3 When Gov. Gavin Newsom visited Union City to mark the opening of vaccine eligibility to everyone 16 and older, he applauded the 24 million doses that have already gone into Californians’ arms. But a second metric, he said, was just as important. “The number I’m most proud of, though not yet satisfied with yet, is the 4.84 million vaccines that have gone into our most impacted communities in the state,” he said Thursday, referencing the fact that California has surpassed its goal to administer 4 million doses in the lowest income areas. It is “an important metric of our success in terms of these equity goals,” Newsom said. “But as a state, we still have a lot of work left to do.” Whether that work includes setting a new equity benchmark is unclear. When asked whether the state has set a specific target beyond having already achieved the 4 million shots, the California Department of Public Health did not directly answer. A plan to roll out …
The Joni Mitchell album that changed my life
Joni Mitchell, who grew up to be one of pop music's most poetic lyricists, was not particularly keen on literature as a kid in Alberta. "The only time I read in school was when it was compulsory, like for a book report," she told an interviewer in 1969. But at that point, as she was settling into the Laurel Canyon home in Los Angeles she had just purchased with Graham Nash (yes, the very, very, very fine "Our House"), Mitchell was expanding her intellectual horizons. She was immersed in Herman Hesse, the visionary German Swiss author of "Steppenwolf" and "Siddhartha." Her favorite poet was her fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen, whose songs - most famously "Hallelujah," with its secret chord and its holy dark - explore not only love and loss but religion, politics and depression. Despite all this, the interviewer described Mitchell almost dismissively, as a "wispy 25-year-old blonde" and a "girl who's so obviously perched on the verge." That would change, forever, with the …
Continue Reading about The Joni Mitchell album that changed my life →
How a Common Air Freshener Can Result in a High-Stakes Traffic Stop
Phil Colbert was on his way to meet his father for lunch before his shift at an Arizona auto dealership in 2019 when he saw the flashing lights of a sheriff’s patrol car in his mirror. He made sure his hands were on the steering wheel, planted at 10 and 2 as his parents had taught him, and asked why he had been stopped. “You can’t have anything hanging from your rearview mirror,” the La Paz County deputy, wearing a Blue Lives Matter wristband, told him. The officer was referring to the tree-shaped air freshener dangling near the windshield but quickly moved on to other questions: Do you have any marijuana? Do you smoke marijuana? When was the last time you did smoke marijuana? Do you have any cocaine? To Mr. Colbert, who is Black, the air freshener seemed nothing more than a pretext for the driving equivalent of a stop-and-frisk. “At that point, I was like, ‘This dude is coming up with anything. He’s just coming up with anything to talk to me or mess with me,’” said Mr. Colbert, …
Continue Reading about How a Common Air Freshener Can Result in a High-Stakes Traffic Stop →
From Dave Grohl to Bessie Smith, New Books on Music’s Iconoclasts
In the opening pages of THE STORYTELLER: Tales of Life and Music (Dey Street, 384 pp., $29.99), Dave Grohl, frontman for the Foo Fighters, recounts running into two unnamed legends backstage at the “12-12-12” benefit concert that followed Hurricane Sandy. “One had the shiny appearance of a brand-new luxury car,” he writes. “Perfectly dyed hair, spray tan, and a recently refurbished smile that had the look of a fresh box of Chiclets.” The other resembled “a vintage, burned-out hot rod. Wiry gray hair, deep lines carved into a scowl, teeth that could have belonged to George Washington, and a black T-shirt that hugged a barrel-chested frame.” Grohl made a choice on the spot about which path he would take as an aging rock star. “I would aspire to become the rusted-out hot rod, no matter how many jump-starts I might require along the way.” Every musician faces some version of this decision. If you do manage to get to the top of the charts, how do you stay there? What does it take to …
Continue Reading about From Dave Grohl to Bessie Smith, New Books on Music’s Iconoclasts →
Books That Satisfy Your Yearning for Far-Off Places
Last year, as the pandemic put passports in lockdown, the number of international tourist arrivals dropped by more than one billion . But lately Americans have been returning to flight hubs by the millions — packed, vaccinated and thirsting for a cure for what the Germans call Fernweh : the yearning for far-off places. Still, you don’t need a plane to reactivate your curiosity. Seven fascinating and purposeful new books revive the mystery, the history and the possibilities of the reawakened planet. In THE ART OF PATIENCE: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet (Penguin Press, 195 pp., $26), the French writer Sylvain Tesson chronicles his rapturous journey through Tibet’s Chantang plateau with the wildlife photographer Vincent Munier. Tesson’s words, in a ravishing translation by Frank Wynne, paint pictures as vivid as any photograph. Observing Lake Yaniugol, rising high in the steppe, he writes: “It settled like a sacred host of jade upon the sand. It appeared to us at twilight, …
Continue Reading about Books That Satisfy Your Yearning for Far-Off Places →
