"A person can grow only as much as the horizon allows." — John Powell.

Yesterday, the girl I’m “mentoring” (which equivalates to hanging out with and listening to whenever I can find a few spare hours from work) told me that she’d had enough. She didn’t know how much more she could take. She put her head in her hands and hid her usually smiling face, and said, “I’m so stressed.”

It turns out that she’s lonely too. And overwhelmed. The world of a teenager is full of unnecessary drama, and hers is no different in that respect. But in most cases, teenagers perpetuate that drama intentionally as a kind of hobby. Not in this case. This girl doesn’t need any more drama, and yet it keeps seeking her out.

There are around 3,000 young people in foster care in Alameda County, and this girl — let’s call her Ruby — is one of them. I’ve only known her since November 2011, but already she has lived in three different places (in the space of less than three months).

And there always seems to be the same problems. She doesn’t have any space, sharing someone else’s home not only with her younger brothers but with other foster children. The last place she lived was packed with three other teenagers, in addition to Ruby and her siblings. The two other problems are money and food, and Ruby says she doesn’t have enough of either. She needs a hat so she can keep warm during January’s cold snap, she says. But it’s always a fight to get a clothing allowance from her foster families. Last time her lawyer had to intervene (— yes, this is a girl who stands up for herself and her rights.) Every time I meet with her, she’s hungry, no matter what time of day it is. We stopped into Trader Joe’s once so I could buy her some snacks to keep in her room. Anything left in the kitchen cupboards or fridge gets eaten, she says, no matter whom it belongs to. And with multiple teenagers in these foster homes — some of them tall, stocky young men — that seems no surprise.

So, Ruby has to fight and keep fighting just to get an inch of what many American teenagers take completely for granted. She does a lot of things by herself, including taking the bus around town and to her after-school classes. She’s working on completing high school with good grades, and she’s been managing exceptionally well considering that her world is extremely isolated. The people she comes home to are strangers to exchange courtesies with, not to vent about her day to or to lean on for a cry. Those things she must do alone.

Despite the fact that I once might have considered myself in a similar, although far less dire, position to Ruby, I find that the advice I offer tumbles out of my mouth in clichés. I tell her what I know now is true: that these years are most likely going to be the hardest of your life, and that everything else beyond it — once you are able to escape — will be much better. But it sounds so hollow. If I had been talking to my teenage self, I wouldn’t have believed it either.

When you’re young and so defined by your environment, it’s almost impossible to see beyond the horizon. You assume that this is life, right here and now, and that it will always be this way. If your “home” is lost, and your environment unstable, how can you ground yourself enough to even move forward a few steps, let alone run a marathon?

In time, Ruby will discover that time is all it will take for her to be somewhere new and happier. But time is the most powerful, unrelenting force to a teenager who wants to fight her way out. There is no winning the fight against time, other than by giving up fighting.

For more information about fostering and adoption in Alameda County, visit A Pathway to Home.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. – Martin Luther King Jr.

As children, we are taught to dream. We are encouraged to dream and praised for dreaming. We are told that the world and the heavens are ours to fill with dreams, and to dream big enough and often enough to populate the vast sky with the dazzling sparks of our imagination at work.

I dreamed of worlds beyond rainbows, of soaring into the beautiful unknown. I saw a future in my small hands, holding them up at night and watching the enormous shadows they could cast. Even in the darkness, in the embrace of sleep, I dreamed in deep color and woke to bright mornings emptied of yesterday, fresh and new, like turning the page in a coloring book.

I filled my childhood with color, from the waking projections of my imagination to the light behind my closed eyelids and, soon, the rainbow world of sleep. From first light to nightlight, I dreamed, living in God’s world where everything is so beautiful, and so true.

But then, endless time began to fade and was replaced by clocks and calendars, a distinction between “real” and “unreal.” Perpetual summer shrank into winter, seemingly without a promise to return. The colors of my world grew washed out and thin, as black and white and grey crept in from the edges, along with the world of people.

