THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 Pacific Palisades Community Council meeting, 7 p.m., Palisades Branch Library community room, 861 Alma Real. Public invited. Tanyo Ravicz signs “A Man of His Village,” an epic novel that ranges from the borderlands of California to the strawberry fields of Oregon, from urban Seattle to rural Mexico, from the crowded slums of Tijuana to the isolation of the Alaskan bush, 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 Palisades Beautiful meets at 10 a.m. in the Palisades Branch Library community room, 861 Alma Real. Upcoming neighborhood tree planting and tree maintenance issues will be discussed. Members, friends and the general public are welcome. Contact: www.palisadesbeautiful@earthlink.net. Monthly movie at the library, featuring Palisadian Nanette Fabray, Fred Astire, Oscar Levant and Cyd Charissee in “The Band Wagon,” directed by Vincente Minnelli, 2 p.m., Palisades Branch Library. Free admission, courtesy Friends of the Library. Please bring a sweater, as the room can be cool. ‘‘Snap Shots Literary Troupe presents “The Story of Hollywoodland,” 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore. Readings include Groucho Marx’s letter to Warner Bros. “Re: A Night in Casablanca,” a Woody Allen pastiche of Dashiell Hammett, and the mean streets of noir L.A. in Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep.” Produced and hosted by Eric Vollmer. “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story,” a Theatre Palisades production directed by Paula LaBrot and starring Joshua Brandenburg, 8 p.m. at Pierson Playhouse, corner of Haverford and Temescal Canyon Rd. Plays every Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., through October 8. Ticket reservations: 454-1970. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 A musical production of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” featuring Chamber Music Palisades co-artistic director Delores Stevens and musicians from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, will be presented free of charge for Palisades families at 2 p.m. in the Palisades Branch Library patio, 861 Alma Real. (See story, page 16.) TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 Chautauqua Series program, “Butterflies of the Santa Monica Mountains,” by Palisades resident Margaret Huffman, 7:30 p.m. at the campfire center in Temescal Gateway Park. The program and parking (near the dining hall) are free. (See story, page 15.) Doug Conkin, orchid lecturer, cultivator and consultant, will speak on cattleyas to members and guests of the Malibu Orchid Society, 7 p.m. at the Woman’s Club, 901 Haverford. (See story, page 16.) WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 Potrero Canyon Community Advisory Committee meeting, 7:15 p.m. in the old gym at the Palisades Recreation Center, 851 Alma Real. Public invited. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 The Chamber of Commerce marketing series features local business owners Elyse Walker, Dave Licht (Kay ‘n’ Dave’s) and Dr. Luke Cohen (Innate Chiropractic), 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in Mort’s Oak Room on Swarthmore. Free to Chamber members; $20 for non-members. RSVP: 459-7963. Check-in and reception is 6 p.m. Palisadian Alan Eisenstock signs “Kindergarten Wars: The Battle to Get Into America’s Best Private Schools,” 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore. The author, a former screenwriter and seven-year board member of a private elementary school, provides startling insights into the private-school application process.

