become the nationwide, premier Spanish-language collection in the country,” she said. “And when somebody wants to know something about a Spanish collection, they’re going to took at the Los Angeles Public Library and say, ‘That’s the truth.’”
Stocking the shelves of city libraries from Sylmar to San Pedro is an intricate process. The system as a whole buys books from vendors and book fairs for distribution to branches that want them. Branch librarians survey their clients and order books that interest their vastly different communities.
There are official selectors responsible for developing the system’s collection in non-English languages — for Chinese and Japanese and Korean, for Farsi and Russian and Thai, nearly a dozen in all. Spanish has four selectors.
“We don’t just decide that, OK, this branch needs Farsi, and so we buy Farsi without even taking the temperature of the branch,” Murphy said. “That’s why the selectors keep in contact with the branches. ... We take the temperature of the whole system, and we really try to see, is there an increase, is there a decrease, is there a new language coming in?”
Selectors are people like Lupie Leyva, a born-and-bred, code-switching Angeleno with wavy brown hair, Hello Kitty tennis shoes and a gold Virgen de Guadalupe necklace.
Leyva has managed the Robert Louis Stevenson Branch of the city library system since 2011, and she attends the Guadalajara book festival each year. Her Boyle Heights branch is decorated with Mexican folk art. A blue “Citizenship Wall of Fame” honors library patrons who were lawful permanent residents in this predominantly Latino and strongly immigrant neighborhood who have become U.S. citizens.
Senior librarian Ana Campos looks for a book that might not have been available five years ago in the International Languages Department at the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Most of Boyle Heights’ residents hail from or have roots in Mexico, which is an important consideration when buying books, because there are differences in vocabulary, culture and interests among Spanish-speaking countries.
“The Spanish that’s spoken here tends to be more Mexican,” Leyva said. “In the past we used to rely a lot more on things published in Spain, but now we’re lucky that there’s a lot more in Latin American publishing.”
Self-help volumes published in Mexico are popular with Leyva’s patrons. Most popular teen and children’s books in Spanish, however, are translations, such as Robert Beatty’s “Serafina,” a series about a girl who lives a secret life in a basement, and Ezra Jack Keats’ “The Snowy Day,” a picture book about a black child who wanders his neighborhood after the first snowfall.
Leyva has seen a resurgence in Latino and non-Latino parents wanting their children to be bilingual readers, and “that’s brought up more of a demand for books in Spanish.” Since Proposition 58 passed in 2016, repealing restrictions on bilingual education, she’s lost track of the city’s dual immersion programs.
On an afternoon in September, about 10 excited, chatty students from Euclid Avenue Elementary School’s Spanish-language Book Club met at the Benjamin Franklin Branch to discuss “Sonrie,” the Spanish translation of Raina Telgemeier’s autobiographical graphic novel “Smile,” about life from middle to high school.
Vanessa Vazquez, a former program and policy development specialist for the Los Angeles Unified School District, asked them in Spanish to tell her what happens in the story.
“Alguien fainted,” said a soft-spoken girl. “Someone fainted.”
Vazquez, in a Natalia Lafourcade T-shirt and jeans, red lipstick and multicolored huaraches, struggled to remember the Spanish word for “fainted.” A student came to the rescue.
“Desmayo,” he said. “Gracias,” she responded.
For 10-year-old Pablo Hernandez, reading in Spanish isn’t all that hard; he’s a native speaker, after all. Sometimes he gets stuck on long words “that are new from fifth grade.” But he has his eyes on the LAUSD Pathway to Biliteracy Award, given to fifth- and eighth-grade students who demonstrate excellence in English and another language.
His mother, Juana Guerra, said having her twin sons in the book club has helped their bilingualism evolve.
“They’re learning to speak more clearly in Spanish and are focused on having a bilingual future,” Guerra said in Spanish. Reading the language “is necessary to be a professional, to understand and converse with people who speak Spanish.”
Times staff writer Ryan Menezes contributed to this report.


latimes--2020-02-17--Skelton: There's a new Proposition 13. It would send billions to California schools that need it

Proposition 13 is the only measure on the March 3 state ballot — and its number is causing many voters to do double takes .
Maybe we should retire certain proposition numbers like professional sports teams retire their superstars ’ jersey numbers .
It would eliminate confusion .
The difference , however , is that the honored athletes are iconic heroes .
The celebrated propositions usually are loved by some and hated by others .
The original Proposition 13 is a prime example .
In 1978 , it substantially cut property taxes and became a national symbol of an anti-tax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schools and local governments of significant property tax revenue and forced much of their care and feeding onto state government .
The latest Proposition 13 is an eye-glazing $ 15-billion state bond issue for education facilities spanning prekindergarten through the university systems .
It has nothing to do with the original Proposition 13 — at least directly .
The measure warrants a “ yes ” vote on Super Tuesday , but don ’ t kid yourself : Unlike the original 13 , the latest version would ultimately result in higher property taxes in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ share of costs for school rehabilitation or new construction .
It ’ s inevitable .
The confusion with the original 13 is aggravated by the fact that a teachers union-promoted initiative is headed for the November state ballot that would directly increase property taxes on commercial and industrial properties .
It would be the first major amendment of the tax-cutting Proposition 13 .
Some voters have called the office of Assemblyman Patrick O ’ Donnell ( D-Long Beach ) , a coauthor of the new 13 , accusing the state of lying about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it repeals the original .
Actually , the new 13 would provide $ 9 billion in bond money for K-12 schools and $ 2 billion each for community colleges , state universities and the University of California .
Of the K-12 money , $ 5.2 billion would be for modernization , $ 2.8 billion for new construction , $ 500 million for charter schools and $ 500 million for career tech ( what we used to call “ shop ” ) .
The modernization would include improving earthquake and fire safety and removing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the money could be spent for preschool facilities .
Universities would need to develop a plan for students ’ affordable housing .
The way it currently works for K-12 schools is that the state pays for 60 % of renovation and 50 % of new construction .
Schools pay for the rest , mostly with local property taxes and some developer fees .
School districts apply for state bond money .
And it ’ s first come , first served .
All that would significantly change under the ballot measure — largely because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s lobbying .
He hated the current system , arguing it favored wealthier school districts that could quickly apply for the state money .
When he was governor in 2016 , Brown opposed a $ 9-billion bond issue for K-12 schools and community colleges because , he claimed , it was “ a blunderbuss effort that promotes sprawl and squanders money that would be far better spent in low-income communities.
” The measure passed anyway .
Under the new proposal , the state would pay for up to 65 % of renovation costs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The highest amounts would go to districts with the least ability to raise their own funds and with large numbers of students who are from low-income families or are English learners .
First come , first served would be scrubbed and replaced with a system that graded applicants based on a priority list .
The highest priority would be projects needed to improve students ’ health and safety .
Another priority — predictable from a government controlled by Democrats— would be construction projects using unionized labor .
Also , developer fees would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as apartments — located within half a mile of a major transit stop .
For multifamily developments that aren ’ t near transit , fees would be reduced by 20 % .
These fees currently can amount to half of some projects ’ construction costs .
Another significant change that is potentially costly to taxpayers : The cap on the amount of local bonds that districts could issue would be nearly doubled .
There are good reasons to vote “ yes.
” Sure , K-12 enrollment is declining overall , but not everywhere @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money is targeted for modernization .
“ When kids walk into a school that ’ s clean and well kept , it sets the tone for the school day , ” says O ’ Donnell , who taught high school social studies for 23 years .
