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    Dombresky, Duke Dumont, Dom Dolla top Insomniac’s Day Trip Festival lineup
    • April 26, 2023

    Insomniac Events has officially released the lineup for its two-day Day Trip Festival and it includes a roster of top house music performers.

    The annual summer house music party is back for its second year and has moved to The Queen Mary’s waterfront park in Long Beach on June 24-25.

    Saturday’s bill will include sets by Dombreksy, Duke Dumont, James Hype, Jask, J. Worra, Low Steppa, Majestic, Titta Lau, Blond:Ish, Claptone, Jaden Thompson, Kaysin, Medzua, Mr. V, Oden & Fatzo and Robin S., giving a special performance celebrating her 1993 record “Show Me Love.”

    Sign up for our Festival Pass newsletter. Whether you are a Coachella lifer or prefer to watch from afar, get weekly dispatches during the Southern California music festival season. Subscribe here.

    Sunday’s lineup will include Cid, Dom Dolla, Friendly Fire, Lupe Fuentes, Miane, Noizu, Ron Carrol, Sideoiece B2B Lee Foss, an extended day party set with Walker & Royce, Archie Hamilton, Beltran, Eli Brown, Josh Butler, Nora En Pure, Robyn Balliet, Secondicity, Tinlicker and an additional closing set by Nora En Pure B2B Tinlicker.

    Tickets go on sale at noon on Thursday, April 27 at daytripfest.com. Two-day general admission passes start at $159.99; Two-day VIP passes start at $319.99. This year’s VIP experience will include shaded areas, viewing decks and refreshments. Fans who purchase VIP packages will also have expedited entry, separate water refill stations, mobile charging areas and air-conditioned restrooms.

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    ​ Orange County Register 

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    California state computer systems fail new audit, at risk of serious security breaches
    • April 26, 2023

    Once again, the California state government has failed to provide adequate computer and technology services to the state’s 39 million residents.

    The Golden State remains the global center of private-sector information technology, yet Sacramento is incapable of harnessing the capabilities of Silicon Valley toward getting government technology up to speed.

    The latest critique comes from State Auditor Grant Parks’ audit of the California Department of Technology.

    The CDT, the auditor noted, “has broad responsibility and authority over nearly all aspects of IT in the state,” including  strategic direction, security and project oversight. But it “has not fulfilled important responsibilities in these areas, resulting in significant consequences for the state.”

    The CDT employs about 1,000 people and has been allocated $830 million in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January budget proposal for fiscal year 2023-24. It is by no means a small department.

    The ongoing failures of the department have led to two major consequences. First, the auditor noted “tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns and systems that do not fully function as intended.”

    Second, and even more important, the state has been at risk of serious security breaches and failures. The auditor highlighted, as one example, a 2016 system outage that affected 122 out of 188 Department of Motor Vehicles offices. The outage impaired the ability of many offices from processing drivers licenses and other critical functions for as long as two weeks.

    Getting the state’s IT sector in order is crucial because, as of November 2022, the state is spending an additional $3.7 billion on IT projects at 20 different agencies.

    The state has suffered similar problems going back decades. In 1994, the Legislative Analyst found $1.3 billion worth of problems with 11 computer systems. In 2020, as COVID-19 spread, the Employment Development Department’s computers buckled, delaying checks to millions of the jobless, sometimes for months.

    Parks’ recommendations include: 1. Ensure better accountability, including performance monitoring and evaluating strategic goals. 2. Prioritize responsibilities, including “focusing efforts in key areas when goals or due dates are in conflict.” 3. Urgently assess the state’s information security. 4. Pass laws to ensure the independence of IT project oversight.

    These all sound like common sense. If only state government officials could focus on the basics of government.

    “Our state government’s lack of modern IT safeguards not only jeopardizes the functionality of agencies and departments, but wastes taxpayer resources and potentially risks the sensitive information Californians entrust to their state government,” Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, R-Rancho Santa Margarita, told us.

    She sits on both the Assembly Appropriations and Budget committees. She called on Newsom to “do more to ensure the security of our state’s digital infrastructure.”

    It ought to be one of his top priorities. Instead of campaigning in other states, Newsom should drop by Silicon Valley and see if anyone wants to help state government catch up with the 21st century.

    ​ Orange County Register 

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    California’s ailing power grid stymies electric shift
    • April 26, 2023

    In its effort to battle climate change, California is in the forefront of the nation’s effort to shift our electrical generation away from fossil fuels and toward renewable-energy production.

