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      Bob Wall, Martial Arts Master Who Sparred With Bruce Lee, Dies at 82

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      He taught thousands of senseis how to run a dojo, all the while trading kicks onscreen with Lee and Chuck Norris.Bob Wall, a martial arts master who with quick business wits and even fleeter fists propelled disciplines like karate, aikido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu into the American mainstream, along the way making friends and sharing the screen with the likes of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, died on Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. He was 82.His wife, Lillian Wall, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.For the millions of fans devoted to 1970s martial arts movies, Mr. Wall was best known for his role in the 1973 film “Enter the Dragon,” in which, as the thug O’Hara, he torments a vengeful undercover agent named Lee, played by Mr. Lee.At 6 feet 1 inch tall, with a full tuft of hair and a scraggly beard, Mr. Wall towered over the wiry, diminutive Mr. Lee, who, in the film, nevertheless overpowers his adversary by kicking him to the ground and crushing his chest. It’s an indelibly grisly moment, and a sharp contrast to the close bond the two men shared in real life.They had met in 1963, at a kung fu demonstration in Los Angeles’s Chinatown neighborhood, where Mr. Wall had withstood the instructor’s blows without dropping his beer.“At that point reality hit that I’d blown this guy’s demo, so I started walking toward the door,” Mr. Wall recalled in a 2011 interview. “I saw this tough-looking guy walking toward me, so I said, ‘This guy, I’m gonna clock,’ and he walks up close to me and says, ‘Hey that was funny. I’m Bruce Lee!’”They ended up talking in the parking lot for three hours.Mr. Lee was still an unknown martial arts instructor in Oakland who, like Mr. Wall, was drawn to Los Angeles’s budding combat-sports scene. Mr. Wall was a student of another instructor, Mr. Norris, an Air Force veteran and martial arts champion.The three became fast friends, and in 1967 Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris went into business together, running a series of studios in the San Fernando Valley, a part of Los Angeles that two decades later would provide the setting for “The Karate Kid.”Martial arts was an exclusively male domain at the time, fought without padding and producing more than a few broken noses and cracked teeth. But entrepreneurs like Mr. Wall saw an opportunity to make studios more professional and family friendly. Through manuals and seminars that he took around the country, he taught thousands of aspiring senseis how to run a dojo.“There were a lot of people who would open a school and start teaching and it would all fall into place or not,” Roy Kurban, a taekwondo champion who was inspired by Mr. Wall to open his own studio in Fort Worth, Texas, said in a phone interview. “He built a business system.”Mr. Lee, meanwhile, had begun his steady rise to global stardom. An appearance at the 1964 International Karate Championships in Long Beach, where he demonstrated his signature moves like the two-finger push up and the one-inch punch, led him to a role as Kato, the sidekick on the 1960s TV show “The Green Hornet,” and later to a series of movie deals.From left, Chuck Norris, Mr. Lee and Mr. Wall. The three became fast friends and Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris ran a series of martial arts studios together.via Wall familyMartial arts movies were huge in Asia but largely unknown in the United States. Mr. Lee decided to change that, in part by incorporating roles for Black and white actors, including Mr. Wall, who won a part alongside Mr. Norris in Mr. Lee’s first major film released in America, “The Way of the Dragon” (1972).Mr. Wall could take a hit, which put him in good stead with Mr. Lee, who insisted on doing his own stunts and refused to pull punches during fight scenes. Mr. Wall recalled that before they started filming “Enter the Dragon,” Mr. Lee told him, “Bob, I wanna hit you, and I wanna hit you hard.”Even the broken bottles that O’Hara wields against Lee were real — which presented a problem when Mr. Lee, a perfectionist, insisted on shooting that part of the scene nine times, with Mr. Wall repeatedly falling back on shards of glass. At another point Mr. Lee kicked him so hard that he flew back into a row of extras, breaking a man’s arm.“It’s one thing to get hit that hard once or twice, but try it eight times in a row,” Mr. Wall said. “Let me tell you, about the fourth time, you know what’s coming, you’re going to get popped real hard, and you just have to say, ‘Hey, I’m here to do a job. Make it real.’”That commitment to combat vérité paid off. “Enter the Dragon,” made for just $850,000 (about $5.3 million in today’s dollars) grossed $350 million worldwide (about $2.2 billion today), making it one of the most profitable movies of all time. It helped establish martial arts as an indelible part of American pop culture.But Mr. Lee did not get to enjoy the success. He died, at 32, just before the film debuted, of undiagnosed swelling in his brain. By then he had begun filming “Game of Death,” featuring an iconic fight scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (the film, in which Mr. Wall also had a role, was released in 1978). And he was planning even more movies, including at least one with a prominent role for Mr. Wall, who would play a sidekick to Mr. Lee’s hero, a C.I.A. agent.“Hey Bob,” Mr. Wall recalled him saying a few weeks before his death, “you get to be a good guy in the next one!”Mr. Wall in 2008. Later in life, he found a second career in real estate as a residential and commercial developer.AlamyRobert Alan Wall was born on Aug. 22, 1939, in San Jose, Calif. His father, Ray Wall, worked in construction and his mother, Reva (Wingo) Wall, was a nurse.He was drawn to martial arts as a young teenager who had suffered beatings at the hands of his abusive, alcoholic father. He wrestled in high school and at San Jose State University, where he left without graduating to join the Army. After he was discharged, he moved to Los Angeles to begin his martial arts education under Mr. Norris.Mr. Wall held an advanced black belt in several disciplines, and he regularly placed first or second at competitions around the country in the late 1960s and early ’70s.After Mr. Lee’s death, he worked as a fight coordinator on several martial arts movies, including “Black Belt Jones” (1974), starring one of his protégés, Jim Kelly, one of the first Black karate champions. He also gave private lessons to celebrities interested in martial arts, including Steve McQueen and Elvis Presley.By the mid-1970s Mr. Norris had decided to go into acting full time, and he and Mr. Wall sold their business in 1975. Mr. Wall turned his attention to real estate, launching a second career as a residential and commercial developer. He didn’t leave the world of martial arts, though. In addition to writing books and teaching seminars, he had a long-running and very public beef with Steven Seagal, another martial arts expert turned action star.In a series of interviews in the mid-1980s, Mr. Seagal, who had taught aikido in Japan, insulted American martial arts, and Mr. Norris in particular. In response, Mr. Wall challenged him to a fight; they never came to blows, and eventually they worked it out, but Mr. Wall refused to watch any of Mr. Seagal’s movies.Mr. Wall also remained close friends with Mr. Norris. He took small roles in several of his movies and on the series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which starred Mr. Norris and ran from 1993 to 2001.It was just the right amount of fame for Mr. Wall.“I’m famous enough that people who know martial arts or know Bruce Lee films know me,” he said. “But I’m not so famous that I can’t walk down a street. I can go in and out of a restaurant. I don’t lose my privacy.” More

