Tradition

CINCINNATI - The Rev. Chris Beard is a theological conservative, make no mistake about it. He believes the Bible is the word of God. He believes the Holy Spirit speaks to him directly. He believes, as an article of faith, that abortion and same-sex marriage are wrong. Still, when a group of religious leaders in Ohio held two days of meetings in Cincinnati recently to talk about economic and racial justice, issues usually associated with the political left, there was Beard, a fourth-generation Pentecostal preacher with a disarming smile, a shaved head and a set of convictions that knock holes in the stereotypes about white evangelical Protestants.

Southwest Chamber Music's L.A. International New Music Festival is more a Los Angeles interstitial new music festival. Skirting touristy Europe, these Southwesterners are not interested in inclusiveness but in filling gaps that very much need filling. Monday's installment, the third of the festival's four concerts at the Colburn School's Zipper Concert Hall, did feature two admired L.A. composers who do not lack local institutional attention. Anne LeBaron, on the faculty at CalArts, happens to be the local composer of the moment with her breathtaking opera "Crescent City" currently in production and a piece on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's opening Hollywood Bowl concert in July.

Teas from across the globe are becoming more and more popular in the U.S. One relative newcomer, yerba mate, is attracting fans for its allegedly jitter-free caffeine boost and high antioxidant content. Lab research suggests some potential health benefits from drinking yerba mate, but studies of lifelong yerba mate drinkers in the tea's native South America suggest the brew increases the risk of some cancers -- a fact most marketing campaigns omit.

Actor Kelsey Grammer is back at it — trying to sell his home in the Beverly Crest area — this time for $17.999 million. Priced in 2008 at $19.9 million, the mansion is described in the listing as modern Traditional in style. The two-story house, built in 1980, features a central hall, media room, a library, a wine cellar and a service entrance. There are seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms and 10,567 square feet of living space. Lawn, a swimming pool, a six-car motor court and a four-car garage complete the grounds of more than three-quarters of an acre.

Birds do it, bees do it, even wildebeests and zebus do it. And during the "Valentine's Day Sex Tour" at Santa Ana Zoo today, visitors will learn exactly how animals court and mate in a captive setting. Wild stuff? Well, the event is for adults only, but zoo curator Connie Sweet said she wouldn't go so far as to slap an R-rating on the tour. Call it PG-13.

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

For Wang Zan, nine months of pregnancy and a caesarean delivery were difficult enough. The last thing she wanted was a monthlong ordeal that her mother and generations of mothers before her had to endure afterward. According to this tradition, the woman must stay in bed behind closed windows, cover her head, give up bathing, washing her hair and even brushing her teeth.

Seventy boys in khaki uniforms cram shoulder to shoulder into chemistry class, where there are no chemicals or test tubes, only the squeak of the teacher's magic marker drawing diagrams and equations in the minutes before recess. If there is a genius among the rows of teenage faces, his gift may never be known. The boys are poor and many are undernourished, leaving class every afternoon to sell water and newspapers in the streets. The teacher earns about $200 a month, not enough to support his family, so he looks for odd jobs in the neighborhoods at the city's edge.

They came to the showdown carrying every weapon they could. On one side stood five dozen men, fingers ready on triggers. Staring back at them across a bleak stretch of grass and sparse shrubs were a couple of hundred warriors, guns raised, holding an emaciated prisoner. Magomed Keligov waited. His face was gray and gaunt, his hair shaggy, his legs shackled. He had seen the sun just once in nearly 12 months. Most of that time he had been fastened to the wall of a cellar by a yard-long chain.

Friday in Ojai was a day best suited for canvas and watercolors. Also, because it was Ojai, for tennis. We live in an era where tradition means you did the same thing last year. In Ojai, their tennis tradition runs a bit deeper. This weekend's tournament, simply called "The Ojai" because that's all that is needed, is the 112th. Some of the trees surrounding the courts in Libbey Park look as if they were there when this all started. To be clear, this is no collection of hackers in green shorts and cheap rackets.

TRIVANDRUM, India - R. Padmanathan Nair sits on a plastic chair in the entryway of the Heritage senior home talking about the fellow residents who treat him like family, which is helpful seeing as his own rarely visits. His wife tried to abscond with their valuables, he said, so he gave the house to a niece, who ignored him after she got the property. Now his daughter is the only one who visits the 76-year-old retired teacher here in the capital of the southern state of Kerala, and that's just a few times a year.

