LOS ANGELES (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) — Several stretches of road that were damaged and closed because of the Station Fire are finally being re-opened at this hour. They include parts of the Angeles Forest Highway, Angeles Crest Highway, and roads through Big Tujunga Canyon.
But transportation officials are warning that those roads could be closed AGAIN during rainy periods, because of the potential danger of debris or mud flows in the burned-out areas.
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Tagged: angeles national forest, snow in los angeles, Station fire
"Keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve it." Theodore Roosevelt upon first seeing the Grand Canyon | Photo by Ilana Gustafson Turner
This month is all about communities coming together in nature and for nature. You can spend the evening along-side other local families as you are serenaded by story, song, or lecture under the warmth of the summer evening. You can also band together with fellow concerned Angelenos to protect our California State Parks from closing (see week of 8/24-8/28). This August let’s take the opportunity to become closer to our families, our neighbors, and the land that provides the setting in which we can connect to one another.
Weekend
Saturday 8/1 from 7-8:30pm at the Satwiwa Native American Indian Culture Center you can hear stories and songs by Alan Salazar a Chumash/Tataviam American Indian. Bring a flashlight. All ages welcome. Info: 805-370-2301*
Sunday 8/2 head out to the South Coast Botanic Garden for some good ol’ outdoor concert fun! You can bring the entire family for a pre-concert picnic at 4:30 and then rock out to the sounds of Zak Morgan from 5-6pm. Tickets $6 children and $8 Adults in advance. Tickets can be purchased in the Foundation Office, Monday through Friday, 9am – 4:30pm, or call Bubble Rock Productions at (310) 541-5819. Does not include admission to the garden prior to 4:30pm.
Week of Monday 8/3 through Friday 8/7
Tuesday 8/4 learn about animals from various parts of the world with Descanso Garden’s “Family Fun for Nature Nuts”. Meet “Under the Oaks” at 5:30 to set up and munch on your picnic, then at 6pm the show will begin. This week’s show will include a trip “around the world”. $10 members, $12 general public. Children under 2 are admitted free. Seating is first-come-first-served at the time of each event. To register, call (818) 949-7980.
Wednesday 8/5 head to Franklin Canyon where you can howl at the moon as you stroll along this moderately strenuous “Full Moon Hike”. 8pm*
Thursday 8/6 take advantage of the opportunity to wander through Madrona Marsh as they are hosting their “Tyke Hike” – which only happens the 1st Thursday of the Month at 10am!*
Weekend
Saturday 8/8 the Sooky Goldman Nature Center is the place to learn how to “Speak for the Trees”. “I speak for the trees, for they have no tongues,” said the Lorax, and so can YOU in this playful, interactive program for kids ages 8 to 88. From 2-4pm*
Or you could send your 8-12 year-old to Headwaters Corner from 9:30am-12:30pm for their “Youth Naturalist Program” where this week they will learn all about reptiles and amphibians. A guest speaker will bring snakes, turtles, lizards and amphibians. Fee. Pre-registration required: 818-591-1701 x181.
Sunday 8/9 join the L.A. Audubon Society as they lead you on a birdwalk around Echo Park lake where you and your family can learn about the more than 60 species which call Echo Park their home for all or part of the year. Meet at the Boathouse on Echo Park Avenue at 8am.*
Then later that day you can head to Peter Strauss Ranch from 3-5pm for “Traditional American music the bluegrass way!” The Brombies will be playing bluegrass classics as you enjoy the beauty that is Topanga. For information call 818-382-4819.*
Week of Monday 8/10 through Friday 8/14
Tuesday 8/11 if your family is ready for fun then head to King Gillette Ranch from 7-8:30pm for their “Family Fun Night”. Enjoy storytelling, songs, and a nature program. Marshmallows, skewers, and, weather permitting, a campfire will be provided. Meet at parking lot to left of bridge.*
One of the best things about L.A. is the summertime combo of music in beautiful natural surroundings! On Thursday 8/13 Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden is hosting Chet Jaeger’s Dixieland Jazz. Admission: $8 adults; $6 students & seniors (65+); $4 children (3-12 yrs.) Garden Members and children under 3 yrs., admitted free.
