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Ricardo DeAratanha Los Angeles Times
Inside The Times
It was a saturday, midmorning. Atelephone split the stillness.
Kendall McArthur’s adoptivemother, Dorothea, known as Dorrie,took the call in the study. In an in-stant, more than two years of turmoilcrested, then crashed in Kendall’s
heart. It was her birth mother.Kendall, 11, dismissed a playmate. She
crept to the study door, just out of sight, and
listened intently. Withinmoments, the conversa-tion grew heated. Kendallhad neither seen nor spo-ken with her birth mother,Patti Sheets, in whatseemed like forever.
There was biting angerin Dorrie McArthur’s voice as it tumbled out of the study and into Ken-dall’s elegantly appointedSilver Lake home. Kendall
caught every word, andshe filled in the silences with good guesses about what her birth mother was saying on the otherend: I want to see Kendall.
She thought this mighthappen. Her birth motherhad called three weeks be-fore, for the first time in 27months. She had spoken
with Dorrie — but not with Kendall, who hadbeen deeply hurt by her absence. Kendallhad already insisted on conditions for a visit:Patti must see a psychologist, just as Ken-dall was doing. She must figure out why shehad disappeared from Kendall’s life. Shemust explain it, and she must promise neverto vanish again. Barring that, Kendall said,even if Patti appeared at her door, she wouldhide in a closet and refuse to see her.
On the phone in thestudy, Kendall’s adoptivemother was spelling thisout again. Last time, theconditions had met withstony silence. Now there was fury.
Maybe it was over. Forsix years, Kendall hadbeen in an open adoption,a delicate arrangement by which children see theirbirth parents often — at
least several times a year,sometimes weekly, evendaily. By agreement, bothsets of parents — adoptiveand biological— play largeroles in their children’slives.
Forty years ago, mostadoptions in the UnitedStates were closed. Today,
[ BETWEEN TWO FAMILIES ]
Negotiating thedifficulties of adelicate pact
An adoptee wonders about her mothers —especially the one who went away. Will she
end up feeling unwanted again?By Sonia Nazario : times staff writer
Last of two parts
TORTUOUS LOVE:
At 13, Kendall McArthurcould be loving and
cheerful — and then an“adolescent plus.” [See Kendall, Page A12]
Stellenbosch, South Africa
NtsikiBiyela looked curiouslyat the red liquid
in her glass, won-dering what to ex-
pect.She was listening to a con-
noisseur who swirled his glassabout, passionately extolling the
perfumes of blackberries and ci-gar box that she was supposedto be appreciating.
Biyela smelled, as instructed,but there had never been anyblackberries or cigar boxes inthe Zulu village where she grewup, fetching water from the river
and firewood from the forest ev-ery day. The liquid smelled alien.
Then it was time to taste. Bit-ter! Disgusting! Was she going todedicate her life to making thisundrinkable brew?
That was eight years ago. To-day, Biyela, a petite woman witha ready smile, gets a farawaylook in her eye when she has hernose in a wineglass. She is South Africa’s first black female wine-maker in an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated industry.In 1999, she was one of a group of
students given scholarships to
learn winemaking as part of anaffirmative action measure in a country struggling to overcomethe poisonous legacy of apart-heid.
Fresh from university in 2004,she joined the boutique Stella-kaya winery here in the CapeWinelands as its winemaker, andits wines since have won goldand silver medals in South Af-rica, one of the world’s new winepowers.
“This is my favorite,” the 29- year-old enthused, popping thecork from a bottle of blendedSangiovese, Merlot and Caber-net Sauvignon, pouring it into a glass and holding it under hernose, with a small frown of in-
COLUMN ONE
A heady bouquet of change S. Africa’s wine industry has long been run by white men who said blacks lacked tradition. Now a Zulu woman is proving them wrong.
By Robyn Dixon
Times Staff Writer
Rodger Bosch AFP/Getty Images
TASTE OF SUCCESS:
Ntsiki Biyela got a scholarship
to study winemaking in 1999.
[See South Africa, Page A6]
When Bing Crosby croonedthat he would settle down and“make the San Fernando Valleymy home,” he wasn’t singing about apartments.
The Southern California dream back then — exemplifiedby the World War II-era tractspopping up in the Valley and
other places — was of an afford-able single-family home, a littlehouse on a patch of green wherekids could play out back.
But today, construction of condos and apartments is rap-idly overtaking that of single-family residences, even in sub-urbs known for spread-out living.
It’s part of a broader shift to
urbanized living in SouthernCalifornia, a change that brings with it significantly higher den-sity and concerns about over-crowding and traffic.
