Year's End, Finally

By (nearly empty) ferry across San Francisco Bay to the city we went for the day, navigating The Embarcadero from the Ferry Building to Pier 39, just like the tourists do. Only this year there are no tourists; only local folks walking, jogging, scootering, biking, skating or singing their way along the waterfront.

It was the first time in years that I've been there but most of the old landmarks remain -- Fog City Diner, Pier 23, Coit Tower, the sea lions. San Francisco is the kind of city where even if you live here you don't mind playing tourist.

Otherwise, it was a mellow, melancholy day, a chance to look back over 2020 and wonder at its endless cycles of chaos, collectively and personally. I spent the first nine days of last January in a skilled nursing facility, the next two months in an assisted living community, and the rest of the year living in different households with my children.

We gave away virtually all my possessions before  I gradually started recovering my health, which early on had not been a given. But I also started posting these essays to Facebook, almost by accident, and made lots of new friends.

Although technically I was retired, my workload easily equalled that when I was employed. Several reporters asked me to help them on investigative projects; I did and loved it, as always. It finally occurred to me that in my case, "retired" means the freedom to write, all the time and without any strings attached.

Besides my essays, I started curating the news because people encouraged me to do that. This space on Facebook became my own little daily broadcast. Since it was an election year, there was plenty of political news, but it unfolded like a train crash in slow motion. The emergence of an authoritarian president ended any sense that this could be a normal election cycle. It was impossible to remain neutral, which is my training and my inclination. I had to speak out.

Because it wasn't a normal election -- the choice was democracy or tyranny.

Huge environmental insults, including monstrous wildfires and hurricanes, presaged an early arrival of the long-predicted climate changes that will alter life on the planet. I developed a sense of urgency and mission to somehow contribute to raising consciousness about climate change while there is still time -- if indeed there actually is still time.

***

The election has not even been certified yet, but the signs are already clear that the Democratic Party is splintering ideologically. The left is dissatisfied with Biden's moderate approach and wants a much more radical agenda. Progressives are already blaming the party's center wing for losing seats in the House and Senate they thought should have been won.

The problem with that analysis is "How could they have won? By being more leftist?"

I doubt that.

There are attractive young radical Democrats, led by the charismatic A.O.C., but history warns us that when one of the parties veers too far from the middle, the electorate will turn away. So I'm talking about 2022 and 2024 now and I have two cautionary tales:

Goldwater in 1964 and McGovern in 1972. One too far right, one too far left. Both catastrophic electoral failures.

I've got bad news for my many progressive friends -- Americans are not going to elect a self-professed socialist at this stage in our history. So any attempt to move the Democratic Party that far leftward is doomed to failure. Besides, any political movement that demonizes Republicans generally and excludes small-town, rural Americans is a movement that will almost certainly backfire.

Biden has the right approach for now -- heal the country, beat the virus, bring back the economy, try to serve everybody. Speak particularly to those alienated voters who supported Trump. Trust me, they are not all QAnon fanatics and idiots. And their sense of alienation is real.

Perhaps our best hope as a nation and a people is to rebuild the institutions of democracy, including our local press, and forge a consensus on overcoming the existential threat of global climate change. We need alternative energy systems, sustainable environmental policies, new housing initiatives, wealth equality, and end to racism, equal rights for all, and an equitable distribution of resources.

These are not socialist ideas; these are survivalist ideas. 

***

Every night as I sort through the news, there are odd items that make me stop and wonder what the hell is going on out there beyond my window. This night one such report is that squirrels have been attacking people in Queens. When I mentioned this to my 12-year-old grandson, he had the perfect observation:

"I guess 2020 just had to squeeze one more crappy thing out in its final hours."

