DK Nnuro’s novel ‘What Napoleon Could Not Do’ explores a family’s immigration saga

• February 24, 2023

DK Nnuro’s novel “What Napoleon Could Not Do” opens with a divorce ceremony, which, in Ghana, is a custom when two families dissolve the marriage bond.

But neither half of the fracturing couple, Jacob and Patricia, are there. The couple, whose relationship had been limited to letters, FaceTime and other modern communications have never even met – Patricia has been working in the United States for years and Jacob has been unable to gain entry there, a source of frustration and shame. When they’d married, Patricia was represented by a relative holding a photo.

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Though she lacks a green card, Jacob’s sister, Belinda, lives in Houston and is the family’s star, having fulfilled her destiny by conquering a foreign land – the book’s title comes from her widowed father’s acclaim for her achievement. She married into great wealth and supplies the family, which includes another brother Robert and his family, with much of what they have. 

Belinda’s husband, Wilder Thomas, is a generation older than her; raised with wealth and education in Texas, he came of age in the Jim Crow era and spent years in Vietnam and Laos during the war. Despite his worldly successes, he is openly bitter about America – or more specifically, White America. 

Nnuro, who spoke recently by video, was born in Ghana but came to America as a boy and graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He still lives in Iowa City.

The novel is filled with richly described incidents: a fabulously ostentatious Washington D.C. wedding, American attacks on Laos from the point-of-view of the Laotians, and a tragic car crash in Ghana. But it’s also a character study of Jacob, Belinda and Wilder, exploring the impact of heartbreak, shame and guilt that works on each of them. And it’s about their differing views of America and how each contrasts with the reality confronting them. 

The book is big-hearted but unflinching toward its characters. “Oh my god, I love my characters,” Nnuro says. In fact, when referring to Robert saying, “Jacob was begotten feckless,” Nnuro says, with a chuckle, “Of course, he would put it that way,” as if discussing an old friend, not a fictional character he created.

“Your characters will tell you what should become of them,” he says. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. The characters have certain dreams about and expectations of America. Do Americans understand our country’s cultural and political influence and how it shapes potential immigrants? 

I don’t think Americans really understand fully how the culture influences the rest of the world and creates the myth of what America is. There’s a way America occupies the imagination.

Ghanians have a certain appreciation of the US because of the ambassadorial nature of US movies and goods – compared to what we have in Ghana, it’s just excellence. There’s a sense of the U.S. as almost heaven-like, and that creates a perception of a more welcoming place because only a welcoming place would be so generous with spreading the best of its culture all over the world. That’s how Africans interpret it. But in truth, it’s not always like that, so a lot of us Africans think of America as more welcoming than it really is. 

Q. For all their struggles here, Belinda and Patricia aren’t as negative about America as Wilder. Some of that is age and geography — he’s a generation older and grew up in the South — but some of that is being a Black American versus being an immigrant. Was that difference an inspiration for your writing?

Yes. I always refer to this quote from the writer Jelani Cobb, where he quibbles with the term “African-American” and says the hyphen should be replaced with an ellipsis because of the enduring tensions between immigrants from Africa and Black Americans. 

In Ghana, there’s persistent inconvenience; you can’t get anything done. The mere fact that in America you’re guaranteed something as simple as electricity all day is enough for African immigrants to overlook the enduring racism that exists in this country. At the end of the day, there is light … literally. 

Q. You came here in 1998 at age 11. Would your own perceptions have been different if you’d come as an adult?

My experience was complicated by the fact that I am a mama’s boy and my mother stayed in Ghana. So I came here with a great deal of pain and it took me a few years to overcome that. It was then that I really started to experience all the other pains America could possibly inflict on Black bodies. 

I didn’t have the term “microaggressions” then, but later I realized I’d experienced a great deal of them. I couldn’t have survived America if I had not kept one foot firmly placed in Ghana, which meant going back often. But there, I was constantly exposed to the inconveniences. This cognitive dissonance was always at play in me. America is a racist nation, but we have light all the time. There’s also that luxury of being able to go home – let the Americans be mean to you, but when Christmas rolls around you can go home and escape.

Had I come at a much older age, I don’t know if I would have paid enough attention to the racism to be able to write about it. Ghanian immigrants who come later are coming for survival, to make money and that is their focus. If they experience microaggressions or racism, then so be it. As Patricia tells Belinda, she doesn’t have time to pay attention and to intellectualize things. 

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For a lot of African immigrants, 2020 [George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed] was as much a revelation for them as it was for White Americans.

Q. Wilder is the one American-born Black character and his section is much longer than Jacob’s and Belinda’s. Were you planning that or did it happen in the aftermath of 2020? 

