A Compelling Drama Sews the Fabric of Life

‘Strumming my pain with his fingers,’ a lyric from Roberta Flack’s 1973 hit song, describes so well the life challenges the women in ‘Quilters’ recount to the audience in the course of the musical now playing at the Morgan Wixson through April 4. Written by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek, the Tony-Award winning ‘Quilters’ tells the story through music, dance, song, words and quilting, of the pioneer women who immigrated to and settled this country. Using the metaphor of a quilting bee, the play assembles a quilt, each piece a chapter in these women’s lives. Each square speaks to the hard times and life-threatening episodes, relived by serendipitous humor. The story opens on a stage featuring a tableaux of pioneer activities that make up life on the prairie. The matriarch of the family, Sarah (Harriet Losin) declares the quilt she’s working on will be her last, a family album of sorts that holds moving snapshots of her and her family’s experiences. The play is structured as one would piece together a quilt; each square represents a different story which is brought to life through song and dance. Vignettes range from weathering the harsh elements, such as tornadoes and drought, to the perils of bearing children. ‘Our ninth died of cholera,’ one character says, listing her offspring along with other prairie wives. ‘The 10th and 11th were the twins.’ Jody (Lauren Perry) wants to end her pregnancy because of the undue economic hardship on the family, but her doctor refuses to help. A well-meaning friend sends her an herbal solution to the problem which ends up being torture. No doubt life was tough for these sturdy pioneers. But, the play is relieved by the sweet voices of the performers and a fair share of humor. In one sequence, a mother tells her daughter in a fabric shop that they can get only a bit of the bright red calico she likes. ‘You know your father,’ she says. But her father, a Baptist minister reveals his devil-may-care side and buys them the entire bolt. Then there is little sister Dana (Megan Burns) who splashes a bit of vinegar on her older sister’s sweet Sunbonnet Sue quilts, which show sunny characters in wholesome variations of a watering can pose. Dana’s own version would have had Sue bitten by a snake, struck by lightning and stabbed through the heart. Director Anne Gesling has put together a strong cast of women, who through a variety of roles (men’s parts, too), tell the moving story from the snapshots of 19th-century lives. Of particular note are Sarah Jay, a senior at Hamilton Academy of Music, who plays Janie, and Hamilton junior Lauren Perry, who plays Jody. Each of these young women possess beautifully trained voices and accomplished acting skills. The onstage music (Dana McElwain on piano, Anne Gesling on flute/percussion and Mike Brick on banjo) infuses the stories with a sparseness to match the strong-willed women of the era. ”Quilters continues through Sunday, April 4, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for seniors and $12 for students. Contact: 828-7519.

When Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing ‘I Know an Old Lady,’ about the old lady who swallowed a cat, then a dog, then a goat, then a cow, and finally a horse, they would leave the children in the audience giggling over the tongue-twister. And when Jewish children sing the traditional folk song ‘Had Gadya’ (The Only Kid) at the Passover seder, the capricious nature of that ditty keeps the young ones entertained during the long Passover meal. Just as with ‘I Know An Old Lady,’ ‘Had Gadya’ is an add-on song with a cast of characters, each one following the last: a cat devours the kid, a dog gobbles up the cat, a stick beats the dog and so on until God slays the angel of death. While ‘Had Gadya’ was first introduced in the Passover service in the 15th century, it was not part of the service proper, but appeared at the end of the Haggadah, the text used during the seder. One of the most stunning versions of ‘Had Gadya’ was the brightly illustrated edition by the Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky, a typographer, book designer, architect and writer in the early 20th century. Lissitzky’s 1919 version was published by the Yiddish secular organization Kultur Lige in Kiev during a brief period in Russia (1917-1919) when the harsh laws against the Jews were relaxed (including the prohibition on printing of Hebrew or Yiddish words), sparking a whirlwind of activity by the Jewish presses. Seventy-five copies of Lissitzky’s beautifully rendered book were published, each bound by a three-paneled wraparound dust jacket. The Getty Research Institute, which owns an original copy, recently published a facsimile of Lissitzky’s book, with an introduction by Palisadian Nancy Perloff, who is collections curator of modern and new media. Perloff will be telling the tale of the ‘Had Gadya’ and promises to teach the song to Palisadians young and old at 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 20 at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore. Lissitzky took advantage of the linked structure of the story by designing each page of the book around a character. He arranged the words of the story to form a frame around the illustration, and connected the words to the story by color-coding the principal character with the word for that character in the Yiddish text. So, in Verse 1, for example, the ‘kid’ is yellow, as is the Yiddish word for ‘kid.’ ‘Lissitzky was interested in pictorial design,’ Perloff says. ‘He used symbols to convey meaning, so young people would be able to follow the story.’ While the artist’s illustrations have a folk-art, bold style reminiscent of Marc Chagall’s work, to convey the Jewish liberation based on the Exodus story, Lissitzky also intended his illustrations as an allegorical expression of freedom for the Russian people after the 1917 revolution. Perloff notes, for example, that the angel of death who kills the slaughterer in Verse 9, and who in turn is killed by the hand of God in the final verse, wears a crown, which resembles the czarist crowns. The implication is that the force of the revolution overthrew the czars. In 1999, Perloff curated an exhibition of El Lissitzky at the Getty entitled ‘Monuments of the Future,’ which displayed his Yiddish book designs including ‘Had Gadya.’ From that show, the Getty had the opportunity to buy the book, which it did, including the dust jacket, one of just three extant in the world. The facsimile, published by the Getty Research Institute, is a collaboration between Perloff, who provided background on the artist, and Arnold Band, a professor emeritus of Hebrew and comparative literature, whose knowledge of Hebrew, Yiddish and Aramaic was invaluable in providing the English translation of the ‘Had Gadya’ as well as the explanation of the iconography. Perloff herself is fluent in both French and German, which she found most useful in studying Lissitsky’s letters, most of which were written in his wife’s native language, German. ”Raised in an academic family’her parents, Palisadians Marjorie and Joe Perloff, are both professors’Nancy’s education combines language, art history and music. At the Getty Research Institute, she is one of six curators and focuses on acquisitions in European and Russian modernism and in postwar music and the visual arts. While Perloff enjoys the strong intellectual community at the Getty, on top of the hill in Brentwood, she expresses just a slight wistfulness about being so removed from the ‘real world.’ ‘I used to work at 401 Wilshire in Santa Monica,’ she says. ‘You could meet friends for lunch or do an errand or two. Here it’s hard to get away, and it makes it a bit more difficult especially if you have children.’ Perloff and her husband Rob Lempert, a senior research associate at Rand, have an 11-year-old son Ben, who is in sixth grade at Crossroads. So far, Ben is more interested in science than art, Nancy admits. ‘But, maybe it’s because I talk about art so much at home.’

Lions rule the African plains and their reputation as ‘King of the Jungle’ is legendary. ”Southern California, though, has its own lions and while they may not roar or have manes like their African neighbors, they are every bit as impressive. Listed in the dictionary under more names than any animal in the world, our local cat is classified by biologists ‘Felis concolor,’ which is Latin for ‘cat of one color.’ With over 30 subspecies, most designated by geographical region, the cat can be called a puma, cougar or panther. In California, it is most commonly known as the mountain lion, our state’s largest predator. Two of these majestic animals are known to live in the Santa Monica Mountains and have been sighted in the foothills above Pacific Palisades. So as not to get too attached to the animals, scientists have named them simply P1 and P2, the ‘P’ being an initial for puma. No mammal in the Western Hemisphere rivals the mountain lion in habitat diversity and range. ‘Our overall goal is to understand how these animals are using the landscape,’ says Seth Riley, Ph.D., a wildlife ecologist for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation area. ‘Because Los Angeles has urbanized so rapidly, it’s a good place to start in terms of learning more about how these lions adapt in areas of high population density. The work we’re doing can hopefully be applied to other fast-growing areas in the future.’ Often mistaken for bobcats, mountain lions are much larger, standing two to three feet high at the shoulders, and usually have tawny-colored, light brown fur with a whitish underside and dark brown or black-tipped ears. They are further distinguished by their long tails (over a third of their body length from nose to end of tail), which they use for balance, and their distinctive ‘M’ shaped paw pads. The males weigh between 120 and 190 pounds (females weigh 80 to 100 pounds). ‘These animals can readily adapt to their environment,’ says Michelle Cullens, director of conservation for the Mountain Lion Foundation, which is headquartered in Sacramento. ‘Just in our state alone, they can live from the bottom of Death Valley to the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevadas.’ Capable of hearing ultrasonic sound far beyond human range and equipped with ‘night vision,’ lions are adept at moving silently and sneeking up on their prey. When walking, a mountain lion’s hind foot steps in its fore track, creating a recognizable overlapping pattern. Mountain lions are capable of bounding 40 feet while running, leaping 15 feet up a tree and sprinting up to 50 miles per hour, all necessary skills to hunt their prey, which locally consists primarily of mule deer. A healthy lion will kill a deer every one to four weeks and return to feed on the carcass over a period of several days. Mountain lions are crepuscular creatures, meaning they are most active and do most of their hunting at night, dawn and dusk. Despite living in the vicinity of large human populations, lions in Southern California avoid people whenever possible yet are often misunderstood as vicious creatures that will attack humans and pets unprovoked. Scientists confirm nothing is further from the truth. ‘When you look at their patterns, you see they avoid areas frequented by people and if they have to cross a path or walk under a freeway, it’s almost always overnight when people are sleeping,’ Riley says. ‘We occasionally get reports about mountain lion sightings, but when we go out to investigate, it usually turns out to be something else, like a bobcat or a coyote. Lions have very distinct tracks so we can usually tell right away.’ It is illegal to kill mountain lions for sport in California. But as recently as 2000 there were 160 lions legally killed statewide under depredation permits for preying on pets (cats and dogs) or livestock (goats, sheep, ducks and chickens). Considering that the population of California is well over 30 million, encounters between people and lions are infrequent and attacks are extremely rare. Lions killed because of direct interaction with people average fewer than 10 a year. ‘Mountain lions are the top carnivore in Southern California,’ says Linda Sweanor, wildlife researcher with the University of California, Davis who recently concluded research on mountain lion and human interactions in San Diego. ‘Lions are a biological keystone for maintaining much of the beauty and richness of California’s landscapes.’ Mountain lions live on average 10 to 12 years in the wild. Females can bear up to four cubs at a time, but 50 percent die before the age of 2 as a result of road kill, falling, starvation or being eaten by other predators. Cutting-edge technology assists scientists in monitoring the lions’ movements better than ever before, primarily in the form of remote cameras, radio collars equipped with VHF (Very High Frequency) and GPS (Global Positioning System) units capable of transmitting accurate data at regular intervals. ‘The GPS readings are great because they come from a satellite,’ Riley said. ‘We receive downloads 150 times a month with precise GPS location points so we can track them pretty well. The collars, which weigh only two pounds, have built-in timers that can be programmed to drop off by themselves after a year. Once located and recovered, they can be reused. In fact, P1 has already been captured and recollared twice. ‘They can travel as far as 50 miles a day,’ says Charles Taylor, chief of external affairs for the Thousand Oaks branch of the National Parks service. ‘Generally, they won’t go nearly that far. But like any carnivore, they have to follow their food source.’ When P1 was first caught and radio-collared in July 2002, researches examined his teeth and determined his age to be between 5 and 7 years old, making him 7 to 9 now. At about 145 pounds, depending upon when he last fed, he is about as large as the species gets in California. P2 was 2 or 3 years old when caught and collared in October 2002, making her 4 or 5 now, and scientists have found no evidence of her having bred yet. Though their ranges overlap, Riley admits there is a distinct possibility that P1 and P2 will never meet and, therefore, never mate. ‘Being a male, P1 has a much larger range than P2,’ Riley said. ‘He roams from the Rustic Canyon/Topanga area all the way to Pt. Mugu State Park west of Malibu, but he spends most of his time in the same range as P2, who stays in the general vicinity of Malibu Creek State Park. So we know they’ve been near each other. But these are solitary animals for the most part. They don’t travel in prides like African lions do.’ Though Riley said there could be anywhere from three to seven mountain lions in the Santa Monicas, it is unlikely there is room for another male in P1’s home range, an area encompassing over 150 square miles. The lions’ constant movement and expansive territory make it difficult for researchers to accurately determine their numbers. Riley has collared two other lions, a juvenile male designated P3 and an adult female (P4). P3 was caught in the Simi Hills, north of the 101 freeway and south of the 118, while P4 is in the Santa Susana Mountains around the area of Interstate 5 and Highway 126. Though her entire range was burned by the wildfires in October, Riley said P4’s range has not dramatically changed. Because they are California’s largest predators, mountain lions are vital to the state’s ecosystem. ‘Studies have shown that when predators are present, herbivores are forced to keep moving and that improves the gene pool, seeds are spread in a natural way and the whole environment operates the way it should,’ says Lynn Sadler, Executive Director of the Mountain Lion Foundation. ‘Lions bring balance to the equation because it’s survival of the fittest.’ The mountain lion may not be ‘King of the Jungle’ in Southern California, but it is, as the Cherokee Indians call it, Klandagi, ‘Lord of the Forest”and pride of the chaparral. Residents interested in learning how to peacefully co-exist with mountain lions and other local wildlife should attend a free ‘People and Wildlife’ Program presented by On the Edge, a consortium of five wildlife organizations (including the Mountain Lion Foundation), next Thursday at 7 p.m. in the dining hall of Temescal Gateway Park.