RLn 01-19-23

By Duaa Eldeib, Propublica

Lying on her living room sofa, her head cradled just under her husband’s shoulder, Brooke Smith pulled out a pen and began marking up her medical records.

Paging through the documents, she read a narrative that did not match her experience, one in which she said doctors failed to heed her concerns and nurses misrepresented what she told them. In anticipation of giving birth to her first child in the spring of 2014, Brooke had twice gone to the hospital in the weeks leading up to her due date because she hadn’t felt the baby kick, her medical records show. And twice doctors had sent her back home.

Brooke, a Black singer-songwriter who has worked as a New York City elementary school teaching assistant, has kept her medical records as a reminder of all that unfolded and all

Eleven Festivals In, SPIFFest Still Dreams Big

By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor

This year will mark SPIFF’s 11th festival, but due to the closing of the Warner Grand Theatre for renovations in June, the festival is happening in February instead of later in the year.

Ziggy Mrkich said the festival was supposed to have happened in November 2022 but she had to push it back to February 2023 to care for her mother in Croatia for several months. Mrkich said if she had it her way, she wouldn’t do it again in February given the schedule’s crowdedness.

Her resume includes stints as program director of the Catalina Film Festival and the Silver Lake Film Festival before founding the San Pedro International Film Festival in 2012.

Mrkich said this year’s film offerings are mostly submissions, most of them short films in the categories of documentary, live-action, and 90-minute episodic webisodes and pilots for television. Then there is the screenplay competition, which features a lot of first-time filmmakers and screenwriters. Mrkich explained that through the years some interesting talents have come through the competition.

This go-round, some really important documentaries have been submitted to the festival including Beyond Homeless: Finding Hope and Reimagining Safety. Director/writer Matthew Solomon, an alumnus of SPIFFest, was last at the festival with Sex, In Cars. This year his documentary film, Reimagining Safety, will be screened at the Warner Grand.

She hoped one-day SPIFFest would grow to fill the void left by the Los Angeles Film Festival, which shut down more than four years ago, and brings attention to the arts that are produced in San Pedro and the Los Angeles Harbor Area.

At the time, the LA Film Festival’s board of directors reportedly said they

that she believes could have been prevented.

After that second hospital admission, and following some testing, she was diagnosed with “false labor” and discharged, records show, though she was 39 weeks and 3 days pregnant and insisted that her baby’s movements had slowed. Research shows that after 28 weeks, changes in fetal movement, including decreased activity or bursts of excessive fetal activity, are associated with an increased risk of stillbirth. The risk of delivering a stillborn child also continues to rise at or after 40 weeks.

Six days later, she and her husband, Colin, met friends for breakfast. Brooke, then 33, had pancakes with whipped cream, the kind of sugary meal that usually prompted kicks from her baby within minutes. When the baby didn’t move, she told her husband they needed to return to the hospital for a third time.

Her due date had come and gone; this time she wasn’t leaving until doctors delivered her baby.

Ziggy Mrkich, founder of the San Pedro International Film Festival, stands outside the Warner Grand Theatre.

Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala

Brooke and Colin Smith’s matching tattoos that they got in honor of the baby they lost.

Photo courtesy of ProPublica

Community Announcements: Harbor Area

SPAA Recycle Festival Student Artists Call

Be a part of the first annual recycle festival in San Pedro, April 14 to 16. The event will be held at Crafted Port of Los Angeles. The cost to be in this festival is a $20 fee for each table. $10 will go to Crafted and $10 will go to the SPAA Harbor-wide all grades student art competition.

Time: April 14, 15 and 16

Cost: $20

Details: Contact Debbie Sue @ 310-612-1949

Venue: Crafted Port of LA , 112 E 22nd St., San Pedro

State of the Port of Long Beach 2023

Join a presentation on the successes and milestones of 2022 and a look ahead to 2023 — “the Year of Imagination” — and beyond. The port will share a forecast of cargo trends, infrastructure projects and more as it works to become a zeroemissions port.

Networking from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., followed by lunch and program. Free parking — enter off Pine Avenue. Attendees are encouraged to wear masks to this event as a precaution against COVID-19. Time: 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Jan. 26

Details: 562-283-7710; https://tinyurl.com/5t49328v

Venue: Long Beach Convention Center, Grand Ballroom, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

Neighborhood Purpose Grants Application Period Now Open

The requirements of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council, or NWSPNC, neighborhood purpose grant application process 2022-2023 are to benefit the northwest San Pedro community. Applicants must be a 501c3 non-profit or a public school.

Applications must be postmarked no later Feb. 17, if mailed, and received no later than Feb. 23, if emailed. The decisions will be announced at the NWSPNC board meeting on March 13.

Details: https://tinyurl.com/NWSPN-grants

Crossroads Church Hosting Recurring Food Giveaways

On Jan. 21, Crossroads is hosting their monthly food distribution event in Long Beach. Folks are welcome to drive-thru or walk up and receive fresh groceries. This event occurs on the third Saturday of each month.

Details: https://crossroadslb.com/events

San Pedro Chamber of Commerce Annual Business Expo

Meet local businesses and service providers in this networking mixer. Refreshments will be provided.

Time: 4:30 to 7 p.m., Feb. 9

Details: www.sanpedrochamber.com

Venue: Crowne Plaza LA Harbor, 601 Palos Verdes St., San Pedro

Free COVID-19 Testing

If you’re feeling sick, get tested to rule out other illnesses like the flu. You can receive free COVID-19 rapid home tests at https://tinyurl. com/free-home-covid-tests

Details: If you need help placing an order, call 1-800-232-0233.

Participate

In the 2023 Homeless Count

Join the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority as a volunteer for the 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count happening Jan. 24 to 26. By joining, you will help make progress in ending homelessness by counting our neighbors without shelter and in need of support.

Details: theycountwillyou.org

LAHSA Winter Shelters Open Until March 31

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority or LAHSA winter shelter program will continue throughout LA County until March 31.

Details: 1-800-548-6047; lahsa.org

First-Time Homebuyer Assistance Program

The City of Long Beach launched a new website for its upcoming first-time homebuyer as-

Committed to Independent Journalism in the Greater LA/LB Harbor Area for More Than 40 Years

Cheryl Green Center Set to Reopen in 2023

The community center in Harbor Gateway will hopefully open in the spring

By Hunter Chase, Community News Reporter

After being closed for nearly three years, the Cheryl Green Center in Harbor Gateway is scheduled to reopen its doors in 2023. Mike Lansing, the CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of the Los Angeles Harbor, said the community center closed down in 2020 for renovations.

While he doesn’t have a set reopening date, Lansing said he would like to see it open by spring, preferably April 1.

“We’re close to getting all the permitting done with the City of Los Angeles,” Lansing said.

The facility, which opened in 2009, was named after Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old Black girl who was murdered by Latino gang members in 2006 as part of a racially motivated killing.

“At that point, City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, and the South Bay Boys and Girls Club came together and said we need to bring facilities into this neighborhood that is lacking them,” Lansing said.

Hahn, now a Los Angeles County Supervisor, said that is important that the facility reopens.

“I will never forget Cheryl Green’s funeral and the heartbreak on her mother’s face,” Hahn said via email. “I decided to open the Cheryl Green Center to provide a place where young people could build friendships and prevent this kind of violence in the future.”

Senior Lead Officer Maligi Nua Jr. of the Los Angeles Police Department Harbor Division said it is difficult for children to move from different streets in that area because of gang activity. However, he said that the center has benefitted

Clear

the area. Nua also sits on the Boys and Girls Club Advisory Board.

“The kids from that area were getting programming and services provided for them,” Nua said. “And it kept them active and engaged in positive programs.”

The Boys and Girls Club of the Los Angeles Harbor inherited this location in 2019 when the South Bay Boys and Girl Club shut down. It consisted of one modular building, which is a type of temporary building. It was donated by the City of Los Angeles in 2007. Prior to that, it was used by

the LAPD Harbor Division, Nua said.

“Since [the center] has been closed, we’ve had kids that unfortunately have gotten involved in certain things that perhaps if it was open, they wouldn’t have,” Nua said.

The Boys and Girls Club of the Los Angeles Harbor closed the site in 2020.

“We hated to close the site,” Lansing said. “But for safety reasons, and for lack of a quality facility, we had to. … It’s in a highly dense area of Harbor Gateway, we promised them that

scoping plan includes over 130 million metric tons of captured carbon from oil refineries, paving the way for over $11 billion in federal subsidies for oil corporations.”

By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

On Dec. 15, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) unanimously approved the most ambitious climate action plan in America, calling for reaching carbon neutrality by 2045, with an 85% reduction in greenhouse gasses (GHG) and a 94% reduction in fossil fuels. “The most important benefit of this is that we are a model for the rest of the world, that’s going to be extrapolated, imitated,” CARB member Dan Sperling said before the vote.

But on Jan. 4, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) released a report critical of the “Scoping Plan” for its lack of a clear strategy for meeting its more immediate 2030 goals, warning that “Failing to develop a credible plan to meet statewide GHG goals could adversely affect California’s ability to serve as an effective model for other jurisdictions or demonstrate global leadership.”

But the same could be said about the Port of Los Angeles, just one of five ports worldwide (along with the Port of Long Beach) rated “full speed ahead” in the initial set of “RePORT Cards for Shipping Ports,” that Random Lengths News reported on in December. The report card for POLA called its 2021 jump in pollution “inex-

cusable,” but two other problems point to persistent patterns of failure that must be addressed for the port to serve as a credible model: Its decadeslong failure to mitigate harms from the China Shipping terminal — the subject of two appeals filed on Dec. 6 — and its more recent failure to maintain functioning air quality monitors, a source of controversy since May 2021, when first brought to light by Andrea Hricko, USC professor emerita of public health.

The LAO focused on the 2030 goal for three reasons: because doing so is required by law, because it’s “a key interim step” to meeting the long-term goal and because it’s more difficult to forecast changes in technology and economic conditions over the longer time-frame.

While climate and environmental justice advocates criticized the plan more from a justice perspective, the LAO questioned the plan in its own terms — a problem of internal consistency and efficacy reflected in recent developments at the Port of LA as well.

A press release from the California Environmental Justice Alliance praised CARB’s Scoping Plan in several respects but noted, “The final

In contrast, the LAO’s critique was more operational, reflecting its mission. “The plan’s estimated reductions are driven primarily by assumptions developed by CARB, without specifying how those assumed outcomes might be achieved,” the LAO said.

The LAO’s most significant specific warning was that CARB’s cap-and-trade program “is not stringent enough to drive the additional emission reductions needed because there will be more than enough allowances available for covered entities to continue to emit at levels exceeding the 2030 target.” A similar lack of stringency in AQMD’s RECLAIM program, regulating refineries, was responsible for its failure, and eventual repeal, as Random Lengths reported in November 2021. The LAO recommended both that “the Legislature direct CARB to submit a report to the Legislature by July 31, 2023 that clarifies its plan for reducing GHG emissions to meet the 2030 statutory goal,” and that it consider changes to make the program more stringent.