    Yet as California rushes to achieve its climate goals of 90% “clean” energy within a dozen years, it is far behind in its need to upgrade our electrical infrastructure.

    The latest news should serve as a wakeup call.

    As CalMatters reported, “California officials insist that the grid can provide enough electricity” to handle millions of new electric vehicles, but “that’s based on multiple assumptions — including building solar and wind at almost five times the pace of the past decade — that may not be realistic.”

    Furthermore, the state’s major utility companies — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas and Electric — unveiled a new rate structure (in response to Assembly Bill 205) that lowers usage-based costs and increases the fixed-cost portion of people’s bills. It bases bills heavily on income levels, but incentivizes consumers to use more electricity. That will further stress the grid.

    The California Independent System Operator, the regional organization that manages the electricity grid, this month released a draft report calling “for an additional 22 transmission projects driven by the state’s energy policy goals.” The ISO estimates those costs at $7.53 billion over the next decade — at a time when California is facing a $25-billion budget deficit.

    This epitomizes California’s approach, which seems driven more by ideology than reality. On the same week last year that the California Air Resources Board announced a roadmap for a 100-percent EV future, the ISO cautioned EV owners not to charge their cars for several days to avoid blackouts from an overstressed grid during a heat wave.

    The Los Angeles Times recently noted that “getting the ball rolling on new power lines has been especially tough” given that “getting permission to string wires over long distances … can take a decade or more.”

    Our leaders need to spend less time promoting far-reaching environmental goals — and more time figuring out how we can meet them.

    ​ Orange County Register 

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    Frumpy Mom: Here’s some funny cancer stuff I didn’t make up
    • April 26, 2023

    Let me just tell you a little secret: Having cancer isn’t nearly as much fun as you might think.

    I remember flouncing into the chemotherapy infusion room, dressed in my best cocktail attire, and waiting for the nurses to bring on the margaritas. Surprise: No margaritas. I came close to walking out, but I decided to stay and try the concoctions they offered.

    Pro tip: Margaritas are better.

    Finally, one week I got fed up, so I brought my own margarita. Along with the glass. The chemo nurse was rather taken aback, but she agreed to take my picture with my frozen tequila beverage. But then she only let me have a couple of swallows before she made me throw it out. I guess I should have gulped it before she got there.

    Not long ago, I reconnected with a friend who’d moved away. I hadn’t seen her for years, but I heard she had cancer, so I sent her a supportive email. Well, she called me, and we ended up talking on the phone for four hours – undoubtedly the longest phone conversation I ever had with someone I wasn’t sleeping with. A good part of the time, we were regaling each other with funny stories about absurd things that happened during our cancer treatment.

    So I asked my Facebook friends (you are on my Facebook page, aren’t you?) to give me their own funny cancer stories. Here are some they shared with me. (I edited for length and to remove some minor, and totally understandable, curse words.)

    One Halloween, chemo left me pale, hairless, round-faced and puffy-eyed. I slipped into a white wrap robe tied with a sash to hand out “treats” and told everyone I was dressed as a Buddhist monk. One child’s father touched my smooth head to confirm that I was genuinely bald and said, “Wow, when you choose a costume, you really commit!” – Sheri

    During my radiation and chemo, I was told that if I lost weight I would have a feeder tube. Oh, no. Not me. But I got chemo sick during Easter week. Deathly afraid of the morning weigh-in, I wore boots, jeans, a large belt, two blouses, a T-shirt and one or two jackets. And for good measure, I put rolled quarters in my boots, pockets and every other piece of clothing. I came in very close to my pre-chemo weight. Later, I got great pleasure in sharing that story with the radiation and chemo oncologists. – Karen

    My pastor’s wife had cancer and she had just lost all her hair and was wearing a wig … People threw her a birthday party, but nobody thought to help her take the presents to the car. It was a super-windy day, and she was walking out to the car with her hands full of presents a sudden gust of wind came up, flipped off her wig, and it went tumbling with all the leaves and branches. She was running after it, with her hands, full, trying to stomp on it, like it was some kind of creature! When she told that to a room full of women, we were all rolling on the floor in church. – Teri

    I had breast cancer and a mastectomy. I used the (silicon enhancer) “chicken breast” in the bra to even things out. It got interesting a few times: It migrated to the middle so that I had one large breast on the left, slipped down toward my pants so I had two widely and weirdly spaced breasts, and my favorite — fell out completely (usually in public). That last one happened several times. – Synthia

