Rituals

The Silent Network

Laura Saari — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:43:00 GMT

It surprises me how noisy an outdoor shopping center can get as mall-goers slow to a parade pace in the service of that primal ritual: checking each other out.

So it is on a Friday night that my friend and I shout to be heard as we approach Starbucks in The Block at Orange. That’s when the crowd suddenly grows hushed even as we jabber on, our voices making us feel we’d been stripped naked on a stage.

All around us, everyone is communicating in sign language.

The conversations are vigorous,flirtatious, even aggressive, as dozens cluster in small groups, fingers flying, pausing, vying for attention, interrupting, several trying to sign at once. We soon discover that we’ve wandered into one of Southern California’s largest monthly social gatherings for the hearing impaired.

Every second Friday night of the month, hundreds from throughout the region converge on the same Starbucks. The social started in the 1990s with some friends meeting for coffee. A few years ago, pushed by social media, the party exploded into what one man called Deaf Jam—as many as 600 hearing-impaired participants from as far away as New York clogging the corridors around the coffeehouse.

It was a lot for the mall to handle. Management brought in three interpreters to help with crowd control. Security guards shined flashlights in people’s eyes to get their attention. Some Starbucks baristas picked up on how to sign.

While promotion is done through social media, the party also is a rejection of social media—the deaf exploiting Facebook and Twitter to bring about old-fashioned face-to-face contact.

When I revisit the event months later, I find the crowd has thinned to about 100. Scott Allen of Yorba Linda, a 26-year-old, fourth-year sign language student from Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, translates for me. Regulars say that the deaf social at The Block has given birth to many smaller gatherings, but it remains one of the major places for the hearing impaired to meet in Southern California. Romances begin, friendships develop. It has even sparked a few marriages.

Participants look forward to the event all month because it provides communication they don’t get in other ways. And they're willing to come a long distance for it. I meet people from San Diego, Riverside, and Los Angeles counties.

Maria Rodriguez, a bouncy 19-year-old with her long curls swept up into a high headband, checks for texts, smiles, and shoves the phone into her bag before heading into the mall. The Anaheim teen tells me she’s been coming to the deaf social for three years and believes it’s a great place to find a boyfriend. She just broke up with a guy she met here six months earlier and she’s hoping to meet someone new.

“This is just an awesome place to hang out,” she says. “I like to walk around. I run into people I know. You should get out there, too. The party’s not just here. It’s all over The Block.”

At first, I worried that asking Allen to help me translate might be awkward. The social has been besieged in recent years by sign language students sent by their teachers to practice. Some of the hearing-impaired would like to see them return to their classrooms. (As an anonymous blogger wrote in “The Orange Deafie Blog”: “Students should just freaking stay out.”) But Allen has been coming here as long as he has been signing, and he clearly has earned his stay by developing real friendships.

The conflict between signing students and the deaf is but one issue that bubbles up . There’s also a controversy over using American Sign Language versus signed English, in which users spell words with their hands. One blogger claimed the event had been taken over by “ASL extremists.”

But the longevity of the social also says a lot about the cohesion of the Orange County deaf community and points to a deep need. It’s summed up best by Rachel French, opposite page, a 26-year-old Anaheim resident who lost her hearing mysteriously just a few years ago. Boyfriend Jakob Meireis, 26, of Garden Grove met her about that time and learned sign language so they could communicate. Still, she often feels lonely.

“How many times a day do you think I run into someone who can sign?” she asks. “It’s a very hard thing. My own family can’t even communicate with me. But you come to an event like this and 99 percent of the people can understand you, and you can understand them.”

I thought about how we take that for granted: the simple abilities to speak and hear, to be understood whenever and wherever we wish—how much our relationships depend on the spontaneity of easy communication.

A lot has been made lately of how we squander that gift, replacing face time with a mess of texts, often reporting no more than our hourly whereabouts. Some of us—who, me?—even use the new technology to avoid real communication.

But maybe it’s not so bleak. It doesn’t surprise me that the hearing-impaired are way ahead, muscling the social media to bring back the joys of simple conversation.

They know more than the rest of us what it’s like to be without it.

Photograph by Challenge Roddie

This article originally appeared in the May 2011 issue.

Up in Smoke

Laura Saari — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:38:00 GMT

At a birthday campfire on the beach last July, I gazed into the orange flames and beyond, into a whorled orange sunset that melted sky into sea. I was starting to dissolve into the warm flow, to become one with all that oranginess, when the wind suddenly shifted, and I inhaled a cloud of smoke. The South Coast Air Quality Management District calls it PM 2.5s, or wood-smoke particulates, and it has drawn a lot of attention because of health concerns. My perfect moment was clouded with a somber thought: Is the campfire endangered?

