Levi

Reading Richard Eder's review of Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved" (The Book Review, Dec. 27) moved me to write concerning my own reactions to Levi's suicide. None of the many articles and reviews I have read touched upon my own immediate conclusion, "Becoming a full-time professional writer and celebrity accomplished what the Nazis failed to do." It seems to me Levi's precarious tightrope walk across the abyss rested on the chemical, as it were, balance between survival, work, family and the need to witness and report.

SACRAMENTO - Releasing his latest budget plan this week, Gov. Jerry Brown repeated his assurance that the tax hikes voters agreed to last fall were enough, that he won't ask them to dig deeper into their pockets any time soon. "We just got a nice tax," he said. "I think we ought to take a deep breath and show how we are spending it in a wise way before we start looking for more money. " But even before Brown spoke, lawmakers were testing him. They have been forging ahead with proposals to tax Californians more - on every can of soda, cigarette, plastic grocery store bag and bullet.

Re "Cuban Teen Makes Revolutionary Choice," Aug. 22: Agustin Gurza tells us that Laura Pina is not your average Cuban kid. That is an understatement. Her mother is an American expatriate (a prize for Castro's Cuba) and her father is a member of one of Cuba's most famous musical groups. Laura did not have to go into the country to cut sugar cane as most Cuban youths are forced to do. She can afford to pay dollars to attend nightclubs and buy $70 Levi's. And she says it's getting awkward?

Matt Kenseth said Thursday the massive penalties that NASCAR levied against the driver and his Joe Gibbs Racing team were "grossly unfair" and "borderline shameful. " NASCAR on Wednesday stripped Kenseth of 50 championship points and suspended his crew chief Jason Ratcliff for several races, among other penalties, because last weekend Kenseth's No. 20 Toyota had an engine part that was too light. The faulty part -- a rod that connects a piston to the crankshaft and normally weighs just over one pound -- was detected in an inspection after Kenseth won Sunday's race at Kansas Speedway.

Among the several compelling elements of the British-made series "Design Classics" is how foreigners observe the mythic dimension in American business. Tonight's edition on Levi jeans (Channel 28, 10:30 p.m.) is a revealing case in point. Levi's brings together three American phenomena--the romantic image of the West, the existential, youthful loner and the turning of a product's name into a generic form, as in Jell-O, Kleenex or Xerox. Though the program misses this last aspect, it amusingly records how the marketing and design of Levi's sought to fuse legendary icons with a longed-for past (Tex Ritter winning a barroom brawl in his clean-pressed denims)

Re "Levi, an American Icon, to Shut Last Plants in U.S.," Sept. 26: Now I finally understand the new economy that lawmakers, at the urging of special business interests, are shoving down our throats: have every single job held in India or China or some Third World country. Encourage Americans to keep on buying with credit until everything is lost to creditors. Then we may join our Third World brothers by happily sewing buttons on jeans, or operating a sneaker assembly line, for 40 cents a week.

For black marketeers, it was a black day indeed: Levi Strauss & Co. opened its first store in the former Soviet Union on Friday, seeking to button up one of the world's most jeans-starved markets. Hundreds of perfectly legal customers pressed up against the windows and struggled to wriggle into the Levi's store when the doors opened at--what else?--5:01 p.m. An entire generation had scrounged for second-hand Levi 501s in hotels and tourist spots, or paid the high prices of black marketeers.

Zachary Levi had a simple reason for taking the role as the caretaker for the furry singers in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel." He wanted to work. The filming of the second season of Levi's NBC series "Chuck" was coming to an end earlier this year, and NBC executives hadn't said if it would be back. We now know the show will return Jan. 10, but at the time Levi wasn't sure. "My agent called and said, ' "Alvin and the Chipmunks 2." What do you think?' I said, 'Let's go!

Cyclists no longer have to arrive at their destination looking like a wet rag and needing a shower. As more people take to commuting and traveling by bike -- for both health and environmental reasons -- some clothing companies are stepping up, offering office-ready clothes that don't have to be wrung out upon arrival. Thank technology for the ability to create or enhance street wear fabrics that not only stretch, but keep perspiration away from the body, resist water and dirt, and retain heat with little insulation.

"The City Louvre," a documentary film offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at Paris' renowned museum, will be screened Tuesday at the L.A. County Museum of Art at 7 p.m. Also, an episode from the Louvre's "Palettes" video series will spotlight Veronese's "Feast in the House of Levi." Information: (213) 857-6139.