Lawsuits Never End

The latest chapter in the 20-plus year saga of China Shipping lawsuits highlights a double breakdown in enforcing the California Environ-

From left to right: Mike Lansing, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of the Los Angeles Harbor; Senior Lead Officer Maligi Nua Jr. of the Los Angeles Police Department Harbor Division; Hilda Chacon-Herrera, regional director of Harbor City/Harbor Gateway Boys and Girls Club; and SLO Adriana Bravo of the LAPD Harbor Division. Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala [continued on following page]

Center to Reopen

we would come back and get this done, so we’ve been working on this for over three years.”

Lansing said the closing of the facility had nothing to do with the pandemic. The modular building was old and needed to be replaced.

“It was on an angle,” Lansing said. “You could easily put your foot through the flooring. It was rundown, the outdoor area, the asphalt was cracked.”

The Boys and Girls Club will replace it with two new modular buildings. Because the buildings don’t need to be constructed from the ground up, they won’t take as long as construct ing a new building. However, the Boys and Girls Club is laying new asphalt and expanding the plumbing and electrical on the site, because one of the modular buildings is much bigger than the original one. The fencing and lighting will be improved as well.

Lansing said that the site is very small, but his organization hopes to get approval by the city to move part of the property forward to make room for a sports court. He said that Councilman Tim McOsker is supportive of this.

How quickly the facility will open will depend on how long the permitting takes.

“Given that it’s limited construction, and we already have the modular buildings lined up, and finalizing the contractors, once we get the permits, it shouldn’t take that long to get the actual work completed,” Lansing said.

The funding for the project came from the state of California, after state Sen. Steven Bradford wrote a grant application requesting the funds.

“We received a grant of almost $1.2 million,”

Lansing said. “This improvement will cost us approximately $700,000 of that.”

After that, the Boys and Girls Club will use more of the funding to outfit the modular buildings and build the sports court, leaving some money for start-up staffing. After that, the club will need to use its own money.

Lansing said that when the Boys and Girls Club of the Los Angeles Harbor took over the facility, there were an average of about 25 children a day using it. Once the larger facility is completed, he anticipates it will average more than 60 children per day.

Since closing in 2020, the Boys and Girls club hasn’t used the site as a traditional club site but has used it for other things.

“We started a weekend wellness food distribution program back in the summer of 2020,”

Lansing said. “Each Friday we’ve been distributing food out of that site to local families that were

The club has also used the site to give out food and gifts during Christmas and Thanksgiving. Now, the club only gives away food at the Cheryl Green Center on the first Friday of the month, but opened seven food pantries in other clubhouses, so that it can give out food every day.

The center’s potential

Activist and former city council candidate Rick Thomas said he was very disappointed when the Cheryl Green Center closed in 2020.

Thomas said that in the area around the center, there are a lot of children, but no good place

“They’ve got nowhere to go, they’ve got nothing to do,” Thomas said. “I’ve fought for the last two and a half years to get this place open again.”

Once it reopens, Hilda Chacon-Herrera, regional director of Harbor City/ Harbor Gateway Boys and Girls Clubs of the Los Angeles Harbor, already has a lot of ideas for programming. These include tutoring, college-bound and career-bound programs, a game room, and a music program.

Thomas wants to bring in producers to tell children how to get into the entertainment business, or into radio. He also wants to invite a woman he knows that helps children raise money for college. He wants to get students apprenticeships with a carpenter’s union and the Los Angeles Fire Department.

“We want to do things [at] Boys and Girls Club that just aren’t playing basketball, coming in, watching TV and playing on video games,” Thomas said. “We want to start building community here.”

Community Announcements: Harbor Area

previous page]

sistance program, which will provide about 100 eligible families with up to $20,000 in down payment and closing cost assistance. The application process for qualified residents is expected to open in early 2023.

Details: https://tinyurl.com/homebuyer-assistanceLB

New Master Composter Recycler Program

The City of Long Beach Department of Public Works has launched its Master Composter Recycler or MCR program, a free program open to Long Beach residents interested in learning about waste reduction, recycling and composting. After a successful pilot launch in spring 2022, the MCR program is now being offered as a recurring series throughout the year at no-cost to residents.

Details: https://tinyurl.com/LB-recycle-program Venue: Public Works Environmental Services Bureau, 2929 W. Willow St., Long Beach

Funding Available for Developers of Affordable Rental Housing

The City of Long Beach Development Services Department is seeking to award up to $5 million to qualified housing developers for the production of affordable rental housing. Additionally, the Housing Authority of the City of Long Beach or HACLB is making 200 project-based vouchers for rental assistance available to property owners and developers of affordable homes through a competitive request for proposals or RFP process.

Details: https://tinyurl.com/affordable-rental-housing

Free Gas Energy Bill Relief

Need help paying your SoCalGas bill? You can apply for relief if you need help paying your SoCalGas bill. The relief will be up to $100, depending on your eligibility.

Details: https://tinyurl.com/57zv5sy9, En Español https://tinyurl.com/45y4cc2s, or 877238-0092

Part of the modular building at the currently unused Cheryl Green Center, which will soon be replaced.

Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala

[from

Will the U.S. Follow Russia’s Health Decline After the Breakup of the Former Soviet Union?

By Stephen Bezruchka, M.D., M.P.H.

News reports abound about how life expectancy in the United States is at its lowest in two decades. In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that showed, among other things, that life expectancy in 2021 was 76.4 years, a drop of 0.6 years from 2020. This followed a report in August 2022 that found that “U.S. life expectancy at birth for 2021, based on nearly final data, was 76.1 years, the lowest it has been since 1996. “What can we expect in the next few years?”

Lifespan or life expectancy in a given year are measures of the average length of life if mortality rates didn’t change. During the last century the world saw phenomenal gains in this health indicator that continue for many nations, but not the U.S.

In the early 1950s, the United States was one of the world’s longest-lived nations. Since then, life expectancy has increased faster in a number of other countries. Many mortality measures for the U.S. have worsened over the last few years, beginning before COVID-19 struck. In 2019 some 35 United Nations countries had longer lives.

The latest United Nations Human Development Report, issued last September, shows that for 2021 American length of life was behind that of 43 countries. These included all the rich ones and some not, such as Chile, Slovenia and Thailand. If we eradicated our three leading killers: heart disease, cancer and COVID-19, we would

still not be the healthiest nation. It may come as a surprise to some of us that the oldest person is never found in the U.S. We are also the only rich country to have seen continued drops in life expectancy from 2019 to 2021. What is going on?

We can find clues by looking to the former Soviet Union, where life expectancy fell after the 1991 breakup. Russia and Ukraine suffered profound rapid declines in lifespan that had only recovered to pre-breakup levels just before the pandemic. Men in both nations bore the brunt of the increased mortality, mostly due to a spike in alcoholism. A more upstream culprit was the massive increase in poverty and economic inequality that took hold in the wake of the breakup.

As state assets were sold to oligarchs at firesale prices, economic inequality soared leading to single middle-aged men dying in what are now termed deaths of despair. Today there are few men to sustain traditional marriage relationships and their divorce rates lead the world. The abrupt increase in inequality led to rapid declines in health that have not been reversed.

The already soaring rates of American income and wealth inequality gained steam with the pandemic and our poor response to it, which encouraged profiteering over sound public health policy. Expected increases in length of life began

faltering around 2015 and are now in freefall. Will the United States follow the Russian example of continued health declines?

Americans report some of the world’s highest levels of stress. We consume about threequarters of the world’s opioids to treat our stress-induced social pain. This leads to staggering overdose deaths in addition to the causes of death listed above.

Consider stress as the 21st century tobacco. By creating awareness of the harms of secondhand cigarette smoke, most smokers were discouraged from their habit. Today only poorer people smoke, mostly to treat the social pain of poverty. Deaths of despair are clearly not limited to Russia and its former satellites. Can we expect to follow their pattern of continued decline? This seems likely unless we deploy the parachute of decreasing our record income and wealth gaps.

We must begin to make the connection between income inequality and a shortened lifespan. As a physician and public health expert, I’ve spent decades looking at global inequities in health and lifespan. The pattern is clear: countries with less income inequality typically enjoy better health and longevity compared to nations

with greater income inequality. When inequality widens, lives shorten. Our solution to our health crisis, then, is a political one. We must organize to close the chasm between rich and poor. We can begin by demanding that the rich return to paying their fair share in taxes. Consider that during the 1950s, when our overall health was significantly better compared to other nations, the highest marginal income tax rate was 91% and income gains were greatest for the bottom fifth of society. That money should be allocated to social programs that protect against poverty and despair and level off income inequality.

In a country that thinks of health as solely a matter of cultivating certain lifestyle habits, it may be a challenge to reframe our declining lifespan as a political issue, but real change always requires a shift in consciousness. We have more than enough evidence at this point, collected from societies around the world, to convince even the most skeptical American of the link between income inequality and premature death.

Most Americans would rather live a longer healthier life than a shorter sicker one. A national campaign to create awareness of how inequality is killing us is the first step in reversing our declining lifespan and regaining our health as a country.

Stephen Bezruchka, M.D., M.P.H., is the author of Inequality Kills Us All: Covid-19’s Health Lessons for the World. He is an associate teaching professor emeritus in the departments of health systems & population health and of global health at the School of Public Health, University of Washington.

New Year, Same Depression

By Katharine Hartleb, WebMd

New Year’s resolutions while depressed … are they possible?

Every year when New Year’s rolls around, people put unrealistic expectations on themselves to complete as many New Year’s resolutions as possible. It becomes a competition of who can transform into their “ideal self” on Jan. 1. This pressure can be too much for people in general, but especially if you struggle with depression.

I know what my New Year’s resolution looked like when I was depressed: “Stop being depressed.” If only it was this easy. It would have been a great year if my depression disappeared when the ball dropped at midnight.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t work this way, but it’s still possible to attain some self-growth while still being depressed.

Make your New Year’s resolutions realistic.

Making a huge list of expectations for yourself for the new year isn’t benefiting you. All it does is make you feel worse when you can’t meet the unrealistic goals you’ve made. Personally, when I make a goal that overwhelms me, it causes me to shut down. I’m unable to make any progress if I feel there is too much on my plate.

After you make your list of New Year’s resolutions, take a look at the intensity of it. If you have a list of 10 things, maybe narrow it down to three or four. Of the ones that you narrow it down to, try to make a couple of them related to mental health.

Make New Year’s resolutions that will improve your mental health.

A great New Year’s resolution when you’re depressed is to work on your positive coping skills. Having a solid set of positive coping skills to fall back on when your mental health isn’t doing well is important. When I am deep in my

depression, it’s like tunnel vision with no way out. Using some of my positive coping skills allows some light to shine through, one moment at a time.

My goal for 2023 is to spend more time outside, especially walking outside. Going on walks is so beneficial. It gets you out of your house — gives you a change of scenery and some fresh air. If you can’t make yourself go on a walk every day, even just spending time sitting outside is beneficial.

You actually don’t have to make New Year’s resolutions.

I know it seems like everyone does it so you have to also, but you don’t. Don’t push yourself to make a resolutions list if you don’t feel like you’re capable right now with your mental health. If a New Year’s resolution list will only stress you out more, then don’t do it.

