UCLA looks to disrupt Cameron Ward, No. 13 Washington State

• October 6, 2023

UCLA will play Washington State for the first time since 2019 when the Bruins produced a memorable 32-point second-half comeback for a 67-61 victory in front of a sold-out crowd in Pullman.

UCLA coach Chip Kelly recalls the wild game but hasn’t had a reason to reflect on it much, even with the Cougars coming to Pasadena this week.

“I remember the game, but we were scheduled to play them for two more years and then (Coach Mike Leach) left and went to Mississippi State, so there’s no correlation to what we’re playing (this week) so I haven’t gone back and watched that game at all,” Kelly said.

The Pac-12 After Dark game served as a breakout for players like UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, who threw for 507 yards and five touchdowns.

Linebacker Carl Jones Jr. and defensive back Alex Johnson are the only Bruins remaining on the roster that played in that game.

A lot has changed for both programs since, but this week’s installment of the series may be the last for some time following UCLA’s move to the Big Ten Conference next season. Washington State remains in limbo regarding its future, but it’s unlikely that it lands in the Big Ten with several of its current conference rivals.

For now, the undefeated Cougars enter the game ranked 13th in the country, averaging nearly 46 points game in its four victories, which include No. 19 Wisconsin and No. 13 Oregon State.

When UCLA has the ball

The Bruins (3-1, 0-1 Pac-12) must set the pace with a level of dominance behind the efforts of running backs TJ Harden and Carson Steele.

The Washington State defense has an “aggressive and attacking” 4-2-5 defense that has allowed 4.43 rushing yards per attempt and six touchdowns this season. The Cougars (4-0, 1-0) are also ranked 100th in the nation with 250.5 passing yards allowed per game.

An established rushing attack would open the Bruins’ passing attack and the opportunity for explosive plays.

True freshman quarterback Dante Moore and the Bruins had the bye week as an opportunity to regroup following its worst offensive showing of the season in a 14-7 loss at No. 11 Utah.

UCLA’s receivers had key drops against the Utes and the offensive line allowed Moore to be sacked seven times. Wide receiver Josiah Norwood spoke highly of Moore and the way he’s responded throughout practice as a “high-energy guy” in preparation for the Cougars.

“They’re aggressive in their secondary with their coverages and they’ve done a really nice job,” Kelly said of Washington State. “They can cause a lot of problems for you because of how they attack offensive schemes.”

When Washington State has the ball

Quarterback Cameron Ward and first-year offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle have the Cougars leading the country in third-down conversions (59.6%), second in passing (405.8 yards per game), fifth in scoring (45.8 points per game) and sixth in total offense (532.2 yards per game).

The Bruins’ defense will be tasked with trying to contain Ward. The junior has thrown for 1,389 yards and 13 touchdowns while completing 75% of his passes (106 of 142) without an interception

“We’ve seen plays (on film) where a lot of teams are trying to get after them and they just needed to execute,” Jones said about trying to disrupt Washington State’s offense. “We just have to get after them.”

First-year defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn has helped UCLA’s defense continue to improve and come into its own this season, allowing just 37 points through the first four games.

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“I have not seen a bigger and longer defense in a long time … I think they are playing with supreme confidence,”  Washington State coach Jake Dickert said of his initial impressions of the UCLA defense. “They are playing tremendously on that side of the ball and (Laiatu Latu) is a problem.”

Latu has 13 tackles, including 7.5 for a loss, along with four sacks, a forced fumble and an interception. The senior defensive end hasn’t recorded a sack in the past two games but will have a huge impact on how the game plays out if he can provide pressure on Ward and help create opportunities for others.

No. 13 Washington State (4-0 overall, 1-0 Pac-12) at UCLA (3-1, 0-1)

When: Noon Saturday

Where: Rose Bowl

TV/radio: Pac-12 Networks / 570 AM

​ Orange County Register 

‘It’s personal’: No. 9 USC and familiar faces host Arizona

• October 6, 2023

LOS ANGELES — In the NFL, this is common. Have a guy. Coach him up. Watch him pack his bags and stand on the opposing sideline the next year.

From almost two decades bouncing around the league, Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch knows this, and is plenty prepared for it; if you carry too much emotion as a pro, he said, you’re going to get cut.

And still, even with the boom of the transfer portal in collegiate football, the situation USC and Arizona find themselves in on Saturday is strange. Uncommon, certainly, in the FBS. Wide receiver Dorian Singer, cornerback Christian Roland-Wallace and defensive lineman Kyon Barrs – three players who were bedrock in Arizona’s program – are now at USC.

An interesting undercurrent, then, lies within USC vs. Arizona on Saturday, exploring program reactions to player movement in this era of college football.

Head coach Lincoln Riley gave an easygoing answer Tuesday, when asked about his guys from Tucson. Roland-Wallace, Barrs and Singer all provided little more than dismissive comments about facing their former team in pre-week media availability. Arizona running back Jonah Coleman gave a simple “we ain’t got friends this week” in a presser. Singer amended that “we just gon’ treat it like such.”

Yet Fisch’s comments this week on his three former players – all of whom were in his program multiple years – were less than congenial.

“Decisions were made at the end of the season by certain players,” Fisch told media Thursday, as captured by the Tuscon Star’s Justin Spears. “Decisions were made by the staff, decisions were made by the program, and we don’t get into why people transferred and whether people were encouraged or discouraged to transfer … we don’t need to get caught up in the emotions of playing former players.”

“But, there is certainly – it’s personal,” Fisch continued later. “And the team understands that.”