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      From a Burger King to a Concert Hall, With Help From Frank Gehry

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      The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s ambitious new home for its youth orchestra is the latest sign of the changing fortunes of Inglewood.INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Noemi Guzman, a 17-year-old high school senior, usually has to find a corner someplace to practice violin — the instrument she calls “quite literally, the love of my life.” But the other Saturday morning, Guzman joined a string ensemble practicing on a stage here that is nearly as grand and acoustically tuned as the place she dreams of performing one day: Walt Disney Concert Hall, the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.“This is beautiful,” Guzman said during a break from a practice session at the Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center, her voice muffled by a mask. “To have a space you can call your own. It is our space. It is created for us.”Inglewood, a working-class city three miles from Los Angeles Airport that was once plagued by crime and poverty, is in the midst of a high-profile, largely sports-driven economic transformation: The 70,000-seat SoFi Stadium, which opened here last year, now the home of the Rams and the Chargers, will be the site of the Super Bowl in February and will be used in the 2028 Summer Olympics. Construction is underway on an 18,000-seat arena for the Los Angeles Clippers, the basketball team.But the transformation of Inglewood, historically one of this region’s largest Black communities, is also showcased by the 25,000-square foot building where Guzman was practicing the other morning. The building, which opened in October, is the first permanent home for the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, and is the product of a collaboration involving two of the most prominent cultural figures in Los Angeles: Gustavo Dudamel, the artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which oversees YOLA, and Frank Gehry, the architect who designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.Mario Raven, right, led students in a singing and music reading class: “Here we go — one, two, three!”Rozette Rago for The New York Times“This was an old bank,” said Dudamel, who has long been friends with Gehry, a classical music lover who can often be spotted in the seats of the hall he designed. “Then it was a Burger King — yes, a Burger King! Frank saw the potential. What we have there is a stage of the same dimensions as Disney Hall.”The $23.5 million project is a high-water mark for YOLA, the youth music education program that was founded here 15 years ago under Dudamel and that he calls the signature achievement of his tenure. It serves 1,500 students, from ages 5 to 18, who come to study, practice and perform music on instruments provided by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was patterned after El Sistema, the youth music education program in Venezuela where Dudamel studied violin as a boy.And it is one of the most vivid examples of efforts by major arts organizations across the country to bring youth education programs out into communities, rather than concentrating them in city centers or urban arts districts. “You can’t just do it downtown,” said Karen Mack, the executive director of LA Commons, a community arts organization. “If you really want it to have the impact that’s possible with that program you have to bring it out to the community. It has to be accessible.”Gehry called that idea the “whole game.”“It becomes not the community having to go to Disney Hall,” he said, “but the Disney Hall coming to the community.”For Inglewood, the new YOLA Center is a notable addition to what has been a transformative wave of stadium and arena construction, which has spurred a wave of commercial and housing development (and with that, concerns about the gentrification that often follows this kind of development). Until 2016, Inglewood was known mainly as the home of the Forum, the 45-year-old arena where the Lakers and Kings once played before moving to what was known as the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, and Hollywood Park Racetrack, which closed to make way for SoFi stadium.Some instruments cannot be played through masks; those lessons are often held outdoors these days.Rozette Rago for The New York Times“We’ve never been known for cultural enrichment,” said James T. Butts Jr., the mayor of Inglewood. “That is why this is so important to us. What’s happening now is a rounding out of society and culture: we will no longer be known for just sports and entertainment.”Even before Beckmen Center opened, YOLA could be a heady experience for a school-age student contemplating a career in music. Guzman, who joined the youth orchestra seven years ago, has played bow to bow with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under the baton of Dudamel. YOLA musicians have joined the Philharmonic at Disney Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and on tours to places including Tokyo, Seoul and Mexico City.Christine Kiva, 15, who started playing cello when she was 7, is now studying with cellists from the Philharmonic. “It’s helped me develop my sound as a cellist, and work on a repertoire for cello,” she said.Inglewood is the fifth economically stressed neighborhood where the youth organization has set up an outpost. But in the first four locations, it shares space with other organizations, forced to fit in without a full-fledged performing space or practice rooms. “We were making the project work in spaces that weren’t specifically designed for music,” said Chad Smith, the chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.Now, the words “Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center,” named after the philanthropists and vineyard owners who made the largest donation to the project, stretch out across the front of the renovated building overlooking South La Brea Avenue and the old downtown. Dudamel has an office there. Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic regularly show up to observe practice and work with students.This building has plenty of rooms for students to practice. There are 272 seats on benches in the main hall, which can be retracted into a wall, allowing the room to be divided in half so two orchestras can practice at once. The acoustics were designed by Nagata Acoustics, which also designed the acoustics at Disney Hall.YOLA, the youth music education program founded 15 years ago, now serves 1,500 students from ages 5 to 18.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesThe building had been owned by Inglewood, which sold it to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “When we first walked into it, it still had the greasy smell of a Burger King,” said Elsje Kibler-Vermaas, the vice president for learning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Gehry, who had worked with Dudamel on projects before — including designs for the opera “Don Giovanni” in 2012­ — agreed to take a look at the building, a former bank that opened in 1965.He said that when they brought him there, he was struck by the low ceilings from its days as a bank.