Consider the Valley: In the1940s, developers there andthroughout the region wereputting up houses wherever theycould, plowing under vegetablefields and planting that dream
along streets and cul-de-sacs.But over the last six years,
Los Angeles has approved morethan 14,000 condos and apart-ments for construction in theSan Fernando Valley, according to city records, nearly threetimes the number of single-fam-ily residences.
It’s a trend that is mirrored
throughout the region, and it isexpected to intensify asSouthern California stretches toaccommodate a crush of 6.3 mil-lion new residents over the next30 years.
So many new apartments willbe built that by 2035,the numberof multi-family dwellings underconstruction will outstrip the
Stephen Osman Los Angeles Times
GOING UP: Workers apply stucco to a condominium complex on Moorpark Street in Sherman Oaks. Throughout Southern California,
more multi-family units than single-family houses are being built, and the trend is expected to escalate during the next 30 years.
Southern Californiais becoming a tight fitAs more apartments andcondos are built, trafficwon’t be the region’sonly kind of jam.
By Sharon Bernstein
Times Staff Writer
[See Homes, Page A10]
yousifiya, iraq — U.S. troopshad nicknamed the suspectedinsurgent “George Clooney” be-cause of his handsome mug, buthe wasn’t so pretty after mem-bers of his own Sunni tribe shotand wounded him, then turnedhim over to the Americans.
U.S. forces say the tribe’s act was an example of the payoffs
from practicing the counter-insurgency techniques preachedby Gen. David H. Petraeus as heenforces President Bush’s troop“surge.” But unlike the 28,500newly arrived troops, soldiershere have been at it for nearly a year.
Their experience in trying totame this palm-fringed enclave
south of Baghdad, within thearea sometimes called the “tri-angle of death,” serves as a so-bering reminder of how long itcan take to remake a region
steeped in violence, be it bucolicfarmland or a chaotic city likeBaghdad.
They have seen victories, butthey also have suffered horrificlosses. And most say that the im-provement in security did not be-gin until May, when the disap-pearance of three U.S. soldiers
Squaring a ‘triangleof death’The U.S. makes progressin a violent swath of Iraq, slowly and subtly.
By Tina SusmanTimes Staff Writer
[See Troops, Page A4]
washington — As the House
of Representatives lurchedthrough its last rancorous hoursover the weekend, there wasmuch talk of shame and disap-pointment about the bitter par-tisanship that seemed to con-
sume Congress ahead of itssummer break.But there were few real tears
in the Capitol for the currentstate of affairs.
Seven months into Demo-crats’ control of the House andSenate, the angry sparring has
largely served the political inter-ests of both parties, whose lead-ers often believe they have moreto gain by warring with their ri- vals than by working with them.
Newly empowered Demo-crats, confident that the publicbacks their agenda and eager toexpand their House and Senatemajorities next year, have littleincentive to accommodate theGOP minority.
They left town touting theirsuccessful efforts to raise the fed-eral minimum wage, revamp eth-
ics and lobbying rules, and im-
plement the Sept. 11commission’s recommenda-tions, though many other majorgoals, such as ending the war inIraq, were unrealized.
For their part, Republicans, who still lag in public opinionpolls after losing the majoritylast year, see more advantage indisrupting congressional busi-ness in their quest to cast theDemocratic Congress as ineffec-tive.
They went home complaining of a “do-nothing” Congress, evenafter they used one proceduraltactic after another to stall legis-lative business.
“This is an era of partisangridlock,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a
NEWS ANALYSIS
Parties play to partisan
rancorAngry sparring haslargely served politicalinterests on each side,
but the confrontationaltactics create risks.
By Noam N. LeveyTimes Staff Writer
[See Congress, Page A17 ]
pueblo, colo. — There areholes in the steel girders sup-porting state bridge K-18-R.
Not big holes. The size of a deck of cards, maybe. But thecorrosion so alarmed state in-spectors on a routine visit Thurs-day that they asked their super- visor to take a look.
Which is why he’s nowperched 40 feet above the Arkan-sas River, bracing his backagainst the concrete deck of thebridge and his feet against the
rust-scarred steel trusses thatkeep the structure up. Jeff An-derson is tapping the girders with a geologist’s pick, listening to each ping and clank for cluesabout how K-18-R is bearing up.He’s waiting for the bridge to talkto him.
“Watch out below!” A very sizable chunk of cor-
roded steel gives way under An-derson’s probing and tumblesdown, shattering on the bike
path that runs along the river.Built in 1924 in this modest
farm town in south-central Colo-rado, the bridge is one of about75,000 nationwide deemed“structurally deficient.” Its suffi-ciency rating stands at 47 on a scale of 100 — lower, by a fewpoints, than that of Minneapolis’Interstate 35W bridge before it
Inspectors feel weightof bridge’s collapse
States dispatch experts.One visits a corroding span in Colorado.
By Stephanie Simon
Times Staff Writer
[See Inspection, Page A16]
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