Weekend
Saturday 8/15 spend the day at the historic and beautiful Placerita Canyon! From 11am – 12pm you can explore the grounds on a “Family Nature Walk”, bring a picnic and chow down under the oaks from 12 – 1pm, then head over to the nature center for the “Animal Presentation” from 1 – 2pm where you’ll meet some pretty awesome creatures!*
Saturday it’s also time for the “We Go ECO!” festival at Solstice Canyon from 10am-2pm. Your child will learn about the wonders of this canyon with hands-on, interactive games and lessons led by the students of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area Youth Program. Info: 805-370-2363*
Sunday 8/16 your child can spend “Sunday with a Naturalist” at Vista Hermosa park from 3-5pm. Learn about nature while having fun at this downtown nature center!*
Week of Monday 8/17 through Friday 8/21
Headwaters Corner is the place to be from 8/17 – 8/21 9am-1pm if you are an 8-11 year-old in L.A.! During this “Discovery Nature Camp” they will discover the wonders of nature with the aid of scientific tools, hands-on activities, crafts, games and listening to engaging talks by guest speakers. Each session will be centered on a different theme and include a guided hike. Pre-registration is required and enrollment is limited.
Weekend
Saturday 8/22 you can get “Wild in California” at Malibu Creek State Park. Meet the local “wild” – that is, raptors, mammals, and reptiles – from 7:30-8:30pm.*
In the morning you can head to Eaton Canyon for their Saturday “Family Nature Walk” from 9-11am. *
Sunday 8/23 head to the Conejo Valley Botanical Gardens! Every Sunday they offer activities, lessons, and fun at their “Kid’s Adventure Garden” from 11am – 3pm.*
Week of Monday 8/24 through Friday 8/28
May I suggest a visit to one of our California State Parks before they close. The Governor has proposed the closing of up to 100 of these state treasures. While you’re there talk to your child about what they see, smell, hear, feel and perhaps you can help them write a letter or draw a picture urging Schwarzenegger to keep our parks open. You can visit the California State Parks Foundation website to learn more about this issue, what you can do to help, and where to send your letters.
Weekend
Saturday 8/29 Griffith Observatory knows how to party – or at least how to throw a good “Star Party”. Head up to the beacon on the hill between 2 and 9:45pm for a gaze at the celestial beauties through the provided telescopes.*
Sunday 8/30 I have the cure for a teenager who may be in the throes of summertime boredom – park restoration! Join TreePeople and the Mountains Restoration Trust and help return Topanga Creek to its historic natural beauty. The focus will be on watering and weeding to vanquish non-native invasive plants. For more information contact Lisa Sotelo (818) 623-4879, volunteer@treepeople.org.From 9am-12pm.*
Week of Monday 8/31 through Friday 9/4
Every Wednesday through September 21st (including this Wednesday 9/2) from 5:30-7pm you can enjoy a “Summer Evening Walk” at the L.A. County Arboretum. Each evening your tour guide will focus on a different section of their expansive grounds. Meet inside the Main Entrance building. This is only for members, but you can always purchase a membership on the day of the event. Call 626-821-3233 for information and reservations.
*FREE
-Ilana Gustafson Turner
Categories: Uncategorized
Published: December 1, 2008
“The average parent doesn’t understand that if you plop your kids down in front of the TV or the computer for five hours a day, it can change their brain development, it can make them fat, and it can lead them to get involved in risky sexual activity at a young age,”
The National Institutes of Health and a nonprofit advocacy group, Common Sense Media, have another reason for President-elect Barack Obama to keep urging parents to “turn off the TV.”
In what researchers call the first report of its kind, a review of 173 studies about the effects of media consumption on children asserts that a strong correlation exists between greater exposure and adverse health outcomes.
“Coach potato does, unfortunately, sum it up pretty well,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chairman of the bioethics department at the institutes’ clinical center, one of the study’s five reviewers.
The report should compel lawmakers to underwrite media education efforts and public service advertising campaigns and should motivate the entertainment industry to be more “responsible and responsive,” said Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, which helped to finance the study.
“The research is clear that exposure to media has a variety of negative health impacts on children and teens,” he said.
Dr. Emanuel, Mr. Steyer and others plan to brief Washington policy makers on the study on Tuesday. Joined by researchers at Yale University and California Pacific Medical Center, Dr. Emanuel’s team analyzed almost 1,800 studies conducted since 1980 and identified 173 that met the criteria the researchers set.
In a clear majority of those studies more time with television, films, video games, magazines, music and the Internet was linked to rises in childhood obesity, tobacco use and sexual behavior. A majority also showed strong correlations — what the researchers deemed “statistically significant associations” — with drug and alcohol use and low academic achievement.
