“Ruby” is a teenager in the foster care system who wants to escape the problems of her environment and live her own life. She’ll have to give up to win.

The limitless faith of childhood is exchanged for perpetual fear in adulthood, and, ironically, results in the creation of an imaginary monster.

Spring is coming and my dad is dying. The daffodils are blooming along the sides of the road and the trees are filled with white blossom. He sleeps most of the time now. The wind smells like dew on freshly sprung green grass. His hearing has started to fail. Next weekend [...]

Out of my window I can see the eucalyptus trees swaying in the wind. The leaves are rustling and the sunlight is falling in dappled rays. A smaller tree in front, with tortoise shell bark, has bright green leaves that turn a luminous yellow with the backlight. Everything is moving, fanning [...]

It’s amazing what a walk in the woods can do. It can transform apathy to passion, fear to awe and ugliness to beauty. Mum’s Van is an idea for an organization to promote adventures with teenagers in your area.

Slake is everything the LA Weekly was at its best, without the pages of ads or the listings we never read anyway.

At Trinity Elementary School in Southeast Los Angeles, a group of fifth-grade girls donning wide-brimmed hats sat down for a spot of afternoon tea.

For many, it was their first tea party, but each one knew to place their napkins on their laps and keep their elbows off the table. They even knew how to stimulate [...]

It’s almost 6am, and the earliest I have ever boarded a bus in Los Angeles. The world outside is dark. Inside, we’re all sleepy. The school girl is sleepy. The man with the headphones is sleepy. The people at the back of the bus, although I’m too tired to turn my head and [...]

There was a man staring out of the window, sitting alone, miles away from anything. Occasionally, he smiled, or spoke, and his words drifted out to the world without an ear to hear them. His dark eyes were bloodshot. His limbs twitched. Every few minutes he would close his eyes and succumb to the feeling, [...]

British health care gets unrepentantly demonized. It’s called “filthy.” It’s accused of having low standards. It’s labeled “socialized medicine” and snubbed.  Rarely do we even take a second look.

If we did, we might realize that what separates the U.S. from the U.K. in terms of our health care systems is ideology. What “socialized medicine” stands [...]