It was a world we all become aware of at a certain point, marking the end of childhood and the beginning of the rest of our lives spent somewhere far away. For some, it comes early, and the feeling of loss underlies all that follows. For others, it comes late, and the prolonged transition only serves to add a deeper sting when eventually, inevitably, it arrives. We all run, even though there is no outrunning it, and for those who hide and succeed in staving off the theft of childhood, the world is a lonely place.

This is a natural process, we are told, when time moves us into a new state of being and understanding. In many ways, this is true. But a cold, cynical world makes us give up one part of childhood that should never have been relinquished: the power of faith, hope and imagination. We leave the world of dreams because we are told there is no more room for dreaming.

We trade a limitless existence for a dog-eat-dog world, where responsibilities outweigh everything else. Obligation is God, and it rules with a tight rein. Dreaming is for dreamers, and dreamers are nobodies, painting with faded colors on a canvas of nothingness.

So, the former child weighs the world of people and chooses what seems to be the straightest, sturdiest path. It is a path that requires little faith. And these paths are held in highest esteem in the world of people.

There is no need for hope in a life ruled by fear. There is no expectation, other than the inevitability of bad, of darkness and of defeat. In this world, no one is free. We are slaves to cynicism, and to the creed that if something can go wrong then it will. We dedicate our lives to building up barriers to protect ourselves: money, power, and even cynicism itself. We believe that these things can help us avoid being hurt, and even ultimately protect us against our biggest fear: death.

But we fear the wrong things. And all along, we have already been protected from that which we should fear, and that which we are always unknowingly struggling against: oblivion. We struggle against the threat of non-existence — the idea that we never existed at all, that our lives are inconsequential, that once our bodies have died our existence has died too. We fear becoming imaginary.

This is what makes faith and hope so fundamentally challenging, so seemingly antithetical.

But could we revisit life through the eyes of our childhood selves, we would experience again the power and sureness of faith. There was no threat of oblivion. There was only life, both seen and unseen, and “seeing” itself was a richer, more complex, more enjoyable gift.

Could we carry that sureness with us into adulthood, we would know that we have already been saved from death and oblivion. We would know, in fact, that life and existence are so true, real and unending that there was never any need to be saved. There is no such thing as death or oblivion, only creation, and transformation. It is a truth so intrinsic that it requires letting go of understanding, and simply being.

If we stopped searching for complexity and instead embraced simplicity, we would then begin to see our salvation visible and tangent in every moment of our lives. Of course there is no oblivion. We exist and persist in love, from that which we receive and that which we give. This is how we live on, endlessly creating the future while living in perfect harmony with the past.

If we could remember what it was like to trust in this basic truth, we could stop being so afraid and start believing again — in ourselves, in the people around us, and in the unfathomable might of God.

There is everything to hope for. There is everything to believe in.

On sunny days, my mum often used a phrase passed down by her own mother: “It’s a sin to be indoors on a day like this.” For my sister and I, this frequently used tagline was a signal to get out of the house and into the garden, or else. But as I’ve gotten older, it has come to mean much more than outdoor playtime.

The world is a chaotic and terrifying place, on most days. And if you’re struggling against the tide of work, bills, taxes, childcare, illness and other worldly complications, it’s very difficult to even take a few moments to look up from your cubicle, let alone get outside for playtime. But then life goes by too fast, and we look back with regret and bitterness about failing to recognize the beauty of what is all around us and how blessed we have been to be a part of this world.

So, “It’s a sin to be indoors on a day like this,” became a mantra for me to remember to look up and out of the window and live in the moment that God had created for me. As kids, this meant literally being forced to look out of the window on long car drives rather than immerse ourselves in video games or comic books. It was very annoying at the time. However, an important lesson - and habit - was learned.