The Policy Committee at Palisades Charter High has proposed changing the school-year calendar in an attempt to raise Advanced Placement (AP) scores and lower class sizes. But the proposed changes have already sparked an intense debate among local parents and teachers. If the changes are approved, the first semester of next school year would begin August 13, about three weeks earlier than usual. That semester would end before a two-week winter break on December 21. The second semester would begin January 7 and end June 6, two weeks earlier than normal. Spring break would last for two weeks, one week longer than usual. The number of instructional days would stay the same. Because PaliHi is the only local school seriously considering the calendar change, many parents fear that the school’s calendar would conflict with local elementary and middle school schedules. Early this month, PaliHi sent parents the proposed changes and asked for their input. The deadline for submitting suggestions to the Policy Committee was September 12. There will also be an open forum for parents on October 6 at 6 p.m. in Mercer Hall, and parents present at that forum will be polled on the proposal. Policy Committee Chair Cheryl Onoye said one source of the proposed change came from the school’s Academic Watch Committee, which searches for ways to raise student achievement. Academic Watch members, she said, identified the timing of winter break as a consistent source of student hardship. Because the first semester does not end until after winter break, students return after weeks of vacation to final exams. And some teachers argue that student performance on final exams suffers unnecessarily because of awkward timing of exams and vacation. For Eileen Savage, a parent of students at PaliHi and Paul Revere Middle School, a winter vacation without school stress is the most convincing reason to support the changes. “Vacations have really suffered when my kids have papers and tests waiting for them when they get back from break,” she said. The Policy Committee has also endorsed the changes to provide an additional three weeks of instruction before students take AP exams. With this extra time, the Committee predicts better student preparation for the exams. Mary Redclay, an honors and AP English teacher, downplayed the benefit of an extra three weeks of instruction before the AP exams. “I don’t think three extra weeks will help them pass the AP test. If they have analytical skills, then they’ll pass. Three weeks here or there won’t make a difference,” she said. Redclay acknowledged that for more fact-sensitive subjects, an extra three weeks might be more helpful. Among the calendar change’s other alleged benefits, the Policy Committee hopes that dual enrollment of students at local community colleges would be facilitated. Onoye said that by starting the school year earlier, PaliHi’s schedule would be more compatible with community colleges. Students could take classes at community colleges for high school credit, and class sizes at PaliHi could decrease, Onoye said. It is unknown how many students would take classes at local community colleges, notably Santa Monica College and West Los Angeles College. At these schools, classes do not begin until late August and early September. Because PaliHi’s classes would end two to three weeks earlier than most local high schools, the Policy Committee argues that students would have an advantage in acquiring summer jobs. Despite these proposed advantages, several parents who spoke with the Palisadian-Post disputed the need for change. The most common anxiety among parents was the prospect of conflicting school schedules. Because most schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, including local elementary and middle schools, show no sign of changing their schedules, parents with children at PaliHi and other public schools might have to juggle incompatible school calendars. One PaliHi mother, who requested to have her name withheld, said that starting school in early to mid-August would keep students from taking summer school and summer programs. She added that because most summer jobs (such as youth camps) last until Labor Day, the earlier school date would disqualify them. For Bud Kling, a PaliHi board member and faculty president, the reasons for approving the calendar change are less compelling now than they were the last time the same change was proposed more than a year ago. Kling said that the earlier proposal was conditional on other Palisades public schools also changing. These local schools have not indicated that they plan to change their calendars. Kling, a longtime tennis coach, also worries that the proposed calendar would cause significant schedule conflicts for student athletes. Because most local high school sports are based on LAUSD schedules, sports finals and final exams would likely occur on the same days, he said.

The town’s recent rash of traffic accidents continued last Sunday afternoon when a 16-year-old female driving north on Palisades Drive veered off the road, hit a fire hydrant and knocked over a street light. This sent a geyser of water soaring higher than nearby palm trees for several hours. West Traffic detectives blamed the accident on excessive speed and cell-phone use. The driver’s Toyota Corolla suffered major damage, but her airbag deployed. A witness told the Palisadian-Post that although the driver appeared uninjured, “She seemed to be quite shaken up and was crying continuously for about an hour afterward.” Fire Station 23 responded to the call at 5:57 p.m. After determining that the driver had no injuries, firemen surveyed the scene. “A light pole had been knocked down next to the fire hydrant,” Captain Dan Thompson said. “Before we approached the hydrant, we called DWP to verify that the power was shut off.” DWP received the call at 6:07 p.m. and arrived on scene at 6:47 p.m. The crew removed a fuse from the hand hole, a little box on the sidewalk that contains fuses and electrical wires . “The street light was defused for safety purposes,” said DWP public affairs officer Carol Tucker. The geyser of water shooting out of the hydrant reached spectacular heights because the hydrants along Palisades Drive are fed by a high-pressure main. Thompson estimated that 2,000 gallons per minute were going into the air. DWP workers who handle water issues arrived at the scene at about the same time as their power counterparts. When they tried to shut off the water flowing to the hydrant, they discovered it wasn’t a standard valve found on most hydrants. In order to reach the valve (located six feet under the sidewalk), they needed a tool with a special extension, which is not normally carried on emergency calls. A call was made to procure the specific tool, and water was finally shut off at 8:20. Meanwhile, firefighters from Station 23 closed down traffic lanes going north, and at about 6:20 set up a reverse-flow lane in the south side fast lane, so that cars could access the Highlands. They continued to help with traffic until parking enforcement arrived around 7:30 p.m. The northbound road remained closed for several hours and DWP workers remained on site until 9:53 p.m.

