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      Readers Share Their Favorite Parts of 2024 So Far

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      New hobbies, graduation ceremonies and more.Mission Beach in May.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesBelieve it or not, we’re nearly halfway through 2024. As a midweek pick-me-up, today I’m sharing some of the lovely notes readers have sent me about their favorite parts of this year: new hobbies, graduation ceremonies and more. Send your own tales to CAtoday@nytimes.com.Here are some highlights, edited and condensed:“I am retired and very active with my local fitness club. The best part of my year to date is learning to play pickleball with a fabulous group of ladies who also enjoy staying active and enjoying each other’s company. We play every week and just have a great time exercising and laughing with each other.” — Linda Robertson, Paso Robles“The best part of my year would have to be late February, the moment I found out I was spontaneously pregnant with triplets. I will meet them in August and I am simultaneously excited and terrified.” — Emily Hannon, San Diego“The best part of my year so far was watching my son walk across the stage at his graduation ceremony at San Diego State University — something he never had a chance to do four years ago because of Covid. The look on his face and the thousands of other students that day will stay with me for a long time!” — Fred Mandel, Encino“This year has allowed me to embark on my Peace Corps Response term in Barranquilla, Colombia. I am here to coach and encourage local public school English teachers. Growing up in Claremont and spending the last 40 years in San Diego, you would think my Spanish would be better. But it is here in Colombia that my Spanish has had a chance to grow. I will be back in California before Thanksgiving and my South American exposure will be complete, but there will be many tales to tell. I came at 77 and will return at 78, perhaps a more seasoned traveler.” — Judy Minnich Stout, San Diego“The best thing this year so far is enjoying four great-grandsons, ranging in age from 15 months to 7 years. Their boundless energy and enthusiasm are contagious. I never thought I would live long enough to see my grandchildren’s children.” — Eleanor Egan, Costa MesaWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Many Abortion Seekers Are Traveling to California

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      After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and some states banned abortions altogether, many Americans began crossing state lines to get one.The New York TimesAfter the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and some states, mainly in the South, banned abortions altogether, many Americans began crossing state lines to get one.In 2023, the first full year after Roe was reversed, the number of patients traveling out of state for an abortion or to get abortion pills was double the figure from 2019, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. The institute said that nearly one-fifth of all recorded abortions involved interstate travel. The New York Times recently captured that trend in a fascinating set of maps.“We’re having people travel hundreds or thousands of miles for a procedure that typically takes less than 10 minutes and can be done in a doctor’s office setting,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, the founder of Whole Woman’s Health, which runs clinics in Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia. “Nobody does that for any other medical procedure.”California has positioned itself as a safe haven for abortion seekers.In the past two years, state legislators in Sacramento have passed several laws fortifying access to abortion. The state Constitution was amended to guarantee the right to abortion and contraception. California, along with Oregon and Washington, officially declared that abortion patients and providers would be protected from the legal reach of other states.Just last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill temporarily allowing Arizona abortion providers to travel to California to provide abortions to their Arizona patients. The move was in response to a possible reinstatement of a 160-year-old near-total ban on abortions in Arizona, through what Newsom called “oppressive and dangerous attacks on women.” (The Arizona Legislature ultimately blocked the ban from going back into effect.)“California stands ready to protect reproductive freedom,” the governor said at the time.The data from Guttmacher shows that 179,610 abortions were performed in California in 2023, which is 19 percent more than in 2019. About 4 percent of the 2023 abortions — or 7,184 — were for patients who don’t live in California.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Man Missing for 10 Days in a California Forest Is Found Alive

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      Lukas McClish said he lost 30 pounds in 10 days but was rescued without any major injuries.On the morning of June 11, Lukas McClish stopped by the home of a friend who told him about a granite outcropping in the nearby woods that piqued his interest, so Mr. McClish set out on his own, shirtless, to explore the scenery.Mr. McClish, 34, of Boulder Creek, Calif., would not be seen or heard from for nine nights and 10 days. His disappearance into California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park would prompt a search that involved about 300 people, emergency personnel from several agencies and ended with help from a dog.Mr. McClish, a hiker who does landscaping in forests that have been razed by wildfires, appeared to have been swallowed by the woods.“I was just so astounded by being lost,” he said in a telephone interview.The area where Mr. McClish was lost had been hard-hit by the C.Z.U. Lightning Complex fire in 2020 and “looks completely different from all of the other terrain,” he said.“That’s one thing that I didn’t take into consideration — when the fire comes through like that and decimates it, it turns into the desert, and you’re unable to find your bearings,” he said.Typical markers to gain a sense of direction, like deer trails or hiking paths, were gone. But Mr. McClish, an experienced backpacker who has traversed other rugged regions of the United States, took it as an opportunity to explore a part of his backyard that he was unfamiliar with.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      California school board president who led conservative culture war loses recall vote

