Look beyond the kissing dudes to the folks protesting the ruling of California's Supreme Court regarding same-sex marriage. The message reminds me of another guy nobody takes seriously.
A few weeks ago, I was driving down the 710 and talking with an old colleague about the person I was en route to interview. My subject was Josh Lowenthal, the self-styled black sheep of his Long Beach family.Lowenthal, 38, grew up in a progressive Jewish family, the kind of home that sang Bob Dylan songs on Shabbat. His parents, now divorced, both taught psychology at Cal State Long Beach and were active in the community. On returning home in the afternoon from public school, he'd encounter community meetings in his living room, often organized by his mother to address homeless issues.(Image: The District Weekly)
"There is a deeply felt sense of tikkun olam [heal the world] that is based in that family in ways that I wish all families would emulate," said Assemblyman Mike Feuer, whose then-L.A. City Council staff Josh Lowenthal joined after returning from Israel in the mid-'90s. "It may not be always exclusively stated, though it is evident in the way they live, but one mission in life is to reach out and help other people. It is more than a political imperative for that family. For the Lowenthals it is a moral imperative."
The clearest example of this in Josh Lowenthal's life can be found in a social service building with an industrial façade in the Port of Long Beach. The Long Beach Multi-Service Center is provided by the city to 14 agencies, including Goodwill, the Long Beach Rescue Shelter and Children Today. Here the homeless come to shower, do their laundry, check their voicemail, meet with social workers or, particularly in the case of children, simply get off the street.
Last month, Children Today served 762 children. Six weeks to 6 years old, they met from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with caregivers who help them cope with losses as seemingly trivial, though not insignificant, as their toys and as traumatic as a family member.
"It's day care with a therapeutic component," said Dora Jacildo, the charity's executive director.
Children Today started in 1997, and Lowenthal joined the board four years later. It provided a channel for Lowenthal, who by the end of the dot-com boom was doing quite well, to give back to the people he thought needed the most help.
"Bye Josh!"
"Bye Josh!"
"Bye Josh!"
The toddlers parrot their teacher as he walks in and out of their classroom on a recent visit. Lowenthal wears a gray pinstripe suit and light-blue shirt, his beard trim and his prematurely gray hair gelled and spiked. He speaks as proudly of Children Today -- the only homeless program accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children -- as he does of the telecommunication companies he started or his nightclub, Sachi.
"For him, it's a world of promise. And he looks for vehicles to bring that promise to fruition," said his mother. "He experienced so much support as a youngster growing up in Long Beach, and I think he is trying his hardest to give back."
And if Ellis isn't recalled, this certainly won't be the last time Josh Lowenthal is mentioned as a political candidate.
"I don't have to be an elected official," he hastened. "I really believe there are two types of elected officials: There are those who want to do something and those who want to be something. I really want to do something -- and will, whether elected of not."
I wish I had a viral marketer to send my best blog posts out in press releases. The folks at The Washington Post and On Faith do, and their publicist just sent me a plug for a taped interview with Rick Warren, who you might know as "founding and senior pastor of the largest Christian church in California, best-selling author and influential evangelical leader Rick Warren."A lot of times our morality tends to dictate our theology. And that is, well, like I said to Sam Harris. I said, Sam, if there was a God, would you have to change your lifestyle? And he said, 'yeah' and I said, 'Well, I think really, Sam, you just don’t want a boss. The bottom line is you don't want a solving God who tells you this is right or this is wrong. And, you want to live a kind of life where you make your decisions rather than God saying this is what I want you to do with your life.
"Anti-Israel!" "Anti-Israel!" "Anti-hate!" "Anti-Israel!" "Anti-racism!" "Anti-Israel!" "Anti-occupation!" "Anti-Israel!"The scene was captured by Reut Cohen, an Israeli-born student who graduated last fall. It serves as the closing scene of a story I have in this week's Jewish Journal about anti-Israel rhetoric that has become synonymous with the UC Irvine brand. A report last week by a task force that was created by Hillel (and later cut loose) blames the administration for not doing more to prevent speeches by radicals like Muhammad Al-Asi and Amir Abdel Malik Ali; the report encourages Jewish students to attend other colleges. Religion aside, with my beard, curly hair and square, black glasses, I know I would.
The crowd moved to a plaza and then quieted. After a few moments and a word from one student, another student thanked the protesters, claiming that it would depress the Zionists who witnessed the act.
"They are going to go out and try to make it look like they are powerful," the young man said. "But they're going to go home and go, 'Crap, we are in the middle of America, in Irvine, at a public campus, and everybody hates our guts.' They have no future, and it is just a matter of time before the State of Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth."