By LOU KAMER Special to the Palisadian-Post (Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment on the Kamer family renovation saga which began in the spring of 2005.) On August 1, my family and I drove from our rented apartment in Santa Monica to our newly re-constructed house in the Alphabet streets. We had been gone from Pacific Palisades for exactly one year, a year in which our single-story, 3-bedroom, 1,800-sq.- ft. traditional house was demolished and a new two-story, 5-bedroom, 3,500-sq.-ft. “farmhouse meets Cape Cod” home sprouted in its place. In the overall scheme of things, I suppose a year isn’t very long, but the last four months felt like decades – decades filled with heat waves and construction delays. While we initially considered simply remodeling our single-story house and not adding a story, we decided that the 40 percent additional cost to rebuild dramatically increased the value of our property and allowed us to keep our large backyard and save our wonderful sycamore tree. So was I happy when the moving van pulled up? You may have heard me shriek with joy as far away as the Rec Center. In previous articles, I’ve written about the “soul” of our old house and how rebuilding reminded me very much of love relationships. In the end however, I felt bad watching the old house come down, and shared the regret some of our neighbors had expressed about all the “building up” going on. But in our case, the only two choices we had were to expand or move out of town. Given our love for the Palisades, the choice was easy. Maybe it’s because classes are now back in session or that my son just started pre-school, but after this renovation experience I now see building a house a lot like going to school – kindergarten, high school, college; it doesn’t really matter, the concepts are the same. First off, there’s the whole first day thing. Me, I hated going back to school. My mother had to basically push me out the door and bribe me with sugary treats in my lunchbox. The same was true when we loaded up the wagon and left the Palisades a year ago. I wondered if we were making the right choice in rebuilding – what was wrong with what we had? I was forced to sooth myself with biweekly won ton soup deliveries from a nearby Thai restaurant. Then there was the homework, consisting of budget reviews, plan reviews (basically reviews of reviews were reviewed), knob-and-paint choices – all with the hope of getting a good grade from the city inspectors, our builders and, most importantly, ourselves. Structure Development, our contractors, work on a fixed-cost system, which means that during the long and sometimes overwhelming pre-construction phase, all the details are worked out, a budget is drawn up, and any overages that occur during the rest of the project are their responsibility; except, of course, any upgrades (or the “I GOTTA HAVE THAT” items, as I like to call them). This took some of the worry out of the process, but our “must-haves” which included a keyless entry system, a large butcher-block island, surround sound, and an antique, belt-driven fan in the loft, to name a few – sent us eight percent over budget. Like school, our building process was split into different disciplines, and I soon found myself learning more than I would ever want to know about such subjects as concrete pouring, three-way switches, and mechanical runs. As I sat and listened to each tradesman describing the details of their problems, I often found my mind drifting in the exact same way it had when I was in school and I had to prod myself back into the present moment for fear of missing something that would be on the test. And just like with trigonometry, I had to wonder if any of this knowledge would be useful in the real world. But then there was the good side. Like school, our house construction was abuzz with activity and people we would never otherwise have met who wound up becoming our friends. Besides Bob and Mark (yes, Bob The Builder), with whom we would swap CDs and have lunches at Kay ‘n’ Dave’s, we also got to know Eric Friske, a native Palisadian finish carpenter who really cared about his work and wanted to help make our house and the Palisades a more beautiful place. And Alex P., another Structure Development client who graciously GAVE us his wood fence and plants as he was re-landscaping. And most of all, Mike Brown and the guys at Xtech Security who tutored me through the tough homework assignments, in this case, home wiring and security. Some people have said that high on the list of things that will destroy a marriage is rebuilding a house. I guess in some ways it’s like flunking out. But my wife and I made it through the process relatively unscathed. Sure, there was the occasional “C-” or “D” that had something to do with mantle colors or drapes, but after we learned our lesson, we were able to move on. Our work together was like two lab partners in chemistry class: there were times when we both had an idea of what the right answer was and other times when it was clear that neither of us knew better than the other. We made concessions and talked about what we felt was right and why, and in the case where we had no idea