UCLA lecturer compiles centuries of LA perspectives in ‘Dear Los Angeles’

Albert Einstein and F. Scott Fitzgerald come together in the pages of David Kipen’s book.

The two icons were among the many whose letters and diary entries appear in “Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018.” Published on Tuesday, Kipen’s book assembles personal accounts from dwellers or passersby who traversed the city. As opposed to Los Angeles travel guides or fiction novels about the city, the UCLA writing programs lecturer said the personal accounts in “Dear Los Angeles” provide a deeply intimate and kaleidoscopic view of the city. Throughout his seven years of research, Kipen said he’s encountered a plethora of Angelenos’ personal experiences spanning the five centuries which he covers in his book.

“There is no substitute for what people write when they think nobody is looking,” Kipen said. “You can add all of those multifarious perspectives together, as I’ve tried to do in this book, and get a picture that’s a little bit more panoptical … than you ever possibly could going off of just one.”

Kipen said he was inspired to collage accounts of LA after reading a New York Times review of the 2011 “New York Diaries, 1609 to 2009,” an assemblage of New Yorker diaries over four centuries. “Dear Los Angeles” differs from its New York counterpart in that Kipen included letters – an additional form of ephemeral, spontaneous writing not originally intended for publication, he said. “Dear Los Angeles” adopts a yearbook format, starting from Jan. 1 and stretching to New Year’s Eve. Each calendar date contains multiple entries, so that a diary entry from from 1853 would appear alongside a letter from 1923 for the same day of the year. Kipen said the format makes the accounts more relatable for contemporary readers, encompassing various time periods into a cohesive whole.

An LA native himself, Kipen said it wasn’t until he left for college on the East Coast that he came to grips with the appeal of Los Angeles as a city. Although his deep love for the city played a major role in his initiative of collecting letters and diaries, Kipen said it was crucial to highlight a darker side of the city’s history through critical perspectives for realism. Diary entries from Japanese-Americans facing internment appear in the book, as well as the perspectives of Native Americans and African-Americans who have been mistreated by the city, Kipen said.

“I learned along the way that LA hasn’t always deserved our love, that it’s got some real blood on its hands,” Kipen said.

Kipen spent a significant portion of his research digging through archives at UCLA’s Special Collections, which yielded writing by influential authors such as Raymond Chandler, Carey McWilliams and Susan Sontag. He also stumbled across 19th century historical figures like Francisco P. Ramirez, the city’s first bilingual journalist. Fluent in English and Spanish, Ramirez eventually started his own paper El Clamor Público in which he railed against lynching and political corruption. An 1856 excerpt of his diary appears under March 8 in the book, in which he discusses the responsibilities of government while describing Southern California’s seascape.

In addition to extracting accounts of figures from the past, Kipen also put out a Facebook call to capture contemporary accounts of the city. Responding to Kipen’s Facebook call, Aaron Paley, also an LA native, began to sift through the diary he has kept since the age of 13, which were included in “Dear Los Angeles.” The alumnus has been involved in the city’s urban planning, cultural programming and event production, founding organizations like Community Arts Resources. Paley’s search yielded a series of entries from 1974 to 1985 which capture his coming to terms with Los Angeles as a city that is differently structured from traditional layouts found in London, New York or Paris – it was constructed around the prevalence of the automobile as the primary mode of transportation. Yet Paley said his diary entries testify to his realization that LA is still a city in its own right.

Another figure who has also been involved in disseminating LA culture is Glen Creason, whose personal essays dating back to the 1970s appear in the book. An alumnus and librarian in the history department in the Los Angeles Public Library for nearly 40 years, he said his accounts present a view of Los Angeles from a librarian’s reference desk. Throughout his career he discovered one of his patrons was a serial killer, unwittingly helped a night stalker and has had run-ins with figures like Denzel Washington. His outlook on the city in his entries is framed by the encounters with individuals who permeate a single public space, he said, a microcosm of “Dear Los Angeles” itself and the unpredictability of the accounts within it.

“You’re not expecting what’s coming with each completely different angle on the city, and you discover as you read,” Creason said.

The book could have been infinite, yet Kipen said he had to stop himself from including more stories – at least for the first edition, he said. Searching through all the accounts brought to light how endangered the personal vernacular of LA really is, Kipen said. He said his aim is to eventually launch a more widespread, open-to-public “Dear Los Angeles” project that would encourage Angelenos to raid their attics to help salvage scraps of this history.

“You only ever really understand the place through the people in it and the words they choose,” Kipen said. “I think I would be sick of the place by now but … I have fallen impossibly even more deeply in love with my hometown from its earliest beginnings until tomorrow.”

