Today’s Agenda

There are plenty of big issues in Southern California--crime, schools, inter-ethnic frictions, the L.A. mayoral race, to name a few. But in everyday terms, it’s often the little stuff that makes a day pleasant, or not. Was a store clerk rude? A waiter especially knowledegable and helpful? Did the electrician come right on time, or the department store delivery truck not at all? Was the city hall clerk indifferent or respectful?

Lots of people claim that the concept of customer service has gone all to heck, but the people who provide those services can also be their own most eloquent defenders. In Gripe, an unhappy customer and a former waiter take on the issue, pro and con. We’d like to hear brief accounts of other people’s experiences--and perhaps print some in weeks to come.

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“I need to find a home for my heart,” writes Julie Lee, a high-school sophomore, about being Korean-American in Los Angeles. In the Youth column, she carries us along on a poetic search for her own identity and for common ground with those who see her only as different, as foreign, as “other.” “Now my heart beats like yours/ And yours like mine,” she writes. “It feels/ Like yours, and wants to be loved/ And love.”

As Julie Lee’s poem makes clear, it’s too easy to hate a stranger. The reverse of that--knowledge grants respect--is the idea behind multicultural studies in this region’s schools. The principals of three area schools tell us in Platform about what they’re doing to promote understanding. In a multiethnic school, says the principal of Franklin Elementary School in San Diego, parents can be more valuable teachers than any textbook.

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San Clemente’s a scenic oceanfront town that hasn’t been much in the news since Richard Nixon (who had a vacation home there) left the White House. The events that have brought San Clemente--or “San Calamity,” as the local wags would have it, back in the news aren’t so benign. Nature’s slaps--pet-catching mountain lions and homes falling off rain-soaked cliffs--have piled atop the human folly that put the city deep in a budget crisis. In the Neighborhood outlines the problems--and the plans of civic activists to fix the city’s ills.

Ethnic and racial slurs can do special harm to children. But should they respond on the spot? Keep quiet and hope for the best? Hallie Esbin Rosen, who conducts workshops on anti-Semitism for Jewish families, says the best course for children often is to report the incident to a responsible adult. But in the In Dispute column, she makes it clear that there’s no single correct response--and that lashing out can put the victim of a slur in danger.

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No matter what the pain, “violence must not be the final arbiter in human affairs,” says the Rev. Louis A. Chase in Sermon. He warns that the “self-defense” of a gun is in the end no defense at all.

Far better, he counsels, to live “courageously, cautiously and faithfully” as a committed member of a community.