Well prepared UCLA women look forward to South Carolina’s challenge

• March 24, 2023

The UCLA women’s basketball team will make its eighth Sweet 16 appearance in the NCAA tournament on Saturday. The game will be on the biggest stage of the season and against arguably the best opponent they’ve faced all season: reigning national champion South Carolina.

The Bruins played the Gamecocks in late November and lost by nine points. Since then, South Carolina has gone on to earn the overall No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament after an unbeaten season. But a lot has happened for fourth-seeded UCLA since that time, too.

“That game was at the beginning of the year,” graduate student Gina Conti said. “We’ve learned a lot, we’ve faced a lot of different adversity and stacked it on top of each other. I’m excited that we get another go-around to play them.”

UCLA (27-9) will face South Carolina (34-0) at 11 a.m. at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, South Carolina, after beating Sacramento State and Oklahoma in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament.

The Bruins are 12-6 in road games this season and Saturday’s game could bring an intense crowd. The Gamecocks had an attendance of over 10,000 people in Columbia, South Carolina for their second-round game against South Florida.

UCLA will rely on the depth and maturity after rotating 10 players in for almost every game lately. The five freshmen average 19 minutes of playing time and three have played in all 36 games.

“We have a good mix of healthy naivety from the freshmen,” coach Cori Close said. “I think sometimes that serves them well. They don’t know that they’re not supposed to win. But then there’s also maturity of like, Charisma (Osborne), where they know what it takes. In those moments, we are going to look to Charisma to be our steadying force.”

Osborne, a senior, scored a career-high 36 points in UCLA’s last outing against Oklahoma. That’s the most points scored in a postseason game by any player in UCLA program history. Throughout the season, she’s reached double digits in scoring in 30 games.

Kiki Rice leads the freshmen and has started in 35 games this season. She’s the second-leading scoring player on the team with 11.9 points per game. Londynn Jones, Lina Sontag, Gabriela Jaquez and Christeen Iwuala round out the freshman group.

“All of us were the best from wherever we went to, but that’s not enough because everybody’s so good,” Iwuala said of the freshmen. “So what else can you bring besides the talent that got you to where you were, like, say in high school and stuff? I feel like that’s a big question in what we have here.”

South Carolina beat its first two opponents of the NCAA tournament — Norfolk State and South Florida — by a combined 63 points.

The Gamecocks, led by head coach Dawn Staley and her 400 wins, average 81 points per game while holding opponents to roughly 50 points. Zia Cooke averages 15.3 points each game and has made 61-of-169 3-pointers this season, but the Bruins are also keying in on Aliyah Boston (13.1 ppg) and Kamilla Cardoso (9.7 ppg) and South Carolina’s overall ability to score in transition.

Close said that South Carolina will have to contain a lot of what the Bruins can do, too.

“We actually probably have more ways in which we can score offensively than they do,” the 12th-year coach said. “We’ve got a lot of weapons offensively that they have to prepare for and so we’ve gotta make sure we use them all.”

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Emily Bessoir, a redshirt-sophomore, has been a big piece of UCLA’s scoring. She’s third on the team with 9.4 points per game and leads the team in rebounds with 5.8 per game. Conti has the most assists on the team with 115 and averages 3.3 assists per game.

UCLA is putting faith in the growth it has had since the last time facing South Carolina. There’s been a serious tone to this week’s preparations, but there’s also room for letting loose. It’s not uncommon to catch the Bruins holding mini dance parties when there’s a break in the work.

“We’ve done all the preparation already,” Conti said. “We’re not cramming things in. It’s not like we’re studying last-minute things. So by the time we get to that point where we’re dancing in a locker room, we should already know our stuff. We just trust that everyone’s put the work in.”

UCLA (27-9) vs. South Carolina (34-0)

When: 11 a.m. Saturday

Where: Bon Secours Wellness Arena, Greenville, South Carolina

TV: ESPN

​ Orange County Register 

A last-minute guide to filing your 2022 return: EV credits, shrinking refunds and the end of pandemic tax relief

• March 24, 2023

Robert Channick | (TNS) Chicago Tribune

With less than one month to go before the April 18 deadline, the majority of the nation’s 168 million tax filers are once again scrambling to download software, organize receipts and call their accountants for last-minute help.

Procrastinators may find what early filers already know: Tax year 2022 is not producing as many happy returns as in previous years due to a number of changes, including the expiration of some pandemic-era tax breaks.

“People will be getting smaller refunds on average because of that,” said Dan Rahill, a longtime Chicago tax partner and past chairman of the Illinois CPA Society, who now serves as a wealth strategist at Wintrust Wealth Management.