Men’s basketball prevails over Notre Dame after last-second 3-point shot

Despite battling calf cramps throughout the night, Kris Wilkes delivered.

The sophomore guard’s game-winning 3-pointer with 0.9 seconds remaining lifted UCLA men’s basketball (7-2) to a 65-62 win over Notre Dame (6-3) on Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion. The victory is the Bruins’ third in a row and their first over a Power Five opponent this season.

Wilkes said he was unsure whether the shot was the biggest of his basketball career, but added that he was happy to see it go in after telling his teammates he would score on the final possession.

“I told the guys before I shot – well at least (freshman forward Shareef O’Neal) – I told him I was going to hit the next shot and I hit it,” Wilkes said. “I took my time like a regular shot and I’m glad I hit it.”

The on-court celebration was short lived for Wilkes, however, as he fell to the floor with a cramp in his leg right after the shot went in. The second-year guard left the game in the opening minutes of the second half to attend to an earlier cramp, but returned just in time to be the hero.

Wilkes also suffered from cramping at the Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational in a game against North Carolina on Nov. 23. He said he understands the importance of body preparation and will do his best to avoid the issue in the future.

“I gotta learn to start hydrating more and I think they offered me some stuff earlier to help me out before the game and I didn’t accept it,” Wilkes said. “But it’s my job to take better precautions with hydration and stuff, and that’ll help me out.”

Although the last-second win generated plenty of excitement, the Fighting Irish gave the Bruins everything they could handle in the second half, shooting 51.6 percent in the final 20 minutes as they clawed their way back from an 11-point halftime deficit.

With 5:53 remaining in the game, Notre Dame went ahead by four after a 3-pointer from guard T.J. Gibbs, but the Fighting Irish were unable to hold on to the slim lead down the stretch.

Coach Steve Alford said he was impressed by the way his team continued to battle despite the late-game efforts of Notre Dame.

“I give our guys a lot of credit,” Alford said. “For a young, inexperienced group to have a big lead, 14 points to start the second half and then lose it, be down five inside three minutes and find a way to win, that’s growth and that’s what we want to see.”

Jaylen Hands also stepped up for the Bruins on Saturday night after being held scoreless in the first half. The sophomore guard scored all 12 of his points in the second half – including a stretch in which he scored nine straight for the Bruins – and dished out 11 assists on his way to a double-double.

Hands credited his increased assist numbers in recent weeks to the work of his teammates.

“You know, our bigs do a great job and (redshirt freshman forward) Cody (Riley) does a great job finishing, along with (redshirt freshman forward Jalen Hill), all of them,” Hands said. “We have really good shooters. So it’s really on my teammates, just making shots and making me look good.”

The Bruins will return to the court Dec. 15 to host Belmont at 2 p.m.

Movie review: ‘Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle’ tangles dark and dull despite stunning visuals

Immersed in the mighty jungle of Andy Serkis’ new film, no one will sleep tonight.

Completely swerving Disney’s playful approach, Netflix brought audiences a darker adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” merging live action and animation to vividly bring the animal kingdom to life. The film follows Mowgli (Rohan Chand), a man-cub raised by wolves who has been stripped of his identity and seeks to find his place in the jungles of India. Throughout the film, he withstands pressure and physical tests of skill in order to gain entry into the wolf pack, later fighting the evil tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch).

“Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” is based on the well-known children’s story, but its target audience remains unclear. The slow pace is seemingly tailored toward an adult crowd but fails to be captivating, while the violence and dark intentions sprinkled throughout are clearly not for the eyes of a child. The film attempts to bring the children’s story to a mature audience, but instead leaves the viewer in a confusing state between dozing off and feeling tense with discomfort.

A majority of the film contrasts dark violence with beautiful, colorful landscapes. There are often disturbing sights such as a dead cow streaked with raw blood that attracts a swarm of buzzing flies, or a scorpion climbing on Mowgli’s face, almost stinging him. These graphic images are certainly jarring compared to the overflow of breathtaking jungle shots. While the disturbing images bring realism to the jungle’s portrayal, they also have the potential to startle a viewer who is more accustomed to the children’s storybook version.

Although the artistic landscape shots are a bit lengthy, they force the spectator to appreciate nature’s subtle beauty – such as the sun reflecting off a vibrant beetle suspended in the air, or Mowgli’s inquisitive eyes peeking out from his dirt-crusted face. The music, or lack thereof, also has a similar effect in scenes in which silence really forces the spectator to hone in on subtle ambient buzzing sounds of various insects. However, such scenes take up a lot of time, causing the plot to drag on longer than it needs to. Removing many of the slow-motion and lengthy shots could help the spectator maintain their attention toward a film that begs for a more riveting plot line.

