This month saw your humble columnist notch two huge literary achievements, the kind ink-stained wretches dream about.

I was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the commentary category for my coverage last year about the political evolution of Latinos, making me just the third-ever Latino to achieve that distinction.

Maybe even more impressive, however, was that portions of a column I wrote a few years ago became mandatory reading for hundreds of thousands of high schoolers across the country.

The occasion was the AP English Language and Composition exam, that annual ritual for smarty-pants high schoolers that allows those who get a great score to earn college credit. The exact column, you may ask? Not the subject of my Pulitzer finalist nod, or my arcane stuff, or my street-level coverage of Southern California life. Or even my rants against In-N-Out, which is overrated.

Nope, the subject was… loquats. The small, tart fruit currently ripening on trees all across Southern California, which forever puzzle newcomers and delight longtimers and squirrels.

In 2021, I wrote a columna arguing that loquats, not citrus or avocados, are our “fruit MVPs” because they’re so ubiquitous and beloved by many of SoCal’s immigrant groups, including Latinos, Asians, Armenians and more. The piece also ridiculed an East Coast reporter who alleged that no one eats loquats in Southern California.

I’m very proud of it, but if I were to use one of my columnas to test college-bound high school seniors on their mastery of analysis and rhetoric, I wouldn’t have used that one. Someone tell that to CollegeBoard, the nonprofit that administers the Advanced Placement exams along with the SATs.

I found out about my columna‘s inclusion last week after the second round of AP English tests concluded. Friends of mine texted me that their children who took it were bragging to friends about how they knew the “loquat guy.” Students across the country took to TikTok to shout me out.

Some called it their favorite reading prompt. Others ridiculed my columna’s description of a loquat tree heavy with fruit as “glow[ing] like a traffic cone” or my stance that people who say no one eats loquats is an affront to Southern California’s “culinary soul.” Still others wondered what loquats were in the first place, how did they taste and where could they buy some.

In response, I created a TikTok account and filmed a short video of me silently staring at the camera while eating a loquat from my 4-year-old tree, which gave fruit for the first time this spring. “Hello I’m Gustavo Arellano the Loquat King,” a caption read. “What loquat questions can I answer?”

180,000 views later, I’m a TikTok loquat star.

But what exactly the AP test asked students about my piece remains a mystery.

A friend’s kid told me test takers were required to read a passage from my piece in the multiple-choice section and then answer questions about “word choice, claims, examples used, figurative language” and the like.

(I’m granting anonymity to the kid because CollegeBoard’s exam policy states that anyone who shares any content from exams that haven’t been publicly released will have their test scores “canceled, no retest will be permitted, and you may be banned from future testing.” Gosh, can’t you just give them detention?)

A CollegeBoard spokesperson declined to share the test questions about loquats with me because students are still taking it. They also asked I “not disclose any information about them” because CollegeBoard sometimes uses the same questions in future tests “and when information about them is shared, we have to discontinue their use.”

Too late!

I’m flattered, CollegeBoard. I’m not even angry that you didn’t bother to at least give me a head’s up. But I guess it’s par for the course: Although I did take AP English at Anaheim High with Ms. Sinatra, I skipped out on the test because I figured it was for dorks and goody two-shoes and I didn’t think I was either.

Oh, how wrong I was. I’ll stuff my sorrows by eating a bunch of loquats this weekend, because no one else eats them.

The week’s biggest stories

Valley fever cases are expected to spike in California

• For the second year in a row, California is on track to have a record-breaking number of valley fever cases, which public health officials say are driven by longer, drier summers.
• Valley fever is a lung infection that people get when they breathe in spores of the fungus that lives in dry soil, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• While valley fever shares many of the same symptoms as other respiratory diseases, including COVID-19, it takes about one to three weeks for valley fever symptoms to develop, and the illness can last a month or more.

A new COVID subvariant spreads rapidly as Trump pivots away from vaccines

Santa Monica residents go to war against Waymo

• There’s a battle brewing in Santa Monica with a fleet of unmanned, electric Waymo vehicles on one side, and exhausted, weary locals on the other.
• Using cones, cars and sometimes themselves, residents have taken to blocking the Waymos from entering their company-funded parking lot, so much so that the company has called the cops on them a half dozen times.