From a reduced child tax credit to the end of a charitable tax break that allowed for an above-the-line deduction last year, the changes are most likely to erode refunds that have become the norm during the pandemic.

For the 63 million people who had already filed their tax returns as of March 10, the average refund is down 11% to $2,972, according to the latest IRS data.

That refund decline could get even steeper as the rest of the returns come in.

“The people that want to get it done right away are the ones that expect that refund, and they want to get that money back,” Rahill said. “If they don’t expect a big refund, there’s no urgency to file.”

On the upside, expanded EV tax credits and other clean energy initiatives from the Inflation Reduction Act, signed in August by President Joe Biden, could help boost refunds for some tax filers this year. And millions of Illinois filers are getting a small measure of relief from the IRS for those one-off state “tax rebate” checks mailed in September.

Here are some key changes to look for in the 2022 return.

Filing DeadlineThere will be a little more time to file this year because the deadline has been pushed back from April 15, which falls on a Saturday, to Tuesday, April 18. The extra 24-hour reprieve is thanks to Washington, D.C., celebrating its annual Emancipation Day on April 17, which affects tax deadlines in the same way as federal holidays.

Child Tax CreditIn 2021, Congress boosted the Child Tax Credit for one year through the American Rescue Plan, increasing the maximum credit from $2,000 up to $3,600 for children under 6, and $3,000 for children 6 through 17. The 2022 tax credit reverts to $2,000 per child, although Biden has proposed expanding it back to the $3,600 maximum for the next fiscal year.

Child and Dependent Care ExpensesAn American Rescue Plan increase on the maximum amount of care expenses you’re allowed to claim for a child or dependent also expired in 2022, dropping the maximum credit from $8,000 to $3,000 per person.

Charitable DeductionsThe 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act under then-President Donald Trump nearly doubled the standard deduction, eliminating the incentive for 90% of filers to itemize and claim charitable expenses as deductions. During the first two years of the pandemic, Congress gave charities a boost by allowing donors to claim an above-the-line deduction of up to $300 — even if they didn’t itemize. The added charitable deduction has expired as well for the 2022 tax year.

Clean Vehicle CreditThe Inflation Reduction Act expanded a tax credit of up to $7,500 for new electric vehicles and added a credit of up to $4,000 for used EVs purchased in 2023. But the law also added price caps, income limits and other restrictions that may reduce or eliminate the tax credit.

To qualify for the expanded $7,500 tax credit, new electric trucks, SUVs and vans must have a retail price of $80,000 or less, while other EVs cannot exceed $55,000. Individual taxpayers who make more than $150,000 a year are not eligible for the credit. The income cutoff goes up to $300,000 for buyers filing joint returns.

Used EVs must be at least two years old and cost $25,000 or less to qualify for the $4,000 tax credit. Income limits are $75,000 for individuals and up to $150,000 for joint filers.

A few other wrinkles to consider. New EVs purchased after Aug. 17 have to be assembled in North America to get the $7,500 tax credit for 2022. A cumulative 200,000-vehicle manufacturer’s sales cap has been eliminated in 2023, but Chevy, GMC and Tesla EVs sold last year do not qualify for the credit.

Requirements on the sourcing of critical mineral and battery components are also set to kick in during 2023, but are not in place for the 2022 tax year.

Residential Clean Energy Property CreditA 30% tax credit on the cost of residential solar, wind, geothermal heat pump and battery storage technology was extended by the Inflation Reduction Act through 2032, with no overall dollar limit on expenditures. A phased-down rate will be in effect for 2033 and 2034.

Tax Filing ExtensionsWith refunds projected to decline this year, Rahill expects more taxpayers to drag their feet all the way to April 18, and perhaps beyond.

The number of taxpayers filing for extensions, he said, is also likely to tick up this year.

“A big percentage of people are going to be affected by these expiring COVID tax incentives,” Rahill said. “A lot of them are not going to get that big refund anymore. So why hustle to their local tax accountant to get their taxes filed?”

[email protected]

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

‘Greater Idaho’ may reignite interest in the State of Jefferson

• March 24, 2023

The myriad activists for a putative State of Jefferson in the mostly rural counties of Northern California don’t need much prodding to spring into action.

But they may soon be getting a push anyway, this time from similar-minded eastern Oregonians eager to split off from their current state and join up with neighboring Idaho.

