Biography
On cold Cleveland days, young Sandy Banks had an after-school routine: Shed lie on the floor, put her feet on a heating vent and read Ann ...
Finding a deeper lesson in high school gang rape
November 7, 2009
In last Saturday's column, I relied on teenagers at Richmond High to help me understand how gang rape became a spectator sport on their San Francisco Bay area campus. They explained that bystanders who watched the assault on a 15-year-old girl outside their homecoming dance last month may have been too afraid to intervene. Or they didn't feel compelled to help because the victim wasn't in their clique. Or they were simply paralyzed by shock, fixated as if the violent scene was a snippet from a reality TV show.
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Plenty of questions but no easy answers in wake of gang rape
October 31, 2009
The sense of horror seems to be fading at Richmond High -- the Northern California school that made news around the world this week after a 15-year-old girl was gang-raped outside a campus homecoming dance while a crowd of students watched but did nothing to intervene.
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Fighting to be a mother again
October 24, 2009
It took her 15 years -- one stint in prison, several passes through drug rehab, months of weekly parenting classes.
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A tough approach to drug-using mothers
October 17, 2009
It was painful to read our stories Sunday about two abused teenagers who died after spending years bouncing around Los Angeles County's child welfare system.
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Supporting our military -- with baseballs and blankets
October 10, 2009
When I first met him six years ago, Jim Hake had yet to reconcile his peacenik credentials with his fervent support for our country's newly declared war on Iraq.
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Getting insight, but not answers
October 3, 2009
I flew down south to Montgomery on a mission to download from my elderly aunts decades of family history.
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Medical pot proposal erases compassion
September 25, 2009
She didn't know whether she'd have the nerve to speak. But Judy Bowen signed the list and took a seat amid the pot smokers and growers, the lawyers and doctors, the Rastafarians and AIDS patients crowded into the Los Angeles City Council hearing room.
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No reward for bad behavior
September 19, 2009
A week of public hand-wringing may have exhausted readers' interest in the recent displays of boorishness by political, athletic and entertainment figures.
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Thoroughly modern milieu
September 12, 2009
I don't remember much about our first visit, beyond the elegant home in Beverly Hills, the delicious home-cooked lunch and the coterie of elderly women hosting me. They called themselves the Current Issues group, and I was one of the writers, artists, politicians and academics asked to speak at their monthly meetings.
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Utopia is a hard sell in Jordan Downs
August 22, 2009
Ronald Perkins and his neighbors were nearly outnumbered by the consultants and architects who showed up at the Jordan Downs community center.
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Is all this really for the children?
May 16, 2009
One thing I've learned in 30 years of covering education is that every dispute, demand or decree rests on one claim: We must do this for the children.
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Chris Brown and Rihanna: a lesson for teens
March 5, 2009
For weeks, as rumors flew and details trickled out, I struggled to find a lesson to share in the violent incident/altercation/lovers' quarrel -- even the media didn't know what to call it -- between teen music idols Chris Brown and Rihanna.
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What do students mean to LAUSD superintendent?
December 6, 2008
I remember the moment in 2003 when I realized that my daughter was in good hands at her Los Angeles Unified middle school.
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Where whiteness meets race
November 11, 2008
The Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere was fired up at its conference in downtown Los Angeles last month.
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Metrolink spokeswoman formed a human link
September 16, 2008
Somehow, her tears made me feel better.
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Metrolink tragedy puts parenting in a new light
September 15, 2008
If I ever thought an "empty nest" at home meant an end to parenting, as I said in my newspaper column Saturday, the stories emerging from this weekend's coverage of the deadly Metrolink train crash painfully put that notion to rest:
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Teenagers have mixed views on gays -- and they're OK with that
June 17, 2008
Kye D'Aguilar doesn't have a traumatic story to tell about coming out. The 18-year-old said he's always known that he is gay. "My mother told me she knew when I was born."
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It's the nightmare before Halloween
October 30, 2007
I wish there were a "bah, humbug" expression for Halloween.
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Life in fire zone carries on close to normal
October 22, 2007
It has been hard to escape the fires and windstorms this week. Turn on the radio or television -- or just step outside and breathe -- and it seems as if all of Southern California is in danger of burning up or being blown away.
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