But there was one more aspect to the idea behind the saying that has stayed with me throughout various transitions, and has now returned to my life with full vigor. On “days like this,” in our green little village in Buckinghamshire, England, there happened to be a cluster of children who were not, by any means, being encouraged by their parents to enjoy fresh air and sunshine. Many parents worked, in fact, or struggled through their lists of weekend chores, without paying much attention to their bored, moping children. My mum quickly recognized the silent (and sometimes not so silent) whining our village emitted on weekends. There was “nothing to do,” said the kids. My mum, however, thought differently.

And so began a series of weekend adventures with the neighborhood children, all of us tumbling into the back of mum’s boxy Suzuki mini-van and heading to the outdoor swimming pool or the park or the beach. Some days we didn’t stray far from home, but ventured together into Penn Woods to discover tree climbing and how to make trails. We brought our dress-up clothes and played Robin Hood or Peter Pan, or rode our bicycles up and down the hills. We dug for clay in the roots of fallen trees and made statues of fairytale creatures. We picked flowers and fell over in the mud and had the time of our lives.

Having those experiences taught me spontaneity and awe, neither of which I would enjoy my life without. Nor would I have developed the courage to pursue my passions. Without spontaneity and awe, it may have been the case that I would not have developed passions at all, but apathy. And apathy is the killer of joy, ambition and love.

I feel very blessed to have learned such an inspiring lesson. I believe it has kept me away from the darkness at the lowest points in my life, and fed all the desires in me that are beneficial to my soul, rather than parasitic.

But it’s not an easy lesson to share. It requires time - quality time - from the worldly woes that cause us to bury our heads in the ground. My head has been buried for the last few years as I have struggled to deal with my mum’s death in 2005, followed by an intense schedule of graduate school, work, work and more work. My life has been blessed in the mean time with a wonderful husband, a full and vibrant family, and a home surrounded by the trees that remind me so often of Penn Woods. I have, however, met with sadness and apathy face to face in the last few years, seeing it in the eyes of teenagers throughout my time reporting on schools in Los Angeles. I’ve seen it, sadly, in the teenagers I know, even perhaps within my own family network.

Now that I am in a place where the chaos of the last few years is beginning to subside, it feels like the time is here to stop merely remembering my mum’s mantra, but to share it. And for that I need help.

It doesn’t take much, as far as I can figure, to share an afternoon or a Saturday with a teenager accustomed to boredom and apathy. It doesn’t even have to cost anything, except time and a little enthusiasm. I am surrounded by so many wonderful and inspiring people that a project such as the one I have in mind seems like it has the potential to really flourish.

So here it is:

Mum’s Van.

My sister and I have been talking about this for a while now. Mum’s Van: an organization that pairs inspiring young people (twenty-somethings) with teenagers to just “hang out” in a different environment, or to pursue that “flighty temptress, adventure” (yes, that’s a quote from Dumbledore. I couldn’t help it.) It can be a Saturday afternoon, or Sunday morning. It could be an after-school hike or an evening stargazing.

All it takes is a walk in the woods.

If you’re interested, or have any ideas about how to get this moving, please email me: emilyhenry@adaylikethis.com or leave a comment below. And keep an eye out for Mum’s Van… adventuring soon!

Slake is the latest endeavor of former LA Weekly editors Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly. The first edition made its debut last night as contributors and supporters sipped gourmet rum cocktails at Caña Rum Bar downtown.

Now, I hate to say I told you so, but I’ve been theorizing about the future of the print medium since I started journalism school to pursue a degree in “print” journalism. Professors and students alike laughed heartily at my opinion that yes, print journalism would continue to exist in a physical form no matter what technological crap came along. My theory was that publishers would have to make the most of the medium by taking advantage of what paper can do, rather than what it can’t. That would mean more money, not less, being poured into the production side of things. Print journalism would no longer be disposable. Newspapers would die, eventually, but well-crafted print products could survive if they earned their physical space. One great example of this concept in action is McSweeny’s — the quarterly literary magazine founded by Dave Eggers.

“To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web,” said Eggers. “Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive. Again, this is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed page.”

And Slake is beautiful. From cover to cover, the journal packs rich, thick pages of photography, colorful graphics and text into a neat bulk of great-smelling pulp.

Content-wise, Slake is everything the LA Weekly was at its best — without the pages of ads or the listings no-one ever read anyway. The excitement has returned. The LA Weekly used to be all about those great L.A. moments captured by aspiring writers who still had the passion to produce something remarkable. Now there’s Slake.

Mark Z. Danielewski gets the issue started with a brief but beautiful account of why poetry still matters to anyone who writes even as much as a grocery list. He’s up to his usual tricks with format, bullet pointing the piece and throwing his characters around, and as usual, it works wonderfully. The photography is mesmerizing, and Geoff Nicholson’s account of being a Hollywood pedestrian hits home with the force of a tourist shoulder-shoving past you on the Walk of Fame. Slake brings creative journalism, art and fiction together in a stunning medley with the production quality of a coffee table book in a neat, holdable size.

Quality, however, comes at a price. At $18 per issue, Slake is by no means cheap. Subscriptions stand at $60 per year. But you get what you pay for in this new world of precious print. McSweeny’s is also pricey, at $55 per year, but every effort is made to have the product “earn its existence,” as publisher Eli Horowitz described it. Creating something beautiful takes imagination as well as financial backing. In the end, quality quarterlies earn a place on the bookshelf while the LA Times decays in a browning pile in the corner.

Print enthusiasts have every reason to celebrate.

The Fox story implied that Santee Education Complex teacher Jose Lara had led students on a “field trip” to Arizona to protest the SB 1070 law. The set up of the piece was obviously designed to raise questions about indoctrination: should teachers air opinions in front of students, potentially encouraging them to follow suit, or simply keep their mouths shut and teach?

But Lara wasn’t shocked by the content of the story. He was disturbed by the journalistic process by which it had come about.

Lara, whose staunch social justice activism is captured through his FLIP camera and distributed via a handful of social networking accounts, was not directly quoted in the article, but both his Facebook and YouTube accounts were used as sources. Being that his first encounter with the story was after its publication, the situation raised questions for Lara about the validity of journalists sourcing social networking accounts rather than actual people.

If they had spoken to him directly, Lara says, they would have realized that they were publishing a factually incorrect account of events.

Lara has composed a response to the Fox news article and the questions it raised for him about “fair and balanced” journalism:

Fox News does it again
By Jose LaraIn a recent article, Fox took another swing at immigrant rights activists, teachers, and our public school system by misreporting and misleading the public.

According to Fox, three teachers took a Los Angeles School District sponsored field trip to Arizona to protest the new law, SB 1070. However, nothing can be further from the truth. Instead of fact checking and conducting authentic journalism, Fox decided to look to YouTube and Facebook for their “fair and balanced” news report, and without establishing actual contact with the subjects of the story, published it anyway.

Here is the truth: Firstly, teachers did not take any students on a field trip. The Los Angeles Unified School District would not have approved of such a trip. Secondly, the high school student quoted in the Fox article went on the Arizona protest trip with her mother, who is also a teacher. All of Fox’s sources appear to come from Facebook, YouTube and online discussion groups.

I have a few questions for Fox:

Is a journalist who gets all their information from YouTube and Facebook without fact checking really a journalist at all?

Shouldn’t Fox retract this story if they know it to be false?

Who benefits from stories like this?

Perhaps Fox News does not intend to produce authentic journalism, but yellow journalism instead. That is to say that Fox uses eye-catching headlines and over-sensationalized stories with little to no authentic research in order to gain ratings.

And, unfortunately, it is a successful method of attracting eyeballs. It also increases hate and division among people. The Fox News message board is filled with hateful rants - comments such as “Deport them all now”, “Bring it on beano”, and “America is being invaded!!!!” Fox fuels the fire by attempting to pass off opinion pieces as authentic journalism.