Society tells us we need to be in a constant state of self-improvement. It’s perfectly acceptable to be content with where you are in your life. It’s also perfectly OK to know that right now isn’t the best time to put pressure on yourself to change. Putting your health first is important! Do what is best for you. Let’s have a great year, or just a year.

LB Seeks to Increase Fresh Produce in Neighborhood Markets

LONG BEACH— The city is seeking to partner with one or more qualified organizations to increase the availability of low-cost, culturally relevant produce in priority neighborhoods in Long Beach through its produce to market program.

Due to high procurement cost, markets in low-income neighborhoods are limited in their ability to stock and sell fresh produce. The Health Department will support one or more qualified organizations to plan, implement and evaluate a sustainable program that will allow small- and mediumsized food stores in Long Beach the ability to procure fresh, quality produce at comparable prices to larger grocery markets. The produce to market program will include grants of up to $250,000 max per award to markets who best demonstrate how funds will be used to reach this goal and thus contribute to increased access of fresh produce in priority neighborhoods throughout Long Beach.

Details: https://tinyurl.com/LB-freshproduce

From the Mountain Top

King’s last speech before his April 3, 1968 assassination

By James Preston Allen Publisher

Every third Monday in January, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is celebrated for his peaceful efforts to get voting rights and other civil rights legislation. But King knew equality required education, wage equity, housing and economic justice. And that peace without justice was neither. Any “spiritual and moral lag” in humanity, King once said, is due to racial injustice, poverty and war. There’s been an ongoing struggle to fulfill that vision ever since … even unto today.

In the Bob Gelfand article on City Watch this week, he writes appropriately, “If we are going to have a holiday celebrating King’s work, let’s at least insist that the country act better than it did in 1968. Nearly 55 years after King’s assasination, this nation is still not there yet.”

At Boston Common, there is a new Hank Willis Thomas public memorial honoring the love and sacrifices made by Coretta Scott King and King in the city where they first met.

On Friday, Jan. 13, the Boston Common — which is the nation’s oldest public park — unveiled its first permanent memorial in 60 years, titled “The Embrace.” The 22-foot-tall bronze sculpture shows King and Scott’s arms intertwined in a hug, which Thomas based on a 1964 photograph of the moment they learned that King won the Nobel Peace Prize. Rather than recreate the entire scene, Thomas isolated their points of contact, leaving space for visitors to stand within.

Some have criticized this abstraction in a public monument without understanding the

deeper symbolism and yet it is still only symbolism, no matter how exquisite or powerful. It is not the accomplishment of the vision from the mountain top itself.

Thom Hartmann in his daily blog this week points out the discrepancies.

• Poverty and homelessness stalk our land: more than one-in-seven Americans live in poverty today;

• Millions have no access to affordable healthcare and families suffer over 500,000 medical bankruptcies every year;

• Higher education is increasingly just for the well-born and well-off;

• Most non-unionized workers have few rights and little say in the workplace: only 10.8% of non-government American workers have a union.

And all of this exists even as our econ-

omy is experiencing a robust recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. This section of King’s last speech still makes me catch my breath. His words still speak to the whole world today. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.”

And then he is connecting the dots about war and peace and survival.

And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

His conclusion still brings a tear to my eyes for he knew that the end of his journey was near, but that what matters is that legacy, that the struggle still survives.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so, I’m happy tonight.

I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

The very next day, at the age of 18, I was in Washington D.C. near the National Mall at an interracial dance party that ended abruptly with the announcement of King’s assassination. It was the saddest party I ever attended. And then that night, as the outrage spread, the nation’s capital was surrounded by riots and fires, the national guard was immediately called out in force, machine guns and barbed wire were placed on the

steps and in the morning smoke and tear gas still wafted through the air. It was clear to me then, as it is today, that the dream from the mountain top was a vision of what should be, but that it was going to take a long time to get there. And that it wouldn’t be accomplished without many years of struggle.

Martin Luther King Jr. knew he was not the first nor the last to die in this conflict with America’s original sin of slavery, one that should be taught in every school, because the struggle for freedom and equality is one that speaks for all of our history, and should never be censored nor covered up for political advantage or subterfuge.

Why Is the For-Profit Health Industry Like a Giant, Bloodsucking Tick?

By Thom Hartmann

Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives, and already have their sights set on forcing major cuts to “entitlements” like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

One of the promises Kevin McCarthy made to become speaker of the House was to force a vote on dialing 2023/2024 spending back to 2021 levels — and there’s been a 7% inflation increase in costs/expenses since then. In other words, they want massive cuts.

His Republican colleagues have already outlined the starting point for their demands, as reported by Yahoo News:

“The Republican Study Committee proposed a budget for fiscal 2023 that would gradually increase the eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare, and change the Social Security benefit formula for people 54 and younger…”

In that, they’re going to have a hell of a fight on their hands, as Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking over leadership of the Senate Health Committee, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid. He’s already promising “a lot of subpoenas” will be ar-

riving at the offices of healthcare and big pharma CEOs.

A half-million American families are wiped out every year so completely that they must lose everything and declare bankruptcy just because somebody got sick. The number of health-expense-related bankruptcies in all the other developed countries in the world combined is zero.

Yet the United States spends more on “healthcare” than any other country in the world: about 17% of gross domestic product.

Switzerland, Germany, France, Sweden and Japan all average around 11%, and Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia all come in between 9.3% and 10.5%.

Health insurance premiums right now make up about 22% of all taxable payroll (and don’t even cover all working people), whereas Medicare For All would run an estimated 10% and would cover every man, woman, and child in America.

Light Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

And it’s not like we haven’t tried to remove that parasite

Two years ago Jan. 6

Today marks the two-year anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history: the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol and our democracy itself.

Even as time passes, we must not let ourselves become numb to the threat posed by those who sought to overthrow our democracy, nor forget the lives taken by the rioters.

I’m proud to say that in many ways, we have risen up to defend our democracy and prevent such a disgrace from happening again.

We just passed the bipartisan Electoral Count Reform Act, closing the loophole that Donald Trump had tried to exploit. We rallied together to defy history and defeat anti-democracy extremists across the country in the midterms. We flipped statehouses blue across the country, opening the way for voting rights protections in crucial battlegrounds.

But the forces that would undermine our democracy are still at work. As your Senate Majority Leader, I will continue to do everything in my power to fight back.

For-Profit Health

We are literally the only developed country in the world with an entire multi-billion-dollar for-profit industry devoted to parasitically extracting money from us to then turn over to healthcare providers on our behalf. The forprofit health insurance industry has attached itself to us like a giant, bloodsucking tick.

And it’s not like we haven’t tried to remove that parasite.

Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all proposed and tried to bring a national healthcare system to the United States.

They all failed, and when I did a deep dive into the topic last year for my book The Hidden History of American Healthcare, I found two major barriers to removing that tick from our backs.

The early opposition, more than 100 years ago, to a national healthcare system came from southern white congressmen (they were all men) and senators who didn’t want even the possibility that Black people could benefit, health-wise, from white people’s tax dollars. (This thinking apparently still motivates many white southern politicians.)

The leader of that healthcare-opposition movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a German immigrant named Frederick Hoffman. Hoffman was a senior executive for the Prudential Insurance Company, and wrote several books about the racial inferiority of Black people, a topic he traveled the country lecturing about.

His most well-known book was titled Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro. It became a major best-seller across America when it was first published for the American Economic Association by the Macmillan Company in 1896, the same year the Supreme Court’s Plessy v Ferguson decision legally turned the entire U.S. into an apartheid state.

Hoffman taught that Black people, in the absence of slavery, were so physically and intellectually inferior to whites that if they were simply deprived of healthcare the entire race would die out in a few generations. Denying healthcare to Black people, he said, would “solve the race problem in America.”

By the 1920s, the insurance company he was a vice president of was moving from life insurance into the health insurance field, which brought an added incentive to lobby hard against any sort of a national healthcare plan.

Which brings us to the second reason America has no national healthcare system: profits.

And I hope you will, too: Talk to your neighbors. Read local news. Volunteer at your polling place. Vote. It’s little actions like these that add up to a healthy democracy, and it takes all of us to keep it safe.

Chuck Schumer, U.S. Senate Majority Leader

I mentioned this before … When the Tea party weaseled their way in, the road to destroying or doing nothing was paved. It’s now an eight-lane highway. The Dems have acclimated to it and only their minority have clarity and outrage. (Yes, I remember your aptly titled book — Where’s the Outrage? Update and reprint! It will get you on

“Dollar” Bill McGuire, a recent CEO of America’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth, made about $1.5 billion dollars during his time with that company. To avoid prosecution in 2007, he had to cough up $468 million, but still walked away a billionaire. Stephen J Hemsley, his successor, made off with around half a billion.

Much of that money, and the pay for the multiple senior executives at that and other insurance companies who make over $1 million a year, came from saying “No!” to people who file claims for payment of their healthcare costs.

This became so painful for Cigna Vice President Wendell Potter that he resigned in disgust after a teenager he knew was denied payment for a transplant and died. He then wrote a brilliant book about his experience in the industry: Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.

In the 2020 election there were quite a few issues on statewide ballots around the country. Only three of them outpolled Joe Biden’s win, and expanding Medicaid to cover everybody was at the top of that list. (The other two were raising the minimum wage and legalizing pot.)

The last successful effort to provide government funded, single-payer healthcare insurance was when Lyndon Johnson passed Medicare and Medicaid (both single-payer systems) in the 1960s. It was a heck of an effort, but the health insurance industry was then a tiny fraction of its current size.

Medicare For All, like Canada has, would save American families thousands every year immediately and do away with the 500,000+ annual bankruptcies in this country that happen only because somebody in the family got sick.

But it would kill the billions every week in profits of the half-dozen corporate giants that dominate the health insurance industry.

The COVID-19 crisis — which produced an explosion in healthcare debt for American families (but not for those in any other developed nation) — is starting to create considerable pressure for change, but Americans still must overcome the political corruption the Supreme Court wrote into our system with Citizens United.

It’ll be a big lift: keep it on your radar. And if you’d like to let your members of the House and Senate know that you stand with Bernie and in opposition to the GOP, the number for the congressional switchboard, which can connect you to any member, is (202)-224-3121.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream (2020); The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.

“news” and talk shows!)

Jamie Raskin is the most forceful voice for eliminating the electoral college. That’s worthy of a cover story— every day!

Where are the next fearless truth telling journalists? Internationally, it’s one of the most dangerous professions. Do you have a favorite organization who is promoting and supporting Democracy Now! and Random Lengths journalists?

Gary Pernell, Seattle, WA

Re: Banned Books

In the Random Lengths article (Sept. 15-28, 2022) , “Banned Books in the Crosshairs” by Terelle Jerricks, he discusses the problem of books and different subjects in school being banned. This affects me as a student because my education is slowly being taken away from me, as well as a place to feel safe talking about things like my sexuality.