All three transfers will likely play a significant role when Arizona comes to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. But Singer and Roland-Wallace, in particular, will be vital to the most intriguing matchups in a game that has a major spread but feels dangerous for USC – Arizona just having challenged Washington and the Trojans nearly falling to Colorado.

When Arizona has the ball

Ironically, after weeks of cycling in and out behind Ceyair Wright and Domani Jackson, it’s Roland-Wallace’s years of experience at Arizona that have seemingly earned him a starting corner job at USC.

“There’s just a maturity and a confidence about him,” Riley said Tuesday, “that’s been really good for that room.”

With Jackson questionable after exiting the Colorado game last week, Roland-Wallace will shoulder a major burden Saturday. The Trojans’ most consistent corner is likely to match up frequently with former teammate Tetairoa McMillan, a tough-as-nails 6-foot-5 receiver from Servite High who’s established himself as one of the best pass-catchers in the Pac-12 with 27 catches for 386 yards and 5 touchdowns. Expect redshirt junior Jacobe Covington, who’s played sparingly in 2023, to get more time in the secondary as well.

USC had had to game-plan, meanwhile, against a fluid situation at quarterback, as starter Jayden De Laura is questionable with an ankle injury. Backup Noah Fifita proved more than capable, though, in Arizona’s 31-24 loss last week to Washington, and has a built-in connection with McMillan from their time at Servite.

When USC has the ball

Arizona defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen said this week that the Wildcats ran a dollar formation – eight defensive backs on the field – 40 times against Washington. From a layman’s view, it made sense: Throw packages with more fortified secondaries at one of the most dynamic offenses in the country. And it mostly worked, as Heisman hopeful Michael Penix Jr. threw for 363 yards but no touchdowns against the Wildcats’ defense.

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The same defensive logic, one would think, applies to USC’s Air Raid attack, and Riley certainly anticipated the Trojans might see some of the same concepts Saturday.

“They played a little bit more of a conservative style defensively,” Riley said, “and tried to really keep everything in front of them.”

ARIZONA AT No. 9 USC

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

TV/radio: ESPN/790 AM

​ Orange County Register 

The Book Pages: What it was like as the ‘Finnegans Wake’ group read the final page

• October 6, 2023

They’d worked for 28 years to get to this moment. I didn’t want to screw it up.

Earlier this week, I interviewed Gerry Fialka about the Venice-Wake Book Group, which he founded in 1995 and has led for nearly three decades. Its goal has been to read a single book, James Joyce’s ridiculously challenging “Finnegans Wake” (and Fialka also brings in discussion of theorist Marshall McLuhan, too).

On this past Tuesday, the group was going to be reading the final page and I’d been graciously invited by Fialka and book club member Peter Coogan, who’d first informed me about the long-running meeting.

For context, in 1995, the top songs on the Billboard charts were Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” and TLC’s “Waterfalls”; the top-grossing movies were “Batman Forever” and “Apollo 13” (with “Toy Story” in third place!); and the No. 1 and 2 TV shows were “ER” and “Seinfeld.” The biggest-selling books? John Grisham’s “The Rainmaker” and Michael Crichton’s “The Lost World” (and another from that year, Philip Pullman’s “The Golden Compass,” is mentioned below in the Q&A by author Elana K. Arnold).

Gerry Fialka has run a book club devoted to reading James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake.” (Photo credit (L-R) David Healey / Penguin /Associated Press)

Now, after 28 years, the members were finally finishing “The Wake,” as they call it. Fialka asked if I’d participate in the group reading of its final page – a big moment to share, I thought. (Fialka delightfully deflected attempts to bring too much attention to the occasion.)

I’d joined the event a few minutes early, so I’d been treated to a bit of pre-meeting small talk – an unpretentious conversation about the various early examples of the novel around the world (in case you thought they compared Netflix queues or Fitbit tips) – before Fialka gently wrangled the meeting to order.

After taking a deep breath and reciting a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem to warm up, we started reading the last page. We each took two lines apiece, and then because the last sentence of the book circles back to begin the opening line – “It’s a cyclical book,” says Fialka. “It never ends.” – we continued to the first page where it was soon my turn again to read a few lines.

That’s when I saw it – an etymological eruption of one of Joyce’s thundering 100-letter words: “Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!”

I was going to have to read that. How, I wondered as my turn got closer, was I supposed to pronounce such a thing? Moreover, how would I pronounce it to a Zoomful of dedicated readers who had been studying this book since Val Kilmer was Batman and Y2K was still a thing?

Well, I figured, I could just try. So I did.

With all the grace of someone walking barefoot across a scalding-hot parking lot, I stumbled over letters, my mouth making sounds like a defective didgeridoo. But I didgeridid it.

Gerry Fialka has run a book club devoted to reading James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake.” (Photo by Erik Pedersen / Courtesy of Duncan Echelson)

And nobody complained or rolled their eyes or grumbled that I had cheated by joining the Joyce marathon 10 steps from the finish line. The 18 participants on this momentous evening – who Zoomed in from as far away as Brazil – were as welcoming and supportive as anyone could hope for. They didn’t even mind that I started cooking dinner during the discussion.

Then as the talk wore down, one of the group, William Kennedy, I believe, surprised everyone as he broke into song, performing the Irish-American composition, “Finnegan’s Wake,” that inspired the title of Joyce’s book. It was a lovely and moving way to mark the occasion.

As goodbyes were said and Zoom windows began to close – with the expectation they’d be getting together again the next month to begin anew – I thought about a question someone had asked Fialka: Would he consider changing the book club’s format – generally, a single page per meeting followed by an hour or two of discussion – so it wouldn’t take another 28 years to get through the book again?

“I’m open for changing, and that’s simply because this group doesn’t exist because of me,” said Fialka. “It exists because of all of us.”

For more information, go to laughtears.com/McLuhanWake.html

What books have you been enjoying? Please email me at epedersen@scng.com with “ERIK’S BOOK PAGES” in the subject line and I may include your comments in an upcoming newsletter.

And if you enjoy this free newsletter, please consider sharing it with someone who likes books or getting a digital subscription to support local coverage.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Elana K. Arnold found a book treasure in a thrift shop

Elana K. Arnold is the author of a number of books, including “The Blood Years.” (Photo by Arielle Gray / Courtesy of Harper Collins)

Long Beach resident and National Book Award finalist Elana K. Arnold is the author of a number of books for kids and young adults, including “A Boy Called Bat,” “Red Hood,” “What Girls Are Made of” and “The Blood Years,” which she’s launching with a free event on Oct. 9. She’s also the second most-banned author on PEN America’s most recent list, which she discussed in last week’s newsletter. Here, she answers questions about books, reading and something that nobody knows about her book.

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

I absolutely love “What It Is” by Lynda Barry. I recommend it to other creative people—writers, artists, musicians—all the time. “The Golden Compass” by Philip Pullman made me want to write again after a series of dry years; its central conceit (which I won’t spoil here) struck me, an animal lover, as so right that I never wanted to leave that world. I recently read “The Idiot” and “Either/Or,” and I can’t stop telling people about them; Elif Batuman’s character, Selin, felt like a smarter, better-educated version of myself. And I recommend “Craft in the Real World” by Matthew Salesses to everyone I know who teaches writing, and every student who plans to take a creative writing workshop.

Q. How do you decide what to read next?

So many different ways! Sometimes, it’s a recommendation from a friend, or a mention in a podcast. Other, times, it’s a book I read a review of. My favorite way to discover a book is to stumble upon it, as I recently did with “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” which somehow, I’ve never read and just found in a thrift store. I ate it up in three days.

Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?

Really, I love so many types of books. What I’m drawn to can depend on my mood, what I’m working on, if I’m stressed or relaxed, the season, the weather. Mysteries, in my opinion, are best read in the winter, pulled up close to a fireplace, a cup of tea in hand and a cat on my lap.  Nonfiction seems most accessible to me in the mornings when my brain feels freshest. Late-night reads tend to be pulled from my bedside stack of new releases or just-found thrift store finds, a hodgepodge of genres that leans toward realistic/literary. I read very little science fiction and keep meaning to delve more deeply into this space.

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

My grandmother, upon whose early life “The Blood Years” is based, was central to my conception of myself as a reader and as a writer. She saw the time I spent reading in her home library— just a spare bedroom full of bookshelves — as sacred work, and she would bring me little gilded bowls full of grapes or berries to nourish me as I read. There were no limits placed on what I was allowed to read, no judgment about what I reached for or how many times I might return to the same book. And Nana filled our time together with stories: made-up nonsense stories about Illa the Gorilla, a character she invented to explain what had happened to her car when she ran into a pole or bruised her leg; real-life stories about her experiences as a child and a teen, many of which became the backbone of “The Blood Years.” Nana modeled for me that storytelling and story sharing is a way to live a life.

Q. What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?

I think more than anything, what appeals to me in a book is the sensation of being surprised: when I’ve expected one thing from a book and found that I’ve gotten something else. You never know when you’re going to encounter this experience, and I think it’s evoked differently for different readers. I remember being deeply surprised—shocked—when, as a pre-teen, I stumbled upon “The Neverending Story” on a library shelf; when I opened it, I found the story was printed in red ink, and as I progressed into the book, when Bastian falls into the story, the ink color switched to green. Oh, I remember the thrill of that! Another totally different book that delighted me with surprise was Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower”; when King appears as a character, I gasped.

Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?

When I first conceived of “The Blood Years,” which is a historical novel set in Czernowitz, Romania, before and during the Holocaust and is based on my grandmother’s young life, I planned to set it in the future, in an eco-ravaged world in which the Holocaust comes again. As Opa, one of the characters in “The Blood Years,” often says, “Everything is cyclical.” And setting the story in the future felt like a really fantastic way to underline the cyclicality of persecution. But this was before Donald Trump was elected president, before the Tiki-torch-carrying mob of White nationalists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. In the light of so much loud, violent hate, setting this story in an imagined future felt less like a thought experiment and more like a premonition. And it seemed more vital than ever to write down our history, to reflect on the past in a way that informs the present and the future.

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Nicola Griffith is the author most recently of “Menewood.” (Photo credit Jennifer Durham / Courtesy of MCD)

Saints preserved

How ‘Hild’ author Nicola Griffith mapped the life of her medieval ‘Menewood’ heroine. READ MORE

• • •

Gerry Fialka has run a book club devoted to reading James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake.” (Photo credit (L-R) David Healey / Penguin /Associated Press)

Finnegans wait

Twenty-eight years ago, a book club began reading one novel. It’s finally reached the end. READ MORE

• • •

“Enough,” a new memoir by former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, is among the top-selling nonfiction releases at Southern California’s independent bookstores. (Courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

The week’s bestsellers

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

Bookish (SCNG)

What’s next on ‘Bookish’

On the next installment Oct. 20 at 5 p.m., Amy Ferris and Chuck Palahniuk join host Sandra Tsing Loh and my colleague Samantha Dunn to talk about their new books. Sign up for free now.