As much as 2020 was an inflection point for America, for me as a novelist, it was Donald Trump and Charlottesville. I finished the first draft in 2019 and it was 550 pages so when I cut, a lot was from Belinda’s section and I barely cut from Wilder’s. The inherent racism and the way that, unfortunately, the sense that when this country takes a step forward, it takes two steps back, that dance has always been there. When I started this in 2016, it was Trump and then Charlottesville that informed Wilder’s section and the complexities of his character and his grievances against America. 

​ Orange County Register 

How Orange County became a refuge for Ukrainians fleeing war with Russia

• February 24, 2023

In a quiet, gated community in Dana Point, a Ukrainian flag flies atop one of the houses. Inside, 9-year-old Arsenii and 7-year-old Mark play while their mothers Maria Kobylianska and Liudmyla Maksymenko sit at the dining table sipping coffee and nibbling on Ukrainian cookies.

Maksymenko is a refugee from Ukraine who came to the U.S. in June with her son, Arsenii. She’s become fast friends with Kobylianska, a Ukrainian American, and is grateful for the community Kobylianska has created for refugees fleeing the Russia-Ukraine war.

When Kobylianska moved to Dana Point from Chicago in December 2021, she joined the Facebook group “Ukrainians in Orange County” with around 600 members. However, she said, it was “super sleepy.” Whenever she posed a question to the group, no one would answer for 2-3 months.

Then, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.

“When the war started, it exploded,” said Kobylianska of the Facebook group.

It became a space for Ukrainians living in Orange County to discuss the war, ask questions and — as refugees started coming in — organize help. In the last year, the member count has ballooned to about 2,500.

Maksymenko, who now lives in Laguna Niguel, was one of the refugees who relied on the group to help her navigate life in the U.S.

With the constant sirens and the exploding rockets traumatizing her son, she made the decision to leave Ukraine. She left her husband and family behind in Uman (a town between Kyiv, the capital, and Odesa, a port city and one of the early targets in the war) and traveled to the U.S. through Poland with her only son in June.

“I cried a lot, and my son, I have never seen him cry, but he cried,” Maksymenko said. “I knew that it was not going to be for a week or two. I wasn’t going to see my family for a long time.”

Maksymenko and her son first moved in with a host family in San Juan Capistrano through the United for Ukraine program. Launched by the federal government last year, it allows Ukrainian citizens fleeing the war to come to the U.S. for a temporary 2-year period. While the program is renewable at the end of those two years, it is not a pathway to citizenship.

“When we came, I saw that my son was suffering from a lack of communication with Ukrainians because everyone was speaking in English,” she said.

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During that “difficult and stressful” time, Maksymenko’s host family helped her find a summer camp for Ukrainian children run out of R.H. Dana Elementary School. The camp was started by Kobylianska.

In May, Kobylianska began the process of bringing her parents to the U.S. to live with her, but she was worried they would be bored. At the same time, she noticed an influx of Ukrainian refugees asking questions in the Facebook group about Ukrainian schools or classes meant for children.

A summer camp was the answer.

When her parents moved to Dana Point, they helped run the camp — after all, Kobylianska’s mother was a teacher for 40 years in Ukraine — and Ukrainian children who had just moved to Orange County found community. The nonprofit Ukrainian American Coordinating Council helped her set up the camp under its umbrella so she could use its 501(c)(3) status, and the RH Dana Elementary School provided a space.

Even her son, Mark, practiced speaking in his parents’ native language.

“(The camp) was a relief for me and a relief for my son,” said Maksymenko.

For just under two months, around 12 children between 5-12 years old spent their days doing art projects, learning chess, practicing the Ukrainian language and conducting science experiments.

At the last class for the summer, the parents and children, Kobylianska said, came together, “They said we need to start it again, and we need to get together and do a school.”

Kobylianska and Maksymenko had become friends by then. And since Maksymenko used to run a school in Ukraine, she planned to join Kobylianska’s mother in teaching.

“We just had to find a place,” Kobylianska said.

The elementary school was not an option as it required expensive custodian fees to use a space on weekends. After having classes temporarily at the Dana Point Senior Center, Kobylianska found a permanent space: a classroom at the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Dana Point used for English as second language classes.

The school, for children between 3 -11 years old, is run on Saturdays from 1:30-4:30 p.m., with three classes: Ukrainian language, art and history. Students, over the age of 11, also have the option of enrolling in programming classes and those older than 6 can sign up for traditional Ukrainian dance classes run at the Dana Point Senior Center.

All of the teachers are volunteers and most are refugees from Ukraine, including Maksymenko and Kobylianska’s mother, Nataliia Kobylianska.

“America is a fantastic country,” said Nataliia Kobylianska in Ukrainian. But she still misses her home. In her small town of Kolomyia, everyone knew her and would greet her when she walked on the streets. She misses visiting with her friends and neighbors.

“I miss the sweet water of the well,” said Nataliia Kobylianska.

Nataliia Kobylianska still remembers the day the war started: The former military airport in her town was bombed.

“Everybody was scared, you couldn’t find any people outside,” she said.

