To Know May Be To Not Know

For a while now, anticipation has been building over the upcoming release of declassified U.S. government files on UFOs. A number of highly placed intelligence officials, including at least two former CIA directors, have publicly confirmed that sightings by seasoned fighter pilots have been occurring for decades now.

As the era of civilian air travel dawned in the wake of World War II, professional pilots also reported seeing odd objects, including syndical discs hovering, darting and speeding away in maneuvers human aircraft are not capable of.

After a brief period when such sightings were made public in the late 40s and early 50s, spurring many additional reports by civilians, intelligence agencies deemed all such incidents as classified events. 

Meanwhile, as our unclassified knowledge of the universe grew, we became aware that it was extremely unlikely that we are alone as an intelligent species in the vastness of space and time. Any life form just a tad more advanced than our own may well have solved the riddle of space travel well enough to travel between solar systems before we have been able to do so.

Today, as the topic moves from the realm of science fiction to scientific inquiry, we have to all be open-minded about the evidence. It's unlikely that anything conclusive has been discovered, such as an alien spaceship or alien life forms. But we now know enough to say that there is much more that we do not yet know.

Come to think of it, that could be said about virtually every question facing us as a species at this time.

Including Covid-19, its origin and its impacts.

Some of the pandemic's lasting effects are only now becoming apparent. Perhaps facing a common enemy in Covid-19 will prove to have unified us even though that may be difficult to see that at present due to our polarized political sphere. 

Meanwhile the political faultiness have shifted, dramatically in the case of the current Israeli-Palestine conflict.

For as long as I can remember, official U.S. government policy has been unwavering support for Israel, including massive foreign aid that guaranteed its military superiority in the Middle East. That support has remained constant through countless wars and bloody incidents in the region.

But now increasing numbers of younger people are pointing out the hypocrisy of American support for Israel when it mercilessly suppresses the human rights of its Palestinian population.

Accordingly, the moment may have arrived when Israel can no longer have it both ways -- calling itself a democratic ally of the U.S. while engaging in imperialistic land grabs and wanton murder.

Unfortunately, on the Palestinian side, Hamas doesn't help the prospect of a peaceful solution to the conflict by acquiring and firing rockets in response to the Israeli aggression. Pro-Palestinian advocates need to realize that and pressure for change there too.

All reasonable voices want a two-state solution and peace in the region. Perhaps the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged during the pandemic, and the emergence of a new generation of progressive leaders hold the key to us finally getting there.

Or perhaps we'll soon solve the UFO riddle and realize our earthly problems are no longer worth fighting about.

I for one would take either solution.

***

The news:

* Are We Entering a New Political Era? -- The neoliberal order seems to be collapsing. A generation of young activists is trying to insure that it’s replaced by progressive populism, not by the fascist right. (New Yorker)

* Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned Belarus’ interception of a Ryanair flight and arrest of an opposition journalist on board as a “shocking act” by the country’s leadership that threatened press freedom and the lives of passengers on board. President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered a fighter jet to accompany the plane and divert it to Minsk, where Raman Pratasevich was arrested. [HuffPost]

* The European Union is banning member airlines from Belarusian airspace after the country’s leaders brazenly forced down a commercial jet and arrested a dissident journalist. (WP)

* Before Rage Flared, a Push to Make Israel’s Mixed Towns More Jewish -- An eruption of Arab-Jewish violence inside Israeli cities has focused attention on a movement of religious nationalists seeking to strengthen the Jewish presence in areas with large Arab populations. (NYT)

* As India Stumbles, One State Charts Its Own Covid Course -- Kerala uses tracking of patients and supplies, a network of health care workers and coronavirus “war rooms” to succeed where the national government has fallen short. (NYT)

* Iran and the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agreed Monday to a one-month extension to a deal on surveillance cameras at Tehran's atomic sites, buying more time for ongoing negotiations seeking to save the country's tattered nuclear deal with world powers. (AP)

* That Covid escaped from a lab isn’t the predominant hypothesis for the pandemic’s origins, yet prominent scientists are calling for a deeper probe and clearer answers from Beijing. (WSJ)

* Dr. Fauci says he's 'not convinced' Covid-19 developed naturally (CNN)

* Lawmakers worry the toxic mood on Capitol Hill will follow them home -- Tensions among lawmakers have been running high since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. As House members head out of Washington for three weeks, some Democrats have concerns for their security back home. (WP)

