Years ago Parenting Magazine asked me to do an article on a homeless mother with children. The idea was simply to find such a family and follow them around for a month. I agreed and, for 30 days, entered the lives of a thirty-something woman and her three kids. The woman, whose name I’ve long ago forgotten, didn’t have a discernible drug problem. Nor was she a drinker. She’d ended up on the street to escape and abusive husband. I watched as she bounced around from shelter to shelter, trying to find a place that would accept both her and her fragile family.

But while there always seemed to be enough shelter beds for men who needed them, the beds for women with kids were extemely difficult to come by

I liked the mom, who struggled hard to overcome her circumstances, at least during the time I observed her. But she always seemed to be swimming upstream.

Yet it was her children who got to me. They were nice kids, and seemed intelligent behind their preternatural watchfulness. I remember one time when I asked the oldest girl, who was ten at the time. about her dreams for the future. She told me she wished she lived in a place where she could sometimes have friends over to play. That was it. But she recited the wish as if the possibility was as far out of reach as the moon.

I bring all this up because, in this week’s LA City Beat, the cover story is again by smart USC journalism grad student, Matt Mundy, and it’s about the homeless kids of Skid Row. Matt wrote the story in a longer version as his master’s thesis for his USC degree, then cut it down to feature size with the help of City’ Beat’s News Editor, my pal, the excellent Alan Mittelsteadt.

According to Mundy’s research, there are 13,521 homeless students in the Los Angeles Unified school system. In California, there are 178,014, and the country….907,000. And those are just the school-age children on the street we know about. The homeless are notoriously census resistant.

Homeless children are four times more likely to drop out of school and two times more likely to score lower on standardized tests; one in ten homeless students will miss at least one month of school each year, 36 percent have repeated a grade, and 14 percent – double that of other children – are diagnosed with a learning disability. All of these problems are caused, exacerbated and impacted in myriad ways by their troubled environments.

Read the rest here.

Let no child be left behind, indeed.

Photo by Monica Almeda, New York Times

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And while we’re on the subject of rescue….. [SEE POST ABOVE]

My smart friend and commentator, Flavia Colgan, wrote this delightful column for the Philadelphia Daily News about what one can do to help California’s fire victims. She says she’s been getting a heartening response, even from as far away as her hometown of Philly, PA.

In the column she lists the following agencies that are collecting donations for fire victims:

American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund: 800-HELP-NOW or 800-257-7575 for Spanish speakers, .

Corporations and businesses interested in making in-kind donations may call 800-746-5463.

San Diego Food Bank: 866-350-3663

Goodwill Southern California: 888-4-GOODWILL

Salvation Army Southern California: 213-896-9160, www.salvationarmysocal.org.

Governor’s Office of Emergency Services: 800-750-2858

And for helping other species other than our own: Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: 888-SPCA-LA1

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I’m headed out into the John Muir Wilderness with my smart son, Will, and Loup-Loup-the-wolf-dog. (I will no doubt freeze my butt off, but, hey, if your kid asks you to go back-packing, you go.)

I may not post again until Tuesday morning. Then back in full force.

(But, if you don’t hear from me by Tuesday, send out the mounted patrol.)

In the meantime, read the excellent Time Magazine cover story, titled “The Incredible Shrinking Court,” about the emerging trend of the Roberts court to take on smaller and smaller issues, focusing on narrower and narrower points of law, shying away from the larger questions of the day–and what this all portends.

(Sorry no photos. I’m doing this from my blackberry.

****************

UPDATE: Back safe, sound, slightly sore, shower-challenged and supremely happy.

Went to Cottonwood Lakes, an enchanting place to backpack. It did, however, get down to below 22 degrees at night, with an occasional nice, bracing breeze thrown in for good measure. So even the dog was a bit chilly after dark. (We wrapped a tarp wrap around her, nest-like, which she seemed to appreciate, while we relied on the miracle of down.)

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One last thought before we head into the weekend. This is from a column that was syndicated yesterday in a number of newspapers around the country. I found it in the Sacramento Bee. It’s by Rod Dreher, a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. The subject will be made quickly evident by the clips posted below. [NOTE: see that the Sac Bee is now is making you register. Here’s another link to the piece at Common Dreams.]

