People and Events

A price tag has been suggested for repair of the so-called “million-dollar jukebox.” Bill Vestal, of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, says it would probably take at least $30,000 to put the Los Angeles City Hall Mall Triforium into working order.

The electronic health of the huge contraption has gone downhill since it was erected a dozen years ago to blast recorded tunes from giant speakers while nearly 1,500 colored glass prisms brightened and dimmed to the music.

Since a feeble attempt last summer, when it performed like a burned-out rock star in his final concert, the Triforium has stood mute. The computer is old and shot. The carillon needs upgrading.

“That would be as lean as we could do it,” Vestal says of his cost estimate. “We don’t want to just put a Band-Aid on it.”

The people who will make the decision--members of the Los Angeles City Council’s Recreation, Library and Cultural Affairs Committee--asked Vestal to find out how many people really care $30,000 worth. He is supposed to report back by the end of the month.

Hospital of the Good Samaritan nurses and staff aides are throwing a little wedding anniversary party today for Thomas and Maybelle Kinsman. It will be their 67th.

Kinsman, a former stock clerk at what was then simply the Los Angeles County Hospital, is just a few weeks short of 90. His wife, better known as Ruth, is 87. He is in Good Sam recuperating from salivary gland surgery.

News of today’s celebration would come as a shock to those doctors in Syracuse, N.Y., who once told Mrs. Kinsman that she was dying of aplastic anemia and that she might live for 90 more days--but only if she would move to California.

Thomas Kinsman gave up his job as a cottage cheese maker and they came, hoping to have those three months.

That was in 1926.

Long Beach graphic designer Buddy Doyle pulled the plug Friday on his Irish Storytelling Workshop, which was to have been held on Santa Catalina Island next weekend. This was to be the second year of the event that Doyle organized as “an alternative way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day--without all the drinking and just raising hell.”

The fact that only a couple of dozen had signed up so far prompted Doyle to scratch the workshop this time around. He had engaged Dublin-born actor Sean McClory to be an old-time storyteller like those who years ago roamed Ireland and taught the people about their heritage.

“The Irish are well-known literary giants,” Doyle says. “This art form (storytelling) has been kind of lost but is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. I’m hoping that in years to come, we can build this thing up to something that is really special.”

He is determined to start organizing early next year, hooking up with an association of local Irish bar owners.

Who, of course, will be delighted to help anything that is an alternative to drinking and raising hell.

Syliva Fathauer, 42, of Glendora had her car back Friday. Industry Station sheriff’s detectives, meanwhile, were looking for someone with a head injury.

According to Sgt. Steve Brennan, someone stole Fathauer’s 1977 El Camino early Thursday. She and a friend went cruising in a pickup truck to look for it. They spotted it in a La Puente parking lot.

As Fathauer started to get in it, she told deputies, three mean-looking guys approached. One ordered her to “get out of here” and tried to replace her behind the wheel. Fathauer, thinking she was about to be attacked, began shouting for help.

She also grabbed a hammer from the pickup truck and struck the would-be driver in the head. All three suspects took off on foot.

Deputies asked nearby hospitals to alert them in case someone showed up with a head wound, but Brennan said nobody had checked in by Friday morning.