In the mid-1950s, my quadriplegic uncle, Gordon Zahler, was not exactly tearing it up as an independent post-production man in Hollywood, as he tried putting the family tragedy he ignited with his accident behind him. There weren’t many “cripples” then winning big contracts or dazzling outside investors to write ‘em a fat check. The studios, moreover, still ruled showbiz, and they employed a battalion of music supervisiors, sound effects technicians and others able to do what Gordon’s then-small company could.
Gordon, the central character in my 2008 biography Wheeling the Deal was forced to take any scraps offered, be they music and sound effects jobs on hokey anthology shows or forgettable commercials. Ed Wood Jr., king of the low-budget horror movie, provided Gordon with one of his first movie breaks by contacting him to provide the soundtrack to his infamous “Plan Nine From Outer Space.” An MGM producer solicited Gordon’s services just about this time (1957), and my uncle must’ve asked himself afterwards what he’d doing hanging around the improvising, corner-cutting, angora-sweater-loving Wood. A Doris Day/Richard Widmark comedic feature about a suburban Connecticut couple struggling to conceive a child needed Gordon’s soundtrack/music supervision expertise, and you don’t say no to MGM, Doris or the movie’s director, the one and only Gene Kelly.
Set years before the sexual revolution, “Tunnel of Love” captures the innocence and frustrations, the bravado and denial of this halcyon age of couplehood. And there’s not one sperm-count or ED joke. Gordon became chummy with Doris thanks to the film, which became his launch pad to network hits and much more in a career hard to imagine for someone with his devastating, die-at-any-second condition. Check out the clip and rent the movie if you can. It’s a time capsule of our parents’ way of looking at our little rock around the sun. No Octomom’s then.
(Note: Gordon’s name is omitted from the IMBD’s “Tunnel of Love” credits for some reason, even though you can see he used old music from his father, Lee Zahler, in the film. Someone else wrote the movie’s original songs while Gordon provided the other tracks.)
* Hard-nosed and visionary director Sam Fuller tapped my uncle, Gordon Zahler, for post-production on one of his terrific 1960-era movies, “The Shock Corridor.” Recently there was a festival honoring him.
* Wheeling the Deal won some tin at the recent Hollywood Book Festival. For a story still searching to bust out, I was pretty happy to have seen my uncle’s story receive the recognition that his heart and will deserved.
* A New York Times story on a solider who lost all four limbs and his journey. It’s worth every word!
Hometown Pasadena may have neglected to mention Wheeling the Deal and my anthology profile of Richard Alatorre, but I’ll take the inclusion with such a hoary list of writers past and present.
“From its earliest settling by Midwesterners, the Arroyo area attracted writers. One of the best known was Charles Fletcher Lummis, who in 1884 walked from Cincinnati to L.A. for a job as a reporter at the Los Angeles Daily Times. This was a brilliant publicity stunt, of course, and he arrived in town a famous man. He remained famous, writing for the Times, fighting for Indian rights, writing editorials and poetry, photographing Native Americans and founding a magazine called Land of Sunshine (later Out West), for which he recruited such writers as Jack London and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. He also built—by hand—a river-rock house on the Highland Park banks of the Arroyo; today it is one of L.A.’s most cherished landmarks and museums …. Today finds the literary culture as vibrant as ever. Southern California’s premier literary small press, Red Hen Press, is now based in Pasadena, right near book-lover-central, Vroman’s Bookstore. Among the hometown scribblers from Pasadena, Glendale, Altadena, South Pasadena, La Cañada and Eagle Rock are …”
Texas Congressman Joe Barton, along with fellow Republican Greg Walden, last year pressured the Justice Dept. to release documents on the secretive prosecution of former high-flying, emissions-broker Anne Sholtz. Barton, a global warming skeptic and longtime champion of big oil, made news again recently for his comments that the federal mandate for BP to set aside $20 billion for cleanup of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill amounted to a “slush fund” and shakedown. Guess what? He was forced to apologize.
Washington Post story on his outburst, which was curious to say the least. Here’s the official contrition from him in an MSNBC update.
I’m just wondering when Barton will get around to explaining why he and House lawyers and investigators were chomping at the bit to learn more about Sholtz and what her air pollution-exchange scandal says about a possible greenhouse gas cap-and-trade, when a national energy/climate bill was on the front burner, and why he’s allowed it slip from it from his political consciousness now that the bill’s propsects faded. Could it be Barton’s entire reasoning was to slam Obama, via California, and shield the petroleum sectors? Naw, couldn’t be.
