Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

NASCAR instituted a series of safety measures since the death of Dale Earnhardt in the 2001 Daytona 500, but all the memories of how dangerous the sport can be came rushing back Monday night when Ryan Newman was involved in a horrific crash that sent him to the hospital.

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“He is in serious condition, but doctors have indicated his injuries are not life threatening,” Roush Fenway Racing said in a statement. “We appreciate your thoughts and prayers and ask that you respect the privacy of Ryan and his family during this time. We appreciate your patience and cooperation and will provide more information as it becomes available.”

The crash occured on the last lap of the 209-lap race, the longest in Daytona 500 history, which had Denny Hamlin and Newman battling for the lead when Ryan Blaney pushed Newman past Hamlin. Newman took the lead and then he and Blaney locked bumpers, sending Newman to the wall and airborne. He was then hit head-on by Corey LaJoie and then Newman’s car slid on its roof, throwing sparks and even fire.

It took safety workers several minutes to extricate him from the car before he was taken to Halifax Medical Center.

Hamlin went on to win the race in the second closest margin in Daytona history, 14-hundredths of a second over Blaney. Hamlin also became the first back-to-back winner since Sterling Marlin won in 1994 and ‘95. It was Hamlin’s third win in five years and the fourth for Joe Gibbs Racing, whose namesake was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame this year.

“We pushed Newman to the lead and then we got a push from the 11 [Hamlin],” Blaney said before knowing Newman’s condition. “I kind of went low and he blocked that and so I was committed to pushing him to the win and have a Ford win it.

“I don’t know. We just got the bumpers hooked up wrong and I turned him. … It looked pretty bad. I was trying to push him to the win. I don’t like saying that things just happen because I feel really bad about it.”

Read more Daytona 500

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UCLA BASKETBALL

Charisma Osborne scored 22 points, including seven in overtime, and No. 8 UCLA rallied to beat 15th-ranked Oregon State 83-74 on Monday night.

Japreece Dean added 22 points and 12 assists and Michaela Onyenwere had 16 points and 11 rebounds for the Bruins (22-3, 11-3 Pac-12). They overcame a 14-point deficit in the third quarter.

Mikayla Pivec had 19 points and nine rebounds before fouling out with 3:42 left in overtime for the Beavers (19-7, 7-7), who have dropped three in a row. Destiny Slocum also had 19 points but was held to three points in the five-minute extra session.

The Bruins never trailed in overtime, getting 3-pointers from Osborne and Dean. The Beavers were limited to two field goals and three free throws.

KINGS

The Kings traded Tyler Toffoli was traded Monday to the Vancouver Canucks for forward Tim Schaller, 20-year-old prospect Tyler Madden, a second-round pick in the 2020 NHL draft, and a conditional fourth-rounder 2022 — a seemingly big haul for a player on an expiring contract.

“He was terrific,” Kings general manager Rob Blake said in a text of Toffoli, 27, who had spent all eight seasons of his NHL career with the Kings. “Like [former Kings forward Kyle] Clifford, has meant so much to [the] organization. They are Stanley Cup winners.”

From the start of the season, Toffoli had been targeted as a potential trade chip. In the last season of a contract worth $4.6 million in annual average value, he appeared to be a top-six luxury for a team that didn’t figure to factor into the playoff race.

In the opening two months, however, the former second-round pick was struggling to keep his place near the top of the Kings’ lineup. After scoring four points in the first five games, he tallied only one goal in the next eight before coach Todd McLellan made him a healthy scratch on Oct. 30.

He returned to the lineup but managed only eight points (three goals, five assists) over his next 18 appearances. Eventually, on Dec. 10, he was dropped to the fourth line.

Then, he turned around his season.

Beginning with a two-point performance on that December night against the New York Rangers, Toffoli went on a hot streak. In his last 28 games, he had 21 points (12 goals, nine assists), a plus-six rating, three game-winning tallies and a strong 13.6 shooting percentage. He ascended back to the top line and took the team lead in goals (18). After his four goals in two games last week, he was named the NHL’s third star of the week.

Madden, a third-round pick in 2018 currently playing his second season of college hockey with Northeastern University, was considered one of the Canucks’ best prospects. In 27 games at the NCAA level this season, he had 37 points (19 goals, 18 assists) and a plus-four rating.

The acquisition of a second-rounder, meanwhile, gives the Kings 10 total picks in the draft, including multiple selections in the second, third and fourth rounds.

DODGERS

When Justin Turner saw Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred’s comments Sunday in which he defended his investigation into the Houston Astros’ illegal sign-stealing scheme and referred to the World Series trophy as a “piece of metal,” rage boiled.

“I don’t know if the commissioner has ever won anything in his life,” Turner said in front of his locker Monday. “Maybe he hasn’t. But the reason every guy’s in this room, the reason every guy is working out all offseason, and showing up to camp early and putting in all the time and effort is specifically for that trophy, which, by the way, is called the Commissioner’s Trophy.

“So for him to devalue it the way he did yesterday just tells me how out of touch he is with the players in this game. At this point the only thing devaluing that trophy is that it says ‘Commissioner’ on it.”

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DUCKS

Andrew Mangiapane had three goals and an assist, and the Calgary Flames rallied for a 6-4 victory over the Ducks on Monday.

Matthew Tkachuk had a goal and an assist for Calgary, which trailed 3-1 early in the third period. Sam Bennett and Sean Monahan also scored.

Mangiapane’s 12th goal got the Flames within one 4:46 into the third. After Bennett tied it 19 seconds later, Mangiapane set up Tkachuk at 12:59. Tkachuk’s initial shot was stopped, but he fired in the rebound from a scramble.

Mangiapane completed his first career hat trick with an empty-netter, taking a pass from Johnny Gaudreau. Mangiapane’s four-point performance also was a career best.

Adam Henrique, Jakob Silfverberg, Nicolas Deslauriers and Devin Shore scored for the Ducks. Ryan Miller made 37 saves.

SOCCER

Carlos Vela has played 72 times for Mexico, taking part in two World Cups and winning two Gold Cups. Yet for all his international success, Vela remains as much an enigma as an icon in his homeland, where he has never played a club game.

Part of that veil will be lifted Tuesday when he leads LAFC into Estadio León for a CONCACAF Champions League playoff game, his first in Mexico in anything other than the tri-colored kit of the national team.