* Half of New York Voters Stand by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Poll Finds (WSJ)

* Seven people are dead and 33 others injured following four separate weekend mass shootings in Ohio, South Carolina and New Jersey. This year is setting itself up to be particularly violent when it comes to gun violence, with 223 mass shootings recorded as of this month, according to nonprofit research group the Gun Violence Archive. [HuffPost]

* Biden administration moves toward making the pandemic work-from-home experiment permanent for many federal workers (WP)

*Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack? -- The Havana Syndrome first affected spies and diplomats in Cuba. Now it has spread to the White House. (New Yorker)

* NYC mayor: Public schools will be all in person this fall (AP)

* It’s Crunch Time and Biden’s Climate Gambit Faces Steep Hurdles -- He wants to require power companies to replace fossil fuels with clean energy. It’s a broadly popular idea but its path in Congress is perilous. (NYT)

* Rich in quartz, limestone, and algae, Lake Erie is also rich with seasonal color. (NASA Earth/Twitter)

* How UFO sightings went from joke to national security worry in Washington (WP)

* In a few years, there’s a good chance your Uber or Lyft ride will be in an electric vehicle. At least 90 percent of the miles driven by ride-hailing companies in California must be in electric vehicles by 2030, according to a new mandate by the state Air Resources Board. (Sacramento Bee)

* Water crisis ‘couldn’t be worse’ on Oregon-California border (AP)

* As hurricane season looms, Biden doubles funding to prepare for extreme weather (WP)

* New Orleans Airbnb Touts Location In Heart Of Historic Airbnb Quarter (The Onion)

***

"Alien" (excerpt)

sung by Dennis Lloyd

written by Nir Tibor

I'm feeling like an alien, baby
Riding around the world
I'm feeling like a stranger lately
'Round and around we go and around we go
'Round and around we go and around we go

So where can I go?
A million miles from home
What am I going for? How can I know
What I'm fighting for?

-30-

The Day Everything Stopped.7

When the orders came down in March 2020 to shelter-in-place due to Covid-19, most people had a place to shelter in. Due to an improbable sequence of events (illnesses, retirement, medical advice) I had three options. This was not necessarily a good problem to have, but one that would work itself. 

In the process my peer group turned completely over from mainly elderly people to mainly children. Suddenly I was many decades older than most of those around me.

The effect was stunning. Instead of isolating myself, monitoring my vital signs for indications of further decline, and finalizing my will, I suddenly was helping a 6-year-old learn to read, a 9-year-old puzzle over math, and a 12-year-old determined to develop his survival skills.

They had a lot of questions and expected me to have at least a few answers.

Looking into the future almost immediately replaced looking at the past. I stopped working on my memoir and reverted to my professional role of a newshound. Gathering, presenting and interpreting the daily news became my obsession.

In the process, I had many conversations with my grandchildren about what we were going through together. They had a far different view of Covid than my older friends -- they found it somewhat exciting, confusing and frustrating at the same time.

They didn't mind staying home from school, wearing masks, or mastering new technologies like Zoom calls. In fact they were already better using computers and mobile devices than their teachers.

But they couldn't have playdates, sleepovers or birthday parties with friends and this was an unwelcome change, to put it mildly.

One solution explored by many families was getting them pets. We did that here with baby quail. Another was to celebrate special occasions by converging on the house of a child whose birthday it was to create a shrine outside -- colorful sidewalk chalk greetings, flowers, and surprises in bags left at the front door.

Back at home, the family dinner hour became newly significant and a time when parents could exchange new information about the pandemic with their children.

There was no known treatment or vaccine, they explained, against a virus that was silent and invisible. You couldn't smell it, feel it or taste it. It came in on the wind and attached itself to you so you had to wash your hands constantly and avoid touching each other except when absolutely necessary. You could never touch a stranger. 

Most of all, we all had to remain separate in our family groups.

As if this all wasn't strange and scary enough, the kids got a first-hand dose of what that thing they kept hearing about -- climate change -- was all about when the worst wildfire season in history started up here in Northern California. The fires seemed to be everywhere around us and the smoke and haze moved into our region for days at a time. Had we not already been confined to the house, this would have chased us in because you couldn't breathe outside.

The sky turned orange.

