Columnists

After a rough year, California is on track to declare "victory" over Covid-19 on June 15th. Nonetheless, the fabric of California society has changed.

In recent months, California has gotten onboard the vaccination train and, as of this writing, more than 38 percent of those over the age of sixteen have been fully vaccinated -- and another 20 percent have had one shot. (California is current vaccinating at the rate of 330,000 doses per day.) At the same time, the number of new COVID-19 cases has fallen, as has the number of Coronavirus-related deaths. The state is now averaging about 1400 cases and 75 deaths a day -- the lowest per capita rates in the continental U.S. We're on track to meet California Governor Gavin Newsom's objectives and "open" the state on June 15th; this means that most businesses will be permitted to reopen, so long as they follow social distancing and mask rules. -more-

When we are depressed or unhappy, or if life doesn't seem to be treating us well, maybe we ought to look at how we're thinking about things. That may sound a bit trite, but sometimes it is applicable, especially when we've taken the medication route as far as it will go.

And maybe we could question the subject matter in the mind. One expert on mental illness believes that the things that go wrong with the human mind are limited, and that the human brain is fairly limited in what it does. Let me explain...

The human mind is like a browser. A browser can bring us content from all parts of the world, can bring us incredible material, can show us unlimited types of subject matter. While some of this inevitably will be garbage, some of it will be produced by greatness. -more-

Walk on the Wildcat Side

We recently set off on a seven-mile, early morning trailwalk through Richmond's Wildcat Canyon—cow moos, wild turkey hoots, and coyote sightings included at no additional cost.

At the end of the trail, we discovered a large placard commemorating the "Anza Expedition of 1776." The signage offered a discomfiting reminder that the world is filled with risk and injury—even in a supposedly blissful "state of Nature." It was the last sentence that reverberates:

"These hills in 1776 were covered with native bunchgrasses and streamside woodlands along canyon bottoms. In his diary, Father Pedro Font often recorded frequent sightings of tule elk and pronghorn antelope. He mentions the 'large deer' (undoubtedly tule elk) whose swiftness allowed them to elude capture by the pursuing soldiers and their horses. Font also recorded sightings of grizzly bears and seeing…'Indians badly scarred by bites and scratches of these animals.'"

May we all suffer no more than the usual allotment of "bites and scratches" as this doddering old world has its way with us. -more-

For our system of government to function properly, we really need two major political parties with competing visions for the future of America. Right now we don't have that as the Republican Party has basically become a cult of personality around former president Donald Trump and those who continue to support the party are its cult enablers. If divisions exist within the Republican party, it is not about issues but about Trump himself.

Consider that the party didn’t bother to adopt, propose, or even write a platform in 2020. All that mattered was affirming Trump. This meant that feral Republican elected officials had to affirm or at least remain silent about Trump’s racism, sexism, nativism, and homophobia, or face political exile. This continues to be the case.

More than one hundred days into the Joe Biden presidency, the GOP continues to embrace, or at least fails to condemn, Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and, contrary to the evidence, continues to insist that Trump, not Joe Biden, won the election. In furtherance of this claim, Trump filed over 50 lawsuits in state and federal courts challenging the election or its outcome, each of which was dismissed.

Then Republicans demanded post-election audits in states where Trump lost; no widespread voter fraud was uncovered. -more-