of the right solution, we made a choice and moved on, hoping that it didn’t result in something blowing up on us. Our rebuild ran about a month over schedule. Our builders had viable reasons for the delay, and though I’ve heard that a month is not too bad in the overall scheme of things, this fact failed to make the extra time in the apartment any easier. It was after-school detention all over again, but in this case, everyone else was grilling in their backyards, as I sat trapped in a hot apartment with a wild 2-year-old son. With one week left, the builders were cramming to get everything done and people were working overtime. Painters worked side-by-side with appliance installers and telephone people. Our insta-lawn sod arrived and was rolled out, transforming our barren dirt lot into a Vegas-like oasis (no flamingos included). Final exams came in the form of city inspections and walkthroughs with the different trades, and then, all of a sudden, it was August 1: Graduation! We hugged and thanked the people who had built our new home and watched as the moving van rolled up the driveway and dispensed stuff we forgot we had into places that had not existed before. That first night, my wife, son and I sat in our den/kitchen, looking out onto the yard and the large sycamore tree that had defined the old house and now defined our new home. “I can’t believe we live here,” said my wife, Marsha. My son, who was now used to the din of city life to help him fall asleep, asked if the crickets could stop chirping. The one word that best describes our feelings in moving from a 900-sq. ft. apartment to a house four times as large is “potential.” It’s something I heard a lot in school – as in, “He has so much potential, but we can’t figure out why he does his homework and leaves it at home.” But now that we are back in this house?our house?we feel like we can get back on with our lives. We have been here for five weeks now and the only thing we would change would be adding a lock to the laundry room door so our mechanically-inclined son will not fry the motor on our washing machine. We love our house so much that we’ve only had take-out once (the won ton soup) since it’s so nice to cook and share in the kitchen. Our son waters the vegetable garden and swings from the tree; and we fall asleep with our bedroom doors open to the upper deck. In the end, if you asked me whether rebuilding my house and going to school turned out for the best, I would answer “yes” to both, but I don’t think I would ever want to do either of them again?although picking paint and floor colors has its moments.

By LOU KAMER Special to the Palisadian-Post (Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment on the Kamer family renovation saga which began in the spring of 2005.) On August 1, my family and I drove from our rented apartment in Santa Monica to our newly re-constructed house in the Alphabet streets. We had been gone from Pacific Palisades for exactly one year, a year in which our single-story, 3-bedroom, 1,800-sq.- ft. traditional house was demolished and a new two-story, 5-bedroom, 3,500-sq.-ft. “farmhouse meets Cape Cod” home sprouted in its place. In the overall scheme of things, I suppose a year isn’t very long, but the last four months felt like decades?decades filled with heat waves and construction delays. While we initially considered simply remodeling our single-story house and not adding a story, we decided that the 40 percent additional cost to rebuild dramatically increased the value of our property and allowed us to keep our large backyard and save our wonderful sycamore tree. So was I happy when the moving van pulled up? You may have heard me shriek with joy as far away as the Rec Center. In previous articles, I’ve written about the “soul” of our old house and how rebuilding reminded me very much of love relationships. In the end however, I felt bad watching the old house come down, and shared the regret some of our neighbors had expressed about all the “building up” going on. But in our case, the only two choices we had were to expand or move out of town. Given our love for the Palisades, the choice was easy. Maybe it’s because classes are now back in session or that my son just started pre-school, but after this renovation experience I now see building a house a lot like going to school?kindergarten, high school, college; it doesn’t really matter, the concepts are the same. First off, there’s the whole first day thing. Me, I hated going back to school. My mother had to basically push me out the door and bribe me with sugary treats in my lunchbox. The same was true when we loaded up the wagon and left the Palisades a year ago?I wondered if we were making the right choice in rebuilding?what was wrong with what we had? I was forced to sooth myself with biweekly won ton soup deliveries from a nearby Thai restaurant. Then there was the homework, consisting of budget reviews, plan reviews (basically reviews of reviews were reviewed), knob-and-paint choices?all with the hope of getting a good grade from the city inspectors, our builders and, most importantly, ourselves. Structure Development, our contractors, work on a fixed-cost system, which