And if you missed it (or just want to relive it), watch the previous Bookish with Lee and Tod Goldberg and Jesus Trejo.

Sign up for The Book Pages
Miss last week’s newsletter? Find past editions here
Dive into all of our books coverage

​ Orange County Register 

Faith-based maternity homes ‘create a haven’ in states with strict abortion laws

• October 6, 2023

Anna Claire Vollers | (TNS) Stateline.org

CHILTON COUNTY, Ala. — At the end of a gravel road that runs through a wooded property in Chilton County, Alabama, a plain white two-story house sits overlooking a small pond.

Outside the house, everything is tranquil: The swings on the new playground nearby are quiet, the pond is still, the rocking chairs lined up on the covered front porch rest vacant.

Inside, the house is a hive of activity on a sunny morning in mid-September. Volunteers mop floors and carry plastic tubs of supplies to the upstairs bedrooms while contractors install stair railings and touch up paint in the hallways.

In the middle of it all is Ashley Liveoak, executive director of an anti-abortion pregnancy resource center in nearby Clanton, a small town known mainly for its peach farms, nestled along Interstate 65 between Birmingham and Montgomery.

Liveoak’s center has been renovating the 11-bedroom house to open it this month as a maternity home, a type of group housing for pregnant and new single mothers. She named the home Selah’s Oasis. Selah is a Hebrew word found in the Bible, at the end of verses in the Psalms, usually interpreted to mean rest, pause or reset.

“Just because abortion is now illegal in the state of Alabama, people think we’ve won,” said Liveoak, whose Christian-based pregnancy resource center offers free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, parenting classes, Bible study, baby supplies and other services for pregnant women, while counseling against abortion.

“That was a great victory that God provided, but there’s still work to be done,” she said. “And the next step for us is offering maternity housing to these women who need it.”

Many states with the nation’s strictest anti-abortion laws, such as Alabama, also tend to be states where families face high maternal and infant mortality rates, high rates of poverty, and poor access to obstetrical providers, health insurance and child care.

In places where the social safety net is threadbare, maternity homes can offer a soft place to land.

And their numbers are growing.

“In the last 12 months we’ve seen a 21% increase in new maternity homes opening. As far as I can find, that is the largest concentrated jump in numbers that we’ve ever seen,” said Valerie Harkins, director of the Maternity Housing Coalition, a nonprofit that provides support to maternity home operators. It’s part of Heartbeat International, a network that trains and equips pregnancy resource centers around the world in how to dissuade people from having abortions.

Harkins said she initially assumed the rise in numbers of maternity homes was due to new state abortion restrictions. The increase was particularly marked in the Midwest. But after talking with maternity home operators around the country, she said, the reality is less clear-cut.

Many told her their expansion has had less to do with lack of abortion access and more to do with addressing the waves of crises —a shortage of affordable housing and child care, paychecks shrunken by inflation — that have hit parents particularly hard since the pandemic.

“Our moms find that it’s difficult to find a job that pays a livable wage, impossible to find a home they can afford and impossible to find child care, never mind child care that’s affordable,” said Harkins. “This is where these maternity homes are stepping in. Many are expanding with services that haven’t broadly existed in the past.”

As conservative state lawmakers look for ways to support pregnant women after championing anti-abortion legislation, some have turned to pregnancy resource centers, many of them Christian-based, funneling public dollars toward them and, in some cases, to the maternity homes they operate.

But critics caution that the free help maternity homes provide comes with strings attached.

They usually require residents to participate in classes and multi-step programs and obey house rules around curfews and cellphone use. They also may require residents to attend Bible study or church services to continue living there.

Andrea Swartzendruber is a public health researcher and epidemiologist at the University of Georgia who studies crisis pregnancy centers. She has noticed a rise in maternity homes aligned with pregnancy centers too.

“Some of the concerns have always been around who gets housing and how they are using it,” she said. “I worry they use the opportunity of attaining housing to potentially coerce people into childbirth.”

‘God will provide’

Each bedroom at Selah’s Oasis is named after a name given to God, such as “Adonai” or “El Shaddai.” Local churches and community groups decorated the bedrooms, providing furniture, baby supplies and art. A welcome basket sits at the foot of the bed in each bedroom, filled with items such as blankets, diaper bags, mugs, toiletries, books and a Bible.

Communal living spaces include a classroom, a large kitchen, a laundry room and a living room with computer stations. All the funding for Selah’s Oasis comes from private donations, Liveoak said.

“We do not use federal grants because a lot of times they try to put stipulations on sharing the gospel, and we are not willing to sacrifice that in order to have funds,” she said. “But God has been faithful. We still need some monthly financial support, but I believe God will provide it.”

Earlier this year, Alabama lawmakers attempted to pass a state tax credit that might have helped pregnancy resource centers like hers. It passed the House but stalled in the Senate; supporters expect it to be brought back in next year’s session. The credit was similar to ones recently passed in Mississippi and Louisiana, which use millions in taxpayer dollars to subsidize tax breaks for people and corporations that donate to pregnancy resource centers.

Aside from tax credits, at least 18 states directly fund pregnancy resource centers through state grants and by funneling federal welfare dollars to them, according to Equity Forward, a research and watchdog group focused on reproductive rights.