    My mom had a partial mastectomy so she had a “chicken breast”. One day while she was hand-stitching something, the doorbell rang. She poked the needle into her chicken breast and answered the door with the needle sticking out of her boob. – Judye

    I’d lost my hair from chemo. I always wore a wig or hats with scarves. My baldness didn’t bother me – others were unnerved and uncomfortable. I was barhopping with friends, donning my wig so we could be viewed as just some girls having fun. Bars closed and I volunteered to drive us to Naugles – why do we get so hungry after a night of cocktails?! I had stopped at a light, windows down and loudly singing along to the radio. A car full of young guys stopped next to us and massive flirting back n forth. Just as the light turned green, I yanked off my wig and waved it at the guys. We took off, I looked in the rearview mirror and they were frozen at the light with a look of total shock! We laughed until we (well, you know.) – Pam

    My mom’s doctor wanted to see her in person after a mammogram follow-up. This can’t be good news, Mom. I’m coming with you. Yep, a breast cancer diagnosis. We had the deer-in-the-headlights look as we stumbled out of his clinic that day. The receptionist called out as we left, “Well, have a nice day!” My mom and I looked at each other in the hallway and just burst out laughing at the inanity of it all. That became our mantra, through thick and thin, and never failed to crack us up. “Yes, >insert some new horrible thing< … BUT, have a nice day!” – Melanie

    My friend is a breast cancer survivor. When she was diagnosed, I would go to her appointments with her. She was too tired and overwhelmed to fill out the forms so every time I asked her a question on the health form – like “Do you have …” And then she, as loud as she could in the waiting room, would say “Well, I probably do now!” We would laugh so hard. – Gina

    P.S. Want to meet me? Come to my next book signing at Nectar of the Dogs wine tasting room (nectarofthedogswine.com). Saturday, May 13 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Stop by to say hi, get your book signed, buy a copy of my book or just drink some wine. A portion of the proceeds go to help animals. Address: 791 Chambers Lane, Suite 110, Simi Valley. (702) 275-0482

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    ​ Orange County Register 

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    LA-Orange County homebuying at 2nd-slowest pace despite 43% March jump
    • April 26, 2023

    Homebuying in Los Angeles and Orange counties ran at the second-slowest March pace on record despite a noteworthy jump in closed transactions from February.

    Sales totaled 7,044 in March in the two counties, according to CoreLogic. That’s up 43% for the month but down 35% for the year.

    But how slow is that?

    No. 2 lowest sales volume for a March in records dating to 1988
    28th-smallest sales total for any month
    39% below the average March sales over 35 years

    Yes, some house hunters returned to the market in early 2023 despite economic skittishness and lofty mortgage rates that have cut buying power by 23% in a year. Still, sales in the six-county Southern California region in the past year fell by 37% to 15,307. The six-county median sales price fell 2.1% to $705,000.

    The basics

    Let’s look inside the L.A.-O.C. market, starting with March sales.

    Los Angeles County had 4,935 closings, up 45% in a month but 36% lower in a year. Orange County had 2,109 sales – up 39% in a month but 34% lower in a year.

    Note: A March sales bump is little surprise. Since 1988, sales have grown from February by an average 38% in L.A. and 37% in O.C.

    Next, consider how prices moved.

    In Los Angeles County, the $799,000 median was up 4.4% in a month but 8% off the $865,000 record high set in April 2022.

    Orange County’s $990,000 median was up 3.6% in a month but 6% off the $1.05 million peak of May 2022.

    Since 1988, the average March has had prices gain 3.5% in L.A. for the month and advance 2.1% in O.C.

    Payment pain

    Pricier financing is a factor: The 30-year mortgage rate averaged 6.5% in March vs. 4.2% 12 months earlier.

    My trusty spreadsheet tells me Los Angeles County buyers got an estimated house payment that was 25% pricier – $4,057 per month on the $799,000 median vs. $3,243 on a year ago’s $832,000 home. That assumes having $159,800 for a 20% downpayment.

    In Orange County, buyers got a 27% bigger payment – $5,027 monthly on the $990,000 median vs. $3,957 on a year ago’s $1,015,000 home. It takes $198,000 for a 20% downpayment.

