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Ricardo DeAratanha  Los Angeles Times

Inside The Times

It was a saturday, midmorning. Atelephone split the stillness.

Kendall McArthur’s adoptivemother, Dorothea, known as Dorrie,took the call in the study. In an in-stant, more than two years of turmoilcrested, then crashed in Kendall’s

heart. It was her birth mother.Kendall, 11, dismissed a playmate. She

crept to the study door, just out of sight, and

listened intently. Withinmoments, the conversa-tion grew heated. Kendallhad neither seen nor spo-ken with her birth mother,Patti Sheets, in whatseemed like forever.

There was biting angerin Dorrie McArthur’s voice as it tumbled out of the study and into Ken-dall’s elegantly appointedSilver Lake home. Kendall

caught every word, andshe filled in the silences  with good guesses about  what her birth mother  was saying on the otherend: I want to see Kendall.

She thought this mighthappen. Her birth motherhad called three weeks be-fore, for the first time in 27months. She had spoken

 with Dorrie — but not with Kendall, who hadbeen deeply hurt by her absence. Kendallhad already insisted on conditions for a visit:Patti must see a psychologist, just as Ken-dall was doing. She must figure out why shehad disappeared from Kendall’s life. Shemust explain it, and she must promise neverto vanish again. Barring that, Kendall said,even if Patti appeared at her door, she wouldhide in a closet and refuse to see her.

On the phone in thestudy, Kendall’s adoptivemother was spelling thisout again. Last time, theconditions had met withstony silence. Now there was fury.

Maybe it was over. Forsix years, Kendall hadbeen in an open adoption,a delicate arrangement by  which children see theirbirth parents often — at

least several times a year,sometimes weekly, evendaily. By agreement, bothsets of parents — adoptiveand biological— play largeroles in their children’slives.

Forty years ago, mostadoptions in the UnitedStates were closed. Today,

[ BETWEEN TWO FAMILIES ]

Negotiating thedifficulties of adelicate pact

An adoptee wonders about her mothers —especially the one who went away. Will she

end up feeling unwanted again?By Sonia Nazario : times staff writer

 Last of two parts

TORTUOUS LOVE:

 At 13, Kendall McArthurcould be loving and

cheerful — and then an“adolescent plus.”  [See Kendall, Page A12]

Stellenbosch, South Africa

NtsikiBiyela looked curiouslyat the red liquid

in her glass, won-dering what to ex-

pect.She was listening to a con-

noisseur who swirled his glassabout, passionately extolling the

perfumes of blackberries and ci-gar box that she was supposedto be appreciating.

Biyela smelled, as instructed,but there had never been anyblackberries or cigar boxes inthe Zulu village where she grewup, fetching water from the river

and firewood from the forest ev-ery day. The liquid smelled alien.

Then it was time to taste. Bit-ter! Disgusting! Was she going todedicate her life to making thisundrinkable brew?

That was eight years ago. To-day, Biyela, a petite woman witha ready smile, gets a farawaylook in her eye when she has hernose in a wineglass. She is South Africa’s first black female wine-maker in an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated industry.In 1999, she was one of a group of 

students given scholarships to

learn winemaking as part of anaffirmative action measure in a country struggling to overcomethe poisonous legacy of apart-heid.

Fresh from university in 2004,she joined the boutique Stella-kaya winery here in the CapeWinelands as its winemaker, andits wines since have won goldand silver medals in South Af-rica, one of the world’s new winepowers.

“This is my favorite,” the 29- year-old enthused, popping thecork from a bottle of blendedSangiovese, Merlot and Caber-net Sauvignon, pouring it into a glass and holding it under hernose, with a small frown of in-

COLUMN ONE

 A heady bouquet  of change  S. Africa’s wine industry has long been run by white men who said  blacks lacked tradition. Now a Zulu woman is  proving them wrong.

By Robyn Dixon

Times Staff Writer

Rodger Bosch  AFP/Getty Images

TASTE OF SUCCESS:

 Ntsiki Biyela got a scholarship

to study winemaking in 1999.

[See South Africa, Page A6]

When Bing Crosby croonedthat he would settle down and“make the San Fernando Valleymy home,” he wasn’t singing about apartments.

The Southern California dream back then — exemplifiedby the World War II-era tractspopping up in the Valley and

other places — was of an afford-able single-family home, a littlehouse on a patch of green wherekids could play out back.

But today, construction of condos and apartments is rap-idly overtaking that of single-family residences, even in sub-urbs known for spread-out living.

It’s part of a broader shift to

urbanized living in SouthernCalifornia, a change that brings  with it significantly higher den-sity and concerns about over-crowding and traffic.