States including Arizona, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Texas have directed public money toward nonprofit maternity homes directed by anti-abortion pregnancy centers. State regulations vary when it comes to prohibiting organizations from having religious discussions with pregnant clients.

Swartzendruber, the University of Georgia researcher, said she’s concerned about state reliance on programs that don’t offer clients the full scope of reproductive options. She worries that women in need of assistance might base decisions about remaining pregnant — which could impact their health, career and finances — on being able to access stable housing.

“This is about who gets housing and who doesn’t,” she said. “Will [maternity homes] turn away people who need help but aren’t aligned with the crisis pregnancy center’s anti-abortion goals?”

Maternity homes differ from domestic violence shelters, which typically offer emergency housing for a short period of time. Maternity homes often are structured to allow a pregnant woman to live at the home during and after her pregnancy, in some cases for months or even years after the baby is born. Some allow a pregnant person’s other children to live there with her.

They also tend to be lightly regulated, aside from having to follow typical building codes and local ordinances. In states such as Alabama, if the pregnant residents and new moms are over 18, the maternity home does not have to be registered with the state’s family services agency.

In Georgia last year, lawmakers passed a law designed to make it easier to open maternity homes. Supported by the anti-abortion Georgia Life Alliance, the law created a new category of homes for pregnant women over age 18, calling them “maternity supportive housing residences” and exempting them from the kind of state regulation that governs maternity homes for pregnant teens.

“All we’re attempting to do is create a haven for pregnant ladies who need a safe place to go, have their child, have an opportunity to bond with their child, have an opportunity to build an offramp back into communities so they can be productive and happy citizens,” said Republican state Sen. Randy Robertson, who sponsored the bill, in an address to the state House’s Health and Human Services committee.

More to come

At Heartbeat International’s annual Pregnancy Help Conference this year, maternity housing was one of the main programming topics, according to Heartbeat International’s news outlet, Pregnancy Help News.

About 450 maternity homes currently operate in the United States, according to the Maternity Housing Coalition. Harkins said about 180 of those are affiliated with Heartbeat International.

“What we’re finding with housing is that this is the next chapter” for pregnancy resource organizations, she said. “After we see [a client] through her pregnancy, what does it look like as she’s raising and loving that child, if that’s what she’s chosen? While other affiliates are on the front lines working on more immediate crises, maternity homes are working on the long-term, perpetual crisis.”

Liveoak said she received training and advice on launching her maternity home at Heartbeat International conferences, from how to set up the client intake process to how to structure the application and other forms. A consultant from a maternity home in Texas even came out to meet with her and her board.

Liveoak said the need for pregnancy services in her area, and especially for housing, has been overwhelming. Her resource center typically serves about 400 clients per year but had already reached that number by September. She expects to see 500-600 clients by the end of the year.

Selah’s Oasis will open with four residents. Liveoak employs a “house mom” who stays with the residents each night, as well as an activities coordinator and a case manager. Residents must be at least 19 years old and are required to participate in parenting and pregnancy classes, as well as attend church services each Wednesday and Sunday at a local church. The house has a curfew. A local organization donated an SUV to transport residents to doctor’s appointments, work and other places.

Harkins expects to see the number of maternity homes continue to increase because they fill an urgent need — especially for women who are struggling to stay sober, have aged out of foster care or are fleeing domestic violence.

“There’s this picture of [a maternity home resident] as a down-on-her-luck woman who can pull herself up by her bootstraps and live a happy life, just her and her baby,” said Harkins. But that image doesn’t account for the economic, educational, psychological and emotional barriers many of these women face, she said.

“Those that are providing housing for them are doing the hard work every day that often goes overlooked.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2023 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Trump lawyers seek to halt civil fraud suit in New York

• October 6, 2023

By Michael R. Sisak | Associated Press

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s lawyers asked a New York appeals court Friday to halt his Manhattan civil fraud trial while they fight a court ruling that calls for dissolving companies that control some of the former president’s most prized assets, including Trump Tower.

Trump’s lawyers asked the state’s intermediate appellate court to suspend the trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit and prevent Judge Arthur Engoron from enforcing his ruling of last week, which revokes the Republican frontrunner’s business licenses and puts a court-appointed receiver in charge of his companies.

Engoron “clearly does not comprehend the scope of the chaos (his) decision has wrought,” Trump lawyers Clifford Robert, Michael Farina and Michael Madaio wrote in a 41-page appellate brief filed as the non-jury trial entered its fifth day of testimony.

Taking Trump’s companies “will unquestionably inflict severe and irreparable harm,” not only on Trump and other defendants, but employees and others “who depend on the affected entities for their livelihoods,” Trump’s lawyers argued.

The companies are “suspended in uncertainty and ostensibly can no longer pay their employees,” and the status of any New York bank accounts or property they maintain is unclear, they wrote.

The appellate court last week rejected the defense’s last-minute effort to delay the trial just days before it began. On Thursday, Trump’s lawyers dropped a lawsuit they filed against Engoron as part of that challenge.

The appellate court was to hear oral arguments in the appeal Friday afternoon, hours after the trial wrapped up for the week.

James’ office said it was willing to discuss delaying enforcement of Engoron’s ruling until after the trial and a decision on six remaining claims in her lawsuit against Trump and other defendants. But, only if the trial proceeds as scheduled, Senior Assistant Solicitor General Dennis Fan wrote in a letter to the appellate court.

Fan argued against “upending an ongoing trial midstream,” noting the extensive court planning and security resources expended for Trump’s attendance, special arrangements for press and public access, and the impact a delay would have on witnesses who’ve cleared schedules to testify.