Sen. Steve Glazer ( D-Orinda ) , the other coauthor and a former CSU board member , says the state universities and UC each need $ 8 billion in capital outlay improvements .
They ’ d get $ 2 billion apiece from Proposition 13 .
“ If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money , the only alternative is to raise tuition , ” Glazer says .
And there are rational reasons for voting “ no.
” Interest on the bonds would cost $ 11 billion , bringing the total tab to $ 26 billion .
Paying off the bonds would increase state spending by $ 740 million annually for 35 years .
The state already is spending $ 6 billion a year to retire about $ 80 billion in various bonds .
“ This is the largest school bond ever proposed , ” says Jon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Taxpayers Assn.
, the leading opponent .
“ The most critical rehabilitation needs can easily be handled with existing revenues when the state is running a surplus .
“ But in all honesty , we anticipate it will pass.
” The opposition isn ’ t spending any money .
And the backers — teacher unions , developers and construction unions — have raised $ 8.5 million for advertising .
This is a good Proposition 13 .
These are public facilities .
And the only way to hold them together or expand for growth @ @ @ @ @

The new Proposition 13 on the March 3 ballot would provide $9 billion in bond money for K-12 schools and $2 billion each for community colleges, state universities and the University of California. Above, the UCLA campus.
Proposition 13 is the only measure on the March 3 state ballot — and its number is causing many voters to do double takes.
Maybe we should retire certain proposition numbers like professional sports teams retire their superstars’ jersey numbers. It would eliminate confusion.
The difference, however, is that the honored athletes are iconic heroes. The celebrated propositions usually are loved by some and hated by others.
Advertisement
The original Proposition 13 is a prime example. In 1978, it substantially cut property taxes and became a national symbol of an anti-tax revolt. But it also stripped K-12 schools and local governments of significant property tax revenue and forced much of their care and feeding onto state government.
The latest Proposition 13 is an eye-glazing $15-billion state bond issue for education facilities spanning prekindergarten through the university systems. It has nothing to do with the original Proposition 13 — at least directly.
The measure warrants a “yes” vote on Super Tuesday, but don’t kid yourself: Unlike the original 13, the latest version would ultimately result in higher property taxes in many communities to pay for the local share of costs for school rehabilitation or new construction. It’s inevitable.
The confusion with the original 13 is aggravated by the fact that a teachers union-promoted initiative is headed for the November state ballot that would directly increase property taxes on commercial and industrial properties. It would be the first major amendment of the tax-cutting Proposition 13.
Some voters have called the office of Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach), a coauthor of the new 13, accusing the state of lying about the proposition because they’ve heard it repeals the original.
Actually, the new 13 would provide $9 billion in bond money for K-12 schools and $2 billion each for community colleges, state universities and the University of California.
Advertisement
Of the K-12 money, $5.2 billion would be for modernization, $2.8 billion for new construction, $500 million for charter schools and $500 million for career tech (what we used to call “shop”).
The modernization would include improving earthquake and fire safety and removing lead from drinking water. Some of the money could be spent for preschool facilities. Universities would need to develop a plan for students’ affordable housing.
The way it currently works for K-12 schools is that the state pays for 60% of renovation and 50% of new construction. Schools pay for the rest, mostly with local property taxes and some developer fees. School districts apply for state bond money. And it’s first come, first served.
All that would significantly change under the ballot measure — largely because of former Gov. Jerry Brown’s lobbying. He hated the current system, arguing it favored wealthier school districts that could quickly apply for the state money.
When he was governor in 2016, Brown opposed a $9-billion bond issue for K-12 schools and community colleges because, he claimed, it was “a blunderbuss effort that promotes sprawl and squanders money that would be far better spent in low-income communities.” The measure passed anyway.
Under the new proposal, the state would pay for up to 65% of renovation costs and 55% of new construction. The highest amounts would go to districts with the least ability to raise their own funds and with large numbers of students who are from low-income families or are English learners.
First come, first served would be scrubbed and replaced with a system that graded applicants based on a priority list. The highest priority would be projects needed to improve students’ health and safety. Another priority — predictable from a government controlled by Democrats— would be construction projects using unionized labor.
Also, developer fees would be banned for multifamily residential complexes — such as apartments — located within half a mile of a major transit stop. For multifamily developments that aren’t near transit, fees would be reduced by 20%. These fees currently can amount to half of some projects’ construction costs.
Another significant change that is potentially costly to taxpayers: The cap on the amount of local bonds that districts could issue would be nearly doubled.
There are good reasons to vote “yes.”
Sure, K-12 enrollment is declining overall, but not everywhere. Anyway, most of the bond money is targeted for modernization.
“When kids walk into a school that’s clean and well kept, it sets the tone for the school day,” says O’Donnell, who taught high school social studies for 23 years.
Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), the other coauthor and a former CSU board member, says the state universities and UC each need $8 billion in capital outlay improvements. They’d get $2 billion apiece from Proposition 13.
“If the state doesn’t provide the money, the only alternative is to raise tuition,” Glazer says.
And there are rational reasons for voting “no.”
Interest on the bonds would cost $11 billion, bringing the total tab to $26 billion. Paying off the bonds would increase state spending by $740 million annually for 35 years. The state already is spending $6 billion a year to retire about $80 billion in various bonds.
“This is the largest school bond ever proposed,” says Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., the leading opponent. “The most critical rehabilitation needs can easily be handled with existing revenues when the state is running a surplus.
“But in all honesty, we anticipate it will pass.”
The opposition isn’t spending any money. And the backers — teacher unions, developers and construction unions — have raised $8.5 million for advertising.
This is a good Proposition 13. These are public facilities. And the only way to hold them together or expand for growth is with public money.


latimes--2020-02-18--The stranger-than-fiction twists that led to Robert Durst's Los Angeles murder trial

On a cloudy March afternoon in New Orleans , John Lewin , a cold case prosecutor from Los Angeles , met a man he had been investigating for so long he felt he knew his every tic and eccentricity .
The way he saw it , Robert Durst , the real estate heir suspected of three murders , had a way of flatly admitting to behavior that would embarrass most people .
He talked openly of having no motivation to succeed in life , of not being “ an acceptable human being , ” of wasting away his days with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t blush when describing how he posed as a woman named Dorothy — buying a blouse , wig and handbag at Walmart — because he couldn ’ t grow a beard fast enough to disguise his appearance .
In the interview room at Orleans Parish Prison that day in 2015 , Lewin told him how most people “ when they ’ re talking to police , family , anybody , are very much concerned with what other people think of them.
” “ And so what I noticed , with about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re asked , you are brutally honest , more honest than anyone I ’ ve ever seen , ” he said .
Thus began a nearly three-hour mental chess match that is a primer of Durst ’ s spectacularly weird odyssey from the day his wife disappeared in New York state in 1982 to the upcoming trial for allegedly murdering his friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles two decades ago .
With jury selection set to begin in Los Angeles on Wednesday , the trial is expected to last up to five months @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Angeles County prosecutors against the high-end Houston legal team that helped Durst beat a murder charge in Texas in 2003 .
Whether Durst testifies , the heart of the trial will center on his words outside court , which have strayed far beyond what any defense attorney would allow .
Against his lawyers ’ advice , Durst gave some 20 hours of interviews for the HBO documentary series “ The Jinx : The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.
” He was arrested on March 14 , 2015 , at a hotel in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speak to Lewin and ultimately made such a compromising statement that legal experts can ’ t wait to see how the defense team tries to get past them .
