Lori Matsumura was stunned when she found out this week about an EBay auction of 20 pencil sketches that the seller claimed were from a Manzanar artist.
Her grandfather, Giichi, used watercolors to document life at the Manzanar War Relocation Center where he and his family were incarcerated during World War II.
Each sketch was signed “Matsumura” in block letters.
The starting bid was less than $70.
“I don’t have the drawings in my hands, but it looks like my dad’s writing,” Lori said. “I was sad that they were trying to sell this artwork. No, it angered me.” latimes.com/california/sto…
“To see these objects for sale, which have been saved from a time of great suffering and loss, is a gut punch,” said Nancy Ukai, the project director of 50 Objects, a digital history project that tells the stories behind Japanese American artifacts. latimes.com/california/sto…
Nearly 60 Japanese American groups sent EBay a letter demanding the company halt bids for the Matsumura drawings. latimes.com/california/sto…
“I know people try to sell artifacts, but I never thought it would ever be from my immediate family,” said Lori Matsumura. “Now, I’m afraid I could lose those forever.”
📈 📉 Over the year, Californians experienced a complex set of guidelines that frequently changed, varied from county to county and created a whipsaw effect where businesses were open one week and sometimes closed within days. 📉📈
UC students do not have access to equal resources and services across its 10 campuses.
UC Riverside students fall far behind their peers when it comes to receiving essential services — transfer student support, counseling, academic advising.
Many Riverside facilities are in deep disrepair. Students have endured falling ceiling tiles, leaking roofs, antiquated air systems that emit mold and lab equipment breakdowns. Staff morale has been low and turnover high.
Yet the Inland Empire campus educates a larger share of needy students — about half are low-income, underrepresented minorities or the first in their families to attend college — than all other campuses except for UC Merced.
Even when state restrictions lift, experts say it may be a year or more before California convention centers host the kind of mega-crowds that flocked to Comic-Con, NAMM and E3 in past years.
Among the reasons for the smaller events: State officials say COVID-19 protocols for large-scale indoor events will require testing or vaccination verifications, which could exclude some would-be attendees. latimes.com/business/story…
Surveys show that many business travelers still don’t feel safe meeting face-to-face indoors with thousands of strangers. latimes.com/business/story…
As supplies of the vaccine have increased recently some parts of California now have periodic excess.
And that is leading officials to make doses available to all adults, even those not eligible under current rules. latimes.com/california/sto…
That occurred this week in several places, including Riverside County, Bakersfield, the Bay Area and even parts of Los Angeles. But those extra slots have been filled quickly, leading some to be turned away.
By Thursday morning, the site had so many walk-ins that staff started turning people away, said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman with the Office of Emergency Services.
“They weren’t turned away because of eligibility, just because of availability,” he said. latimes.com/california/sto…
Ferguson said the decision to cut off walk-up access was based on the rate that people with appointments were filling up at the site. latimes.com/california/sto…
The site typically administers about 7,000 vaccines a day, he said, and about 1,500 of them were spoken for by people who made new appointments overnight or walked up Thursday morning.
A group of parents — who say their children have been illegally shortchanged by Los Angeles Unified School District’s return-to-school plan — is seeking a court order to force the district to reopen “to the greatest extent possible” within seven days.
The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday, asks the court to prohibit L.A. Unified from using a six-foot distancing standard in classrooms because it effectively prevents the school district “from providing in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible.” latimes.com/california/sto…
It also seeks to prohibit the district from requiring students to take regular coronavirus tests as a condition for returning to campus.