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Los Angeles Times

I've covered California for more than four decades. That's why I'm taking on Essential California

For more than 40 years, I have reported on some of California's biggest ruptures, contradictions, characters and conundrums. Now I'll be working the phones, roving this blessed and sometimes cursed state and arriving most mornings here in your inbox as the regular host of Essential California. I'll be trying to help you understand the people, places and events that are changing California, though we know it's a place that's always a little beyond our grasp, a place, as John Steinbeck said of 'Cannery Row' that 'is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.' I hope that the rest of you essential Californians, expatriate Californians and Californians-in-waiting will respond with inspiration, recriminations and story ideas for me and the rest of our crackerjack crew: fellow reporter Andrew Campa, multiplatform editor Kevinisha Walker and Times newsletters czar Karim Doumar. You can reach us at essentialcalifornia@ Here's how I got here: Though I was born in New York City, my parents moved us to L.A. when my brother was a toddler, and I was an infant. My sister soon joined us, born in Beverly Hills. One of my earliest memories was of grabbing the L.A. Times off the front stoop the morning after Bobby Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel, right here in Los Angeles. His sudden, inexplicable death was a 9-year-old's introduction to the concept of impermanence. Journalism found me at Santa Monica High School, where you signed up for the school paper, the Samohi, because faculty advisor Larry Knuth was way cool and because Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had just sent President Nixon packing for San Clemente. At UC Berkeley's Daily Californian I covered sports, including football, and witnessed the greatest play in college football history, which I write about as often as I possibly can. I entered the pro newspaper ranks with a tiny daily in Danville, east of Oakland. I wrote about playwright Eugene O'Neill's historic home and came face to face in a prison interview with Sara Jane Moore, the suburban housewife who tried to gun down President Ford. More than four decades on, California and its people have remained the center of my reporting world. I was on the streets the fearful night when L.A. burned, after a Simi Valley jury decided not to hold rogue LAPD officers responsible for the savage beating of motorist Rodney King. I've covered every L.A. mayor from Tom Bradley to Karen Bass. I wrote about torment in the state's youth prisons and heartbreak in the overburdened foster care system. I rode horseback into the Sierras to watch a biologist reestablish trout in a high mountain lake. I swam along (for a mile or two) with a young doctor who conquered the Catalina Channel. I hung out with nudists, wearing nothing but combat boots, in a remote desert oasis. On rare occasions, my family became part of the news. It happened joyously, when I wrote about my dad on his 90th birthday, celebrated as a working actor. It happened tragically, when someone beat my older brother to death in his Culver City chiropractic office, a crime that remains unsolved. The news blasted onto the Rainey family doorstep again in January. The epic Palisades fire incinerated the Malibu home where I grew up. I'd be reporting on the fire recovery anyway. Now it has become extra personal. The fire reintroduced me to an old friend named Bill Stange. He's a surfer, fisherman, contractor and a bit of a sage. After Bill's home burned he said something about Malibu that might apply to California as a whole. 'No matter what, [it] goes back to its wildness,' he said, in part. 'It turns out we are all just renters here.' As I help shepherd Essential California, I am fortunate to remain on the story of this singular place. I hope you'll spend some time with me, seeking out the serious, the silly and the sublime. Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. Today's great photo is from Juliana Yamada at Gladstone's in the Pacific Palisades. Six months after closing due to the Palisades fire, the iconic seafood restaurant finally reopened last weekend. Jim Rainey, staff writerDiamy Wang, homepage internIzzy Nunes, audience internKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on