In any event, my story on Sholtz — and it’s contexualized and expanded in our book Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles — won gold in the Southern California Journalism Awards Sunday night. I dislike even mentioning this, because I am ambivalent about subjective honors, but in this case I make an exception because after all these years, there is still more heat than light about the Sholtz caper and Barton’s real motives, let alone why the Justice Dept. handled her the way it did and all that CIA stuff.
The United Spinal Association may not be as well publicized as other groups assisting the paralyzed, such as the Christopher Reeve Foundation, but it’s an impressive organization nonetheless. It claims to be the fastest growing charitable-service entity of its kind.
Here’s its charter:
“United Spinal Association is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization formed in 1946 by paralyzed veterans who pioneered the disability rights movement.
Our mission is to improve the quality of life of all Americans living with spinal cord injuries and disorders (SCI/D), including multiple sclerosis, spina bifida, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), and post polio …
The core belief of United Spinal is that, despite living with a disability or mobility impairment, a full, pro-active, and rewarding life is not only possible, it is within the reach of anyone with the strength to believe it and the courage to make it happen. For over 60 years, we have been an active voice in the disability community and a leading provider of outstanding programs and services for individuals with disabilities.”
Click here to see what services United Spinal offers. Imagine the hope it brings to those used to the dark and dependence. Vets, as they should, receive special consideration. Link.
I adore their creed: Adapt. Achieve. Inspire. As the nephew of a quadriplegic who didn’t have anywhere near the care provided today, those were his survival terms. I detail it inWheeling the Deal: the Outrageous Legend of Gordon Zahler. But what I write there is a mere morsel of what United Spinal assists, treats and uplifts every day.
I encourage you to cruise their site and consider their cause because chances are someday somebody in your family may suffer a neurlogical/spinal injury. Even if they don’t, the “strangers” who have them should never feel alone if hearts are open, particularly for vets.
(Note to readers: United Spinal a few weeks ago on their own published a wonderful review of Gordon’s story. Since then, I’ve realized I’m the one who should be writing about them. They asked for nothing, BTW, when I wrote to thank them. They’re too humble and selfless for that.)
“When I first set out to read this book my purpose was to see if, as a United Spinal staff member living without a disability, I could gain some additional insight into a world I can only imagine, a world of living with a spinal cord injury. Since I began working here I have gained many friends, some of whom use a wheelchair to get around. I have also become quite knowledgeable about the great strides the disability movement has made in the last 60 years.
After reading (Wheeling the Deal), I have to admit there was not much more that I learned about this life I view from the outside. One thing I did learn though, is that human perseverance and determination can get anything accomplished, no matter what time period or circumstances you are born into.
Chip Jacobs recalls the story of his Uncle Gordon, paralyzed from the shoulders down as the result of an accident in the gym at age 13, and in doing so, he uncovers hidden family secrets, and the strength of his uncle to live life to the fullest in the face of tragedy. The book begins with Chip as a young boy in Hollywood, visiting Gordon in the hospital. The smells, sounds and sights overwhelm his senses and he is too young to fully understand the circumstances of what has happened. The book takes place over a 20-year span, uncovering the trials and tribulations of every member of this family. Fully dramatizing the fact that spinal cord injury changes not only the dynamics of any family unit, but entire neighborhoods.
(Wheeling the Deal) takes you back to the roaring 1950s. Although a midpoint of the 20th century, it was merely the beginning of accessibility, as we know it today. Simple advances like curb cuts, and accessible public transportation were only an idea. Finding accessible housing outside of a nursing home was unheard of. But Gordon is the master of his own fate. What he wants, he gets.
Gordon hires an architect to build one of the first fully accessible homes. Realizing people might not be able to get past his appearance; he conducts most of his business by phone until he can secure a contract. Impressed by his inability to give up, Hollywood producers and movie stars flock to him while he markets his father’s background music for feature films and television shows. Innovative thinking and willpower prove to be the combination Gordon banks on, risking it all to prove his will to survive is more powerful than a doctor’s grim prognosis. Surpassing everyone’s expectations with a little help from his friends, who would help transfer him into a car, or tie his wheelchair to the helm of a boat, or assist him on his many business trips to Asia, Africa or the Middle East, Gordon accomplishes what most of us only dream of.
It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and it will make you want to turn your dreams of the impossible into reality. An inspiration to anyone who reads it, with or without a disability. Gordon lives a life of glamour, travel, and financial success. What have you got to lose? When it’s all on the line you dive in and take the plunge. Gordon proves he is in control of his life and lives each and every minute to the fullest.
