MTV Generation Tunes In to County’s Hunger Crisis

Nothing wrong with teenagers spending Saturdays at the beach. Or even watching MTV, I suppose. On the other hand, you have to be busting buttons with pride if your daughter or son wants to spend a Saturday at a seminar on race relations, or taking a look at hunger in Orange County.

Those are the kinds of things students enrolled in the National Conference’s Knowledge and Social Responsibility program (KSR) get involved in. This Saturday, for example, about 50 students will spend their day at the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County in the city of Orange.

They’ll take a tour of the food bank and hear speakers talk about hunger issues. Then the students will hold their own project meeting on what they can do about some specific social issues during the rest of the school year.

William Shane, executive director of the Orange County chapter of the National Conference, told me that the students may well decide to make hunger their main issue.

The 70-year-old, privately funded National Conference is dedicated to fighting bigotry and racism. Its operation is divided into three parts--youth, community and interfaith programs. It’s the youth, Shane said, that “have been the most inspiring part of my professional life.”

Bia Myung, a senior at Garden Grove High School and one of the participants, explained that she got involved “to show that young people are serious about important issues, and don’t just spend their time watching MTV.”

Shane says many students not only have “a desire to learn, but just want to blast out the stereotypes that some people have of their generation. To some extent, they have a chip on their shoulder about it.”

KSR is for seniors who also attended a 10-day conference on social issues the previous summer at UC Irvine. Shane said his office gets about 200 student applications each year, but can accept just 50 of the best.

Earlier this week, I spent a morning in Juvenile Court for a future column. It was so depressing, it convinced me that 50 young people choosing to spend their Saturday at a food bank deserves special mention.

Not tongue in cheek: Communicating with teens is a perennial problem for many of us. Where do you draw the line in letting them express themselves? I confess it would be difficult for me to sit across the dinner table from my teen son if he had a piece of jewelry stuck in the middle of his tongue.

I don’t even understand tongue-piercing. How did this become a thrill? But I did get some insight this week as I read a piece on the subject in the Oracle, the student newspaper at Troy High School in Fullerton.

Jennifer Danskin, a senior, told the paper she had her tongue pierced despite her parents’ warning that if she did, she would lose some of her driving privileges.

She said that when she was younger, and had a weight problem, another student in class called her “bacon bits.” You can imagine the pain that must have caused, the kind that stays with you for life. Jennifer explains the pierced tongue:

“At 17, you don’t know your true identity, but you know what you want to be. You are taking steps to get there, even if you don’t know what the steps are. . . . In high school I was trying so hard to be something I wasn’t, then finally realized it wasn’t worth it. I was stomped on and my heart was broken. It changed the way I thought about the world.”

Actually, I didn’t follow all that myself, but enough to get the idea. The next teen I see with a pierced tongue, I’ll think of that “bacon bits” slap and try a little harder to understand.

Outdoor History Room: When the Mission Viejo Library opens on Saturday, just about everything inside will be brand spanking new. But in the courtyard you’ll find something beautifully worn with age. The library has moved a 50-year-old oak tree from a ranch near Julian to be the centerpiece of the courtyard. Charlie Everett, resident expert at the Tree Society of Orange County, applauds the effort: “Few country trees move to town in their mature years.”

Ghost Stories: On my list of great California places to visit is Bodie, now just a ghost town, but once a thriving village of 8,000 people high in the eastern Sierra Nevada not far from Bridgeport. More than $90 million in gold was mined out of its surrounding hills in the late 1870s.

The gold boom brought the usual ruckus: Bodie sported 65 saloons, a few houses of ill repute, and a reputation for a killing a day. One young girl whose family was moving there once wrote: “Goodbye God; we’re moving to Bodie.”

But like all gold rush towns, when the veins were mined out, the population dwindled. The town was down to a handful of people in the 1920s.

Now the Fullerton Museum Center is looking for those people. It’s planning an exhibit on Bodie, scheduled to open Nov. 16 and run through May. If you, your parents or grandparents lived in Bodie, or know anybody who did, call the museum at (714) 738-6545.

Museum assistant Bevin Zandvliet wants you or them to share recollections to enhance the exhibit. I called to ask her if the museum had found anyone yet. Zandvliet said she has scheduled an interview with a man whose father was the town doctor.

Wrap-Up: If you don’t know the National Conference by reputation, you might know its former name: The National Conference of Christians and Jews. Shane said the organization simply outgrew the name, and is actually changing its name again: Soon it will become the National Conference for Community and Justice.

The local chapter’s list of board of director members is certainly impressive. Among the names are Coastline Community College President Leslie Purdy, 4th District Court of Appeal Justice William Bedsworth, and Channel 5 TV sports anchor Ed Arnold, who is involved in numerous Orange County causes.

If you want to learn more about any of the three phases of its programs, you can reach its office in Newport Beach at (714) 668-9191.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com