Death and city taxes were as inevitable and unwelcome in Roman days as they are to Malibuites today. Women felt the hurt of the second as much as the former. In 42 B.C., five men dragged the entire country into a civil war — an expensive activity, even before stealth bombers and SCAR missiles were invented. To finance their adventure, the ruling council — men — decided to lay a tax on women — and only women whose wealth exceeded 100,000 denarii. A total of 1,400 females were told to cough up one year’s income and, by the way, lend the city council one-fiftieth of their property at interest. To ensure compliance, rewards were offered to informers, free or slaves, about ladies who, shall we say, under reported. Like Malibu code enforcement policies work today. At other points in Roman history, matrons with wealth had given generously. This time the circumstances were different. This was a civil war and the squash was put solely on women of wealth.

Although she’d never been allowed to plead law cases, Hortensia, the daughter of Rome’s top orator and legal advocate, had a superb education and real talent for the law. She was chosen by the throng of enraged women to act as their spokesperson. No male had the nerve or interest to plead his case. With Hortensia in the lead, the women made a noisy political march through the streets of Rome and into the city council chambers blowing whistles and clanging bells. There the city council was forced to listen as Hortensia give an enormously effective speech on their behalf.

How good was Hortensia? She convinced the squandering council members to reduce the number of women being taxed from 1,400 to 400. More critical, they decreed that the new tax would fall equally on women and men, citizens and strangers alike. Granted, that’s not as good as rejecting the whole idea, but then those council members really needed money for their pork barrel city projects and after all they were fighting a war.

Hortensia’s speech entered Roman history, where little boys (and, I hope little girls) read it and memorized it for centuries. It is time that the Malibu City Council members read or reread her speech, then, on the other hand they might have more time to read it in early political retirement.

And that’s the truth.

Tom Fakehany

This letter was sent to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

Since my arrival to John Adams Middle School in 1995, the instrumental music program has grown from 280 students to a current enrollment of 360. Just this week, a new orchestra was created to alleviate the over-crowded enrollment in our Symphony Orchestra (75 students) as well as to serve the needs of the individual students who perform at various levels of experience. My teaching assignment for the past two years has been 1.2 FTE, accompanied with a 6-hour/day instructional aide position which has been filled with music majors and graduate students from UCLA. This year, an additional .4 FTE was allocated by Jerry Kantor (I’m so grateful to him) and that position has been shared by Kevin McKeown and Brian Hamilton, both master’s degree candidates in conducting at UCLA. Needless to say, the presence of certificated staff members is highly critical and imperative to the success and soundness of the John Adams music program for the following reasons:

1. Safety. Should an emergency arise, one teacher cannot properly oversee the safety and security of 75, 85, or 94 students in a single class (current Symphony Orchestra, Concert Band, Symphonic Band class enrollments, respectively.) With another adult in the classroom, an unexpected circumstance can be supervised more manageably. (What if something were to happen to me during an emergency?)

2. Rehearsal Efficiency. Within the block schedule, a 90-minute rehearsal can be structured in a very efficient and effective manner for the students. Presently, Kevin and Brian each take half of the two largest band classes into the auditorium for 45 minutes, working on specific homogeneous techniques while I rehearse the other half in the music room. Then the two halves reunite for a combined rehearsal, incorporating the techniques just practiced. Young students appreciate and greatly benefit from the smaller, more individualized sectionals where they are able to work on specific problems.

3. Individual Attention. During rehearsals, students occasionally require medical attention (nurse referrals); in addition, random mechanical mishaps frequently occur with specific instruments. Students can discreetly ask the music aides for assistance without disturbing the teacher, and consequently, the rehearsal can continue without disrupting the ensemble.

4. Rehearsal Preparation. Before each and every rehearsal, much preparation and planning is required for a successful class. The coping, filing and general paperwork is overwhelming for a subject area that does not utilize textbooks or preprinted manuals/booklets. Many of the music repertoire is out of print, and the preservation of the literature can only be maintained via Xeroxing. Without additional staff members, one teacher assigned to 360 students would drown in the paperwork generated for the upkeep of the program. (Also, when would this teacher have the time to do lesson plans, grade papers, hold parent conferences, complete report cards, return messages, etc.?)