But there is one thing the film’s visual affects ensure: The connection between the animal characters and the human Mowgli becomes as believable as it can get between reality and animation. For the most part, the cast does a solid job of infusing life into the animated characters. The fearsome villain tiger, Shere Khan, becomes even more frightening with Cumberbatch’s threatening articulation. While Kaa, the python, hypnotizes listeners with riddles and mystery through Cate Blanchett’s sinister tone.

Meanwhile, Chand also does a remarkable job portraying Mowgli as an energetic, adventure-seeking boy whose greatest desire is to fit in among the animals of the jungle. Mowgli’s relationship with the animals is certainly touching at times, with Bagheera (Christian Bale), the panther, treating Mowgli as a son by guiding him through the jungle and reminding him that he is special in his own way.

Although a majority of the cast effectively humanizes the animal roles, Serkis as Baloo hardly reminds the viewer of the fun, lovable bear introduced in the original Disney animation. Instead, he captures the image of an old, gruff and sometimes aggressive mentor who pushes Mowgli to his limits. Instead of singing songs about “Bare Necessities” and floating lazily down the river, Baloo often loses his temper and growls at Mowgli in order to push him toward success. Although fitting the film’s grittier take, Baloo’s character is likely to cause frustration amongst viewers who prefer Disney’s beloved bear.

Aside from the cliche coming-of-age lessons Mowgli learns along the way, the beautiful visuals, cinematic shots and unexpectedly dark turns are a ray of sunlight for the film. And Mowgli’s search for his identity is an interesting exploration into the boundaries between man and animal, leaving the viewer to think about where the child truly belongs.

But despite offering a different interpretation of Kipling’s story, the gritty version takes the lighthearted fun out of the jungle with its mediocre attempt at a serious film for more mature audiences.

Bruins successfully battle Bulldogs, seeing improvement in the second quarter

It was all smiles for the Bruins as they filed off the court.

UCLA women’s basketball (4-5) secured an 89-80 victory against Fresno State (4-3) on Friday evening to snap its four-game losing streak.

Coach Cori Close said she saw clear improvement in the team’s performance, especially in the Bruins’ second-quarter play.

“We addressed some of our growth areas today,” Close said. “The second quarter has been our Achilles’ heel in the past, but that was our best quarter (tonight).”

After Fresno State knocked down a jumper to take the lead 19-17 in the start of the second quarter, Close called a timeout to get her team going.

“The general message was that we needed to pick up our focus,” said redshirt freshman guard Lindsey Corsaro. “We’ve been working on our focus, especially in the second quarter, where we’ve struggled a little bit in games in the past. I thought we responded after she got us going.”

UCLA averaged only 12 points in the second quarter in the U.S. Virgin Islands Paradise Jam, and put up 10 points in the second against Indiana last week. However in Friday night’s game against the Bulldogs, the Bruins went 8-of-17 from the field, scoring 23 points in the quarter.

Sophomore forward Michaela Onyenwere led UCLA in a 6-0 run in the second quarter, which put the Bruins on top for the remainder of the contest.

“My teammates have a lot of confidence in me,” Onyenwere said. “Just having that confidence in myself and my teammates having confidence in me (is what) fuels me.”

Onyenwere went 9-of-13 from the field, logging a third career high this season of 29 points on the game. She had 14 points in the second quarter alone, outscoring the entire Bulldogs team, which was held to only 12 points in the quarter.

Senior guard Japreece Dean accompanied Onyenwere in scoring, putting up 23 points of her own despite entering the second half with only four points. She also recorded a double-double on the game with 23 points and 10 rebounds.

“(Dean’s) battle has been that when she gets frustrated, she wants to do well so badly that sometimes it gets the best of her,” Close said. “More than all of her statistics, … more important for me was the way she fought her own adversity and the way she continued to lead through that.”

Dean went 4-of-6 from the field and shot 3-of-4 from beyond the arc in the second half. All of her 3-pointers were assisted by redshirt freshman guard Lindsey Corsaro.

“It’s funny because a lot of the 3s I made, (Dean) assisted on, and a lot of the 3s she made, I gave her the pass,” Corsaro said. “It’s fun to play off (Dean) and be in a rhythm together.”

The Bruins forced the Bulldogs to shoot behind the paint, holding them to shooting less than 36 percent from behind the arc. Despite allowing Fresno State to close the gap to make it three-point game in the fourth quarter, UCLA’s defense shut out the Bulldogs on two consecutive possessions to steal the win.

“We were doing a great job when we started stopping the 3-point line, and we got two straight stops when the pressure was highest,” Close said. “I think that the difference was the defensive end. … I thought the defense was the anchor in those last few minutes.”