“I said, ‘is it possible to make an intervention?’” recalled Gehry who, even at 92, is involved in a series of design projects across Los Angeles.By cutting a hole in its ceiling and putting in a skylight, and cutting a hole in the floor to make the hall deeper, he was able to create a performance space with a 45-foot-high ceiling, close to what Disney Hall has. “The kids will have a real experience of playing in that kind of hall,” he said.That turned out to be a $2 million conversation; the total price, including buying the building and renovating it, jumped from $21 million to $23.5 million to cover the additional cost of raising the roof, installing a skylight and lowering the floor.The building was bustling the other day. Students had come for afternoon music instruction from elementary schools, most in Inglewood, and after snacks — bananas, apples, granola bars — they raced to their lessons in reading music, percussion and how to follow a conductor.“Pay attention!” said Mario Raven, leading his students in a singing and music reading class. “Here we go — one, two, three!”The brass players were outdoors because of Covid-19 concerns (it’s hard to play a French horn while wearing a mask). As planes flew overhead, they performed High Hopes by Panic! at the Disco, suggesting that a youth orchestra need not live by Brahms and Beethoven alone.Students typically sit through 12 to 18 hours a week of instruction for 44 weeks a year. About a quarter of them end up majoring in music. Smith said that was reflected in the broader aspirations for the program. “Our goal wasn’t we were going to train the greatest musicians in the world,” he said. “Our goal was we were going to provide music education to develop students’ self-esteem through music.”Dudamel said his experience as a boy in Venezuela had been formative in bringing the program to Los Angeles. “I grew up in an orchestra where they called us, in the press, the ‘orchestra without a ceiling,’” he said in a Zoom interview from France, where he is now also the music director of the Paris Opera. “Because we didn’t have a place where to rehearse. We have materialized a dream where young people have the best things they can have. A good hall. Great teachers.”“Look, this is not a regular music school,” he added. “We don’t pretend be a conservatory. Maybe they will not be musicians in the future. But our goal is that they have music as part of their life, because it brings beauty, it brings discipline through art.” More

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      Don Maddox, Last Survivor of a Pioneering Country Band, Dies at 98

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      In the 1940s, he joined with his three brothers and his sister, Rose, to make exuberant music that anticipated rockabilly and rock ’n’ roll.Don Maddox, the last surviving member of the Maddox Brothers & Rose, a lively sibling band that helped give rise to West Coast honky-tonk, rockabilly and early rock ’n’ roll, died on Sept. 12 in an adult care facility in Medford, Ore. He was 98.His death, which was not widely reported at the time, was confirmed by his wife of 11 years, Barbara Harvey-Maddox, who said he had been suffering from dementia.Hailed in the 1940s and ’50s as America’s “most colorful hillbilly band,” the Maddox Brothers & Rose were renowned for their exuberant fusion of barnyard twang and gutbucket R&B, as well as for their uproarious antics onstage. The fringed, embroidered costumes they wore — designed by the Hollywood rodeo tailor Nathan Turk — were equally dazzling, a harbinger of the Western resplendence sported by Buck Owens in the 1960s and later by Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers.Mr. Owens’s lean, hard-driving Bakersfield sound owed a debt to the Maddoxes’ rollicking hillbilly boogie, propelled as it was by the instinctive thwacking by Mr. Maddox’s eldest brother, Fred, on upright bass. The early rockabilly of Elvis Presley was also influenced, notably in the slapping technique of his bass player, Bill Black, who idolized Fred Maddox.The Maddox sound “was born from that slap bass,” Mr. Maddox said of his brother Fred’s style in an interview for Ken Burns’s multipart PBS documentary “Country Music” in 2019. “Fred didn’t know what the notes were. He just slapped it for rhythm.“We didn’t call it ‘rockabilly,’” Mr. Maddox went on. “We called it ‘Okie boogie.’”Mr. Maddox played fiddle, in a sawing down-home mode, and provided backing vocals; his sister, Rose, was the lead vocalist. The other members were his older brothers Cliff and Cal on guitars and his younger brother, Henry, on mandolin.Rose Maddox died in 1998, Cliff in 1949, Cal in 1968, Henry in 1974 and Fred in 1992.The account of how the Maddoxes made it to California rivaled the story of their rise within the ranks of West Coast country music — a Depression-era narrative as emblematic as “The Grapes of Wrath.”In 1933, forced by drought to abandon their life of subsistence farming in rural Alabama, Mr. Maddox and his family — his sharecropper parents, Charlie and Lula (Smith) Maddox, and his five siblings — headed west, hitchhiking and riding in the boxcars of freight trains in search of a better life. Mr. Maddox was 10.The family picked fruit in migrant labor camps in California, where they squatted in the large concrete drainage cylinders found in construction yards in the industrial part of Oakland known as “Pipe City.”Quickly fed up with their hardscrabble life, Fred Maddox persuaded the owner of a furniture store to sponsor regular performances by him and his brothers on a radio station in Modesto. The only proviso was that the band, which at the time included only Fred, Cliff and Cal, feature a female singer, a role fulfilled with preternatural command by the 11-year-old Rose.Two years later, having changed their name from the Alabama Outlaws to the Maddox Brothers & Rose, the group won a competition at the California State Fair that included a two-year contract to perform on radio shows broadcast on KFBK in Sacramento. The next year, Mr. Maddox joined the band — managed, with the strictest of discipline, by the siblings’ mother, known as Mama Maddox.Don Maddox in performance at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in 2013. He had come out of retirement a year earlier after many years as a cattle rancher.Erika Goldring/Getty ImagesDon Maddox was born Kenneth Chalmer Maddox on Dec. 7, 1922, in Boaz, Ala., in the foothills of Appalachia.As a member of the family band from 1940 on, he toured with his siblings and appeared on the popular recordings they made for the Four Star and Columbia labels in the 1940s and ’50s, including their waltzing rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Philadelphia Lawyer.”Other hits, like “Whoa Sailor,” “(Pay Me) Alimony” and “Hangover Blues,” were sung from his sister’s perspective and exuded not just womanly independence and pluck but an incipient feminist consciousness as well.In 1956, after more than a decade of success touring and recording (interrupted only by the military service of Mr. Maddox and his brothers), the act broke up. Rose hired Cal as her accompanist and pursued a solo career. The remaining brothers went on without them, only to call it quits two years later — because, according to Don Maddox, they lacked the talent to make a go of it on their own.For his part, Mr. Maddox went back to school to study agriculture and bought a 300-acre ranch in Ashland, Ore., where he raised Angus cattle for more than five decades.In 2012, Mr. Maddox came out of retirement to participate in an exhibition at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville commemorating the Bakersfield sound that he and his siblings had helped establish. He went on to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, on the singer Marty Stuart’s television show and at festivals, including a headlining engagement in Las Vegas.His wife is his only immediate survivor. His previous wife, Nila Bussey Maddox, died in 2002.Besides playing the fiddle and singing backing vocals with his siblings, Mr. Maddox provided the comedic impetus for the group’s gag-laden stage show, particularly through his “Don Juan” persona.“I was shy around girls, so I took Don Juan as a stage name because the Sons of the Pioneers had a song called ‘Don Juan of Mexico,’” he said in a 2008 interview with The Mail Tribune of Medford.“I thought that if I learned that song, the girls would think I was a Don Juan and talk to me. Of course, it didn’t work.” More