As I navigated these experiences with my grandchildren, my worries about my own health faded into the background. 

For over a year I had been walking with a cane and living life in what is best called a passive manner -- relying on others to do the cooking and cleaning and laundry. I lived in a constant state of thinking I needed to be taken care of.

Now that felt selfish and unnecessary. I was around young people who *really* needed caretakers to guide them through an unprecedented crisis.

As I started contributing around the household by cooking, cleaning and supervising the kids, I  starting to get noticeably better physically.

With the physical changes, came more mental clarity and less of the confusion I'd felt in the aftermath of the stroke. The weird dreams subsided a bit and I started having more confidence in my ability to express myself. 

My writing evolved day by day and I developed relationships here on Facebook that helped me to keep going.

One thing was crystal clear -- the pandemic was a life-changing experience not just for me but for millions of people. Most everyone was reevaluating their place in the world every bit as much as I was.

Then our world changed profoundly right before our eyes. Massive demonstrations unlike anything since the 60s filled up the streets; progressive social change once again was in the air. It was all triggered by the George Floyd murder, but the implications went way beyond the awful problems of structural racism and police violence -- they reached into every corner of our social consciousness.

It was one of the most inspiring things I'd seen in decades. Out of the ashes of the pandemic a new world suddenly seemed possible -- based on justice, equality, freedom. 

Of course there was a dark side to this as well, and no one epitomized that better than the man occupying the White House.

(To be continued.)

***

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that three researchers at the Wuhan lab studying a bat virus that is the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 became sick enough in November 2019 that they had to go to the hospital.

This is the latest indication that an accident at the lab may have been responsible for the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, and will no doubt lead to greater pressure on the Chinese authorities to release information sought by public health officials but so far withheld.

The news:

 * Bob Dylan, the greatest songwriter of his era, turns eighty on Monday. A dominant presence for over sixty years, Dylan has made an indelible mark on the history of rock and roll, in part by not treating age and longevity like most here-and-gone performers. The New Yorker has covered him from the start. This week, as a birthday celebration, we’re highlighting a selection of pieces celebrating the musician and his virtuosity. (New Yorker)

* Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate On Covid-19 Origin -- Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab (WSJ)

* Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications -- Fewer babies’ cries. More abandoned homes. Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom. (NYT)

* How Black Lives Matter changed the U.S. debate on the Mideast -- The group has shifted the Democrats’ lens on a range of issues, from the environment to the economy. Now it’s doing the same on global matters — pressing the Democratic Party to adopt a dramatically different approach to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (WP)

* Redistricting delays add to Democrats' worries about keeping U.S. House (Reuters)

* The mob made me do it: Rioters claim Jan. 6 crowd at fault (AP)

* In the Russian Arctic, the First Stirrings of a Very Cold War -- Though the Russian military has little in common with liberal Western politicians or environmental groups like Greenpeace, it is taking ice melt in the Far North seriously. (NYT)

* It’s a golden age for Chinese archaeology — and the West is ignoring it (WP)

* Iran says inspectors may no longer get nuclear sites images (AP)

* Australia Exhumes the Somerton Man, and His 70-Year Mystery -- This week the police disinterred a body, found on a beach in 1948, that has puzzled investigators for decades. “There’s lots of twists and turns in this case, and every turn is pretty weird,” one said. (NYT)

* Pandemic has fueled eating disorder surge in teens, adults (AP)

* Discord in San Francisco schools, on race and reopening, looms large (WP)

* Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known -- The famed source of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, has made another unauthorized disclosure — and wants to be prosecuted for it. (NYT)

* The Biden administration is facing new pressure to resolve a mystery that has vexed its predecessors: Is an adversary using a microwave or radio wave weapon to attack the brains of U.S. diplomats, spies and military personnel? (AP)

* Ryanair flight carrying wanted Belarusian journalist forced to land in Minsk (WP)

* Once Nearly Extinct, The Florida Panther Is Making A Comeback (NPR)

* Giant Marilyn Monroe Statue Sparks Outcry in Palm Springs (WSJ)

* CNN parts ways with Rick Santorum, former senator who made much-criticized comments about Native Americans (WP)

* The Army Is Expanding Allowed Hairstyles For Women (NPR)

* Daily readings at tomb honor Dante 700 years after his death (AP)