Consider the Valley: In the1940s, developers there andthroughout the region wereputting up houses wherever theycould, plowing under vegetablefields and planting that dream

along streets and cul-de-sacs.But over the last six years,

Los Angeles has approved morethan 14,000 condos and apart-ments for construction in theSan Fernando Valley, according to city records, nearly threetimes the number of single-fam-ily residences.

It’s a trend that is mirrored

throughout the region, and it isexpected to intensify asSouthern California stretches toaccommodate a crush of 6.3 mil-lion new residents over the next30 years.

So many new apartments willbe built that by 2035,the numberof multi-family dwellings underconstruction will outstrip the

Stephen Osman  Los Angeles Times

GOING UP: Workers apply stucco to a condominium complex on Moorpark Street in Sherman Oaks. Throughout Southern California,

 more multi-family units than single-family houses are being built, and the trend is expected to escalate during the next 30 years.

Southern Californiais becoming a tight fitAs more apartments andcondos are built, trafficwon’t be the region’sonly kind of jam.

By Sharon Bernstein

Times Staff Writer

[See Homes, Page A10]

 yousifiya, iraq — U.S. troopshad nicknamed the suspectedinsurgent “George Clooney” be-cause of his handsome mug, buthe wasn’t so pretty after mem-bers of his own Sunni tribe shotand wounded him, then turnedhim over to the Americans.

U.S. forces say the tribe’s act  was an example of the payoffs

from practicing the counter-insurgency techniques preachedby Gen. David H. Petraeus as heenforces President Bush’s troop“surge.” But unlike the 28,500newly arrived troops, soldiershere have been at it for nearly a  year.

Their experience in trying totame this palm-fringed enclave

south of Baghdad, within thearea sometimes called the “tri-angle of death,” serves as a so-bering reminder of how long itcan take to remake a region

steeped in violence, be it bucolicfarmland or a chaotic city likeBaghdad.

They have seen victories, butthey also have suffered horrificlosses. And most say that the im-provement in security did not be-gin until May, when the disap-pearance of three U.S. soldiers

Squaring a ‘triangleof death’The U.S. makes progressin a violent swath of Iraq, slowly and subtly.

By Tina SusmanTimes Staff Writer

[See Troops, Page A4]

washington — As the House

of Representatives lurchedthrough its last rancorous hoursover the weekend, there wasmuch talk of shame and disap-pointment about the bitter par-tisanship that seemed to con-

sume Congress ahead of itssummer break.But there were few real tears

in the Capitol for the currentstate of affairs.

Seven months into Demo-crats’ control of the House andSenate, the angry sparring has

largely served the political inter-ests of both parties, whose lead-ers often believe they have moreto gain by warring with their ri- vals than by working with them.

Newly empowered Demo-crats, confident that the publicbacks their agenda and eager toexpand their House and Senatemajorities next year, have littleincentive to accommodate theGOP minority.

They left town touting theirsuccessful efforts to raise the fed-eral minimum wage, revamp eth-

ics and lobbying rules, and im-

plement the Sept. 11commission’s recommenda-tions, though many other majorgoals, such as ending the war inIraq, were unrealized.

For their part, Republicans,  who still lag in public opinionpolls after losing the majoritylast year, see more advantage indisrupting congressional busi-ness in their quest to cast theDemocratic Congress as ineffec-tive.

They went home complaining of a “do-nothing” Congress, evenafter they used one proceduraltactic after another to stall legis-lative business.

“This is an era of partisangridlock,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a 

NEWS ANALYSIS

Parties play to partisan

rancorAngry sparring haslargely served politicalinterests on each side,

 but the confrontationaltactics create risks.

By Noam N. LeveyTimes Staff Writer

[See Congress, Page A17 ]

pueblo, colo. — There areholes in the steel girders sup-porting state bridge K-18-R.

Not big holes. The size of a deck of cards, maybe. But thecorrosion so alarmed state in-spectors on a routine visit Thurs-day that they asked their super- visor to take a look.

Which is why he’s nowperched 40 feet above the Arkan-sas River, bracing his backagainst the concrete deck of thebridge and his feet against the

rust-scarred steel trusses thatkeep the structure up. Jeff An-derson is tapping the girders  with a geologist’s pick, listening to each ping and clank for cluesabout how K-18-R is bearing up.He’s waiting for the bridge to talkto him.

“Watch out below!”  A very sizable chunk of cor-

roded steel gives way under An-derson’s probing and tumblesdown, shattering on the bike

path that runs along the river.Built in 1924 in this modest

farm town in south-central Colo-rado, the bridge is one of about75,000 nationwide deemed“structurally deficient.” Its suffi-ciency rating stands at 47 on a scale of 100 — lower, by a fewpoints, than that of Minneapolis’Interstate 35W bridge before it

Inspectors feel weightof bridge’s collapse

States dispatch experts.One visits a corroding span in Colorado.

By Stephanie Simon

Times Staff Writer

[See Inspection, Page A16]

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