I feel like this issue is really important and needs to be known to more people. It’s causing problems for the education of students

and taking away space for them to feel safe and accepted at school. The laws are making it harder for people to access education at a higher level, and decreasing the quality of that education. They are banning subjects at school and making it even harder for learning to be interesting or exciting. This not only takes away safe spaces for students but also takes away the ability for them to learn about their past.

I think it is important for students to be able to access higher education, many people, like my mom, would not have been able to go college without financial aid, and the fact that the laws limit financial aid should be known to more people. This issue is important for the safety and well-being of our future. Without people being able to learn about their own identity or even the history of our country, how will we know how to deal with what’s to come?

Maya Malahni, San Pedro High School

Community Alert

Assembly District Election

The California Democratic Party Assembly District Elections Meeting or ADEM are held in each of the 80 Assembly Districts in January of each odd-numbered year in order to elect representatives as Assembly District delegates or ADDs to the California Democratic Party Democratic State central committee and one representative per Assembly District to the CDP executive board representative.

Vote-by-mail ballots were mailed out Jan. 13, so you should have received it already or you should be receiving it any day now. Check your mailbox.

Ensure that you mail your ballot back in time for it to arrive at the party by the Jan. 31 deadline. You may also drop your ballot off at any in-person voting location of your choice.

Time: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Jan. 21 Venue: Full Gospel Baptist Church, 6900 Compton Ave., LA

Time: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Jan. 22 Venue: VFW Post 2967, 1130 W. Anaheim St., Wilmington

Time: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Jan. 21 Venue: George Nakano Theater, 3330 Civic Center Dr., Torrance

To find a voting location near you, visit Progressive Labor Slate Linktree site at: https://linktr.ee/ progressivelaborslate Under “Where to Vote.”

A Familiar Story for Many Black Women

But at the hospital they learned their baby, a girl they had named Kennedy Grey, had died in Brooke’s womb. She would have to deliver their stillborn daughter.

The doctor, the same one who had been on call during her second hospital admission less than a week before, asked her when she last felt the baby move. Brooke said she had felt rapid, almost violent kicking two days earlier, followed by wavelike movements. The doctor, Brooke said, told her that she should have come in earlier.

“If they would have listened to me earlier, I would have delivered a living baby,” Brooke said recently. “But if you’re a Black woman, you get dismissed because it’s like, ‘What are you complaining about now?’”

For Brooke, her experiences in the last weeks of her pregnancy, along with what she later discovered in her medical records, crystallized what researchers and medical experts have found: While many pregnant people say their doctors and nurses do not listen to them and their concerns are often dismissed, pregnant Black people face an even higher burden.

One 2019 study that looked at people’s experience during their pregnancy and childbirth lamented the “disturbing” number of patients who reported a health care provider ignored them, refused their request for help or failed to respond to such requests in a reasonable amount of time. The study found pregnant people of color were more than twice as likely as white people to report such “mistreatment.”

Another study looking at stillbirths that occurred later in pregnancy highlighted the “importance of listening to mothers’ concerns and symp-

toms,” including “a maternal gut instinct that something was wrong.”

Every year more than 20,000 pregnancies in the U.S. end in stillbirth, the death of an expected child at 20 weeks or more. But not all stillbirths are inevitable. This year, ProPublica

has reported on the U.S. stillbirth crisis, including the botched rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant people, the proliferation of misinformation, the failure to do enough to lower a stubbornly high national stillbirth rate and the lack of study of the causes of stillbirths.

Data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells the story of how the U.S. health care system has failed Black mothers in particular. Black women overall are more than twice as likely as white women to have a stillbirth, according to 2020 CDC data, the most recent available. In some states, including South Carolina, Kansas and Tennessee, they are around three times as likely to deliver a stillborn baby.

In Arkansas and Missis-

sippi, the stillbirth rate for Black women in 2020 topped 15 per 1,000 live births and fetal deaths; it was more than 11 in New Jersey and New York. The national stillbirth rate for Black women was 10.3 and for white women 4.7.

But drawing focus to Black stillbirths is a challenge in a country where stillbirths, in general, have been understudied, underfunded and received little public attention. In addition, the community of stillbirth researchers and advocates remains relatively small and overwhelmingly white.

Academic studies and national obstetric groups have explicitly identified racism as one of the factors that contribute to persistent health disparities. In 2020, in the wake of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG, joined around two dozen obstetric and gynecologic health organizations to issue a statement expressing their commitment to “eliminating racism and racial inequities” that lead to disparities.

“Systemic and institutional racism are pervasive in our country and in our country’s health care institutions, including the fields of obstetrics and gynecology,” the statement reads.

Nneka Hall, a maternal health advocate and doula trainer who recently served on Massachusetts’ Special Commission on Racial Inequities in Maternal Health, said disparities are embedded in the health care system, including unequal rates of stillbirths and dying during pregnancy or soon after.

Black women face nearly three times the risk of maternal mortality than white women, according to CDC data. Even at higher educational levels, Black people die during pregnancy or childbirth at higher rates than their white counterparts, as do their babies. Pregnant people are also more likely to deliver prematurely if they are Black.

“It’s the Black experience,” said Hall, whose daughter Annaya was stillborn. “You’re told that you have to advocate for yourself, but when you’re in a melanated body and you advocate for yourself, it’s not taken seriously. If you raise your voice, you’re being abusive or abrasive. If you say you know something, you’re automatically shown that you don’t know as much as you think you know.”

For years, Dr. Ashanda Saint Jean has heard the stories of Black patients who, before they suffered the devastating loss of delivering a stillborn baby, said they tried to tell their doctors and nurses that something was wrong.

But they said they were dismissed by their medical team. Even shut down.

With each new story, Saint Jean asked the same question: Would they have been treated differently if they had not been Black? Far too often, she concluded, the answer was yes.

“Those are the stories I hear that break my heart,” she said.

Saint Jean, chair of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Health Alliance Hospitals of the Hudson Valley, said those patients, the very same ones who face an increased risk of stillbirth, are left feeling powerless.

“We know that this is certainly a public health crisis, and it should be a public health priority,” said Saint Jean, a diversity, equity and inclusive excellence adviser for ACOG and associate professor of obstetrics and gy-

Aiming to Fix A Broken Maternal Healthcare System

By Melina Paris, Assistant Editor

Released in 2022, the documentary Birthing Justice discusses the causes of the maternal health crisis in the African American community and advocates for the most effective practices to raise birthing equity for all women — especially Black women.

Advocates and leaders behind Birthing Justice describe their work as a movement which aims to “fix the broken (maternal healthcare) system, change the culture and transform the future.”

Executive producer of the film, Allyson Felix, who is also the most decorated American track and field Olympian, said, “We should care about every woman, and I think you know a Black woman’s pain, a Black woman’s suffering gets discarded. It cannot go on that way. It’s crucial that we pay attention. We do more than see statistics but understand how we go about fixing the issue. It starts at the core with Black wom(e)n. We are at the center of it all and we deserve to be heard, we’re worthy and it’s about time that you know others step up and stand alongside us as we fight this issue.”

Highlighting the progress made through health initiatives and most effective practices, the film focuses on what’s being done to address this national crisis and provides solutions that can be replicated in communities across the country. Executive producer, co-writer and co-founder of Women in the Room Productions, Denise Pines, said they are partnering with organizations, colleges and universities (locally at USC and UCLA), sororities, foundations and government offices to host free screenings around the country.

Birthing Justice screenings are taking place across the country. For more information or to find out how to host a screening, visit https://www. birthingjustice.com/ to complete and submit a request form.

Time: 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., Jan. 27

Cost: Free

Details: https://www.birthingjustice.com

Venue: The Miracle Theater, 226 S. Market St., Inglewood

Kanika Harris, director of maternal and child health at Black Women’s Health Imperative. Photo courtesy of ProPublica

SPIFFest to Focus on Social Justice, the Environment and Overlooked Peoples

ByGreggoryMoore,Columnist

ver since its inception, the explicit mission of the San Pedro International Film Festival (SPIFF) is to celebrate “the diverse culture and community of San Pedro with a broad spectrum of independent film, documentaries and shorts.”

With a lineup featuring films focusing on the homeless, the hearing-impaired, Korean War refugees, and Native American artists and athletes, the 11th incarnation of SPIFF stays true to that mission, while at the same time drawing attention to major issues of the 2020s. Scheduled to open the festival on Feb. 2 at the Warner Grand Theatre are two works with intimate ties to San Pedro itself. First up is Girl at the Top of the Mast, which brings to life selected scenes from the autobiography of Bungy Hedley, a San Pedro resident who in the 1940s and ‘50s managed to break into the all-male world of sailboat crews, by way of which she journeyed from California to Hawaii, Tahiti and points beyond. Then comes Christopher H.K. Lee’s Forgotten Victory, telling the story of the S.S. Lane Victory, from its role in the

E“EcoDocs” program. Among these is Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops. Narrated by Richard Gere, by itself this introduction (of what is a connected series of five short films, which can be screened with subtitles in any of 23 languages) is a concise primer on how human-caused emissions are triggering potentially irreversible, self-perpetuating global warming mechanisms. Also on the bill are three films taking on issues specific to the West Coast: Without Water, which documents the ongoing dispute between stakeholders in Long Valley, California and Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power’s efforts to keep L.A. County residents flush in the midst of a dwindling supply; Saging the World, which discusses how the faddish overuse of white sage (native only to Southern/Baja California) is threatening it with extinction; and Surviving the Pacific Northwest: A Bumblebee Tale, an enthusiast’s search of the wild for these critically-endangered crucial pollinators. Later in the day is a

“Miracle of Christmas” — the evacuation via of 86,000 refugees from in and around the port city of Hungnam, North Korea after U.N. troops were overrun at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir — to its present-day function as a link to the past as one of only three surviving “Victory”-class ships from “the Forgotten War.” (Built and launched at Terminal Island in 1945, today the Lane Victory is berthed in San Pedro as a historical landmark and museum ship.)

On Feb. 3 the focus shifts to social justice with Reimagining Safety, an attempt to further the post-George Floyd conversation about transforming our public-safety paradigm. Arguing that America is fighting a war against crime with the wrong weapons and targets, a variety of scholars and people on the frontlines discuss the origins of policing in the United States (inextricably tied to slave-catching and thus growing from these “birth defects”) and the abject failure of our “conception of justice [as being] rooted in retribution, retaliation, and revenge.” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is one of those voices: “Looking at our entire system through a lens of rehabilitation and prevention will completely revamp the DNA of our criminal legal system. Frankly, I think it will take it someplace [so] that I would call it a ‘criminal justice system.’ [As it is] I’ve purposely taken ‘justice’ out of it because I believe that our system has so many injustices that it cannot be called a ‘justice system.’”

Feb. 4 sees a change of venue to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, a fitting setting for an entire

mixed program of documentary shorts.