means that during the long and sometimes overwhelming pre-construction phase, all the details are worked out, a budget is drawn up, and any overages that occur during the rest of the project are their responsibility; except, of course, any upgrades (or the “I GOTTA HAVE THAT” items, as I like to call them). This took some of the worry out of the process, but our “must-haves” which included a keyless entry system, a large butcher-block island, surround sound, and an antique, belt-driven fan in the loft, to name a few?sent us eight percent over budget. Like school, our building process was split into different disciplines, and I soon found myself learning more than I would ever want to know about such subjects as concrete pouring, three-way switches, and mechanical runs. As I sat and listened to each tradesman describing the details of their problems, I often found my mind drifting in the exact same way it had when I was in school and I had to prod myself back into the present moment for fear of missing something that would be on the test. And just like with trigonometry, I had to wonder if any of this knowledge would be useful in the real world. But then there was the good side. Like school, our house construction was abuzz with activity and people we would never otherwise have met who wound up becoming our friends. Besides Bob and Mark (yes, Bob The Builder), with whom we would swap CDs and have lunches at Kay ‘n’ Dave’s, we also got to know Eric Friske, a native Palisadian finish carpenter who really cared about his work and wanted to help make our house and the Palisades a more beautiful place. And Alex P., another Structure Development client who graciously GAVE us his wood fence and plants as he was re-landscaping. And most of all, Mike Brown and the guys at Xtech Security who tutored me through the tough homework assignments, in this case, home wiring and security. Some people have said that high on the list of things that will destroy a marriage is rebuilding a house. I guess in some ways it’s like flunking out. But my wife and I made it through the process relatively unscathed. Sure, there was the occasional “C-” or “D” that had something to do with mantle colors or drapes, but after we learned our lesson, we were able to move on. Our work together was like two lab partners in chemistry class: there were times when we both had an idea of what the right answer was and other times when it was clear that neither of us knew better than the other. We made concessions and talked about what we felt was right and why, and in the case where we had no idea of the right solution, we made a choice and moved on, hoping that it didn’t result in something blowing up on us. Our rebuild ran about a month over schedule. Our builders had viable reasons for the delay, and though I’ve heard that a month is not too bad in the overall scheme of things, this fact failed to make the extra time in the apartment any easier. It was after-school detention all over again, but in this case, everyone else was grilling in their backyards, as I sat trapped in a hot apartment with a wild 2-year-old son. With one week left, the builders were cramming to get everything done and people were working overtime. Painters worked side-by-side with appliance installers and telephone people. Our insta-lawn sod arrived and was rolled out, transforming our barren dirt lot into a Vegas-like oasis (no flamingos included). Final exams came in the form of city inspections and walkthroughs with the different trades, and then, all of a sudden, it was August 1: Graduation! We hugged and thanked the people who had built our new home and watched as the moving van rolled up the driveway and dispensed stuff we forgot we had into places that had not existed before. That first night, my wife, son and I sat in our den/kitchen, looking out onto the yard and the large sycamore tree that had defined the old house and now defined our new home. “I can’t believe we live here,” said my wife, Marsha. My son, who was now used to the din of city life to help him fall asleep, asked if the crickets could stop chirping. The one word that best describes our feelings in moving from a 900-sq. ft. apartment to a house four times as large is “potential.” It’s something I heard a lot in school?as in, “He has so much potential, but we can’t figure out why he does his homework and leaves it at home.” But now that we are back in this house?our house?we feel like we can get back on with our lives. We have been here for five weeks now and the only thing we would change would be adding a lock to the laundry room door so our mechanically-inclined son will not fry the motor on our washing machine. We love our house so much that we’ve only had take-out once (the won ton soup) since it’s so nice to cook and share in the kitchen. Our son waters the vegetable garden and swings from the tree; and we fall asleep with our bedroom doors open to the upper deck. In the end, if you asked me whether rebuilding my house and going to school turned out for the best, I would answer “yes” to both, but I don’t think I would ever want to do either of them again?although picking paint and floor colors has its moments.