I have spent the last two weeks carrying around a chunk of bloody flesh. It is masquerading as a paperback novel called “All Quiet on the Western Front,” but in truth, it’s the ravaged heart of a man who was a soldier once. If there is a work of literature more searing in its description of modern warfare’s personal horrors, I have not read it and don’t know that I could withstand it.

I started reading Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel — a perennial high school lit fave — for the sake of civic edification. You know the drill: Read a certified Great Book…..

SNIP

“All Quiet” is thought by many to be the greatest war novel because it tells the universal combat experience of the soldier: the sanity-crushing bombardments, the murder of ideals, the barbaric clawing for survival, the scorn for authority figures who don’t suffer the consequences of their decisions, the alienation of fighting men from the people back home, who can’t possibly understand what they endure, and so forth…….

SNIP

As shattering as “All Quiet” is, the wretched truth remains that war we will always have with us. Because men are born to trouble, sometimes war is a necessary evil.

Ah, but on that one word — necessary — hangs the world.…

SNIP

As I read the final pages, I heard my 3-year-old stirring in his bedroom. I went to check on him and stood there regarding with wonderment the blond boy slumbering in the soft glow of the nightlight. I prayed hard for him and his brother to be spared war’s desolation. As I will pray constantly for their Uncle Mike — faithful husband, devoted father and brave soldier — when he deploys to Iraq this month.

SNIP

Kentucky poet Wendell Berry has written: There is no government so worthy as your son who fishes with you in silence beside the forest pool. There is no national glory so comely as your daughter whose hands have learned a music and go their own way on the keys. There is no national glory so comely as my daughter who dances and sings and is the brightness of my house. There is no government so worthy as my son who laughs, as he comes up the path from the river in the evening, for joy.

A novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa,” writes Dreher, “recently told The Wall Street Journal: ‘I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.’”

Yep. Quite so. Read on.

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Object:Clinton’s man in California a pro at digging up dirt:/c/a/2007/05/12/MNGIMPQ12L1.DTL

Article:Clinton’s man in California a pro at digging up dirt:/c/a/2007/05/12/MNGIMPQ12L1.DTL

Article:Clinton’s man in California a pro at digging up dirt:/c/a/2007/05/12/MNGIMPQ12L1.DTL

Connoisseur of Dirt: Ace Smith

Ace Smith hung up on me twice this week. And I was trying to help him. I wanted to put to rest the theory that this master of opposition research and trusted Antonio adviser might have somehow inspired the rash of anti-Rocky stories that broke last month. We all know Rocky has plenty of enemies and a phone-book size list of others who wouldn’t mind embarrassing him. So I certainly don’t blame Ace when he dismisses as “speculative shit” my June 25 post on this topic, “The Antonio-Rocky Show: Winners, losers, but who’s the producer?”
All that aside, it would be nice if Ace could answer 10 simple questions so we could move on to refocusing the mayor’s attention on solving the city’s more pressing problems of failing schools, killer air pollution, lost and forlorn youth and our ever deepening problems with traffic and a skeletal public transportation system that moves too few people. We need a mayor who commands respect and admiration and gets action in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, not only in a Studio City bedroom. (Note to editorial writers at the L.A. Times: Send reinforcements, please. You’ve been silent now for 27 days since the mayor first announced the end of his marriage. Use your firepower and influence to restart the civic discourse on important themes, though you should implore the mayor to come clean on when his relationship started with First Lady wannabe Mirthala Salinas to see whether it helped the mayor win gushing coverage of his school takeover bill. Can you imagine the chorus of editorials if this were New York?)
And Ace, it’s not like I’m the only guy in town wondering whether trusted Antonio loyalists might be planting anti-Rocky stories to deflect attention from the mayor’s soap opera. Take a look at what Steve Lopez posted online the same day the Daily News’ Beth Barrett exposed secrets of the mayor’s love life.
Plus, there’s a deeper reason to wonder about the sources of the wave of Rocky stories. The heap of negative press about our city attorney prompted the L.A. Times to call for his resignation. It’s one thing if investigative reporters doing their jobs uncovered all of the questionable goings-on in Rocky’s shop and home as part of a full-blown, independent examination of that powerful office. Such inquiries are the heart and soul of a free press in America. But if Rocky’s rivals orchestrated the coverage behind-the-scenes, and Rocky is driven from office by a plot masterminded by nameless, faceless confidential sources with an axe to grind, that stinks.

