JAMES MEIER -- Editor’s Notebook

I’m back. That’s about the quickest and simplest way to explain how

I’m feeling right now. I’m back in Southern California. And it’s great to

be back.

You see, I, a native Californian, left Orange County (and the state)

for the Chicago area in August 1999. I didn’t do so for the pursuit of

happiness, necessarily, but the pursuit of a whole new world (to borrow

from Disney’s “Aladdin”). Always the curious cat, I wanted to know how

other Americans lived.

More specifically, I wanted to know why some people lived not in

Southern California (where the song says it never rains, though I beg to

differ), but in the Midwest, where winter snow replaces sidewalks and

displaces parking spots, and summer humidity causes sweat breakouts in

unbeknownst places within milliseconds.

A year and a half later, I’ve got an answer: I have no clue

whatsoever. It must be the need to keep family close together. It can’t

be the snow because, even though it always made my day, my Midwestern

friends and co-workers couldn’t stand it and let me know it.

“Thanks a lot, James,” my former co-workers sarcastically threw in my

direction.

“You’re welcome for the cookies,” I’d say, referring to the

chocolate-chip cookie pie I’d bring in on snow days.

Yeah, it definitely wasn’t the snow that kept the natives there. The

summer didn’t seem to offer much either, with the aforementioned humidity

and all. No, I can only offer one real answer as to why the natives stay

there, besides their families. They’ve never lived elsewhere, at least

not in SoCal.

That must be it.

So, to make what could be a long story short enough for the newspaper,

I received the opportunity to return to (as they refer to it in a few

Illinois advertisements) “sunny California” and took it. So, here I am,

now an assistant city editor at the Daily Pilot.

Though I returned to Orange County to encounter six continuous days of

rain (and thinking that I had made a wrong turn on my drive west and

instead ended up in Seattle, where they now suffer our earthquakes), it’s

now sunny and warm, two adjectives seldom used in wintry Chicago.

Anyway, long before my Midwestern stint, I was born in Fountain Valley

and raised in Stanton, Irvine and Temecula (I’ll unfortunately never get

those latter two years back). I then returned to Orange County, where I

majored in journalism at Cal State Fullerton while working at

Disneyland’s Blue Bayou restaurant.

After college, I spent a few years as a reporter at the now-defunct

Tustin Weekly and then a year at the Orange County section of the Los

Angeles Times. At the Times, I continued to cover Tustin, but also added

Irvine, Buena Park, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Woods, Stanton,

Brea and Yorba Linda to the mix. As a result, I probably know much more

about those cities than I ever expected I would.

Now, I look forward not only to beginning my editing career at the

Pilot, but also getting to know the cities and residents of Costa Mesa

and Newport Beach. And, with “the warmth of the sun” (tribute to the

Beach Boys) now at my back, it’s great to be back. Thanks.

* JAMES MEIER is the assistant city editor of the Pilot.