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Safely Remove Snow From Your Car AAA is Committed to improving the lives of 51 million members across North America. When you think of AAA, you probably think of maps and directions and emergency roadside assistance, some of our top services. But did you know that AAA offers many services to help with your travel […]
LOS ANGELES — Engelbert Humperdink has one. Clint Eastwood does not. John, George and Ringo – yes. Paul McCartney? Not yet. And George Clooney would be in the club if only someone could convince him to show up for the ceremony. When it comes to receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the sidewalk tourist attraction that encompasses 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of intersecting Vine Street, it’s not so much who you know, but whether you’re willing to play by the rules. For starters, someone in the celebrity’s camp must first fill out an application form that includes the star’s signed promise that they will attend the ceremony. No pledge? No ceremony. Which is why Eastwood, Julia Roberts and Clooney aren’t among the 2,450 honorees lining Hollywood’s sidewalks. A five-member committee meets annually in June to consider some 250 to 300 applicants from five categories of the entertainment industry – film, television, music, broadcast radio and theater, a category added in 1984. As you might imagine, some of the candidates possess light resumes. Others wouldn’t be able to show up for obvious reasons. “We’ve had applications from Santa Claus and the duck that represents an insurance company on commercials,” says Walk of Fame producer Ana Martinez, who attends the voting meeting and decides where the stars are eventually placed on the street. “Somebody insisted Shakespeare should have a star,” Martinez adds. Typically, the Walk’s committee annually selects 20 to 24 new honorees, who must then pay a $30,000 sponsorship fee. This covers the cost of constructing the three-foot-wide stars as well as the cost of the ceremony. A portion of this money also goes to the Walk’s trust fund for continued maintenance. Of course, the honorees themselves rarely foot the bill. Recipients have five years to schedule their ceremony. Most celebrities time the event to coincide with a promotional opportunity. “Stars like to make it a big deal,” Hollywood Chamber of Commerce president Leron Gubler says. “That’s the way they are. They get a little more bang for their buck out of it when they time it right.” Thus, September’s star recipients Neil Patrick Harris and Jon Cryer scheduled their ceremonies to coincide with the fall premieres of their long-running television series, “How I Met Your Mother” and “Two and a Half Men,” respectively. The shows’ production companies each paid the $30,000 fee. Rock star Melissa Etheridge, a recent honoree, saw her star unveiled in front of the Hard Rock Café, which, not coincidentally, paid her bill. Etheridge used the ceremony both to thank her fans and launch Hard Rock’s Pinktober breast cancer awareness campaign. Etheridge, 50, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 and has been a spokesperson for the event for the past six years. “It’s forever,” Etheridge says of her star, following a morning ceremony attended by an estimated 500 people, including many fans who traveled on their own dime from across the country to be at the event. “We’ve been playing this fame game for 100 years here in this city of dreams,” Etheridge adds, noting she came to the Walk of Fame when she visited Los Angeles as a teenager. At 51, the Walk of Fame is roughly half of Hollywood’s age, and many of its stars are in need of a little cosmetic surgery. Tree roots along Vine Street have caused the stars’ black and pink terrazzo concrete to crumble. Heat and foot traffic are factors, too, contributing to the buckling of the stars’ brass name lettering, borders and emblems. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce initiated a restoration project in 2008, grading each of the walk’s stars. Nearly 800 were targeted to be repaired or replaced. Raising the $4.2 million needed to complete the project hasn’t been easy. Corporate sponsors have donated about half the total, to go along with money from private donors and a portion of the proceeds from the star ceremonies. Though still short of the goal, Gruber says he hopes work can begin next year. “We don’t have the money to do the whole walk,” Gruber says. “We’ll start with the worst sections and go from there.” Redevelopment, including the Hollywood and Highland complex and its Kodak Theatre, the permanent home of the Academy Awards, have bolstered the fortunes of the walk’s west end in the past decade. The Walk of Fame, along with the famous movie star footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, remain popular attractions for tourists visiting Los Angeles. “They’re iconic places that still resonate with people, though what’s in the imagination probably doesn’t align with the reality,” says USC professor Leo Braudy, whose book “The Hollywood Sign” covers another area landmark. “It’s a way for people to connect with their favorite celebrities,” Braudy continues, “though if you really want to meet one, you’d have a lot more luck going to the nearest supermarket.” ? Read more from the original source: Why Doesn’t George Clooney Have A Star On The Walk Of Fame?