“It’s a game everyone’s been waiting for, the most important game of this part of the season,” León president Jesús Martínez said in Spanish.

“This game is going to draw a very important audience and we’re very excited.”

So is Vela, who left Mexico and the Chivas academy system for Europe when he was 16, beginning an odyssey that would see him play for seven teams in three countries before leading him home again 15 years later.

“Obviously it’s my country. I love Mexico,” Vela said. “I’m happy to have the chance to play there. I hope it’s a great game.

“I hope I score some goals. And I hope we win.”

TODAY’S LOCAL MAJOR SPORTS SCHEDULE

All times Pacific.

Kings at Winnipeg, 5 p.m., FSW

BORN ON THIS DATE

1895: College football player George Gipp (d. 1920)

1938: Former Dodger player Manny Mota

1945: Golfer Judy Rankin

1947: Marathon runner Carlos Lopes

1950: Former Angel Bruce Kison (d. 2018)

1960: Hockey player Andy Moog

1964: Former Dodger Kevin Tapani

1967: Soccer player Roberto Baggio

1969: Hockey player Alexander Mogilny

1981: Basketball player Andrei Kirilenko

DIED ON THIS DATE

1933: Boxer James J. Corbett, 66

1998: Baseball broadcaster Harry Caray, 83

2001: Race car driver Dale Earnhardt, 49

2001: Baseball player Eddie Mathews, 69

2015: Basketball player Jerome Kersey, 52

AND FINALLY

Manny Mota talks about playing with Roberto Clemente. Watch it here.

The Rev. Kori Pacyniak is believed to be the first transgender, nonbinary priest in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement.

SAN DIEGO — 

The conversation began in typical fashion, with a question many grandparents ask: “When you grow up,” Kori Pacyniak’s grandmother wondered, “what would you like to be?”

At that point, the chat took an atypical turn.

“I want to be a priest,” said Kori, then an 8-year-old girl from a devout Polish Catholic family.

Grandmother: “Only boys can be priests.”

Kori: “OK, I want to grow up to be a boy.”

Now 37, Kori Pacyniak no longer wants to be male — or female. Pacyniak now identifies as nonbinary, someone who is not strictly feminine or masculine. (And someone who has abandoned gender-specific pronouns like “he” or “she” in favor of the more inclusive, if sometimes confusing, “they.”)

While Pacyniak left behind standard gender roles, the youthful fascination with the priesthood never faded. On Feb. 1, Pacyniak was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement.

The Rev. Kori Pacyniak is now pastor of San Diego’s Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community, a Serra Mesa church that preaches “A New Way to be Catholic.” For this parish, Pacyniak also represents a new way, as they are believed to be the first transgender, nonbinary priest.

Founded in 2005 by Jane Via and Rod Stephens, Mary Magdalene celebrates Mass with a liturgy that, aside from some tweaks in the wording, would be familiar to most Roman Catholics. The church is not recognized by the San Diego Diocese, however, and the Vatican has excommunicated several of the women ordained in what has become a global movement.

Mary Magdalene now has about 120 registered parishioners; 60 to 70 regularly attend 5 p.m. Sunday Mass at the church’s temporary home, Gethsemane Lutheran Church. Most in the congregation were raised as Catholics, yet were disillusioned by the church’s refusal to ordain women. Even among these believers, though, there was some initial hesitation about a nonbinary cleric.

“For some congregants,” said Esther LaPorta, president of Mary Magdalene’s board, “I think at first it might have been something to get used to.”

Among those who have had to adjust: Via, the 73-year-old pastor emeritus.

“I’m struggling to refer to Kori as ‘they,’” Via said. “When there is a single person and we know that is just one person, well, I’ve never used the word ‘they’ for a single person. I know Kori gets frustrated with me at times.”

Usually, though, the priest responds to this confusion with a charitable laugh.

“This is hard?” Pacyniak said. “Learning to spell my last name as a child was hard. Welcome to my world!”

A restless search

Kori Pacyniak grew up in Edison Park, a neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side. The tightly knit Polish community shared a common language, customs and beliefs. Friends, neighbors and family, Kori’s comrades in the Polish Scout troop and Polish folk dancing troupe — all were Catholic.

Like many children, Kori daydreamed about careers. Some days, the goal was to become a Navy SEAL. On other days, a professional soccer goalie. Or a Catholic nun. Always, though, there was the hope that the impossible dream Kori had shared with a grandmother would, somehow, become possible.

“As they went through college and started studying theology, this really became a topic of conversation,” said Basia Pacyniak, 67, Kori’s mother. “It was very much what Kori wanted to do.”

Majoring in religious studies and Portuguese — “no employable skills,” Kori cracked — the undergraduate came out as bisexual. Pacyniak was still searching, though, still examining gender identity and career paths. Although president of Smith’s Newman Assn., an off-campus Catholic organization, Pacyniak was frustrated by the church’s positions on women and sexuality.

“Other people wanted to become president,” Pacyniak said. “I wanted to overthrow the Vatican.”

This restlessness continued post-graduation. After an administrative job in Los Angeles, Pacyniak enrolled in Harvard Divinity School’s master’s degree program. The new grad student came out as transgender and started to identify as male. This venture into masculinity was brief and unsatisfactory.

“I realized that box was just as restrictive as female,” Pacyniak said. “Neither male nor female identification works for me.”

For a time, Pacyniak considered converting to a church that, while similar in some ways to Catholicism, ordains women and welcomes LGBTQ clergy. Again, though, something didn’t seem quite right.

“I thought that might be my church home,” Pacyniak said of the Episcopal Church. “But am I too Catholic to be Episcopalian?”

Yet Catholicism posed barriers to Pacyniak. For one thing, Rome recognizes only two genders, male and female. And…

“Right now,” said Kevin Eckery, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, “ordination is only open to natural-born males.”

Pacyniak completed studies at Harvard, and later enrolled at Boston University’s School of Theology. There, Pacyniak studied how to minister to LGBTQ military service members in the years following the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

But in 2016, a friend forwarded a job listing. Mary Magdalene needed a pastor. Candidates didn’t have to be ordained, if he, she or they were willing to work toward ordination.

In January 2017, Pacyniak began serving as Mary Magdalene’s pastor.