Recent air regulations sharply curtail burning: New wood-burning fireplaces and stoves were outlawed in 2008;
you can't build one unless it runs on natural gas or has some other non-wood-burning flame. And in November, mandatory no-burn days go into effect.

Crystal Cove’s new campground is scheduled to open this summer. According to Ken Kramer, district superintendent for California State Parks, Orange Coast District, it’s the first to open on the state coast in more than two decades. And a proud moment for the county.

But the new campsites will lack one feature most campers consider standard, indeed the very heart of the experience: the fire pit. Traditional wood campfires won’t be allowed because, in addition to air quality and environmental concerns, smoke drifts toward nearby homes. The state deliberately built the campsites without fire pits, although campers will be allowed to bring self-contained gas-fired gizmos.

The campfire is one of Orange County’s most primal and enduring rituals. So far, they have been exempt from regulation, although the regulations do apply to “outdoor portable wood-burning devices.” But these rules come down from the AQMD, which in turn must meet federal guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency. I was stunned when my husband, Miguel Pulido, who serves on the AQMD board, told me. Banning fire? Really?

While part of me sides with those smoke-choked homeowners, I’m also worried that the issue has become the environmental equivalent of second-hand cigarette smoke.

Jill Whynot, the AQMD’s director of strategic initiatives, says the rules are about protecting our lungs in the South Coast Air Basin, one of the filthiest places in the country; 43 percent of Americans who breathe dangerous levels of air pollution reside in the basin, which includes Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. (Orange County, with more fortunate geography, doesn’t have as much smog as some inland areas.)

Yes, that’s unfortunate. But does my campfire really pump out more particulates than a diesel truck, more pollution than a Chinese ship belching sulfur in the port? My little mesquite log from the convenience store is excreting more toxins than a power plant? I don’t buy it.

As it turns out, stationary sources such as fireplaces aren’t nearly as dirty as cars, trucks, and ships. More than 80 percent of local smog comes from moving sources.

But wood burning also is worse than I realized. Whynot says fireplaces emit more than four times the fine particulates—PM 2.5s, the tiny ones that lodge in the lungs—than all the power plants in all four counties combined. We have the nation’s worst levels of PM 2.5s. Home fireplaces dump 4 tons of these particulates into the atmosphere every day, compared with 7 tons from trucks and 4 tons from ships. Who knew?

“Think of the millions and millions of fireplaces,” she says. “If everybody does small things, it can add up to a lot.”

She says officials tried to take a practical approach, allowing wood fires if they are “the sole source of heat,” for example, and exempting cook stoves and fires above 3,000 feet. Officials decided to leave campfires alone, she says, because there aren’t nearly as many of them.

Phew. So campfires are safe. Unless.

Unless we can’t afford them anymore. I asked Kenneth Kramer at the state parks about the future of the campfire, given the situation at Crystal Cove.

“Gathering around the campfire has been and will continue to be part of the state park camping experience,” he says. But campfires could be in trouble in the short run, because state parks are facing an $11 million budget reduction this fiscal year and $22 million next.

“The only way to realize that is to cut staffing,” Kramer says. “Do you close a restroom? Do you not clean the fire pit? ... It’s very expensive to operate fire rings. They have to be kept clean to be safe.”

At the new Crystal Cove campground, Kramer notes, campers can use portable gas campfires, which strikes me as about as appealing as roasting a plastic marshmallow. I’ve seen some tricked-out gas grills. A few mind-blowing gas fireplaces. But even if your gas flame is leaping from a bed of volcanic beads attended by a 5-foot pure-brass Buddha, it’s no match for the crackle and random light dance of a wood fire. I know others feel the same way because even though state park land in Orange County offers nearly 700 fire pits, and city beaches have another 100-plus, there never are enough in the summer. I’ve seen people stake out fire rings as early as dawn. In Capo, where there are only five pits, people practically have to sleep overnight on the beach to snag one.

But it’s always worth the craziness.

Walking the beach one recent night, I notice how the fire pits are lined up along the Newport shore like giant votive candles. There’s a devotional feeling about the scene, and as I shamble down the sandy aisle between the dark sea and a row of glowing fires, I say a little prayer for all the campfires out there, that they may continue to burn brightly.

I can’t imagine summer without them.

Photograph by Michael Saechang

This article originally appeared in the July 2011 issue.

A Life Long Mission

Laura Saari — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:33:00 GMT

When I lived near Mission San Juan Capistrano, the tolling of its bells always made me stop whatever I was doing to listen. They don’t ring that often. Dignitaries, special celebrations, deaths in prominent families—that about covers it. But I was always left to wonder.

