Years from now, when I am telling the story of the COVID-19 shutdown to my future students, I will struggle to capture the way in which the news was both incremental and sudden, both inevitable and completely unexpected. My students — 10th, 11th, and 12th graders at Jordan High in North Long Beach — had […]
Meetings of the Long Beach Unified School District’s Board of Education are usually pretty…well, boring. Absent of any fireworks or major disagreements, they’re almost always about an hour of cordial agreement and unanimous votes. Last week’s meeting was about as far from “usual” as the Board has probably ever gotten. Superintendent Chris Steinhauser announced that […]
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but video games are totally saving my sanity right now. The lack of live sporting events has left a hole in my personal and professional life, so this week I bought a used Xbox online with soccer and basketball games. Luckily, and surprisingly, FIFA20 and NBA2K have somewhat scratched […]
One of the best things about sports is that we’re supposed to know when they start, and when they end. It’s on the calendar, right there in black and white: start of the season, end of the regular season, playoffs, championship. I’ve always believed that their predictability and stability is one of the reasons that […]
I’m lucky to be a sports fans who can truly appreciate the internet. Not long ago, newspaper box scores and ESPN highlight packages were the only ways to find information about some sporting events. Now fans and athletes can interact everyday via social media. I’m old enough to remember watching morning SportsCenter replays with my […]
Lately I’ve been thinking about Mr. Miyagi’s famous quotes from The Karate Kid. Pearls of wisdom like, “It’s okay to lose to an opponent, it’s never okay to lose to fear” or “If the root is strong, the tree will survive” seem more poignant nowadays. Of all the beautiful advice written by Robert Mark Kaman […]
When you know you’re going to have a kid, you start daydreaming. Most of those daydreams involve how your kid will fit into your life and your story, because before they come into the world, there’s no way to fully understand how hilarious and unrealistic a thought that is. While my wife, Shar, was pregnant […]
Every married man hopes for at least one shared interest with their father-in-law, and I got lucky with a basketball fan. I’ve been trying to turn my father-in-law Ray into a Los Angeles Lakers fan since the family moved from New York to Long Beach. He’s been a Knicks fan, so the recent player movement […]
Do you know Sheryl Yoast? She is the late daughter of legendary Virginia high school football coach Bill Yoast, and actor Hayden Panettiere famously played her role in the movie “Remember The Titans.” Panettiere performed with gusto to show that a young girl can know more about football than a grown man. She stalked the […]
Fifty eight years ago, Billie Jean King asked the citizens of Long Beach to send her to the world. She raised $2,000 from the Long Beach Century Club, the Long Beach Tennis Patrons, and the residents of the city to send her to Wimbledon, where she skyrocketed to international fame at the age of 17 […]