The crowd rejoiced and shouted: "Allahu Akbar!"
I wish it weren't true, but this region we live in is meant to burn every now and then. And when we fight fires, we only add fuel to future flames.The men and women whose job it is to fight Southern California wildfire perish by all possible means and in every circumstance imaginable. In the Angeles National Forest, a helicopter flying at night lands in darkness atop a second chopper already parked on the helibase. Two airmen die. In the same forest, a fire chief and his crew are surprised by advancing flames. The crew flee in one direction; the chief escapes in another, until—worried of his men's fate—he returns through fire in search of them and is killed. Above the northern San Fernando Valley, 12 firefighters are caught in a wind shift along a steep ravine that swirls superheated gases over them, raising the tiny canyon's temperature to 2,500 degrees. A fire engine driver racing to a call flies over a San Bernardino rail crossing and is smashed to death by an oncoming train. Beside Bryant Canyon, high in the Angeles Crest, a burning rat runs at two men in heavy brush, surrounding them in fire . On a San Diego blaze a firefighter pauses to talk with a passing bulldozer operator. His trousers become entangled in the machine's moving tracks, and he is pulled under and crushed. While fighting a blaze in Orange County, a fireman drops dead of pneumonia.With the history of fires in Bel Air and Malibu, I'm not sure I agree with that. But fire certainly feels like an imminent threat for Angelenos now.
Wildfire in the Golden State, and especially in Southern California—the nation's maximum fire-prone landscape—is the most dynamic, violent natural event that people engage with. In sheer energy and unpredictability, a hurricane is as close as you can come to the riotous mien of a Los Angeles chaparral fire. We do not attack hurricanes, or earthquakes, or tornadoes. We do attack, however, what is essentially photosynthesis thrown into reverse, as foliage instantaneously releases stored solar energy in the form of hot gases—what we see as flames.
The 19 largest and most costly fires in 100 years have ignited within the last quarter century. Yet wildfire for Angelenos has typically remained an occurrence that happens "out there" —in the unseen San Jacinto wilderness, somewhere above lonely Morongo Valley, on a distant Los Padres plateau. Stories of firefighter deaths and injuries, or images of entire forest communities left in ashes, with lives ruined and fortunes lost, are annually beamed into the living rooms of Hancock Park, Alhambra, and Encino, like scenes out of Iraq. Usually, the smoke cannot even be spied from backyard porches. The misery on household TV screens might as well be happening in another country.
"The people who are actually culpable, a lot of them are dead, and among the rest of us, nobody has any more culpability than anyone else," said Sheridan, a homemaker. "But I do think the Vatican can sell a painting or two. That would pay for it."Oh, don't worry, Bishop Robert Brom has also asked parish priests to chip in for the $198 million bill. He's got a real global (catholic?) perspective. And I thought Cardinal Roger Mahony was out of touch.
Still, some said they would gladly support Brom.
"This is our church and we love it," said Marie English, 76, a member at St. Mary. "If the church needs help, how can we deny it? Sometimes you have to pay for problems you didn't cause -- that's life. Let's pay and move on."
Last May, when it was discovered that the next tournament, which long ago was scheduled for April 18-20, 2008, would conflict with the first night of Passover, Jewish leaders requested a date change from the California High School Speech Association (CHSSA), an independent group that organizes the event. They were ignored.
After additional attempts to change the schedule failed, Jewish leaders this week issued an "Action Alert," asking people to contact the CHSSA and their school districts to pressure organizers to reschedule the tournament.
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"I find this astonishing and frustrating, and I take that as a slap in the face to the Jewish community," said Southern California Board of Rabbis executive vice president Rabbi Mark Diamond, who competed as a high school student on the debate team. "There is an attitude here that is profoundly disturbing, a total unwillingness to grapple with the issues, to even apologize for the mistakes and to work with people of good will toward trying to resolve this. There seems to be an attitude of, 'Tough. Too bad. Life is filled with difficult choices.' And I do not accept that."
"We don't want to be associated with something as symbolic and hateful as a swastika," said Scott Sutherland, deputy public affairs officer for Navy Region Southwest, the command that is responsible for maintaining buildings on local bases.Not long after, the San Diego chapter of the Anti-Defamation League took the issue to Rep. Susan Davis, who is Jewish. But, seriously, did the Navy really need to wait for public outcry before doing something about this?
The collection of L-shaped buildings is at the corner of Tulagi and Bougainville roads, named after World War II battles.
Navy officials say the shape of the buildings, designed by local architect John Mock, was not noted until after the groundbreaking in 1967 -- and since it was not visible from the ground, a decision was made not to make any changes.