5. Fiscal Efficiency. Currently, there are nearly 600 students enrolled in a John Adams band, orchestra, or choir and the present teaching percentages total 2.6 FTE (Woo – 1.2, Blanchard – 1.0, McKeown – .2, Hamilton – .2). If those 600 students were enrolled in any other department, wouldn’t the district hire at least 5 or 6 teachers to teach those students? (600 divided by 5 class periods with an average class size of 25.)

In addition, three of the four feeder elementary schools to John Adams are Title I schools, meaning that there are many families at JAMS who cannot afford private instruction, which means that the individualized and small group instruction provided by the music aides is essential if students are to succeed and not become discouraged and quit.

I would be happy to offer any clarification should it be necessary. I know that the task of reducing the district’s financial deficit is terribly daunting, but I am very hopeful that you will continue to keep the students’ educational well-being in the forefront of your arguments and decisions. Please do not eliminate the middle school music aides (Item #51 – 2000/2001 Budget Reductions List [Level II]).

Thank you for your consideration.

Angela Woo

director, Instrumental Music

John Adams Middle School

The Malibu High School PTSA applauds all the committed parents, teachers, administrators and nurses who came out to support our children and their schools at the Malibu City Council meeting on Monday night. We especially would like to thank the bilingual families, who came out en masse with signs of support for our children. And what a beautiful sight it was to see all the Valentines sent to the council members, one from every student in Malibu. Thanks, Malibu!

We are extremely appreciative of the council members’ positive response to our request to provide funds to alleviate the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District budget crisis. We are looking forward to the establishment of an ongoing partnership with the city of Malibu and the school district.

The city of Santa Monica is preparing to support our schools and so should the city of Malibu. We are urging the city of Malibu to provide a one-time immediate grant of $150,000 (or approximately 1 percent of Malibu’s budget, the same percentage as Santa Monica is preparing to provide). We are also requesting a long-term commitment to our school district in the form of a permanent budget line item as the city of Santa Monica does. There is no better investment the city can make than investing in Malibu’s children and their education!

Let us clarify, we urge the City Council to act now to provide these funds, so that no teacher, principal, nurse, librarian, coach, custodian positions are cut. Please do not complicate this issue with the sale of school district property to the city of Malibu. It is an unrelated issue. Good schools are our community’s greatest asset. Please invest in Malibu’s future, now!

Cathleen Sands, MHS PTSA president

Karen Farer, MHS PTSA executive vice president

O’ you denizens of Malibu,

Who have structures built before —

Malibu became a City,

And our leaders declared war.

Don’t depend on age to help you,

Or the fact the building’s sound —

And though it goes back 20 years,

The politicians want it down!

They have to justify their jobs,

And make sure they’re in control —

Prove how heartless they can be,

And act without a Soul.

And you who thought that Cityhood

Would be the way to go —

Aren’t you sorry you didn’t listen,

To the ones who warned you so?

Be assured, our fearless leaders,

Have a great deal more in store —

As they act like anti-humans,

From a foreign shore.

J. M. Coldcastle

How is it possible a woman the magnitude of Sally Kirkland is lovelorn? The Golden Globe-winning actor, currently in two recurring television roles and starring on stage, is also an ordained minister, lecturer and activist.

Still, what she wouldn’t give to be with her life’s true love, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. And that’s not just fantasy.

Kirkland is probably best known for the film “Anna,” which earned her a 1987 Oscar nomination for Best Actress and her Golden Globe. She currently appears on WBTV’s “Felicity,” playing Professor Sherman, and as Barbara Parker on ABC’s “Wasteland.” Her current play, “The Powder Room Suite,” closes this weekend at West Hollywood’s Court Theatre.

Her resume reflects a long and massive body of work. She has appeared with nearly everyone in the business.