***

The news:

* "Our son Christopher Allen was killed in South Sudan. We urge Biden to protect journalists like him." (Joyce Krajian and John Allen / WashPo)

* Significant numbers of coronavirus patients experience long-term symptoms that send them back to the hospital, taxing an already overburdened health system. (NYT)

* As U.K. coronavirus cases hit record high, health-care workers are overwhelmed (WashPo)

* Will Pence Do the Right Thing? -- On Jan. 6, the vice president will preside as Congress counts the Electoral College’s votes. Let’s hope that he doesn’t do the unthinkable — and unconstitutional. (NYT)

* A top federal prosecutor who issued a bizarre statement during the 2020 campaign that helped fuel President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud has announced his impending resignation. U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania David J. Freed, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, said Tuesday that he will resign his office at midnight on Jan. 1, just 19 days before Joe Biden is sworn into office as the 46th president of the United States. [HuffPost]

* Bracing for a possible Iranian-linked attack, U.S. officials warn ‘the threat streams are very real’ (WashPo)

* Experts say that the worst of climate change’s effectshave arrived more quickly than even many scientists expected. And that has wide-ranging implications about which parts of California are habitable, as well as how many resources must be devoted to managing fires, figuring out where crops will grow and more. (NYT)

* Legal Abortion, Once a Long Shot in Catholic Argentina, Now Within Reach  -- A bill before the Senate would make abortion legal in the predominantly Catholic nation, the homeland of Pope Francis. Its approval likely would have significant effect across Latin America. (NYT)

* Squirrel-Mania! Queens Residents Describe In Graphic Detail Being Attacked By Crazed Rodents (CBS)

***

The Twentieth Century Is Almost Over

Back in 1899, when everyone was singing "Auld Lang Syne" 
A century took a long, long time for every boy and girl. 
Now there's only one thing that I'd like to know 
Where did the 20th century go? 
I'd swear it was here just a minute ago 
All over this world. 

And now the 20th century is almost over, 
Almost over, almost over 
The 20th century is almost over 
All over this world. 
All over this world, all over this world 
The 20th century is almost over, all over this world. 

Does anyone remember the Great Depression? 
I read all about it in True Confession 
I'm sorry I was late for the recording session 
But somebody put me on hold. 
Has anybody seen my linoleum floors 
Petroleum jelly, and two World Wars? 
They got stuck in the revolving doors 
All over this world. 
And now... 

The winter's getting colder, summer's getting hotter 
Wishin' well's wishin' for another drop of water. 
And Mother Earth's blushin'' 'cause somebody caught her 
Makin' love to the Man in the Moon. 
Tell me how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm 
Now that outer space has lost its charm? 
Somebody set off a burglar alarm 
And not a moment too soon. 
Because... 

Old Father Time has got his toes a tappin' 
Standing in the window, grumblin' and a rappin' 
Everybody's waiting for something to happen. 
Tell me if it happens to you! 
The Judgment Day is getting nearer 
There it is in the rear view mirror. 
If you duck down I could see a little clearer 
All over this world! 

 -- © by Steve Goodman, John Prine

P.S. Factcheck: It apparently ended twenty years ago.

-30-

Where It Does Hurt

In recent weeks, I've been reading news story after news story about the struggle of local arts and journalism organizations to survive this pandemic. For that matter, nonprofits of all stripes are clearly in trouble.

At the same time, the accumulation of wealth by the few is accelerating. One appalling story today is how Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg are earning the equivalent of major stimulus packages on their own while Congress struggles to send $600 to people -- a paltry sum that isn't going to provide much relief to anybody for long.

The stock market remains at record heights while so many small businesses are closing up shop we're getting inured to the story. Around here, we are getting fearful of asking about this shop or that one, fearful of the answer. There are too many stories of this kind to tell and with the disappearance of local news outlets in many places there is no one to tell them.

The damage this is doing is going to be difficult, possibly impossible to undo. The interwoven arts and media ecologies are so disrupted at this point, with thousands of local newspapers dead or reduced to broadsheet status that any attempts to right this matter are starting from a point of weakness. But we will try.

Meanwhile, as I've warned repeatedly, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has shielded free speech on the Internet, has also led us to the verge of a new era of censorship, this time enforced by the very Internet giants that that landmark 1996 legislation enabled to thrive.

The authoritarian president who declared journalists the "enemy of the people" so abused the truth in such egregious ways that he has forced the social media companies into censoring him, or at least trying to.

In the process, they have walked into a trap where his approach to communications -- the Big Lie -- is prevailing over First Amendment to the Constitution. We are all in deep trouble as a result.

