By STEPHEN MOTIKA Palisadian-Post Contributor In the first semester of my freshman year at college in New York in 1995, I had a love affair with the writing of Joan Didion. I read nearly everything she had written up to that time, including the novels “Play it As it Lays” and “The Book of Common Prayer” as well as the essay collections “The White Album,” “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” and “After Henry.” I was homesick, and Didion wrote about California in just the right way’a bit removed, just a bit off the nerve center’so when I read her, I felt reminded of home, but never overwhelmingly so. The love affair came to a quick end when I read her novel “The Last Things He Wanted,” published in 1996. The book disappointed me; it felt like a repeat of her previous novels. I wrote a dismissive review of it for my college newspaper. I wasn’t interested in reading her new work. Still, for quite some time, I retained a Didion quotation as my “signature” on all the e-mails. It read: “We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.” Now, she has written a book about the unforgettable: the sudden death of her husband of 40 years, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and the illness of their daughter Quintana, who suffered from total septic shock and then a massive hematoma. Dunne died on December 30, 2003; Quintana was in the hospital at the time and would be for much of 2004. It is a book I felt I had to read. “The Year of Magical Thinking” is not only a return to form, but an extension of Didion’s talents as a writer. She wrote the book during the autumn of 2004, finishing it a year after Dunne died. It is perhaps the fastest she has ever written anything; as she wrote it she didn’t feel as if she was writing. She said recently: “It felt just like sitting there and putting down what was on my mind, which is not the way I write.” Yet, the book is recognizably Didion’s, elliptical in nature and syntactically terse. It grew out of her medical notes, and in reading it, one notices the accretion of details and material, information and phrases are repeated throughout with little additions, little subtractions. The book also showcases how memory and the passage of time shape grief. She becomes aware of the “vortex effect” triggered each time she goes to a place she has been previously with John or Quintana. This seems most difficult when she’s away from her New York home: say, the five weeks she spends in Los Angeles while her daughter is at the UCLA Medical Center in March-April 2004. She and John lived in Los Angeles County’in Palos Verdes, Hollywood, Malibu, and Brentwood Park’from 1964 to 1988. She shares the places they lived and enjoyed in writing, but stays clear in person. Even so, she cannot remove the Santa Ana wind or the jacaranda trees while driving. Just their presence brings tears to her eyes. By the end of “The Year of Magical Thinking,” Didion admits that she did not want the year to end, for as time goes on, the sharpness of John’s presence will fade. Yet, after completing that year and that book, she lost her daughter this past summer, and now she must face the even harder task of trying to find the “magic” of this next year. These are tragic events, but they have inspired some of the best writing from one of our most important writers. Sometimes your art is the only thing you have left.

Zeitgeist Community Learning Center is having its first online auction, featuring items from local vendors, through December 16 (www.zclc.org, under the Events section). The proceeds will help support the nonprofit organization’s free after-school and summer programs for elementary and middle school students in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, where the center is located. Local vendors contributing to the online auction include Boca Man, Denton Jewelers, Black Ink, Pearl Dragon, the Palisades-Malibu YMCA, the Pilates Fitness Center, Bambino Photos, and the Self Centre, and the accounting firm Johnson, Harband, Foster and Darling, who donated a free consultation and a tax return. Rare and high-end auction items include tickets to a film premiere, a gourmet five-course in-home dinner, a week-long retreat at a home in Sun Valley, and a day of beauty at Burke-Williams spa. Zeitgeist, which means “the spirit of the time,” utilizes the skills of high school mentors, many of whom are bused to school at Palisades High School from their homes in the Crenshaw area. “These talented high school students provide homework help, tutoring and guidance to younger students in a variety of enriching activities,” says Palisadian Jake Phillips, 29, who co-founded the organization with Jennifer Welsh, 28, about two years ago. Other local board members include Don Burgess, who attended PaliHi, and Bruce Dickieson, a partner at Johnson, Harband, Foster and Darling, which is located in the Washington Mutual building in the Palisades. “Our organization has grown to depend on support from the local community,” says Phillips, who was the owner of the Palisades-based Brain Storm Tutoring until February 2004 when he closed its doors to focus on the development of ZCLC. Students and families at the center participate in educational and fun field trips. Over the past year, the Santa Maria Trails & Parks Association has sponsored trips to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Malibu Lagoon and the Children’s Nature Festival in Temescal Gateway Park. “We will be taking a field trip to UCLA’s Stunt Ranch in the next couple of months,” says Phillips, a graduate of Duke who has been accepted to Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government but will be deferring admission to help ZCLC reach sustainability. Welsh grew up in the Palisades, attended Dartmouth College and is currently a doctoral student in education at USC, where she was recently recognized with an Award for Excellence in Teaching. ZCLC is currently facing financial difficulties and needs community support more than ever. For more information or to make a donation, go to www.zclc.org or call (323) 299-2194.