“The defendants can continue to try to delay and stall, but the evidence is clear, and our case is strong. We are confident justice will prevail,” James said.Engoron ruled last week that Trump committed years of fraud as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to fame and the White House.

The judge, ruling on the top claim in James’ lawsuit, found that Trump routinely deceived banks, insurers and others by exaggerating the value of assets on his annual financial statements, which were used in making deals and securing loans.

Trump has denied wrongdoing, arguing that some of his assets are worth far more than what’s listed on the statements.

Back in court Friday, former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney testified that values he assigned to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida — as much as $739 million in 2018 — were based on the false premise that it could be sold as a private residence. Such use is prohibited by Trump’s 2002 agreement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“Were you aware that Mr. Trump had deeded away his right to use the property for any other purpose than a social club?” state lawyer Andrew Amer asked.”I was not aware,” said McConney, who’s also a defendant in this case.

Barring a stay, the trial will resume Tuesday with Trump’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg on the witness stand. Weisselberg, a defendant, oversaw Trump’s dealmaking, was involved in securing loans and supervised McConney’s work on the financial statements. He left jail in April after serving about 100 days for dodging taxes on $1.7 million in job perks.

As the trial was unfolding this week, Engoron issued an order Thursday setting procedures for enforcing his ruling. He gave both sides until Oct. 26 to submit names of potential receivers and gave Trump and other defendants seven days to provide a court-appointed monitor, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, with a list of all entities covered by the ruling.

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He also ordered the defendants to give Jones advance notice of any application for new business licenses in any jurisdiction and any attempts to create new entities to “hold or acquire the assets” of a company that’s being dissolved under the ruling.

Trump’s lawyers argued that Engoron had “no rationale or legal authority” to impose what they described as “the corporate death penalty.” They also rapped the judge for not being clear in explaining the real world effects of his decision.

At a pretrial hearing on Sept. 26, Trump lawyer Christopher Kise pressed Engoron to clarify whether his ruling meant Trump would be required simply to close up some corporate entities or if he’d be forced to relinquish some of his most prized assets.

Engoron said he wasn’t “prepared to issue a ruling right now.”

“Perhaps most alarming is (the court’s) incomprehension of the sweeping and significant consequences of its own ruling,” Trump’s lawyers said in their appeal Friday, describing Engoron’s ruling as an “overbroad directive that sows confusion and chaos in its implementation.”

​ Orange County Register 

Rams WR Cooper Kupp expected to make season debut vs. Eagles

• October 6, 2023

THOUSAND OAKS — Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp is expected to make his season debut in Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles, head coach Sean McVay said Friday.

McVay added that there could be unforeseen setbacks, but Kupp is feeling healthy and has looked like himself since beginning to practice on Wednesday.

“You can’t ever really simulate the game in these practice settings, especially once you get a quarter of the way into the season,” McVay said. “But he’s very comfortable, he’s so conscientious, he looks like he’s moving around really well. Seeing good things between he and Matthew with a lot of their non-verbal communication. Just having his presence out there is definitely a boost. So I’m really happy for him.”

Kupp missed the first four games of the season with a hamstring pull suffered at the beginning of training camp and then aggravated by a setback in the final week of the preseason. He flew to see a specialist in Minnesota because there were elements of his injury that weren’t acting like a typical soft-tissue pull.

But nothing new arose, and the Rams made the decision to put Kupp on injured reserve for at least the first four weeks of the season, allowing him the time and patience to heal on his body’s schedule and not dictated by the NFL’s.

“That was always in the back of his mind because he’s such a conscientious guy and you feel obligated,” McVay said. “I think there was a benefit of just the overall time to have a good rehabilitation program that was structured towards just building the overall strength and trying to eliminate some of the, whether it’s the sensations or the things that weren’t in alignment when the muscle strain, whatever that was, he’s feeling good now and I think the time was beneficial for that.”

Sunday would be Kupp’s first game since he suffered a season-ending high ankle sprain in Week 9 last year. That injury required off-season surgery that limited Kupp during OTAs. But he had looked like his old self during the first week of training camp, making acrobatic catches that left defensive backs hanging their heads.

The Rams will be monitoring and communicating with Kupp during the game Sunday to see how much of a workload he is capable of taking on rather than entering the game with a set number of snaps that he can play.

“That’ll be something we want to be careful about, but it’ll be a lot of that communication in terms of how he’s feeling as well because he has such a good ability to do that with myself and the rest of our coaches,” McVay said. “The beauty of it is with him being out, there’s been a lot of guys that have stepped up and we’ve been able to develop some depth and guys have earned the right to get out on the field and contribute.”

Noteboom out Sunday

The Rams have some good and bad news along the offensive line entering Sunday. We’ll start with the bad, regardless of your preference, because we already teased it above.

Right guard Joe Noteboom (groin) will be out against the Eagles, McVay said. Kevin Dotson will continue to fill in at right guard, as he did last week when Noteboom played left tackle.

But the Rams are expected to get their starting left tackle, Alaric Jackson, back on Sunday after he was a limited participant in practice on Friday. Jackson missed the Week 4 win over the Colts with a hamstring injury, but he’s progressed enough that he can return. Rookie Warren McClendon will serve as his backup, McVay added.

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​ Orange County Register 

Bezos vs. Musk: Launch of Amazon test satellites latest salvo in billionaire duel

• October 6, 2023

In the battle of space-minded billionaires, Elon Musk has paved the way with SpaceX as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has had to play catchup with his company Blue Origin. The first launch of a pair of satellites for Amazon set for Friday could prove to be both a boon for the future of Blue Origin and also give Musk some serious competition for one of SpaceX’s money-making ventures.