That movement, called “Greater Idaho” because it would shift 15 rural eastern Oregon counties into Idaho, has so far won voter approval in 11 of those counties and will get a vote in May in northeast Oregon’s Wallowa County (population 7,391). The Idaho Legislature’s lower house has already approved the concept.

While the Greater Idaho movement is far younger than the notion of a State of Jefferson, which originated in the 1940s, it has moved much farther toward its goal. It is even due for some discussion in the Oregon Legislature this year, with at least one state senator and one member of the lower house as sponsors.

The State of Jefferson, by contrast, has never gotten formal consideration in Sacramento. Its aim is not to join another state, but to rip away from Oregon some of the same counties now amenable to joining Idaho and link them to Northern California in a new 51st state, its putative capital Redding, in California’s Shasta County.

Meanwhile, a nascent separatist movement in San Bernardino County won narrow approval from local voters last fall for a study of independent statehood. There’s been no action yet on that.

The State of Jefferson gets some support not only in Northern California, but also in southern Oregon, where roadside signs in cities like Grants Pass, Reedsport and Medford are readily visible.

It would be no surprise if California counties sympathetic to Jefferson joined Oregon areas pushing to join Idaho. Their complaints are the same: Most are politically more conservative than the dominant coastal, urban areas of their states.

Many counties are wrapped into each legislative district in those regions, while some urban counties get dozens.

That last has been true since California in the 1960s bent to the U.S. Supreme Court’s One Person, One Vote decision. Before then, state Senate seats were allocated by geography, so the northern counties often wielded significant power.

Now their mostly Republican representatives are part of small GOP minorities in both houses of the California Legislature.

It’s little different in Oregon, where tiny Wallowa’s populace would fit into a few Portland or Eugene city blocks.

The rural counties feel they suffer the same kind of taxation without representation that helped fuel the American Revolution and many folks there want out. They also despise gun control laws passed over the last few years in both Oregon and California.

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In Oregon, they get some statewide sympathy. One poll often cited by Greater Idaho organizers found 68 percent of Portland area voters favor their Legislature at least discussing the idea of separation. They note that losing many eastern areas would let that Oregon become even more solidly Democratic than now.

But Greater Idaho and the State of Jefferson both face major roadblocks: Each would require a statewide vote okaying both letting significant areas pull out, along with congressional support and statewide voter support for whatever property split was worked out between existing state governments and new or revised ones. Not to mention similar votes in Idaho, where voters would have to approve adding the rural Oregon counties which now get far more financial support from their state than they contribute via taxes.

All of which means none of the current state splitting or state altering ideas has yet become serious business, just like all the other 42 ideas for new state lines proposed formally and informally since California entered the Union in 1850.

Thomas D. Elias can be reached at [email protected].

​ Orange County Register 

Is Mexico safe for U.S. travelers?

• March 24, 2023

By Nikki Ekstein

When the US Department of State released a spring break travel advisory on March 13 warning travelers to take extra caution when visiting Mexico, the message rippled far, wide and fast. Broadcast news disseminated scary stories of illegal drugs and gang crime as reasons to reconsider vacation plans—most tragically, the early March kidnapping of four American medical tourists in Matamoros, on the Texas border, two of whom were found dead.

“It’s like clockwork,” says Zachary Rabinor, the American founder of travel agency Journey Mexico. “Every year preceding spring break we get the same wave of sensationalism. People need eyeballs, and what better way than fearmongering? In some ways it’s the clearest sign yet that we’re done worrying about the pandemic.”

In reality, he says, no new travel advisories to Mexico have been issued by the State Department since last October, in which the updates to the existing warning related to additional public-health information, not crime. The spring break alert, meanwhile, asks visitors to be mindful of several factors—the list includes 10 points ranging from illegal drug activity to counterfeit medication to the risk of drowning.

On crime, it asks Americans to “exercise increased caution in the downtown areas of popular spring break locations including Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, especially after dark,” on the basis that “crime, including violent crime, can occur anywhere in Mexico, including in popular tourist destinations.” (Never mind that it can also occur anywhere else in the world.)

“Most of Mexico remains at a Level 2 warning, which is the same that applies to countries like France, Spain, Italy and more,” says Rabinor.

Why Warnings Happen

Mexico is a big, varied country, not a monolithic destination. The most common spring break locations, in the states of Quintana Roo (Cancún, Tulum, Playa del Carmen) and Baja California Sur (Los Cabos), are currently ranked by the US State Department at a standard Level 2; the states of Oaxaca and Mexico City are also categorized at that level.