Sixteen graduates graced the stage of John Adams Middle School auditorium in Santa Monica on a recent Friday afternoon. Eight were students at the school and the other eight, homeless shelter dogs the students spent three weeks training to become adoptable. All graduated from a character education program called K9 Connection, co-founded by Palisadians Katherine Beattie and Patricia Sinclair. A project of OPCC (formerly the Ocean Park Community Center), K9 Connection empowers at-risk youth to apply the lessons they teach the dogs’an awareness of the risks of uncontrolled and impulsive behavior, and the power of positive reinforcement’to their own lives. “There’s something about putting a dog and a kid together’you can access the kid,” said Sinclair, who has a background in law, social work, state government and community service. Beattie is a former small business owner with a five-year background in humane education, which encompasses animal, environmental and human rights issues. At the culminating ceremony, the young trainers proudly demonstrated their dogs’ skills in a show on the auditorium stage. The canines were guided through a slalom course of orange pylons and then instructed to sit down before continuing through a nylon tunnel. Each student communicated with his or her dog a little differently, having learned the animal’s strengths and weaknesses in the previous three weeks of training. When 11-year-old Madison ran to the end of the nylon tunnel, “Riley” dashed through it to meet her at the other end. Ada, 12, tossed a few treats in the tunnel to guide “Ziggy” in. For Dominique, teaching “Chip” to “come” was the most challenging part. A 3-1/2-month-old German shepherd mix, “Chip” was a special rescue dog whose family had been displaced after Hurricane Katrina. Following his K9 Connection graduation, “Chip” was to be reunited with his Louisiana family. “This dog has special needs; he almost died,” said Dominique, 12. Asked what “Chip” taught her, she said, “that instead of being in detention, I could be with my dog.” Other students learned patience, empathy, and persistence. Matt, 11, said he joined K9 Connection because he was looking to have some fun but ended up learning a lot from his dog, “Robby.” “Sometimes he doesn’t listen, so I learned to never give up,” Matt said. Sinclair and Beattie interviewed 50 students for eight spaces in the program at John Adams. They chose four boys and four girls who “seemed to need the program and were really enthusiastic about it,” Sinclair says. “These kids are at a fork in the road. This program is the tipping point for them.” The dogs selected for the program are “animals who need to be rescued but are also really sweet,” Sinclair said. All but one had been adopted by graduation day. The K9 Connection group meets for two hours a day, five days a week’first setting goals for themselves and their work with their dogs, and then putting their ideas into practice as they train the dogs in basic obedience, using positive reinforcement (as an alternative to force and violence). Initially, the goal is “just hanging in there for three weeks,” Sinclair said. The students work towards graduating from the program and helping the dogs secure an adoptive family. “I feel successful to complete a demanding program like K9 Connection,” Madison said with “Riley” by her side. “We struggled on some things but we got through it.” Another student, Andrew, had chosen to participate in the program despite the fact that he had been bitten in the eye by a Siberian husky when he was 2. “I learned that people can learn stuff from animals,” said Andrew, 12. “I used to be violent to people. I’m not like that anymore. I’m much nicer.” A former K9 Connection graduate, Mike, 13, returned to the program to help the students train their dogs. “I just liked it the first time,” he said. “It was my first time ever having a dog to care about.” At the end of the graduation ceremony, the young trainers presented the dogs to their new owners’a proud and poignant moment reflected in tender exchanges between the students, dogs and the new families. The K9 Connection staff continues to meet monthly with each graduated class to continue goal-setting and update them on the status of their dogs. K9 Connection is seeking foster homes for dogs during its programs, the next of which begins Monday, November 28, at Olympic High Continuation School. Foster families are provided with the cost of care during this four-week commitment. Those interested can call 264-5424 or e-mail Glen Zipper, project operations manager, at gzipper@k9connection.org. For more information, visit www.k9connection.org.