It’s also hard to believe this prodigiously energetic person relaxes, but she says she loves staring at the ocean from her Malibu home. Scorpios, she says, love to regenerate. But this day, she is in her “office,” a booth at a West Hollywood restaurant that she occupies hours a day, many days a week.

She wraps herself in a warm scarf, settles into the booth and orders mounds of comfort food that she doesn’t eat. Let’s begin with her connection to Malibu, she suggests. She first followed Dylan to Morningview Drive, invited to watch his recording sessions. He offered her a role in a film, but she had just signed elsewhere.

She flew with him as his date to a performance at the Astrodome, on an airplane with Ringo Starr, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Graham Nash. “He thought I could sing,” she recalls. “I told him no, but I’d dance. It was the most sensational chapter in my life. So much of it took place in Malibu, where I was cheer leading.”

She wrote “20 million” poems to Dylan — “I’m exaggerating,” she interjects — and then listened for answers in his songs.

There were other relationships. She married, but it broke up, and she moved into the seminary of the Church of The Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, in which she now ministers. Then she lived at the beach with a man 20 years her junior. “We talked for a split second about marriage. Then something went terribly wrong with the relationship.”

Kirkland came from old-line Philadelphia, where Kirkland Street is named for her family. Her grandfather disowned his Harvard-graduate son for marrying a working woman, a Vassar graduate. In her family, “There are generations of feminists as well as generations of blue bloods.”

They must have been thrilled when she acted, naked, on Broadway. “You can’t carry a gun on the naked body,” she professes. She was once jailed for a role with La Mama. “Where’s the activism in theater there was in the ’60s?” she wonders. “I want people to get angry and argue.”

Her mother, whom Kirkland describes as “scary” and “mannish” except at home, was the first woman editor of Life magazine. Kirkland says her home was filled with beautiful people. Always self-conscious, Kirkland underwent breast implant surgery. “In the name of wishful thinking, I had to look like Marilyn Monroe,” she says. The implants caused her numerous health ailments, and she now lectures about their dangers.

She appears onstage in Powder Room without makeup. “I wanted women to say, ‘Please, can we be proud of ourselves just the way we were born?’

“If I were to speak out as much as I want to, I couldn’t work in this town,” she adds.

She agreed to perform in The Powder Room Suite if she could add some of her own lines — giving “feminist” rhetoric to her characters. Of playwright Frank Strausser, she says, “He is a spirited enough man to allow Sally to say some things Sally wanted to say publicly.” Still, she is pleased with her dual roles, noting only one in 50 characters are written for women older than 40.

At age 5, she announced she wanted to be a saint. She was deemed a blasphemer. “So I said I would be a movie star.”

As a young girl, she danced with Anna Sokolow and Daniel Nagrin, breaking her ankle four times “trying to be Gwen Verdon.”

Kirkland decided on acting after she saw Ingrid Bergman in “Saint Joan.” “If you know that about me, the rest you can figure out,” she says.

She trained as an actor with Shelley Winters, living with the legend in New York and Los Angeles and learning about a concept called “dramedy.” “The audience never knows what you’ll do next, and you’ll surprise yourself.” David O. Selznick befriended her and warned her she would have no career until she was old enough to be a character actress. He told her, “Wrap up 300 credits. Just about that time, they’ll make you a star.” She sees herself taking the places of Geraldine Page and Jessica Tandy.

A lifetime member of The Actor’s Studio and a former faculty member of the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, Kirkland now enjoys giving acting and casting advice to young women. “Every actor should — I hate the word ‘should,’ but it would be nice if every actor learned yoga. Every actor should learn to breathe.” She also learned to fence, sing and play musical instruments.

Born a High Episcopalian, she tried Catholicism and Hinduism before joining her current church. “It includes Eastern and Western philosophy,” she says. “No soul is lost. If we take care of ourselves, we can take care of others.”

She teaches workshops on gratitude and forgiveness. “I do it selfishly. I want to remember to forgive those who hurt me. And gratitude. Not everyone has made it. Madeline Kahn just died.”