While only a small number of destinations globally are considered Level 1—meaning travelers should “exercise normal precautions”—two Mexican states indeed qualify as such: Yucatán and Campeche. You might visit the former if you’re planning a trip to Mérida.

Seven of Mexico’s 32 states are classified as Level 3—“reconsider travel”—while an additional six are listed under the US State Department’s Level 4 warning—“do not travel.” The department attributes those 13 state designations to widespread criminal activity and kidnapping risks. (Matamoros is located in Tamaulipas, one of the Level 4 states.)

“Nothing has radically changed in terms of traveling. The touristic zones—Oaxaca, Pacific Coast, Mexico City, the Yucatan—are protected, like islands, and don’t follow the trends that you see in Tamaulipas, Michoacán, and so on,” says part-time Mexico resident Romain Le Cour, who as a senior expert at Global Initiative conducts research on organized crime. “He argues that the alerts help the US government channel a warning to Mexican authorities: Essentially saying, “The US may not prevent tourism right now, but we can escalate these warnings, so pay attention.”

For his part, Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been eager to send a message in return. On March 13 he criticized the State Department warnings as “vile,” saying that “Mexico is safer than than the United States and there’s no security problem that prevents travel.”

Rabinor, who splits his time between Mexico and New York, reads between the lines. “The reason we get these new advisories in the spring every year is because you get these waves of American college kids going down and doing stupid things,” he posits. “The government’s goal is to minimize that stupidity by getting parents on board, so that they encourage their kids to behave with only the same amount of idiocy that they live with on a day-to-day basis on a college campus.”

Stoking Fear

In the past month, Google has seen a 200% spike in people asking: “Is it safe to travel to Cancún now?” And in the week following the early March incident in Matamoros, searches for Mexico travel ideas declined in popularity by 75%, according to insights on Google Trends. Since then, they have continued to decline. It’s one way to quantify the effect hard news can have on the tourism economy, which accounts for 8.8% of jobs in Mexico and represents roughly 8% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to government figures.

“We are seeing cancellations and are doing our best to clear up the confusion,” says Steph Farr, co-owner of Maya Luxe, a villa agency that manages 100 exceptional homes on the Riviera Maya. “But it’s easier said than done. Some people have already made up their minds, and we have lost business as a result.”

What she describes is not a large-scale loss of business but a significant disruption: Farr says her sales team logged at least eight canceled bookings in February, all responding to the State Department’s safety warnings even before the incident in Matamoros brought Mexico safety more fully into the news cycle. (More recent figures weren’t made available.)

“Even the most educated and erudite people do respond to these advisories,” says Rabinor. “Fear is an emotional response, and we have been flooded with concerns and anxiety.”

Calculating the impact on business, he says, is complicated. “We can’t measure the loss of people who never called, who just decided instead to go to Yosemite or Florida or the Caribbean.” (Even many popular Caribbean destinations are also considered Level 2, including the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos Islands.)

The Less Concerned

Other travel advisers report that their clients are undeterred. “I think people are over sensationalism,” says Jack Ezon, co-founder of the travel agency Embark Beyond. “Americans are numb, it’s almost a new outlook since Covid.” Before, he’d have expected to be busy fielding calls about safety concerns and tallying up the cancellations. Now, Ezon says, “we haven’t seen anything, not a single hesitation.”

The same is true, he adds, in Paris, Israel and Turkey, where political instability and earthquakes have made headlines.

Rabinor offers a strong reminder: Even though his company’s bottom line depends on sending travelers to Mexico, it depends even more on ensuring the safety of his guests and staff. “We would be the first to use a contingency plan or advise a change in itinerary if there was any risk, both to our staff and clients,” he explains.

Alyson Nash, a travel designer with Cloud 10, a Virtuoso-affiliated agency, says she’s taken plenty of calls from travelers who’ve kept Mexico on their short lists—particularly for yearend holiday travel. Crime, she says, registers only as an occasional concern, outweighed by inflation and increases in taxes, room rates and fees. “Any hesitation,” Nash adds, “tends to be less about safety and more surrounding price.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Gov. Newsom’s homeless plan is funded the wrong way

• March 24, 2023

Everyone agrees that the California government has spent record amounts in recent years to address the increasingly visible homeless situation. Lawmakers “have provided unprecedented funding to support our cities, counties, continuums and providers in our collective effort to prevent and end homelessness,” confirms the chairman of the state’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, in a 2021 report that tracks the spending.

Everyone also agrees that the problem isn’t showing signs of subsiding. As the Public Policy Institute of California reported last month: “Homelessness continues to grow in California: nationally, California has topped the list for the state with the largest homeless population for more than a decade.”