On the walls of Marquez Elementary School, murals of all sorts soften the harsh, institutional walls: delicate, flowery, playful and intriguing, one long building is disguised as two with an ocean view and a flower bed in front. The magic is by Palisadian Martha Meade. “I got into painting by accident,” she said. Meade intended to be an actress. She grew up in Waltham, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston, and attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she majored in English and theater. She studied in Ireland and took a course in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Meade had met her husband, Steve Miller, in college, but says, “It was a real ‘When Harry Met Sally’ relationship. Nothing really clicked.” Over the years they kept running into each other. When she was working as an actress in New York, she bumped into him again on Bleeker Street. Finally, when she was working on an independent film project with his best friend in New York, they got together. They married in 1988 and moved to a small house in Venice California. “We had this cabinet in the bathroom that was a real eyesore,” she says. “I saw a book on faux marbling and thought it might work on the cabinet, so I bought a kit.” Meade was amazed at how easy it was to transform something so ugly into something beautiful. The next thing she attempted was the mantle. It was once again a success. She thought, “Wow, this came out of my hand,” and decided she wanted to learn more. She started studying the craft of faux finishing. She took classes at Otis College of Art and Design, specializing in trompe l’oeil’which technically means “fool the eye”‘under noted artist Richard Shelton. Meade also studied with Carol Free. Thirteen years ago, when her son Richie’s kindergarten teacher at Marquez Elementary asked if someone could paint the children’s wooden playhouse, Meade volunteered. “The teacher wanted the structure just to get a coat of paint,” Meade says. “I don’t think she was expecting me to do what I did.” Meade transformed it into a work of art, complete with painted flowers growing up the outside and “painted” wall paper inside. The curtains next to the window appear to be blowing in the breeze. She also painted the children’s furniture that went into the house. Impressed with her work, people in charge of STAR at Marquez commissioned her to do a 75-foot trompe l’oeil mural. The mural gives one the impression that you could walk through an archway towards the Pacific Ocean’there is no archway; it’s a solid wall. “I wanted to give back the ocean view they would’ve had if the building wasn’t there,” Meade says. “I painted a garden on the front of the building to soften it.” Parents and students were so pleased with her work that when the school received grant money, they commissioned her to paint a flower border behind the raised flower beds by the kindergarten rooms. The idea was that even if real plants weren’t flowering, it would always look as if something was in bloom. Surrounding the cafeteria tables are flowers and vines reminiscent of a garden spot in Italy. “What I wanted to create was an environment that will make a place where you’d always want to have lunch,” Meade says. When opened, the beautiful wooden doors on the patio leading into the cafeteria line reveal LAUSD’s standard ugly blue steel doors on the reverse side. Around an ordinary ugly water fountain, she’s painted a marble molding. “I like to watch the kids touch it,” she says. “They’re surprised to find out it’s a flat wall.” Meade has done seven murals for Marquez Elementary School, where her younger son Leland is still a student. In addition to the school, Meade has completed numerous projects for private residences. In a windowless powder room in a Marina del Rey townhouse, she painted a trompe l’oeil window and added a vase on the window sill. The owner didn’t like the vase and asked if Meade could paint baseball to replace it since her son was a minor league baseball player. Meade pointed out that it would look like the ball would roll out of the window. The woman suggested putting the ball in the mitt. The woman gave her a mitt to photograph, and from that Meade painted it on the window, aging the mitt to the woman’s specifications. For another project, the client wanted “Tiepolo” on the ceiling. His idea for his 12-by-18-ft entryway was a view of Florence in the evening’with clouds that had pink and gold edges. It took time for Meade to get the colors that he had envisioned. “It’s important to nail down what clients mean,” Meade says. “It takes a while. One of the things I really enjoy is helping them define what they want and then creating that environment.” Meade was asked to paint the outside of a private home that was entirely shaded. The owners had tried and tried to get flowers to grow, but nothing would take hold. When Meade met with the family to find out exactly what kind of painting they wanted, she discovered that the wife as a child had lived next to a garden of hollyhocks that also contained hedgehogs. She recreated the childhood memory, flowers complete with a whole family of hedgehogs hiding in it. “It makes it special for me, and more special for them to have personal references.” In one teen’s room, she did two panels based on designs from the Taj Mahal. One panel was on the wall, the second she painted on a window shade, so that the light around it gives it an alabaster glow. “Doing texture on a wall makes a dramatic difference,” she says. “It gives the walls a presence that helps create a world.” When Meade first moved to the Palisades, the cabinets in her kitchen were a dirty Hershey bar color. She painted them, putting grain into the wood. Graining or faux bois is an ancient art which requires special tools. She can paint plywood to make it look like oak, walnut, or bird’s-eye maple. She points out that many of the castles in Europe that seem to have marble actually have faux marble or faux wood. Shortly after she learned the art of faux finishing, she was in the Tate Gallery in England. She looked to the door at one side of the room she was in and it was marble, the door on the other side was not. The floor board was marble, but the crown molding was faux. Meade also custom-paints furniture. An 8-year-old girl was adamant that she wanted her dresser painted with skateboarders. The mom was pushing for something more feminine. There was an impasse until Meade talked to the child. “You’re going to have this your whole life,” Meade told her. “It’ll help you remember growing up in the Palisades.” Those words registered with the girl and she decided she wanted the dresser to look like the Palisades. It does, complete with the gentle curve of the Pacific ocean, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the houses of the Palisades nestled on the hill.