But not because they assume it will be impossible : Durst famously told a jury how he beheaded and sawed up the body of his neighbor Morris Black in Galveston , while insisting he had not murdered him — and was acquitted .
This time , Durst , 76 , is charged with shooting Berman in the back of the head at her cottage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show how the killing is tied , in a grisly cascade of events , to the disappearance of Kathleen Durst in Westchester County and the death of Black .
With no physical evidence tying Durst to Berman ’ s death , the government ’ s case hinges on two envelopes : one mailed to Beverly Hills police notifying them of a “ cadaver ” at Berman ’ s address before her body was discovered , and another sent by Durst to Berman before she died .
Both envelopes were addressed in the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” When Lewin spoke to Durst in 2015 , he quickly moved to get him on the record about the envelopes , according to an audio recording of the interview .
“ I ’ m here talking to you today because I truly believe , Bob , I don ’ t think you feel that badly about Morris .
That ’ s my view ... .
I don ’ t know how you feel about Kathie .
Here ’ s what I do know .
I know when you killed Susan that was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Do you know how I know that ?
” “ I ’ m going to stay away from killing Susan , ” Durst replied .
“ So the reason I think that , is because you know that the killer left a note , right ?
The cadaver note ... Why would you think the killer would have left a note ?
” “ I ’ m going to stay away from that.
” Lewin paused and backed off .
He would come back to it from another direction .
He talked about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his 20-plus years .
To keep the conversation relaxed , he revealed personal details about himself — his 170-pound dog , his wife saying he was approaching obesity — before delving into the bizarre switchbacks of Durst ’ s life .
“ There ’ s no question that of any suspect I ’ ve ever had , ever dealt with , you are the most interesting , ” he said .
“ It ’ s not even close ” Robert Durst was the first son of Seymour Durst , and thus a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s oldest and wealthiest real estate companies , the Durst Organization .
His life was most deeply dissected by director Andrew Jarecki and cinematographer Marc Smerling in “ The Jinx.
” In the six-part documentary , Durst said he had a happy childhood until age 7 when his mother Bernice fell from the roof of the family ’ s home — which he depicted as a suicide but was officially labeled an accident .
After that , he said he ran away from school repeatedly , and felt like he didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1965 , where he met and became fast friends with Susan Berman , the daughter of a Las Vegas mob boss .
Durst grew his hair long , smoked pot and rebelled against the buttoned-up corporate world of his father and , in 1972 , moved to Vermont with a new love , Kathleen McCormack , a dental hygienist , to run a health food store .
They married and he returned to New York in 1974 to work in the Durst Organization — according to him , under pressure from his father @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lived a glamorous life , partying at clubs such as Studio 54 and Xenon .
But Ann McCormack , Kathleen ’ s mother , thought Robert was an “ oddball ” and didn ’ t care for him .
Durst said he couldn ’ t bear to talk to her about “ canning ” or New England lifestyle or articles she read in Yankee magazine .
“ Those experiences with her family were kind of Bob meets the average American family , ” Jarecki suggests to him in one of the documentary interviews @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ” Durst replies .
“ Bob is forced to spend time with the average American family .
Bob is supposed to be polite and cooperative and pleasant and engage in the same conversations as they are .
And I just can ’ t do that.
” But by January 1982 , both were having affairs , and fighting over a divorce settlement .
Kathleen was in her fourth year at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx .
On Jan. 31 , at their second home in South Salem , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s party and returned to eat dinner with Durst .
He says she then got on the train to New York to sleep in their Manhattan apartment before a class the next day .
New York investigators say they don ’ t think she ever got on the train .
A woman saying she was Kathleen Durst called the medical school dean the next morning to say she was sick and going to miss class .
“ I don ’ t think Kathie called , ” Lewin would tell Durst 33 years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rotation where she was going to be.
” Lewin suspected , as others involved in the case had before , the caller was Durst ’ s friend Susan Berman .
Despite the national headlines about his wife ’ s disappearance , the call to the dean helped steer detectives away from Durst until November 2000 , when he learned that New York investigators reopened the case based on new leads .
“ It blew me away , ” he says in “ The Jinx.
” By that time , Durst had left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homes in New York and Trinidad , Calif. , a small coastal town north of Eureka .
As Durst related in the documentary , Berman , then a struggling crime writer , told him on the phone : “ The Los Angeles police contacted me .
They want to talk about Kathie Durst ’ s disappearance.
” Shortly thereafter , on Christmas Eve , Berman was found lying facedown in her bare-bones cottage , shot execution style .
There was no sign of a break-in or robbery .
On Dec. 27 , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ received a letter that there was a “ cadaver ” at Berman ’ s address , 1527 Benedict Canyon Drive .
It had been postmarked Dec. 23 , a day before her corpse was discovered .
With the pressure on , Durst fled .
He rented a run-down $ 300-a-month apartment in Galveston in the name of Dorothy Ciner , his high school girlfriend .
He presented himself as mute so he didn ’ t have to try to fake a female voice .
Durst ’ s new neighbor across the hall , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drifter known in the neighborhood as a perpetual grouch .
Durst would later testify that despite Black ’ s cantankerousness they became friendly , and the real estate heir slumming it in Texas dropped the disguise .
That September , Black ’ s severed body parts were found floating in trash bags in Galveston Bay .
Investigators learned that a mute woman who was often traveling out of town lived across from Black .
They searched Durst ’ s apartment , spotting small cuts in the linoleum floor .
When they pulled the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they would match to Black .
Durst was arrested for murder , released on $ 250,000 bail and never showed up to his arraignment .
He expressed disbelief to Jarecki that authorities would let anyone out who had been charged with murder , no matter the bail .
But he was caught 45 days later in Pennsylvania , shoplifting a Band-Aid and a hoagie while he had $ 38,000 in cash in his trunk .
Extradited to Texas for trial , he testified that he found Black in his home that September afternoon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and threatening him .
He said he scuffled with him to get ahold of the gun , and they both fell , the gun accidentally shooting Black in the head .
In a gravelly matter-of-fact voice , Durst , in explaining why he didn ’ t just call police , testified that he felt no one would believe he was trying to defend himself , so he bought a bow saw , borrowed Black ’ s ax and another saw , and hacked the body into pieces .
He dumped the bags off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and returned in the morning to find them floating and drifting onto shore .
When a teenage fisherman later alerted police to a human torso in the water , crime scene investigators noted that one of the bags had been ripped open .
Prosecutors alleged Durst had retrieved the one part of Black that would destroy his defense : his head .
Without it , they had no solid physical evidence to dispute the defendant ’ s account .
Black ’ s head has never been found .
“ I did not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testified .
“ I did dismember him.
” Jurors believed him , finding him odd , but probably honest .
He was acquitted .
New York tabloids were outraged .
Still , Durst might have eventually drifted into quiet oblivion had he not agreed to cooperate with Jarecki and Smerling in making “ The Jinx ” for HBO , which catapulted him back into the public eye in 2015 .
Berman ’ s adopted son defended Durst in his interviews for the documentary .
But in 2012 , during its making , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1999 letter from Durst to Berman — with the same misspelling and block handwriting as the so-called cadaver note .
It was a clincher worthy of Sherlock Holmes .
In a follow-up interview , Durst struggled to explain it .
Normally unflappable , he began burping , briefly pinching his earlobe and covering his face , before simply claiming he did not write the cadaver note .
When the crew finished the interview , Durst went to the bathroom with his microphone still live .
Muttering to himself , he said : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expected to get .