The night before, she had watched Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address, when he said he had “no other option” but to launch a military operation, advocating for the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” That night, Nataliia Kobylianska realized the invasion was going to be “something terrible,” she said, her eyes red welling up with tears.

“Ukraine will stand. Ukraine will win,” said Nataliia Kobylianska.

The three women will mark one year since the Russia-Ukraine war began at the “365 Days Defending Freedom” event at Kaleidoscope Union Market in Mission Viejo, organized by the Ukrainian American Coordinating Council, on Friday, Feb. 24 from 7-11 p.m. The event will also feature an auction to raise funds for Ukrainian defenders on the front lines.

Tickets are priced between $10-$25 and are available on its Eventbrite page.

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​ Orange County Register 

5 garden tips: Consider planting this tough, long-blooming perennial

• February 24, 2023

1. There is a new variety of almond called Independence that has taken the almond industry by storm. Most almond varieties are self-sterile, meaning they need to be planted with another variety in order to produce almonds. Independence, however, is self-fertile, meaning it can produce almonds on its own. The advantage of growing Independence is that, since it can pollinate itself, it does not need bees to assist in this process. You can acquire an Independence tree from any nursery that carries plants grown by Dave Wilson Nursery. To find out which nursery in your area carries their trees, go to wheretobuy.davewilson.com. Still, studies have shown that Independence does produce more almonds where bees are available for pollination, but far fewer bees are needed than in the case of conventional almond varieties, which require two hives per acre to reach their harvest potential. This finding alone, however, is significant since there are more than one 1.3 million acres of almonds in California, producing 900 billion almonds a year, or more than 100 almonds for every person on earth. To even halve the number of beehives needed to achieve this harvest would represent a significant savings since the cost of renting each beehive, for a single growing season, is around $200.

2. Sproutable pencils are gift items that have the appearance of regular pencils, colored pencils, and eyebrow pencils. The only difference is that the top end consists of a biodegradable capsule that contains seeds of sage, chia, thyme, basil, and coriander (note: coriander seeds grow into cilantro plants) in the herb category; carnations, daisies, and forget-me-nots in the flower category, and spruce seeds in the confier category. You can customize a message on the pencils, of which 40 million have been sold to date. After your pencil has been whittled down to a nub, you simply place the top end in potting soil, water, and watch the encapsulated seeds germinate. To find out more about sproutable pencils, go to sproutworld.com.

3. There are an ever-increasing number of websites that help you identify plants. However, there is only one website I have discovered that offers this service at no charge. The service is provided through Pl@ntNet (identify.plantnet.org). The riches you will find here are virtually endless and will give you an inside look at everything the plant world has to offer. Plant images, all contributed by the Pl@ntNet community, are arranged by country. You will discover what plants you could expect to encounter when traveling to a foreign land or tropical island; Martinique Island in the Caribbean has 1,929 plants listed and Reunion Island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean has 1,856. You will also find a multitude of images of “useful plants” from different continents as well as invasive plants and weeds.

4. Pink mulla mulla (Ptilotus exaltatus) displays a unique, cone-shaped, pinkish-white bottlebrush flower that will take your breath away, especially when it is planted en masse. I have only seen it grown by Monrovia nursery locally, but you can grow it from seed or root cuttings as well. It demands full sun and barely needs any water, as it is native to the dry Australian plains. It belongs to the Amaranth family, a group of durable plants that includes love-lies-bleeding (Amaranthus caudatus) and quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa). Technically a perennial, mulla mulla is commonly grown as an annual. Expect to see it increase its presence in retail nurseries as its charms and durability are more widely recognized.

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5. For a long-blooming perennial that self-sows, consider columbine (Aquilegia spp.). Its delicate appearance is a facade that masks its toughness as a garden perennial. Flowers are bent in the manner of daffodis but there is nothing shy or submissive about these plants, which perform well throughout the summer with their attractively lobed bluish-green foliage providing a refreshing antidote to hot sun and dry weather. Coneflower or Echinacea is another perennial everyone should try. Although native to dry prairies and the edge of woodland habitats, coneflower grow swell in California gardens when planted with compost, assiduously mulched, and given half-day sun. Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) is another must-have perennial for its wave upon wave of bright orange-yellow flowers that begin as soon as the weather warms. You can sow the seed now so that by the time the heat arrives, the plants will be ready to bloom. How did black-eyed Susan get its name, anyway? Well, the central disk on this flower is black and legend has it that a black-eyed Susan and a sweet William fell in love. Since black-eyed Susan and sweet William (the name given to another perennial, a carnation relative known botanically as Dianthus barbatus), bloom around the same time, the names of the two lovers were given to these two simultaneously blooming plants.

Please send questions, comments, and photos to [email protected].

​ Orange County Register 

Bill sparked by Huntington Beach spill could end drilling in state ocean waters

• February 24, 2023

A bill aimed at ending offshore oil drilling in state waters calls for officials to negotiate with companies that own the leasing rights to the last three of those platforms, all off the coast of Orange County.

State Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, said the goal of his bill, SB 559, is a quick and fair end to the local risk of “economic and environmental catastrophe” that comes with offshore drilling. Without the negotiated settlements his bill proposes, the platforms could legally keep operating until they run dry, possibly after several decades.

“Each oil spill has massive impacts that not only result in direct costs to the state, such as for cleaning our beaches, but indirect costs from the damage to our coastal economy,” Min said in an interview and via email.

“To the extent that ending offshore drilling eliminates the risk of oil spills from those platforms, that is a massive net savings for California residents.”

Min pitched a similar idea a year ago, months after an October 2021 oil spill off the coast of Huntington Beach that closed beaches in Orange and San Diego counties, fouled estuaries and hurt everybody from swimmers and homeowners to big hotel operators and local commercial fishermen.

But Min’s plan died last year after the state Assembly passed a separate but potentially related proposal, to have the California Lands Bureau study how much oil operations have cost the state. Now, with the state armed with some of that information (the study is expected to be concluded by the end of next year) Min believes the Lands Bureau will be better equipped to negotiate decommissioning deals favorable to taxpayers.

Still, cost will be key. Based on the amounts spent to close down other offshore oil operations, the cost of shutting the three platforms off the coast of Orange County – known as platforms Eva, Emmy and Ester – would run between $1 billion and $2 billion. How much of that would be paid by oil companies, and how much by taxpayers, would be the subject of negotiations and, perhaps, a source of controversy in blue-leaning California. The state also is facing a projected budget deficit of more than $20 billion.

“It’s a fantastic bill, except we feel strongly that polluters should pay all of the costs associated with closing those operations,” said Brady Bradshaw, senior oceans campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group.

Min said his plan takes that into account. The bill, he wrote, “nets out the expected revenues from these offshore leases against the costs of decommissioning the platforms and wells, which gives us a true market value rather than the ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ approach that oil companies benefit from now.”

By law, offshore drillers in California are required to pay for the costs of decommissioning their platforms, but only after the wells are no longer productive. And the state definition of “productive” is loose, allowing oil operators to keep drilling for a tiny amount of oil each year as a way to stave off the massive costs of closing down an offshore plant.

State data shows that the oil operations off the coast of Orange County remain viable, if not big producers. Combined, several dozen wells connected with the three local platforms produced about 1.6 million barrels of oil during the fiscal year 2020-21, a tiny sliver of the total U.S. production of 4.1 billion barrels during that same period. The data also shows the local leaseholders paid the state about $18.3 million in royalties, and combined rent of about $20,000.

Min suggested his bill would compensate oil companies for ending those drilling rights early – “their leases have value,” he said  – without letting them off the hook for the long-term costs of removing drilling operations.

Though details of SB 559 aren’t fleshed out, the proposal last year called for the Lands Commission to study the long-term value of those leases and estimated revenue, and then balance those estimates against the estimated costs of capping wells, hauling away equipment and possibly paying for environmental damages.

Another financial issue is the cost of any future oil spill.

In the year since Min last pitched this idea, companies connected to the Huntington Beach spill have been ordered to pay about $95 million in damages to Orange County fishing operators, tourism companies and homeowners, among others. But that spill was small, at just 25,000 gallons, and the money set aside for individuals and businesses doesn’t include clean-up costs or costs connected to long-term environmental damage and harm done to the county’s reputation for being next to a clean ocean.

Still, the example that might determine the fate of SB 559 is the payout underway related to Platform Holly, an oil operation off the coast of Santa Barbara. Until it ceased production in 2017, Holly was the fourth well in state waters.

That deal still frustrates Bradshaw and other environmentalists. The company that held the leasing rights for Holly, Venoco, filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations when that well was no longer productive, a move that shifted some decommissioning costs to California taxpayers.

Since then, the Lands Commission worked with the original operator of Holly, Exxon Mobil, to get paid for decommissioning the platform. As of last year, Exxon was expected to spend about $350 million and the state was on the hook for more than $130 million.

Min believes his bill would produce better results. But he also argued that any spending by taxpayers to compensate drillers for their future revenue would pale when compared to the economic and environmental cost of “the next spill.”

“This is a much better deal for taxpayers than the alternative,” Min said.

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​ Orange County Register 

What you need to know before repotting your houseplants

• February 24, 2023

Q. When should I repot my houseplants? Is there anything I should know before I start?

A. When your indoor plants start growing again, usually in the early spring when the days become longer, it’s time to give them some attention. Tip the plant out of its container and look at the roots. Have they filled the container? Are they circling? Coming out of the drainage holes? If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, it’s time to move your plant to a larger container.

When potting up, select a container that is only slightly larger. For instance, you would move a plant from a 6-inch pot into an 8-inch pot. Relocating into a much larger container will cause problems including root rot from inadequate drainage.