‘Queer theology’

The Rev. Caedmon Grace is a minister at the Metropolitan Church of San Diego, a church that grew out of the LGBTQ community. Even here, there are ongoing discussions about the language of worship.

Consider John 3:16. A familiar New Testament verse, it’s often translated as “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…”

“Our practice in the MCC is to use inclusive language,” said Grace. “So that has become ‘For God so loved the world that God sent the begotten one.’ We’re not identifying God as male or female.”

This may not be the translation heard in most Christian churches, yet the emerging field of “queer theology” questions many of the assumptions of traditional religious prayer and practice.

“We have to get out of the hetero-normative lens we use for understanding everything,” said Pacyniak, who is completing a doctorate in UC Riverside’s queer and trans theology program. “We have to make trans and queer folks see themselves as part of the liturgy.”

Even at Mary Magdalene, a church that prides itself on its inclusive nature, this requires some work. When Pacyniak arrived, the liturgy included a line, “We believe that all women and men are created in God’s image.”

“This is great,” Pacyniak told Via after Mass. “But for people who don’t identify as women or men, that doesn’t work.”

The line was rewritten: “We believe that all people of all genders are created in God’s image.”

Creating a “spiritual support community” for trans and nonbinary people is a key goal of Mary Magdalene’s newly ordained priest. So is reaching out to the congregation’s men and women.

“Let’s make the tent as big and as open as we can,” Pacyniak said. “It’s an ongoing opportunity. Don’t get too comfortable; have conversations with people on the margins.”

All in good time

Through this past January, Via assisted Pacyniak on the altar during Mass. The new pastor studied, learning theology, liturgy and administrative duties, before being ordained as deacon in June 2019 and then, on Feb. 1, as a priest. More than 100 attended the ordination, so the ceremony was moved from Mary Magdalene’s small space to the soaring Gothic sanctuary of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral.

The pews held Pacyniak’s parents, Basia and Bernard; brother, sister-in-law, two nephews and several cousins; friends from high school, Smith, Harvard and Boston University; plus dozens of congregants from Mary Magdalene.

“Kori is very open and kind,” said Carol Kramer, who has attended Mary Magdalene for a decade. “I think they’ll be a really good pastor.”

Pacyniak is a pastor and a student of queer theology, yes, but so much more: a baseball fan — with shifting allegiances, from Cubs to Red Sox to Padres — a regular Comic-Con attendee and, this priest insists, a Catholic. This brand of Catholicism may not be recognized by the Vatican, but that doesn’t bother Pacyniak’s parents, who remain practicing Roman Catholics.

“We are very proud of Kori,” said Basia Pacyniak. “The movement and the community is very welcoming, very open, and we are very supportive of that community. I feel that it is not in conflict with the Catholicism that we practice.”

The Pacyniaks foresee a day when their church will include female priests. Give it time, counseled Bernard Pacyniak, 66.

Lots of time.

“I imagine,” he said, “in 100 years this will all be part of one organization.”

Rowe writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Authorities are investigating an officer-involved shooting that resulted in the death of a man whom police were chasing on foot.

The shooting happened at about 10:10 p.m. Sunday, in the area of East Rhea Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Long Beach. Officers had tried to stop a man on a bicycle for a vehicle code violation, police said.

The man immediately fled on foot and a chase began, according to the Long Beach Police Department. “After several deescalation attempts by the officers, the suspect continued to be uncooperative, ” the department said in a statement.

After officers deployed an electrical shock weapon, the department said, the suspect “then brandished a firearm toward one of the officers. Officers indicated at least one shot was fired by the suspect, and an officer-involved shooting occurred.”

The police rendered aid to the man until paramedics arrived. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Officials with the Los Angeles County coroner’s office are working on identifying the man, whose age was not released. A gun was located at the scene — a silver semiautomatic handgun with a black handle, according to a photo released by authorities.

No officers were injured. They were in the area Sunday night as part of an ongoing task force effort to curb crime in Long Beach, police said.

The department said it is conducting a “multilevel review” of the officer-involved shooting. “The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office will conduct an independent investigation of the incident, as they do with all officer-involved shootings that result in injury or death.”

Anyone with any information is asked to contact Long Beach Homicide Dets. Oscar Valenzuela and Eric Thai at (562) 570-7244. Those wishing to remain anonymous may call (800) 222-TIPS (8477) or visit www.lacrimestoppers.org.

Homicide detectives are investigating three dead bodies that were found Monday morning near a gravesite in a Perris cemetery.

The victims, described only as three men, were discovered sometime before 10:30 a.m. at the Perris Valley Cemetery in the 900 block of North Perris Boulevard, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff’s deputies roped off the cemetery, and police activity in the area has been heavy all day. No information about the cause of death, or how the bodies were discovered, has been released.

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“Central Homicide Investigators are on scene assuming the investigation,” the Sheriff’s Department said. “While they are processing the scene, the Perris Valley Cemetery remains closed to the public.”

Aerial footage from TV news outlets showed the bodies lying on the grass on cemetery grounds. Onlookers watched with disbelief and horror.

“One of them was hunched over, the other one was laying down and the other one looked like he … was wrapped up in a sleeping bag type,” Randy Rios told KTLA-TV, Channel 5.

Perris Mayor Michael Vargas, in a statement Monday afternoon, said he has been in touch with law enforcement officials and is monitoring the latest developments.

“I am heartbroken by the horrific crimes that have taken place today in our hometown of Perris,” he said. “Our deepest sympathies lie with the families of the victims of these horrible crimes … and we are committed to seeing those responsible for these horrific acts brought to justice.”

It was a rare thing, a few decades ago, to hear anyone in academia talk about Central Americans.

“People would study Mexicans with no problem,” said Cecilia Menjívar, professor of sociology at UCLA. “But Central Americans were seen as a niche, a small group of people that didn’t seem as relevant.”

But on a recent afternoon, Menjívar, a native of El Salvador, stood inside a packed UCLA lecture hall introducing a notable lineup of professors invited to speak about Central American migration. They were social scientists from Los Angeles, Texas and different parts of Mexico including Chiapas, Tijuana and Mexico City.

“So many people showed up, we have two overflow rooms,” Menjívar said, sounding thrilled and a little surprised.