I don ’ t know what ’ s in the house .
Oh , I want this .
Killed them all , of course .
[ Unintelligible ] I want to do something new .
There ’ s nothing new about that ... .
He was right .
I was wrong .
The burping .
I ’ m having difficulty with the question .
What the hell did I do ?
” The film crew edited this to end more menacingly , concluding the series with the final words @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do ?
Kill them all , of course.
” Durst was arrested the day before the final episode aired .
Speaking with Lewin , Durst admitted he was getting ready to flee the country .
Lewin moved through Durst ’ s narrative , clearly trying to pin down critical facts .
He asked Durst why he sold his house in Trinidad just days before Berman died , and instead of flying home to New York from Arcata , like he normally did , bought a red-eye ticket at the counter in San Francisco @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Durst drove to Los Angeles to kill Berman and returned to San Francisco . )
Durst conceded it was unusual .
Then the prosecutor got back to the cadaver note .
Lewin claimed his handwriting expert said the two envelopes were absolutely written by the same person .
Durst wobbled on how similar they appeared , but stuck to his claim that he had nothing to with the cadaver note .
“ Whoever wrote the note was a part of killing her , ” Lewin said .
“ Whoever wrote that note had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death.
” On Dec. 24 , while still insisting Durst did not kill Berman , his defense team conceded that he wrote the note .
They have two choices now , said Loyola Law professor Laurie Levenson .
Durst could take the stand and face a combative , all-encompassing cross-examination by veteran prosecutors .
“ It would have to be a slam-dunk performance , ” she said .
Or his attorneys can float a possible explanation , in the process of questioning other witnesses , of how a person might have known Berman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why that person would lie about it .
With Durst , no one knows what to expect , Levenson said .
“ This case is morphing before our eyes .
”

On a cloudy March afternoon in New Orleans, John Lewin, a cold case prosecutor from Los Angeles, met a man he had been investigating for so long he felt he knew his every tic and eccentricity.
The way he saw it, Robert Durst, the real estate heir suspected of three murders, had a way of flatly admitting to behavior that would embarrass most people. He talked openly of having no motivation to succeed in life, of not being “an acceptable human being,” of wasting away his days with weed, booze and meth. Durst didn’t blush when describing how he posed as a woman named Dorothy — buying a blouse, wig and handbag at Walmart — because he couldn’t grow a beard fast enough to disguise his appearance.
In the interview room at Orleans Parish Prison that day in 2015, Lewin told him how most people “when they’re talking to police, family, anybody, are very much concerned with what other people think of them.”
Advertisement
“And so what I noticed, with about 90% of the things you’re asked, you are brutally honest, more honest than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Thus began a nearly three-hour mental chess match that is a primer of Durst’s spectacularly weird odyssey from the day his wife disappeared in New York state in 1982 to the upcoming trial for allegedly murdering his friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles two decades ago.
With jury selection set to begin in Los Angeles on Wednesday, the trial is expected to last up to five months, pitting a lineup of elite Los Angeles County prosecutors against the high-end Houston legal team that helped Durst beat a murder charge in Texas in 2003.
Whether Durst testifies, the heart of the trial will center on his words outside court, which have strayed far beyond what any defense attorney would allow.
Against his lawyers’ advice, Durst gave some 20 hours of interviews for the HBO documentary series “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” He was arrested on March 14, 2015, at a hotel in New Orleans, where he agreed to speak to Lewin and ultimately made such a compromising statement that legal experts can’t wait to see how the defense team tries to get past them.
But not because they assume it will be impossible: Durst famously told a jury how he beheaded and sawed up the body of his neighbor Morris Black in Galveston, while insisting he had not murdered him — and was acquitted.
This time, Durst, 76, is charged with shooting Berman in the back of the head at her cottage in Benedict Canyon. Prosecutors plan to show how the killing is tied, in a grisly cascade of events, to the disappearance of Kathleen Durst in Westchester County and the death of Black.
Advertisement
With no physical evidence tying Durst to Berman’s death, the government’s case hinges on two envelopes: one mailed to Beverly Hills police notifying them of a “cadaver” at Berman’s address before her body was discovered, and another sent by Durst to Berman before she died. Both envelopes were addressed in the same handwriting with the misspelling “Beverley Hills.”
When Lewin spoke to Durst in 2015, he quickly moved to get him on the record about the envelopes, according to an audio recording of the interview.
“I’m here talking to you today because I truly believe, Bob, I don’t think you feel that badly about Morris. That’s my view.... I don’t know how you feel about Kathie. Here’s what I do know. I know when you killed Susan that was not something you wanted to do. Do you know how I know that?”
“I’m going to stay away from killing Susan,” Durst replied.
“So the reason I think that, is because you know that the killer left a note, right? The cadaver note ... Why would you think the killer would have left a note?”
“I’m going to stay away from that.”
Lewin paused and backed off. He would come back to it from another direction. He talked about some of the cases he worked on in his 20-plus years. To keep the conversation relaxed, he revealed personal details about himself — his 170-pound dog, his wife saying he was approaching obesity — before delving into the bizarre switchbacks of Durst’s life.
“There’s no question that of any suspect I’ve ever had, ever dealt with, you are the most interesting,” he said. “It’s not even close.”
***
Robert Durst was the first son of Seymour Durst, and thus a scion to one of New York’s oldest and wealthiest real estate companies, the Durst Organization.
His life was most deeply dissected by director Andrew Jarecki and cinematographer Marc Smerling in “The Jinx.” In the six-part documentary, Durst said he had a happy childhood until age 7 when his mother Bernice fell from the roof of the family’s home — which he depicted as a suicide but was officially labeled an accident. After that, he said he ran away from school repeatedly, and felt like he didn’t fit in.
He attended UCLA in 1965, where he met and became fast friends with Susan Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mob boss.
Durst grew his hair long, smoked pot and rebelled against the buttoned-up corporate world of his father and, in 1972, moved to Vermont with a new love, Kathleen McCormack, a dental hygienist, to run a health food store. They married and he returned to New York in 1974 to work in the Durst Organization — according to him, under pressure from his father. Outwardly, Bob and Kathie Durst lived a glamorous life, partying at clubs such as Studio 54 and Xenon.
But Ann McCormack, Kathleen’s mother, thought Robert was an “oddball” and didn’t care for him.
Durst said he couldn’t bear to talk to her about “canning” or New England lifestyle or articles she read in Yankee magazine.
“Those experiences with her family were kind of Bob meets the average American family,” Jarecki suggests to him in one of the documentary interviews.
“More than ‘meets,’” Durst replies. “Bob is forced to spend time with the average American family. Bob is supposed to be polite and cooperative and pleasant and engage in the same conversations as they are. And I just can’t do that.”
But by January 1982, both were having affairs, and fighting over a divorce settlement. Kathleen was in her fourth year at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. On Jan. 31, at their second home in South Salem, N.Y., she went to a friend’s party and returned to eat dinner with Durst. He says she then got on the train to New York to sleep in their Manhattan apartment before a class the next day.
New York investigators say they don’t think she ever got on the train.
A woman saying she was Kathleen Durst called the medical school dean the next morning to say she was sick and going to miss class.
“I don’t think Kathie called,” Lewin would tell Durst 33 years later. “Kathie would have called the rotation where she was going to be.”
Lewin suspected, as others involved in the case had before, the caller was Durst’s friend Susan Berman.
Despite the national headlines about his wife’s disappearance, the call to the dean helped steer detectives away from Durst until November 2000, when he learned that New York investigators reopened the case based on new leads.