That has led to a new push from lawmakers from both parties for more accountability, as CALmatters reported. That interagency council report found that the majority of homeless people who participated in state homeless programs remained unhoused “or the state lost tract of their whereabouts.” This is a tough problem, but California’s typical big-spending approach isn’t yielding results.

Against that backdrop, we turn to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest idea – asking California voters to approve a $3-to-$5-billion bond measure to finance construction of facilities to treat the homeless. We appreciate the measure focuses on dealing with mental-health and substance-abuse issues – rather than just pretending the homelessness crisis is solely about a lack of affordable housing.

As the governor’s office explained, the bond would fund “thousands of new community behavioral health beds in state-of-the-art residential settings to house Californians with mental illness and substance use disorders, which could serve over 10,000 people every year in residential-style settings that have on-site services – not in institutions of the past, but locations where people can truly heal.”

The measure also prioritizes services for homeless veterans and revamps a 20-year-old law that taxes millionaires so that it earmarks more homeless-related funding to local governments. The basic concepts are fine. Yet given the failures of California’s latest record-setting spending efforts, it’s not overly cynical to ask why this new spending program will succeed in ways that the last ones haven’t.

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If lawmakers are serious about accountability, then they need to embrace something other than the same-old spending approach. Actually, this funding mechanism evades accountability. The state last year had an unprecedented budget surplus of $97.5 billion and now faces a deficit. Nothing promotes accountability better than making hard choices by funding new programs out of existing budgets – rather than borrowing.

We applauded Newsom for his legislation last year that creates so-called CARE Courts (Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment), which epitomizes innovative thinking that the state needs to embrace. It’s designed to divert homeless people toward public services rather than jailing them when they get in trouble with the law.

As the Sacramento Bee reports, opponents of that law faulted it “for failing to guarantee housing for everyone who needs it” and see this bond measure as an attempt to provide that housing. The problem, of course, is there isn’t enough money in the world to provide permanent housing for every person who needs it – especially at absurd $700,000-plus per-unit costs that are typical in these government-directed projects.

We’ll pay close attention as further details emerge, but Californians are right to be skeptical that this new approach will accomplish more than the last approaches.

​ Orange County Register 

The Book Pages: Meeting ‘Last Unicorn’ author Peter S. Beagle among the paperbacks

• March 24, 2023

The rain came down hard last Sunday, and I wondered whether I’d made the right decision.

This is a question I often ask myself, rain or not. But this time it had more to do with avoiding puddles and keeping my clothes from soaking through.

While the smart money was on a day of pajamas, Sunday papers and hot beverages, I’d decided to leave the great indoors for a cold downpour.

I was on a mission to visit the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collectors Show at the Glendale Civic Auditorium, which promised “tens of thousands of vintage paperbacks” along with authors Denise Hamilton, Tim Powers, Gary Phillips, Larry Niven and more. I’d never been, but my colleague Steven Rosenberg had tipped me to it.

“There is no telling what might show up,” the website had promised, and I wondered if they were referring to me as I shook off the rain.

But as I entered and saw the tables and tables full of old paperbacks, I knew I’d made the right decision. As a kid, I’d gotten most of my books this way, pawing through paperbacks at rummage sales, yard sales and Friends of the Library events.

Or on some very good days, I’d ride my bike to a used bookstore in Pasadena called Book Village where a beatific man named Nick patiently answered questions about comic books or old paperbacks while leaning back in his chair behind the desk, occasionally eating a Dolly Madison pie.

So while I didn’t really need more books, I did need to look around. I walked in and went straight to the back and found myself in front of the table of Peter S. Beagle, author of “The Last Unicorn” (and the screenplay for the animated film), as well as other books, short stories and the script for the 1978 Ralph Bakshi animated version of “The Lord of the Rings,” among other things.

Beagle, who recently regained control of his intellectual property, is publishing a new book in April, “The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn,” and in May he’s bringing out the two-volume, “The Essential Peter Beagle.” I’m told there’s going to be a new edition of “The Innkeeper’s Song,” and in the UK this fall, there will be a new edition of “A Fine and Private Place” with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

I’d first heard of Beagle through Gaiman, who has praised Beagle’s work, and the kind words went both ways as Beagle recalled their first meeting at a convention.

“We were on a panel, the two of us, and we had five or 10 minutes to get used to each other,” said Beagle. “We bounced lines off each other as though we’ve been carrying on together for 30 years. … We’ve been friends ever since.”