Matt Kenseth and his Joe Gibbs Racing team were hit with major penalties from NASCAR on Wednesday following Kenseth's victory Sunday at Kansas Speedway. NASCAR said that in its post-race inspection of Kenseth's No. 20 Toyota, it found the car had an unapproved engine part -- a connecting rod that was too light. Although Kenseth was able to keep his victory, the driver was stripped of 50 Sprint Cup Series championship points, dropping the former Cup champion from eighth in the standings to a tie for 14th with Jeff Gordon.

NASCAR on Wednesday levied stiff fines against the teams of reigning Sprint Cup Series champion Brad Keselowski and teammate Joey Logano because their cars were found to have unapproved suspension systems before Saturday's race at Texas Motor Speedway. Keselowski's crew chief Paul Wolfe, Logano's crew chief Todd Gordon and some other team members of the two Penske Racing Fords were suspended for the next six points-paying races along with the non-points Sprint All-Star Race on May 18. The crew chiefs also were fined $100,000 each.

Among the household items put to unintended use in the new film "Evil Dead," a playfully reverent if not-overly-so remake of Sam Raimi's 1981 cult favorite horror movie, are a nail gun, an electric knife, a jerry-rigged defibrillator, and, in an obvious nod to the original, a chain saw. The feature debut of Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez, discovered via a short on YouTube, "Evil Dead" has a gleeful exuberance of its own analogous to the mad invention...

SACRAMENTO - The most courageous politician in California - probably the nation - is a Berkeley city councilman, Gordon Wozniak. His gutsy act: proposing that the government tax email. Yes, sacrosanct, time-gobbling, out-of-control email. "I got a lot of nasty emails nationally," he says. "You are making Berkeley look really silly," one person wrote. Another called him "the epitome of a communist - you and all your commy liberal idiots. " Wozniak, however, is certified brainy - a retired nuclear scientist, a futurist who, he admits, may be ahead of his time about taxing email.

ATHENS - Lawmakers in Cyprus on Tuesday voted against a controversial economic bailout plan, threatening to cripple the island republic's banking sector and with it the economy Not a single one of Cyprus' 56 lawmakers backed the proposal to levy taxes on some bank deposits in exchange for $13 billion in international aid to prop up the island's faltering banks. Thirty-six legislators opposed the measure, with 19 abstaining and one missing the vote. The plan, announced over the weekend by European officials after marathon negotiations and later modified, was intended to raise about $7 billion on top of the aid from Europe and the International Monetary Fund.

If you're concerned about corporate crime, 2012 looked like a pretty successful year for the good guys. The Thousand Oaks biotech giant Amgen paid $762 million in fines and penalties and pleaded guilty to a federal charge related to illegal marketing of its anemia drug Aranesp. Britain's GlaxoSmithKline and Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories paid $3 billion and $1.5 billion in government penalties, respectively, in connection with their off-label promotions of blockbuster drugs.

Reading Richard Eder's review of Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved" (The Book Review, Dec. 27) moved me to write concerning my own reactions to Levi's suicide. None of the many articles and reviews I have read touched upon my own immediate conclusion: "Becoming a full-time professional writer and celebrity accomplished what the Nazi's failed to do." It seems to me that Levi's precarious tightrope walk across the abyss rested on the chemical, as it were, balance between survival, work, family and the need to witness and report.

While Dr. Michael Levi volunteered at the Venice Family Clinic, he saw one aspect of the lives of the poor and homeless with a podiatrist's eye: foot problems caused by poverty. "I saw a lot of patients who had poor shoe gear, and some not wearing socks," says Levi, 33, a Santa Monica podiatrist who founded the Venice clinic's foot-care unit in 1988. "They had problems that would easily be solved with the proper gear.

A boom floating at the mouth of the Los Angeles River in Long Beach collects trash by the ton. After each rainstorm, the debris washes downstream toward the ocean - plastic bags, tires, mattresses, spray cans, a mannequin head. Last year, the Los Angeles County contractor that operates the boom hauled more than 1,000 tons of garbage from the site. But many of the pollutants dumped into county waters by storm and urban runoff are invisible: pesticides, bacteria from animal waste, vehicle fluids and tiny pieces of metal and rubber washed off of roadways.

On the final day of the year, the U.S. Department of Transportation levied fines against two airlines that kept passengers stranded on delayed flights, pushing the number of violations issued against airlines in 2012 to a record. The federal agency recorded 49 violations in 2012, totaling $3.6 million in fines, with the final two coming against Copa Airlines of Panama and California-based Virgin America. The previous high number of fines came in 2011, when the agency levied 47 violations, totaling about $3.3 million.