There is a lesson to be learned here for both active Internet users and journalists. Abundant forms of information sharing mean abundant opportunities for bad, unethical journalism. Beware. On the one hand, using a social networking site feels like a personal experience. On the other, that is a downright lie. It seems that anything accessible on the Internet is now fair game (despite what points one and two of the SPJ Code of Ethics clearly state.) Your status feed might as well be a press release. An opinionated update can become a story, and a story can become a horde of angry emails, tweets and blog comments.

Lara quickly felt the effects of his Internet ambush. One Twitter user called him an “idiot” - adding that it’s “no wonder California has some of the worst schools in the nation.” Another emailed directly to say that “homeland security should put him on the terrorist list.”

Hoping, somewhat naively, for a chance to respond, Lara accepted an invitation to the Bill O’Reilly show last week. Within minutes of the show airing, the comments on his blog entries became a war of two worlds: pro-immigrant activists versus anti-immigrant conservatives, straying to the far reaches of the immigration debate.

This article appeared on the South Los Angeles Report and the Huffington Post.

“I usually smoke me about two to three inhalations of weed in the morning with my morning cup of coffee. I medicate probably about every two to three hours during the day.

I had surgery on my left foot and I’ve also had ADHD. I’ve been using it a lot for pain relief. I prefer it to Ritalin or amphetamines for ADHD. The treatment is worse than the disease in modern medicine.

Weed, it seems to help you focus. And it doesn’t affect my appetite. I’m not itching. I don’t have cast-iron gut rot. You know, I’m not backing up narcotics to my system, inviting death down the road. I would say that a lot of pharmaceutical drugs have those effects, whether they are amphetamines or anti-depressants or sleeping pills. Even alcohol. But I could sit here with a bushel of marijuana and ranch dressing and you know… might have too much fiber, but that’s about it.

You can’t kill someone with marijuana. There is a saying among Stoners that says you can actually smoke yourself straight. There’s a point where you just can’t get any higher. I don’t know of any drug that has an effect like that. The body usually screams for more.

One thing that you could do that would just totally upset Wall Street right now - just one magic bullet in the dark - is you legalize cannabis tomorrow and put it on the New York stock exchange. I don’t see what the problem is with legalizing something that for over 200 years has been a foundation stone of our nation.

A lot of people think that if you legalize marijuana you are saying drugs are OK to their kids, this, that, the other - but these are the same people that pump their kids full of Ritalin; they want to deny you something that just grows out of the ground.

Weed is, to a degree, a negative influence, but the reason being is because it’s already been demonized. It’s like - what’s our government really doing nowadays? Are they interested in controlling people, or are they interested in changing people?

There has never been a recorded overdose or death in the history of mankind from marijuana. It needs to be decriminalized so that police and society can concentrate on the real evils of the black market.”

This interview was produced for KPCC’s Town Hall Journal: Marijuana: Economic Wonder Drug?

But it turns out to be one of the most peaceful bus rides of my life. Not only is everyone half dozing, but they’re quiet too. No one is on their cell phone. There aren’t even any screaming children. There is very little rowdiness at all. None, in fact.

We sail down Venice Boulevard in a sort of pre-morning-coffee stupor, and by the time we reach Mid City a brilliant streak of red has appeared on the horizon. The darkness is starting to recede. Slowly, slowly, one pixel row at a time, the city comes into view. And my, what a beautiful city it is.

The buildings in Los Angeles were designed for dawns and sunsets; cream-colored walls reflect the scarlet rays with mesmerizing perfection. Sometimes it makes me feel like the world is about to end, but that it’s OK. Because we all understand. We all see. We’re all safely enveloped by this wondrous glow.

I like to think that even I look good in this light. It’s early, my eyes are puffy, my make-up is struggling to hide the imperfections of blotchy morning-face, but I’m refreshingly homogenized by the purest light of the day. Renewed, again, like the city itself; this is a day that could take me anywhere.

I’ve already found myself somewhere unexpected: at peace on a bus in Los Angeles.