I encourage you to meet the characters this book introduces you to and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.”
Andrea Dimech is senior graphic designer of Action.
Here’s my little Op-Ed on the lessons of former emissions broker Anne Sholtz, who defrauded the very smog cap-and-trade she helped concoct. We write about her spectacular and alarming escapades at length, as well as about L.A.’s air pollution market, in Smogtown: the Lung Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles.
“In the toxic air of Los Angeles is a primer on human nature as we debate a national cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases.
During the 1990’s, Southern California manufacturers, weary of decades of stern regulation, wanted a new way to shrink their emissions of sky-smudging, health-damaging oxides of nitrogen and sulfur. Their answer was the planet’s first smog cap-and-trade system. Its name was awkward — the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, or Reclaim — but its implications seismic. Industry finally had flexibility in achieving its cuts, and a motive to reduce more than their yearly pollution cap. They could sell unneeded “credits” for profit!
Though environmentalists caterwauled about corporate sellout, the anti-smog officials were on board. For years, they’d been sandwiched between federal clean air mandates and industry accusations that they had crippled the region’s manufacturing muscle with overzealous rulemaking. Why not allow the market to be the magic?
Leading this vanguard environmentalism was Anne Masters Sholtz, a 30-something Caltech economics professor and aspiring emissions-broker. Her brokerage, which used the Web and advanced software to match trades, lined up heavyweight clients and enlisted marquee financial institutions as trade clearinghouses. Sholtz bought a spectacular hillside estate, won niche celebrity, and had a seemingly blue-sky future in the mecca of whiskey-brown air.
The problem is the system was vulnerable. During California’s electricity brownouts in 2000 and 2001, speculators made a killing off the boutique, $90-million-a-year market by hoarding credits the utilities needed to run full time. By then, Sholtz had twice fleeced the system.
In 1996, she misappropriated roughly $2 million in credits belonging to Chevron, then Mobil Corporation and another client and sold them to Southern California Edison. A few years later Sholtz lulled another client, a New York-based trading outfit called A.G. Clean Air, into believing she owned credits the company needed to complete a lucrative trade with Mobil. In truth the credits weren’t available.
Predictably, local regulators were in the dark about both episodes until industry complained to them. As her case illustrates, and Europe’s cap-and-trade scandals corroborates, even the best-intentioned oversight is laps behind sophisticated schemers, be they full timers or just desperate like Sholtz. Concoct a market anywhere, whether for beads or subprime mortgages, and they’ll show up.
Two House Republicans today are moving to unseal court records of Sholtz’s federal prosecution in a ham-fisted effort to hurt President Obama’s chances for a carbon market. If there’s chicanery with smog, imagine a trillion-dollar greenhouse market, they say. But the Sholtz case is too important for politicization, because global warming is a global threat now.
I’m against Obama’s plans because a more straightforward carbon levy seems more cost-effective and less contrived. Yet cap-and-trades can work, as they generally have in L.A., as long as we remember that to make a commodity out of something is to arouse temptation.”
To read the entire New York Times “Room for Debate” online forum, click here.
Here’s the link to my last story about Sholtz and L.A.’s cap-and-trade. It’s a tale of environmental fraud and foreign intrigue unlike any others.
“Californians: meet your sun. Or, rather, remember it.
Despite living in America’s premier green state, most of the state’s homeowners continue to rebuff solar power as a way to shrink their electricity bills, and simply plug into their local public utility much as their parents did.
The numbers paint the apathetic picture. Out of 7.7-million single family homes statewide, only about 50,000 have roof-mounted photovoltaic cells. In Los Angeles, the nation’s eighth sunniest city, only 1,627 homes boast solar hookups …”
There’s a lot more to say, and I will, but for now, I encourage you to read the opposing viewpoints and reader commentaries.
Right now, to reiterate, no matter California’s “status” as the greenest of greens, a meager 1 out of 154 homeowners currently use solar power. Does that sound like consumer acceptance to you? I fear we may learn how catastrophic this is as the environment continues to degrade and we experience an earthquake, terrorist attack or other awful event that knocks out power plants and leaves people with no way to electrify their lives and meet their needs until the juice is back on (and yeah, I know you need a fuel cell).
Anyway, here’s the link and I hope it proves a little thought-provoking. Just don’t buy into labels. Buy into the numbers and the big picture.