The 83-year-old Beagle seemed pleased to be there, giving each person his full attention when they approached him to chat or have a book signed. Throughout, he kept a black-and-white photo of a smiling woman close at hand.

“She’s gone. Today, it’ll be 11 years,” he said, gesturing to the picture. “I called her Nell, but her full name was Jenella DuRousseau.”

Though they’d not been married to each other – there had been other marriages for both of them – Beagle said they’d maintained a connection even when DuRousseau was in Europe and he was here in the States.

And did he always bring the photo with him?

“These days I do,” he said. “She loved books and writing, so it seemed logical to bring her with me.”

“The Last Unicorn” author Peter S. Beagle at the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collectors Show on March 19, 2023. (Photo by Erik Pedersen)

Not wanting to monopolize Beagle’s time, I moved on, looking unsuccessfully for a copy of “The Last Unicorn” for him to sign. I did buy some classic Penguin Crime paperbacks, John Wyndham’s “The Chrysalids,” Wilkie Collins’s “The Moonstone” (despite – cough – having bought one in recent memory I haven’t opened) and a copy of “The Ipcress File,” largely because I will watch the 1960s Michael Caine film version anytime it’s on.

Some Penguin Crime paperbacks purchased at the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collectors Show at the Glendale Civic Auditorium on March 19, 2023. (Photo by Erik Pedersen)

Finally, I found myself near the entrance again, looking at a bunch of familiar paperbacks – and a familiar face.

It was Nick – full name Nick Smith, I learned – who’d been so kind to me when I was a kid asking him intense questions about Marvel comic books or Doc Savage paperbacks. I was thunderstruck and overjoyed, and he was, as remembered, beatific.

Smith, who recently retired from the Pasadena Public Library, was volunteering at the event as part of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. As we talked about books, the upcoming LosCon 49 and the work of comic book writer Ed Brubaker, I asked him if he’d realized the effect he had on kids like me and my friends, who he treated with such kindness and respect.

“I remember being a kid buying comics myself. And where I was buying comics at the time, there was nobody to ask; there was just the person behind the counter at the grocery store and they didn’t know anything about the comic. They were just selling them,” Smith said. “So I tried to be somebody that people of any level could communicate with.”

Nick Smith at the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collectors Show on March 19, 2023. (Photo by Erik Pedersen)

I told him I had a very strong memory of him eating Dolly Madison pies, for some reason, and he laughed.

“We didn’t really have much in the way of breaks there, so I would get stuff either from the little grocery store across the street or from the Burger King,” he said, surprisingly willing to answer what I realize was an entirely strange question.

We had a wonderful talk, and in moment that seemed to pull everything together, Smith told me about meeting Peter Beagle at a convention years ago.

“It was amazing. Peter actually invited a bunch of us fans up to his hotel rooms to play us the music for “The Last Unicorn” songs, because he had written original music, or adapted really obscure music, for all of those things that are scattered through the book,” said Smith, recalling Beagle as being incredibly nice.

“He was just so kind and generous with his time and was so excited to be having fun with fans. Because that was part of what he was about.”

It was time for me to go, finally. As I walked back into the rain, my books wrapped in a plastic shopping bag, I couldn’t help but think of something else the website had promised: “There will be treasures found.”

Victor LaValle shares what he found in a Flushing, Queens candy store

Victor LaValle is the author of, most recently, “Lone Women.” (Photo by Teddy Wolff / Courtesy of One World/Penguin)

Victor LaValle has written novels, novellas and short stories, and his latest work is “Lone Women,” which hits stores March 28. LaValle’s books have made numerous best-of lists and he’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University and lives with his family in the Bronx. LaValle spoke with Michael Schaub about the new novel, and here he responds to the Book Pages Q&A.

Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?

I always recommend “Corregidora” by Gayl Jones. Close runner-up is “A Personal Matter” by Kenzaburo Oe. Both are pretty rough books, but that’s why I love them. They look at some difficult subject matter and never blink.

Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?

The “Encyclopedia Brown” books were early favorites. They were the first books I could read by myself and I felt proud of that.

Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that stayed with you from a recent reading?

The grandson of one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves is named Fountain Hughes. He gave a recorded interview in 1949 as part of the Works Progress Administration program. You can listen to his voice as car horns sometimes play in the background. Much as some people like to discuss slavery as some ancient event, it remained in the living history of this man, and by recording it, it becomes a part of our living history. Past isn’t even past, as the saying goes. Learned this in a book called “Darkly” by Leila Taylor.

Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?

