Archive: Editor's note

I will be moderating a journalism panel on Monday night and then, on Saturday, signing and schmoozing at the Times book festival.

It's true. Once again I have tweaked the look of the LA Observed front page for the new year. Details inside.

"Al was a complicated man," Joanne Martinez writes on the AARP blog.

I'll be around schmoozing and signing on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Hope to meet some more of you. Plus Bill Boyarsky, Jon Christensen, Cari Beauchamp and more.

The company that hosts LA Observed on its servers has been dealing with a sticky technical issue since Thursday morning.

A memorial for Al Martinez will be held Feb. 8 at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica.

Back from three weeks away from the routine with a hefty offering of items in politics, media, sports and more. Catching up will continue all week.

I'm still traveling and will start to catch up on posting later in the week. In the meantime, a reminder about the venerable Linotype.

I'm still traveling but came across some stories with Los Angeles angles worth mentioning — plus the unexpected sounds of a Mexican band deep in the French Basque country.

I'm getting ready to head out for a couple of weeks of lighter than usual posting. But first: some news notes and items to get off the desk.

My Central Library conversation with Gary Leonard last month has been put online by Photo Friends, the supporting organization for the Los Angeles Public Library photo collection.

Gary Leonard has been documenting Los Angeles in photos since before he was at UCLA in the early 1970s. He has seen a lot, but what he hasn't done much of is talk about his photographs or the LA he sees. That ends Saturday!

Our weekly novelist was interviewed by Los Angeles magazine. Meanwhile, columnists Jon Christensen and Mark Gold were both on KPCC today talking about issues around the water main break that deluged part of UCLA.

After three months of hospitalization, Martinez resumes his column for LA Observed. "I was a mess, but I lived. Barely."

She will be posting weekly installments of her new novel, "Veronica Street," set in Los Angeles with a strong flavor of her old home area of Echo Park. Look for new chapters on Wednesdays through the summer.

Al posted this message on Facebook over the weekend.

I probably won't be posting today. Busy period on other projects.

I've been otherwise engaged a lot and will continue that way for another week or so. Al Martinez continues to sit out. But here are some news and notes.

I'm otherwise occupied for the first part of today. Will be posting later.

Won't be able to post a Morning Buzz. But I do want to point out a familiar face in that 1994 photo of the quake-disheveled Daily News newsroom.

With Thanksgiving at the end of the week, and a small medical procedure at the front, I'm going into a lighter posting mode for the week. No Morning Buzz.

The funeral for Mark will be Sunday at 12 noon at Hillside Memorial Park. Details inside.

I'll be going on live at 7:25 a.m. to talk with "Morning Edition" Steve Julian about our colleague Mark Lacter.

Folks, I'm sad to announce that Mark Lacter — the creator of LA Biz Observed and the author of 10,000 posts since 2006 — has passed away. He suffered a stroke.

I'll be posting later in the day.

I am otherwise engaged this morning. No posting by me until later today.

Jon Christensen and Mark Gold are both respected observers of the environmental activism and policy scene. They will be writing together as Christensen & Gold — and like all LAO columnists, with no interference from a pushy editor.

We have unpublished a post about the late author Amy Wallace that was misconstrued as an obituary and offended some of her friends with its tone. "I share my condolences with Amy Wallace's family and friends," the post's author, Adrienne Crew, writes.

Hey, just so anyone knows who is trying to reach me. I fiddled with my personal email settings last night hoping to tighten the spam screws a bit. Instead, I cut myself off. Facebook looks like a better bet for today.

Time Warner Cable finally responded to my Thursday cable outage about 4 p.m. Friday and got the service restored this morning a little after 9. Since I mostly post from home, that's a good thing.

Nothing since early last evening. Thanks Time Warner Cable.

Pasadena is throwing its first community-wide book festival all day today at Central Park, just down the street (south) from Old Town Pasadena. I'll be meeting readers and signing some books at the Angel City Press booth from noon to 2 p.m. Stop by and have a chat. LitFest Pasadena, which is free, goes from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.