People like me are overmatched by those who label what we do as "fake" news. Trump may have lost the election but he didn't lose his war on the press. Although he didn't articulate his hatred of the arts specifically, they are his collateral damage.

Public health experts warn that dark days are ahead in the pandemic.

Dark days are ahead for many other reasons as well.

***

Here's the latest dose of what Trump calls fake news:

* Even as global carbon emissions were expected to decrease by about 7% this year due to coronavirus restrictions on normal activities, this has only “briefly slowed ― but far from eliminated ― the historic and ever-increasing burden of human activity on the Earth’s climate,” United Nations enviromental researchers wrote in a December report. This year has seen record-breaking heat, wildfires and storms. [HuffPost]  

* Child labor in palm oil industry tied to Girl Scout Cookies (AP)

* Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg fortunes grow by nearly $1 Trillion during pandemic (USA Today)

* Vaccinations lag as hospitalizations hover near record high (WashPo)

* New York Bans Most Evictions as Tenants Struggle to Pay Rent (NYT)

* The use of Snapchat, Instagram or TikTok can fray or strengthen teenagers’ ties to their friends, depending on whether the pals communicate the same way. (WSJ)

* Kentucky Is Hurting as Its Senators Limit or Oppose Federal Aid -- Urban and rural fortunes diverge in the state, with the pandemic compounding troubles that predated it. (NYT)

* Coronavirus infections have barely touched many of the remote islands of the Pacific, but the pandemic’s fallout has been enormous, disrupting the supply chain that brings crucial food imports and sending prices soaring as tourism wanes. (AP)

* Mexico is home to the world’s most powerful drug cartels, who have terrorized the country for years. Now the country is poised to try something different by legalizing one of their products: marijuana. (WSJ)

* South Africa imposes strict new rules as it surpasses 1 million covid-19 cases (WashPo)

* Drainage works unearth Roman baths in heart of Jordan's capital (Reuters)

* Spotify Celebrates 100th Dollar Given To Artists (The Onion)

***

Hurt

 (Best version by Johnny Cash)

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real

The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end

And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair

Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I'm still right here

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end

And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

Songwriter: Michael Trent Reznor

Roots in Love

Like humans, trees live together in families. The parents raise their children, care for them when they are ill, share food and warn each other of impending danger. In "The Hidden Life of Trees," Peter Wohlleben recounts the scientific evidence for all of this, including that trees communicate with each other through their root systems.

Wohlleben says it's hard for us to comprehend the social and emotional life of trees because we live on such radically different time scales. He describes a spruce tree in Sweden that is over 9,500 years old -- 100 times older than a very elderly human being.

I knew a 95-year-old man (not a tree) where I was living earlier this year. He loved to play dominoes with a friend and he welcomed me to watch so I might learn how to play the game.

The two men usually played in the game room at our facility, but it was closed off for repairs one day so we decided to repair to his room. I'd never before visited another resident's quarters.

In his room was a centrally displayed photo of his wife, who had passed away years earlier. Clearly, she had been the love of his life. And when he spoke of her, it was always in the present tense.

When I think about the truest measure of enduring human love, it usually is based in the continued ability to communicate with each other. Call it intuition, empathy, or just an unusually mutual understanding, but loving couples always seem to have achieved this kind of bond.

Besides trees and humans, many other animals and plants communicate and maintain social organizations, of course: Ants, elephants, fungi, monkeys, lions, flowers, bushes, penguins...the list goes on and on, without even mentioning domesticated species like dogs and cats.

By contrast, a broken communication system seems to signal impending death of a relationship in any species. It certainly ends the chance for human couples to stay together, for example.

So I wonder, do trees ever get divorced? Kicked out of their families? Go to couples' counseling? Probably not, I'm guessing, and maybe we could learn something from that.

With so few of the many animal and plant species even catalogued yet, let alone studied and understood, and at the same time so many of them endangered by human domination, I have a pessimistic feeling about our species surviving anything near as long as the time scale of that Swedish spruce.

For that reason, one field we desperately need to encourage our students to pursue is biology with all of its subsets (zoology, microbiology, genetics and evolutionary biology) in order to better enhance our appreciation for and conservation of our fellow living species.

We need to do this as if our lives depended on it.

***

The latest news...

