Everyday Life

Recently, I was jarred to read an essay that ran on the front page of this newspaper two decades ago. "Suddenly, I am scared to be Asian," the author wrote. "More specifically, I am afraid of being mistaken for Korean. " Those words were mine, a fourth-generation Chinese American, written as large swaths of L.A. were smoldering. I'm sure my remarks made some readers suspect I had slept through Political Correctness 101. Had the violence racking the city really rubbed me so raw? It's easy to forget how confounding the events of that spring were for Los Angeles.

Re “ A fateful dance with death ,” Dec. 23 This article is both gripping and compelling, and brings added emphasis to the cliche about life being too short. I love the attitude this young man had about life. It is wise beyond his years, and without question a brave and admirable one. The last sentence was amazing to me: “It's never too early and it's never too late. Everyone's life is borrowed.” Thank you for writing this. Olakunle Arowolo Long Beach I feel the article about a young man's bout with poverty and cancer and his eventual death was in very poor taste, and definitely did not warrant being a top story on the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper such as The Times.

Dynamic strength is the type of strength you use in everyday activities such as standing, lifting, carrying, bending and twisting. It is often referred to as "strength in action." This move, which focuses on dynamic strength, trains many muscles in your body to work together as a unit. -- Karen Voight 1 Begin in a plank (or the top of a push-up) position. Form a straight line, with your body balancing evenly between your hands and toes.

The lead character in Jim Unger's offbeat cartoon panel "Herman" is a rumpled, middle-aged everyman, with a bulging belly and a potato-sized nose, dealing with the frustrations and absurdities of everyday life. In one panel, Unger's lumpy hero wears an apron and washes the dishes as his wife glowers over his shoulder. The caption says, "It's one small step for a man, one giant leap toward a divorce. " The award-winning British-born cartoonist had a good idea why his widely syndicated cartoon was so popular.

For at least a decade, Karin Apollonia Muller has been making savvy photographs that consider the disquieting contradictions of ordinary experience, a project for which Southern California has been her muse. Muller divides her time between Los Angeles and Germany, where she was born (in Heidelberg) in 1963. Perhaps it takes an outsider to see a place with fresh eyes, because she understands the perplexing city in ways that deeply resonate.

On the short cul-de-sac in Commerce that runs alongside the railroad tracks, fresh lumber mingles with the detritus from the homes. A roll of toilet paper. A lampshade. A child's Superman bedsheets. The residents of Davie Avenue are accustomed to freight traffic and Metrolink trains rumbling past. Then an out-of-control train derailed Friday afternoon. Seconds before the crash, they had formed a tableau of everyday life.

Searching for romance? TV chef Nick Stellino knows how to find it. Of course, Stellino thinks of romance in the broader sense--injecting magic into everyday life--not just hearts and flowers. "I call romantic a meal at which the whole family sits together and shares their stories of the day," says Stellino, star of the PBS cooking show "Cucina Amore," which begins its new season Saturday at 11 a.m. on KCET (Channel 28). That's the way it was as he grew up in Sicily.

THE WHORE'S CHILD And Other Stories by Richard Russo Alfred A. Knopf 272 pp., $24 * Starting in 1986 with "Mohawk," set in upstate New York, Richard Russo has made a name for himself writing big novels about small places. His most recent, "Empire Falls," about a dying mill town in Maine, won him the Pulitzer Prize earlier this year.

Visionary Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke is certainly not known for his dramas. The few plays Rilke did write are seldom, if ever, produced today. "Everyday Life" at the Pacific Resident Theatre is a welcome opportunity to see a full-fledged Rilke drama in all its glory and excess.

Frederick Mosteller, 89, who founded Harvard University's statistics department and used mathematical theories to explain everyday concerns, from healthcare to the World Series, died Sunday at a nursing home in Falls Church, Va. The Washington Post reported the cause of death as sepsis, a toxic condition resulting from the spread of bacteria or their toxic products through the body after an infection.

Recently, I was jarred to read an essay that ran on the front page of this newspaper two decades ago. "Suddenly, I am scared to be Asian," the author wrote. "More specifically, I am afraid of being mistaken for Korean. " Those words were mine, a fourth-generation Chinese American, written as large swaths of L.A. were smoldering. I'm sure my remarks made some readers suspect I had slept through Political Correctness 101. Had the violence racking the city really rubbed me so raw? It's easy to forget how confounding the events of that spring were for Los Angeles.