BEIJING - Orgies and anal sex hardly seem the usual fodder of traditional Chinese folk art, but that is exactly what one Chinese artist is depicting in a series of provocative paper-cuts that are now being exhibited in Los Angeles for the first time. Paper-cuts originated in Eastern Han Dynasty China (AD 25-220) and are hung on windows or doors for good luck. But instead of the usual decorative flowers and birds, Xiyadie, whose pseudonym means "Siberian Butterfly," portrays graphic and daring depictions of homosexual love - long considered taboo in China.

LYNCHBURG, Va. - Seeking to connect with the community of evangelicals that has been cold to his candidacy for many months, Mitt Romney delivered a commencement speech at Liberty University on Saturday that delved deeply into his faith while arguing that Christians of all different creeds could come together in the name of service. Speaking to a crowd of more than 30,000 at the school founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, the presumed Republican nominee took the stage after an admonition from Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. - who was quoting his father - that the American people will be “electing a commander in chief, not a pastor or a religious leader” in November.

The first electric motorcycle that promises to deliver near the performance of traditional sport bikes was unveiled in Hollywood. The Brammo Empulse is designed to be "the first viable motorcycle that just happens to be electric," said Brammo Chief Executive Craig Bramscher, whose team started working on the bike in 2010. The company, based in Ashland, Ore., said the Empulse is capable of going at least 100 mph and as far as 121 miles per charge in city riding. It carries a 9.3-kilowatt-hour lithium ion battery pack and liquid-cooled motor.

TEHRAN — On a recent trip to a city on the Persian Gulf, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood in the back of a pickup as it made its way through a thick crowd clamoring for his attention when an older, disheveled man began to shout at him. "Ahmadinejad, I am hungry, Ahmadinejad, I am hungry," he pleaded desperately. The man banged on the pickup's front window to get the notice of the president, who leaned forward as the two exchanged a few words. A young woman then climbed onto the hood of the vehicle and told the leader, "I have problems.

Friday in Ojai was a day best suited for canvas and watercolors. Also, because it was Ojai, for tennis. We live in an era where tradition means you did the same thing last year. In Ojai, their tennis tradition runs a bit deeper. This weekend's tournament, simply called "The Ojai" because that's all that is needed, is the 112th. Some of the trees surrounding the courts in Libbey Park look as if they were there when this all started. To be clear, this is no collection of hackers in green shorts and cheap rackets.

The sea is restless as Kim Jae-yeon perches on the rocky shoreline, eyeing the churning waters at her feet. Slowly, she wipes her goggles with a fistful of grass to keep them from fogging underwater and offers a prayer to the pounding surf for her good fortune. Like six generations of women before her on this treeless speck of land in the East China Sea, the young mother of two is preparing for a dangerous job no man here is allowed to perform: free-diving for minutes at a time to catch abalone and other shellfish.

Boxers or briefs? Bikinis or thongs? Bras or negligees? So many choices -- and that's just for the men. Three times a year, UCLA's unofficial Undie Run brings out thousands of skivvy-clad students looking to unwind -- and then some -- from finals week by meeting at midnight to run from the corner of Gayley Avenue and Strathmore Place to the school's intramural field.

SEATTLE — In a move to improve treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, the Army is discouraging the use of traditional definitions such as feelings of fear, helplessness and horror — symptoms that may not be in a trained warrior's vocabulary. It also is recommending against the use of anti-anxiety and antipsychotic medications for such combat stress in favor of more proven drugs. The changes are reflected in a new policy document released this month, one that reflects a growing understanding of the "occupational" nature of the condition for many troops.

Stories pour out of Gabriela Lena Frank like music. Sitting on an old brown leather chair in her little house, where she lives with her grand piano, books and black Labrador retriever, she is describing her upbringing and musical education with passion and joy and not a note of calculation. The composer has electric-black curly hair and a mind as alive as morning light. Before she finishes her cup of tea, she has described, like a magical character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, the influence on her music of her father, a Jewish Mark Twain scholar who grew up in the Bronx; her mother, a Peruvian whose Chinese grandfather sold shovels to miners in the 1800s; her congenital hearing loss; Graves' disease, which has diminished her eyesight; bodybuilders and Andes Mountain Indian runners; and her perfect pitch, which Frank's piano teacher discovered when Frank was 10, after Frank informed her that a harp recording of Bach's Prelude in C was really in the key of F. Frank, 39, is also glad to help journalists who stammer like flummoxed tourists to categorize her. "I'm a Berkeley gringa, Latino, Peruvian, Chinese, Lithuanian Jew, deaf, short composer!"