Freshman guard Kiara Jefferson put up a season high of 11 points. She had a cumulative total of 13 points on the season coming into the game.

Jefferson extended the Bruin’s fourth-quarter lead with two back-to-back 3-pointers in the final five minutes of the game.

“I think we are at that point in the season where we are starting to really define our roles on this team,” Close said. “I think for (Jefferson), she really played her role well tonight.”

UCLA also saw growth in its free-throw shot percentage. The Bruins entered the game shooting an average of just under 63 percent from the free-throw line. But on Friday night, UCLA went 28-30, shooting just over 93 percent.

“The free throws helped us a lot,” Onyenwere said. “We have been doing not so well with our free throws, but it helps that we have been visualizing our free throws during every practice. I think that helps my mental game.”

The Bruins will have the opportunity to sustain this momentum and continue seeing this improvement when they face Oklahoma State at home on Dec. 16.

UCLA researchers attempt to understand tusklessness among Mozambique elephants

A civil war has left a disproportionate number of elephants in Mozambique without tusks. UCLA researchers are trying to figure out why.

Shane Campbell-Staton, an ecology and evolutionary biology assistant professor, studies female elephants in Gorongosa National Park, an area ravaged by the country’s nearly 16-year civil war.

Fighters in the war killed African elephants for food and for their valuable tusks, reducing the population from thousands to hundreds, Campbell-Staton said.

A quick reduction in population increases the role chance plays in shaping trait variation in the following generations, Campbell-Staton said. The change in the frequency of alleles in a population due to chance is called genetic drift.

“If you had, for instance, a population of 100 individuals and you just pulled out one, that is your entire population,” Campbell-Staton said. “Even if that individual was rare and was the only individual with that form of aspect and function, now if you look across the population of one, that thing that was very rare is now extremely abundant.”

Typically, only between 2 and 4 percent of female African elephants are tuskless. However, about 32 percent of the elephants born after the civil war were tuskless.

Campbell-Staton is identifying the genes responsible for tusklessness, and will use them to draw conclusions about the evolutionary history of the trend.

This increase in tusklessness could be a result of random chance, but Campbell-Staton said it is likely that tuskless individuals have an inherent advantage in an environment where elephants are being hunted for their tusks.

One of the biggest questions of the project is why this increase in tusklessness is primarily present in females, said Campbell-Staton.

Campbell-Staton said that tusklessness occurs overwhelmingly in female elephants, suggesting the trait for tusklessness is sex-linked. However, this still raises questions on how the gene would be inherited. He said the project should help reveal why this trait is disproportionately female-specific.

There is a possibility that the presentation of tusklessness in females may also be caused by a combination of hormonal and genetic influences, Campbell-Staton said.

Campbell-Staton said the project also investigates what effect tusklessness will have on the elephants and their environments.

Elephants provide services to their ecosystems through their behavior, and this behavior is connected to their physical traits, Campbell-Staton said.

One way elephants serve ecosystems is through tree felling, a behavior in which they push over trees to gain access to the bark for food, Campbell-Staton said. These fallen trees create new spaces for plants, which can attract different grazing animals to the area, and creates new habitats for small animals such as lizards.

“From a conservation level, even if you get (elephant) population numbers rebounding, do the ecosystem services that that species provides also rebound?” Campbell-Staton said.

Karen Sears, chair of the ecology and evolutionary biology department, joined Campbell-Staton on the tuskless elephant project this fall. She said her lab will research the developmental origin of tusklessness.

Alexa Sadier, a postdoctoral researcher in Sears’ lab who also joined the project this fall, said her research would focus on at what point in an elephant’s development the failure to present tusks occurs.

“When you have a tusk, or tooth, that develops, it’s developed from (a) little germ, and it erupts, like in humans,” Sadier said. “In tuskless elephants, we want to understand, is (the tusk) lost at the germ level, (does) a germ develop, or is it that the tooth is there but never erupts?”

In order to understand what causes tusklessness, researchers must first identify the stage in elephants’ development in which tusks fail to grow, Sadier said.

“We don’t know at what level it is lost; we think it is genetic because it seems to be heritable,” Sadier said. “We have less and less elephants with tusks, and the new babies, they don’t have tusks.”

Campbell-Staton said those working on the project are approaching the issue from many different perspectives, and these all are important in examining the causes and effects of tusklessness in the elephants of Gorongosa.

“All of these different angles interlock like pieces of a puzzle to tell, I think, what could end up being a really unique story about how rapid evolution of a single or a few genes within a genome can have cascading effects on entire ecosystems,” Campbell-Staton said.