    Single-family homes

    Sales: Los Angeles County’s 3,523 transactions were up 50% in a month but 33% lower in a year. Orange County’s 1,309 closings were up 42% in a month but 32% lower in a year.

    Prices: Los Angeles County’s $850,000 median was up 2% in a month but 6% lower in a year. Orange County’s $1.13 median was up 6% in a month but 6% lower in a year.

    Condos

    Sales: Los Angeles County had 1,149 sold —  up 38% in a month but 39% lower in a year. Orange County had 561 sold —  up 30% in a month but 45% lower in a year.

    Prices: Los Angeles County’s $665,000 median was up 4% in a month but 1% lower in a year. Orange County’s $710,000 median was down 2% in a month and 5% lower in a year.

    New homes

    Sales: Los Angeles County builder sold 176 units —  up 12% in a month but 55% lower in a year. Orange County had 234 new residences sold —  up 44% in a month but 2% lower in a year.

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    Prices: Los Angeles County’s $884,250 new-home median was up 0.5% in a month and 6% higher in a year. Orange County’s $1.19 million median was down 4% in a month and 9% lower in a year.

    Builder share: In Los Angeles County, new homes were 3.6% of all closings last month compared with 5.1% 12 months earlier. Orange County’s 11.1% share last month compares to 7.5% 12 months earlier.

    Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]

    ​ Orange County Register 

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    The $11.8 billion mistake that led to Bed, Bath & Beyond’s demise
    • April 26, 2023

    Bed, Bath & Beyond made plenty of mistakes that led to this week’s bankruptcy filing. Among the most consequential was the $11.8 billion it has spent since 2004 to buy back its own shares.

    The company’s repurchase program wasn’t unique. But for a cash-starved business that announced it would likely be forced to close all of its stores if it couldn’t find an 11th-hour savior to buy it, the money could have been better spent. Instead, it fueled a desperate and ultimately failed effort to support its stock price.

    The $11.8 billion Bed, Bath & Beyond spent on its own stock since 2004 comes to more than twice the $5.2 billion in debt it had on its books in its most recent SEC filing, a debt load that proved crushing for the company. It left the company unable to buy the inventory required to create the sales it needed to reverse losses.

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    “The company’s stewardship of their capital failed,” said Declan Gargan, retail director and credit analyst who follows Bed, Bath & Beyond for S&P Global Ratings.

    Pressure from shareholders

    Bed, Bath & Beyond grew particularly active share repurchases in July 2014, taking on $2 billion in debt to finance share buybacks, as it started to face pressure from activist shareholders to improve the stock’s performance.

    The company had carried relatively little debt to that point, and it put Bed, Bath & Beyond on a path toward a debt load that ultimately proved unaffordable.

    “We understand they have the equity shareholders to serve. Generally, we would prefer to use their cash flow to invest back in business,” said Sarah Wyeth, the lead credit analyst for the consumer and retail sectors for S&P. “Even M&A would be less risky than a straight share repurchase.”

    Bed, Bath & Beyond was engaged in an active share repurchase program right up until February of 2022, spending $230 million on shares in an accelerated repurchase program over the course of three months. It spent an average of $16.04 on each share.

    But its efforts to support the stock price did little to help. Its stock plunged 83% last year, and another 88% so far this year before it closed at 29 cents a share on the Friday before the bankruptcy filing.

    A stock repurchase blitz

    Bed, Bath & Beyond’s buyback programs are hardly unique. Chevron recently announced plans to repurchase $75 billion worth of its stock with windfall record profits that came from high oil prices.

    Across Corporate America, share repurchases reached a record $936 billion, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices, up from $882 billion in 2021. Share repurchases are forecast to top $1 trillion this year.

    And Bed, Bath & Beyond isn’t even the first retailer to spend billions of dollars repurchasing its own stock on its way to bankruptcy court. Sears Holdings, which owned the Sears and Kmart brands, repurchased $6 billion of its stock between 2005 and its 2018 bankruptcy filing.

    Share repurchases are a way for companies to return cash to shareholders indirectly, without them having to pay taxes as they would on a stock dividend. The idea is that by reducing the number of shares outstanding, each remaining share of stock in the hands of investors becomes more valuable.

    For example, if a company earns $100 million in a quarter, and it has 100 million shares outstanding, it earned $1 a share. If it repurchases 10 million of those shares, its earnings per share increases to $1.11, or 11%, even if its total profits don’t increase at all.