The central purpose of the conference was to show that Central Americans are not newcomers to the U.S. or to Mexico. They’ve been migrating north for at least a century, due to wars, poverty, violence and U.S. intervention.

Hondurans started arriving in the late 1800s in New Orleans, where bananas and other fruit from Central America entered the U.S. Salvadoran and Nicaraguan coffee producers began settling in small numbers in San Francisco in the early 1900s. And during and after World War II, U.S. wartime industries recruited scores of Central American workers.

Today, much of the contention over immigration centers on migrants from Central America. A record number of families have flocked to the U.S. border in recent years to seek refuge.

More than 430,000 family members from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were caught at the U.S. border during the fiscal year that ended last September, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Nationwide, more than 3 million Latinos have roots in these three Central American countries.

Recent immigrants have been met by both Democratic and Republican administrations with aggressively restrictive policies that have separated parents from their children, held them for extensive periods in detention centers and drove them back into Mexico and Guatemala to discourage them from applying for asylum.

Long before Central American migration dominated national headlines, some academics were pushing to study this region’s migrants, to get a deeper understanding of their history; the forces that drive them north and the complex relationship of their native countries to the U.S.

Menjívar began studying the topic as a grad student in the 1990s. By then, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans had arrived in the U.S., seeking refuge in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. They escaped a brutal 12-year civil war that the U.S. government fomented and sponsored in the 1980s, spending billions of dollars to help support government oligarchs and right-wing death squads.

These migrants were received with hostility and suspicion in the U.S. Less than 2% were granted political asylum, giving way to a community without documentation and few to no rights.

Menjívar wanted to explore, from an academic standpoint, why the U.S. wasn’t receiving these migrants as war refugees. But finding any established research about Central Americans was difficult.

“I looked everywhere and could only find a couple of academics out there who were interested in this topic,” she said. “People didn’t understand what I was doing.”

Over the years, she and a small but committed number of scholars — several of them Central Americans — have worked diligently to create space for the field. They’ve published articles and books, created panels at academic conferences and began teaching courses at universities.

In 2000, after nearly a decade of intense lobbying, Cal State Northridge became the nation’s only university to establish a Central American Studies department with a Central American studies double major, major and minor. Back then, Cal State Northridge was home to 1,200 students of Central American descent, more than at any other American university.

At UCLA, Menjívar and a few other colleagues, some from El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, have partnered with Central American students to create a close-knit community of scholars passionate about studying the region and its diaspora.

In November, galvanized by the growing presence of Central Americans in Los Angeles and by national politics, many lobbied to have the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana & Chicano Studies add “Central American” to its name. Scholars hope to establish a Central American studies minor within the next year and a major within the next five.

At the gathering at UCLA, professors from the U.S. and Mexico took turns presenting work that many had been chipping away at for years — collecting data at migration centers, conducting interviews, surveys and studies — all to get the most accurate picture of the Central American migrant story. They delivered their lectures and responded to questions, in English and Spanish, inside of a lecture hall that stayed packed from 8 a.m. until past sundown.

The conference, planned about a year in advance, coincidentally took place the same week as a nationwide outcry erupted over another sort of migrant storytelling.

It had to do with “American Dirt,” a novel by Jeanine Cummins, that made headlines after the publishing industry and critics promoted it as the defining immigrant story of our times. When Latinos pushed back, calling the novel cartoonish, and riddled with inaccuracies and stereotypes, it sparked a weeks-long controversy over misrepresentation and cultural appropriation.

Scholars at UCLA didn’t bring up the book directly during the conference, but many were well aware of the uproar. In a world of research where precision and nuance is everything, they had their own concerns.

“It’s upsetting,” said Alfredo Trejo, 27, a PhD student of political science at UCLA. “We spend so much time and energy on our research. We have to make sure we get everything correct. Then, this book that distorts so much is hailed as the one book everyone should read to understand migration today.”

Late last year, Trejo, whose mom is Salvadoran, and other graduate students established the Central American Isthmus Graduate Assn. or CAIGA, a group that promotes Central American research on campus. They work side by side with the Central American Student Union, UNICA, an organization made up of undergrad Central American students.

Both groups are quite active at UCLA. Among other things, they want university research on Central Americans to be more accessible to the outside world.

“Academics usually make things sound a lot more complicated than they are,” Trejo said. “We want to make sure we’re working closely with the community at all times.”

Many of the students who enroll in Central Americans courses are often searching for themselves, trying to recover some part of their history. Their pasts are fragmented, obscured by a culture of silence and trauma. Also, by a U.S. school system that rarely, if ever, teaches Central American history.

Over the years, Rubén Hernández-León said he has seen Latino students explore their own communities with a great sense of rigor and commitment. Still, says the director of UCLA’s Center for Mexican Studies, he regularly has to push back against critics who think students of color are not equipped to research their own histories.

“It’s the so-called ‘me-research’ argument,” Hernández-León said. “Some think you’re too close to the subject to be objective. You don’t have the distance to do the cold, scientific research.”

Hernández-León partnered with Menjívar and Leisy Abrego, a professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano and Central American Studies, to organize the recent conference on Central American migration.

One researcher, a longtime expert named Amarela Varela of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, spoke about the growing militarization of Mexico, as the country has partnered with the U.S. to push back Central American immigrants since the 1980s. According to the National Commission of Human Rights, she said, 8 out of 10 crimes against immigrants are are committed in collusion with Mexican state officials.

Rodolfo Casillas, a scholar from the Latin American Social Sciences Institute in Guatemala, spoke about the great anxiety Mexicans are feeling about Central American migration. The fear, he said, is largely overblown and race-based. As of 2015, Central Americans made up little more than half a percentage of Mexico’s population.

Floridalma Boj Lopez, an assistant professor at Cal State Los Angeles, talked about Guatemalan Mayans, a community she knows well from growing up Mayan in Los Angeles. Boj Lopez explored the indigenous group’s traumatic history of genocide, war and poverty. She said when Mayans cross into Mexico, they face a disproportionate level of racism and struggle to find anyone who understands their language.

“We’re talking about an entire structure that doesn’t recognize them and excludes them,” Boj Lopez said.

In recent years, scholars studying Central Americans have cultivated a close network across the country, with students eager to learn from each other and grow the field.