Note to readers: the following story is a longer, slightly different version of the article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other outlets on February 5, 2010. To see that version, click here.
Not long ago, most Californians harvesting green energy at home had pretty much one way to turn: toward their eaves. Rooftop solar panels might’ve resembled giant aviator-sunglasses, with a typical setup costing as much as a luxury car, but they at least delivered power-bill savings without anxiety. Trying to capture rustling winds or subterranean heat sounded as farfetched as it did impractical, and never found consumer traction.
Well, chalk another one up for the green revolution.
Today, with more user-friendly technology on the market and meaty taxpayer-subsidies available to begin popularizing the concept, the era of limited choices is fading. Homeowners out to shrink their reliance on the local utility grid and live greener without opting for standard solar-cells can now do so, depending on where they reside and their devotion to stick with it.
Experts believe it’s an idea worth bouncing around because of converging trends. As energy demands continue to tick upwards and governments crack down further on greenhouse gases, everyone – including consumers who previously shrugged off home-generation as a quixotic extravagance — will likely pay more for their electricity and natural gas.
New power plants are just prohibitively expensive to build. And no one knows when the next energy crisis will strike.
“Renewable energy produced at home shouldn’t just be for the granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing people,” said Angelina Galiteva, chairwoman of the non-profit World Council for Renewable Energy. “It should be for everyone.”
But will more than a hardy band of believers really commit to churning out kilowatts in their own backyards and communal grounds, when just one of 154 California single-family homeowners right now even run solar cells? Will the temptation to lock down energy costs, or the desire for more self sufficiency, catch on in the forward-looking West Coast as it has throughout Europe?
Check back in 2030 for concrete answers. For now, take a look what at some are already doing.
SMALL WIND
People driving along gusty interstates near such places as Palm Springs are accustomed to seeing commercial wind farms, where turbines as high as buildings spin lazily against a blue sky. These days, a modest but growing number of individuals are trying that technology inside their own fence-lines.
Roughly 10,500 small turbines were sold to homes, farms and businesses nationwide in 2008, according to the American Wind Energy Assoc. While the numbers aren’t in yet for 2009, demand remained strong in spite of the Great Recession, said Elizabeth Salerno, the association’s director of data and analysis. A survey of small-turbine manufacturers has projected a 30-fold increase in the U.S. market by 2013.
Locally, some of the growth is emanating from companies eager to contain their electricity tabs. In Palmdale, for instance, city officials have cleared the way for businesses to install wind turbines up to 60-fee-high to crank out their own clean power. Among them is Wal-Mart, which has a 17-turbine project planned for its Sam’s Club outlet in Palmdale.
Potential wise, though, the largest new pool of converts may be individuals such as Ernest Ramirez. He and his wife live in Oak Hills, an unincorporated, blustery section of western San Bernardino County dotted with spacious homes on multi-acre lots. They inherited their wind turbine when they bought their 3,250-square-foot property equipped with a pool and hot tub in 2003.
Ernest Ramirez can’t imagine life without out it now.
Perched on a slender tower about 80-feet high, the turbine has three, 10-foot-long blades that whip often enough to keep his power bills from Southern California Edison at about $100 a month, or roughly a quarter of what he calculates he’d fork out otherwise.
Gusts are so fierce in this part of the Cajon Pass that they have been known to snap trees and jackknife semi-trucks. But Ramirez welcomes a bad hair day. His 10-kilowatt device, which initially struck him as a hovering insect, not only is a money saver. It salves his environmental conscience.
“When I get out of my car and it’s blowing 35-mph and I have to stay inside the house, at least I know I’m saving money,” said Ramirez, a 46-year-old grant writer. “Wind is such a precious resource.”
Ramirez said he can count seven neighbors with their own wind turbines. Still, what works in windblown San Bernardino County won’t necessarily fit everywhere.
To make economic sense, a homeowner considering a turbine should live in an area where 10-mph winds are frequent, and be paying at least 10-cents a kilowatt hour for electricity, according to the wind association. Permitting is also a challenge in many communities; some neighbors consider the spinning contraptions as noisy and eyesores and even a threat to birds.
The technology certainly isn’t cheap, running about $3,000 to $6,000 per kilowatt installed or roughly $30,000 for an average system, experts say.
Sweeteners are being dangled to cushion some of that sticker shock. Homeowners can get a hefty rebate from the state of California – as much as $12,500 for a typical 5-kilowatt setup. They’re also eligible for a 30-percent Investment Tax Credit from the federal government.