    Companies can often face market pressure to do share repurchases, especially from activist shareholders. In fact the Bed, Bath & Beyond share repurchases were not enough to stop activist investors from pushing out top management of the company in 2019.

    But share buybacks are also increasingly under fire. President Joe Biden, a frequent critic of share repurchases, included a 1% tax on share repurchases in the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats in Congress last year.

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    ​ Orange County Register 

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    Abraham Verghese says ‘The Covenant of Water’ dips into his family’s past
    • April 26, 2023

    When asked to describe the south Indian state of Kerala, the word that springs to mind for Dr. Abraham Verghese is this: “Water – 44 rivers, countless streams and lagoons and hundreds of miles of waterways.” More than a decade after the publication of his previous novel, “Cutting for Stone,” these waterways are where Dr. Verghese, author and professor of medicine at Stanford University, has set his latest book “The Covenant of Water,” out May 2 from Grove Atlantic.

    Water is the “defining element” of Kerala, Dr. Verghese says, which is why the central tragedy of “Covenant” is one of a family cursed by inexplicable drownings. The novel begins with the arranged marriage of the family’s matriarch, known as “Big Ammachy,” or “Big Mother,” who discovers something is very wrong with the family she’s just joined: They’ve been fighting a war with the waters of their homeland for generations.

    RelatedSign up for our free newsletter about books, authors, reading and more

    Geography is intentionally a character in Dr. Verghese’s books. Just as “Cutting for Stone” brought to life the Ethiopia he connected with as a child, “The Covenant of Water” takes the audience to the lush tropical landscape of Kerala, the land of his parents and grandparents.

    It’s also the land of my own forebears, and where my father, uncles, aunts and cousins grew up. When I visit India on summer breaks and winter vacations, Kerala is a stop I make to see family still living at our ancestral home. Days go like this: Waking up in the tropical heat and humidity mitigated by ceiling fans in large, airy rooms; taking lazy morning and afternoon dips in the river meandering past the family house; feasting on stew and lacy pancakes called “appams”; playing card games or music outside at sunset; watching farmworkers, schoolchildren and fishermen steer “vallams,” or small wooden boats, home for the night. Every visit is a reminder of my privilege and a vital reconnection with where I come from.

    Kerala is a state where education is prized and the literacy rate is, at around 94 percent, the highest in India. Politics lean left, labor unions are influential and communist parties have strong showings in elections. A well-covered topic in “Covenant” is Christianity, which has had a foothold in Kerala since St. Thomas, a disciple of Jesus, is said to have arrived there and founded several churches in the first century A.D.

    A vast and epic telling of the generations who face the curse known as “The Condition,” Dr. Verghese’s latest work weaves history and medicine together to welcome readers to the home of his ancestors.

    This interview has been edited for clarity.

    Q. Was there a specific motivating factor for setting the book in Kerala?

    When my mother was in her 70s, my niece, who was five at the time, asked her: What was it like when you were a five-year-old girl? At the time, my mother was living in Florida, and trying to figure out how to answer that question for this little girl born in America. 

    So she wrote it in longhand: a 100-page-plus manuscript – with illustrations, because she was very good at drawing – of familiar, somewhat exaggerated stories about our eccentric cousins and escapades and whatnot. It just reminded me how rich that geography and that culture is, and how the history of our Christian community is really quite unique and unknown to many readers. 

    Q. How did you go about researching that time period, the early 1900s in Kerala and in South India?

    When I used to visit Kerala as a child, which would have been the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, it was pre-electricity. The evenings were all lit by lamplight and there was no indoor plumbing – everything was well water drawn in a little outhouse. Still, by any standards, my family were very well off compared to, you know, people working for them. They weren’t very rich, but they had someone cooking and someone helping with cleaning. And so, in a funny way, I had a glimpse into what life would have been like in the pre-electricity, pre-gas stove kind of days for my grandmother and great-grandmother. 

    The rest of it was a lot of research and a lot of conversations with my parents. My mother passed away in her 90s, and my dad’s still alive, and vibrant, at 96. I also had access to uncles, aunts – not that they were alive in that period, but they certainly have vivid memories of being alive in the time of British rule. India gaining independence is a very recent thing for them, it happened after they were in college. So I was tapping into that.

    You might be able to appreciate this detail: I wanted to play up how readily we label people by their talents or professions in our culture. There’s “Artist Kurien” and “Engineer Babu,” and then people live up to those roles, you know? 