“It’s still new and it’s still growing. There’s mentorship happening on a national level,” said Abrego, who began teaching at UCLA a decade ago.

Abrego championed having her department add Central Americans to its title. She constantly promotes Central American research on social media and encourages everyone to share their work using #CentralAmericanStudies.

Those who worked to establish the Central American department at Cal State Northridge recognize how much the field has grown.

“That department didn’t come from the benevolence of the Cal State system,” said Roberto Lovato, the program’s former coordinator. “It was an actual political struggle.”

Their battle, in some ways, was similar to what Chicanos and African American studies endured in the 1960s to establish their own departments at universities, including Cal State Northridge. What helped Salvadorans, he said, was their long history of organizing in times of warfare and political upheavals.

Today, Lovato said, he’s encouraged by the growing number of young Central American scholars committed to studying their communities.

“These are places where our culture is being preserved, developed and documented,” Lovato said. “And intellectually, these are scholars who will not be stopped in their pursuit of learning about themselves.”

If “West Adams,” now at the Skylight, had been produced three years or so ago, it might have been dismissed as overwrought.

Who knew that such drastic change could transpire in such a short span of time? Playwright Penelope Lowder has her finger firmly on the pulse of American culture, and this patient is in dire need of resuscitation. Her world premiere play is a modern-day parable about the rise of racism, disrespect for the rule of law and the brutally strident rhetoric that has infected the national discourse.

The play commences as a comical sendup about urban gentrification. New to L.A.’s West Adams district, two engaging but clueless couples set out to make their mark on the neighborhood by winning a contest to sing the National Anthem at a local block party.

Michael (Clayton Farris) wants to make a splash by displacing the area’s African American incumbent on the neighborhood council, despite the reservations of his wife (Jenny Soo) about the expense of such a campaign. The product manager at Michael’s bouncy castle company, Edward (Andrés M. Bagg), a Peruvian national whom Michael sponsored for entry into the country, is a born-again Christian happily expecting his first child with his white wife (Allison Blaize).

To say much more about the plot would spoil the production. Suffice to say that monsters are at large on West Adams. Genial though these newcomers may seem at first, their increasingly extreme efforts to insinuate themselves into the scene and uproot the status quo take an appalling turn.

David Murakami’s projection design is the standout of this handsomely designed production. Award-winning director Michael A. Shepperd and his wonderful cast lift the rock off Lowder’s dishearteningly fine play. Indeed, there are plenty of laughs to be had — before the horror sets in.

“West Adams” launches the Skylight Theatre’s season of three plays from SkyLAb, an innovative residency program that fosters new plays written by company members. It’s a brilliant debut that bodes well for the rest of the season.

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In 2018, Pam Tanowitz choreographed T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” with an original score by Kaija Saariaho and a scenic design that incorporates paintings by Brice Marden. It was the 75th anniversary of the publication of Eliot’s four meditations on time and spiritual transience written at the start of World War II.

The premiere, which included actress Kathleen Chalfant (“Angels in America,” “Wit”) reading Eliot’s four poems, took place that summer at Bard College, and the response was of extravagant praise for every element of the collaboration, though most of all for Tanowitz’s dance. In his New York Times review, Alastair Macaulay found it “the greatest creation of dance theater this century.” Last May, the work traveled to London and to equally rapturous response.

It is that admirable. “Four Quartets” was revived for only a third time by CAP UCLA with two performances Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at Royce Hall. I saw the matinee.

The movement by Tanowitz, a choreographer’s choreographer long known to East Coast dance aficionados but barely on the radar of the larger dance public (the London “Four Quartets” was the first time her work has been seen outside the U.S), has a suppleness that is usually unexpected and never uninviting.

Everything sounds good. Saariaho’s incandescent score for string quartet and harp — superbly played by members of the Knights and given a resplendent amplified sound design by Jean-Baptiste Barriére — dazzles in its intensity. Chalfant reads Eliot’s sublime stanzas with a restrained elegance such that each reaches the listener as a marvel of imagery.

Speaking of imagery, everything looks just as good. Clifton Taylor turns Marden’s Minimalist paintings into a luminously lit scrim, backdrop and set of panels around which dancers perform.

No art form, here, competes with the other, and that even includes the diaphanous costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung. The pale pastels blend effortlessly with Marden’s bold primary colors and transparency enhances dancers’ movements. The lighting, also by Taylor captures the soul of illumination.

Most important and most impressive of all, nothing competes with or makes an unenviable effort to find meaning in a text that stuffed with it. “Four Quartets” by Eliot goes deep. “Four Quartets” by Tanowitz, et. al., is thankfully and magnificently superficial.

There may be little about “Four Quartets” that is danceable, but its lines dance off the page when read with Chalfant’s unerring lilt. Eliot creates a seeable sense of place, each poem has both a specific and otherworldly setting. Stillness is evoked in a hundred ways. “There could be no dance, and this is only dance,” Eliot writes early on in the first poem, “Burnt Norton,” as he tries to go beyond poetry with poetry.

Miraculously, Eliot seems, 75 years later, to speak directly to us. “Distracted from distraction by distraction,” he writes, as though yesterday, “Filled with fancies and empty of meaning.” Or: “Not here the darkness, in this Twittering world” (the capital T, mine).

In this Beethoven year celebrating the composer’s 250th anniversary, when practically every composer is asked to have a dialogue with Beethoven, Eliot demonstrates how he could, with a brilliant intentionality, shape his “Four Quartets” as though they were late Beethoven quartets. Christopher Walken, of course, quotes Eliot in the 2012 film “A Late Quartet.”

Tanowitz has said in interviews that she visited the British locations Eliot describes to get a feel for them, but she steers clear of any illustration. The same goes for all the contributors. What that means is they steer clear of Eliot’s own intentions.

The poet seduces us into the very essence of being, taking in what was then fashionable Asian thought about how all we can know is of the present as it is lived. He wrote during a very real crisis of faith in humanity at time of unparalleled destruction. For him, redemption is, controversially, found necessarily in Anglican prayer. Appropriation of Hinduism, quantum physics and all else is disapprobation.

The dance begins with a long abstract solo, expressive but, opposite of Eliot’s manner, not insistent upon anything specific. A man enters. Relationships in duos, and later ensembles, remain indistinct and, because of that, of lasting interest. Throughout the 75-minute performance, Tanowitz’s outstanding company serves to add to Eliot not interpret. Complexity grows upon complexity.

