Author Archives: Kit Stolz

GOP: Party of Big Pizza — and obesity?

Last year at this time I started working on a story about childhood obesity in a couple of small towns in Ventura County, and how different the picture looked in an upscale, mostly white town such as Ojai, where childhood obesity runs behind the national average of about 35%, and how it looks in the poorer, mostly Latino town of Santa Paula, where childhood obesity prevalence is among the highest in the state, at about 48%.

Interviewing the director of food services for Ojai's schools, I learned that she does not allow frozen pizza at all for her students eating school lunches, and did what she could to discourage parents from bringing pizza to after-school events. By contrast, I heard from a student at Santa Paula High, most students went for the frozen pizza at the high school every day.

Naturally I wondered if there was a connection to the high rates of obesity, but my adviser at USC/Annenberg's Health Reporting fellowship, discouraged me pointing the finger of blame at a single food for Santa Paula's obesity problem. 

So my ears perked up when today I came across a characteristically strong but unusually wide-ranging column from Paul Krugman at the NYTimes, who argues that based on contributions, it's fair to say that Republicans are "the party of Big Energy and Big Food…and in particular, the party of Big Pizza."

Could caloric frozen pizza explain the obesity problem among kids eating free and reduced lunches?

Save the groundfish: the great Sand Dab supper

It's rare to see a professional cook write an op-ed for a newspaper such as the Los Angeles Times, but Kelly Whitaker makes a plea for a fishery which I second from the bottom of my heart. I have made sand dabs for supper countless times because yes, they're irresistible. Please don't let them go away. Help these fishContinue reading “Save the groundfish: the great Sand Dab supper”

A weekend on the PCT with pinyons and snow: 2015

Having just fallen in love, so to speak, with the pinyon pine, I'm distressed to learn that the species may fall prey to "forest mortality" in the Southwest (as discussed a few weeks back here).

What can be done — if anything? Are these forests doomed, or — ?

With my young nephew Eli Huscher went back to the Walker Pass area of the PCT this past week to explore this question. I'm not a scientist and have no answers as of yet, but I think it's an important question. 

I'll begin with a picture of the tree that inspired this new-found devotion. (The pinyon's not the most spectacular of trees — but in the harsh desert landscape of the Mojave, it's a hero.)

Pinyonpine

Okay, the rest of the pics I'll put below the fold — please enjoy!

Reporter: In defense of the gotcha question

Somebody had to defend the much-despised "gotcha" question.  Ron Fournier, veteran reporter, digs into the legend and finds all kinds of juicy examples. Writes it up with great depth and precision.  For example, where did the phrase "gotcha" come from? Fournier agrees with another reporter, and suggests that Bill Clinton might have introduced it intoContinue reading “Reporter: In defense of the gotcha question”

Megadrought in SW by 2050: news shocks climatologist

Like many other Americans, I have had difficult absorbing the recently published news that megadroughts are scheduled into the future for the Southwest. Just did not want to hear that, read that, learn the details. But because I intend to go back to the Mojave this weekend, after being foiled last weekend, I forced myself to readContinue reading “Megadrought in SW by 2050: news shocks climatologist”

To know yourself you must sometimes be by yourself

Last month Backpacker magazine ran a tough-minded Mark Jenkins essay on journeying alone called Go Solo. At its heart it goes something like this: Ever since Aron Ralston got himself caught between a rock and a hard place in Utah’s Blue John Canyon, hung there for five days, and then amputated his right forearm toContinue reading “To know yourself you must sometimes be by yourself”

The photographer as fearless story teller

The highest compliment paid in the land of journalism, sez me, is to say that such-and-such a writer, Mike Royko in Chicago, say, or Carl Hiaasen in Miami, or Joseph Mitchell in New York, is/was "fearless." Well, in the land of photography, no one in our time has been more fearless than Duane Michaels. (NotContinue reading “The photographer as fearless story teller”

The soar into the stratosphere of the 1%

As one news organization after another has gotten on board the income inequality bandwagon, the graphics have gotten ever telling. Each seems to be competing to best tell the story graphically. The WSJ had an especially good set of interactive graphics on Inequality in America lately. But here's the simplest and perhaps the best toContinue reading “The soar into the stratosphere of the 1%”

An inequality graphic that’s not a chart but a cartoon

Take a glance at this depiction of the raging income inequality debate. It's refreshing, because on this subject there have been approximately 573 stories, studies, and graphs, graphs, graphs posted in the past 48 hours or so in the press, and this is about the only one that's been humorous. It's incredible, the volume of this debate, and its implications, inContinue reading “An inequality graphic that’s not a chart but a cartoon”