Speaking

The biggest home in Los Angeles County is ready for a new nickname: The 56,500-square-foot Manor, dubbed Candyland after owner Candy Spelling, has been sold to another wealthy socialite, British heiress Petra Ecclestone, in an all-cash deal for $85 million. As steep as that price is, it's not a record or even close to what Spelling was asking. The priciest Southland home transaction was the 2000 sale of an 8-acre estate in Bel-Air to financial executive Gary Winnick in a deal that included the trade of other land, for a total value of about $94 million.

Deep inside my writerly brain, down where my earliest memories reside, there is a voice. It speaks to me in Spanish. I write in the language of Shakespeare and Steinbeck. That's the language I was educated in, here in L.A. The language of the British Empire, of American Manifest Destiny, of California and the West. But Spanish gave me my first words: mamá, agua . And it was the language on the covers of the first works of grown-up literature I held in my hands, the Guatemalan novels my immigrant father brought into our Hollywood home.

WELL, I guess Gwyneth Paltrow, or anyone for that matter, is not allowed to have a negative opinion of President Bush ... and that poor woman from Irvine [Letters, Sept. 18], afraid to speak her mind. This is a democracy? VICTORIA GROSTICK San Luis Obispo

ROME — Quiet and bookish, a little colorless, Mario Monti doesn't seem the kind of man to inspire religious epiphanies. But his leadership of Italy in the last five months has moved one leading politician to declare it not just a "miracle," but proof that God exists. Granted, his transformation from mild-mannered technocrat to the man charged with saving Italy has been a bit startling. From a photo op with President Obama in the White House to a whistle-stop tour of Asia to woo foreign investors, Monti is on a tear, busy telling the world that his country is back in business.

State lawmakers passed measures Thursday to protect foreign-speaking business patrons and make life tough for waterfowl that imperil airline travelers. Worried that geese and jets don't mix, the Senate approved a bill that would give airports greater authority to avoid run-ins with game wardens if they need to kill birds that could interfere with jets. Meanwhile, the Assembly approved a measure that would prohibit restaurants and other establishments from refusing to serve patrons because they're speaking a different language.

We should be grateful to Culver City Councilman Steven Gourley for speaking up about problems stemming from overpopulation in Los Angeles and the continuing flow of legal and illegal immigrants into this area (Times, Aug. 18). A key phrase in one of Gourley's answers to questions about illegal immigration is, ". . . and no one seems to want to do anything about it." Unfortunately, the longer we remain quiet the worse the problems become. Silence is not a virtue when one sees serious disorder developing.

Learning more than one language is a 21st century skill. It provides students with economic opportunities across the globe and at home. Many students enter our schools fluent in a language other than English. They speak Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Farsi, Arabic, Khmer and dozens of other languages important in international trade. They come with a resource. Ideally, these students — more than 1.5 million in California who enter school speaking a language other than English — would gain English proficiency while enhancing their home language skills.

Generally speaking, "Old soldiers never die." Privately speaking, "Only the young ones do." ED KYSAR, Reseda

Happy new decade (technically speaking). MICHAEL E. LEVITON Encino

Kristofferson puts on a good concert, makes interesting movies, is an outstanding songwriter and is now speaking out politically. He's to be congratulated--that's terrific! PAT ELLISON Ventura

Long ago before the Venice boardwalk was a messy hive of sunglass huts, homeless hipsters begging for weed and a prime example of what happens when T-shirt slogans go terribly wrong, it housed an elaborate promenade of stunning luxury hotels and was known as the Coney Island of the Pacific. Developer Abbot Kinney had also master planned opera houses, ballrooms, bathhouses and a grand pier. Every roaring '20s playground needed a boozy respite, and Venice had a bar established in 1915 called Menotti's Buffet.