After a dazzling harp introduction, Saariaho’s score doesn’t really get going until the second poem, “East Coker,” with long passages of spectral harmonics, vibrating and “twittering” (not to poetic birdsong or anything else). Marden’s paintings, made over the last nearly four decades, are marvelously what they are. No more and no less, but spiritual, for sure, while hinting toward Eastern religion.

In the third poem, “The Dry Salvages,” music and dance come closest to amplifying Eliot, climaxing as the poet begins to reach for revelation. In the last poem, “Little Gidding,” named for a 17th century Anglican community, Eliot, living in terror of Nazi bombing, finds Western civilization only savable from fire by fire, namely Christ.

There is no fire for this stage. Music and dance take on the character of dirge. Eliot stops with: “And the fire and the rose are one.” Musicians and dancers stop as they are, not one but many.

In the end, movement, light, music and text are all surfaces in this “Four Quartets” that prevent Eliot’s words from congealing. Those words are taken on their word, standing on their own, becoming their own kind of theater.

Eliot used modernity to reject modernity. But rejecting Eliot’s rejection of poetry and even further rejecting Eliot’s reasoning and orthodoxy, this exceptional response to “Four Quartets” achieves genuine universality and profound nowness.

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NEW YORK — 

Novelist Charles Portis, a favorite among critics and writers for such shaggy dog stories as “Norwood” and “Gringos” and a bounty for Hollywood whose droll, bloody western “True Grit” was a bestseller twice adapted into Oscar-nominated films, died Monday at age 86.

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Portis, a former newspaper reporter who apparently learned enough to swear off talking to the media, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s in recent years. His brother, Jonathan Portis, told the Associated Press that he died in a hospice in Little Rock, Ark., his longtime residence.

Charles Portis was among the most admired authors to nearly vanish from public consciousness in his own lifetime. His fans included Tom Wolfe, Roy Blount Jr. and Larry McMurtry, and he was often compared to Mark Twain for his plainspoken humor and wry perspective. Portis saw the world from the ground up, from bars and shacks and trailer homes, and few spun wilder and funnier stories. In a Portis novel, usually set in the South and south of the border, characters embarked on journeys that took the most unpredictable detours.

In “Norwood,” an ex-Marine from Texas heads East in a suspicious car to collect a suspicious debt, but winds up on a bus with a circus dwarf, a chicken and a girl he just met. “The Dog of the South” finds one Ray Midge driving from Arkansas to Honduras in search of his wife, his credit cards and his Ford Torino. In “Gringos,” an expatriate in Mexico with a taste for order finds himself amid hippies, end-of-the-world cultists and disappearing friends.

The public knew Portis best for “True Grit,” the quest of Arkansas teen Mattie Ross to avenge her father’s murder. The novel was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1968 and was soon adapted (and softened) as a film showcase for John Wayne, who starred as Rooster Cogburn, the drunken, one-eyed marshal Mattie enlists to find the killer. The role brought Wayne his first Academy Award and was revived by the actor, much less successfully, in the sequel “Rooster Cogburn.”

Rooster was so strong a character that a new generation of filmgoers and Oscar voters welcomed him back. In 2010, the Coen brothers worked up a less glossy, more faithful “True Grit,” featuring Jeff Bridges as Rooster and newcomer Hallie Steinfeld as Mattie. The film received 10 Oscar nominations, including lead actor for Bridges, and brought new attention to Portis and his novel, which topped the trade paperback list of the New York Times.

“No living Southern writer captures the spoken idioms of the South as artfully as Portis does,” Mississippi native Donna Tartt wrote in an afterword for a 2005 reissue of the novel.

Portis was born in 1933 in El Dorado, Ark., one of four children of a school superintendent and a housewife whom Portis thought could have been a writer herself. As a kid, he loved comic books and movies and the stories he learned from his family. In a brief memoir written for the Atlantic Monthly, he recalled growing up in a community where the ratio was about “two Baptist churches or one Methodist church per gin. It usually took about three gins to support a Presbyterian church, and a community with, say, four before you found enough tepid idolators to form an Episcopal congregation.”

He was a natural raconteur who credited his stint in the Marines with giving him time to read. After leaving the service, he graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1958 with a degree in journalism and for the next few years was a newspaper man, starting as a night police reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal and finishing as London bureau chief for the New York Herald Tribune.

Fellow Tribune staffers included Wolfe, who regarded Portis as “the original laconic cutup” and a fellow rebel against the boundaries of journalism, and Nora Ephron, who would remember her colleague as a sociable man with a reluctance to use a telephone. His interview subjects included Malcolm X and J.D. Salinger, whom Portis encountered on an airplane. He was also a first-hand observer of the civil rights movement. In 1963, he covered a riot and the police beating of black people in Birmingham, Ala. Around the same time, he reported on a Ku Klux Klan meeting, a dullish occasion after which “the grand dragon of Mississippi disappeared grandly into the Southern night, his car engine hitting on about three cylinders.”

Eager to write novels, Portis left the paper in 1964 and from Arkansas completed “Norwood,” published two years later and adapted for a 1970 movie of the same name starring Glen Campbell and Joe Namath.

Portis placed his stories in familiar territory. He knew his way around Texas and Mexico and worked enough with female stringers from the Ozarks in Arkansas to draw upon them for Mattie’s narrative voice in “True Grit.” He eventually settled in Little Rock, where he reportedly spent years working on a novel that was never released. “Gringos,” his fifth and last novel, came out in 1991.

Portis published short fiction in the Atlantic during the 1990s, but he was mostly forgotten before admiring essays in Esquire and the New York Observer by Ron Rosenbaum were noticed by publishing director Tracy Carns of the Overlook Press, which reissued all of Portis’ novels. Some of his journalism, short stories and travel writings were published in the 2012 anthology “Escape Velocity.”

In recent years, the author lived in open seclusion, a regular around Little Rock who drove a pickup truck, enjoyed an occasional beer and stepped away from reporters. He did turn up to collect the Oxford American’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Literature and was known to answer the occasional letter from a reader. But otherwise, Portis seemed to honor Mattie’s code in “True Grit” for how to deal with journalists.