If the roots look crowded or are circling, try to gently separate them. Extreme circling roots can be trimmed and unwound. Use fresh potting soil and a slow-release fertilizer like Osmocote when filling the pot. If using a systemic pesticide, now is a good time to dose with that to get a jump on aphids, mites, and mealybugs.

You may be tempted to put your indoor plants outside once the weather gets warm and sunny. This can result in severe sunburn and, in extreme cases, defoliation (loss of all leaves). Even plants that have been brought inside for winter protection should be gradually acclimated to direct sunlight. Think about your first sunburn of the season – this is how your plant feels when it’s brought outside for too long.

Q. My citrus trees have been super productive and I don’t know what to do with all of the fruit. I was thinking about canning some of the juice, but I can’t find any canning recipes for citrus juice. Why is that?

A. Citrus will lose its flavor when exposed to high temperatures. Citric acid is the key component of citrus’ tart flavor, but it breaks down at 175 degrees. When a recipe calls for citrus juice, it almost always instructs you to add it immediately before serving. If citrus is heated to a high temperature for too long, it can impart a bitter flavor or cause discoloration.

What about commercially prepared citrus juice? To ensure shelf stability, it has to either be pasteurized or heat processed. Since the juice has lost its flavor, flavoring agents must be added after the fact.

Marmalade is another alternative, but I shudder to think about how many jars I could get out of 100 pounds of oranges.

If you have a glut of citrus (and you’ve given so much of it away that your neighbors run away when they see you coming with another bagful), you can freeze the juice since that will preserve the flavor. Grated zest can be frozen as well and added into recipes at a later date. Dried orange slices seemed to be a popular Christmas decoration last year. Perhaps this trend will still be around next Christmas and you can get a head start on your decorations!

Los Angeles County

[email protected]; 626-586-1988; http://celosangeles.ucanr.edu/UC_Master_Gardener_Program/

Orange County

[email protected]; 949-809-9760; http://mgorange.ucanr.edu/

Riverside County

[email protected]; 951-683-6491 ext. 231; https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiversideMG/

San Bernardino County

[email protected]; 909-387-2182; http://mgsb.ucanr.edu/

​ Orange County Register 

Swanson: USC’s Destiny Littleton finds her voice

• February 24, 2023

A girl adrift, 12 years old and alone in the wilderness of San Diego’s concrete jungle. She keeps moving, keeps chopping wood, keeps her wits about her. Because there’s a play drawn up for her to succeed, she can feel it. Destiny, child.

***

“What’s the word? Serendipity?” USC women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb asks in regard to Destiny Littleton’s presence in her program this season.

She asks because back in 2017, when Littleton was a top recruit out of The Bishop’s School in La Jolla, a McDonald’s All-American whose 4,300 career points made her the state’s all-time leading scorer among girls, she thought she’d play all her college ball as a Trojan. Instead, she wound up at Texas, and then at South Carolina, where last year she became a national champion.

That she’s playing at USC only now, just as the Trojans have begun to crest upward again, breaking into the Associated Press’ Top 25 poll for the first time since 2016? That does seem like a stroke of serendipity.

A little like a touch of fate, that it’s happened just as Littleton – a 23-year-old graduate student and point guard, playing heavy, necessary minutes and making the most of the NCAA’s bonus COVID year – has dropped her disguise, emerging from an emotional thicket not unscathed, but untarnished. Good, stronger and the right woman to lead these tough-willed Trojans, whose wins don’t often come easy, but have come anyway.

A fighter, with the fortitude to take the big shots and live with the results. “A great overall person,” said Aaliyah Gayles, a teammate and friend. “A pick-me-up person, a loving person. I would take a thousand Destinys, if I could.”

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

To get a sense of that, you need only to sit and listen a while to Littleton, a 5-foot-9 floor general whose braces show when she smiles and who has a tattoo on the inside of her left forearm that reads, in neat, cursive script, “With pain comes strength ♡.”

As a kid, the baby of the family, she’d played football and basketball with the boys. But she couldn’t compete with the drug addictions poisoning her home, sending her parents and siblings spiraling and leaving her without much food or, half the time, functioning utilities, she said. She wound up living out of a duffle bag, and later, saw her father convicted of a decades-old murder.

But back then, when she’d been so angry and with so few tangible assets, she also had tons of talent, on the court and in class, and she was determined not to waste it. “Something in me was just like: Don’t just throw your life away,” she said. “Don’t give up on things that you can control.”

She found lifelines and opportunities, and she didn’t squander those either. She moved in with a coach, and with friends, with a teacher, and earned her way into a prestigious private high school and onto the radars of every major college women’s basketball coach.

All that while she kept the most important information about herself confidential, strictly on a need-to-know-basis – and dang near nobody needed to know.

