Valley Life

Thank you for your new Valley Life segment. My wife and I have thoroughly enjoyed the Valley directories in it. We attended a presentation of "Bus Stop" by the Group Repertory Theater of North Hollywood, guided there by your Life segment. It was a delightful evening! Their cast combines the skill of professionals with the enthusiasm of amateurs. Thanks for your help. OWEN G. OWENS Woodland Hills

The night is cold, dark and silent in Tahquitz Valley, a bowl-shaped expanse of boggy meadows and sloping forests 8,000 feet above sea level in the San Jacinto Mountains. Suddenly, the "chirp, chirp" of an electronic bat detector is joined by the sound of footsteps trampling the undergrowth. Drew Stokes strode through knee-high ferns, the beam of his headlamp fixed on a bat caught in a net and baring its razor-sharp upper canines.

KID-FRIENDLY: A guide to Valley restaurants that actually want kids as customers is in Valley Life!, Page 31. With toy trains and other attractions, many eateries serve healthy alternatives to fast food. . . . On the other hand, what about a nice dinner without the kids? Critic Max Jacobson recommends the European flavor of Piacere in Woodland Hills on Page 32. LUCKY DOG: Steve Ledoux, above, has a winning hand. . . .

What's it like to come of age in a place defined by outsiders and their cliches: surf, gang turf, Hollywood, Vine, the land of milk and honey? Do our children grow up too soon? Is Southern California the great springboard to a life of opportunity? On the following pages you'll find 17 children who are moving toward adulthood. Their stories are not the stuff of headlines or extremes: young criminals, star athletes, child movie stars. Rather, we went in search of "typical" kids.

Today's is the last issue of Valley View, which will be replaced June 12 with Valley Life, a newly designed, separate tabloid section. Many of the most popular columns from Valley View, including Bargains and ViewFinder, will appear in the new section, along with new lifestyle and entertainment features.

The title of the current exhibition at the Century Gallery, "Representation and Distortion," is a catch-all phrase. Virtually all visual artistic endeavors possess such qualities. Yet the four artists in this show make no attempt to hide or qualify their distorting schemes. Roger Dolin's paintings, the most satisfying of the bunch, celebrate their own ocular tipsiness, as if viewed through warbling windows or under water.

This is the last issue of Valley Life! Special Valley Edition entertainment and restaurant coverage will continue, however, with local news and advertising pages inside your Thursday Calendar section. Many of the regular features and listings in Valley Life! will be contained in these Calendar pages, which also will preview weekend activities and events. This coverage debuts next Thursday.

Today, wrapping Valley Life! is a back-to-school special section. Learn how to assist over- and under-achievers, how to organize your child's life, how to help choose the hippest lunch box, and how to set rules for teen-age drivers.

On March 4, Charles W. Diggs Jr. wrote, "Now, what I want to say to Southpaw Jones is, 'Man, you ain't seen no blues, yet,' white or otherwise," (Letters to the Valley Edition). This was his response to Katherine Tolford's article about my music (Valley Life, Feb. 23). Frankly, he's right. As a young white male, the only "blues" I confront are shallow dilemmas like Napster lawsuits, neck hair and people who don't read articles fully before they jump to conclusions and respond. So what right do I have to wail?

Effective today, the county's chief probation officer--who once made headlines for refusing to send juvenile offenders to the California Youth Authority--has been fired for allegedly not showing up for work and not doing his job. John Lum, who believes that institutionalizing young offenders does little to rehabilitate them, maintains that the charges against him stem from a witch hunt conducted by conservative officials out to ruin his career....

As a boy, Steve Allen visited the San Fernando Valley and was captivated by "the sweet smell of the citrus," said his son Bill Allen, recalling a time when orange groves dotted the Valley landscape. When the legendary entertainer, who died suddenly Monday evening, decided to switch coasts, moving from New York to Southern California, he knew where he wanted to put down roots.

You're traveling in another dimension. The new fall television season brings the onslaught of about 34 new programs. But "new" is a misnomer. For your consideration, just two examples: CBS' "Judging Amy" is similar to NBC's "Providence" but different, and CBS' "Family Law" resembles ABC's "The Practice" but not quite. * While television programmers ran out of new show ideas years ago, now it seems they've even started to run out of show titles. Case in point: "Now and Again" and "Once and Again."

"You're the best," rejoices a regular as Hiro Matsuda hands a gaudily stuffed hand roll across the slate-gray sushi counter at his Ventura Boulevard restaurant. The man enraptured by his hand roll, I discover, was one of Matsuda's best customers when he worked down the street at Teru Sushi, before he left to open this new restaurant, named Matsuda. The man had better be right.