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      Rose Lee Maphis, Early Star of Country Music TV, Dies at 98

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      She and her husband, Joe (“Mr. and Mrs. Country Music”), helped give birth to a West Coast music scene later associated with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.NASHVILLE — Rose Lee Maphis, the singer and guitarist who, with her husband, Joe, was a mainstay of the early years of live country music television, died on Tuesday at her home here. She was 98.Her son Jody said the cause was kidney failure.Billed as “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music,” the Maphises rose to prominence in the 1950s as members of the cast of “Town Hall Party,” a pioneering TV barn dance seen on KTTV in Los Angeles. On the strength of Ms. Maphis’s exuberant stage presence and her husband’s dazzling guitar work, the couple — often in matching Western-wear suits — helped give birth to the unfettered West Coast country music scene later associated with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.The Maphises achieved early acclaim with “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music),” a twanging barroom lament released by Okeh Records in 1953.“Dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music/It’s the only kind of life you’ll ever understand,” Mr. Maphis (pronounced MAY-fiss) sang, admonishing the song’s wayward wife as Ms. Maphis added sympathetic harmonies on the chorus. “Dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music/You’ll never make a wife to a home-loving man.”“Dim Lights” became a honky-tonk standard and has been recorded by Conway Twitty, Flatt & Scruggs, the New Riders of the Purple Sage and others. Though credited as one of its writers, Ms. Maphis always insisted that the composition was solely her husband’s. He wrote the song, she said, while driving home one night from Bakersfield’s renowned — and notoriously smoky — Blackboard Cafe.The Maphises recorded throughout the 1950s and ’60s, but given their commitment to performing on regularly scheduled broadcasts, they never really had the chance to promote their releases at radio stations or in live venues across the country. Instead they concentrated on TV and radio work, appearing with country stalwarts like Tex Ritter and Merle Travis and rockabilly insurgents like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson.The couple met when they were both appearing on the WRVA radio show “Old Dominion Barn Dance” in Richmond, Va., in 1948 and had been dating by the time they moved to California in 1951, at the urging of Mr. Travis. They married when Mr. Maphis’s divorce from his first wife became final in 1952.The Maphises later recorded with their son Dale. But they had more success on television than they did on records.Moving to the West Coast proved inspiring for them both. They were especially energized by the differences between the dance halls of California and the venues they had played in the East.“There was a real separation between the music on the West Coast and in Nashville,” Ms. Maphis said in a 1998 interview with Vintage Guitar magazine. “On the West Coast, people danced, and bands had drummers.”“All the people getting up and dancing while you were performing, that was strange to us,” she elaborated. “West of the Mississippi, people danced. East of the Mississippi, they watched and listened.”Doris Helen Schetrompf was born on Dec. 29, 1922, in Baltimore. Her parents, Stanley and Margaret (Schriever) Schetrompf, were farmers.Doris began playing the guitar at 15; two years later, she was hired to play on a local radio show in Hagerstown, Md., where she grew up. She acquired her nickname there, after the show’s announcer introduced her as “Rose of the Mountains” because of her habit of wearing flowers in her hair.After graduating from high school in 1941, she attended business college, worked various jobs and teamed up with three other young women to form the Saddle Sweethearts, a Western-style group that toured with Gene Autry and the Carter Family.Despite their relative success, the Sweethearts had all but called it quits when Ms. Maphis and another member of the group were invited to join “Old Dominion Barn Dance,” where Mr. Maphis was a founding member. Before long he and she had moved to the West Coast and joined its burgeoning live country music TV scene.Known as the “King of the Strings,” Mr. Maphis, who often played a double-neck Mosrite guitar (which he had helped design), also became a first-call session musician. He appeared on recordings by Rick Nelson and on the soundtracks of movies like “God’s Little Acre” and “Thunder Road,” both in 1958.The couple had three children between 1954 and 1957, beginning a period of domesticity that by 1968 would have them moving to Nashville, where they began performing at the Grand Ole Opry.By the early ’70s Ms. Maphis had all but dropped out of the music business. She eventually took a job as a seamstress at the theme park Opryland USA, where her youngest son, Dale, was working as a musician.Besides her son Jody, who is also a musician, Ms. Maphis is survived by her daughter, Lorrie Harris, and a granddaughter. Her son Dale died in 1989 in an automobile accident. Mr. Maphis died of lung cancer in 1986 at 65.In the early 2010s, after five decades out of the limelight, Ms. Maphis volunteered as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Not long after she began, the museum mounted an exhibition on the Bakersfield Sound that she and her husband had helped shape, including a video of them singing “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke.”Few of the museum’s visitors made the connection between their host and the exhibit, which also included Ms. Maphis’s Martin D-18 guitar, until one female patron asked her about it.“She came back downstairs when she was through with her tour,” Ms. Maphis explained to The Hagerstown Herald-Mail. “She asked, ‘The guitar that’s up there, is that your guitar?’“She saw my name tag,” Ms. Maphis went on. “I told her ‘Yes.’ She was the only one who ever did that.” More

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      Labor Board Looking Into Complaints at Sean Penn Vaccination Site