Among these is another work taking on today’s front-page issues: Beyond Homelessness: Finding Hope, an examination of how the “Housing First” strategy favored by the majority of government officials on the federal, state, and local levels is failing — particularly in California, where housing policies inimical to low-income housing are fueling the current crisis. Arguing that “Housing First” is like “trying to empty the ocean with a paper cup” because it shortchanges supportive services and thereby leaves unaddressed the issues underlying homelessness, the filmmakers hold up San Antonio’s Haven for Hope, a campus of sorts providing up to 1,700 boarders at a time with a panoply of services to redress those underlying issues, as a recipe for long-term success, noting homelessness in San Antonio has dropped by over 10% since Haven for Hope opened in 2010.

Additionally, on Feb. 4 and 5 numerous shorts of all sorts screen in competition at the Terrace Starlight Cinemas, which also hosts the closing party, where the winners will be announced. Q and A sessions with filmmakers and other panelists are scheduled after each program throughout the festival. For a complete list of programming, venues and to reserve tickets (free!), visit spiffest.org

Top: Stills from Racial Idiocracy. Middle: Stills from Beyond Homeless: Finding Hope. Bottom: Stills from Forgotten Victory. Images courtesy of the San Pedro International Film Festival

ew Year’s is a time of great reflection and a chance to look ahead. But how do other cultures revere this time? In parts of Asia, New Year’s is the most important holiday and until somewhat recently, the Lunar Calendar was the only one celebrated and the celebrations lasted for 15 days, not just one. What changed?

The Gregorian calendar labels New Year’s day as one day on Jan. 1. This is what we celebrate in the United States and most western countries. It is also celebrated in Japanese culture. It wasn’t always this way, though. The country of Japan celebrated the Lunar New Year until the year 1873 during the Meiji Restoration. During this time, Japan revered the western culture as the modern culture and felt they would be left behind if they did not adopt western ideals. In 1873 the Meiji government announced they would be adopting the Gregorian Calendar. This was 20 years after admiral Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay to open up trade between the USA and Japan. This was not adopted by everyone in Japan at first, though. For years, the Lunar Calendar continued to be used by rural regions of Japan. By the early 1900s though, the Gregorian Calendar was almost entirely adopted. This New Year celebration is called Oshôgatsu. One place where the Japanese community celebrated the Oshôgatsu was on Terminal Island in the early 1900s. Terminal Island was once the location of a large fishing and canning community.

Construction of the area started in 1915 and facilities were fully operational by 1917. Strongly employed by Japanese immigrants, known as Issei, as well as American born Japanese citizens, the area became known for Japanese cultural inclusion. How was their New Year’s celebrated?

Although Japanese culture celebrated the Gregorian New Year, old traditions were still kept from previous lunar celebrations. The holiday is not a single day affair, rather multiple days of preparation leading to multiple days of food and celebration. It is customary not to cook

during the holiday so cooking and “the big cleaning” occurs on the days leading up to the new year. On the day of, assorted food plates called Osechi are enjoyed as well as different foods representing ideals such as happiness, strength and fertility. Examples of Osechi include candied chestnuts representing luck and prosperity, kuromame sweet black beans representing good health and tazukuri herring roe representing bountiful harvest. Along with food, many Japanese descendants on Terminal Island

New Year’s: Reflect and Anticipate

Exploring New Year’s Traditions in Asian Culture

celebrations family is incredibly important and food is a major part with dishes such as dumplings in China, pastries in Mongolia, and rice cake soup in Korea. Every country has specific foods they revere during this time and different traditions akin to them. In China, the red pouches called lai see or hong bao are well known symbols during New Year gifted to children and unmarried adults and are similar to the monetary gifts otoshidama in Japan. Unlike the Oshôgatsu, where celebrators spend more time visiting friends and family, many Lunar New Year celebrations include loud fireworks as well as markets selling decorations. The literal duration of the Lunar New Year is a big difference as well. Although there is no set duration of Japanese celebrated New Year, it typically is around three days long, whereas Lunar New Year is a 15-day event, during which time much of Asia is shut down for observance.

remember otoshidama, spending money given to kids by adults. New Year’s on Terminal Island was remembered as a time for relatives and friends to visit households paying respects to their families. The men would travel giving gifts, such as money and food to other

households; while the wives and kids stayed home to receive the same offerings. New Year in the Japanese culture then focuses on family and good fortune for the future.

Lunar New Year has some similarities to the Japanese Oshôgatsu. In Lunar New Year

Stacking / Up

We all love New Year’s for the symbolic new start and mental reset we are given. This time of year is also very symbolic to many other countries and their traditions. Whether you celebrate the Gregorian Calendar or the Lunar Calendar, grab the opportunity for a mental reset, visit some family or light a firework. If you are looking to celebrate Lunar New Year in the area, make sure to check out the Lunar New Year Festival by the Port of Los Angeles being held on Jan. 21, 2023 at the Cabrillo Way Marina. There will be food, lion dancers, entertainment and more.

Seth Meyer is a graduate of Long Beach State University’s marine biology program, with interests in science, photography, culinary arts and music.

Group exhibition at The Loft Galleries showcases thirteen artists, all of whom happen to be local

By Melina Paris, Assistant Editor

Stacking / Up, an organic and surprisingly zen-inducing exhibition now on display at The Loft Gallery, was co-organized by artists Jim Murray, of The Loft and Jan Govaerts, founder of The Loft and Blue Water Clay ceramics studio. January’s First Thursday opening of Stacking/ Up generated great interest because of the way different works play off of each other. For example, Ben Zask’s pieces play well off of both Murray’s and Ann Daub’s pieces of horizontal stacking. All the artists in Stacking

/Up work in 3D but stacking is not a typical process that they utilize in their works.

Murray said Govaerts, who has been a working artist in San Pedro since 1996, proposed the initial exhibition. The Loft’s previous show was made up of artists that have worked at The Loft Studios.

“Jan thought we could follow up with artists who had shown in The Loft Studios,” said Murray. “We didn’t have any idea what the title was going to be but when we started assembling

names we realized that everybody that we were trying to consider were 3D people and a lot of them fit this concept of “stacked.”

He said the various pieces in the show are stacked up but also stacked out. But that was too long a title.

Exhibiting artists include three from Angels Gate Cultural Center, Phoebe Barnum, Lowell Nickel and Nancy Voegeli-Curran..

The exhibit also features Ann Olsen Daub,

Two dragons are used during a 2020 celebration of Lunar New Year at the Port of Los Angeles. Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala

Stacking/Up

Eugene Daub, Peggy Sivert, Ben Zask and Eric Johnson. And from The Loft, Michael Stearns, Jim Murray and Jan Govaerts, who also is from Blue Water Clay along with Mayra Zaragoza and Gregorio Nocon. As indicated by this list, Murray noted San Pedro has so many quality artists.

“We’re off the beaten path but in a way that’s how many people prefer it,” he said.

The exhibition presents a wide variety of works that play well together.

“One thing leads to another,” said Jan. Utilizing curious, often organic, pieces, Stacking / Up evokes a sense of progressive energy with works that, together, build this exhibition upwards. See the exhibition to experience its energy but in the meantime, you can discover more details here on Stacking / Up.

Govaerts and Murray were familiar with the variety of work the artists in Stacking / Up do; it wasn’t based on stacking in particular but that’s what they came to, Murray explained. Both Murray and Govaerts work in stacking themselves. Govaerts’ Stone Stack 3 and Chrysalis take the form of columns; the former

BIG NICK’S PIZZA

Tradition, variety and fast delivery or takeout—you get it all at Big Nick’s Pizza. The best selection of Italian specialties include hearty calzones, an array of pastas and our amazing selection of signature pizzas. We are taking all safety precautions to protect our diners and staff. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay updated on new developments. Call for fast delivery or to place a pick up order. Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mon.-Thurs.; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fri.-Sun. Big Nicks’ Pizza, 1110 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro, 310-732-5800, www.bignickspizza.com

1111 BISTRO AT LA HARBOR COLLEGE

Come experience the French flair at 1111 Bistro at Los Angeles Harbor College. Open Tuesday and Thursday for lunch from 11:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. starting Feb. 23 through March 2. The Bistro is run by students serving à la cart and 3-course meals. 1111 Bistro on the LA Harbor College campus, 1111 Figueroa Place, Wilmington, culinaryreservations@ lahc.edu

in round, stacked rock forms — balanced stable on the narrowest rock in the stack.

Her Chrysalis almost suggests the form of a

mummified being with a narrow top (head) atop a wider top third (torso) that narrows downward: a caterpillar’s ceramic chrysalis.

Peggy Sivert’s works, Break Up, Home Ism and Relic Totem made during COVID-19, include left behind pieces from her past students’ work that she had accumulated. She developed a series of works from cast off ceramics, metal, plastic and cement. The pieces resemble playful totems of colors and surprising individual shapes, stacked together in slender, graceful triangles.

Michal Stearn’s Sky Ladder (wood, rawhide, stone, yarn) is an inspired implement reaching towards the sky: it exemplifies the thoughts, meditations, words or prayers that humans offer — as we gaze upwards. It was good fortune running into Stearns as I left the gallery; I mentioned my affinity for this piece to him, to which he offered this sage explanation.

Ann Olsen Daub’s Child Warrior in black painted corrugated cardboard relief sculpture) and Night Vision are different in what Murray calls horizontal layered stacking. One can imagine Daub’s Child Warrior confidently donning this black GI-like ensemble of corrugated armor.

Murray said some of his relief pieces and

Ben Zask’s work are also a kind of horizontal stacking, or layered. Murray works with wood panels, paper and mixed media. His textured paintings present realistic images of natural elements, like wood, water, mountainscapes and Southwest colorscapes. His panels, he said, give him a lot of flexibility. He has both vertical and horizontal layered stacks — displayed on podiums and walls — of various sized, mixed media panels in a whole series: SW Strat Column 2, SW Strat Hoodoo 2 and 3 and Untitled SW Fissure 4 and 5.

“I’m not a 3D person … but I started to play around with these pieces and I stacked them and I thought it was an interesting variation,” he said. “I spent a lot of time in the Southwest and I had that interest in the control of the coloration, like in the Southwest. I started thinking about how they’re stacking. They started to look like the hoodoos, those sandstone columns in Bryce Canyon [Utah].”

Murray added the hoodoo’s are like the arches (in Arches National Park) which will eventually fall down because the sandstone wears away. But in the meantime they create these “otherworldly, fantastic columns.”