On June 15, the Palisadian-Post published a story investigating the “black rock” that lines the pond at the base of Santa Monica Canyon at Chautauqua. This investigation was prompted by a letter to the Post from a concerned Palisadian who alleged that county officials had dumped the rock on the beach from the bridge to the water line. These rocks, our reader said, made walking on the beach difficult and painful for himself as well as his children. During our investigation, we were told by Joe Chesler, division chief of County Beaches and Harbors, that the rock had in fact not been dumped there, but was natural runoff from the channel. This raised another issue: the faulty low-flow diversion system at the base of the canyon which is responsible for the ponding on the beach. Several times a year the county dredges the polluted water in the pond out into the ocean. The diversion system, consisting of a recently installed steel berm and three large drains, is intended to send water coming down the channel during the dry season (April through October) to the Hyperion sewage plant for treatment. “When the diversion works like it is supposed to, [Will Rogers State Beach] should get an ‘A’,” said Mark Gold, head of Heal the Bay, in our June 15 article. “Instead, this beach has been rated ‘F’ for years…” A few weeks ago, I took a walk up the channel to investigate the source of the rocks and the berm situation. I started at the beach and slid my way down the hillside, covered with the offending black rock, and into the channel itself. Strange looks followed me, but how could I blame them? Knee-high boots, a tripod, and a large black camera are not exactly typical beach paraphernalia. I had chosen this time of day’around 6 p.m.’for the dramatic lighting I hoped it would provide on the water, and I was not disappointed. As a gust of wind swept in from the ocean, I snapped my first shot. Walking into the channel itself, I passed first underneath the bike path and then Pacific Coast Highway. To say the odor here was pungent would be conservative. Moist black rock crunched underfoot. Several large and small drainage pipes in the side of the tunnel poured brown, foamy water and garbage into the mix, creating a moat around the main body of black rock. The black rock thinned as I stepped out of the tunnel and back into the sunlight. Overhead, several seagulls flew down the channel. Continuing on, I soon reached the berm, a large piece of steel, laid down to divert the flow from up the channel into a drainage basin. It appeared to be working: a steady, strong flow of runoff struck the berm and went into the adjacent drain. About 50 feet ahead, a chain-link fence served to catch large pieces of debris. Most of the items it had snared were plants, but there were also several aerosol cans, as well as a discarded planter. Looking another 50 feet ahead, I saw that the channel split into two separate paths. As anyone who has driven along West Channel Road can tell you, the right lane continues up East Rustic Road. Opting for adventure and intrigue, I chose the left channel where there was a steady stream of runoff. Above, there were houses, some with bridges over the stream. I walked a mile up the channel. While I saw some graffiti on the walls, I did not see any black rock. In fact, I had not seem any black rock since I left the tunnel by the PCH. Ultimately, I left the channel with more questions than I’d had when I started out. I wondered if the new berm was finally going to stem the flow of water that ponded at the beach? Also, the Post had reported in June that the city and county were under pressure to meet federal Clean Water quality standards by July 15 or face fines up to $32,500 per day. Had those standards been met? And finally, were there any plans to remove the existing black rock from Will Rogers Beach? According to Mark Pastrella, Assistant Deputy Director of the L.A. County Flood Control District, “People’s perception of the beach is that it’s just sand, but if you dig down, you’re going to come to rock. The natural erosion of the sand [in that area] has exposed the rock. When the rock is exposed to water, it turns black.” Pastrella said that rock also comes down from the channel. He did not indicate that there are any plans to remove the black rock on the beach, which was covered over with sand last week. Meanwhile, the berm is apparently doing its dry-weather job. Since our report in June, the beach at Chautauqua has received all “A’s” except for last week when it received a “B” after the county dredged the water in the pond out into the ocean. Still, Gold, who has been lobbing for two years to have the pond filled in, feels there has been progress, “considering that this beach, for years, was considered one of the most polluted in the county. At least that has been corrected.”