Umbrellas

The Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group's Green Umbrella season opener was conceived as a companion to what would have been the U.S. premiere of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's "La Passion de Simone" last weekend. The premiere didn't happen (postponed until next season), but the planned Saariaho survey remained in place Tuesday night.

Born in poverty, raised by a mother who chased the gangs off her doorstep with a shotgun, protected by big brothers, even as they succumbed to the drug culture.... And those were the good old days? The plight of Isiah Thomas, coach and president of the Knicks, is so overwhelming, he sometimes compares it to his escape from Chicago's West Side. It's so wild, it makes sense only to him and his few sympathizers.

JOHN ADAMS conducted two of his chamber concertos Tuesday night with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group. A "Green Umbrella" concert, it was also an early 60th birthday party for the composer, in anticipation of Feb. 15. The performances weren't the best of either work that I've heard. "Grand Pianola Music," the boisterous two-piano concerto, was, in some regards, better played three nights earlier by the Pasadena Symphony.

THREE years ago, when the Los Angeles Philharmonic moved its Green Umbrella new music series from a smaller theater to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, I regretted the decision. Or course, the crowds would be large at first, but the venue felt too big and formal for new music. Amplification, often used in new music, was a big problem in the hall. Prices (a $45 top) seemed awfully high for new music.

RAIN couldn't spoil the intense color or striking geometry of these irrigated rice fields on Bali, captured by Daniel Fink during his trip in April. Fink, an L.A. doctor, got the shot -- holding his Casio Exilim EZ-40 in one hand and an umbrella in the other. The stop in Gulingan, a rice-growing village more than 400 years old, was part of a tour of the southern part of the Indonesian island that also included nearby temples.

The nation's most comprehensive healthcare reform effort became law Wednesday as Gov. Mitt Romney signed a bill that would assure near-universal health insurance for Massachusetts residents. The measure followed a year of negotiations between the Republican governor and the overwhelmingly Democratic state Legislature, and was swiftly heralded as a national model.

Re "Rain Dampens Everything but Spirit," Jan. 3 Looks like God forgot about the "never on Sunday" rule for the Rose Parade. Had it been on Jan. 1, it wouldn't have gotten rained on! JASON CHASE Anaheim Re "Edwards Spends This Parade Out in the Cold," Jan. 3 As a 30-year Rose Parade equestrienne (marshal, Tanner Appaloosas), I noticed it wasn't so much that the crowd's colorful umbrellas and raincoats at times outshone the entries themselves. It was that TV commentator Stephanie Edwards, who has long provided KTLA television's "color," had to juggle an umbrella and rain-soaked program while reporting from street level.

Hoping to increase their political muscle, leaders of Los Angeles' system of neighborhood councils are trying to create a citywide congress that would allow representatives of each panel to collectively weigh in on important issues. The effort marks a milestone for the fledging neighborhood councils, which were created five years ago as part of the effort to reform city government and prevent a city breakup movement centered in the San Fernando Valley.

Call it compassionate chaos. Relief supplies quickly gathered by families, churches and businesses around the nation have been streaming for days into the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Yet there is no central clearinghouse to match the donations with those in need. Instead, a handful of charities and coordinating groups have stepped up to handle the gushing stream of donated goods, including bottled water, socks, towels, toothpaste and flip-flops.