* A massive heat dome is about to make the Southeast sweat (CNN)

* Children's Science Website Clearly Struggling To Come Up With 10 Facts About Slugs (The Onion)

***

"America"

Paul Simon

"Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag"
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And walked off to look for America

"Kathy", I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said "Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"
"We smoked the last one an hour ago"
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost", I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America

-30-

The Day Everything Stopped.6

[Part Six]

March 2020. As I tried to adapt to my new surroundings amid the weirdness of the pandemic, I started having anxiety dreams whenever I went to sleep. Sometimes, for example, I was on a passenger jet that developed serious engine trouble, forcing the pilot to land in a field and all of the rest of us to deplane and stand around while he (the pilot) tried to fix the plane.

In this dream, the pilot and I quickly became friends and my "job" was to keep everyone else calm.

For some reason no help was on the way and we had no means to contact anyone. We were just out there somewhere on our own. It was up to the pilot and me to get us out of there.

Awake, and careful not to wake my little granddaughters asleep in the bunk above,  I snuck out to the living room and started sifting through the news.

Whew! No reported plane crashes. It was 3 a.m.

This quickly became a nightly ritual; only the particulars of the dream changed. Sometimes I was in my apartment in the upper west side roaming room to room emptying bottles of poison that kept appearing in Fantasia-like fashion.

Someone was trying really hard to get me to drink that poison.

My overall mental condition had started getting freaky as much as a year earlier but now it was really getting to me. I heard myself making strange comments to the people around me, often in the form of bad jokes with no punchline. Despite all my time in hospitals and nursing facilities, none of those caring for me could explain in terms I understood what was wrong with me.

After many X-rays and cat-scans in 2019, the only thing I was told is that there was something going on "mentally" and I should go see a neurologist. My son Aidan drove me to the appointment and helped me into the examination room.

There, a woman administered the standard cognitive test that Trump would later famously claim he'd "aced." I aced it too, and believe me it would have been a really, really bad sign if I hadn't. Besides, I'd already had the same test several times before my visit to the neurologist.

After the cognition check, the attendant pulled out the grainy picture of my brain and pointed out a dark spot at the back of the organ.

"You know you had a stroke, right?" she said matter-of-factly. "It basically blew a hole in the base of your brain."

Although I appreciate straight talkers, this was a little blunt for my taste. I wished she would have eased me into this news, since no one else had explained me why I had had to go to a neurologist in the first place.

Now I started imagining that maybe everybody around me knew stuff I didn't know. That's truly a paranoid thought, which I'm not normally given to, but even my son didn't seem to be very surprised about the stroke.

While I was still trying to absorb the stroke bit, she added that I probably had "Parkinsonism" -- thus the tremors.

(To be continued.)

***

Back to the present. Even as I relive my two-year odyssey through our health system and the pandemic in the form of essays like the above, normality is returning all around me.

It was so nice to be able to go out to one of our favorite Chinese restaurants, Alice's in Noe Valley, Saturday night. The city is slowly returning to normal; traffic is heavier now, but masks are still on and the infection rate here is microscopic.

Th occasion was Julia's return home after graduating from Goucher College; now I am able to say all six of my kids have college degrees, completing one phase of my parenting role that began 45 years ago next Sunday.

The news:

* Greta Thunberg aims to change how food is produced --Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has set her sights on changing how the world produces and consumes food in order to counteract a trio of threats: carbon emissions, disease outbreaks and animal suffering. In a video posted on Twitter on Saturday, Thunberg said the environmental impact of farming as well as disease outbreaks such as COVID-19, which is believed to have originated from animals, would be reduced by changing how food was produced. "Our relationship with nature is broken. But relationships can change," Thunberg said in the video marking the International Day of Biological Diversity. (Reuters)

* Green Finance Goes Mainstream, Lining Up Trillions Behind Global Energy Transition --After years of intermittent excitement and fizzled expectations, environmental-oriented investing is no longer just a niche interest. “We’ve reached the tipping point and beyond,” said one power-company executive. (WSJ)

* A changed Democratic Party continues to influence the Biden presidency (WP)

* Hamas defiant with military parade, appearance of top leader (AP)

* Israel-Hamas ceasefire holds, Egyptian mediators shuttle between the two sides (Reuters)

