Episode 003... Scrubs for SiCKO

This third episode of Off-Leash Public Affairs (OLPA) debuted Monday, 30 July 2007, on cable TV channel 17. The episode covers a demonstration held on Friday, 29 June 2007, to raise awareness about the health care insurance crisis in California. The demonstration was part of a coordinated effort throughout California that was scheduled to coincide with the premiere date of SiCKO, the latest film by Michael Moore.

Held during the early evening in front of the famed Arlington Theater in downtown Santa Barbara, the demonstration was organized primarily by the Santa Barbara chapter of Health Care for All, as part of its statewide issues campaign called One Care Now. This campaign is boosting public and political support for California Senate Bill 840, sponsored by State Senator Sheila Kuehl.

The demonstration featured clever signs and street theater about the plight of people with no or insufficient health care insurance. This OLPA video includes remarks by the demonstrators and people buying tickets for the SiCKO documentary film, called a "reality show" by one of the theatergoers in this video. A crisis of reality indeed, the theatric trailer for SiCKO is embedded within this OLPA video, along with an excerpt of the OneCareNow video that describes SB 840.

Some critics of Michael Moore refer to his films as SHOCK-UMENTARIES, as if that is such a bad thing "to shock and possibly anger the audience" for raising awareness and enacting social change.

The health care demonstration held on the sidewalk in front of Arlington Theater occurred only 31 days prior to the TV debut of this OLPA episode, a fast turn-around time for the OLPA production schedule, essentially bumping everything else in queue for the video recording and producing schedule. We are glad to feature this topic on an expedited schedule while SB 840 still is under deliberation in the State legislature and facing an expected veto by Governor Schwarzenegger, the self-declared Man of the People. Apparently, by "of the People" Arnold only meant the rapidly shrinking number of people who have adequate health care insurance that will never fail them for coverage.

A large rally to mark the end of 365 consecutive days of events that support SB 840 and health care reform is planned for Saturday, 11 August, at Los Angeles City Hall. OLPA will be there to cover this event and interview people from Santa Barbara who participate, including Peter Conn and Paulina Conn, the local leaders with Health Care for All.


Health Care Reform march down State Street, 07June2007.
Photo by Paul Wellman for Santa Barbara Independent

Our title Scrubs for SiCKO for this OLPA episode refers to the name of the statewide outreach campaign organized by California Nurses Association. The CNA events were large and prominent elsewhere, but for this event in Santa Barbara only one nurse was there in her commemorative scrubs garb, along with many other medical colleagues in traditional scrubs who were interviewed for the video.

As Peter Conn notes in his concluding interview, local news coverage was disappointingly skimpy for this event held that beautiful summer evening. However, KCSB covered the event well with an audio news story by Harry Lawton, a retired UCSB professor who deftly melds news reporting, political analyzing, and film reviewing all in one 8-minute story.


Watch the Video of this show!!
For a FULL SCREEN option, link on the Google label and also be sure to select arrow icon there for the Smooth Video option.
As a technical note, this video includes too much time (15 seconds) for the still image at the beginning before the intro, intended as a solution to accommodate a glitch that no longer applies because the clunky video playback system has been replaced at Santa Barbara Channels TV. The end of the video includes 8 minutes of blank black space because the DVD recorder stopped too late.

Episode 002... Douglas Family Preserve: People, Dogs, Birds, and Bees

This second OLPA episode debuted on Monday, 16 July 2007, and showed for 2 weeks on Santa Barbara Channels, cable TV-17, under the schedule atop this website.

Synopsis

This episode features Douglas Family Preserve (DFP), a 70-acre open-space "wild" park owned and managed by City of Santa Barbara. The timeliness of this episode showing during the last half of July 2007 coincides with an art exhibit and fundraiser by SCAPE, Southern California Artists Painting for the Environment, to be held 28-29 July at La Arcada Court, the breezy paseo-arcade space between the downtown Library and Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Called City Parks: Domestic & Wild, proceeds from this exhibit will benefit Friends of Douglas Family Preserve and PARC Foundation.

The video features interviews with representatives of these organizations, including a discussion with Nancy Rapp about development and funding of the Management Plan for this parkland.

• Rosalind Amorteguy, Board President of PARC Foundation
• Jean Schuyler, PARC Board member
• Susan Belloni, Friend of DFP and SCAPE member and painter
• Nancy Rapp, Director of Santa Barbara City Parks and Recreation Dept.

Editorial Notes

Often known as the Wilcox Property because of the prior property owners before the site became public land, the DFP Management Plan, completed in 2004, was one of the most lively and contentious public planning processes in the recent history of Santa Barbara. Dogs --either on- or off-leash-- dominated the public debate and environmental review, but other issues of invasive exotic plants, trail placement and access, and blufftop erosion also are substantial elements of the Plan; however, so far the City has not advanced too fast on implementing those provisions of the Plan, mainly because of a lack of funding. That is discussed in the interview by David with Nancy Rapp.

While this OLPA episode seems heavy on friendly promotion for the SCAPE art exhibit, opening reception, and art sale (for a non-profit organization, of course), this subject for a video production at this time coincided nicely with our long-standing goal for highlighting DFP and the SCAPE and PARC Foundation efforts.

A future OLPA episode will feature the Community Planting Day held in January 2006, when a demonstration plot of native plants was installed by volunteer ecological restorationists. Nearly 1.5 years later, a field interview with Brad Taggart (a leader of Friends of Douglas Family Preserve) will be included in that episode to see how the native plantings have grown after 2 seasons.

Production Notes

The video was recorded 23 June 2007, on location at DFP. Lighting was soft, thanks to the ubiquitous fog most summer mornings, but the ocean horizon was all gray. During the beginning of the show, the hemispheric mapping video that zoomed in to DFP was from the free software application Google Earth, where "Douglas Preserve" already is entered into the database of places. Future OLPA episodes with a place-based theme will feature more of such video geographic orientations, such as the episode in production, Take Back The Park XX, about the little-known public park-like space in front of Fess Parker DoubleTree Resort on Cabrillo Bl.

Video editing skills advanced in complexity for this second episode of the show, this time including cut-away still photos and video clips that were introduced over the main video timeline. Aligning the boundaries of these cut-away images had a few foibles where the top and bottom edges sometimes extended too far, but that is all part of the editing learning curve, which is flattening fast with the fine work by Cathy.


Watch the Video of this show!!
For a FULL SCREEN option, link on the Google label and also be sure to select arrow icon there for the Smooth Video option.