It is unclear who first noticed the shape on Google Earth. But one of the first and loudest advocates demanding a change was Dave vonKleist, host of a Missouri-based radio-talk show, The Power Hour, and a website, www.thepowerhour.com.
In spring 2006, he began writing military officials, including then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, calling for action.
That August, he received a response from officials in Coronado, who made no promise to take action and said, "The Navy intends to continue the use of the buildings as long as they remain adequate for the needs of the service."
Elisha Shapiro is a candidate for governor you just can't believe in. Why should you? He doesn't. He doesn't believe in anything. He's a nihilist.So next fall, when you're thinking about all those presidential candidates who claim they stand for something, think about Elisha Shapiro. He'll admit that he stands for nothing.
In a chaotic world, Shapiro thinks believing in anything - God, religion, Democrats, clubs, love, any notion of right or wrong - does more harm than good. So he's not about to ask people to start believing in something, much less him.
But he thinks - not believes - that as the National Nihilist Party write-in candidate, he could make a better California governor than those other two guys.
"I'm not trying to make people better off, and I'm not trying to proselytize," Shapiro said after a Tuesday campaign stop in Ventura. "I don't think it's going to make a bit of difference if people think like me or not."
Shapiro, 52, just wants people to know there is another choice, that it's OK to think differently, to not buy what the media are selling, and that everything in this world is always changing.
He also wants California to secede from the United States. No point in those folks in the middle of the country dictating what we here on the left coast need to do about abortion, gay marriage or how our taxes are spent, he said.
On Tuesday, when Shapiro handed out his campaign material to potential voters as he gnawed on a toothpick that poked out from two days of gray stubble, he offered his constituents a caveat: "It's a little unusual."
His platform includes, but is not limited to: legalized marijuana so as to provide the world a quality product; friendly relations with Cuba and Venezuela to ensure good cigars and quality vacation destinations; marriage for gays only and no public kissing between straight couples; and support for scientists who actually discover things.
But while his stance may seem unusual, Shapiro himself seems somewhat normal.
Growing up in Southern California, the man named after a Biblical character always felt a bit different from other children. He was the artsy kid who didn't fit into school cliques, much less his parents' Jewish temple.
"I always felt like an outsider," he said. "I'm not much of a joiner."
Every time he explored one group or theory, he found that where an ideal might be right in one situation, it would be wrong in another. The only absolute was change.
After attending an experimental college in Berkeley where he studied philosophy and political science, he had a eureka moment when he first heard of nihilism, which Webster's dictionary defines as "the denial of the existence of any basis for knowledge or truth."
And so a nihilist performing artist was born.
He started putting on obscure performances like the Nihilist Olympics in downtown Los Angeles, where anyone could compete in the U-turn driving competition. He snapped moody black-and-white photos of his favorite things: guns, genitals and TV. And he started his political life when he ran for president in 1988. He lost.
Actually, he wasn't even officially a candidate because he didn't jump through the hurdles of paperwork in all 50 states.
When he ran for Los Angeles County Sheriff in 1994, he registered as an official write-in candidate. He lost again. But he did receive 241 votes, which, he said, was more than any other write-in candidate.
He didn't get involved in Gray Davis' recall election because "it was a zoo." Then, the nihilist would have had to compete with a porn star, an aging childhood actor and a Hollywood macho man. This time around, the political arena was wide open. So Shapiro, who teaches remedial writing at Santa Monica College when he's not making a spectacle, jumped in with his latest performance-art piece.
"Behind all the humor is a serious message," he said.
As much as anything, he's running against what he sees as a growing push by the right wing to control everything. While he doesn't believe in anything, he especially doesn't believe in President Bush.
His campaign through the state is a modest one, and he wants to keep it that way.
His goal is to spend less than $1,000 because any more than that and he has to file all sorts of cumbersome paperwork. One thousand is also the number of votes he's gunning for - just enough to justify his coffeehouse talks in San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco.
And as much as he wants to get people to think a little, he wants them to laugh a lot. Nobody views his campaign as a bigger joke than the jokester himself.
His stumping in Ventura -which was really an opportunity for him and his live-in-girlfriend to browse Main Street's thrift shops - took place in front of the offbeat punk store, Wild Planet, where bongs, Buddhas and bumper stickers adorned the front window.
"The people who frequent this place might have some sympathy to my solution," said Shapiro.
Shapiro also ran into an old acquaintance who remembered him from junior high. Shapiro was a character then, and he hasn't changed much, said Irv Hansen.
Shapiro continued, giving a piece of his mind to anyone who would take it.
"Have some literature," he said. "I know it's scary. You might like it."