Last fall, a state inspector strode into Great Beginnings preschool and declared the tree house and climbing structure too high. They would have to come down or be surrounded by extra padding. The metal ladder to the playhouse, which had been there 30 years, could pinch the children, said Beverly Wright-Chrystal, a state child care licensing representative. Also, a log worn smooth by generations of boys and girls playing horsy and hide-and-go-seek would have to be sanded and painted because of a potential "splinter hazard," Wright-Chrystal determined.

Thirty-five years ago, when I had just graduated from high school and was starting out in journalism, one of my first assignments was covering City Section cross-country. I had to copy the names of the top three finishers in each league race and write a short story about what happened. Even then, I was curious about these crazy high school kids who ran 50 to 60 miles a week, didn't receive much attention but loved the challenge. So there I was last week at the City finals at Pierce College, looking for a little inspiration.

There's the grown son bridging the distance with his alcoholic father, an old woman's girlhood memories of working in her grandfather's dumpling restaurant, a student's search for an inspiring former teacher. Like pages ripped from a diary, they're personal stories about love, loss and just coping with everyday life in this crowded and stressful society. But these private thoughts are presented in a public place: The short tales, signed by their authors, are part of a new storytelling program on Seoul's Metropolitan Subway System.

My little bit of a nervous breakdown started 10 years ago, when my daughter — then five — was diagnosed with epilepsy. After six weeks of smiling through neurologist appointments, EEGs, blood tests and boatloads of worry, I started having panic attacks, which are aptly named. They feel like total, uncontrollable panic. Mine started with a tingling in my head and quickly spread to tunnel vision, sweaty palms, thumping heartbeat and the belief that I was about to die. One panic attack invites many, and in the weeks to come I had them in stores, at home, in the day, in the night.

Take down four or five streetlights, remove a scattering of TV antennas, scrape off the asphalt from twisty narrow streets, and the Calabrian mountainside village of Caulonia would look virtually as it did in medieval times. Caulonia and its environs are the setting for native Calabrian Michelangelo Frammartino's enthralling "Le Quattro Volte" (The Four Lives), inspired by the region's great philosopher Pythagoras' belief in four-fold transmigration, which holds that the soul is passed from human to animal to vegetable to mineral.

Joe Restivo, a comedian and character actor who performed on the national comedy club circuit for many years with a stand-up routine that reveled in the absurdities of everyday life, has died. He was 60. Restivo, who was a resident of Valley Village, died Monday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank after a long battle with cancer, said his wife, Maryanne. His comedy was filled with what has been described as middle-class angst.

The first thing to confront the viewer in Jack Pierson's current exhibition at Regen Projects is a startlingly visceral and intimate accusation, scrawled on a wall in angry black paint: "I left all the love I had for you in a locker at the Hollywood Greyhound Station hacked up in a plastic bag." Evoking an image that is difficult to put out of the mind, the phrase embodies the exhibition's peculiar balance of tenderness and sordidness.

Homeownership, long trumpeted as the American dream, has turned into a nightmare for many, especially those on whom life has inflicted unexpected blows. Secure in their jobs, with plenty of savings and good health when they bought their homes, millions of Americans are now fighting to keep them ? leading a growing number of economists and real estate experts to ask whether the national obsession with homeownership is healthy. Two economists question even the basic financial arguments for homeownership and say the government has oversold the economic case for subsidizing it. "One thing that is certain is that homeownership is not for everyone, and thus, based on the economic benefits, the case for trying to achieve a nation of homeowners needs to be rethought," say Wenli Li and Fang Yang, authors of a study published recently by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Mattaponi Queen Stories Belle Boggs Graywolf Press: 228 pp., $15 paper Belle Boggs, a Virginia girl, has been cured in a mixture equal parts American West and East: an MFA in fiction from UC Irvine and an award recipient of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont. These stories, set on the Mattaponi Indian Reservation in Virginia's Tidewater region, are rich in the details of small-town life. Boggs is precise — she has studied the movements of young and old alike, how they peer through windows, dreaming of other towns; how they peer through windshields at landmarks they've seen for half a century or more.