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      Two online commenters complained of working 18-hour days and not getting food from Krispy Kreme or Subway. Penn saw “narcissism” and “betrayal.”A nonprofit group co-founded by Sean Penn is facing a National Labor Relations Board hearing over an accusation that he implicitly threatened employees after complaints about long hours and the food served during a Covid-19 vaccination effort.In January the group, Community Organized Relief Effort, played a key role in an operation to administer vaccines in a parking lot of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.The work drew praise, but an anonymous online comment posted in response to a New York Times article late that month about the vaccinations said that employees were working up to 18 hours a day. A second comment, also anonymous, said there had been a lack of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Subway sandwiches — food described by the Times report as being at the site.Soon, CORE employees were sent a long, impassioned email by Penn. He wrote that he was grateful for their work and mindful of his responsibilities in “the race against mutations and the fight against the current strains of Covid-19.”He also appeared to suggest that the online commenters were guilty of “reckless narcissism” and “broad betrayal.”And Penn proposed that those who might feel inclined to gripe online amid a pandemic ought to simply leave the group instead.“Any of us who might find themselves predisposed to a culture of complaint, have a much simpler avenue than broad-based cyber whining,” he wrote. “It’s called quitting.”A labor lawyer in Los Angeles read the message after it was published, in early February, along with an accompanying article, by The Los Angeles Times. That lawyer, Daniel B. Rojas, said Penn’s remarks struck him as unlawful and that he quickly filed a charge with the N.L.R.B. The N.L.R.B. process calls for a charge to be followed by an investigation, which can lead to a complaint or a dismissal.In this instance, the N.L.R.B. issued a complaint, dated Oct. 25, saying Penn’s email violated federal labor law. Penn had, the complaint added, “impliedly threatened” employees with reprisals or discharge.A hearing before an administrative law judge has been scheduled for January.A lawyer for CORE and for Penn said that “on principle and merit,” both had rejected a settlement offer from the N.L.R.B. that did not involve any fine or monetary payment, and will “vigorously contest and fight” the charge.“Despite its utter lack of legal merit, the N.L.R.B.’s General Counsel and Regional Director have decided to waste federal resources and taxpayer dollars by filing an ill‐advised and meritless lawsuit, even as CORE continues its groundbreaking work,” a statement from the lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, said. “The N.L.R.B.’s actions to distract CORE from its crucial mission for a case where no employees were harmed, are shameful.”In May, Rosengart and two colleagues sent a letter to the N.L.R.B. saying the complaint about long hours was false and that charges by Rojas were “utterly frivolous” and should be dismissed. Penn’s email, the lawyers added, was “a motivational rallying cry.”The N.L.R.B. general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, said in a statement on Thursday: “Although CORE engages in important and admirable work, like all employers, it must respect the right of its employees under the National Labor Relations Act to engage in protected concerted activities, such as discussing matters of mutual concern with one another and bringing workplace concerns to the public, federal agencies, or other third parties.”This week, Rojas explained his motive in filing the charge, writing in an email: “It’s neither selfish nor un-American to discuss your wages or working conditions with the public.”.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}.css-1in8jot{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1in8jot{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1in8jot:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1in8jot{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}What to Know About Covid-19 Booster ShotsThe F.D.A. has authorized booster shots for millions of recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna recipients who are eligible for a booster include people 65 and older, and younger adults at high risk of severe Covid-19 because of medical conditions or where they work. Eligible Pfizer and Moderna recipients can get a booster at least six months after their second dose. All Johnson & Johnson recipients will be eligible for a second shot at least two months after the first.Yes. The F.D.A. has updated its authorizations to allow medical providers to boost people with a different vaccine than the one they initially received, a strategy known as “mix and match.” Whether you received Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or Pfizer-BioNTech, you may receive a booster of any other vaccine. Regulators have not recommended any one vaccine over another as a booster. They have also remained silent on whether it is preferable to stick with the same vaccine when possible.The C.D.C. has said the conditions that qualify a person for a booster shot include: hypertension and heart disease; diabetes or obesity; cancer or blood disorders; weakened immune system; chronic lung, kidney or liver disease; dementia and certain disabilities. Pregnant women and current and former smokers are also eligible.The F.D.A. authorized boosters for workers whose jobs put them at high risk of exposure to potentially infectious people. The C.D.C. says that group includes: emergency medical workers; education workers; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing workers; corrections workers; U.S. Postal Service workers; public transit workers; grocery store workers.Yes. The C.D.C. says the Covid vaccine may be administered without regard to the timing of other vaccines, and many pharmacy sites are allowing people to schedule a flu shot at the same time as a booster dose.By many measures, CORE’s pandemic work has been a success. The group, which Penn co-founded after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, has provided free coronavirus testing in California and beyond. At Dodger stadium, CORE assisted the Los Angeles Fire Department, which led an operation that administered nearly 56,000 vaccinations in its first nine days.The description of the parking-lot scene in The Times article in late January included: “There is Krispy Kreme for breakfast and Subway for lunch (the fruit on the tables is for poking with syringes during training sessions). At the trailers marked ‘Vaccine Draw,’ runners elbow past Mr. Penn, slide their empty coolers inside and await a fresh batch of syringes.”Among 150 comments in response to the story were the two that purported to come from CORE workers. One, attributed to “CORE staff,” referred to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, writing: “We have staff working 18 hour days, 6 days a week,” adding: “This is an OSHA violation.”A second commenter, “staff #2,” wrote: “We do NOT get krispy kreme for breakfast. In fact, we usually DON’T get breakfast, just coffee,” that commenter wrote. “And the lunch is NOT subway. It’s the same old lettuce wraps every day. It’s free lunch for staff/volunteers so I’m not complaining but still … not subway.”The day after the article ran, Penn’s message addressed to “All CORE Staff” went out, citing “a pair of highly visible comments on a major news outlet’s platform.” He began by commending CORE workers and wrote that he is consumed with the fight against Covid: “I awaken pre-dawn and pass out post-midnight every morning and every night, pulling at my hair and pounding pavement.”Penn wrote that CORE has strong complaint procedures and complies with OSHA regulations, but also warned against “obscene critiques” and stated that “valuable, organized response is most vulnerable to destruction from within.”And although he wrote that he had “taken counsel” and would refrain from using certain language, Penn left little doubt about his feelings toward the commenters.“And to whoever authored these,” he wrote, “understand that in every cell of my body is a vitriol for the way your actions reflect so harmfully upon your brothers and sisters in arms.” More