A fantastically fun example of horizontally [See Stacking, p. 15]

PIZZERIA

Family owned and operated since 1965, Buono’s is famous for awardwinning brick oven baked pizza. Buono’s also of fers classic Italian dishes and sauces based on tried-and-true family recipes and handselected fresh ingredients. Dine-in and patio service, takeout and delivery. Hours: Sun.-Thurs. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Buono’s Pizzeria, corner of 6th and Centre sts., Little Italy San Pedro, 310-547-0655, www.buonospizza.com

HAPPY DINER #1

The Happy Diner #1 in Downtown San Pedro isn’t your average diner. The selections range from Italian- and Mexican-influenced entrées to American Continental. Happy Diner chefs are always creating something new—take your pick of grilled salmon over pasta or tilapia and vegetables prepared any way you like. Dine in or al fresco or call for takeout. Hours: Mon.-Wed. 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thurs.-Sat. 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and Sun. 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Happy Diner #1, 617 S. Centre St., San Pedro, 310-241-0917, www.happydinersp.com

Built on the success of Happy Diner #1, Happy Diner #2 offers American favorites like omelets and burgers, fresh salads, plus pasta and Mexican dishes are served. Order online for delivery or call for pickup. Hours: Mon. - Sat. 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Sun. 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Happy Diner #2, 1931 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro, 310-935-2933, www. happydinersp.com

HAPPY DELI

The Happy Deli is a small place with a big menu. Food is made-to-order using the freshest ingredients. Breakfast burritos and breakfast sandwiches include a small coffee. For lunch or dinner select from fresh salads, wraps, buffalo wings, cold and hot sandwiches, burgers and dogs. Order online or call for takeout or delivery. Hours: Mon. - Sat. 6 am. to 8 p.m., Sun. 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Happy Deli, 530 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro, 424-364-0319, www.happydelisp.com

PINA’S MEXICAN RESTAURANT

Pina’s Mexican Restaurant serves traditonal Mexican food from Michoacan for breakfast through dinner, and is known for specialty enchiladas, burritos, tacos

and mariscos served in a comfortable, casual dining atmosphere. Pina’s now has a full bar and outside dining, so come on by for a real margarita! Party trays for any occasion. Hours: Sun. - Wed. 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Thurs. - Sat. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Pina’s Mexican Restaurant, 1430 W. 25th St., San Pedro, 310-547-4621, www.pinasmexicanrestaurant.com

SAN PEDRO BREWING COMPANY

A micro brewery and American grill, SPBC features handcrafted awardwinning ales and lagers served with creative pastas, BBQ, sandwiches, salads and burgers. Order your growlers, house drafts and cocktails to go (with food purchase)! Open daily 12 to 8 p.m. for indoor or al fresco dining, takeout and delivery.. San Pedro Brewing Company, 331 W. 6th St., San Pedro, 310-831-5663, www.sanpedrobrewing.com

BUONO’S AUTHENTIC

HAPPY DINER #2

Jan Govaerts, Stone Stack 3, 2022, ceramic

MUSIC

Jan. 20

Gabble Ratchet

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of Genesis’ classic album Foxtrot, Gabble Ratchet will be playing the full album along with an eclectic selection of other classic fan-favorites.

Time: 8 p.m., Jan. 20 Cost: $25 Details: https://alvasshowroom. com/events/

Venue: Alvas Showroom, 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro

SBCMS Celebrates 60 Years

South Bay Chamber Music Society or SBCMS is celebrating its 60th year. Performances are held Friday evenings at Los Angeles Harbor College in Wilmington, and Sunday afternoons at Pacific Unitarian Church in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Time: The Pacific Trio will play at 8 p.m., Jan. 20 at Harbor College and 3 p.m., Jan. 22 at PUC

Details: https://sbcms.net/ Venues: LA Harbor College, 1111 Figueroa Place, Wilmington and PUC, 5621 Montemalaga Drive, Rancho Palos Verdes

Jan. 21

Spinphony

The dazzling female electric string quartet Spinphony is breaking down barriers between classical, rock and pop music, mixing and mashing catchy melodies into their own unique arrangements. Whether you’re a fan of Bach, ACDC, Journey or Mozart, the virtuosic ladies will have you rocking out to the greatest melodies of all time.

Time: 8 p.m., Jan. 21 Cost: $35 and up Details: 310-781-7171; https://torrancearts.org/show/spinphony

Venue: Torrance Cultural Arts, 3330 Civic Center Drive, Torrance

Jan. 28

Dirk K All Star Band

Guitarist Dirk K is returning to Alvas Showroom and bringing his All Star Band. C.C. Thomas Jr., MD for Diana Ross, will be on bass, Gene Coye from Larry Carlton’s

band will be on drums and New Zealand native Tim Sellars will be on percussion and tablas. Dirk K’s playing brings a vast variety of sounds from jazz to Flamenco and rumba.

Time: 8 p.m., Jan. 28

Cost: $25

Details: https://tinyurl.com/ Dirk-K-all-star-band

Venue: Alvas Showroom, 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro

South Bay Wind Ensemble

Join the all-new South Bay Wind Ensemble inaugural concert, From Chaos Into Life. The event will feature works by Leonard Bernstein, Morten Lauridsen, Alfred Reed and culminates in the epic Symphony Number 8 by David Maslanka. SBWE is offering a pre-concert lecture and after concert champagne toast for all VIP ticket holders.

Time: 7 p.m. Jan. 28, with pre-concert lecture for premium ticket holders

Cost: $15 and up Details: 310-433-8774; www.sbmusic.org

Venue: Warner Grand Theatre, 478 W. 6th St., San Pedro

Feb. 1

Rob Kapilow Explores Gershwin

Composer Kapilow explores George Gershwin’s most recognized composition, Rhapsody in Blue, with William

Cunliffe, a music professor from California State University in Fullerton. Gershwin’s piece helped to define the jazz age and eventually became one of the most popular concert works.

Time: 7:30 p.m., Feb. 1

Cost: $55

Details; 562-916-8500; https:// cerritoscenter.com

Venue: Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 18000 Park Plaza Drive, Cerritos

Music

Feb. 4

For All Seasons

Long Beach Symphony, under the direction of Maestro Eckart Preu, Feb. 4, will rouse audiences with Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons a group of four violin concertos embodying each season of the year.

Time: Pre-concert talk 7 p.m., concert 8 p.m., Feb. 4 Cost: $32 and up Details: 562-436-3203; LongBeachSymphony.org

Venue: Long Beach Terrace Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., #300, Long Beach

John Jorgenson Quintet

This jazz guitarist is known for his musicianship and he’s the only American to headline France’s Django Reinhardt Fest. His band is hailed as “the U.S. ambassadors of gypsy jazz.”

Time: 8 p.m., Feb. 4 Cost: $28 and up Details: www.grandvision.org/ event/john-jorgenson-quintet Details: Grand Annex, 434 W. 6th St., San Pedro

Feb. 5

Kool & the Gang

Celebrate good times and groovin’ tunes with the Grammy-winning band and its legendary blend of jazz, R&;B, funk, and pop, which earned the band seven American Music Awards.

Time: 7 p.m., Feb. 5

Cost: $60 to $110

Details: 562-916-8500; cerritoscenter.com

Venue: Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 18000 Park Plaza Drive, Cerritos

THEATER

Jan. 19

Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero Agatha Christie is the consummate master of mystery with twists and turns that keep audiences guessing until the final line is spoken. Towards Zero is no exception.

Time: 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 19 to Feb. 11

Cost: $20 to $30

Details: 562-494-1014, www.lbplayhouse.org

Venue: Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach

Pick of the Vine

The New Year means new plays. Little Fish Theatre’s reading committee has selected seven tantalizing plays for the New Year: Inner Child Work by Robin Berl; Not Just a Phase by Ai Ebashi; Hang-Ups by Brett Hursey; Lovers and Survivors by Aaron Leventman; Safe Walk by Rebecca Kane; Sugar by Jennifer O’Grady; Bingham’s Ledge by W.L. Newkirk.

Time: Jan. 19 to Feb. 5

Cost: $20 to $30

Details: https://tinyurl.com/littlefish

Venue: Little Fish Theater, 777 S. Centre St., San Pedro

Jan. 22

Agnes Of God

A young nun who claims she had a virgin birth is accused of murdering her child. A psychiatrist

assigned to the case faces off with the mother superior. All three women explore questions of faith, memory and the meaning of sainthood.

Times: 8 p.m. Jan. 20, 21 and 2 p.m., Jan. 22

Cost: $20 to $24 student/senior/ military Details: https://lbplayhouse.org/ event/agnes-of-god Venue: Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach

ENTERTAINMENT

Jan. 20

Tim Burton Burlesque

Come witness the magic as your favorite Tim Burton characters come to life: Wednesday, Dumbo, Alice In Wonderland, Sleepy Hollow and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Cosplay, vendors, live art, trivia, prizes are included. Come dressed as your favorite Tim Burton Characters or in your best black and white stripes. Time: 9 and 11 p.m., Jan. 20 Cost: $15 to $125

Details: https://tinyurl.com/timburton-burlesque

Venue: Harvelle’s Long Beach, 201 E. Broadway, Long Beach

Jan. 21

Capitol Comedy

Political satire and musical comedy return to the stage. Featuring fresh parodies and timely original compositions, Capitol Comedy’s new show is a lively musical program skewing both sides of the aisle with hilarious and insightful political satire. From the White House to Congress, everyone is fair game.

Time: 8 p.m., Jan. 21 Cost: $50

Details: https://tinyurl.com/Capitol-comedy

Venue: Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 E. Atherton St., Long Beach

ART

Jan. 19

Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories

See how American quilters have knitted together stories since the 1600s at the Skirball’s celebration of quilt makers. Over 40 artists will have work on display, as will a complementary exhibition, Together for Good: Caron Tabb and the Quilting Corner a largescale collection of keepsakes that respond to the pandemic.

Time: Now through March 12 Cost: $13 to $18

Details: https://tinyurl.com/fabricof-a-nation

Venue: Skirball Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles

Jan. 19

STACKING/UP

Exhibiting Artists: Phoebe Barnum, Nancy Voegeli-Curran, Eugene Daub, Anne Olsen Daub, Janice Govaerts, Eric Johnson, Jim Murray, Lowell Nickel, Gregorio Nocon, Peggy Sivert, Michael Stearns, Mayra Zaragoza and Ben

Zask.

Time: Now through Feb. 4 Cost: Free

Details: https://www.loftartstudiosandgalleries.com Venue: The LOFT Gallery and Artist Studios, 401 S. Mesa St., San Pedro

Audrey Lin Art Show

An art show by local high school student Audrey Lin showcases art celebrating the AAPI community. The show aims to simultaneously celebrate the many diverse aspects of Asian culture and raise awareness about the recent hate crimes against the community. Time: Now through Feb. 17 Cost: Free Details: www.celebratingaapi.art Venue: Peninsula Center Library Foyer, 701 Silver Spur Road, Rolling Hills Estates

Little Boxes, An Exhibit by Kay Erickson

Using an assortment of Cuban cigar boxes and display boxes, she provocatively and cleverly frames some villainous vignettes of the horrors currently haunting America, along with some calmer, more surreal scenes. A selection of Erickson’s photographs from her 2012 visit to Cuba are also on exhibit. The works will be on display and available for purchase through January.

Time: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday Cost: Free Details: 562-588-7075 Venue: Page Against The Machine, 2714 E. 4th St., Long Beach

Jan. 21

Uplifting Tales and Eroded Histories

Angels Gate Cultural Center presents a new exhibition, Uplifting Tales and Eroded Histories, on view Jan. 21 to March 25. An installation by local artists Richard Turner, Michael Davis and Paul Harris, this exhibition presents a speculative geohistory of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Uplifting Tales and Eroded Histories opens with a free public reception at Angels Gate Cultural Center Jan. 21. Time: 3 to 5 p.m., Jan. 21 Cost: Free Details: https://angelsgateart.org Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro

Trade Fare Social

Artists kelli rae adams, Melissa Bouwman, Mark Rumsey, and the Institute 4 Labor Generosity Workers & Uniforms engage the audience as participants in art as social practice. The works address present-day challenges of the student debt crisis, bodily autonomy, sustainability and economic systems. The exhibition runs to March 25.