My favorite recent book cover is Mariana Enriquez’s “Our Share of Night.” The annotated Lovecraft stories, edited by Leslie Klinger, both have gorgeous covers. Centipede Press, an independent press out of Colorado, makes a tremendous number of books with beautiful covers.

Q. Which books do you plan, or hope, to read next?

I’m reading the Enriquez now and loving it. Also planning to dive into “Mott Street” by Ava Chin, a nonfiction book about Chin’s family history in the United States, tracing it back more than a hundred years from coast to coast.

Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?

Two sisters who ran a candy store around the corner from my apartment building in Flushing, Queens. Their names were Gina and Rose. Their store was, aptly enough, called GinaRose. They let us kids read all the comics we wanted on the spinner rack, even if we weren’t buying. Never shooed us out of the place, never demanded we spend a penny. It was such a loving act. I fell in love with comics, and with reading, because of the freedom they gave us.

Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?

When’s the first time you fell in love with a book, and why? I’m always fascinated by the answer to such a question because it’s rarely about the book all by itself. You ask about the book and you often learn something a lot more personal.

• • •

Please write me at [email protected] to share news, comments and what you books you’re enjoying, and your comments may appear in the newsletter.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Jinwoo Chong is the author of “Flux.” (Photo credit Enushé Khan / Courtesy of Melville House)

In ‘Flux’

Jinwoo Chong’s debut mixes grief, family and identity with time travel. READ MORE

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Ari Shapiro, longtime National Public Radio reporter and host, shares stories from his professional and personal life in the new memoir “The Best Strangers in the World.” (Photo by J.J. Geiger, book jacket courtesy of HarperOne)

Voice of radio

NPR’s Ari Shapiro shares his own stories in “The Best Strangers in the World.” READ MORE

• • •

“Hello Beautiful” by Ann Napolitano is among the top-selling fiction releases at Southern California’s independent bookstores. (Courtesy of The Dial Press)

The week’s bestsellers

The top-selling books at your local independent bookstores. READ MORE

• • •

Bookish (SCNG)

What’s next on ‘Bookish’

The next free Bookish event is April 21 at 5 p.m. with guests including Sharon Gless, Ari Shapiro and more talking books with host Sandra Tsing Loh.

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Dive into all of our books coverage

​ Orange County Register 

Sea Breeze Pet Cemetery office temporarily closed, awaiting new management

• March 24, 2023

The Sea Breeze Pet Memorial Park in Huntington Beach has been temporarily closed as of Feb. 27 as the cemetery transitions to new management. While burials and cremations have been paused for the time being, the park is still open to visitors.

“The Seabreeze Pet Cemetery remains open, and as always, the community continues to have access to visit their beloved pets’ burial sites,” Rick Doane, managing director at West Coast Memorial L.A., said in an email. “The cemetery remains under the same ownership and our company continues to lease the Seabreeze Pet Cemetery from its owners. We have moved our crematory operations from the property, but we continue to maintain the property.”

Word had spread recently on social media that the more than 60-year-old cemetery was closed, drawing a flurry of comments and emails raising concerns it could be permanent, could the property be destined for development or would buried pets have to be relocated.

The grounds are still being maintained by a groundskeeper on site. Plots still belong to their owners, and people who currently have loved ones buried at Sea Breeze do not need to exhume their loved ones.

For many in the surrounding community, Sea Breeze is more than a memorial park.

“This is a very important property for pet owners who have their pet’s remains there, including pets belonging to Richard and Karen Carpenter, John Wayne and memorials to WWII canines, including Old Sarge,” said William Lancaster, a resident and pet owner.

Old Sarge is credited with saving the lives of nine Marines and received a Purple Heart. There is a life-sized statue in the park of him.

“(Sea Breeze) is a singularly interesting park, just reading the headstones and realizing the love that the pet owners have for their fur babies or feather babies gives visitors a lot to consider and enjoy.”

It is unclear when the memorial park’s offices will be up and running again.

Tens of thousands of pets are buried at Sea Breeze, one of just a few cemeteries in Southern California dedicated to just pets. In a 2013 story in The Orange County Register, a previous owner said among the pets are also goats that were pets of singer Jose Feliciano and a small lion and cheetahs from the circus.

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​ Orange County Register 

Alexander: UCLA’s seniors leave a basketball legacy, but what now?

• March 24, 2023

LAS VEGAS — It was the end of the road for the UCLA’s men’s basketball team, a couple of stops short of the Bruins’ desired destination, and no one really felt like talking.

Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Tyger Campbell joined coach Mick Cronin at the dais following victorious Gonzaga’s elongated media availability – Cronin grumbled about how “it took 33 minutes to get me in here, which is ridiculous” – and the answers were for the most part clipped and perfunctory.

