Bradbury

The City Council will hold a meeting Monday to decide how to fill the District 5 seat vacated by the resignation of Ron Westmyer. Westmyer, who has served on the council since 1976 and was mayor in 1979-80 and 1983-84, said he resigned because he did not intend to run for reelection next April. Westmyer said he has recommended that Beatrice La Pisto-Kirtley, a Planning Commission member, be appointed to his seat.

The year was 1853, and the steamboat Jenny Lind departed Alviso at the southern tip of San Francisco Bay for its standard voyage to the city. Then disaster struck. A boiler pipe failed, and pressurized steam blew out the furnace doors as passengers awaited their lunch. At least 32 died slow and gruesome deaths from burns, among them some of the Santa Clara Valley's most prominent residents. Others are believed to have jumped overboard and perished. For Bay Area residents, the disaster has been little more than a historical footnote, a nod to the era of steamboat travel.

In its annual reorganization, the City Council on Tuesday selected Councilwoman Audrey Hon as mayor. Hon, who won reelection April 14 by a two-vote margin out of 88 votes cast, replaces John H. Richards, who was unopposed for his council seat. The council also appointed representatives to 13 local and state associations and commissions.

The intersection of 5th and Flower streets in downtown Los Angeles was designated Ray Bradbury Square by city officials Thursday. But a better description might be "the intersection of imagination and inspiration," author and producer Steven Paul Leiva told fans of the noted writer who died in June at age 91. The location, near the front entrance to the Central Library, is a fitting place to honor the author of "The Illustrated Man" and "The...

Professional baseball player Adrian Beltre and his wife, Sandra, have listed a more than 4-acre estate in Bradbury for $19.8 million. The newly built Mediterranean was custom designed for both formal entertaining and casual indoor-outdoor living. A 2,500-square-foot rec room is outfitted as a batting cage, but now that the MLB third baseman is playing for the Boston Red Sox, he no longer needs the West Coast residence. The 16,600-square-foot home, in a 24-hour gate-guarded community, sits off a circular driveway.

Patience often pays off when waiting for the right pitch, and it also can pay off in home selling. Texas Ranger third baseman Adrian Beltre and his wife, Sandra, have sold their 4-acre-plus estate in Bradbury for $17,410,961, according to the Multiple Listing Service. The couple listed their custom house nearly two years ago at $19.8 million. The newly built Mediterranean, designed for both formal entertaining and casual indoor-outdoor living, includes such custom features as a 2,500-square-foot rec room outfitted as a batting cage.

Meet Ray Bradbury, the illustrating man. The 89-year-old dreamer is renowned as a lion of literature, of course, but it's his longtime pursuit of the visual arts that will bring him to the Santa Monica gallery Every Picture Tells a Story at 4 p.m. Saturday. Bradbury will unveil a new giclee print of an evocative oil painting he completed in 1948 and has come to refer to as "Dark Carnival." "Painting has been part of my life since I was a child," Bradbury said. "My Aunt Neva went to the Art Institute of Chicago, and she took courses there and she took me to see the paintings.

It must have been a tough week up there on Mike Bradbury's Hang 'Em High Ranch in Ojai. A hailstorm of sorts had come sweeping out of nowhere, and it was all coming down on Bradbury's head. The storm broke as a Times story revealed that Bradbury, who earns $131,804 annually, has been receiving an additional $639 per month in federal Section 8 housing funds the past two years for renting a small home to his mother on his $558,000 ranch. There was something about this story, more than most, that touched off instant outrage.

The photo accompanying "Surprises in Clearest Mars Photos Yet" (Jan. 7) reminded me of Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles," which I read this summer. The Mars imagined by Bradbury was hot, shimmering, "broiling like a prehistoric mud pot," teeming with wine trees and flame birds. Nothing like the photo sent back by the Spirit rover, which reminds me of the American desert. Yet I couldn't help wondering if, standing directly behind the "pancam" that was taking the pictures for us Earthlings, there was a Bradbury-like Martian with sharp, yellow coin eyes, brownish skin, movements quick like an insect and a voice metallic and sharp.

As the lyricist of the original 1967 Lincoln Center production of Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine," my first instinct after reading "Of Wine and Rosy Summer Memories" (by Daryl H. Miller, Aug. 20) was to write a long, detailed response to the misinformation as to how Colony Theatre director Terrence Shank and "the show's creators" agreed to "proceed with new music and lyrics" for the 1981 production. Suffice it to say that no less notable and professional a Broadway producer than Stuart Ostrow ("1776," "M. Butterfly")

“For the Martian Chronicles,” at L&M Arts, pays homage to Ray Bradbury, who wrote much of his fantastic tale in his clapboard home that once stood at the gallery's address. Organized by Yael Lipschutz, archivist of the Noah Purifoy Foundation, the 30-artist exhibition is a whimsical mishmash of media, methods and styles. It keeps visitors on their toes, thinking quickly to discover connections among objects and images with not much in common except for their love of wide-eyed possibility.