* Palestinian Anger With Israel Is Undimmed, Even With Battle Paused -- Unrest broke out in Jerusalem and the West Bank again on Friday, and Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territories expressed the need for common cause against injustice. (NYT)

* Gaza struggles with twin health crises of war injuries and feared coronavirus surge (WP)

* After the Cease-Fire, Gaza Wakes to a Sea of Rubble -- In addition to relief, some residents felt a sense of déjà vu, having survived several recent wars with Israel. After each war, it takes years for Gaza to recover. (NYT)

* There is a growing sense Israel cannot come out of this crisis the same country it was when went into it (New Yorker)

* In echo of Arizona, Georgia state judge orders Fulton County to allow local voters to inspect all 147,000 mail ballots cast last fall. (WP)

* The history of black rebellion demonstrates a fundamental reality. Police violence precipitates community violence in a vicious cycle. (NYT)

* Trump is sliding toward online irrelevance. His new blog isn’t helping. (WP)

* Biden says he won’t allow Justice Dept. to seize journalists’ phone, email records (WP)

* America’s rich people could have saved local journalism — and perhaps democracy. They refused. (WP)

* The rivalry between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos already was intense. Now it’s extending to the moon. (WP)

* Great White Sharks Increasing Off Northern California (SJMN)

* Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic reports reaching space for the third time (WP)

* In Search Of A Better Life, Teen Moves Downstairs (The Onion)

***

"Ballad of a Thin Man"

Bob Dylan

You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard but you don't understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You raise up your head and you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says, "It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?" and somebody else says, "Well, what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God, am I here all alone?"
But something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You hand in your ticket and you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel to be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible!" as he hands you a bone
And something is happening here but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You have many contacts among the lumberjacks
To get you facts when someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect, anyway they already expect you to all give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

Ah, you've been with the professors and they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well-read, it's well-known
But something is happening here and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you and then he kneels
He crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice, he asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan"
And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Now, you see this one-eyed midget shouting the word "Now"
And you say, "For what reason?" and he says, "How"
And you say, "What does this mean?" and he screams back, "You're a cow!
Give me some milk or else go home"
And you know something's happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Well, you walk into the room like a camel, and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law against you comin' around
You should be made to wear earphones
'Cause something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

-30-

Making Sense of It All

[NOTE: The serialized memoir called "The Day Everything Stopped" will continue after a short break.]

It's back to the present tense today after a week where my recollections of the early days of the pandemic suddenly took over my writing impulse completely. Maybe the seemingly sudden end of the Covid crisis led to my obsession with how it all began.

In both fiction and nonfiction, you often discover you can't really begin a story properly until you know how it ends. That's why so many murder mysteries start with the body of the victim. Knowing how the story ends makes everything leading up to that conclusion a quest for logic, for meaning.

For everyone's sake, you want it all to make sense. That's what I'm trying to do with the pandemic and also with my life story.

It feels like I've been asleep for the past 15 months or so, but now I'm awake, I'm wondering whether things really happened as I remember or whether it was all just a dream. 

***

Friday started out with my daughter Julia's graduation from Goucher College in Maryland. The president of the college in his commencement remarks cited Bureau of Labor Statistics data  predicting that the class of '21 will have an average of 11 different jobs during their careers. Starting now.

Also at the ceremony, the mayor of Baltimore noted that the graduates are entering a world where racism, poverty, gun violence, and other severe problems await new leaders to propose new solutions.

Indeed. And we need to be hopeful for their sake and ours as we welcome the next generation of 22-year-olds to the struggle to make our only partially democratic society much more  equitable, peaceful and inclusive.

Their work is cut out for them. That is a cliche and it is true. At least eleven jobs each -- that's what it will take to reach retirement, the experts believe. Personally,  I hope Julia can retire a half-century from now knowing she did her best to make this a better world to the best of her ability.

But for now she stands where I did in May 1969. Did I do everything I could have done to make the world a better place?

Not by any measure. Like most people my most idealistic self struggled over and over with my pragmatic self, and sometimes pragmatism won out. I can rationalize that as well as the next guy, but the universal battle seems to be how to balance self-realization with loftier work on behalf of everybody else.