At this point in her life, she thought she would have a house with the picket fence, a husband and children, and more money. “And yet, I don’t have that because I always identified with Saint Joan. My work won’t stop until everyone gets a fair shake.”

As for Dylan, she says she wishes it would finally happen for them. She plays his music before her performances. “He’s my muse.” They last dated a year ago. “It hasn’t worked out, yet. I’ve been in love with him since my 20s. Maybe when we’re in our 90s.”

Sally Kirkland stars in “The Powder Room Suite,” closing this weekend at West Hollywood’s Court Theatre. Tel. 310.289.2999.

I am a sixth-grader at John Adams Middle School. Please, please, please don’t cut the middle school music aids. I can’t even explain how important they are to our music education. There are 94 students in my music class, and if my teacher, Ms. Woo, had to stop the whole class every time one person had a problem with their instrument, we would never learn anything. Our music aids, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. McKeown, help us when we have problems with our instruments, and can also take us away from class to practice separately when we are having a hard time with something. With them here, we can split up into sectionals for half of the class so that we get more help and attention, and then we come back and practice for the rest of class together. Our class is very concerned about the fact that you might cut item #51 and we have discussed it in class often. We are all concerned about this; my teacher and many of my classmates are also writing to you.

Thank you, and please take my opinion into consideration.

Riley Franks

Proposition 26 is the ballot measure which says 50.1 percent, not 35 percent, of voters should decide whether school bonds pass. Last week’s anti-26 writer believes facts he presented show California already spends too much educating its kids. First, he compared total U.S. education spending to other countries’ spending, but California’s funding is 41st out of 50 states, so the total US amount doesn’t tell us where California stands relative to other countries. The writer points out total U.S. education spending rose 200 percent over the last 30 years. Population and inflation rose; the computer was invented and globalization occurred. Spending should have risen. Unexamined statistics can create their own hyperbole and misunderstanding.

Moreover, it is unknown whether the writer’s spending figures are for operating costs, facilities costs or both. Proposition 26 only deals with facilities costs — a figure that should go up — if only because of class size reduction, which the state mandates but does not fully fund. Rather, it requires local school districts to match state funds — with bonds. The sole question posed by 26 is: “Is it fair that children, silent in our democracy through lack of voting power, must also suffer from having majority voices who do speak on their behalf, shouted down by a minority?”

The writer argues for minority rule, because bureaucrats often make terrible spending decisions. Minority rule does not reform bureaucracies, but 26 does. It contains provisions for increased scrutiny and accountability, for which the writer wisely called and may have been unaware 26 contained.

Nothing replaces vigilant citizen oversight. Santa Monica and Malibu have a devoted group of parents who fight for intelligent use of taxpayer money. Our school district is a manageable size; we can influence it. Yet, the writer focuses on L.A. Unified, one of the toughest to operate and worst run. It is an unpersuasive debating tactic to posit the worst example as the norm or a reason to deny all others. A basic tenet of democracy is that bad bureaucracies are best combated by strengthening majority rule, not defeating it.

Lastly, the writer says, defeat 26 and work towards a “new educational funding paradigm,” where schools compete for parents free to choose. If this means school vouchers, they were recently defeated in a statewide referendum. No matter, whatever the system, it would be funded by taxes and bonds, which require a vote. We’d still have to decide whether that vote would be majority or minority!

I chose to send my children to Webster public school, not private schools or other public schools available to me. I am involved in the way the writer advocates. I see principals, school board members and bureaucrats, listening to and being influenced by vocal parent groups, which are quite diverse and always seek increased community involvement.

Santa Monica/Malibu families already live in an educational world, though not utopian, where parent choice and voice make a difference. The main problem is lack of money to provide things parents believe children need. Urging schools to be competitive and parents to adopt school choice, while simultaneously arguing schools should not be allowed access to funds that would allow them to compete well and the majority’s choices regarding education should be ignored, is illogical.

Vote “yes” on 26. Allow the majority to deliver funds when and how children need them, without being derailed by a minority which so deeply distrusts government it would rather keep its money under the mattress than invest in the future of all our children.

Deirdre Roney