For more times than he can recall, Ken Bouchard has journeyed from Los Angeles to his hometown of Framingham, Mass. There, Bouchard willingly provides blood samples, dons heart monitors and details his eating habits.
The Los Angeles Fearless Family Caregiver Conference is in Carson on June 28 It is sponsored by Today\’s Caregiver magazine along with the City of L.A. Department of Aging and the L.A. County Area Agency on Aging.
El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills has once again given Los Angeles something to kvell about. The school claimed top honors at this year\’s national Academic Decathlon, the annual contest of intellectual prowess.
Three of the nine team members generated special pride for the Jewish community: Lindsey Cohen and Linsday Gibbs are both affiliated with Shomrei Torah, while Kevin Rosenberg attends Temple Aliyah.
\”I got enormous support from my parents, from my temple [Shomrei Torah] and from my friends,\” Gibbs said. \”After we won state, the rabbi sent me a letter and the cantor called me…. They didn\’t know what I got on each test or how I did medal-wise, and yet, they were all so supportive and welcoming and congratulatory when I got back.\”
After David Rudolph sprained his ankle during a basketball game, his father noticed that the second-grader couldn\’t seem to keep his left heel flat on the ground. The problem persisted, sidelining David from his position as catcher on his Little League team, and preventing him from progressing beyond his blue belt in karate.
By the time he had reached the fourth grade, Josh\’s dystonia caused his right hand to involuntarily clench into a fist so tight that he could only open it by force. His feet turned inward, requiring him to wear braces. The symptoms had forced Josh to quit his baseball and basketball teams after six years of playing, leaving him depressed and angry.
In a tale rooted in personal experience, Dr. John Menkes explores the themes of loss and recovery in his novel “After the Tempest” (Daniel & Daniel, 2003). A Holocaust survivor, Menkes returned to his hometown of Vienna after the war and found that not only was his family and his home gone, but his very identity had been irrevocably lost.
As 14-year-old Lisa Jura said goodbye to her mother at a Vienna train station in 1938, Jura’s mother spoke words that would inspire her for a lifetime: “Hold on to your music. It will be your best friend.”
Jura didn’t imagine that these words — and how her life came to embody them — would inspire subsequent generations of teenagers, even 70 years later.
Obesity has reached record rates among children and adults, bringing with it increased risk for developing diabetes and related health problems. In addition to the more than 18 million Americans currently living with diabetes, another 41 million are considered prediabetic, and are likely to develop the disease unless they take action.
In her new book, \”Diabesity: The Obesity-Diabetes Epidemic That Threatens America — And What We Must Do to Stop It\” (Bantam), Dr. Francine R. Kaufman describes how reversing these trends requires efforts from all levels of society.
Southern Californians can travel from Pharaoh\’s palace to Midwestern wheat fields to a rain forest — all without leaving Westwood.
This year, the People of the Book will miss out on the largest book festival in town, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
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