Time: 3 to 5 p.m., opening reception, Jan. 21

Cost: Free

Details: https://angelsgateart.org Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro

Jan. 28

Connective Threads Fiber Art from Southern California Connective Threads is a survey of contemporary fiber art in Southern California that provides a window into what is currently engaging fiber artists, even as this discipline continues to evolve and change. The exhibition offers unique perspectives on the complicated identities of fiber art as a genre.

Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Jan. 28 to April 15

Cost: Free Details: https://pvartcenter.org/ connective-threads

Venue: Palos Verdes Art Center, 5504 Crestridge Road, Rancho Palos Verdes

Feb. 7

Lee Krasner: A Through Line

The exhibition provides a context to explore important abstract paintings and collages from the 1940s to the early 1960s. The exhibition includes four of the five Krasner works held in the museum’s Gordon F. Hampton Collection and rarely exhibited works on loan.

Time: 12 to 5 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Feb. 7 to May 19

Cost: Free Details: www.csulb.edu/carolyncampagna-kleefeld-contemporary-art-museum Venue: Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach

FILM

Jan. 29

Chesley Bonestell — A Brush with the Future Film

Join the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy for a Zoom event with filmmaker and Rancho Palos Verdes resident Douglass Stewart, who will discuss the amazing life and career of Chesley Bonestell. Price includes home delivery of the DVD, which participants can view in advance.

Time: 4 to 5 p.m., Jan. 29

Cost: $30 per family Details: 310-541-7613; https:// pvplc.org/event/chesleybonestell/ Venue: Online

Feb. 2

11th Annual San Pedro Film Festival

Join free screenings over four days of the 11th annual San Pedro Film Festival. SPFF kicks off Feb. 2 to 5 with independent films and then it heads into Oscar season with “Oscar Nominated Shorts” Feb. 25 to March 11. The Oscarnominated shorts series will be screened at the Terrace Starlight Cinemas in San Pedro, starting with the animation category Feb. 25, documentary category March 4 and live action March 11. Tickets for the Oscar short series are now on sale: https://tinyurl.com/ SPFF-Oscar-shorts-series. Time: 7 p.m., Feb. 2 to 5 Cost: Free Details: www.spiffest.org Venue: Warner Grand Theatre, 478 W. 6th St., San Pedro

FOOD

Jan. 24

Long Beach Black Restaurant Week

Organized by Long Beach Food & Beverage, Long Beach Restaurant Week is an eight-day event celebrating African, African American and Caribbean fare in and around Long Beach. On Jan. 24, join a pop-up chef event celebrating Long Beach Restaurant Week at Trademark Brewing and 5 to 9

p.m., Jan. 26 at Cove Hotel (200 E. Willow St., Long Beach). Time: 4:30 p.m. to closing, Jan. 24

Cost: Varies

Details: https://blackrestaurantweeklb.com/pop-ups

Venue: Trademark Brewing, 233 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach

DANCE

Jan. 19

Dance Camera West Film Festival

The globally renowned festival presents its 21st edition, premiering 60-plus dance films in Los Angeles. Opening night features the LA premiere of Bella, celebrating LA dance icon and activist Bella Lewitsky.

Time: Various times, Jan. 19 through Jan. 21

Cost: $10 to $150

Details: https://tinyurl.com/dancecamera-west-tickets and festival pass https://tinyurl.com/dcw-festival-tickets-pass Venue: Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles

Feb. 5

Con el Alma

The popular Esencia Flamenca company returns with scintillating Flamenco from their exquisite dance company and musicians.

Time: 2 p.m., Feb. 5

Cost: $20 to $45

Details: https://tinyurl.com/Conel-Ama

Venue: Warner Grand Theatre, 478 W. 6th St., San Pedro

COMMUNITY Jan. 21

9th Annual Lunar New Year Festival

Year of the Rabbit. Join a cultural festival with entertainment, lion dancers, crafts, food and a festive finale.

Time: 3 to 7 p.m., Jan. 21 Cost: Free

Details: 310-514-4985; https://www.cabrilloway.com/ Venue: Cabrillo Way Marina, 2293 Miner St., San Pedro

Make a Milagro

Join artist-teacher Karen Emonts to create milagros, small metal votives popular in many parts of Latin America to petition the saints for a wish, for thanks, or for protection. Supplies will be provided. All are welcome. COVID-19 safety protocols (mask wearing and contact tracing) will be enforced. Children must be accompanied by an adult at all times.

Time: 1 to 2:30 p.m., Jan. 21 Cost: Free Details: https://tinyurl.com/makea-milagro Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro

Jan. 28

Songwriter Workshop

Every person has creativity inside them that needs to be expressed. Joselyn Wilkinson and Don Barrozo will lead a songwriting workshop before their Saturday evening concert, open to anyone interested in songwriting. No experience or obvious talent necessary. Just bring a notebook, pen and an open mind.

Time: 4 to 5:30 p.m., Jan. 28

Cost: Free

Details: https://tinyurl.com/songwriting-workshop

Venue: TOCA, George Nakano Theatre, 3330 Civic Center Drive, Torrance

SPIFFest Dreams Big

were “struggling to thrive,” and concluded that the organization should explore a more nimble, sustainable form of exhibiting and celebrating independent film artists year round.

Mrkich noted that geographically, we’re not far enough out to be a destination festival like the

Sundance or Palm Springs film festivals.

“But we’re in the city of LA and I would really like the festival to become Oscar-qualifying,” she said. “But that would depend on the quality of the theaters we screen at and the number of short films we screen.”

Mrkich noted that film lovers will always

FEB

2 5 - 9 PM

find their way to film festivals, while regular people may not always get it. But in towns that are destination festivals like Palm Springs, the surrounding community tends to love and sup port them. She said she has found the same to be true in San Pedro.

“I would love to build a festival into an event that is on the film festival map for Los Angeles,” Mrkich said. “That way it would make Pedro, which is always growing and developing that

25TH ANNIVERSARY

much more interesting for people to come down here.

“We just got to keep at it,” she said.

“We’ll get there. It’ll take time and money but we’ll get there.”

FIRST THURSDAY ART

ART GALLERIES OPEN STUDIOS LATE DINING LIVE MUSIC

Come visit our frame shop and get your project started. Your art deserves the best. 1,000 frame samples to choose from or custom build your own. Check out some local art and understand the important details behind framing and your investment.

Details: 310-600-8881

Venue: Epiphany Framing, 343 W. 7th St. San Pedro

Emanating from artists’ studios in Southern California, Connective Threads offers unique perspectives on the complicated identities of fiber art as a genre. Fiber artists can formally exploit the medium’s connections to pattern, color, shape, and texture. Multilayered content can also be woven into its structure through abstract, representational, or narrative strategies. The works on view by 25 artists encompass a rich diversity of influences and inspirations, independent from conventional expectations. Collectively they offer a penetrating examination of fiber’s possibilities. The exhibition is curated by Carrie Burckle and Jo Lauria and runs Jan. 28 to April 15. Opening reception Feb. 4, 6 to 9 p.m.

Details: 310-541-2479; www.pvartcenter.org

Venue: Palos Verdes Art Center / Beverly G. Alpay Center for Arts Education, 5504 Crestridge Road, Rancho Palos Verdes

Celebrating the month of love at Michael Stearns Studio @The Loft

Join us during the San Pedro First Thursday ArtWalk from 6 to 9 p.m. Details: 562-400-0544; www.michaelstearnsstudio.com Time: 1 to 5 p.m., Saturdays or by appointment

Venue: Michael Stearns Studio@The Loft, 401 S. Mesa St., San Pedro.

Epiphany Framing by JJ Geary

Palos Verdes Art Center CONNECTIVE THREADS

Web by Diane Meyer Bosebrucke

Michael Stearns Studio

THE MONTH OF LOVE

Ziggy Mrkich. Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala

JOB OPPS

RLNews is looking for freelance food and music writers who are knowledgeable about Harbor Area restaurants, culture and music scenes. Committment to writing to deadline is a must. Having a strong social media following and bi-lingual skills is a plus. Submit inquiries and any links to your writing to editor@randomlengthsnews. com or call 310-519-1442 weekdays.

HOME & GARDEN

Never clean your gutters again! Affordable, professionally installed gutter guards protect your gutters and home from debris and leaves forever! For a FREE Quote call: 844-499-0277 (AAN CAN)

Water Damage to Your Home? Call for a quote for professional cleanup & maintain the value of your home! Set an appt today! Call 833664-1530

BATH & SHOWER UPDATES in as little as ONE DAY! Affordable prices - No payments for 18 months! Lifetime warranty & professional installs. Senior & Military Discounts available. Call 1-866-3702939 (AAN CAN)

BCI Walk In Tubs are now on SALE! Be one of the first 50 callers and save $1,500! CALL 844-514-0123 for a free in-home consultation.

MISC.

JOB TRAINING

COMPUTER & IT TRAINING

PROGRAM! Train ONLINE to get the skills to become a Computer & Help Desk Professional now! Grants and Scholarships available for certain programs for qualified applicants. Call CTI for details! 888-281-1442 (M-F

BathWraps is looking for calls from homeowners with older home who are looking for a quick safety update. They do not remodel entire bathrooms but update bathtubs with new liners for safe bathing and showering. They specialize in grab bars, non-slip surfaces and shower seats. All updates are completed in one day. Call 866-5312432

Don’t Pay For Covered Home Repairs Again! American Residential Warranty covers ALL MAJOR SYSTEMS AND APPLIANCES. 30 DAY RISK FREE/ $100 OFF POPULAR PLANS. Call 855-731-4403

Credit Card Debt Relief! Reduce payment by up to 50%! Get one LOW affordable payment/month. Reduce interest. Stop calls. FREE no-obligation consultation Call 1-855-761-1456 (AAN CAN)

4G LTE Home Internet Now Available! Get GotW3 with lightning fast speeds plus take your service with you when you travel! As low as $109.99/mo! 1-888-5190171 (AAN CAN)

DirecTV Satellite TV Service Starting at $74.99/month! Free Installation! 160+ channels available. Call Now to Get the Most Sports & Entertainment on TV! 877-310-2472

DISHTV $64.99 For 190 Channels + $14.95 High Speed Internet. Free Installation, Smart HD DVR Included, Free Voice Remote. Some restrictions apply. Promo Expires 1/21/23 1-866-566-1815 (AAN CAN)

Spectrum Internet as low as $29.99, call to see if you qualify for ACP and free internet. No Credit Check. Call Now! 833-955-0905

LONG DISTANCE MOVING: Call today for a FREE QUOTE from America’s Most Trusted Interstate Movers. Let us take the stress out of moving! Call now to speak to one of our Quality Relocation

Specialists: Call 855-7874471

AUTOS

DONATE YOUR VEHICLE to fund the SEARCH FOR MISSING CHILDREN. FAST FREE PICKUP. 24 hour response. Running or not. Maximum Tax Deduction and No Emission Test Required! Call 855-504-1540

PETS

PEDRO PET PALS is the only group that raises funds for the City Animal Shelter and FREE vaccines and spay or neuter for our community. 310-991-0012.