What her classmates and teachers at The Bishop’s School knew was only “laughing-and-smiling Destiny.” High-achieving Destiny. Sober, focused Destiny. But no, almost no one knew anything at all about the family she was estranged from. Or that Marlon Wells, her basketball coach – her guardian and eventually her dad legally – wasn’t her father biologically.

She hadn’t wanted to be mislabeled on her affluent high school campus, where a friend’s biggest problem was how to hide a Hot Cheetos habit from her mom. Littleton didn’t want anyone looking at her and thinking, “You’re just another black kid from the inner city.”

More, she felt betrayed by the people who, above all others, she was supposed to count on. How in the world could she trust anyone else? Even with Wells, she said, it took three years.

It was a “mask,” Littleton calls it, that didn’t come off until last March, when she was coming off the bench for the top-ranked Gamecocks, and coming out of the fog of depression.

For the first time, she thought she’d be able to talk about it all without crying, and she looked around and she saw more athletes speaking on mental health. So she reached out to Mirin Fader, a best-selling author and feature writer for The Ringer, who had written a bit about her in high school, and whom she trusted to tell her whole truth.

The instincts that kept Littleton afloat for much of her life proved right again, because when Fader’s story, “The Determination of Destiny,” ran on The Ringer’s website, it meant Littleton’s secrets, well, they weren’t secrets anymore. Just facts. And we know what the truth shall do …

“Littleton has realized something she hasn’t always been able to: ‘The world is not against you,’” Fader wrote. “Instead of dwelling on why things have happened to her, she embraces the resilience that came from those experiences.”

The response to the piece was stunning: “It was crazy to see how many people were just like, ‘Oh my gosh, you went through all of this and you’re still here? Still playing at a high level?’ It was good to hear adults be like, ‘Wow, you’re my role model. I look up to you!’”

A hidden talent emerged – for public speaking. She began to talk, aloud, about everything she’d kept quiet all her life.

‘GET IN THIS CAR’

If you’re ever in a room to hear Littleton tell her story, you’d be rapt, like the students at Irmo High School in Columbia, S.C., where she spoke at last spring’s College Decision Day.

“You could hear a pin drop in our auditorium,” emailed Ruschell Pearson, an Irmo counselor. “The students were so focused on what she was sharing about life, the trials, triumphs and being a victor not a victim of your circumstances, learning how to face life head on and appreciate the good and the bad.”

Good. Bad. There they were, mixed up one night near San Diego Community College, one of those moments on which an entire plot hinges.

Littleton was a middle schooler then, trying to avoid being home. So she loitered at the gym late into the night, long after all the other kids had gone following a full day of action in the summer league run by Wells, a decorated coach who has worked with some of Southern California’s top girls hoopers in the past quarter-century, and who this year has led Temecula Rancho Christian to the CIF-SS Division 3A title game.

“(The adults) were just outside talking and I was just out there with them, knowing I can’t leave until they leave because they’re gonna be like, ‘Where’s your parents?’ ‘Who’s picking you up?’ Littleton said. “I was just like, ‘Oh, don’t worry, they’re coming.’”

But then Wells spotted Littleton walking alone toward the trolley.

“He pulls up,” Littleton said, “and I’m just like, ‘Oh crap.’”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

He remembers Littleton saying she didn’t have money, she was going to hop the trolley without paying. Littleton said she told him where she was headed – to the home of some friends whom she knew Wells would recognize as “bad influences, just terrible.”

Coach’s order: “Get in this car!”

Littleton remembers telling him he didn’t need to bother calling her mom: “She doesn’t care.”

He remembers trying. “Nobody answered.”

So Littleton wound up on Wells’ couch for the first of many nights, under the same roof as the coach and his wife and sons, “thinking, like, I don’t really know what this is gonna be, but I’m glad I’m not home. I’m sleeping on this couch. I’m cool. Like, I trust him, there is no like, ‘Oh my god, who is this man?’ But it was definitely more, ‘Don’t talk to me, just leave me alone. Take me to practice. And that’s it.’”

RELIVING OUT LOUD

So, no. Heck no. No way she would have imagined then that she’d be talking about those moments before 700-some fellow athletes last year at the Black Student-Athlete Summit in Houston.

And that she’d enjoy it? Shoot.

“She was dynamic,” said Leonard Moore, the executive director of the summit. “The way she was received, it just really affirmed for her, ‘Hey, I can have a dynamic life after basketball.’”

Moore, an American history professor at the University of Texas, invited Littleton to the stage last May because he’d gotten to know her during her two turbulent seasons playing for the Longhorns.

She’d re-routed because Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, who’d become a rare confidante for Littleton in high school, resigned as the Trojans’ coach in March 2017. But her time in Texas messed with her. Littleton had problems with her knee, with coaches wanting her to do therapy she wasn’t ready for, with prescriptions from doctors.

And the haymaker: “This whole news thing blew up about my dad,” Littleton said.

In July 2018, Stacy Littleton was convicted of first-degree murder for the stabbing death of an acquaintance, Cyrus Jefferson, in October 1986 – 13 years before Destiny was born.