“It blew me away,” he says in “The Jinx.”
By that time, Durst had left the family business and was living in homes in New York and Trinidad, Calif., a small coastal town north of Eureka.
As Durst related in the documentary, Berman, then a struggling crime writer, told him on the phone: “The Los Angeles police contacted me. They want to talk about Kathie Durst’s disappearance.”
Writer Susan Berman was killed in her home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Benedict Canyon. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Shortly thereafter, on Christmas Eve, Berman was found lying facedown in her bare-bones cottage, shot execution style. There was no sign of a break-in or robbery. On Dec. 27, the assistant chief of the Beverly Hills police received a letter that there was a “cadaver” at Berman’s address, 1527 Benedict Canyon Drive. It had been postmarked Dec. 23, a day before her corpse was discovered.
With the pressure on, Durst fled. He rented a run-down $300-a-month apartment in Galveston in the name of Dorothy Ciner, his high school girlfriend. He presented himself as mute so he didn’t have to try to fake a female voice.
Durst’s new neighbor across the hall, Morris Black, 71, was a drifter known in the neighborhood as a perpetual grouch.
Durst would later testify that despite Black’s cantankerousness they became friendly, and the real estate heir slumming it in Texas dropped the disguise.
That September, Black’s severed body parts were found floating in trash bags in Galveston Bay. Investigators learned that a mute woman who was often traveling out of town lived across from Black. They searched Durst’s apartment, spotting small cuts in the linoleum floor. When they pulled the linoleum up, they found blood stains they would match to Black.
Durst was arrested for murder, released on $250,000 bail and never showed up to his arraignment. He expressed disbelief to Jarecki that authorities would let anyone out who had been charged with murder, no matter the bail. But he was caught 45 days later in Pennsylvania, shoplifting a Band-Aid and a hoagie while he had $38,000 in cash in his trunk.
Extradited to Texas for trial, he testified that he found Black in his home that September afternoon, holding Durst’s .22-caliber handgun and threatening him. He said he scuffled with him to get ahold of the gun, and they both fell, the gun accidentally shooting Black in the head.
In a gravelly matter-of-fact voice, Durst, in explaining why he didn’t just call police, testified that he felt no one would believe he was trying to defend himself, so he bought a bow saw, borrowed Black’s ax and another saw, and hacked the body into pieces. He dumped the bags off a jetty in the bay at night, and returned in the morning to find them floating and drifting onto shore.
When a teenage fisherman later alerted police to a human torso in the water, crime scene investigators noted that one of the bags had been ripped open. Prosecutors alleged Durst had retrieved the one part of Black that would destroy his defense: his head. Without it, they had no solid physical evidence to dispute the defendant’s account.
Black’s head has never been found.
“I did not kill my best friend,” Durst testified. “I did dismember him.”
Standing with his attorneys, multi-millionaire murder defendant Robert Durst, right, reacts to a not guilty verdict on Nov. 11, 2003, in Galveston, Texas. (Pat Sullivan / Associated Press)
Jurors believed him, finding him odd, but probably honest. He was acquitted. New York tabloids were outraged.
Still, Durst might have eventually drifted into quiet oblivion had he not agreed to cooperate with Jarecki and Smerling in making “The Jinx” for HBO, which catapulted him back into the public eye in 2015.
Berman’s adopted son defended Durst in his interviews for the documentary. But in 2012, during its making, he called Smerling to say he found a 1999 letter from Durst to Berman — with the same misspelling and block handwriting as the so-called cadaver note. It was a clincher worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
In a follow-up interview, Durst struggled to explain it. Normally unflappable, he began burping, briefly pinching his earlobe and covering his face, before simply claiming he did not write the cadaver note.
When the crew finished the interview, Durst went to the bathroom with his microphone still live. Muttering to himself, he said: “I don’t know what you expected to get. I don’t know what’s in the house. Oh, I want this. Killed them all, of course. [Unintelligible] I want to do something new. There’s nothing new about that.... He was right. I was wrong. The burping. I’m having difficulty with the question. What the hell did I do?”
The film crew edited this to end more menacingly, concluding the series with the final words: “What the hell did I do? Kill them all, of course.”
Durst was arrested the day before the final episode aired. Speaking with Lewin, Durst admitted he was getting ready to flee the country.
Lewin moved through Durst’s narrative, clearly trying to pin down critical facts. He asked Durst why he sold his house in Trinidad just days before Berman died, and instead of flying home to New York from Arcata, like he normally did, bought a red-eye ticket at the counter in San Francisco. (The prosecution plans to argue Durst drove to Los Angeles to kill Berman and returned to San Francisco.) Durst conceded it was unusual.
Then the prosecutor got back to the cadaver note. Lewin claimed his handwriting expert said the two envelopes were absolutely written by the same person. Durst wobbled on how similar they appeared, but stuck to his claim that he had nothing to do with the cadaver note.
“Whoever wrote the note was a part of killing her,” Lewin said.
“Yes,” Durst replied.
“No question, right?” Lewin asked.
“Whoever wrote that note had to be involved in Susan’s death.”
On Dec. 24, while still insisting Durst did not kill Berman, his defense team conceded that he wrote the note.
They have two choices now, said Loyola Law professor Laurie Levenson. Durst could take the stand and face a combative, all-encompassing cross-examination by veteran prosecutors. “It would have to be a slam-dunk performance,” she said.
Or his attorneys can float a possible explanation, in the process of questioning other witnesses, of how a person might have known Berman’s body was there, and why that person would lie about it. With Durst, no one knows what to expect, Levenson said.
“This case is morphing before our eyes.”


latimes--2020-02-18--Central Americans have long migrated north. Today, their studies are getting their due

It was a rare thing , a few decades ago , to hear anyone in academia talk about Central Americans .
“ People would study Mexicans with no problem , ” said Cecilia Menjívar , professor of sociology at UCLA .
“ But Central Americans were seen as a niche , a small group of people that didn ’ t seem as relevant.
” But on a recent afternoon , Menjívar , a native of El Salvador , stood inside a packed UCLA lecture hall introducing a notable lineup of professors invited to speak about Central American migration .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Texas and different parts of Mexico including Chiapas , Tijuana and Mexico City .
“ So many people showed up , we have two overflow rooms , ” Menjívar said , sounding thrilled and a little surprised .
The central purpose of the conference was to show that Central Americans are not newcomers to the U.S. or to Mexico .
They ’ ve been migrating north for at least a century , due to wars , poverty , violence and U.S. intervention .
Hondurans started arriving in the late 1800s in New Orleans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Central America entered the U.S. Salvadoran and Nicaraguan coffee producers began settling in small numbers in San Francisco in the early 1900s .
And during and after World War II , U.S. wartime industries recruited scores of Central American workers .
Today , much of the contention over immigration centers on migrants from Central America .
A record number of families have flocked to the U.S. border in recent years to seek refuge .
More than 430,000 family members from El Salvador , Guatemala and Honduras were caught at the U.S. border during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection .
Nationwide , more than 3 million Latinos have roots in these three Central American countries .
Recent immigrants have been met by both Democratic and Republican administrations with aggressively restrictive policies that have separated parents from their children , held them for extensive periods in detention centers and drove them back into Mexico and Guatemala to discourage them from applying for asylum .
Long before Central American migration dominated national headlines , some academics were pushing to study this region ’ s migrants , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history ; the forces that drive them north and the complex relationship of their native countries to the U.S. Menjívar began studying the topic as a grad student in the 1990s .
