Scavengers

The Aquarium of the Pacific's newest exhibit introduces visitors to an eerie world beyond the reach of sunshine: the bottom of the ocean, a strange seascape of crushing pressure, volcanic fissures and an abundance of cryptic creatures. The Wonders of the Deep gallery, which is scheduled to open to the public May 24, will be one of the few places where visitors can marvel over bioluminescent fish and opportunistic scavengers that inhabit the biological oases created by dead marine mammals that sink to the bottom.

The Aquarium of the Pacific's newest exhibit introduces visitors to an eerie world beyond the reach of sunshine: the bottom of the ocean, a strange seascape of crushing pressure, volcanic fissures and an abundance of cryptic creatures. The Wonders of the Deep gallery, which is scheduled to open to the public May 24, will be one of the few places where visitors can marvel over bioluminescent fish and opportunistic scavengers that inhabit the biological oases created by dead marine mammals that sink to the bottom.

I read with great interest letters (Oct. 29) opposing the crackdown on scavengers who take recyclable items from the yellow bins provided by the city. Over the last several months council offices and the LAPD received hundreds of phone calls and letters from residents complaining about this problem. My office worked to create a scavenger task force. Members of the community were asked to take down the license plate numbers and descriptions of scavengers' vehicles and report them to the LAPD or the scavenger hot line at 1-800-773-CITY.

It's a hot summer morning and the campers trundle through the gates of a Pasadena grade school, then fall in with their age groups: the Seeds, the Dates, the Coconuts and the Trees. A day of typical camp activities awaits: scavenger hunts, a "pirates and princesses" dress-up play and water-balloon tosses. But there is a difference here: Those activities are sandwiched between Koran recital, the Dzhur afternoon prayer and story time that includes tales about Mecca and Muhammad. Even as one of the counselors tries to bring order to the paper boat race, it's a moment peppered in faith.

So the City of Los Angeles, hard-pressed for cash, has voted to waste 600,000 precious dollars to pay cops overtime to catch newspaper recycling scavengers (Oct. 18). Doesn't the council realize that there's a better way, one that would cost nothing and generate income? Let the scavengers continue. Then have the firms that buy the scavenged materials merely deduct 15% from what they pay the scavengers, and remit this to the city. Is this idea too logical for our city fathers? And have they also failed to realize that by permitting the scavengers to continue they are given honest income and don't have to turn to crime?

As if the Valley doesn't have enough problems affecting our daily lives. What with crime, gangs, drive-by shootings, graffiti, pollution, yet another sinister threat to our community has emerged in our streets--none other than the dreaded "newspaper scavenger"! Our elected officials have called for an all-out war on these predators and asked the public to report license plate numbers of vehicles perpetrating this crime against humanity. I suggest a proposition be placed on the March ballot calling for capital punishment of anyone caught in the act of scavenging newspapers.

In the smoke and dust along Rue La Saline, at the edge of a rubble-strewn dump, a little man with missing front teeth hammered away at a shattered pillar of concrete. Jean Robert Lemer, 45, had been laboring for hours to extract a piece of the iron rebar that ran through it. But he wasn't making much progress. If he had a hacksaw, he could cut off the exposed metal. But he only had a little household hammer. The sun was taking a toll, searing through a pall of white cement dust and the black smoke of smoldering trash.

If Bindeswar Pathak's long-held dream comes true--and there is evidence it might--India's scavengers will be freed from their humiliating, caste-imposed life's work of carrying human excrement on their heads. About 600,000 people are directly involved in the daily collection and disposal of human waste from bucket latrines used in 6 million homes. Their lot in life, passed down from generation to generation, causes them to be shunned by the rest of Indian society.

The warning letter from the city's recycling office weighs on Roberto like a ton of aluminum cans and glass bottles. Stop scavenging from city-issued recycling bins, it says, or face a $500 fine, six months in jail and the impounding of your car. What is all the fuss about? asks Roberto, a full-time gardener who earns minimum wage. How could people get mad at him for taking what was discarded? Roberto, 56, and his wife, Maria, 49, who asked that their last name not be printed, scavenge to help support their four children.

Having read Ellen James Martin's front page real estate story mauling "bottom feeders" as scavengers, grubbers and bargain hunters, my sensibilities as both an environmental engineer and a licensed real estate broker are in a very raw state indeed. Were it not for beneficial bottom feeders in nature, our oceans would have become open sewers. These various organisms act as debris scavengers and should be applauded for their work without which there would be no world as we know it. In real estate, bargain hunters provide the same cleansing action as scavengers do deep in our oceans and waterways without which there would be no balance between supply and demand.