The duo of test internet-providing satellites are the first for Amazon’s Project Kuiper. The Project Kuiper Protoflight is scheduled to launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 with a two-hour launch window that opens at 2 p.m.

Space Launch Delta 45 forecasts an 70% chance of favorable weather conditions for launch, and 85% in the event of a 24-hour delay.

Amazon has plans to launch 3,236 of the satellites, with the majority flying from Cape Canaveral on either Bezos’ Blue Origin New Glenn rockets or ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rockets, which will use Blue Origin engines on their first stage.

While Bezos retired from his role of president and CEO of Amazon in 2021, he has remained executive chairman of the board, helping steer its decisions, including where pieces of what the company has said would be a $10 billion overall investment in the program.

Included in that is $120 million to construct a satellite processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center’s former Shuttle Landing Facility set to begin operations by 2025.

The megaconstellation will be a direct competitor for SpaceX’s Starlink, which to date has launched more than 5,200 of its satellites, and garnered more than 1 million internet-service subscribers through the end of 2022. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, that’s far less than the projected 20 million the company expected when Starlink was being pitched to investors.

Amazon to set up $120 million Space Coast shop in competition with SpaceX’s Starlink

“They are going full steam ahead with deploying their constellations,” said Harvard-based astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who keeps detailed accounts of satellites in space. He notes the low-Earth orbit currently is approaching 8,000 satellites, the majority of which are from SpaceX, which sent up its first Starlink in 2019, when there were less than 2,000 in orbit.

There could be between 10,000 and 20,000 by the end of this decade and close to 100,000 by 2040, he said noting there are plans for similar satellite constellations from the Chinese, Russia and other private companies including OneWeb.

“What those timescales really are is hard to say,” he said. “It depends on funding. It depends on how profitable these things end up being.”

Blue Origin wins NASA contract to join SpaceX for moon landings

The launch is the latest game of catchup for Bezos’ companies, which have lost out to SpaceX on several fronts. including a lucrative Department of Defense launch contract that passed over Blue Origin’s New Glenn. NASA also chose SpaceX’s Starship to be the initial human landing system for the Artemis III mission that aims to return humans to the moon, although NASA eventually tapped Blue Origin to pursue a second commercial lander.

Musk has used social media to rib Bezos at every turn while Bezos has gone to court to battle government agency choices when SpaceX comes out on top.

“Turns out [Bezos] retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX,” Musk posted at one point on Twitter, now X.

Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2021

When Amazon announced it would pursue Project Kuiper, Musk tweeted at Bezos that he was a copycat with the help of an emoji.

Amazon, though, with its built-in customer base could reap the benefits of providing what it touts will be “fast, affordable broadband to unserved and underserved communities around the world.” And while SpaceX has a head start, delays in its next-generation Starship have also meant delays in its deployment plans for bigger Starlink satellites.

One of the issues facing Amazon’s plans, though, are deadlines set by the Federal Communications Commission, which require Amazon to have at least half of the total constellation in orbit by July 31, 2026, and the entire string deployed by July 30, 2029.

The decision by Amazon to contract with ULA, Blue Origin and Arianespace with its Ariane 6 rocket, all of which remain in development and have yet to make it off the launch pad, has delayed timelines to the point that reaching the FCC milestones could prove impossible. The FCC has not indicated it would allow any sort of extension on the initial license.

Amazon has kept under wraps details about the prototype satellites, named Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2, including how many will be able to launch in each of the heavy-lift rockets.

“Competition often makes things mysterious and exciting,” ULA CEO and President Tory Bruno said this week about the lack of detail on the payloads and launch timeline for this initial Atlas V launch.

Amazon has eight more Atlas V launches that can begin taking up more starting in 2024.

But Atlas V rockets can carry only between 18,000 and 41,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit depending on how many solid rocket boosters it uses. Steve Metayer, Amazon’s vice president of Kuiper production operations, said Atlas V launches will be capable of taking up a couple dozen per launch.

So after all of the Atlas V launches, that’s less than 200 with likely only two years and change left among its other rocket contracts to get a further 1,400 into orbit before the midpoint deadline.

Vulcan Centaur can carry up to 60,000 pounds to low Earth orbit, so it will be able to get more in space. It could be ready to fly before the end of the year. Still, Amazon has to sign off on its test satellites, then ramp up production, ship them to Florida for final fueling and prep, and rely on ULA’s Atlas launches until Vulcan is ready to taken them up as well.

Blue Origin and Arianespace have yet to announce when they will try their two rockets’ first launches.

All three of the heavy lift rockets were supposed to be up and running already, some as early as 2020, but all have faced delays.

Amazon taps Blue Origin, ULA to launch thousands of satellites from Space Coast

One Amazon shareholder, Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery last month against Bezos and the rest of the Amazon board of directors, saying Bezos’ ongoing and public feud with Musk drove the decision to ignore SpaceX as a potential ride to space for its satellites.

“The Amazon Board knowingly abdicated its fiduciary duties and acted in bad faith,” the lawsuit states, citing the lower cost of SpaceX compared to other rocket companies that can routinely hit $100 million per launch as well as the pace with which it’s already launching.

SpaceX has managed 70 launches so far this year alone from its Florida and California pads including dozens for its own Starlink satellites. Musk has said he has no issue working with competitors, having launched OneWeb satellites for instance after that company’s plans to launch on Russian rockets fell through due to the invasion of Ukraine.

