Opinion

The many thousands who regularly use the state’s large and varied park system were among the most distraught of Californians when legislators and Gov. Jerry Brown last year imposed cuts and closures on the system, with 70 parks scheduled for shuttering early this summer.

In January of 2011, I shared data from the Search Institute indicating that 35 percent of 4th to 6th graders in Santa Clara County felt the adults in their communities valued children and youth and only 18 percent of our middle and high school students felt valued by the adults in their communities. I urged community members, “let’s ask ourselves what we can do to build positive relationships with our youth.” I am very happy to report that many of our community members and organizations have answered the call.

If Proposition 29 is approved by California’s voters, the tax on cigarettes in the state will increase by $1 to $1.87 per pack. The additional tax revenue will be used to fund cancer research, smoking reduction programs and tobacco law enforcement. And that’s a good thing, whether the research is done in California or anywhere else.

Immigration is a topic of heated discussion in the United States. The current presidential campaign has provoked fear, distortions, outrage and scary stories; a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court seeks to resolve how much control states can have over non-citizens living within their borders.

Webster’s definition for understudy: an actor who learns the part of another actor so as to serve as a substitute when necessary. Here is where prolific, Pulitzer Prize nominee, author and playwright Theresa Rebeck (recently creator of TV’s “Smash”) lets the fall out of what it means to be an understudy in this wacky, witty rendition of a Broadway play within a play by (wait for it) Franz Kafka.

I vividly remember the day she adopted me, me driving home with her 5-month-old paws on the dashboard, face tilted downward and pressed against the windshield. I remember wondering if I had made the right decision: Was I ready to take on a dog? We’d had family dogs when I was young, but I was an adult now, living on my own. She would be all mine.

I was a lucky kid; I grew up in “Small Town America” during the 1950s. And although my Colorado hometown wasn’t “small” by most standards (roughly 100,000 people), it felt that way because we were encapsulated within our close-knit neighborhoods.