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      Why the Baby on Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ Album Is Suing Now

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      Spencer Elden, 30, says Nirvana engaged in child pornography when the band used a picture of him naked on the cover of the breakthrough album.Spencer Elden was 4 months old when he was photographed by a family friend in 1991 drifting naked in a pool.The picture, taken at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, Calif., would be used that year for the cover of “Nevermind,” Nirvana’s seminal second album that helped define Generation X and rocketed the Seattle band to international fame.In the decades that followed, Mr. Elden appeared to celebrate his part in the classic cover, recreating the moment for the album’s 10th, 17th, 20th and 25th anniversaries, though not naked.“It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember,” he said in 2016 in an interview with The New York Post, in which he posed holding the album cover at 25.Now, however, Mr. Elden, 30, has filed a federal lawsuit against the estate of Kurt Cobain, the musician’s former bandmates, David Grohl and Krist Novoselic, and Mr. Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, among other parties. He claimed that they, along with Geffen Records, which released “Nevermind,” profited from his naked image. It is one of the best-selling records of all time, with at least 30 million copies sold worldwide.“Defendants knowingly produced, possessed, and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer, and they knowingly received value in exchange for doing so,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday in federal court in California.Mr. Elden suffered “permanent harm” because of his association with the album, including emotional distress and a “lifelong loss of income-earning capacity.” The lawsuit did not provide details about the losses and said they would be disclosed at trial.Mr. Elden, an artist living in Los Angeles County, has gone to therapy for years to work through how the album cover affected him, said Maggie Mabie, one of his lawyers.“He hasn’t met anyone who hasn’t seen his genitalia,” she said. “It’s a constant reminder that he has no privacy. His privacy is worthless to the world.”The lawsuit said that Mr. Elden is seeking $150,000 from each of the 15 people and companies named in the complaint, including Kurt Weddle, the photographer who took the picture. Mr. Weddle did not respond to messages requesting comment.The photo of Mr. Elden was picked from among dozens of pictures of babies Mr. Weddle photographed for the album cover, which Mr. Cobain envisioned showing a baby underwater.Mr. Weddle paid Mr. Elden’s parents $200 for the picture, which was later altered to show the baby chasing a dollar, dangling from a fishhook.“They were trying to create controversy because controversy sells,” Ms. Mabie said. “The point was not just to create a menacing image but to cross the line and they did so in a way that exposed Spencer so that they could profit off of it.”She said her client sometimes agreed when the band, media outlets and fans asked him to recreate the photo as an adult, but he eventually realized that this only resulted in the “image of him as a baby being further exploited.”The representatives for Mr. Cobain’s estate did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Representatives for Mr. Grohl, Ms. Love, and Geffen Records, which is now part of Universal Music Group, did not respond to messages.Mr. Elden, who declined to comment on his suit, said in a short documentary in 2015 that the album cover had “opened doors” for him. For example, he worked with Shepard Fairey, the artist who was sued by The Associated Press for using an image of Barack Obama for his piece “Hope.”Over the years, he has expressed ambivalence about the cover.“It’d be nice to have a quarter for every person that has seen my baby penis,” he said in a New York Post interview in 2016.In a different interview that year, he said he was angry that people still talked about it.“Recently I’ve been thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody?’ I didn’t really have a choice,” Mr. Elden said to GQ Australia.He said that his feelings about the cover began to change “just a few months ago, when I was reaching out to Nirvana to see if they wanted to be part of my art show.”Mr. Elden said he was referred to managers and lawyers.“Why am I still on their cover if I’m not that big of a deal?” he said.Ms. Mabie said that Mr. Elden has long felt discomfort over the images and had expressed it in even earlier interviews when he was teenager.“Mr. Elden never consented to the use of this image or the display of these images,” she said. “Even though he recreated the images later on in life, he was clothed and he was an adult and these were very different circumstances.”Ms. Mabie said his parents never authorized consent for how the images would be used.She noted that Mr. Cobain once suggested putting a sticker over the baby’s genitals after there was pushback to the idea for the cover.The performer, who died in 1994, said the sticker should read: “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.”Mr. Elden is “asking for Nirvana to do what Nirvana should have done 30 years ago and redact the images of his genitalia from the album cover,” Ms. Mabie said.This lawsuit is not a typical child pornography case, said Mary Graw Leary, a professor at the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America.“Nudity of a child alone is not the definition of pornography,” she said. “The typical child pornography that is being seen in law enforcement and pursued in the courts can be violent. The children are young and it is very graphic.”But there are factors under federal law that allow a judge or a jury to determine whether a photo of a minor “constitutes a lascivious exhibition of the genitals,” including if they were the focal point of a photo, Professor Graw Leary said.That part of the law “gives a bit more discretion to the court,” she said. “It’s not a case with easy answers.”Mr. Elden’s past comments about the cover should not undermine his current claim that he was a victim of child pornography, she added. The law does not pick between children who immediately denounce their abusers and children who initially were dismissive about what happened to them, she said.“We don’t want to be in a position where we’re only going to consider one case criminal because in the other, the child didn’t think it was a big deal at the time,” Professor Graw Leary said. “We don’t only protect certain kids.” More

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      ‘Bring Your Own Brigade’ Review: Some Say the World Will End in Fire