Now, when the bells ring, the texts start flying.

Nathan K. Banda, a 26-year-old bereavement counselor at the mission church, says each tolling yields dozens of texts asking what happened. Or more precisely: Who died? At a time when we communicate faster

than ever, it's the church bell, the simplest and slowest device, that still drives the conversation in San Juan Capistrano. There’s something incredibly grounding about that.

On Swallows Day, March 19, Banda, who has just been named the mission’s newest bell ringer, will perform his duties for the first time. If he follows tradition, he will ring the bells until one day the bells toll for him.

In a place of notoriously high turnover—with most of us often changing jobs, spouses, homes, businesses, and even fortunes—it’s comforting to know that the bell-ringer position has only been held by a handful of men since the mission began keeping tabs in the late 1800s. This is not the job for a flake. And Banda, who is flanked in the photo by fellow ringers Michael Gastelum, left, and Rafael Gutierrez, is anything but.

A descendant of founding families from the Acjachemen Nation (later the Spaniards dubbed them the Juaneños) and the Rios clan, he traces his European lineage in Orange County back 10 generations, his Native American heritage even further. His cousin, Steve Rios, a criminal defense and family attorney, still inhabits the Rios adobe on Los Rios Street, the oldest residential neighborhood in California. Banda’s ancestor, Feliciano Rios, was a leatherjacket—a Spanish soldier who arrived in the late 18th century with Father Junipero Serra.

Banda’s heritage gives him a practical perspective: “Back in the 1700s, these bells were used to call the Indians in for lunch,” he says. “You know: Food’s ready!” They also tolled for incoming ships.

I meet Banda on a winter day in the rose garden of the mission, just below the bell wall. He is about to practice for the first time—something he dreamed about as a kid, but never believed he’d be doing.

This day happens to be the 198th anniversary of the great earthquake of 1812. I learn that this event is the very reason the bells are hanging from a wall. The original bell tower at the Great Stone Church came down in the earthquake. Forty churchgoers perished, but the bells survived.

Still, no one had the heart (or the cash) to rebuild the tower. So they built the bells into a lower wall.

Reaching for the red cords, 185-pound Banda looks like a bell ringer—powerfully built, the result of the modern gymnasium. Gastelum, his 55-year-old tutor who began ringing the bells in 1981, and then succeeded his grandfather, Paul Arbiso, who held the job until his death in 1994 at age 99. Arbiso, in turn, learned from a Juaneño named Acu, who it’s believed started ringing the bells in the late 1800s during the era of Father St. John O’Sullivan, who started the swallows celebrations in the early 20th century. Sadly, the birds no longer return to Capistrano, though swallows tours are still offered, and tourists still squint into the eaves of the clay-tiled roof trying to sight one of the little forked-tailed wonders. In their absence, the bells take on even greater significance—a remaining and tangible tradition.

As Banda grasps the cords for the first time, his face registers the gravity of his role. Only moments earlier, the bells marked the anniversary of those who perished in the 1812 earthquake. I realize when Banda rings these bells for the earthquake victims next year, he won’t simply be memorializing some ambiguous idea of his ancestors. He’ll be mourning his great—times seven—grandmother, who was killed when the church collapsed. Gastelum leans toward his student: “You’ve got to use your shoulders. Keep the rope straight. Now lean back a little.”

Banda does as he’s asked and rings the big bell. Once, twice, three times.

The bells sound clear. Deep. Resonant.

But this wasn’t the case for almost two centuries. After the earthquake, there were cracks in the big bells, and a slightly off-key sound rang out until 2001, when they were recast. The duplicates were placed in the wall, while a cracked pair was put on display in the garden, where the tower of the original stone church stood.

Banda looks at Gastelum, relieved. "How long does the celebration last?” he asks. “About 30 seconds,” Gastelum says. “Then pause and do it again.” In later lessons, Banda will learn how the ringing varies for each ritual.

I ask Banda if it’s a heavy burden, having a job like this for life. He answers that his family has lived in San Juan Capis-
trano for 234 years. “I knew when I was born I was going to be spending all my life here.”

After practice, Banda says it was more difficult than he imagined. Ringing the large bells delivers the biggest surprise. “All your weight is on those ropes,” he says. “Your body is really leaning back. It’s not like you’re holding the bells. It’s like the bells are holding you.”

Maybe, I thought, the bells are holding all of us.

I suppose this is true in villages everywhere. Bells have a way of stopping time, of making us put down whatever seems so important at the moment, to sit or stand still and simply listen. They tie us with a few resonant tones to all who came before and all who will follow.

Photograph by Kyle Monk

This article originally appeared in the March 2011 issue.