Andrew Murr

CALIFORNIA GOVERNORS NAMED Brown have long personified West Coast liberalism. From 1959 to 1967, Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, espousing "responsible liberalism," spent lavishly, building freeways, water projects and superb public universities.

THE MENENDEZ SAGA KEEPS GETTING stranger. Last week brothers Erik and Lyle were back in a Los Angeles courtroom. This time they were claiming not abuse but poverty-their multimillion-dollar inheritance presumably all gone.

AMID THE AFTERSHOCKS STILL SHAKING Woodland Hills, chiropractor Mike Spagnoli is counting his losses. The remains of a parking garage occupy the Olympic-size pool, and the X-ray machine lies on the floor.

JURY TO HILLARY: THE VERDICT IS in. Cutting the cost of health care sounds great. But when it comes to curbing benefits, watch out. Last week a California court awarded a whopping $89 million in damages to the family of a woman who died after her health-maintenance organization refused to pay for a controversial bone-marrow transplant that doctors hoped would cure her breast cancer.

FIRE--FED BY THE treacherous Santa Ana winds, sweeping through the canyons and roaring across the tindery flatlands--has been an essential part of nature's plan for southern California for millennia.

Four trophies sit on the living-room shelf in the Carson, Calif., home of Milton and Regina Jenkins. There's a pair of cheerleading awards for 13-year-old Risha and another for her skill at math.

Pete Wilson went to the California Statehouse in 1990 as the quintessential country-club Republican. Affable and urbane, he won a closely-contested governor's race by campaigning as "the compassionate conservative." But there was nothing genteel about Wilson last week as he promoted a hard-line plan to staunch illegal immigration.

For Gary and Cathy Dean, the California Dream has led to...Nevada. Gary, 46, is a victim of the construction industry's decline in southern California. After collecting unemployment for more than a year--and sending out some 500 resumes--he found a job last fall as project manager for a construction crew refurbishing an apartment complex in Las Vegas.

When a Southern Pacific freight derailed near the town of Dunsmuir, Calif, on July 14, spilling nearly 20,000 gallons of a potent pesticide into the Sacramento River, it created an ecological blank slate: 45 miles of prime riverine habitat reduced to complete sterility.

The report, compiled during the White House transition, must surely rank as one of the more fascinating and poignant documents of the Bush presidency. Forty-four pages long, it is entitled, "All the Presidents' Children," and it is a compendium of the private and not-so-private problems of presidential offspring through the years.