By then , hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans had arrived in the U.S. , seeking refuge in Los Angeles , Washington , D.C. , and San Francisco .
They escaped a brutal 12-year civil war that the U.S. government fomented and sponsored in the 1980s , spending billions of dollars to help support government oligarchs and right-wing death squads .
These @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the U.S. Less than 2 % were granted political asylum , giving way to a community without documentation and few to no rights .
Menjívar wanted to explore , from an academic standpoint , why the U.S. wasn ’ t receiving these migrants as war refugees .
But finding any established research about Central Americans was difficult .
“ I looked everywhere and could only find a couple of academics out there who were interested in this topic , ” she said .
“ People didn ’ t understand what I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a small but committed number of scholars — several of them Central Americans — have worked diligently to create space for the field .
They ’ ve published articles and books , created panels at academic conferences and began teaching courses at universities .
In 2000 , after nearly a decade of intense lobbying , Cal State Northridge became the nation ’ s only university to establish a Central American Studies department with a Central American studies double major , major and minor .
Back then , Cal State Northridge was home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , more than at any other American university .
At UCLA , Menjívar and a few other colleagues , some from El Salvador , Guatemala and Mexico , have partnered with Central American students to create a close-knit community of scholars passionate about studying the region and its diaspora .
In November , galvanized by the growing presence of Central Americans in Los Angeles and by national politics , many lobbied to have the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana & Chicano Studies add “ Central American ” to its name .
Scholars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minor within the next year and a major within the next five .
At the gathering at UCLA , professors from the U.S. and Mexico took turns presenting work that many had been chipping away at for years — collecting data at migration centers , conducting interviews , surveys and studies — all to get the most accurate picture of the Central American migrant story .
They delivered their lectures and responded to questions , in English and Spanish , inside of a lecture hall that stayed packed from 8 a.m. until past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a year in advance , coincidentally took place the same week as a nationwide outcry erupted over another sort of migrant storytelling .
It had to do with “ American Dirt , ” a novel by Jeanine Cummins , that made headlines after the publishing industry and critics promoted it as the defining immigrant story of our times .
When Latinos pushed back , calling the novel cartoonish , and riddled with inaccuracies and stereotypes , it sparked a weeks-long controversy over misrepresentation and cultural appropriation .
Scholars at UCLA didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conference , but many were well aware of the uproar .
In a world of research where precision and nuance is everything , they had their own concerns .
“ It ’ s upsetting , ” said Alfredo Trejo , 27 , a PhD student of political science at UCLA .
“ We spend so much time and energy on our research .
We have to make sure we get everything correct .
Then , this book that distorts so much is hailed as the one book everyone should read to understand migration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , whose mom is Salvadoran , and other graduate students established the Central American Isthmus Graduate Assn .
or CAIGA , a group that promotes Central American research on campus .
They work side by side with the Central American Student Union , UNICA , an organization made up of undergrad Central American students .
Both groups are quite active at UCLA .
Among other things , they want university research on Central Americans to be more accessible to the outside world .
“ Academics usually make things sound a lot more complicated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We want to make sure we ’ re working closely with the community at all times.
” Many of the students who enroll in Central Americans courses are often searching for themselves , trying to recover some part of their history .
Their pasts are fragmented , obscured by a culture of silence and trauma .
Also , by a U.S. school system that rarely , if ever , teaches Central American history .
Over the years , Rubén Hernández-León said he has seen Latino students explore their own communities with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Still , says the director of UCLA ’ s Center for Mexican Studies , he regularly has to push back against critics who think students of color are not equipped to research their own histories .
“ It ’ s the so-called ‘ me-research ’ argument , ” Hernández-León said .
“ Some think you ’ re too close to the subject to be objective .
You don ’ t have the distance to do the cold , scientific research.
” Hernández-León partnered with Menjívar and Leisy Abrego , a professor in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Central American Studies , to organize the recent conference on Central American migration .
One researcher , a longtime expert named Amarela Varela of the National Autonomous University of Mexico , spoke about the growing militarization of Mexico , as the country has partnered with the U.S. to push back Central American immigrants since the 1980s .
According to the National Commission of Human Rights , she said , 8 out of 10 crimes against immigrants are are committed in collusion with Mexican state officials .
Rodolfo Casillas , a scholar from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , spoke about the great anxiety Mexicans are feeling about Central American migration .
The fear , he said , is largely overblown and race-based .
As of 2015 , Central Americans made up little more than half a percentage of Mexico ’ s population .
Floridalma Boj Lopez , an assistant professor at Cal State Los Angeles , talked about Guatemalan Mayans , a community she knows well from growing up Mayan in Los Angeles .
Boj Lopez explored the indigenous group ’ s traumatic history of genocide , war and poverty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mexico , they face a disproportionate level of racism and struggle to find anyone who understands their language .
“ We ’ re talking about an entire structure that doesn ’ t recognize them and excludes them , ” Boj Lopez said .
In recent years , scholars studying Central Americans have cultivated a close network across the country , with students eager to learn from each other and grow the field .
“ It ’ s still new and it ’ s still growing .
There ’ s mentorship happening on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who began teaching at UCLA a decade ago .
Abrego championed having her department add Central Americans to its title .
She constantly promotes Central American research on social media and encourages everyone to share their work using # CentralAmericanStudies .
Those who worked to establish the Central American department at Cal State Northridge recognize how much the field has grown .
“ That department didn ’ t come from the benevolence of the Cal State system , ” said Roberto Lovato , the program ’ s former coordinator .
“ It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in some ways , was similar to what Chicanos and African American studies endured in the 1960s to establish their own departments at universities , including Cal State Northridge .
What helped Salvadorans , he said , was their long history of organizing in times of warfare and political upheavals .
Today , Lovato said , he ’ s encouraged by the growing number of young Central American scholars committed to studying their communities .
“ These are places where our culture is being preserved , developed and documented , ” Lovato @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are scholars who will not be stopped in their pursuit of learning about themselves .
”

It was a rare thing, a few decades ago, to hear anyone in academia talk about Central Americans.
“People would study Mexicans with no problem,” said Cecilia Menjívar, professor of sociology at UCLA. “But Central Americans were seen as a niche, a small group of people that didn’t seem as relevant.”
But on a recent afternoon, Menjívar, a native of El Salvador, stood inside a packed UCLA lecture hall introducing a notable lineup of professors invited to speak about Central American migration. They were social scientists from Los Angeles, Texas and different parts of Mexico including Chiapas, Tijuana and Mexico City.
Advertisement
“So many people showed up, we have two overflow rooms,” Menjívar said, sounding thrilled and a little surprised.
The central purpose of the conference was to show that Central Americans are not newcomers to the U.S. or to Mexico. They’ve been migrating north for at least a century, due to wars, poverty, violence and U.S. intervention.
Hondurans started arriving in the late 1800s in New Orleans, where bananas and other fruit from Central America entered the U.S. Salvadoran and Nicaraguan coffee producers began settling in small numbers in San Francisco in the early 1900s. And during and after World War II, U.S. wartime industries recruited scores of Central American workers.
Today, much of the contention over immigration centers on migrants from Central America. A record number of families have flocked to the U.S. border in recent years to seek refuge.
More than 430,000 family members from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were caught at the U.S. border during the fiscal year that ended last September, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Nationwide, more than 3 million Latinos have roots in these three Central American countries.
Recent immigrants have been met by both Democratic and Republican administrations with aggressively restrictive policies that have separated parents from their children, held them for extensive periods in detention centers and drove them back into Mexico and Guatemala to discourage them from applying for asylum.
