My ‘Field of Dreams’ Above Carpinteria

At Santa Barbara County’s Ken McMullen Baseball Camp, a True Team Player Taught Us How to Teach Others

Did you have strange dreams during this unsettling, crazy California summer? Me too.

Mine compressed time and space. In dreamland, I toggled between the anxious claustrophobia of summer 2020 and memories of the sun-splashed Santa Barbara County baseball camp I attended as a kid in the mid-1980s.

I’m not sure what took me back to Ken McMullen Baseball Camp in the hills above Carpinteria. Maybe it was because most summer camps were closed, and my three young sons were stuck at home, having lost all interest in everything but looking at screens …

Do Californians Love Their Houses Too Much?

A Fourth-Generation Homeowner Reconsiders the California Dream

No house on earth means more to me than my paternal grandparents’ small blue home near the bottom of a windswept hill in the Bay Area city of San Mateo.

I’ve …

The Downsizing of the City of Outsized Dreams

L.A.'s Ambitions Have Given Way to Trepidation

Has Los Angeles downsized its dreams?

In the last century, Southern Californians dreamed so big and global that the size of our aspirations came to define this place. We created a …

The Drums That Bang Out the Heartbeat of My Community

A 13-Year-Old Explains How Japanese Taiko Drumming Connects Her to the World Around Her

I am 13 years old, and taiko drumming is my life. Taiko are Japanese drums—big ones are the size of a Mini Cooper, and small ones are 15 inches around …