***

The news:

* The mess in Maricopa -- Votes are still being counted in Arizona. It won’t change the winner. But it might change America. (WP)

* The Justice Department under President Donald Trump secretly obtained the phone and email records of CNN’s Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, according to that news network and a Justice Department spokesman, again illustrating how the previous administration was willing to seek journalists’ data to investigate disclosures of information it preferred to remain secret. (CNN)

* First They Fought the Virus. Now They Battle the Medical Bills. -- Insurers and Congress wrote rules to protect coronavirus patients, but the bills came anyway, leaving some mired in debt. (NYT)

* After more than a year of separation and isolation, Americans are reuniting. (WP)

* Even Amid a Pandemic, More Than 40 Million People Fled Their Homes -- Storms, floods, wildfires and to a lesser degree, conflict, uprooted millions globally in 2020 — the largest human displacement in more than a decade. (NYT)

* A highly contagious disease originating far from America’s shores triggers deadly outbreaks that spread rapidly, infecting the masses. Shots are available, but a divided public agonizes over getting jabbed. Sound familiar? Newly digitized records — including a minister’s diary scanned and posted online by Boston’s Congregational Library and Archives — are shedding fresh light on devastating outbreaks of smallpox that hit the city in the 1700s. And three centuries later, the parallels with the coronavirus pandemic are uncanny. (AP)

* Arizona's secretary of state told Maricopa County officials that hundreds of vote-tabulating machines should no longer be used because of their handling by the "amateur, uncertified" company hired by state Senate Republicans to recount ballots cast in November's presidential election. Cyber Ninjas broke the "chain of custody" for machine possession, Katie Hobbs said. [HuffPost]

* China is tightening its grip on the global supply of processed manganese, rattling a range of companies world-wide that depend on the versatile metal—including the planet’s biggest electric vehicle makers. (WSJ)

* Europe regulator sees first flying taxis in 2024 or 2025 (Reuters)

* After signing two bills into law targeting transgender people over the past week, Tennessee’s Gov. Bill Lee has approved legislation that bans gender-confirming treatment for young minors despite objections that the series of bills unfairly discriminate against an already vulnerable population. Tennessee becomes the second state to enact such a ban, after Arkansas.[AP]

* As fragile cease-fire holds, eyes turn to suffering in Gaza and Netanyahu’s political future -- Hard-right Israeli politicians lambasted the agreement ending 11 days of violence and Hamas warned of hands “on the trigger” amid a dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. (WP)

* In climate push, G7 agrees to stop international funding for coal (Reuters)

* A massive slab of ice, nearly six times the size of New York City, has broken off of an ice shelf in Antarctica, creating what is now the largest iceberg in the world, scientists recently announced. Christopher Readinger, the lead analyst for the USNIC’s Antarctic team, said the break was “not unexpected ... but it did come out of the blue, sort of.” [HuffPost]

* Europe regulator sees first flying taxis in 2024 or 2025 (Reuters)

* How Violent Cops Stay in Law Enforcement (New Yorker)

* A recent law unsealed police misconduct and use-of-force files in California. A new podcast, “On Our Watch,” from NPR and KQED, digs into the files and explores how the opaque system of police accountability works in the state. (California Today)

* Could humans really destroy all life on Earth?  Studies have shown that for most species, evolutionary adaptation is not expected to be sufficiently rapid to buffer the effects of environmental changes being wrought by human activity. And our own species will be no exception to this. (BBC)

* Iconic Mint-Condition 1933 Babe Ruth Baseball Is Expected To Shatter Auction Records -- Auctioneers hope it will sell for over $5.2 million, part of a sports collection that could fetch $20 million for the heirs of a man whose mom threw out his first baseball cards. He never got over it. (NPR)

* Historians Discover Thomas Jefferson May Have Secretly Fathered Multiple Other Countries (The Onion)

***

"One More Night" (excerpt)

by Phil Collins

Please give me one more night

Just one more night

One more night

Give me just one more night
Give me just one more night
Ooh, one more night
'Cause I can't wait forever

Please give me one more night
Give me one more night
One more night
Please give me one more night
Give me one more night
One more night

One more night, one more night

I've been trying, oh so long to let you know
Let you know how I feel
And if I stumble, if I fall, just help me back
So I can make you see

Please give me one more night
Give me one more night
One more night

-30-

The Day Everything Stopped.5

As my son-in-law Loic drove us along the normally clogged but now empty highways away from Millbrae headed to El Cerrito in late March 2020, we were both in somewhat of a state of shock. In this we were hardly alone. The entire world was trying to come to grips with the shocking arrival of a global pandemic, the likes of which had not been seen since the Great Flu of 1919.