1971 India-Pakistan War: 50 Years and Counting, a Woman’s Wait for Her Husband & Closure
5 December 1971 Amritsar airport Around 1230 hours Flight Lieutenant Vijay Vasant Tambay is walking purposefully down the tarmac in his blue overalls. For a moment, his mind goes back to Ambala, where he has left Damayanti, his wife of eighteen months. He knows she hates being alone and would be ticking days off the calendar till he returns. Her response to his ‘Aaj tumne ghar mein kya kiya?’ has always been ‘Intezaar!’ Tambay smiles to himself. It is a clear day and the winter sun is nearly blinding. Helmet clasped in the crook of his arm, he squints to look at his faithful Su-7, tail number B-839, that waits for him, fully armed and ready for action. A bright-eyed airman in a crew cut, not older than twenty, is standing near the stepladder. He steps forward to take Tambay’s helmet that has his nickname, ‘Uncle’, painted on it. Taking a cursory walk around the aircraft to check if everything is in order, Tambay climbs into the open cockpit and, strapping himself into the …
On Japan’s Pacific Coast, an Artist Communes With Nature
IN AN EDO-PERIOD farmhouse near the rural seaside town of Isumi, two hours southeast of Tokyo, soft light filters through paper-and-wood-lattice doors onto seven clay vessels as big and round as marine buoys; their pale surfaces glow against the building’s wood posts and beams, which have been blackened over time by smoke from an open hearth. These vessels are the only residents of this more than 200-year-old traditionally built house, or kominka . A lopsided white one, with gently indented fingerprints mottling its surface like fish scales, rests on the decaying tatami in the large front room. A turnip-shaped pair, one painted with dripping indigo polka dots and the other with a thick belt of sooty brown, seem to gaze out a window together. Hand-formed from grayish-white clay from Japan’s Shiga Prefecture, they are the work of the artist Kazunori Hamana , 51, who uses this once-grand dwelling as an exhibition space. His pieces have been shown at prestigious galleries, including …
Continue Reading about On Japan’s Pacific Coast, an Artist Communes With Nature →
Joe Biden’s Big Labor push not winning voters
Joe Biden Joe Biden Manchin to vote to nix Biden's vaccine mandate for larger businesses Congress averts shutdown after vaccine mandate fight Senate cuts deal to clear government funding bill MORE vowed to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen” and is quickly making good on that promise. Is it working for him politically? No, it is not. Working-class Americans are more concerned about high inflation, open borders, rising crime and vaccine mandates than they are about the declining fortunes of Big Labor. In a recent CNN poll, only 15 percent of respondents indicated strong approval of the job Biden is doing. The economy was cited as the nation’s number one issue, followed by the coronavirus and immigration. Labor unions did not make the cut. Tellingly, 58 percent said Biden was not paying attention to the country’s biggest concerns. ADVERTISEMENT Joe doesn’t seem to care. He and his party are desperate to win back blue-collar voters who …
Continue Reading about Joe Biden’s Big Labor push not winning voters →
OLIVER: The Awful Biden Speech
“A great man giveth not a mean speech; yea, and a mean man giveth not a speech worth hearing.” One point about Biden’s Wednesday night speech is not debatable: no one could have been disappointed. Biden’s speech was pure Biden: unimaginative, mean, probably plagiarized in parts and designed to sow discord even as he mouthed words about bring Americans together. In another words, about what you would expect — probably just what you did expect. He spoke of lifting his “hand off our family Bible” — you know, the one that endorses abortion, which Biden wants to fund in a thousand and one ways. Some Catholic bishops may have been watching: It has now been reported that some of them are considering stopping Biden from receiving communion. He spoke of “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” Not much nuance there, given that the crisis was created entirely by government, which locked down the country, snuffing out economic activity. So: Biden is pro draconian lookdown …
The Canonization of Saint John Coltrane
THE SAINT JOHN Coltrane Church in San Francisco — a branch of the African Orthodox Church, where the jazz musician John Coltrane is the canonized patron saint — is a family affair. It was founded in 1969 by His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. King, D.D., and his wife, the Most Rev. Supreme Mother Marina King, before they possessed such lofty titles. (Their daughter, the Rev. Chaplain Wanika Stephens, Archpriest, M.A., is also a pastor there.) The church began around 1964, as the Jazz Club in the couple’s garage — “a listening clinic,” F.W. King, now 77, says on a recent Zoom call with his wife, 75, from their home in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point. (Their daughter, 57, also joined.) “Maybe less than a dozen brothers and sisters would come together every week. Everybody would bring a new album. We’d put the music on and start testing our ears and our knowledge,” seeing if they could name the drummer or the piano player on a track without looking at the record sleeve. One day, …
Continue Reading about The Canonization of Saint John Coltrane →