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      In her new documentary, Lucy Walker looks at California’s apocalyptic fires and finds more than the usual smoke and politics.A few times a year, I pull out our HEPA filter and begin reassuring worried friends and family members that, no, the city of Los Angeles, where I live, isn’t burning — or at least not yet. The air quality here is almost always poor, of course, but I tend to switch on the air filter only when the smoke comes, filling the basin and darkening the sky.“The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself,” Joan Didion wrote in 1967. It was two years after the Watts uprising, but Didion wasn’t writing about race and reckoning, she was creating a poetically apocalyptic image of the city and, by extension, California. Decades later, she returned to the topic, using a phrase — “fire season” — that now feels obsolete. In the age of enduring drought and climate change, the wildfires never seem to go out in the West, where so many burned in July that the smoke reached the East Coast.In “Bring Your Own Brigade,” the director Lucy Walker doesn’t simply look at the fires; she investigates and tries to understand them. It’s a tough, smart, impressive movie, and one of its virtues is that Walker, a British transplant to Los Angeles, doesn’t seem to have figured it all out before she started shooting. She comes across as open, curious and rightly concerned, but her approach — the way she looks and listens, and how she shapes the material — gives the movie the quality of discovery. (She’s also pleasantly free of the boosterism or the smug hostility that characterizes so much coverage of California.)Specific and universal, harrowing and hopeful, “Bring Your Own Brigade” opens on a world in flames. It’s the present day and everywhere — in Australia, Greece, the United States — fires are burning. Ignited by lightning strikes, downed power lines and a long, catastrophic history of human error, fire is swallowing acres by the mile, destroying homes and neighborhoods, and killing every living thing in its path. It’s terrifying and, if you can make it past the movie’s heartbreaking early images, most notably of a piteously singed and whimpering koala, you soon understand that your terror is justified.To tell the story of this global conflagration, Walker has narrowed in on California, turning her sights on a pair of megafires that began burning at opposite ends of the state on Nov. 8, 2018. (There was also a mass shooting that same day.) One started in Malibu, the popular if modestly populated (about 12,000 people) beach city that snakes along 21 miles of the state’s southern coastline and runs adjacent to a major highway; the other, deadlier fire ignited near Paradise, a town in a lushly, alarmingly forested pocket of Northern California and which, at the time, had more than double Malibu’s population.The contrasts between the areas prove instructive, as do their similarities. As Walker explains, Paradise is tucked into a Republican-leaning part of the state (though its county went for Joe Biden), while Malibu sits in reliably blue Los Angeles County. In 2019, the median property value in Paradise was $223,400 (per the website Data USA); in Malibu, it was $2 million, the city’s Gidget-era surf shacks supplanted by mansions ringed with imported palm trees and incongruously bright green lawns. But, as Walker finds, despite their demographic differences, each area has a history of going up in flames.Drawing on both archival and original footage — including some extremely distressing cellphone imagery and 911 calls — Walker is on the ground soon after the infernos erupt, riding shotgun with a fire battalion chief in Southern California and interviewing residents who managed to get out of Paradise alive. She jumps around in time a bit, shifting forward and back as she surveys the terrain, fills in the backdrop and introduces a range of survivors, heroes, scientists and activists. She seeks answers and keeps seeking, building on regional contrasts to create a larger global picture. (Three cinematographers shot the movie and three editors seamlessly pieced it together.)The story Walker tells is deeply troubling and often infuriating, and stretches back past 1542, the year that the Iberian explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo dropped anchor in an inlet now known as the Los Angeles harbor region. He named the area La Bahia de las Fumas, or the Bay of Smokes. For thousands of years, native peoples up and down the West Coast had built campfires, but also used fire to productively manage the land. In the centuries since, fire management has come to mean fire suppression at any cost. The problem is, as Walker methodically details, fire suppression isn’t working: The top six largest California wildfires in the past 89 years have all happened since 2018.That’s bleak, but I’m grateful to Walker for not leaving me feeling entirely hopeless about the future of my home and — because this movie is fundamentally about our planet — yours as well. Climate change is here, there’s no question. But, she argues, we can do much more than curl up in a fetal position. The problem, as always, is people. And when, a year after Paradise burned, residents in a meeting complain about proposed fire codes that may well save their lives in the next conflagration, you may shake your head, aghast. Human beings have a disastrous habit of ignoring our past, but Lucy Walker wants us to know that there’s no ignoring the fires already destroying our future.Bring Your Own BrigadeRated R for upsetting images and audio of people trapped by fire. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Testing Britney Spears: Restoring Rights Can Be Rare and Difficult

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      To get out of conservatorship, the pop star will likely have to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, an uneasy melding of legal standards and mental health criteria.Her voice quaking with anger and despair, the pop star Britney Spears has asked repeatedly in court to be freed from the conservatorship that has controlled her money and personal life for 13 years. What’s more, she asked the judge to sever the arrangement without making her undergo a psychological evaluation.It’s a demand that legal experts say is unlikely to be granted. The mental health assessment is usually the pole star in a constellation of evidence that a judge considers in deciding whether to restore independence.Its underlying purpose is to determine whether the conditions that led to the imposition of the conservatorship have stabilized or been resolved.The evaluation process, which uneasily melds mental health criteria with legal standards, illustrates why the exit from strict oversight is difficult and rare. State laws are often ambiguous. And their application can vary from county to county, judge to judge, case to case.Isn’t Ms. Spears’s artistic and financial success proof she is self-sufficient?Yes and no. A judge looks for what, in law, is called “capacity.” The term generally refers to benchmarks in a person’s functional and cognitive ability as well as their vulnerability to harm or coercion.Under California law, which governs Ms. Spears’s case, a person deemed to have capacity can articulate risks and benefits in making decisions about medical care, wills, marriage and contracts (such as hiring a lawyer), and can feed, clothe and shelter themselves.Annette Swain, a Los Angeles psychologist who does neuropsychological assessments, said that because someone doesn’t always show good judgment, it doesn’t mean they lack capacity. “We all can make bad decisions at many points in our lives,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we should have our rights taken away.”Even so, Ms. Spears’s professional and financial successes do not directly speak to whether she has regained “legal mental capacity,” which she was found to lack in 2008, after a series of public breakdowns, breathlessly captured by the media. At that time, a judge ruled that Ms. Spears, who did not appear in court, was so fragile that a conservatorship was warranted.Judges authorize conservatorships usually for one of three broad categories: a severe psychiatric breakdown; a chronic, worsening condition like dementia; or an intellectual or physical disability that critically impairs function.Markers indicating a person has regained capacity appear to set a low bar. But in practice, the bar can be quite high.