The case was reopened in 2017, and previously unavailable DNA testing led to new charges. He was sentenced to 26 years to life. And, yeah, “a cold case cracked wide open, 31 years after a man was killed!”? That wound up all over the news, family photos and all.

“Just got people texting me, texting me, texting me. Facebooking me. Like, ‘Oh my gosh! Like, what’s going on?’” Destiny said. “Everyone knows that’s me.”

When her father started calling her from prison, she balked: “What? What are you calling me for? There’s nothing to talk about.”

But there were things to talk about.

“Eventually I was just like, you know what? Let me just stop being (a jerk),” she said. “So I would give him a little bit more information like, ‘Oh, practice was good.’ And he would send me letters.”

But then, when she’d begun to count on weekly conversations with him, they stopped. A month passed without her hearing from him. “And obviously you can’t call him,” she said. “So I sent an email, ‘Is everything OK?”

It wasn’t. He’d been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. He didn’t want treatment: “No point,’” he told her in January of 2019.

A BRAVE FACE

Destiny’s dynamism is evident not only when she’s speaking to a crowd, but to you alone.

There’s no dancing around delicate topics anymore. She doesn’t break eye contact and she doesn’t break stride, inflecting and emoting and unburdening herself. She plows forward like she must have in her short-lived youth football career, when she tackled one kid so hard it knocked her out.

She wobbles only as she forms the words to describe her final visit with her father, in prison.

“He was so skinny,” she said, after a deep breath. “Mind you, he’s been like a strong, hefty, beer-bellied guy his whole life. And so I see him and instantly, like, I have to look away because I could not start crying, not in front of him. He had this big – I swear it was watermelon-size – tumor in his neck. And I was like, ‘Holy crap.’ He didn’t even have the energy to hold his water. Couldn’t drink water, he couldn’t eat.

“And the first thing he asked was, ‘Do I look good?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, absolutely. You look great.’

“No,” she said, he did not, not really, not at all. “I can’t even get the image out of my head.”

Their time together lasted only five minutes, she said, before he asked to go inside, saying he was hot even though it wasn’t a hot day.

She learned he died when she got a call in class, from her mom, on April 1. It fell on Destiny to handle the funeral arrangements, including the sticky act of fundraising to pay for them – all while going to college halfway across the country.

‘IT’S ALL PERSPECTIVE’

Have you ever wondered how people who have had to endure a lot feel about folks around them constantly sweating the small stuff, whining about life’s inconsequential inconveniences? Does it ever bug Destiny?

“Honestly, no,” she said, thinking back to the weeks following surgery for stress fractures in both feet after she transferred to South Carolina in 2019, when she couldn’t walk or shower or get to the bathroom without help.

“I thought, ‘Now I know what it feels like to be disabled.’ That part of my life was taken from me. I don’t usually wake up, ‘Man, I’m so grateful (to be able to walk).’ I can just walk out of bed and use the bathroom …

“But some people don’t have that, so that was a really big eye-opener for me, just looking in the mirror like, ‘I can’t walk right now – right now – but I will be able to.’

“It’s all perspective, honestly.”

MEET DESTINY LITTLETON

There’s a new, more accurate perception of Littleton now at The Bishop’s School. She spoke there last year at the athletics awards ceremony, telling her story to current students and members of the faculty who knew her but didn’t know her.

Striking in a red dress, microphone in hand, she told them what her high school life had really been like, and also about the depression that caught up with her at South Carolina. She shared what she’s learned: “It’s OK to ask for help. It’s OK to not be the strong person that you put on for everyone.”

That’s the tough stuff, too. Opening up like that. That’s what’s going to help people. And, for Littleton, that’s where it’s at: “I always say my ‘why’ is to help others, to let people know that they can do it too.”

She’s thinking about becoming a doctor and, a few months ago, was considering basketball retirement so she could begin pursuing a medical degree. But hoops – and an opportunity to play at USC after all – won out.

She’s happy it did. An open book now, Littleton’s collegiate epilogue, her one chapter as a Trojan has just one home game remaining: against Washington State on Saturday afternoon at the Galen Center.

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It’s been a good season; the Trojans are 20-8, their most wins since 2017-18; she’s averaging career-highs – 34.2 minutes per game, 13.9 points – and boasting a 3.7 grade-point average in communication management. There’s a sense at USC, as Gottlieb put it after the Trojans triumphed in Thursday night’s 47-43 rock fight with Washington, that there’s “a lot of season left.”

Energized, Littleton now knows that she, personally, has a lot of basketball left too. She’s game for the next chapter, wherever the sport takes her, wherever fate does. There’s a play drawn up for her to take the shot.

“Destiny is a really beautiful soul,” Fader said this week. “And the best part of her story is that it’s just beginning. She’s finally found her voice. When I first met her, I could tell she had so much heart, not just on the court, but as a person. And I think the fact that she is now comfortable sharing her story just shows how much light she has to give … that’s a real gift.”