Trump administration threat to revoke Chinese student visas roils California

• Scholars and international students fear such an action could jeopardize the academic future of tens of thousands of Chinese students enrolled at colleges across the country, and threaten billions of dollars in tuition payments desperately needed by universities already facing the loss of research funding and other cuts effectuated by Trump’s education policies.
• The potential financial fallout is of acute concern in California, where Chinese students constitute the largest international group. About 51,000 Chinese nationals in California make up more than a third of the state’s nearly 141,000 foreign students.

More big stories

This week’s must reads

More great reads

For your weekend

Rite Aid’s Glassell Park location — including its Thrifty ice cream counter — closed in 2023, as part of the company’s debt restructuring after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company recently announced more store closures.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Going out

Staying in

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Gustavo Arellano, metro columnist
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, Sunday writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

In a unique alliance, prisoners at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center and California district attorneys are championing legislation to reform California’s prison system by introducing a pilot program for single-occupancy cells.

Ken Oliver, who spent nearly 24 years incarcerated — eight of those in solitary confinement — turned that trying time alone, in a cell the size of a closet, into an opportunity for self-improvement. 

“I literally turned my cell into a law library and studied the law for four years,” Oliver recalled. “Had I had a cellmate, I would not have been able to do that.”

AB 1140, sponsored by Assemblymember Damon Connolly, whose district includes San Quentin, mandates the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to implement a pilot program for single-occupancy cells by January 1, 2027. If approved, the program will designate four adult prison facilities where at least 10% of the incarcerated population will be housed in single-occupancy cells.

The bill emphasizes the importance of restorative sleep and reduced stress in promoting rehabilitation. Studies cited in the legislation highlight that overcrowded conditions can lead to increased stress and health issues among inmates.

“It causes less stress,” Oliver says of single-occupancy living for those incarcerated. “That actually soothes me a little bit, calms me down, allows me to go to things in a different perspective. When I’m forced to navigate that with another person, I’m actually restricting a piece of myself, or repressing a piece of myself because there’s another human being in close proximity that if I don’t do that, may cause violence, may cause death, which has happened in multiple cases inside the Department of Corrections.”

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins leads regular symposiums with inmates, whom she calls residents, at San Quentin. She worked alongside those serving time to craft the legislation. 

“It is probably the most unimaginable partnership between a district attorney and inmates in a prison,” she told CBS News Bay Area. “They have an overwhelming desire for us as prosecutors to understand the road that got them here. They also want to give back so that other people, other kids, youth, young people, don’t end up in the same place.”

Vincent O’Bannon, who collaborated with Jenkins on the legislation during his 15-year tenure at San Quentin, emphasized the potential benefits of single-occupancy cells. 

“Just being alone takes a great weight off of you,” he stated. “When you can go to a cell and know you don’t have to share it with anyone else, and you can just walk in and relax. It makes a difference.”

As Oliver reflects on his past and the potential impact of AB 1140, he remains hopeful. 

“Never fun to go back into the dungeon,” he said, referring to his time in confinement. 

Yet, he believes that the system that once confined him is now taking steps to enhance public safety and rehabilitation both inside and outside prison walls.

The state Assembly is expected to vote on the legislation next Tuesday. If approved, it will go to a vote in the Senate.

A San Mateo man is facing multiple felony charges after he allegedly opened fire at an SUV carrying three high school boys who had poured oil over his porch and egged his home, authorities said.

Craig Miceli, 54, told police officers that his daughter had been a victim of constant bullying at her high school and that he was infuriated by the pranksters’ antics, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors said the boys — two of them age 16 and another 17 — targeted the San Mateo home of a female classmate they did not like from Hillsdale High School.

First they spread oil over Miceli’s front porch on Friday. Then they returned in the early hours of Sunday morning and each threw an egg at his home.

Miceli fought yolk with lead, allegedly firing two shots at the boys’ SUV, one of which struck the panel above the front passenger side wheel, according to the D.A.’s Office.

He told police officers that he was already upset about having to spend time cleaning oil off his porch prior to the egging incident, so he angrily grabbed his gun and fired it at the boys’ car tires, prosecutors said. Miceli said he then dumped the weapon into Water Dog Lake.

Police later obtained a search warrant and recovered an illegal automatic rifle and several types of ammunition from his home.

Miceli was charged with three counts of assault with a firearm, one count of shooting at an occupied vehicle and two counts related to an unlawful assault weapon. He was arraigned in San Mateo Superior Court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The court issued a protective order banning Miceli from contacting the teenagers. His bail was set at $25,000, and he is due back in court for a preliminary hearing on June 9, according to the D.A.’s Office.