“‘Restored to capacity’ before the psychotic break? Or the age the person is now? That expression is fraught with importing value judgment,” said Robert Dinerstein, a disability rights law professor at American University.Records detailing grounds for the petition from Ms. Spears’s father, Jamie Spears, to become his daughter’s conservator are sealed. A few factors suggest the judge at the outset regarded the situation as serious. She appointed conservators to oversee Ms. Spears’s personal life as well as finances. She also ruled that Ms. Spears could not hire her own lawyer, though a lawyer the singer consulted at the time said he thought she was capable of that.Earlier this month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny said Ms. Spears could retain her own counsel.Does “capacity” differ among states?Yes. Some states, like California, detail basic functional abilities. Others do not. Colorado acknowledges modern advances like “appropriate and reasonably available technological assistance.” Illinois looks for “mental deterioration, physical incapacity, mental illness, developmental disability, gambling, idleness, debauchery, excessive use of intoxicants or drugs.”Sally Hurme of the National Guardianship Association noted: “You could be found to be incapacitated in one state but not in another.”Who performs the psychological assessment?Ideally, a forensic psychiatrist or a psychologist with expertise in neuropsychological assessments. But some states just specify “physician.” Psychiatrists tend to place greater weight on diagnoses; psychologists emphasize tests that measure cognitive abilities. Each reviews medical records and interviews family, friends and others.Assessments can extend over several days. They range widely in depth and duration.Eric Freitag, who conducts neuropsychological assessments in the Bay Area, said he prefers interviewing people at home where they are often more at ease, and where he can evaluate the environment. He asks about financial literacy: bill-paying, health insurance, even counting out change.Assessing safety is key. Dr. Freitag will ask what the person would do if a fire broke out. “I’d call my daughter,” one of his subjects replied.Who chooses the evaluator?Ms. Spears has not been able to choose her evaluators in the past because the conservator has the power to make those decisions. However, if she moves to dissolve the conservatorship, she can select the evaluator, to help build her case. If the conservator, her father, opposes her petition and objects to her selection, he could nominate a candidate to perform an additional assessment. Ms. Spears would likely pick up both tabs as costs of the conservatorship.To avoid a bitter battle of experts and the appearance that an assessor hired by either camp would be inherently biased — plus the strain of two evaluations on Ms. Spears — the judge could try to get both sides to agree to an independent, court-appointed doctor.What impact does a mental health diagnosis have on an evaluation?Many states explicitly say that a diagnosis of a severe mental health disorder is not, on its own, evidence that a person should remain in conservatorship.Stuart Zimring, an attorney in Los Angeles County who specializes in elderlaw and special needs trusts, noted that he once represented a physician with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who was under a conservatorship. The doctor’s rights were eventually restored after he proved he was attending counseling sessions and taking medication.“It was a joyous day when the conservatorship was terminated,” said Mr. Zimring. “He got to practice medicine again, under supervision.”The association between the diagnosis of a severe mental disorder and a determination of incapacity troubles Dr. Swain, the Los Angeles psychologist.“Whatever they ended up diagnosing Britney Spears with, was it of such severity that she did not understand the decisions that she had to make, that she could not provide adequate self-care?” she asked. “Where do you draw that line? It’s a moving target.”Does the judge have to accept an evaluator’s findings?No, but judges usually do.What standard does a probate judge apply to reach a decision?In most states, when a judge approves a conservatorship, which constrains a person’s autonomy, the evidence has to be “clear and convincing,” a rigorous standard just below the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”But when a conservatee wants those rights restored, many experts believe the standard should be more lenient.Some states indeed apply a lower standard to end a conservatorship. In California, a judge can do so by finding it is more likely than not (“preponderance of evidence”) that the conservatee has capacity. But some states say that the evidence to earn a ticket out still has to be “clear and convincing.”Most states do not even set a standard.“There’s an underlying assumption that if you can get the process right, everything would be fine and we wouldn’t be depriving people of rights,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “Our take is that the process is fundamentally broken and that we shouldn’t be using guardianship in so many cases.”If someone is doing well, isn’t the conservatorship no longer necessary?Yes and no. “Judges are haunted by people they have had in front of them who have been released and disaster happens,” said Victoria Haneman, a trusts and estates law professor at Creighton University. “So they take a conservative approach to freedom.”Describing the Kafkaesque conundrum of conservatorship, Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a disabilities rights lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “If she’s doing great, the system is working and should continue. If she is making choices others disagree with, then she’s unreliable and she needs the system.”Or, as Kristin Booth Glen, a former New York State judge who oversaw such cases and now works to reform the system, put it, “Conservatorship and guardianship are like roach motels: you can check in but you can’t check out.”Can an evaluator recommend a less restrictive approach than a conservatorship?At times. Judge Glen once approved the termination of a guardianship of a young woman originally deemed to have the mental acuity of a 7-year-old. After three years of thoughtful interventions, the woman, since married and raising two children, had become able to participate fully in her life. She relied on a team for “supported decision making,” which Judge Glen called “a less restrictive alternate to the Draconian loss of liberty” of guardianship.A supported decision-making approach has been hailed by the Uniform Law Commission, which drafts model statutes. It has said judges should seek “the least restrictive alternative” to conservatorship.To date, only Washington and Maine have fully adopted the commission’s recommended model. More