Pacifica

Citing "artistic and professional reasons," Ballet Pacifica artistic director Molly Lynch has resigned from the Irvine-based company she has led since 1988. "It was an extremely difficult decision to make, but I felt it was the only reasonable alternative at this point," Lynch said Wednesday. "I'm trying to focus on the positive and all we did over the last 15 years and figure out what I'm going to do next." Lynch would not elaborate on her decision.

It's my first day on the job, I'm supposed to deliver a Chrysler Pacifica review, and already I have to write a correction. OK, here goes: Because of what might charitably be called "editing errors," in some editions of The Times published in May through July 1912, stories concerning the Times Ocean-to-Ocean expedition -- a transcontinental auto trip sponsored by publisher Gen. Harrison Gray Otis and reported by auto editor Bert C.

To mark the 58th anniversary of the first atomic bombing, KPFK-FM (90.7) on Wednesday will air a dramatization of "Hiroshima," journalist John Hersey's chronicle of six survivors of the blast and its aftermath. In addition, the station will air archived interviews with Hiroshima survivors, with bomber crew members and with scientists debating the ethics and effects of nuclear war.

It's not often you find a Pilates reformer in a boardroom. But the exercise contraption is a tool of the trade for Molly Lynch, artistic director of Irvine's Ballet Pacifica. Especially during most of July, when it is put into overdrive by 15 company members and four visiting choreographers who have been invited to participate in Pacifica Choreographic Project 2003.

When the leftist Pacifica radio network packed up its offices and left Berkeley for Washington, D.C. one night in January 2000, critics said it was the most tangible evidence yet that the organization had abandoned its radical roots. But by the end of the month, Pacifica will be back in Berkeley, where it was founded by a peace activist after World War II and where it pioneered listener-supported radio.

When Jodie Legaspi signed with UCLA in November, she wasn't thinking about her team's chances of winning a Southern Section Division III championship. Legaspi was feeling relief -- and excitement -- about the prospect of playing for the college softball team she dreamed about since she was 9. But her signature also provided something else. "It pumped me up because I knew I had a future ahead of me," she said. "It meant that I was going to move on in my career.

Rob Weil, who led Garden Grove Pacifica to the Southern Section Division III championship, has been named 2003 state coach of the year in softball by Cal-Hi Sports. The Mariners finished 31-2 and atop the Cal-Hi state's rankings. It was the fourth title for Weil, who won three in a row at Pacifica from 1997 to 1999. Woodbridge's Alan Dugard, whose Warriors (27-8) won the Division I softball title, has been named large-school coach of the year.

Top-seeded Garden Grove Pacifica, trailing by three runs, scored nine times in the bottom of the sixth inning to shock unseeded La Mirada, 9-3, and win the Southern Section Division III title Saturday at Barber Park in Irvine. "We haven't given up nine runs total in our last 20 games," said Matadores Coach Rich Trujillo, whose team dropped to 27-7. "I don't know what happened." What happened is that every bad break for Pacifica (31-2) in the first five innings was returned in full in the sixth.

If ever a school suffered an understandable inferiority complex, it was Garden Grove Pacifica. Pacifica has been the Clippers of Southland high school baseball, developing young talent handed up from the successful local youth system only to have players leave. Worse yet, some of those players ended up at nationally ranked league rival Westminster La Quinta, only six miles away.

The small margin for error in softball finally caught up with Garden Grove Pacifica, which had spent the last few weeks in the No. 1 spot of The Times' rankings. After 14 games, Pacifica finally lost, as Brittany Weil lost a nine-inning pitcher's duel, 1-0, to Corona Santiago's Taryne Mowatt in the Foothill tournament championship. It won't be the last we've heard of Pacifica though.