The evidence was somewhat less indicative of a relationship between media exposure and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the seventh health outcome that was studied.
Dr. Emanuel, whose brother, Rahm, is the president-elect’s chief of staff, said he was surprised by how lopsided the findings were. “We found very few studies that had any positive association” for children’s health, he said.
Researchers sought to look at the health effects of a wide array of media and distill 30 years of research into a simple message. “The average parent doesn’t understand that if you plop your kids down in front of the TV or the computer for five hours a day, it can change their brain development, it can make them fat, and it can lead them to get involved in risky sexual activity at a young age,” Mr. Steyer said.
Acknowledging that socioeconomic status and other factors can affect children’s health, Dr. Emanuel said the researchers chose studies that controlled for outside variables and ranked the strength of evidence accordingly.
Mr. Steyer said he was surprised to find an absence of research into the impact of new technologies. “Media has evolved at a dizzying pace, but there’s almost no research about Facebook, MySpace, cellphones, et cetera,” he said.
His organization, which was founded in 2003 and provides family-oriented reviews and ratings of Web sites, television shows and video games, intends to push for more research into the media’s effects on children and the setting of limits on advertising to children.
Mr. Obama has shown interest in the subject, telling parents to “turn off the television set and put the video games away” in speeches and running a commercial during the campaign, “Turn It Off,” that focused on education.
While Dr. Emanuel wouldn’t say if the study was a subject at Thanksgiving dinner with his brother, he said that more research into media’s effects on children’s health was necessary.
“We have to be concerned about what’s on TV, but we also have to be concerned about how much of the day kids are actually interacting with TV and other media,” he said.
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Parents of children with attention deficit problems are always looking for new strategies to help their children cope. An interesting new study suggests that spending time in nature may help.
A small study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at how the environment influenced a child’s concentration skills. The researchers evaluated 17 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who all took part in three 20-minute walks in a park, a residential neighborhood and a downtown area.
After each walk, the children were given a standard test called Digit Span Backwards, in which a series of numbers are said aloud and the child recites them backwards. The test is a useful measure of attention and concentration because practice doesn’t improve the score. The order of the walks varied for all the children, and the tester wasn’t aware of which walk the child had just taken.
The study, published online in the August The Journal of Attention Disorders, found that children were able to focus better after the “green” walks compared to walks in other settings.
Although the study is small, the data support several earlier studies suggesting that natural settings influence psychological health. In 2004, a survey of parents of 450 children found that “green” outdoor activities reduced A.D.H.D. symptoms more than activities in other settings.
“What this particular study tells us is that the physical environment matters,” said Frances E. Kuo, director of the university’s Landscape and Human Health Laboratory. “We don’t know what it is about the park, exactly — the greenness or lack of buildings — that seems to improve attention.”
Dr. Kuo noted that the study used tight controls to make sure that the walks were identical except for the environment. Who the child was with, noise levels, the length of time, the time of day and whether the child was on medication stayed constant.
“If we kept everything else the same, and we just changed the environment, we still saw a measurable difference in children’s symptoms,” Dr. Kuo said. “And that’s completely new. No one has done a study looking at a child in different environments, in a controlled comparison where everything else is the same.”
Dr. Kuo said more children were initially involved in the study, but logistical problems like weather changes, late arrivals or changes in medication made it difficult to maintain tight control, leaving the study with just 17 children from which to draw conclusions.
Despite the small size, the study is important because it involves an objective test of attention and doesn’t rely on children’s or parents’ impressions. During the walks, all of the children were unmedicated — participants who normally took medications to control their A.D.H.D. symptoms stayed off the drugs on the days of the walks.
The researchers found that a “dose of nature” worked as well or better than a dose of medication on the child’s ability to concentrate. What’s not clear is how long the nature effect can last.
Dr. Kuo said that while there are “hints” exposure to green outdoor settings offers a benefit, the science isn’t advanced enough to give parents a strict formula.
“We can’t say for sure, ‘two hours of outdoor play will get you this many days of good behavior,’ but we can say it’s worth trying,” she said. “We can say that as little as 20 minutes of outdoor exposure could potentially buy you an afternoon or a couple of hours to get homework done.”
Dr. Kuo said it’s notable that parents themselves consistently report benefits for their children from green settings.
“One reason we believe this is that if the effect were short-lived, we don’t think that parents would have so consistently observed it,” she said. “But they do. They report it over and over.”
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