And back then there had been no 24/7 news cycle to tell people about it.

Nowadays, what happened in Wuhan, China, might as well have happened next door in Burlingame, and in fact in this case it was.

As we drove, my mind turned to the logistics of my situation.

With us in the car were three bags, my computer case and a couple of garbage bags hastily stuffed with clothes, and some random supplies -- toilet paper, coffee filters, cans of soup. 

Most of my possessions were in disarray. I'd been gradually moving from the flat in San Francisco where'd I'd spent the previous 17 years to the assisted living facility in Millbrae, so my stuff was split between those two places. But now I was headed to a third location, my daughter's house in the hills of El Cerrito and it wasn't clear whether I'd ever go back to the other two again. 

Laila, a journalist and mother of three, had been extremely concerned about the coming pandemic much earlier than most people I knew. Weeks before the official schools shutdown she had already decided to pull her kids out of school and teach them at home. She converted all their shopping to online deliveries and ordered masks for the whole family. Loic  the CEO of a global non-profit, had cancelled all of the trips he normally took to Europe and South America and Africa in order to work from home.

My daughter's house was a sharp contrast to what my life had been like at Millbrae. Instead of being isolated (for good reason) in my room, I now was surrounded by three lively children excited by the latest developments.

To them it all felt like a holiday from the boring reality of daily life. Orders had just come down that everyone was to shelter-in-place, the schools were all shuttered, so they had broken out the marshmallows, chocolate bars and graham crackers for s'mores! Eleven-year-old Luca told me he was an expert at building fires in the fireplace.

I immediately regretted not being 11 myself.

Because for adults, every aspect of our lives suddenly became magnified to a new level of scrutiny. Would we have enough to eat? Did we have enough water on hand? Where could we get good facemasks? Was the economy going to collapse? Would this madman Trump do something crazy like declare martial law?

Laila started baking bread and a network of friends started exchanging tips about where to order certain foods or supplies, how to set up a home office, where to leave any extra stuff so those in need could swing by and pick it up.

We settled into a new lifestyle, all six of us hunkered down with Betsy the dog and the fears of what would happen next.

Into the middle of this cauldron of uncertainty, in late May a policeman in Minnesota did what had been done countless times over decades, killling a black man accused of committing the most trivial of crimes -- attempting to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.

It seemed ludicrous that in the middle of a pandemic, someone in authority could do that. After all, due to the emergency, evictions had been halted, courts had been suspended, and millions of people were out of work. Poor people, including addicts, were desperate.

So of course the overwhelming majority of us wanted to help one another, not further torment those in need.

Who knew at the time that this would be the spark that ignited a conflagration that would eventually help to sweep the madman Trump from power.

But the explosion of protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd showed that millions of people were willing to risk infection from the coronavirus to stand up to abuses of power by authorities; that, in turn, indicated a degree of political instability that shook global confidence in the U.S. as a nation to look up to.

It was suddenly obvious that even facing the threat of death by a disease that authorities could neither control no explain, people were simply no longer going to be silent about the racism, inequality and basic lack of fairness epitomized by the Floyd case.

No way. Almost overnight, all hell had broken loose and as it did, a huge chasm in the population of this country became starkly visible.

Just witnessing this triggered powerful, mostly forgotten memories for me, from the 1960s when I was a student activist and aspiring journalist at the University of Michigan. In April 1968 a carload of us had driven from Ann Arbor down to Memphis, Tennessee, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was leading a demonstration of black sanitation workers.

As it turned out, that that was the last demonstration King would ever lead.

This time around, recovering from an illness that had almost ended my life, and sheltering-in-place in El Cerrito, I decided it was probably time for me to start telling my life story -- right here, right now, on Facebook.