I've always been interested in ways that paintings function as anthropological evidence of moments in time, and I'm a fan of the Charles Mackay book from 1840 "Extraordinary Public Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," which traces the history of the Dutch tulip bubble. This painting precedes the collapse of the bubble; it's not a direct comment on tulip mania. But it's a moment when people get really excited about collecting tulips and they start seeking variations in the plant caused by the mosaic virus, which produced the variegated or striped tulips you can see in the painting.

A charismatic L.A. mayor appears to be riding an unstoppable populist wave to the governor's mansion -- but his victory celebration may be premature. Amid the campaign's down-to-the-wire twists and turns, nothing can be taken for granted except human fallibility in Chuck Rose's new drama, "Bedfellows" (as in "politics makes strange…"). The fine line between personal ambition and the public good -- and the resulting ethical dilemmas -- are hardly uncharted thematic territories, but they speak with particular relevance to a polarized electoral climate in Jack Stehlin's impassioned staging for his New American Theatre company.

In this age of Kindle and iPad and e-books, I write by hand, on little notepads, in my car. I have written in my car since I was 22 and working on my first novel. Then, the car was a broken-down pale green Fiat. I sat in the driver's seat while my then-husband worked on it in our gravel driveway, yelling at me to pump the brakes or start the engine. Now I write in my 2009 Honda CRV while waiting in the high school parking lot for my youngest, or even at the curb in front of my house - the way Raymond Carver used to - before I go inside.

A group that represents the majority of Roman Catholic nuns in the United States has been chastised by the Vatican for deviating from church doctrine and promoting what the Holy See called "radical feminist themes. " The Leadership Conference of Women Religious said Thursday it would consult with its members to decide on a course of action after the church's three-year investigation resulted in the harsh assessment of its activities and a call for reform. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the enforcer of orthodoxy - criticized the group for "protesting the Holy See's actions regarding the question of women's ordination and of a correct pastoral approach to ministry to homosexual persons.

Lena Dunham is sitting at a Larchmont Boulevard cafe in a pale yellow dress and a blazer, rummaging around her bag for a bottle of green juice. She's drinking it to stave off illness caused by frequent plane travel - one of the hazards of being an in-demand wunderkind. Her upcoming HBO series, "Girls," was filmed in New York, where she sleeps in her parents' basement while she waits for her new place to be ready. But Dunham just spent half a year in L.A. so she could edit and consult with the show's producers, Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner.

I was pleased to see "Speaking of Implants" (Feb. 24) about how Jenny Jones decided to "come out" with her personal tales of the negative effects that breast implants have had on her body. It is great that we now have a public figure speaking out and informing the public on the dangers that accompany breast implants. EVA FIELDS North Hollywood

"The mayor is too strong a man, too big a fighter. He would never quit. He is not a person who would lie down like (Jim) Wright." --Ethel Bradley, the mayor's wife, speaking of her husband's determination to remain in office despite the controversy surrounding some of his financial dealings.

We got our first real glimpse this week of how President Obama and his now-almost-certain Republican rival, Mitt Romney, intend to wage their campaigns in the lead-up to the general election. In a speech Tuesday, Obama painted Romney as an out-of-touch patrician who doesn't care much about the troubles of hardworking people low on the income ladder. Romney soon fired back, painting Obama as an out-of-touch liberal who doesn't care much about the struggles of honest businessmen who want to create jobs.

PEWAUKEE, Wis. — Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum each sought to shore up their standing with religious conservatives Saturday as the two leading rivals for the Republican presidential nomination battled for support in the Wisconsin primary. Their latest appeals to the party's conservative wing come as Romney is trying to take on the role of presumptive Republican nominee, which would normally require a pivot toward the center. Romney's prolonged combat with Santorum is not only blocking him from making what he had hoped would be a smooth and quick transition to a general election campaign, but also spotlighting the shifts on social issues that led much of the party's conservative base to distrust him. "I want to protect the sanctity of human life," Romney told hundreds of conservative Christians on Saturday at a gathering of the Faith and Freedom Coalition in this Milwaukee suburb.