Burnout

As a mid-career professional with a doctorate in chemistry, Maurice Stephenson appeared made to order for the Los Angeles Unified School District, especially because he was eager to teach at a high-poverty campus in a system woefully short of qualified science teachers. But the honeymoon ended abruptly after less than two years. Fed up with student insolence and administrative impotence, he stalked out of Manual Arts High School on March 12 and never went back.

It wasn't really a titillating revelation, merely Bill Stoneman's way to describe the 24/7, energy-depleting nature of the general manager's job. Nodding at his wife sitting in the front row at the news conference where he confirmed that he was resigning as the Angels' general manager, an emotional Stoneman forced a smile and said Diane was unaware "when she married me that I would have a mistress."

Rich Gonzalez has everything he needs to fulfill his dream of becoming a major league umpire. He has the skills, the character, the intelligence, the passion. "It's what I want to do with my life," he says. What he may never get, however, is the opportunity. That's because the big league umpire roster has only slightly more turnover than the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, between 2004 and last season the Supreme Court actually got more new justices (two) than baseball did new umpires (one).

Barbara Brown Taylor worked long hours ministering to a large congregation in Atlanta, then took the helm of a small rural parish nearby, even as her role and her soul were, as she puts it, "eating each other alive." After 15 years at the pulpit, the job, which once fulfilled her spiritually and emotionally, had come to leave her feeling frustrated, discouraged and fatigued.

Re "Oh no, another election already!" Current, May 28 I disagree with the premise of Tony Quinn's commentary, which predicts a record low number of voters in the June primary. Citing Quinn's own figures, attendance at three of the last four elections has ranged from 34.6% in the 2002 primary to 60% in the recall election that turned Gray Davis out of office. Only the 2004 presidential election attracted a greater number of voters: about 75%. These percentages do not begin to justify his theory that we are suffering from a bad case of ballot burnout.

COME on, guys, since when does mean-spirited nastiness need to be part of a book review? Jonathan Shapiro goes beyond the call of an unbiased reviewer in his review of Tommy Chong's new memoir of his prison time as a result of selling a bong ["Chong in the Joint, Out of Joint," Aug. 12]. Chong, a comedian, was imprisoned at taxpayer expense in an era when millions of Americans are suffering from lack of healthcare, poor education and spiraling debt. The possibility that his incarceration was a result of a Republican conservative Christian campaign is certainly a reasonable hypothesis and not necessarily untrue, as Shapiro states.

Feel like you're going crazy? Maybe you need a day off. More than 80% of employees admit to taking "mental health" days from work to recover or recharge, according to a poll conducted by ComPsych Corp., which provides corporate counseling services. Almost a third said family and relationship issues were the cause, while 20% cited work-related stress and 12% being tired. The online survey polled 1,036 employees of ComPsych's company clients.

BOB MULROY thinks he may be a pioneer. Or an idiot. On an October day at Oregon's Cristom Vineyards, he was laboring to figure out which. Mulroy, an electrical engineer from Ellicott City, Md., had purchased 28 acres in Howard County, Md., and was thinking of planting some of the land with wine grapes. His was no idle rumination: He was trying to decide whether to stay in engineering or become a vintner.

On the day Lonnie Wagman told her second-grade class that she was retiring after 34 years as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, she asked the pupils to paint a portrait of her and to write down what they thought retirement means. Most of her students at Arminta Elementary School portrayed the pixieish Wagman -- reasonably accurately -- with a round face topped by a swath of dark brown hair. They drew her a big smile, which they accented with bright red lips.