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      Voters in Temecula, California, have ousted the local school board president who thrust the political body to the forefront of rightwing culture wars seeking to eliminate discussions of race and gender identity from the classroom.Joseph Komrosky on Thursday lost a recall vote with 51% of voters favoring his removal.Temecula – a predominantly white city of 100,000 residents – was a hotbed of the culture wars that conservative Americans have mounted in an attempt to censure how schools teach racism, gender and American history.In June of 2023, Komrosky presided over the Temecula school board’s banning of critical race theory – which examines how racism was embedded into American law – as well as attempts to purge elementary school textbooks of any reference to Harvey Milk, the openly gay politician from San Francisco who supported LGBTQ+ rights before his 1978 assassination.Komrosky first joined the board in November 2022. Since then, the school board has forced out the district superintendent and passed a parent notification policy requiring schools to tell parents if students go by a different gender than what they were assigned at birth.Komrosky has called critical race theory a “racist ideology” that uses “division and hate as an instructional framework in our schools”. Komrosky and fellow school board members then voted to reject California’s social studies curriculum over its inclusion of references to Milk, whom Komrosky described as a “pedophile”.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, threatened to impose a $1.5m fine on the district for not adopting the curriculum, though Komrosky and the school board vowed to find a way to circumvent doing so while adhering to state mandates. The board also initiated another controversial vote to limit what flags can be displayed on school grounds.The unflattering public attention drawn by the controversies Komrosky’s actions ignited incited the recall election against him.The recall vote was conducted on 4 June with final results released on Thursday. Among 9,722 ballots tallied, 4,963 supported the recall. The recall election turned out 45.1% of registered voters in Temecula.Komrosky told the LA Times he is inclined to run for the school board again given his slim margin of defeat in the recall.“Given the narrow margin, I will likely run again in the November 2024 general election,” Komrosky said. “If not, it has been an honor to serve the Temecula community, and I am proud to have fulfilled all of my campaign promises as an elected official.“My commitment to protecting the innocence of our children remains unwavering.” More

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      in Elections

      The Culture Wars Came to a California Suburb. A Leader Has Been Ousted.

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      Voters recalled a Southern California school board president after his conservative majority approved policies on critical race theory and transgender issues.From the start, the three conservative board members of the Temecula Valley Unified School District made clear where they stood. On the same night in December 2022 that they were sworn in as a majority, they passed a resolution banning critical race theory from classrooms in their Southern California district.Months later, they abruptly fired the superintendent, saying they believed the district needed someone with new ideas. After that, they passed a rule requiring that parents be notified whenever a student requests to be identified as a different gender at school.The moves were applauded by conservatives, many of them Christian churchgoers who had helped to install the new board members, hoping that Temecula Valley could remain an island of traditional values in a liberal state.But this once rural area, about 60 miles northeast of San Diego, had transformed in recent decades into a diverse bedroom community, and many other families grew frustrated by what they considered to be the unwelcome incursion of national culture wars into their prized public schools.That backlash came to a head this month when voters recalled Joseph Komrosky, a military veteran and community college professor who had been the school board president since that December night. Mr. Komrosky’s ouster was made official on Thursday evening.“People are moving here so they can put their kids in the school district,” said Jeff Pack, whose One Temecula Valley PAC led the recall effort. “They don’t want all this partisan political warfare, this culture war stuff getting in the way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How This Year’s Fire Season Could Pan Out

