“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 [...]

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

Today is the last day for Brits to buy their way to victory. By midnight GMT, that’s 4pm PST and only a few hours from now, the votes will all have been cast. At this point, it could go either way… the Rage Against The Machine group states that “some indications are putting us BEHIND by 10,000 copies”. Others claim the opposite. Tom Morello told the Sun newspaper: “This really does seem like the biggest ‘which side are you on?’ moment in the history of UK music.”

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 [...]

A new adventure begins: seeking creative writing about South LA. This is part one.

You might say I’m a moody foodie.

I love eating out, and I love eating in. It all depends on what’s happening inside the bowl of spaghetti that is my brain. Sometimes I’m in stale, frustrated knots and need to get out of the house, sip a frou-frou cocktail and eat warm chips with fresh pico-de-gallo [...]

It’s obvious that poverty can be a negative force for developing children. But what is lesser known is that poverty — in a wider context — can also be a catalyst for motivation. Of course, this is just a personal theory, which I’m going to name “I-need-to-get-the-hell-outta-here” syndrome.