***

The news:

* Israel and Hamas agree Gaza truce after Egyptian mediation (Reuters)

* New Political Pressures Push U.S. and Europe to Stop Israel-Gaza Conflict -- President Biden faces a leftward shift in his party. In Europe, Muslim migration, terrorism fears and populist politics make diplomacy more urgent than ever. (NYT)

* Biden’s warning to Israel shakes up diplomacy — and politics (WP)

* Israel unleashed new airstrikes across the Gaza Strip early Thursday, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding several others. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against U.S. pressure to wind down the offensive against Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers, who have fired thousands of rockets at Israel. [AP]

* Sen. Bernie Sanders to introduce resolution of disapproval on $735 million U.S. arms sale to Israel (WP)

* The Gaza Conflict Is Stoking an ‘Identity Crisis’ for Some Young American Jews -- A new generation is confronting the region’s longstanding conflict in a very different context, with very different pressures, from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. (NYT)

* House Republican votes for U.S. Capitol riot plan a blow to Kevin McCarthy (Reuters)

* Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the Republican official who came under fire from Trump while doing his job to certify the 2020 election results in his state, has confirmed that he is running for reelection next year. He spoke about the essential role the rule of law plays in the democratic process, saying, "I lived it." [HuffPost]

* Trump loyalists push to revisit 2020 election results around the country (WP)

* The reelection of Marco Rubio to the Senate — who disparaged Trump as a candidate, then praised him after he won the presidency — could hinge on whether Florida Republicans will love Trump more than Florida Democrats hate him a year and a half from now. Trump impeachment prosecutor Val Demings has jumped into the race against Rubio. [HuffPost]

* A group of U.S. Capitol Police officers signaled their "profound disappointment" that Republican congressional leadership has refused to support a proposed bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot in an open letter. "Officers are forced to go to work with the daily reminder of what happened that dreadful day,” the officers wrote in the unsigned letter. [HuffPost]

* As Amazon, McDonald’s Raise Wages, Small Businesses Struggle to Keep Up (WSJ)

* Big gaps in vaccine rates across the U.S. worry health experts (AP)

* If 70 percent of adults get a shot by July 4, U.S. can avoid later surge, Fauci says (WP)

* From Colombia to U.S., Police Violence Pushes Protests Into Mass Movements -- In Colombia, and many other countries, security forces’ attacks on protesters have led to nationwide reckonings with injustice. (NYT)

* The Biden administration reinstalled the scientist responsible for producing the federal government’s top climate change reports after he was removed from his post by Trump last year. “It’s been my privilege to work with the nation’s best scientists and policymakers,” Michael Kuperberg said of his return. [HuffPost]

* The United States must double or quadruple the rate at which it thins and removes dead wood from its forests to reduce the threat of wildfires that have become more frequent and severe due to climate change, the Biden administration said. (Reuters)

* U.S. calls off key sanctions on Russian pipeline as Blinken holds first meeting with Moscow (WP)

* Greg Abbott (R) from Texas has become the latest governor to sign an abortion ban based on "fetal heartbeat" rhetoric. But the cutoff in these bans, which is typically around six weeks into a pregnancy, is arbitrary and based on a false premise, according to doctors. [HuffPost]

* An ‘Army of 16-Year-Olds’ Takes On the Democrats -- Young progressives are an unpredictable new factor in Massachusetts elections. They’re ardent, and organized, and they don’t take orders. (NYT)

* Centenarians who survived the 1921 destruction of a thriving black district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, told members of Congress at a hearing that they are still waiting for justice. “I have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history but I cannot," said 107-year-old Viola Fletcher. [HuffPost]

* Microsoft is pulling the plug on its once omnipresent browser, Internet Explorer, next year as it prepares to battle market leader Chrome with its slicker Edge browser. Launched in 1995, IE became the dominant browser for over a decade as it was bundled with Microsoft's Windows operating system that came pre-installed in billions of computers. The browser, however, started losing out to Google's Chrome in the late 2000s and has become a subject of countless internet memes for its sluggishness in comparison to its rivals. (Reuters)

* A Sense Of Touch Boosts Speed, Accuracy Of Mind-Controlled Robotic Arm -- A man who is paralyzed can quickly perform tasks like pouring a glass of water, thanks to a mind-controlled robotic arm that conveys a sense of touch. (NPR)

* 1 in 4 California employees admit to having worked from their car during the pandemic, reveals poll. (Cherry Digital Content)

* Blinken confirms the U.S. does not want to buy Greenland after Trump proposal (Reuters)

* Golf thrives on the ocean’s edge. What happens when the oceans rise? (WP)

* Apartment Listing Cagey About Whether Unit Has Floor (The Onion)

***

"The Times They Are A Changing"

By Bob Dylan

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'

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