Long before Central American migration dominated national headlines, some academics were pushing to study this region’s migrants, to get a deeper understanding of their history; the forces that drive them north and the complex relationship of their native countries to the U.S.
Advertisement
Menjívar began studying the topic as a grad student in the 1990s. By then, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans had arrived in the U.S., seeking refuge in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. They escaped a brutal 12-year civil war that the U.S. government fomented and sponsored in the 1980s, spending billions of dollars to help support government oligarchs and right-wing death squads.
These migrants were received with hostility and suspicion in the U.S. Less than 2% were granted political asylum, giving way to a community without documentation and few to no rights.
Menjívar wanted to explore, from an academic standpoint, why the U.S. wasn’t receiving these migrants as war refugees. But finding any established research about Central Americans was difficult.
“I looked everywhere and could only find a couple of academics out there who were interested in this topic,” she said. “People didn’t understand what I was doing.”
Over the years, she and a small but committed number of scholars — several of them Central Americans — have worked diligently to create space for the field. They’ve published articles and books, created panels at academic conferences and began teaching courses at universities.
In 2000, after nearly a decade of intense lobbying, Cal State Northridge became the nation’s only university to establish a Central American Studies department with a Central American studies double major, major and minor. Back then, Cal State Northridge was home to 1,200 students of Central American descent, more than at any other American university.
At UCLA, Menjívar and a few other colleagues, some from El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, have partnered with Central American students to create a close-knit community of scholars passionate about studying the region and its diaspora.
In November, galvanized by the growing presence of Central Americans in Los Angeles and by national politics, many lobbied to have the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana & Chicano Studies add “Central American” to its name. Scholars hope to establish a Central American studies minor within the next year and a major within the next five.
At the gathering at UCLA, professors from the U.S. and Mexico took turns presenting work that many had been chipping away at for years — collecting data at migration centers, conducting interviews, surveys and studies — all to get the most accurate picture of the Central American migrant story. They delivered their lectures and responded to questions, in English and Spanish, inside of a lecture hall that stayed packed from 8 a.m. until past sundown.
The conference, planned about a year in advance, coincidentally took place the same week as a nationwide outcry erupted over another sort of migrant storytelling.
It had to do with “American Dirt,” a novel by Jeanine Cummins, that made headlines after the publishing industry and critics promoted it as the defining immigrant story of our times. When Latinos pushed back, calling the novel cartoonish, and riddled with inaccuracies and stereotypes, it sparked a weeks-long controversy over misrepresentation and cultural appropriation.
Scholars at UCLA didn’t bring up the book directly during the conference, but many were well aware of the uproar. In a world of research where precision and nuance is everything, they had their own concerns.
“It’s upsetting,” said Alfredo Trejo, 27, a PhD student of political science at UCLA. “We spend so much time and energy on our research. We have to make sure we get everything correct. Then, this book that distorts so much is hailed as the one book everyone should read to understand migration today.”
Late last year, Trejo, whose mom is Salvadoran, and other graduate students established the Central American Isthmus Graduate Assn. or CAIGA, a group that promotes Central American research on campus. They work side by side with the Central American Student Union, UNICA, an organization made up of undergrad Central American students.
Both groups are quite active at UCLA. Among other things, they want university research on Central Americans to be more accessible to the outside world.
“Academics usually make things sound a lot more complicated than they are,” Trejo said. “We want to make sure we’re working closely with the community at all times.”
Many of the students who enroll in Central Americans courses are often searching for themselves, trying to recover some part of their history. Their pasts are fragmented, obscured by a culture of silence and trauma. Also, by a U.S. school system that rarely, if ever, teaches Central American history.
Over the years, Rubén Hernández-León said he has seen Latino students explore their own communities with a great sense of rigor and commitment. Still, says the director of UCLA’s Center for Mexican Studies, he regularly has to push back against critics who think students of color are not equipped to research their own histories.
“It’s the so-called ‘me-research’ argument,” Hernández-León said. “Some think you’re too close to the subject to be objective. You don’t have the distance to do the cold, scientific research.”
Hernández-León partnered with Menjívar and Leisy Abrego, a professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano and Central American Studies, to organize the recent conference on Central American migration.
One researcher, a longtime expert named Amarela Varela of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, spoke about the growing militarization of Mexico, as the country has partnered with the U.S. to push back Central American immigrants since the 1980s. According to the National Commission of Human Rights, she said, 8 out of 10 crimes against immigrants are are committed in collusion with Mexican state officials.
Rodolfo Casillas, a scholar from the Latin American Social Sciences Institute in Guatemala, spoke about the great anxiety Mexicans are feeling about Central American migration. The fear, he said, is largely overblown and race-based. As of 2015, Central Americans made up little more than half a percentage of Mexico’s population.
Floridalma Boj Lopez, an assistant professor at Cal State Los Angeles, talked about Guatemalan Mayans, a community she knows well from growing up Mayan in Los Angeles. Boj Lopez explored the indigenous group’s traumatic history of genocide, war and poverty. She said when Mayans cross into Mexico, they face a disproportionate level of racism and struggle to find anyone who understands their language.
“We’re talking about an entire structure that doesn’t recognize them and excludes them,” Boj Lopez said.
In recent years, scholars studying Central Americans have cultivated a close network across the country, with students eager to learn from each other and grow the field.
“It’s still new and it’s still growing. There’s mentorship happening on a national level,” said Abrego, who began teaching at UCLA a decade ago.
Abrego championed having her department add Central Americans to its title. She constantly promotes Central American research on social media and encourages everyone to share their work using #CentAmStudies.
Those who worked to establish the Central American department at Cal State Northridge recognize how much the field has grown.
“That department didn’t come from the benevolence of the Cal State system,” said Roberto Lovato, the program’s former coordinator. “It was an actual political struggle.”
Their battle, in some ways, was similar to what Chicanos and African American studies endured in the 1960s to establish their own departments at universities, including Cal State Northridge. What helped Salvadorans, he said, was their long history of organizing in times of warfare and political upheavals.
Today, Lovato said, he’s encouraged by the growing number of young Central American scholars committed to studying their communities.
“These are places where our culture is being preserved, developed and documented,” Lovato said. “And intellectually, these are scholars who will not be stopped in their pursuit of learning about themselves.”


latimes--2020-02-18--Op-Ed: Have you heard this one? Los Angeles can't take a joke

A woman left one of the Westside ’ s roughly 75,000 blow-dry joints and fell in love with my dog .
Mid-coo , she asked , “ Did you adopt him ?
” I smiled , thinking , Got ta write that one down .
But with Tasers in her voice , she said , “ If you went to a kill-shelter and saw the litchrally hundreds of abused puppies in cages desperate for a loving home , you wouldn ’ t think you ’ re so funny.
” A kill-shelter tour would definitely be heartbreaking but that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t make a dog joke on Montana Avenue , it ’ s a sure sign that America ’ s epidemic of humorlessness has come to town .
Like the rest of the country , Los Angeles is officially a tough room .
By the way , a nice thing about owning a dog is having someone around the house who ’ s aging even faster than me .
From L.A. kids attending far-off colleges and adult friends inexplicably living in other cities , we ’ d been hearing for a few years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sounded grim but not a threat to Angelenos .
The contagion couldn ’ t find us , not with our giggling history of riffing on our own bad taste , natural disasters , ethnic strife and grossly overpaid jobs , sometimes all in one joke : “ Do I miss the change of seasons ?