It’s important for the public to know who wields power in this city, and who is trying to oust the city attorney. If for no other reason than to keep the newspaper and its reporters from being beholden to sources who gave them such a great batch of stories that did in an elected official. Down the line, will it lead to punches being pulled or otherwise dilute needed scrutiny if similiar tactics are employed during, say, a gubernatorial run by Antonio in 2010 or a mayoral re-election bid in two years? The public is best served when all the players and their roles are known and examined in the theater called City Hall. In other words, if the mayor, even indirectly, flings dirt, we want to know; if the mayor or anyone near him, helps bring down a political foe, the public must know. (Note to Rocky: Don’t consider this post a defense of your tenure.)

Before I get to the list of 10 questions, let me explain my history with Ace. He emailed me on June 25, the same day that the original post went up, and accused me of fabricating the line that I had tried to reach him for comment. I told him I’d called the mayor’s communication staff and left a message on a Sunday explaining the gist of my post and that I would like their help getting a response from Ace. I never heard back from the office or Ace. Ace called my response “one of the most embarrassingly weak explanations I have heard in the decades I have been doing this.” Hey, I can take criticism. I let Ace know I still wanted to interview him. But my emails and four phone calls over the next two days went unreturned. Finally, last Friday I emailed questions and gave him a deadline of 5 p.m. Monday to respond. I told him if he chose not to answer them, I would probably list the questions in my next post. Again, no response. On Tuesday afternoon, I called his cell phone to verify that he had received the questions and to see if he planned to answer them. “I don’t think I was dealt with honestly by you, so I have no intention.” He hung up. I waited five minutes before calling back. He lashed out at what he called my “bogus attempt” to get a comment from him for the original post. Come on, Ace, let’s move on. I pressed him to respond to the questions, but he wouldn’t. “I don’t think it’s right to publish speculative shit that you have no basis for.” He hung up.
Ace, the offer still stands. Anytime you’re willing to tell your side of things and address these 10 questions, call or email. I’ll even buy lunch—so long as the conversation’s on the record.

The 10 questions:

1. What role, if any, did you play in the dissemination of information that may have led to any of the recent news stories about Rocky and Michelle Delgadillo’s problems?

2. Did you participate in any discussions with the mayor and/or his staff about ways to handle the announcement of the breakup of the mayor’s marriage?

3. Did you discuss with the mayor or any of his staff members alerting the media to Rocky and his wife’s driving/business/babysitting problems?

4. How many times did you meet at City Hall with the mayor and/or his staff in June?

5. What was discussed at those meetings?

6. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci wrote a story about your role in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which ran May 12 under the headline, “Clinton’s man in California a pro at digging up dirt.” In the article, Garry South, a top Democrat strategist and a former adviser to Gov. Gray Davis, called you “the best op research guy in America on either side of the aisle. He digs under every rock.” Do you take issue with that characterization or anything else in the Chronicle story?

7. Share your reaction to this observation Marinucci makes about you in the article: “As with any successful political opposition researcher, most of Smith’s best work needs to arise anonymously with few — other than his clients — recognizing who found it.”

8. You ran Jerry Brown’s campaign last year when he faced Rocky Delgadillo in the Democratic primary. Did you know at that time about any of the disclosures that emerged in June about Rocky and his wife?

9. Would you like to share any other thoughts on this matter?

10. By the way, do you know of any other Los Angeles politicians, current or former, whose city-owned vehicles were driven by family members? Who?

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Soon-to-be the empty Monty’s

Here’s some breaking news off the social-justice and Southern California restaurant beat: Monty’s Steak House, an old money Pasadena hangout for 66 years, is closing Saturday, giving some 25 employees a week to find new jobs.
Come again? The Pasadena institution, where aging and bulging waitresses wore mustard-colored mini skirts until a decade or so ago, gives its loyal workers a measly one-week notice?
It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. The original closing date was July 31, but the deal is closing early, said Monty’s grand-daughter, Debbie Levine, general manager of the restaurant. She said she found out last Friday along with the rest of the crew.
“It’s really sad for all of us. We all knew there was something in the works, but none of us realized that it would happen as quickly as it did.”
Levine said she isn’t sure what’s in store for the property on Fair Oaks Avenue, which also houses a a Chinese restaurant and a massage parlor; Monty’s employees said they heard it would become medical offices. Across the street is the monolithic Huntington Hospital, which recently added a huge wing.
Monty’s has been in the Levine family since 1941, when Monty bought an existing bar called Perry’s. The patriarch died about eight years ago and the restaurant is now owned by Debbie’s father, Dennis, and her uncle, Larry. They also own one in Woodland Hills.