* A divided nation asks: What’s holding our country together? (AP)

* The House of Representatives on Monday voted to override President Donald Trump's veto of the sweeping defense bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act, delivering a bipartisan rebuke to the President. (CNN)

 * The Place Hit Hardest by the Virus -- The coronavirus has disfigured Gallup, a small New Mexico town near Native American reservations, that is now one of the hardest hit places in the country. (NYT)

* After a year of pandemic and protest, and a big election, America is as divided as ever (WashPo)

* The Pandemic Is Imperiling a Working-Class College -- The coronavirus has hurt Indiana University of Pennsylvania, but its financial problems were planted years ago. (NYT)

* When he was 4, Santiago Potes' parents fled Colombia and settled in Miami. Now, at 23, he's a new graduate of Columbia University — and the first Latino DACA recipient to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. (NPR)

* As COVID-19 ravages U.S., shootings, killings are also up (AP)

* The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday said it is issuing long-awaited rules to allow for small drones to fly over people and at night, a significant step toward their use for widespread commercial deliveries. (Reuters)

* The high-altitude Whitebark Pine is vital to its ecosystem, but it’s being decimated by a fungus. Its admirers are fusing old and new methods to bring it back. (Wired)

* Biden accuses Trump appointees of obstructing transition on national security (WashPo)

* A former official in the George W. Bush administration blasted Republicans Saturday for continuing to back an “unhinged” and “delusional” Donald Trump and his twisted “fantasy” about a rigged presidential election. Elise Jordan, an MSNBC political analyst who worked as a speechwriter for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, commented as Trump seems eager to sow chaos to get the GOP to block the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6. [HuffPost]

* President Trump’s donors — the vast majority of whom are working-class supporters and retirees contributing just a few dollars a month — put $10.5 million into the erstwhile billionaire’s own personal businesses over the course of his presidency, a HuffPost analysis found. Some $8.5 million came from the Trump campaign and related entities that Trump controls directly. [HuffPost]

* The pandemic forced us to live our lives online. (WashPo)

* Hypnosis, now going virtual, is gaining more acceptance from doctors, researchers and entrepreneurs. But potential patients remain skeptical. (WSJ)

* A new species of flowering plant has been found in Hawaii and the details have mystified botanists.“Only one individual of the new species, named Cyanea heluensis, is currently known from a remote location in West Maui,” Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources said. (Sacramento Bee)

* Current polling in Georgia Senate races: Perdue (R) leads Ossoff (D) by 0.1%; Warnock (D) leads Loeffler (R) by 1%. (538)

* In a Village of Widows, the Opium Trade Has Taken a Deadly Toll -- Afghan men in an impoverished border settlement die trying to smuggle opium into Iran, leaving behind loved ones forced to survive on their own. (NYT)

* Heavy snow forecast over wide areas of Japan (NHK)

* China imprisons citizen journalist for Wuhan lockdown reports during height of coronavirus outbreak (WashPo)

* Journalism got more dangerous in 2020 — including in the United States (WashPo)

* How Biden can undo damage to U.S.-backed news outlets that counter authoritarian propaganda (WashPo)

* Minneapolis Announces Plan To Replace Police Officers With Thousands Of Heavily Armed Social Workers (The Onion)

***

"Highway Patrolman"

My name is Joe Roberts I work for the state
I'm a sergeant out of Perrineville barracks number eight
I always done an honest job as honest as I could
I got a brother named Frankie and Frankie ain't no good

Now ever since we was young kids it's been the same come down
I get a call over the radio Frankie's in trouble downtown
Well if it was any other man, I'd put him straight away
But when it's your brother sometimes you look the other way

Yeah me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family well he just ain't no good

Well Frankie went in the army back in 1965
I got a farm deferment, settled down, took Maria for my wife
But them wheat prices kept on droppin' till it was like we were gettin'
Robbed
Frankie came home in '68, and me, I took this job

Yeah we're laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain't no friend of mine

Well the night was like any other, I got a call 'bout quarter to nine
There was trouble in a roadhouse out on the Michigan line
There was a kid lyin' on the floor lookin' bad bleedin' hard from his head
There was a girl cry'n' at a table and it was Frank, they said