Until, that is, I asked Cronin to assess the role seniors Jaquez, Campbell and David Singleton had played in raising UCLA’s program back to a level where Final Fours were a reasonable goal. What were the attributes that stood out?

“Loyalty, which is rare in today’s society, which is something that I have great respect for,” Cronin said. “And when I look at those guys … I don’t respect anybody I think that’s a fraud that doesn’t work hard. I just don’t. I don’t care if you like me. I have great respect for those three because when you watch them play you don’t think, ‘Well, he should be better than that.’

“When you watch Dave Singleton and you see he’s limited athletically, you see that he gets everything he can out of his body and his talent. Tyger Campbell, unbelievable career. You can’t get any more out of his body and his God-given things that he has that he can’t change. He totally maxes it out.

“And Jaime Jaquez, same thing. Came in to us as a human turnover the first two months. And I just played him because he was as crazy as me. We were losing. He was pissed. I said, ‘I can build a program with this guy because he’s got heart.’ Now look at him.

“But it proves, if you work hard, you have a great attitude, you can become a really, really good player. So that’s why I respect those guys so much.”

UCLA won 31 games this season, 80 in the last three seasons with Jaquez, Campbell and Singleton playing prominent roles, with a Final Four and two Sweet 16s to show for it. At a university where the only banners that hang are for national championships, it’s not enough; Cronin and the players will be the first to acknowledge that.

But consider where the Bruins were for the better part of the previous decade and a half. After two straight Final Fours in 2007 and ’08 under Ben Howland, UCLA missed the tournament in 2010 and 2012 and Howland was fired after the 2012-13 season. Steve Alford got UCLA to three Sweet 16s, lost in a First Four and was fired midway through the 2018-19 season. Cronin’s first UCLA team in 2019-20 was 19-12 and didn’t appear in the tournament because there wasn’t one, thanks to COVID-19.

None of those UCLA teams were considered capable of winning a national championship. This one was in some quarters, even with the injuries to Jaylen Clark and Adem Bona that scrambled the lineup in the final weeks.

That’s why losing to Gonzaga – in a devastating déjà vu, on Julian Strawther’s just-inside-the-logo 3-pointer in the final seconds that brought back the memories of Jalen Suggs’ heave from the logo to eliminate the Bruins in 2021 – hurt as much as it did.

The day before, Cronin had said, “If it doesn’t go our way, I’m not going to come in here and say we lost because these two guys weren’t playing or these three guys weren’t playing. We’re still going to get to play 5-on-5. You’ve got to be tough enough to figure it out if you want to win.”

For the record, he was true to his word.

So what happens now?

Cronin had kidded earlier in the tournament about chanting to Jaquez, “One more year.” He has the extra COVID year of eligibility available to him, but there has been no indication if he plans to use it or if he will instead opt for the NBA draft, where he has raised his stock considerably.

This being the modern era of college basketball, there’s no sense plotting next season’s roster yet. Amari Bailey almost certainly raised his own stock as well – that cool 3-pointer he sank to put the Bruins back in front briefly in the final minute exemplified his ability to rise to the moment – and it could push him toward the NBA.

Freshmen such as Bona, Will McClendon and Dylan Andrews received and responded to additional responsibility as the season continued and would figure to be in line for even larger roles next season … but Bona could draw interest from NBA teams as well.

And the transfer portal will have an impact, too, though you can be sure that Cronin – whose coaching style is, ahem, not for everybody – will be picky when it comes to what’s available.

Then again, if you think Cronin is just some old soul who yells at the clouds in response to the changes in his game over the last few years, consider his response Wednesday to a question about those changes.

“You’ve got to look at it as different,” he said. “The dying words of every successful business (are) somebody sitting there saying, ‘Well, this is how we’ve always done things.’

“And I would remind that to the new head of the NCAA,” he added, a message for new president and former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. “They better heed those words if they want the NCAA to exist and continue. They better heed those words.

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“I’m glad you asked that question because players getting paid is coming. The government in our country got to a point where they’re interceding to force NIL (name, image and likeness payments). The Alston case, the Supreme Court. I mean it’s just a matter of time. And we better figure it out if we want to continue. And lobbying to stop it, hoping the ship’s coming back to port is not the answer. We have to figure it out.”

This doesn’t sound like a man stuck in the past, for all of his reverence for the program John Wooden built. It sounds like a guy ready to tackle the future.

[email protected]

​ Orange County Register