“I do not fool around with newspapers,” Mattie says. “The paper editors are great ones for reaping where they have not sown. Another game they have is to send reporters out to talk to you and get your stories free. I know the young reporters are not paid well and I would not mind helping those boys out with their ‘scoops’ if they could ever get anything right.”

SERIES

NCIS The team tries to piece together how a retired Navy officer obtained a rare and valuable coin. Mark Harmon and David McCallum star in this new episode of the procedural drama. 8 p.m. CBS

The Flash After months of searching for Sue Dearbon (Natalie Dreyfuss), Ralph (Hartley Sawyer) gets a lead on her whereabouts. Grant Gustin, Candice Patton and Danielle Panabaker also star in this new episode. 8 p.m. CW

The Resident Nic (Emily VanCamp) must work with Cain (Morris Chestnut) again as Red Rock opens its new neurosurgery center, but she and the rest of the staff discover that the facility is a far cry from what had been promised. Shaunette Rene Wilson, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Bruce Greenwood and Matt Czuchry also star with guest star Alex Hernandez. 8 p.m. Fox

SoCal Connected A new episode of the local news magazine series profiles the firefighters, paramedics and others assigned to Fire Station 9, which serves the nearly 5,000 people living on skid row. 8 p.m. KCET

Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Marisa Tomei, Jimmy Kimmel and John Turturro learn about the sacrifices their ancestors made to bring their families from Italy to America. 8 p.m. KOCE

Washington In “Father of His Country,” the conclusion of the documentary miniseries, the Revolution has been won, but as warring nations attack America’s borders and uprisings threaten from within, Washington builds the new United States while enduring treachery and personal attacks. 8 p.m. History

Bless This Mess Rio (Lake Bell) must come up with a new plan when Sierra (Nicole Richie) confesses something big on her wedding day. Also, Mike and Rudy (Dax Shepard, Ed Begley Jr.) devise a plan to make money from the New Yorkers who are coming in for the wedding and Beau and Kay (David Koechner, Lennon Parham) reach a turning point in their marriage. 8:30 p.m. ABC

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow After Sara (Caity Lotz) leaves Ava (Jes Macallan) in charge while she’s away on business, the team takes on its next Encore: Marie Antoinette. Matt Ryan and Brandon Routh also star. 9 p.m. CW

Frontline The new “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos” profiles the New Mexico-born entrepreneur, and documents Amazon’s rapid success and its global impact. 9 p.m. KOCE

Chopped In the finale, four repeat champions return for a shot at the championship. Scott Conant, Amanda Freitag and Giorgio Rapicavoli are the judges and Ted Allen hosts. 9 p.m. Food Network

black-ish Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross) is heartsick to discover that Diane (Marsai Martin) is no longer friends with Sophie (guest star Cleo Fraser). Also, Dre (Anthony Anderson) discovers a damaged wall that Junior and Jack (Marcus Scribner, Miles Brown) had concealed and makes them repair their expensive mistake. 9:30 p.m. ABC

FBI: Most Wanted A cult leader and the most trusted members of his flock go on the run after he orders his family killed. As Jess (Julian McMahon) and his team step up their pursuit of the fugitives, they begin to uncover illuminating information of this “man of faith” in his previous life as a con artist. Kellan Lutz, Roxy Sternberg, Nathaniel Arcand and Keisha Castle-Hughes also star. 10 p.m. CBS

New Amsterdam Max (Ryan Eggold) tries to do some creative budgeting when he discovers some hospital employees are about to go unpaid. Also, Bloom (Janet Montgomery) gets a visit from one of the last people she ever expected to see, while Iggy (Tyler Labine) takes some dubious measures to support a diagnosis he has made. Anupam Kher also stars with guest star Gina Gershon. 10 p.m. NBC

For Life As Aaron (Nicholas Pinnock) continues his fight to overturn his life sentence, some in his prison crew resent his decision to provide counsel to a white supremacist in order to settle his debt to another inmate (guest star Peter Greene). Also, District Attorney Maskins (Boris McGiver) responds when Aaron sues the New York Police Department to gain access to his case file. Brandon J. Dirden and Erik Jensen also guest star. 10 p.m. ABC

Project Blue Book When Hynek (Aidan Gillen) is kidnapped by the mysterious Man in Black, Quinn (Michael Malarkey) teams up with the CIA to track him down and save his life. 10:05 p.m. History

SPECIALS

Bernie Sanders: Town Hall Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders takes questions in Las Vegas. 5 p.m. CNN

Pete Buttigieg: Town Hall Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg takes questions in Las Vegas. 6 p.m. CNN

Amy Klobuchar: Town Hall Presidential hopeful Amy Klobuchar takes questions in Las Vegas. 7 p.m. CNN

We Are the Dream: The Kids of the Oakland MLK Oratorical Fest Oscar winner Mahershala Ali (“Green Book”) is an executive producer of this documentary filmed during the Martin Luther King Jr. Oratorical Festival, an annual event at which hundreds of young people from across the United States perform a combination of published and original poetry and speeches. 7 p.m. HBO

TALK SHOWS

CBS This Morning Gordon Corera; Susan Fowler; Beverly Johnson; Winnie Harlow. (N) 7 a.m. KCBS

Today (N) 7 a.m. KNBC

KTLA Morning News (N) 7 a.m. KTLA

Good Morning America Dwyane Wade; Billie Eilish; “Moulin Rouge!” performance. (N) 7 a.m. KABC

Good Day L.A. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Elizabeth Wagmeister; Lewis Howes. (N) 7 a.m. KTTV

The View Producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Isaac Wright Jr., the inspiration for “For Life.” (N) 10 a.m. KABC

Rachael Ray Cote de Pablo (“NCIS”). 10 a.m. KTTV

The Wendy Williams Show (N) 11 a.m. KTTV

The Talk Piers Morgan; NeNe Leakes guest co-hosts. (N) 1 p.m. KCBS

Tamron Hall A man is addicted to prescription medicine; reality star Alexis Haines, convicted of burglaries. (N) 1 p.m. KABC

The Dr. Oz Show Jussie Smollett has been indicted again on six new counts; developments in the Fotis Dulos case. (N) 1 p.m. KTTV

The Kelly Clarkson Show Dan Levy; Stephanie Beatriz; Kimora Lee Simmons. (N) 2 p.m. KNBC