HBO's two-for-one biopic "Hemingway & Gellhorn," which would more appropriately reverse the order of those names, dramatizes the stormy coming together and falling apart of the famous novelist and his third wife, war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. The film, which premieres Monday, is a big-name affair, with Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman in the leads and Philip Kaufman directing a screenplay by Barbara Turner ("Pollock") and Jerry Stahl ("Bad Boys II"). But - though it is clearly based on research, with dialogue that scavenges the principals' own writing - it is never quite believable, either as history or drama.

In many ways, Paulus Smit had made the Yorba Linda library his home. It was there that he read his favorite car magazines and daily newspapers and on sunny days, more often than not, sat under one of the magnolia trees. He was not consistently homeless, yet Smit, 57, had become a friendly fixture in the small town, where horse trails run along sidewalks and residents feel connected. There is a series of wide, wall-lined steps on the side of the sleek, nicely apportioned library. About 4 p.m. on the afternoon of Dec. 30, those steps became a killing ground.

In one city, officials want to lock them up. In another, they want to lock them out. Responding to complaints from residents who say they're fed up with trash scavengers, Newport Beach officials voted recently to criminalize the practice; in Costa Mesa, officials are considering a plan to keep garbage under lock and key. The actions, officials say, are intended to thwart a growing number of curbside collectors who cruise neighborhoods in...

Explore the spirits, secrets and legends of one of Los Angeles' oldest neighborhoods at L.A. Conservancy's second annual Scavenger Hunt. Teams of intrepid ghost hunters will explore some of the area's spookiest Victorian mansions, armed with flashlights and a digital camera. A portion of the admission benefits the conservancy. Angelino Heights Area, Echo Park. 4-6:30 p.m. Sat.-Sun. $30. (213) 623-2489. outoftheboxevents.webconnex.com/angelinoheights.

Three hours into the race, it was the butt scooter that nearly did Scott Ramsay in. "Burniiing!" he hollered to his teammate Fatima Santos. "I'm cramping up! We gotta keep moving. Let's go!" As the couple rushed from a West Hollywood park toward the finish line in Pershing Square, it was obvious they would not take first or probably even 50th place in Saturday's fourth annual Great Urban Race. But no matter. For many of the 700 or so racers who signed up, it was less about the finish line than the wacky adventures on the way. A combination scavenger hunt, brain teaser, obstacle course and footrace, the event unfolded like a masquerade party with a to-do list.

When documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker smiles and says, "I can't complain my life isn't varied," she is not kidding. While most directors would be grateful to have one film in Sundance, Walker has two compelling works and they could not be more different. For "Countdown to Zero," a hair-raising exposé of the dangers of rogue nuclear weapons, she spent considerable time talking with world leaders like Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, F.W. de Klerk and Pervez Musharraf, "more presidents than I could keep track of."

Recycling seemed so easy, so anxiety-free. Residents would stash their bottles, cans and paper in city-provided bins. The cities would take the contents and send them off to be recycled. Everyone was supposed to feel good. Everyone doesn't. The programs, implemented after the state ordered cities to cut back the junk they sent to landfills, are reducing the trash flow but they are also adding to Southern Californians' Angst. Scavengers' pre-dawn sorties are upsetting the rubbish cart.

In response to the letter from Jill Renton on raising the redemption value of bottles and cans (April 3): If the refunds were raised to 5 cents, rather than fearing more scavengers, an easy solution would be for residents to recycle bottles, cans, etc., and donate good reusable items to charity. Also, why not have a garage sale? Then trash would become just trash with nothing left to scavenge. Scavenging has always been a means of salvaging usable material from trash.

In the smoke and dust along Rue La Saline, at the edge of a rubble-strewn dump, a little man with missing front teeth hammered away at a shattered pillar of concrete. Jean Robert Lemer, 45, had been laboring for hours to extract a piece of the steel rebar that ran through it. But he wasn't making much progress. If he had a hacksaw, he could cut off the exposed metal. But he had only a little household hammer. The sun was taking a toll, searing through a pall of white concrete dust and the black smoke of smoldering trash.

In the smoke and dust along Rue La Saline, at the edge of a rubble-strewn dump, a little man with missing front teeth hammered away at a shattered pillar of concrete. Jean Robert Lemer, 45, had been laboring for hours to extract a piece of the iron rebar that ran through it. But he wasn't making much progress. If he had a hacksaw, he could cut off the exposed metal. But he only had a little household hammer. The sun was taking a toll, searing through a pall of white cement dust and the black smoke of smoldering trash.