She’s Not Out of Her Tree Over the Headwaters Deal

Deal, shmeal.

The state, the feds and Pacific Lumber Co. have all shaken hands over their agreement on the fate of the ancient Headwaters Forest, but the one--perhaps the only--human who lives there is not convinced.

Julia “Butterfly” Hill, who resides 180 feet up in a thousand-year-old redwood named Luna, cannot muster enthusiasm for the deal. The plan, she said by cell phone from her perch, “is based on the premise that only a bare minimum needs to be protected for endangered species recovery, and from the beginning it has failed to require what is biologically necessary to accomplish even that.”

Hill’s sit-in, or sit-up, has drawn international news media attention and a cadre of volunteers since it began in December 1997. The stately tree and the steep terrain she chose epitomize much of what the agreement fails to protect, she contends, so she will stay put “to achieve our goals for permanent protection for all remaining old growth.”

Nonetheless, Hill has had occasions to celebrate in months past, even if the agreement is not one of them. She strung up Christmas lights in the branches, and commemorated her birthday with carrot cake, fresh orange juice and organic Zinfandel. No toothpicks.

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Mortarboard Manson: The most notorious inmate in the California penal system now has two venues: a prison cell and a classroom.

Without setting foot out of Corcoran State Prison, multiple murderer Charles Manson will be playing both teacher’s aide and defendant for a political science class at Newman University, a Catholic school in Kansas where a lawyer and part-time professor has enlisted Manson’s support in his curriculum.

Teacher Robert Beattie plans to restage the trial that convicted Manson and three young women of killing actress Sharon Tate and four others 30 years ago this summer. Beattie contacted Manson, who, to Beattie’s astonishment, agreed to provide a 45-minute taped interview as his testimony--which he never gave in the trial. Beattie also hopes for a phone linkup to Manson during the mock trial itself.

“They have lied about me,” Manson said on the tape. “They have told horrendous fabrications. . . . I’m not saying I’ve been honest. I’ve been an outlaw all my life. I’ve been a lot of bad. But I’ve never done anything that I’m ashamed of.”

Manson will defend himself in a class in which other student jurors have acquitted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of harassing Anita Hill and acquitted O.J. Simpson of double murder.

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Teenage Birth Rates

California’s teenage birth rate has fallen substantially for the sixth year in a row. Here are comparative teenage birth rates by county for 1991 and 1997:

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Birth Rate per 1,000 Girls Aged 15-19 County 1991 1997 % Change Fresno 107.2 83.9 -21.7% Kern 104.3 81.5 -21.9% San Bernardino 90.3 68.7 -23.9% Riverside 83.2 65.1 -21.7% Los Angeles 82.6 64.1 -22.4% Sacramento 72.6 54.4 -25.0% San Diego 66.0 49.3 -25.3% Orange 61.6 50.8 -17.5% Ventura 56.7 44.7 -21.2% San Francisco 49.5 35.2 -28.8% Statewide: 72.9 56.7 -22.2%

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Source: California Department of Health Services, Sacramento

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times

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One-offs: A mystery was solved when a 14-foot-high wooden cross that appeared above a northern San Diego County canyon was acknowledged to be the handiwork of a Temecula church youth group, which built the cross and videotaped it for an upcoming Easter commemoration. . . . In another attempt to foil those who would do themselves in, a Golden Gate Bridge committee is recommending installation of an 11-foot-high suicide barrier whose top two feet bend inward over the sidewalk to deter anyone who tries to grab and climb. . . . A forgotten document that an astronomer found in a drawer at UC Santa Cruz turns out to be a horoscope written for a long-dead Austrian nobleman by Johannes Kepler, the 17th century mathematician who discovered the laws of orbital motion.

EXIT LINE

“From an aesthetic point of view it’s a fantastic design. If we had that bridge leading into Oakland, it would be a major boon. People from all over the world would come to drive across it.”

--Oakland Mayor Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. on architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s 50-year-old design for the east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Brown prefers Wright’s “butterfly wing” model to the single-tower suspension bridge chosen by the state, and he wants the design selection reopened.

California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.