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      More than two dozen wildfires have ignited in California this week, and experts warn of an extreme season ahead.A burning landscape in Lebec, caused by the Post fire.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThere’s no doubt about it: The 2024 wildfire season in California has begun.Propelled by dry and windy weather, more than two dozen fires have erupted across the state in the past week, including the two biggest blazes of the year so far — the Post fire northwest of Los Angeles and the Sites fire in Colusa County, northwest of Sacramento, which had grown to more than 19,000 acres as of Wednesday evening and was only 10 percent contained.“We have entered fire season unambiguously,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at U.C.L.A., said in an online briefing. “I think we’re going to see a greatly increased level of fire activity this year, compared to the last two years.”After two rainy winters in a row, there is more grass and vegetation than usual available to burn, Swain said. And though the land isn’t unusually parched yet, he said, it’s likely to become dangerously dry in the next few months, setting the stage for extreme and difficult-to-control fires.(Fire season is looking worrisome elsewhere in the West as well. Two wildfires in southern New Mexico were burning out of control Wednesday evening, scorching more than 23,000 acres and prompting the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes.)In California, 2022 and 2023 were mild fire years, for a welcome change. Wildland fires burned roughly 325,000 acres and damaged 70 buildings across the state in 2023; two years earlier, the acreage figure was nearly eight times as high — more than 2.5 million in all — and 3,500 structures were damaged.California was lucky last year, with an exceptionally wet winter followed by an unusually cool summer. Then the remnants of Hurricane Hilary dumped so much rain on Southern California in August that it effectively ended the fire season when it ordinarily would be peaking.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Remembering Willie Mays as Both Untouchable and Human

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      Mays, who died on Tuesday at 93, had been perfect for so long that the shock of seeing baseball get the best of him was the shock of seeing a god become mortal.At the end, the Say Hey Kid looked nothing like the extraordinary force who had been at the center of the American imagination for much of the 20th century.The Kid — Willie Mays — struggled at the plate and stumbled on the basepaths. A line drive arced his way, easily catchable for Mays during most of his career. But he fell. Another outfield mistake caused the game to be tied in the ninth inning.He was a creaky-kneed 42 years old on that October afternoon, Game 2 of the 1973 World Series — Mays’s New York Mets in Oakland facing the A’s. On the grandest stage, the ravages of time had settled upon the game’s most gilded star.That he would redeem himself at the plate three innings later is often forgotten. The unthinkable had happened. Mays had not only failed, he had appeared lost, clumsy and out of sorts.The shock of seeing him that way would linger long past his playing days as a warning: Don’t be like Willie Mays, sticking around too long, stumbling in center field, a shadow of his former self. Such became the axiom, uttered in so many words by everyone from politicians to business leaders to commentators weighing in on great athletes who yearn to play into their twilight.Quit before it is too late.In retirement, Mays, who died on Tuesday at 93, did his best to ignore the game that would be his last. But there is another way to view its echoes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Angela Bofill, R&B Hitmaker With a Silky Voice, Dies at 70

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      Starting in the late 1970s, she scored multiple hit singles, including “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” and “I Try,” but multiple strokes in the 2000s ended her career.Angela Bofill, a New York-bred singer whose sultry alto propelled a string of R&B hits in the late 1970s and early ’80s before strokes derailed her career in the 2000s, died on Thursday in Vallejo, Calif. She was 70.Her death, at the home of her daughter, Shauna Bofill Vincent, was announced in a social media post by her manager, Rich Engel. He did not specify a cause.With a silky blend of Latin, jazz, adult-contemporary and soul, Ms. Bofill is best remembered for jazzy love songs like “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” and funk-inflected pop numbers like “Something About You.” Armed with a three-and-a-half-octave range, her voice was “as cool as sherbet, creamy, delicately colored, mildly flavored,” as Ariel Swartley wrote in Rolling Stone magazine in 1979.Starting in 1978, Ms. Bofill logged six albums in the Top 40 of the Billboard R&B charts, with five of them crossing over to the Top 100 of the pop charts. She also scored seven Top 40 R&B singles, including “Angel of the Night,” (1979) and “Too Tough” (1983).Angela Tomasa Bofill was born on May 2, 1954, in New York City to a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father and grew up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, in Manhattan and in the West Bronx. She started writing songs as a child.By her teens, she was already showing off her vocal chops in a duo with her sister Sandra and a group called the Puerto Rican Supremes, and also as a member of the prestigious All-City Chorus, a group composed of top high-school singers in the city’s five boroughs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More