When you fly to the west coast, you usually pass over the Sierra Nevada mountain range. On a clear day you’ll notice the surrounding forests are irregular; they’ve been “checkerboarded.” Millions of acres have been logged and “clearcut.” While problematic on many levels, clearcutting imperils the drinking water for 45 million Americans. Clearcutting is a logging technique where all trees in a given area are cut down. The valuable timber is hauled away and the residue, the “slash pile,” is burned. Then the ground is scraped and sprayed with herbicides to suppress native vegetation. The area is replanted with one species, typically pine. In recent years, this process has been rebranded as “even-age” timber management. In California, clearcutting is only permitted on private land and usually occurs on property owned by Sierra Pacific Industries — the largest private landowner in the state holding over 1.7 million acres. Since 1990 Sierra Pacific has received permission from the California Forestry Board to clearcut over a quarter million acres. In 2000, the California legislature debated a bill that would have banned all clearcutting because of concerns about its environmental impact. Democratic Governor Gray Davis killed the law by declaring he would only sign legislation “that was the result of compromise between environmentalists and loggers.” (Sierra Pacific made significant contributions to Davis’ campaign and on July 13, 1999, hosted a fundraiser that raised $129,000 for the governor.) Clearcutting has two major consequences. First, it impacts biodiversity. Replacing native trees and plants with a solitary species, pine, may simplify logging but it disrupts the habitat for plants and animals. Clearcutting fractures the fragile forest ecology causing species to migrate and, in some cases, disappear. And, wherever there is clearcutting there are roads for logging trucks; these roads also impact the environment directly by the introduction of polluting vehicles or indirectly by increasing the number of landslides. Second, clearcutting has a savage impact on water resources. 60 percent of California’s water supply comes from watersheds in the Sierra Nevada — 15 percent comes from the Colorado River and the remaining 25 percent from groundwater. The logging practices of Sierra Pacific have three impacts. The initial clearing process leaves the Sierra Nevada topsoil exposed and vulnerable. Winter rains often carry the best soil away, clogging streams and damaging habitat far away from the logging site. That’s the problem at Battle Creek a stream that descends from Mount Lassen in California’s Shasta County. The US Bureau of Reclamation is overseeing a $128 million project to revive the Battle Creek Salmon population; five dams are being removed and four others modified so steelhead and winter- and spring-run salmon can return to their spawning habitat. Tragically that same habitat is threatened by erosion resulting from upstream Sierra Pacific clearcutting, authorized by the California Department of Forestry. California doesn’t require loggers to monitor water quality and the agency charged with overseeing fish habitat, California Department of Fish and Game, has been decimated by budget cuts. The second impact of clearcutting is alteration of the rate of rainwater absorption. In a natural forest, native tree root systems trap and filter rainwater; as a result water percolates slowly through the soil, gradually recharging streams and aquifers over California’s dry months. In “even-age” forests, this process is altered and water is primarily distributed when it’s not needed. In the summer there is less stream water and this negatively affects fish habitat as well as plants and animals on adjacent properties. The third impact is from the introduction of herbicides. Each year an average of 200,000 pounds of herbicides are used to domesticate California private forests. Until recently, the most commonly used herbicide was Altrazine. In 2004, the European Union banned Altrazine “because of its persistent groundwater contamination.” US researchers are alarmed by Altrazine’s effects as an endocrine disruptor and its epidemiological connection to low male sperm count. (Health problems from aerial herbicide spraying have been reported in Triangle Lake, Oregon where most residents have tested positive for atrazine in their urine.) Recently, Altrazine has been replaced by Roundup, the most widely used US herbicide. The European Union classed Glyphosate, Roundup’s main ingredient, as “dangerous for the environment” and “toxic for aquatic organisms”. In 2006, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported on Global Warming and California’s Water Supply : “By the end of the century, if global warming emissions continue unabated, statewide annual average temperatures are expected to rise into the higher warming range (8-10.5°f). This temperature rise will lead to more precipitation falling as rain instead of snow, and the snow that does fall will melt earlier, thus decreasing the spring snowpack in the Sierra Nevada by as much as 90 percent… spring stream flow could decline up to 30 percent.” There are many signs that California’s water supply is imperiled by global climate change. Clearcutting increases the probability that the Sierra Nevada watershed will be furthered diminished or rendered unfit for consumption. It’s time for Governor Brown and the Legislature to ban clearcutting in all circumstances. Go here to read the rest: Bob Burnett: It’s the Water, Stupid: The Perils of Clearcutting
How to Remove Snow from Your Car AAA is Committed to improving the lives of 51 million members across North America. When you think of AAA, you probably think of maps and directions and emergency roadside assistance, some of our top services. But did you know that AAA offers many services to help with your […]