Well I went out and I jumped in my car and I hit the lights
Well I musta done one hundred and ten through Michigan county that night
It was out at the crossroads, down 'round Willow bank
Seen a Buick with Ohio plates. Behind the wheel was Frank

Well I chased him through them county roads
Till a sign said "Canadian border five miles from here"
I pulled over the side of the highway and watched his tail-lights disappear

Me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

-- Bruce Springsteen (Covered by Johnny Cash)

-30-

Brand Name Parenting

 

Living under the undisputed flag of church-state capitalism, we obediently raise our children to be brand-sensitive "consumers" -- an identity I abhor. We also teach them to be good citizens, neighbors, friends, workers, jury members and adventurers, among other roles, but capitalism is so all-powerful that trying to raise anti-consumers would be doomed to failure, and we know it. 

Forget us; the sheer allure of stuff and of peer pressure will easily overcome any parental hesitance at raising the next generation of buyers. And let's face it -- that is what it really means to be a loyal American.

This Democrat vs. Republican stuff is small potatoes compared to Saks Fifth Avenue vs. Ross Dress for Less.

In this battle, I suppose I gave in without a fight. When forging connections with my kids in their formative years, the brand-name gods choices pretty much made my choices for me while I was focused on silly distractions like political ideology, religion and philosophy. You know the lofty stuff, like do you prefer Freud or Jung?

But kids see through all that.

When my first-born hit the phase where clothes were her passion, Nordstrom Rack became our main hangout and I willingly dropped a ton of money on our outings there. 

When my second-born introduced me to grunge, I took her to the Hard Rock Cafe.

As my first son and I bonded around sports; after the game it had to be McDonald's.

Then came a gap of 13 years when you might have expected that I would have caught on to the game, but no luck on that score. I was still tilting at the wrong windmills.

Since my younger kids came and went as a unit for years, every Saturday morning like a pack of mall rats we journeyed to Target, where I purchased them generic toys that all ended up broken and discarded precisely at the expiration date, followed by lunch at Sizzler, where we all knew the menu by heart before we even entered the place for the very first time.

Had any of us departed from our pre-scripted preferences at lunchtime there, it would have been an event worth noting in a parenting journal.

As all of my six children grew, one by one they extracted personalized experiences from me seemingly separate from brand. Thus my oldest daughter accompanied me on research trips to Tucson and L.A., where at universities you can buy your way into we dug up dusty artifacts for articles I was editing. Those included the story of a white woman who went into the internment camps with her Japanese husband, and became an artist documenting what she saw there.

That woman later had a nervous breakdown, waiting for aliens on a rooftop.

My second daughter wore a gold skirt and high heels as we took a cab to Les Mis on our first trip together to New York. She has a great voice so I enrolled her in singing lessons at a music school at Fort Mason.

My oldest son went with me on a business trip to Chicago; then we drove to Michigan via Indiana, one of the last places you could purchase fireworks legally year-round. We bought a box full and mailed to ourselves in California.

The post office let it go through and many undocumented explosions occurred as a result. The Mill Valley police never had a clue.

On my second go-around, my fourth child drew me into coaching kids' sports at a level I hadn't previously been willing to venture. On our very first soccer team, at the age of six in our small suburban Maryland town, he and his teammates lined up for our first game, secured the ball at midfield, turned and scored on themselves without interference from our well-trained goalie.

If you want to learn a thing or two about brands, look at a soccer uniform.

My third son, on a trip with me to New York, so charmed the entire Editorial Board of The Nation magazine that he ended up at the center of the boardroom right next to Katrina vanden Heuvel, who nearly turned the running of the meeting over to him. That would be at the epicenter of anti-capitalism but we did fly American.

And don't get me started on Xbox vs. PlayStation.

Finally, my youngest accompanied me almost everywhere as she emerged as her own independent woman at a tender age, an artist, and the one who finally taught me to shop with a bit more discerning eye. She expertly moved me from Safeway to Trader Joe's and from the mass market shops to niches like Claire's or JoAnn.

Now somewhere in this essay, this thread about brands really started unraveling, which was the main point I've now failed to make. How Harvard v. Princeton of me!