Dr. Phil A father accused of abuse faces his daughter and 16-year-old drug-addicted son. (N) 3 p.m. KCBS

The Ellen DeGeneres Show Harrison Ford (“The Call of the Wild”). (N) 3 p.m. KNBC

The Real Matthew Cherry and Karen Rupert Toliver (“Hair Love”). (N) 3 p.m. KTTV

The Doctors Podcast porn; sexsomnia; how to raise children with resilience; kicking food cravings; water kefir. (N) 3 p.m. KCOP

Amanpour and Company 11 p.m. KCET; midnight KVCR; 1 a.m. KLCS

Conan Kevin Nealon. 11 p.m. TBS

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Robert Downey Jr.; Aidy Bryant; Little Big Town performs. 11:34 p.m. KNBC

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Comic John Mulaney; comic Fortune Feimster. 11:35 p.m. KCBS

Jimmy Kimmel Live! 11:35 p.m. KABC

The Late Late Show With James Corden 12:37 a.m. KCBS

Late Night With Seth Meyers Claire Danes; Zach Woods; Gavin Newsom; Elijah Wood performs. 12:37 a.m. KNBC

Nightline (N) 12:37 a.m. KABC

A Little Late With Lilly Singh Rainn Wilson; Matteo Lane. 1:38 a.m. KNBC

SPORTS

College Basketball Illinois visits Penn State, 3:30 p.m. FS1; Teams TBA, 4 p.m. ESPN; Teams TBA, 4 p.m. ESPN2; Creighton visits Marquette, 5:30 p.m. FS1; Kentucky visits LSU, 6 p.m. ESPN; Baylor visits Oklahoma, 6 p.m. ESPN2

NHL Hockey The Toronto Maple Leafs visit the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4 p.m. NBCSP; the Kings visit the Winnipeg Jets, 5 p.m. Fox Sports Net

For more sports on TV, see the Sports section.

A suitcase that’s heavyweight but lightweight, a battery charger that can get a car battery or a mobile phone going again, a vacuum that works on wet or dry messes, and a light that turns fingers into flashlight are our gear items for the month that make your traveling life easier.

It just keeps growing and growing

You’ve fit everything for your trip into a carry-on bag. No waiting at the luggage carousel when you land. But what if you make purchases at your destination? Just expand your bag, if you’re packing the new Hanke Foldable Expandable Wheeled Suitcase.

The ultra-lightweight (a tick more than 5 pounds) luggage is a 20-inch wheel-aboard but can expand to 24- or 28-inch check-through size in two zipper-release stages. Or it can fold down to less than 5 inches deep (then double fold if need be) and stash in other luggage.

The suitcase glides on four spinner wheels, has an adjustable shoulder strap, sewn-in double carry/pull handles, and a large zippered external pocket. Fully expanded, the capacity is about 24 gallons, but the sturdy, pliable material allows the bag to squeeze in more.

Because the double-zipper closure is at the top of the suitcase, you’ll have to pack from the bottom up. Placing heavier items at the bottom will make for easier rolling and, when expanded to check-through size, help keep the bag from tipping over.

Cost, info: The Hanke Foldable Expandable Wheeled Suitcase costs about $65

You’ll get a charge out of this

Your new battery pack may be able to charge multiple mobile devices simultaneously, but can it also jump-start your car and power a TV?

Mophie’s new Powerstation Go can do all that as well as charge mobile devices. And did we mention the bright, built-in floodlight? The 7-by-4-by-1½-inch rechargeable brick won’t fit in your shirt pocket (cargo pants maybe), but it slips easily into a glove compartment or tote and packs 44,400mWh of power into a relatively compact body.

To jump-start your car, plug the included color-coded mini jumper cables into their dedicated port, attach the black “- ” and red “+” clamps to your vehicle’s matching positive and negative battery terminals, and press the Powerstation’s jump-start button. When the flashing green button turns solid green, start your vehicle. The charger allows three consecutive attempts. (If the car still won’t start, the battery may be so weak you’ll need a mechanic.)

When the Powerstation is not being used to get back on the road, its wireless charging surface can juice up any Qi-enabled device with up to 5 watts of power. Its dual USB-A ports and a 115V AC wall outlet are compatible with any mobile device’s cable adapters.

Mophie includes a micro USB- to USB-A cable; alas, there’s no Lightning or USB-C port. With up to 65 watts of oomph, the AC outlet could be essential for charging laptops or running electronic devices with higher-output requirements.

Cost, info: Mophie Powerstation Go costs about $160 but is available for less from other online stores;

Embrace the suck

My new Make Lemonade Handheld Cordless Car Vacuum got a baptism by fire right out of the box. It’s small enough to fit in a cup holder, but its built-in lithium ion battery (fully charged using the included 12V car adapter) managed to clean up the mess from my carsick dog, thanks to its ability to clean wet or dry messes.

The combo flat hose/brush attachment got into the nooks and crannies, and an LED light helped ensure nothing was missed. I had to empty the little dirt repository twice, but that was quick and easy with a twist where the nozzle attaches to the barrel.

The included replaceable HEPA filter is said to help air filtration. This 2-pound trouble shooter did a respectable job on the mess, snarfing up crumbs and spills in follow-up testing.

Cost, info: Make Lemonade Handheld Cordless Car Vacuum costs about $60; replacement HEPA filter, about $8.

Light at your fingertips

Here’s a little light from an untapped digital source: your fingers. Coroler’s new Cool Fingerless LED Flashlight Glove lets users point and shoot a bright beam from tiny lamps atop the stretchy neoprene knuckles of the thumb and index finger. No need to hold a flashlight. On a night hike, the beams aim naturally at the path (or leash, if you’re walking the dog). The “finger lights” are especially helpful with close-up tasks: tinkering with finicky gears on a bike trip, inspecting under the hood of the car.

Whether you’re using a flashlight glove on one hand or both, your unoccupied fingers and all your fingertips remain unencumbered. The neoprene finger “sleeves” are held in place by a swath of nylon that houses the on/off power button and stretches across the back of the hand to an attached adjustable neoprene wrist band with a Velcro closure. The lights are powered by two replaceable CR2016 button batteries (included).

Coroler Cool Fingerless LED Flashlight Glove costs about $18 for one; may be less at other retailers.

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