Stress

For better or worse, summer heat has finally descended upon our gardens. Certainly, local gardeners will experience more periodic heat spells during the next two or three months, so how should a local gardener respond to these heat spells? With a cold glass of lemonade? Well yes, but what about our gardens? Because a plant's reaction to heat is gradual, its impact is often misunderstood. In a futile attempt to mitigate heat stress, a gardener's usual response may only be to water more.

A few years ago, Brad Green and other Newport Beach police officers were responding to a report of gunshots on the Balboa Peninsula in the middle of the night. Officers found a scattering of bullet casings in the area and began looking for the suspect. Green headed down an alley with no lights and plenty of hiding spots. "If this guy jumped out of nowhere, he would've had me. One shot and I'm done," Green, 54, recalled. "I looked up at the sky and there was no moon, so the stars were really showing.

With Memorial Day soon marking the traditional beginning of beach season, lifeguards and firefighters said it’s only appropriate that May is National Water Safety Month. National organizations like the Assn. of Pool & Spa Professionals, the World Waterpark Assn. and the National Recreation and Park Assn. joined together this year to raise awareness of water safety. California leads the nation in drownings, the leading cause of death for children younger than 5, according to the Orange County Fire Chief’s Assn.

It’s almost here. Holy Cat. How did this happen? I have no idea. Halloween was, what, three weeks ago? Thanksgiving was last Thursday, right? Never mind that now. Are you ready? Seriously? What do you mean “no”? You’ve got five days left, 120 hours, 7,200 minutes, 432,000 seconds. Why are you still here? In the time it took to read those numbers, you could have bought 75-cent gifts, built at least one layer of the seven layer cookies or trimmed two-thirds of a branch.

As the H1N1 influenza virus, or swine flu, begins to affect area schools, administrators and teachers are trying to get the word out on how to stop the flu from spreading. Twenty UC Irvine students have contracted swine flu since Sept. 1. As of Tuesday, two schools in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District — College Park Elementary in Costa Mesa and Lincoln Elementary in Corona del Mar — have seen more than 10% of their students call in absent since late last week.

When many people think of human trafficking, they picture anonymous faces in far-off countries, Rep. Loretta Sanchez said Friday. “When you think it’s not here, it can be in the house next door to you, and you don’t even know it’s going on. But we’re going to work to eradicate it,” said Sanchez (D-Garden Grove). She spoke at a town hall meeting on the issue at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa to a crowd of stakeholders, clergy, students and interested community members.

A woman who is suing Newport Beach for $15 million after fighting police on her front porch claims in recent legal filings that she lives in constant fear, has lost weight and hasn’t been able to sleep or hold a job since the incident. Suzanne Abrams claims Newport Beach police officers knocked her off the porch of her Little Balboa Island house and beat her while responding to a call in which she screamed that she had been raped. In recent court filings, Abrams details her time in a Massachusetts psychiatric hospital where she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after her run-in with police.

A 35-year-old UC Irvine graduate student is due in court today to face charges he shot his ex-wife to death outside his apartment in the university’s family housing Sunday night. Brian Hughes Benedict, 35, a grad student in the physics program, shot his ex-wife, Rebecca Edwin Clarke, 30, as she ran away from him following an argument in the Verano Place apartment complex just after 7 p.m. Sunday, Irvine police officials said. Clarke was there to pick up the pair’s 4-year-old son, whom she had full custody of, said UCI Police Department Assistant Chief Jeff Hutchison.

Since I wrote the column about the transcendental meditation program (“To a mind that is still,” Dec. 13), I have learned so many exciting things about how the technique is now being used both in schools and the criminal justice system. For example, there is a K-12 school in Fairfield, Iowa, that has incorporated meditation into the regular schedule every day for students, teachers and staff. Everyone swears by the program, and the results support their enthusiasm. The Maharishi School Pioneers, which has only 300 students, requires its students, teachers and staff each morning and afternoon to meditate for 15 to 20 minutes.