Plants for Sale

Various sizes of Peruvian Spiral Cactus, mature Aloe Vera plants and Century plants $10 to $24.95 ea. Call or text

FICTITIOUS

BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

File No. 2022-276962

The following person(s) is (are) doing business as: Vorte Restoration Services, 1323 S. Gaffey, San Pedro, CA 90731, County of Los Angeles

Registered owner(s): Bolanos Brothers LLC, 1123 Via Sebastian, San Pedro, CA 90732; California. This business is conducted by: a Limited Liability Company

The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on 01/2010 I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. (A registrant who declares as true any material matter pursuant to Section 17913 of the Business and Professions code that the registrant knows to be false is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not to exceed one thousand

dollars ($1,000)). S/ Victor Bolanos Ortega, President of Bolanos Brothers LLC

This statement was filed with the County Clerk of Los Angeles on December 27, 2022

NOTICE-In accordance with Subdivision (a) of Section 17920, a Fictitious Name Statement generally expires at the end of five years from the date on which it was filed in the office of the County Clerk, except, as provided in Subdivision (b) of Section 17920, where it expires 40 days after any change in the facts set forth in the statement pursuant to Section 17913 other than a change in the residence address of a registered owner. A new Fictitious Business Name Statement must be filed before the expiration. Effective January 1, 2014, the Fictitious Business Name Statement must be accompanied by the Affidavit of Identity form. The filing of this statement does not of itself

authorize the use in this state of a Fictitious Business Name in violation of the rights of another under Federal, State, or common law (See Section 14411 et seq., Business and Professions Code). 1/5, 1/19, 2/03, 2/17/23

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

File No. 2023-007074

The following person(s) is (are) doing business as: The Carberry Family Trust, 1224 Cota Ave., Torrance, CA 90501, County of Los Angeles

Registered owner(s): April Carberry 1224 Cota Ave., Torrance, CA 90501; California. This business is conducted by: an Individual

The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on N/A I declare that all information in this statement is true and cor-

rect. (A registrant who declares as true any material matter pursuant to Section 17913 of the Business and Professions code that the registrant knows to be false is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000)). S/ April Carberry This statement was filed with the County Clerk of Los Angeles on January 11, 2022 NOTICE-In accordance with Subdivision (a) of Section 17920, a Fictitious Name Statement generally expires at the end of five years from the date on which it was filed in the office of the County Clerk, except, as provided in Subdivision (b) of Section 17920, where it expires 40 days after any change in the facts set forth in the statement pursuant to Section 17913 other than a change in the residence address of a registered owner.

A new Fictitious Business Name Statement must be filed before the expiration. Effective January 1, 2014, the Fictitious Business Name Statement must be accompanied by the Affidavit of Identity form. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a Fictitious Business Name in violation of the rights of another under Federal, State, or common law (See Section 14411 et seq., Business and Professions Code). 1/19, 2/02, 2/16, 3/2/23

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME

Case No. 23LBCP00010

Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles

Petition of: JULIE ANNE DUENAS TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS:

Petitioner JULIE ANNE DUENAS filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: JULIE ANNE DUENAS to JULIE ANNE SOLA-DUENAS

The Court orders that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.

Notice of Hearing:

Date: 02-24-23, Time: 8:30 am, Dept.: 27

The address of the court is 275 Magnolia Ave., Long Beach, Ca 90802

A copy of this Order to Show Cause shall be published at least once each week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing on the petition in the following newspaper of general circulation, printed in this county: Daily Journal and RLn.

Date January 13, 2023

David W. Slayton Judge of the Superior Court

1/19, 1/26, 2/2, 2/16/23

Public Notary Services available at

mental Quality Act (CEQA): first at the port level, then at the court level.

Last June, Judge Timothy Taylor ruled that POLA violated CEQA with its 2020 Supplemental EIR, involving replacement mitigations for 11 measures in the 2008 EIR that were never implemented. The most basic reason was because its measures were unenforceable, since they relied on China Shipping signing a new lease agreement, which it has repeatedly refused to do. However, Taylor declined to pursue a

specific remedy, writing, “The court may not direct the port to carry out its obligations under CEQA in any particular way.”

Now, both Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), representing community groups who’ve fought the port for 20-plus years, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) have appealed the court’s ruling, arguing that it erred in not ordering compliance with CEQA. “After a court determines that an agency has violated CEQA, it must issue a peremptory writ that compels compliance with the law; the statute accordingly gives courts broad authority

Stacking/Up

stacked are Ben Zask’s musical sculptures (metal, paint). His D Flat is literally a flattened horn, with three bells, sized large, medium and small, with its various tubing and mouthpieces placed within the sculpture. Zask’s Musical Keys are exactly that; the metal valves and buttons are strung together in a 54-inch sculpture, evoking the sound of melodious music.

Eric Johnson’s Ocean Color Scape in blue and Pond Color Scape in green in the form of bars (polyester, resin) offer a visual, layered stacking. They are a blend of contemporary sculpture and abstract painting.

Lowell Nickel‘s Rock Garden on Pallet: Axehead (palm, wood stand, ceramic mixed media) blends organic and ceramic materials. Murray said he’s a beach scavenger. Nickel likens himself a landscape artist, creating projects made of human disposed materials, describing his work as “the fashioning of our own human footprint as artifact … These remains might resemble just another strange abstracted strata upon a future landscape.”

Nancy Voegeli-Curran’s Spill (recycled plastics, tyvek, wire, paint) has a darkness to the piece, Govaerts noted, its creation was based on an oil spill.

“When you look at Nancy’s [piece], you wonder how she did this and that’s when it comes to inquiry about the materials [she used],” said Govaerts.

Eugene Daub’s The Mentor (bronze) and Joe Hill (stoneware bust) sculptures stand across from each other in the gallery. Daub’s sculptures, often of historical figures who inspire him, are important and grounding pieces. Yet, charm and sense of humor are also present. In this case, Daub created a podium of “stacked” Home Depot buckets, with the phrase “Songs of Labor” painted on the makeshift platform to support the songwriter, itinerant laborer and union organizer.

Phoebe Barnum’s Stick a Nail In It (low-fire ceramic mixed media) depicts a personal trauma the artist endured when she had to have a series of surgeries which ultimately caused the complete loss of vision in one eye. The large piece is composed of multiple clay masks that appear to express stages of pain. Barnum said the clay lends itself to the visceral expression.

“The use of clay enabled me to express my feelings about my loss of vision and all that entailed,” Barnum wrote in her statement.

All the artists self-curated their works and in one form or another all the pieces are reused or recycled. Murray posited that what artists do with their process is intriguing but in the end it’s the image that we need to respond to. Because whatever the materials are, that tends to generate the conversation. The process can be really important but it’s usually the secondary thing when it comes to actually appreciating the work.

Stacking / Up will have a closing reception Feb. 4, following the next First Thursday ArtWalk.

to craft a writ that does so,” NRDC wrote in its appeal brief. “Accordingly, the trial court’s cramped interpretation of its powers was legally flawed and should be overturned.”

Monitoring Failure

POLA’s failure to maintain functioning air quality monitors is another facet of the state’s lackluster effort problem, which came into focus once again at its online Air Quality Monitoring Program update meeting on Jan. 11. In its announcement, POLA stated that the program “supports the Port’s commitment to improve air quality within the San Pedro Bay port complex,” but in a letter drafted in advance of the meeting, Andrea Hricko, who first drew attention to the problem in 2021, wrote, “We argue that the Port’s actions in not keeping monitors function-

ing actually shows a FAILED COMMITMENT to better manage air quality improvement efforts.”

In the meeting itself, after a presentation by consultant Joel Torcolini, Hricko queried him about the ongoing failure.

“I do not understand, Joel, how there can be 14 monitors currently not working — one third of the monitors in the port of LA are currently not functional. How is that possible?” Hricko asked.

Torcolini responded that they were “likely those instruments that we’re waiting on from the manufacturer” that were purchased but not yet deployed.

“These monitors have not been working for six months, 12 months, two years,” Hricko shot back. “Why should we not have duplicate monitors

Birth Disparities

necology at New York Medical College.

The risk of a stillbirth increases along with the number of “significant life events” a pregnant person faces, including job loss, an inability to pay bills or the hospitalization of a close family member. Black people who are pregnant, research shows, are more likely than their white counterparts to report mul tiple stressful life incidents.

In 2020, a CDC report examining racial and ethnic disparities in stillbirths identified several factors that might be at play, includ ing the patient’s health before pregnancy, socioeconomic status and access to quality health care, as well as stress, institutional bias and racism. The report found the “disparities suggest opportunities for prevention to reduce” the stillbirth rate.

A spokesperson for ACOG said that the group has been working for years to eliminate racial inequities through policy, training, guidance and advocacy. The group has publicly acknowledged the field’s disturbing history, including the fact that James Marion Sims, who’s known as the “father of gynecology,” conducted medical experiments on enslaved Black women.

Last year, the CDC launched a racism and health web portal, and CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky declared racism a serious public health threat, saying in a statement that racism isn’t just discrimination but “the structural barriers” that influence how people live and work.

Dr. Terri Major-Kincade, a neonatologist and health equity expert in Texas, said it’s

for every one of the monitors at the port?” She asked. The monitoring system “Needs to be continuous,” she said. “We need to be able to compare the level this year to 10 years ago to five years ago to two years ago. We need to have a continuous monitoring system.”

While new monitors will presumably not break down as frequently as the old ones did, neither Torcolini nor any of the POLA staff present offered a concrete assurance of any backup capacity at all.

In short, at every level, from the state’s broadest longterm planning document down to the port’s monitoring stations on which the most basic data-gathering depends, there’s an ongoing disconnect between promises made and the nutsand-bolts actions needed for those promises to be met.

misguided to highlight disparities among different racial groups without recognizing the lingering effects of racism. She said racism, not race, is responsible for the disparities.

One recent modeling analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health determined lowered levels of segregation decreased the odds of stillbirth for Black people, but had no effect on stillbirths for white people. The researchers estimated decreasing segregation could prevent about 900 stillbirths a year for expectant Black parents.

“A dedicated provider is not going to outshine a system that’s compromised by years of structural bias,” Major-Kincade said. “The system is going to win every time.”

The first and easiest step, she said, is listening to pregnant Black women.

“We can’t prevent every stillbirth,” she said, “but we can sure prevent a lot if we listen.”

Real People, Real News, Really Effective

1300 S. Pacific Ave. San Pedro 310-510-1442

Time: Now through Feb. 4, closing reception 2 to 5 p.m. Cost: Free Details: www.loftartstudiosandgalleries.com and www.facebook. com/Loft401smesa

Venue: The LOFT Gallery and Artist Studios 401 S. Mesa St., San Pedro

Brooke and Colin Smith. Photo courtesy of ProPublica