Youth California

California's 7.7 million children are less likely to be immunized or go to college compared to their counterparts nationally, and are more likely to be murdered, drop out of high school or become teen-age parents, according to Children Now, a statewide advocacy group that issues annual report cards on the status of the state's children.

During a Mass this week here at World Youth Day, Mayra Giallo extended her hand as a sign of peace--the custom in her Southern California parish--to a handsome young Frenchman next to her. "He grabbed me and kissed me on both cheeks," the 22-year-old Cal State Northridge student from La Puente said, blushing. "I was like, let's do that again!"

California's teen-agers are far more likely to become pregnant, be jailed or be killed than they were four years ago and they are less likely to have a job and to live with a parent, according to a report issued Wednesday by a children's advocacy group.

"All good teenagers go to California," Brian Wilson once quipped, "when they die." Wilson's remark, far edgier and more richly ironic than any of the hit songs he wrote and sang for the Beach Boys, is invoked by Kirse Granat May in "Golden State, Golden Youth," a study that deconstructs the popular culture of postwar America and shows exactly how the California dream and the cult of youth came to be linked in powerful but also cynical and even ominous ways.

America's youth are more likely to live in poverty and die because of violence than ever before, according to a report to be issued today by a Washington think tank. Clearly worse off than a decade or five years ago, California's teen-agers are especially vulnerable to crime, poverty and other stresses of urban life.

A wide-ranging new study of teen-age pregnancy released Tuesday found that California leads the nation in rates of children giving birth to children and that almost a quarter of the young mothers have two or more babies. The study said that for every 1,000 California girls ages 15 to 19 in 1993, 154 had become pregnant, a far higher incidence than nationwide, where 111 pregnancies occurred for every 1,000 teen-age girls.

Two brothers on a Southern California freeway at 3:30 a.m. One is wearing a seat belt and the other isn't when the car slams into a guardrail. The one who isn't wearing a seat belt is ejected from the car and killed. The other one walks away with minor injuries. No one knows whether a seat belt would have saved the life of Andre Stewart, the Newport Harbor High School football star who died a week ago in a crash on the Pomona Freeway.

As in the sport of bullfighting, certain dangers come with the territory at the minuscule Ole Madrid restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter: You are likely to leave not only stuffed to the gills, but hoarse.

Not far from the U.S. Capitol but light years from the exclusive black-tie galas that are such hot tickets here this week, Gia Daniller spent Monday with an army of other young people laboring to transform a long-abandoned theater into a model of public service. Daniller is a 22-year-old college graduate who helped canvass Los Angeles campuses for Bill Clinton last fall.

During a Mass this week here at World Youth Day, Mayra Giallo extended her hand as a sign of peace--the custom in her Southern California parish--to a handsome young Frenchman next to her. "He grabbed me and kissed me on both cheeks," the 22-year-old Cal State Northridge student from La Puente said, blushing. "I was like, let's do that again!"

Katerina Karen Canyon began writing poetry as a child, after her father snooped through her diary: "I had a need to write things down," said Canyon, 32. "So I wrote poems, thinking he wouldn't know what I was writing about." This month, Canyon was named poet laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, a community of winding back roads in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Two brothers on a Southern California freeway at 3:30 a.m. One is wearing a seat belt and the other isn't when the car slams into a guardrail. The one who isn't wearing a seat belt is ejected from the car and killed. The other one walks away with minor injuries. No one knows whether a seat belt would have saved the life of Andre Stewart, the Newport Harbor High School football star who died a week ago in a crash on the Pomona Freeway.

A wide-ranging new study of teen-age pregnancy released Tuesday found that California leads the nation in rates of children giving birth to children and that almost a quarter of the young mothers have two or more babies. The study said that for every 1,000 California girls ages 15 to 19 in 1993, 154 had become pregnant, a far higher incidence than nationwide, where 111 pregnancies occurred for every 1,000 teen-age girls.

Not far from the U.S. Capitol but light years from the exclusive black-tie galas that are such hot tickets here this week, Gia Daniller spent Monday with an army of other young people laboring to transform a long-abandoned theater into a model of public service. Daniller is a 22-year-old college graduate who helped canvass Los Angeles campuses for Bill Clinton last fall.

California's teen-agers are far more likely to become pregnant, be jailed or be killed than they were four years ago and they are less likely to have a job and to live with a parent, according to a report issued Wednesday by a children's advocacy group.

America's youth are more likely to live in poverty and die because of violence than ever before, according to a report to be issued today by a Washington think tank. Clearly worse off than a decade or five years ago, California's teen-agers are especially vulnerable to crime, poverty and other stresses of urban life.

Katerina Karen Canyon began writing poetry as a child, after her father snooped through her diary: "I had a need to write things down," said Canyon, 32. "So I wrote poems, thinking he wouldn't know what I was writing about." This month, Canyon was named poet laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, a community of winding back roads in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

"All good teenagers go to California," Brian Wilson once quipped, "when they die." Wilson's remark, far edgier and more richly ironic than any of the hit songs he wrote and sang for the Beach Boys, is invoked by Kirse Granat May in "Golden State, Golden Youth," a study that deconstructs the popular culture of postwar America and shows exactly how the California dream and the cult of youth came to be linked in powerful but also cynical and even ominous ways.

As in the sport of bullfighting, certain dangers come with the territory at the minuscule Ole Madrid restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter: You are likely to leave not only stuffed to the gills, but hoarse.

California's 7.7 million children are less likely to be immunized or go to college compared to their counterparts nationally, and are more likely to be murdered, drop out of high school or become teen-age parents, according to Children Now, a statewide advocacy group that issues annual report cards on the status of the state's children.