Patience often pays off when waiting for the right pitch, and it also can pay off in home selling. Texas Ranger third baseman Adrian Beltre and his wife, Sandra, have sold their 4-acre-plus estate in Bradbury for $17,410,961, according to the Multiple Listing Service. The couple listed their custom house nearly two years ago at $19.8 million. The newly built Mediterranean, designed for both formal entertaining and casual indoor-outdoor living, includes such custom features as a 2,500-square-foot rec room outfitted as a batting cage.

  The FBI gave Ray Bradbury a mixed review. According to documents declassified recently through the Freedom of Information Act, the bureau investigated the "Fahrenheit 451" author in the 1950s and 1960s because of suspected communist sympathies. One informant warned agents that Bradbury, who died June 5 at age 91, wrote stories that were "definitely slanted" against capitalism. The informant added that science fiction itself could so terrify readers that they would succumb to "incompetence bordering on hysteria" and would be helpless during a third world war. The bureau noted Bradbury's opposition to Sen. Joe McCarthy and other anti-communists and his support for civil rights.

After two weeks of taking stock of its surroundings, the Mars Curiosity rover has taken its first "baby steps" and sent back images of its first tracks, NASA officials said Wednesday. Engineers sent the commands Tuesday night for this first drive, which took about 16 minutes -- mostly spent taking pictures, said lead rover driver Matt Heverly. During the test, the rover moved forward about 4½ meters, turned 120 degrees in place and then backed up 2½ meters -- ending up about 6 meters, or roughly 20 feet, from its landing spot.

The Mars Curiosity landing site will now be called Bradbury Landing in honor of science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, NASA announced Wednesday. The naming was part of a NASA briefing about the Curiosity Rover's progress. Curiosity's Twitter feed shared the news with a photo, saying: "In tribute, I dedicate my landing spot on Mars to you, Ray Bradbury. Greetings from Bradbury Landing!" Although Curiosity successfully landed on Mars on Aug. 6, NASA officials waited to announce the name of the site.

The Lakers further fortified their bench Friday, agreeing to terms with power forward Jordan Hill on a two-year contract for almost $8 million. “Jordan was excited about the fact that Steve Nash decided to join the Lakers and the prospect of winning a championship in L.A.,” said Kevin Bradbury, Hill's agent. Hill becomes the second backup forward to join the Lakers this week after Antawn Jamison agreed to a one-year deal for the veteran's minimum of about $1.4 million. Hill, Jamison and Josh McRoberts will back up starters Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol, though Jamison can also play small forward.

To the post office, it's just Compton. To the U.S. Census Bureau, it's no place at all, an orphaned pocket of houses too small even to have a name. But to the three women chatting outside their homes on neatly trimmed Zamora Avenue, their unincorporated area of a dozen blocks entirely inside Compton is a world unto itself. They call it Rosewood. "This is a real neighborhood," said Virginia McCarter, a resident for more than 37 years. "If I won the lottery, I wouldn't move.

The year was 1853, and the steamboat Jenny Lind departed Alviso at the southern tip of San Francisco Bay for its standard voyage to the city. Then disaster struck. A boiler pipe failed, and pressurized steam blew out the furnace doors as passengers awaited their lunch. At least 32 died slow and gruesome deaths from burns, among them some of the Santa Clara Valley's most prominent residents. Others are believed to have jumped overboard and perished. For Bay Area residents, the disaster has been little more than a historical footnote, a nod to the era of steamboat travel.

After an important cultural icon dies, it isn't unusual for a handful of readers to reflect on how the recently deceased's work touched their lives. Author Ray Bradbury, who passed away last week, was no exception. Of the 42 (and counting) submissions sent to letters@latimes.com, several readers credited Bradbury's work for stoking their own imaginations and inspiring them to pursue careers in a number of creative fields. But the preponderance of submissions responding to Bradbury's death -- which are still trickling in, a week after the author passed June 5 -- have a personal dimension.

An excerpt from Ray Bradbury's novel "Fahrenheit 451," copyright © 1953, renewed 1981 by Ray Bradbury. The passage describes Montag and the other firefighters hunting down books and burning them. Have reason to suspect attack; 11 No. Elm, City. E.B. "That would be Mrs. Blake, my neighbor," said the woman, reading the initials. "All right, men, let's get them!" Next thing they were up in musty blackness swinging silver hatchets at doors that were, after all, unlocked, tumbling through like boys all rollick and shout.