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Okay, I’m in the middle of another project, but I simply couldn’t let this AP story pass. It has to do with five Illinois high school students who were denied their diplomas by Galesburg High School officials because family members cheered too enthusiastically for them during the graduation ceremony.

Evidently an increase in rowdiness at graduation ceremonies has become a genuine problem for a lot of high schools with large student populations. It seems that, in addition to cheering, friends and family bring air horns, silly string and the like, and other parents can’t hear their own child’s name called, admittedly not an ideal situation.

Some schools have hired sheriff’s deputies to police the ceremonies in an effort to keep over-the-top behavior to a minimum. Many simply ask audience members to hold their applause and cheers until after all diplomas have been handed out, then make peace with the fact that the noise may be lessened, but not eliminated. Other schools break up the ceremony into groups of graduates, allowing families to get their ya-yas out by cheering, at least, for the group.

But few have resorted to the kind of strong-arm tactics that the AP story describes.

Caisha Gayles graduated with honors last month, but she is still waiting for her diploma. The reason: the whoops of joy from the audience as she crossed the stage.

Gayles was one of five students denied diplomas from the lone public high school in Galesburg after enthusiastic friends or family members cheered for them during commencement.

“It was like one of the worst days of my life,” said Gayles, who had a 3.4 grade-point average and officially graduated, but does not have the keepsake diploma to hang on her wall. “You walk across the stage and then you can’t get your diploma because of other people cheering for you. It was devastating, actually.”

(The fact that cutting these monster schools into smaller, more personal schools would solve the problem in a heartbeat is an issue that we won’t get into right now.)

School officials in Galesburg, a working-class town of 34,000 that is still reeling from the 2004 shutdown of a 1,600-employee refrigerator factory, said the get-tough policy followed a 2005 commencement where hoots, hollers and even air horns drowned out much of the ceremony and nearly touched off fights in the audience when the unruly were asked to quiet down.

Certainly the school didn’t break any laws and even the ACLU agrees that, legally, the high school administrators are probably within their rights. But is it really a sensible, productive strategy to start yanking kids’ diplomas because of somebody else’s over-sized whoops?

“You’re kidding?” said Father Greg Boyle on the phone when I told him about the news story. “I just spoke at three graduations last week where they had this same issue. Everybody lives with it. I can’t believe they took those kids’ diplomas. It’s ridiculous.”

Over the years, I too have attended my share of gigantic graduations for LA’s biggest inner city high schools, some of which have student populations larger than certain Midwestern towns. And, although in many cases administrators ask everybody to hold applause and keep the mayhem down to a dull roar, it works only up to a point and nobody sweats it. Some people really want to cheer for their kid—especially, as is true in many families, when a successful high school graduation is a hard-won victory worth cheering.

I suspect this same is true for many families in economically-distressed Galesburg.

And while we’re on the subject, would the Galesburg officials have also flipped out over the wild cheering that erupted for this Utah dad who flew home from Afghanistan to hand his son a diploma?..
Or perhaps the cheering for the kid in this Maryland story who got whoops and shouts from both his happy grandmas as the first in his very large family to ever graduate?

Which of those diplomas do the no-cheering adults suggest we eliminate?

I’m just curious.

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Hey, it’s a privilege to love kids. They don’t have to be your own. (But it’s really cool when they are!)

Today, my 21-year-old child [see photo of mom and tall son here] is taking me for an afternoon of “rock” climbing at a climbing gym as a Mother’s Day gift. This means that, by the end of the day I should have some really humiliating photos of my….er…..adventure.

This morning, I talked with two of my favorite East Los moms—Ophelia Duarte, , who has six kids, and Frances Aguilar, who has seven plus a beautiful step daughter. (I’ve written about them each here and here.) They are both amazing women. And I’m happy to report that, against more difficult odds than I hope I ever have to face….they’re both doing well.

Hope everybody else’s day is equally filled with joy, silliness and love.

UPDATE - Okay, I did it.

As Katherine Hepburn once said to Jane Fonda who then told me: “If you don’t try something new at least once a week, you become soggy.”

So, with my kid’s help and very patient encouragement, this Mother’s Day was a blow against…… sogginess.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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