A gift for us. “We’re lucky,” Fader said, “to hear her story.”

​ Orange County Register 

Chris Holden introduces another job-killing bill that would devastate small business owners

• February 24, 2023

Sacramento’s nastiness toward fast-food restaurants reignited last week with the introduction by Assemblymember Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, of a bill that would amend state law to make the parent corporation of franchised restaurants share liability for workplace health and safety violations.

Assembly Bill 1228 is backed by the powerful Service Employees International Union, which says the current system protects corporations from having to pay damages for violations of employment law. Another labor advocacy group, Fight for $15, says it found in a survey of California fast-food workers that nearly 425,000 of them had experienced some type of wage theft such as unpaid work, overtime violations, issues with meal breaks or paycheck problems.

Related: One of California’s worst ideas is to turn the state into a union for fast food workers

SEIU estimates that there are more than 557,000 fast-food workers in California at about 30,000 work sites.

Franchise owners are already liable for labor law violations, but they are generally small-business owners, and the bill’s sponsors seek to find deeper pockets. This is their second try at it — the same provision was stripped out of Assembly Bill 257, which established a state-run Fast Food Council empowered to raise wages as high as $22 per hour.

Gov. Newsom signed AB 257 in September, but the Save Local Restaurants Coalition, backed by major chains including Starbucks and Chipotle, quickly raised $12 million to qualify a referendum, so the law is now suspended until voters speak on the issue in November 2024.

Related: The California Legislature should repeal Chris Holden’s absurd AB 257

The state Legislature should not be picking and choosing industries to burden with extra layers of laws and liabilities based solely on the political juice of special interests. In this case, Holden has announced that he will be a candidate for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors next year, challenging incumbent Kathryn Barger. His political water-carrying for the SEIU on the fast-food liability bill will undoubtedly earn him valuable support at election time.

But the California restaurant industry has been put through the trials of Hercules over the last three years, and restaurants that are still in business, fast-food or otherwise, are not without scars on their balance sheets. This attempt to make franchisees a more lucrative target for lawsuits could be the last straw for many small businesses. If they go out of business, their employees’ jobs go with them.

​ Orange County Register 

HOA Homefront: Election questions swirl as boards avoid, deflect

• February 24, 2023

Q: No one on our HOA board has been elected and they all remain on by default year after year. We never meet quorum. I suspect foul play and would like to have the property manager as well as the board members investigated. I was wondering if you had any ideas on how we can investigate them all. — C.M., Pomona

A: Low voter turnout in HOA elections could be caused by member discouragement, but it also could be caused by contentment and a lack of desire to have different people staff the board of directors. Either way, directors can sit on a board for years without ever being re-elected. There may be some hope on the horizon from Assembly Bill 1458, recently introduced in the California Legislature.

Assembly Bill 1458, by Member Ta of Westminster, would add a new subpart 2 to Civil Code Section 5115(d), allowing a member election that fails for lack of quorum to proceed within 5 to 30 days later, changing the quorum to be those members participating. It’s very early in the legislative session, so it is very difficult to predict if the bill has a chance.

Generally, I find that boards are staffed by well-intentioned people, and outright foul play is rare. However, boards can easily create the impression that they are hiding something when they become defensive in response to criticism and behave in a less transparent manner.

HOAs are little democracies – if you talk to enough neighbors who want a new board, you can elect a new board.

Q: An HOA that I am involved with is holding upcoming elections and is looking for a truly independent inspector of elections. I am wondering whether you know of any paralegals or junior associates who might be willing to perform that function for a modest fee or as pro bono work to enhance their resume. —C.S., Los Angeles

A: The HOA election reforms from 2005 and Senate Bill 61 dramatically changed the way HOA elections are conducted. One new requirement was that an “inspector of elections” be appointed to run the election and count and announce the vote. This created a small cottage industry of election inspector businesses. However, not all HOAs need professional inspectors.

The law allows the board to appoint a volunteer inspector, so long as they are not a director or candidate and are not related to a director or candidate (Civil Code Section 5110(b)). Management and legal counsel can assist the Inspector but cannot act as Inspector.

Q: Can a member waive their “secret ballot” vote and sign, date and return a ballot via e-mail? — D.K., Novato

A: No. California law, unfortunately, does not permit voting for directors, governing document amendments, or major assessments, by any other method than secret written ballots contained in sealed envelopes. The procedure, described in Civil Code Section 5115(c), does not allow for emailing or faxing of a ballot. Interestingly, California HOAs are still the only nonprofit corporations in California that are not allowed to use electronic voting.

Kelly G. Richardson, Esq. is a Fellow of the College of Community Association Lawyers and Partner of Richardson Ober LLP, a California law firm known for community association expertise. Submit column questions to [email protected].

​ Orange County Register