In the end, after ULA’s nine Atlas V launches are complete, the remaining contracts with Blue Origin, ULA and Arianespace, the terms of which have not been revealed, is the largest procurement of launches at one time ever made — up to 83 — according to Amazon, and Bezos will be benefiting from nearly 80% of those.

​ Orange County Register 

‘Loki’ review: Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan joins the Marvel series in a chaotic Season 2

• October 6, 2023

Nina Metz | Chicago Tribune

Just two years and three months after “Loki” first premiered on Disney+ — a mere 27 months! — the Marvel series is back for a second season. If you’re detecting sarcasm, there’s the irony that a show about time has really stretched the boundaries of a reasonable gap between seasons.

Those more dedicated to the Marvel Cinematic Universe might not see it that way, but it feels like a blunder. The first season built so much momentum, with Tom Hiddleston’s endlessly entertaining Loki, the Norse god of mischief, getting a taste of his own medicine down in the bowels of the Orwellian-sounding Time Variance Authority, before teaming up with Owen Wilson’s laconic TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius to … honestly? Don’t even recall.

But the fate of the universe is at stake! And Jonathan Majors’ Kang, the agent of chaos also known as He Who Remains, is somehow at the root of it all.

Majors, you may recall, is in the midst of some real world problems of his own. Earlier this year, the actor was charged with assaulting and harassing his then-girlfriend, and the court case is ongoing. He’s also been accused of acting violently or abusively in other workplace settings. All of which casts a pall over his appearance here. Even his performance — primarily as one of the character’s variants, a nutty professor type named Victor Timely — feels like something pulled from a bag of tricks left over from a Saturday morning cartoon, full of clunky choices and a halting delivery. “We don’t need him,” a character says at one point. “Maybe we never did.” It’s a line that works as commentary on Majors’ presence, as if the series were all but (unintentionally) acknowledging the obvious.

The six-episode season picks up where the story left off, with Loki running for his life through the halls of the TVA where he’s pursued by Mobius, who doesn’t seem to recognize the guy. That’s because Loki is time-slipping and we’re in the past, before he and Mobius became acquainted.

Owen Wilson, left, as Mobius and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in Season 2 of “Loki.” The fate of the Time Variance Authority hangs in the balance and these two might just be its saviors. (Gareth Gatrell/Marvel Studios/Disney+/TNS)

Finally, Loki gets Mobius to call off the dogs and listen. A war is coming, he warns. And it all comes down to He Who Remains.

Mobius: “Is that what you’re calling him or is that his name?”

Loki: “That’s how I was introduced.”

Mobius: “Pretty arrogant. It’s like calling yourself Last Man Standing.”

Wilson underplays everything, regardless of the project, and it works here to give the series some ballast. I especially like a quieter moment between the pair, sitting down for a slice of Key lime pie and considering their options. What show couldn’t stand to pause things for a bit of pie?

Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) joins the cast as Ouroboros, nicknamed OB, who is the TVA equivalent of the I.T. department. There’s a clever bit where he, Loki and Mobius play around with ways — mid-time slippage — to resolve Loki’s problem.

But they ultimately have bigger issues at hand, namely a battle for the soul of the TVA, which is on the verge of collapse. Entire timelines will vanish and people will die (a proposition more abstract than meaningful, despite many heartfelt speeches to the contrary) and there are considerable worries about the temporal look, whatever that is. If you suddenly feel like you’re failing a physics class, welcome to the club. But Quan’s a terrific addition to the cast, frantically running around the TVA shouting jargon and attempting to rig a fix. You half expect him to borrow a line from another franchise altogether: “I’m giving her all she’s got, captain!”

It’s probably best to approach “Loki” as pure action-adventure, never mind the story. (Spoiler: There is no story.) It’s a series of set pieces, some better than others. When Loki and Mobius go to a movie premiere, the sight of Hiddleston looking dapper in a tux offers a flicker of the James Bond that he might have been.

They travel through different time branches (sparingly) and we get just the tiniest taste of them (Mobius really) noodling around during a sojourn to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago to gather up Victor Timely and bring him back to the TVA so that his aura can be scanned in order to get the blast doors open. Bravo to the ensemble for saying these lines with a straight face.

If there’s a thematic thread to “Loki” I wish writer Eric Martin had pursued with some vigor, it’s this: The TVA’s workers have all been kidnapped from their respective time branches, their memories wiped to better function as drones. Buried in there is maybe a critique of the heavy hand of capitalism, but the show moves on from it, lickety split. Nothing to see here, folks!

The retro-futuristic production design (from Kasra Farahani) is the show’s calling card, with bulky computers, rotary phones, reel-to-reel machines and pneumatic tubes. There’s even an Automat at the TVA. Love that detail. Costume designer Christine Wada has dressed the TVA’s office workers in a shirt-and-tie combo that features an endless collar that subtly extends on both sides to blend into the shoulder. It’s a fascinating garment!

If emo Loki is a bit of a drag — “Stop trying to be a hero,” someone tells him, “you’re a villain. You’re good at it. Do that” — Hiddleston gives the whole thing the patina of class. Even so, he’s not given much character motivation. Loki apparently has feelings about the fate those many unseen people who exist on all those different time branches. Visually, those branches are represented on a large screen in the control center, looking like a diagram of veins and arteries.

Too bad there’s no heart.

———

‘LOKI’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-14

How to watch: Disney+

———

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

​ Orange County Register