All that really matters is that the possessions never stopped piling up, which made my transition to a bag lady last year all the more lengthy, while still being a strangely exhilarating  experience. And it was my children, appropriately, who presided over the disposal of my possessions.

True to our semi-Marxist roots, we just gave everything away. And when it comes to presents from now on, it's gonna be Etsy all the way.

***

Today I have one true honor: To recommend that you check out the "Journal of the Plague," which exists at the intersection of literature, politics, the pandemic and the collective alienation we all share at this precise moment in history.

Co-founders Susan Zakin and Brian Cullman sometimes publish my essays, which is awesome, and it's almost free to subscribe <https://www.journaloftheplagueyear.ink/join-the-tribe>. By so doing, you can help good young writers survive the Covid-19 crisis that is threatening our creative ecosystem.

***

The news:

* Trump is driving the country through chaos from behind the wheel of his golf cart.Over the Christmas weekend, he was the only man with the power to forestall a government shutdown on Tuesday, restore jobless benefits to millions of laid-off Americans and prevent further economic calamity in the days ahead. Trump appeared interested in doing none of that until Sunday, when days after receiving it, he reluctantly signed a Covid relief and government funding bill his own administration helped negotiate and that his own aides claimed he'd approved days ago. But his Sunday night signature was too late to prevent unemployment aid from lapsing. (CNN)

* Trump’s Fraud Claims Died in Court, But the Myth of Stolen Elections Lives On -- For years, Republicans have used the specter of cheating as a reason to impose barriers to ballot access. A definitive debunking of claims of wrongdoing in 2020 has not changed that message. (NYT)

* U.K. variant of coronavirus appears in Canada, elsewhere, despite containment efforts (WashPo)

* Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday expressed concern that the worst may still come in America's battle against Covid-19, agreeing with President-elect Joe Biden's recent assessment that the "darkest days" in fighting the virus lie ahead. (CNN)

* Makers of Folgers coffee, Scott toilet paper and others are investing in factories and new products, wagering that pandemic habits like growing beards and fixing quick lunches will stick around. (WSJ)

* Market Edges Toward Euphoria, Despite Pandemic’s Toll -- Investors of all stripes piled into stocks this year, creating levels of froth reminiscent of the dot-com boom. Analysts say there’s room to go higher, but some worry about a bubble. (NYT)

* Holiday Sales Rose, but Not by Much (WSJ)

* China's economy forecast to overtake US in 2028 (NHK)

* Ancient Snack Bar Unearthed in Pompeii -- Archaeologists working in the ruins of the former Roman city this month excavated a thermopolium, or snack bar, containing food that dates back to A.D. 79 (AP)

* Snail, Fish and Sheep Soup, Anyone? Savory New Finds at Pompeii -- The ancient site is the archaeological gift that keeps on giving. A food shop excavated this month suggests that its ancient residents had singular culinary tastes. (NYT)

* Until Biden’s win is certified, the U.S. remains vulnerable (WashPo)

* Early Vaccine Doubters Now Show a Willingness to Roll Up Their Sleeves -- Polls show that pervasive skepticism is melting, partly because of the high efficacy rates in trials and the images of real people getting the shot. (NYT)

* More vehicles are hitting showrooms with automated driving features, raising questions about driver distraction. (WSJ) 

* A Stinging Setback in California Is a Warning for Democrats in 2022 -- Democrats lost four swing House districts in the state, suggesting that their hold on a number of formerly Republican seats is tenuous at best. (NYT)

* ‘Una mariposa con las alas rotas’: La búsqueda de una solicitante de asilo transgénera para llegar a California (KQED)

***

"Falling in Love" by Cigarettes After Sex (Thank you, Suzanne Marie)

When I hold you close to me
I could always see a house by the ocean
And last night I could hear the waves
As I heard you say, "All that I want is to be yours"

Falling in love
Falling in love
Deeper than I've felt it before with you, baby
I feel I'm falling in love with all my heart

Back when you were far away
We would go on dates to watch the same movie
And you were imagining sitting next to me
And holding my hand for the whole thing

Falling in love
Falling in love
Deeper than I've felt it before with you, baby
I feel I'm falling in love with all my heart

-- Songwriter: Gregory Steven Gonzalez

-30-