No , L.A. has four seasons : Fire season , flood season , riot season and pilot season.
” Now it ’ s 2020 and even Left Coast townsfolk have scowled up , our brains bunched into fists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we patrol the internet/streets craving umbrage/affront so we can indignantly type/chant : “ Hey !
That ’ s not OK !
” You know , like the woman in the ( illegal ) Rustic Canyon dog park who fiercely defended the # MeToo movement when I said , “ My dog ( Ike ) did his domination act on a female labradoodle ( name withheld ) and an hour later , I got a call from Ronan Farrow.
” There are two quasi-buyable reasons why my L.A. has succumbed to can ’ t-take-a-joke-ophilia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for every insensitivity known to American life .
It promotes violence , decadence , depravity and the demeaning of dogs , not to mention racism , sexism , materialism and pathological sequel-ism .
( OK , I ’ ll cop to that one . )
Not unlike humans , when show business people are accused of something often enough , we get defensive , and then we get defensive about being defensive .
Next we buy in , terrified of making even the tiniest joke for fear of swift rebuke .
You know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paramount lot who said , “ Uh , the death of our planet is not funny ” in response to this observation : “ My dog stopped flying private to reduce his carbon paw print.
” A second and decidedly ironic factor in our grumpy-opathy is L.A. ’ s overwhelmingly left-wing politics .
We coastal elites feel obligated to deeply empathize with struggling others while still finding life tragic enough to be funny .
But since roughly Jan. 20 , 2017 , we ’ ve spent so much time watching MSNBC , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bravely tries to make us chuckle , but the earlier time slots have already deadened our pleasure centers .
Even the commercials are soul-crushing : Honestly , who knew so many Americans suffer from moderate to severe plaque psoriasis ?
And yet , all those dermally beset Americans can happily skip through dewy meadows alongside their purebred dogs .
It ’ s ( almost ) too confusing to joke about ; it ’ s definitely too dangerous .
We can ’ t even make jokes about not being allowed to make jokes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hancock Park fundraiser for a candidate from some frowning swing state and happen to note , “ Being funny in L.A. now is like trying to do a tight 15 minutes after the Weinstein prosecution rests its case.
” There is an excellent chance someone will respond with , “ Oh , you poor thing .
Try living in Aleppo.
” Those are the options ?
Unfunny in L.A. or decimated in Syria ?
Maybe our sourpuss epidemic is a cyclical phenomenon and the pendulum will swing back .
I ’ ve never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if there is one , here ’ s an idea for reversing it : Everyone in town is physically forced to watch “ Blazing Saddles , ” “ Animal House ” and “ Airplane !
” Cinema is our penicillin and these movies are so grotesquely un-PC , so ecumenically offensive yet so wantonly funny , they might nudge L.A. back into being “ a great crowd.
” In the meantime , local humor will continue sidestepping politics , religion , sex , race , gender , GMO produce and — Hey .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s sadder than losing a family member .
After all , you don ’ t have any mixed feelings about your dog .
Is this thing on ?
Peter Mehlman ’ s latest novel is `` # MeAsWell.
” He was a writer and executive producer on “ Seinfeld .
”

A woman left one of the Westside’s roughly 75,000 blow-dry joints and fell in love with my dog. Mid-coo, she asked, “Did you adopt him?”
“No,” I said, “he’s my biological dog.”
I smiled, thinking, Gotta write that one down.
But with Tasers in her voice, she said, “If you went to a kill-shelter and saw the litchrally hundreds of abused puppies in cages desperate for a loving home, you wouldn’t think you’re so funny.”
A kill-shelter tour would definitely be heartbreaking but that’s beside the point: When you can’t make a dog joke on Montana Avenue, it’s a sure sign that America’s epidemic of humorlessness has come to town. Like the rest of the country, Los Angeles is officially a tough room.
By the way, a nice thing about owning a dog is having someone around the house who’s aging even faster than me.
Advertisement
Testing 1, 2, 3.
From L.A. kids attending far-off colleges and adult friends inexplicably living in other cities, we’d been hearing for a few years how laugh-averse Americans had become. It sounded grim but not a threat to Angelenos. The contagion couldn’t find us, not with our giggling history of riffing on our own bad taste, natural disasters, ethnic strife and grossly overpaid jobs, sometimes all in one joke: “Do I miss the change of seasons? No, L.A. has four seasons: Fire season, flood season, riot season and pilot season.”
Now it’s 2020 and even Left Coast townsfolk have scowled up, our brains bunched into fists. Instead of shrugging off offensiveness, we patrol the internet/streets craving umbrage/affront so we can indignantly type/chant: “Hey! That’s not OK!”
You know, like the woman in the (illegal) Rustic Canyon dog park who fiercely defended the #MeToo movement when I said, “My dog (Ike) did his domination act on a female labradoodle (name withheld) and an hour later, I got a call from Ronan Farrow.”
There are two quasi-buyable reasons why my L.A. has succumbed to can’t-take-a-joke-ophilia. For one, Hollywood is blamed for every insensitivity known to American life. It promotes violence, decadence, depravity and the demeaning of dogs, not to mention racism, sexism, materialism and pathological sequel-ism. (OK, I’ll cop to that one.) Not unlike humans, when show business people are accused of something often enough, we get defensive, and then we get defensive about being defensive. Next we buy in, terrified of making even the tiniest joke for fear of swift rebuke.
You know, like the greener-than-thou guy on the Paramount lot who said, “Uh, the death of our planet is not funny” in response to this observation: “My dog stopped flying private to reduce his carbon paw print.”
A second and decidedly ironic factor in our grumpy-opathy is L.A.’s overwhelmingly left-wing politics. We coastal elites feel obligated to deeply empathize with struggling others while still finding life tragic enough to be funny. But since roughly Jan. 20, 2017, we’ve spent so much time watching MSNBC, the funny part has disappeared.
Advertisement
Rachel Maddow bravely tries to make us chuckle, but the earlier time slots have already deadened our pleasure centers. Even the commercials are soul-crushing: Honestly, who knew so many Americans suffer from moderate to severe plaque psoriasis? And yet, all those dermally beset Americans can happily skip through dewy meadows alongside their purebred dogs.
It’s (almost) too confusing to joke about; it’s definitely too dangerous. We can’t even make jokes about not being allowed to make jokes.
Let’s say you attend a Hancock Park fundraiser for a candidate from some frowning swing state and happen to note, “Being funny in L.A. now is like trying to do a tight 15 minutes after the Weinstein prosecution rests its case.” There is an excellent chance someone will respond with, “Oh, you poor thing. Try living in Aleppo.”
Those are the options? Unfunny in L.A. or decimated in Syria?
Maybe our sourpuss epidemic is a cyclical phenomenon and the pendulum will swing back. I’ve never seen a pendulum in L.A., but if there is one, here’s an idea for reversing it: Everyone in town is physically forced to watch “Blazing Saddles,” “Animal House” and “Airplane!” Cinema is our penicillin and these movies are so grotesquely un-PC, so ecumenically offensive yet so wantonly funny, they might nudge L.A. back into being “a great crowd.”
Or not.
In the meantime, local humor will continue sidestepping politics, religion, sex, race, gender, GMO produce and —
Hey. When your dog dies, it’s sadder than losing a family member. After all, you don’t have any mixed feelings about your dog.
Is this thing on?
Peter Mehlman’s latest novel is “#MeAsWell.” He was a writer and executive producer on “Seinfeld.”