Writer, Editor, Investigative Journalist
I'm a former student of George K. Porter Middle School in Granada Hills. Between my memories of my experience there and the experiences I've had as the parent of a student in the Los Angeles Unified School District, I'm not at all surprised to learn that the administrators at Porter may have bungled an attempted drug sting. The principal at my … Continue »
At a party I attended a few years ago, I was enchanted by a guy who gravitated towards me and my son and spontaneously began singing songs to us ? preschool classics like ?Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes? and ?Three Little Fishes.? When I asked him how he knew all that material ? he looked too young to be a father ? he told me that he used to work … Continue »
The 'green' DWP's Festival of Lights is mostly off-limits to cyclists. Touring the Festival of Lights in Griffith Park is an exercise in irony. Entering the mile-long display, staged every year by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the first thing visitors see is a sign announcing that the festival is "going green." If you're driving … Continue »
Crime is down, but parents shelter their children as if there's a child predator on every corner. ONE SUNNY afternoon as our children played nearby, I asked a neighbor at what age she would allow her son to bicycle around the block by himself. "I don't think I would ever do that," she replied. "The world is a very different place now … Continue »
Mark laughs at the memory now, but at the time, he didn't think it was that funny. ?I was trying to break camp in a whiteout, and I walked about 50 feet away from my RV, and couldn't find it again for the next two hours.? For the remainder of the five-hour dust storm, Mark tied a rope to his RV?s bumper and tied the other end to his belt loop so … Continue »
As I was preparing to leave the hospital after the birth of my son, a nurse sat me down and solemnly told me that it was very important, while breastfeeding, to ?avoid all spicy foods like Mexican or Indian.? I imagined a sari-clad wife cradling a newborn and looking on sadly as her Mexican husband cleared their refrigerator of tikka masala, … Continue »
At Halloween, there are few words that frighten me more than ?Bring your kids to the mall for our annual ?Safe Trick-or-Treat!'? It?s not that I?m afraid that Halloween is a thinly disguised occasion for devil worship. Some fret over Halloween?s alleged satanic origins, but even if it were conclusively proven that the first jack o? lantern were … Continue »
When Teletubbies appeared in 1997, the world got its first glimpse of a TV series produced specifically for babies, as well as its first glimpse of a future utopia in which infants would be born with television screens embedded in their torsos. Many were appalled at the prospect of a program being marketed to a pre-verbal audience, and the show … Continue »