    Q. My father likes to say he learned to swim when his father threw him in the river at age three. My sister and I were taught to swim early as well (we had actual lessons!) It’s why the “family curse” of drowning felt so devastating, like an actual supernatural curse. 

    Yes, something like “The Condition” is so, so bizarre in a place where everybody learns to swim. It’s an example of something people could only describe as a family curse and never know what it was. As time goes on, it becomes clearer what “The Condition” is because you have medical advancements – better imaging and more refined autopsies and so on. 

    That was also part of why I picked that particular time period (1900-1977). Not only was the world going through cataclysmic changes in World Wars One and Two, not only was India going through cataclysmic changes that culminated in Independence, but it was a tremendous period of medical advancement.

    It was actually quite easy to research medicine in these time periods, because we have very vivid records in journals and elsewhere describing different conditions. And sometimes you can look at them and think, “Oh, my God, how naive they were.” Then you realize that 100 years from now, people are going to look at the way we describe certain diseases and think, “Oh, my goodness, they were so backward.” 

    I think readers have an inherent interest in things medical to some degree, because what is medicine but life lived at its most extreme? 

    Q. You don’t shy away from discussing caste and the inherent unfairness of it through some of your characters. 

    Yeah, my desire to talk about caste was in part because of the tensions that I felt it created in our world. For example, the older generation would never have really questioned why things were how they were. Being born outside of Kerala, however, and being more exposed to the more worldly view of equality and the French idea of egalitarianism, it would chafe me to see, for instance, how some people, some servants, weren’t permitted to come inside the house. There are all these little rules that you quickly become aware of.

    It’s in the very fact that we were Christians and so devout, and yet no one thought to convert the people working for us to Christianity. We left it to the Anglicans to come and do that. And even when they were converted, it didn’t erase any of the barriers. I always thought that was intriguing. I truly wanted to put myself in the shoes of people on both sides of that divide.

     

    The funny thing is I look around America, and in some ways, it’s the same. Kids play together when they’re young, but as time goes on, one kid goes to private school, the other goes to the public school, and suddenly it’s different roads depending on what their parents’ income levels are. So it’s not as though we’re equal in America, far from it. Issues of income and race are really very, very similar to issues of caste. A book on this I found very insightful was Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste.” That was a powerful book for me.

    Q. Reading this book was deeply personal for me, since I’ve experienced so much of the Kerala you describe. How do you hope readers will respond to this glimpse into a place they might never have heard of before?

    I’m hoping that readers enjoy looking at a world that might feel alien to them, and yet recognize the things about family, about relationships, that are universal. 

    I love the idea of introducing them to a world that they have no familiarity with. I hope that the book awakens their curiosity, maybe inspires them to travel there. More than that, I hope that they will identify with the characters, because I think the underlying lesson is that wherever you are, whatever nationality, the molecular units of a life are the same – family and relationships and marriages and lineage and privilege. It’s all the same thing. 

    Live Talks Los Angeles: Abraham Verghese and Aimee Liu discuss “The Covenant of Water”

    When: 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 3

    Where: William Turner Gallery, Bergamot Arts Station, 2525 Michigan Ave. #E-1, Santa Monica

    Tickets/Information: https://livetalksla.org/events/abraham-verghese/

    ​ Orange County Register 

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    Orange County sending several contenders to CIF-SS diving finals in Riverside
    • April 26, 2023

    Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribe now

    The return of the CIF-SS swimming and diving championships to Riverside begins Wednesday with the divers taking to the 1- and 3-meter springboards.

    The Division 2 and Division 3 finals will be held Wednesday at Riverside City College with Division 1 and 4 set for Thursday.

    Orange County could open strongly. Fullerton’s Abigail Ekstrom, a senior bound for Penn State, is the top seed in girls Division 3 and the defending champion.

    Junior Isabella Chen of Cypress is seeded second.

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    High School Sports |


    Busy weekend for high school swimming invitationals

    High School Sports |


    Orange County girls athlete of the week: Teagan O’Dell, Santa Margarita

    On Thursday, Mater Dei senior Ella Roselli, an Indiana commit, is the top seed in Division 1 girls while Capistrano Valley Christian sophomore Grant Schneider is the No. 1 seed in Division 4 boys.

    The swimming and diving finals were last held in Riverside in 2019.

    The swimming championships are next week.

    ​ Orange County Register 

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