Mr. Ayers Goes To Washington.

I've mentioned Nathaniel Ayers here previously, and his ongoing saga continues to be chronicled by the estimable Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez:

In those early days after we met 5 1/2 years ago, when Nathaniel Ayers slept on the streets of skid row, he was a dreamer. He'd play a two-string violin at the feet of the Beethoven statue and imagine a day when he would figure out how to get the two missing strings, or a day when he might visit a concert hall or play well enough to draw an audience.
But he never would have guessed that one day he'd be invited to the White House to meet the president and to perform at a celebration commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
"It's the most incredible thing I ever could have imagined," Mr. Ayers said a few weeks ago on hearing of the invitation through his sister, Jennifer.
To be honest, I had misgivings about the trip. I tend to err on the side of being overprotective and shielding my friend from stressful situations. Despite remarkable progress, he is still at the mercy of unpredictable storms like those that knocked him out of the Juilliard music school nearly 40 years ago with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
But the dreamer already had the scene in his head — Mr. Ayers goes to Washington. And he made a passionate appeal to our friendship, asking me please to be there with him.
OK, I said. But Mr. Ayers needed a new set of duds for his big day, so Bobby Witbeck, a longtime Ayers family friend, took him to a Hollywood Suit Outlet. Mr. Ayers knew exactly what he wanted, and when I later asked why he got a white suit, white shoes, white bowtie and white derby, I already knew the answer.
"Because it's the White House," said Mr. Ayers.

The rest is here.

Mr. Ayers Lets The Music Play.

L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez began writing about Nathaniel Ayers several years ago. Those stories were the inspiration for "The Soloist," which itself was no match for those inspired columns.
After many fitful stops and starts, Mr. Ayers has finally made it to the recording studio, and, once again, Lopez is there...

RAM Is Fabulous At The Forum.

RAM--Remote Area Medical--is an all-volunteer medical charity providing free health care in Los Angeles this week at the one-time Fabulous Forum, the old home of the Lakers. According to the Los Angeles Times, RAM will treat 1,500 people everyday over an eight-day period.

Read Times columnist Steve Lopez's accompanying piece here.

"There Are 8 Million Stories In The Naked City."

     This post's title is taken from the first half of the closing line in 1948's The Naked City.

    I have always loved reading newspaper columns. The 750-word form has long transfixed me, ever since I first read Jimmy Breslin in the New York Daily News in the 1970's. Breslin seemed to be writing for an audience of one--The Man in the Street--and his columns read like short, short stories.  They were stuffed with sharp detail; real locales, hustlers and hookers, politicians and policemen, and Breslin never wasted a word. 

     We are lucky in Los Angeles to have Times columnist Steve Lopez, one of the finest at his craft. I tracked down a reprint of a column he wrote about Wal-Mart in late 2003 after the Times had done a three-part series on the retail behemoth. Lopez wrote about the real cost of that $8.63 polo shirt and you can read that column here. 

     I mention all this due to Sunday's 60 Minutes segment concerning Lopez's relationship with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless Los Angeles man. I have read Lopez's columns on Nathaniel, who is a musically gifted paranoid schizophrenic and now the writer's friend.  The columns brim with honesty, respect, humanity and empathy, and are emblematic of a storyteller of the first degree.

     If you missed 60 Minutes this week, here's the segment.

     Those millions of stories in the Naked City?

    This is one of them: