Opinion
This column, however, focuses on the Salinas Californian, a 152-year-old newspaper/website with a long history of watchdog journalism. At one time the Californian had a staff of 120, including 35 writers and photographers. That editorial number in 2023 is now zero. The Californian’s lone reporter quit in December and has not been replaced. Print circulation has dropped from 11,000 to 2,500.
The Californian is owned by the largest newspaper publisher in the country, Gannett, which has continued to focus on cost cutting to stay alive. When that doesn’t work — which it hasn’t at the Californian — there are not many choices other than to stop publishing or sell at a bargain price. Think about this scenario: how can any media company keep readers when there are no reporters or editors to publish news? One day the Californian published five paid obituaries as their news coverage.
Cancer in the colon or rectum, collectively referred to as colorectal cancer, is the third most common type of cancer for both men and women. It is expected to account for over 52,000 deaths in the US in 2023, according to the American Cancer Society. Rates of this cancer increase with age and are higher among Black and Native American people.
I recently went to a talk at Scripps College by DJ Kurs, the director, currently, of Deaf West Theater in Los Angeles. Deaf West is a small but increasingly mighty theater that produces plays featuring deaf and hearing actors, some of which, like “Spring Awakening” and “Big River,” have ended up on Broadway.
I was encouraged to see the Claremont City Council reaffirmed its commitment to fight hate on Valentine’s Day, a day that commemorates a saint that was bold enough to take a stand for the sake of love and freedom.
The aorta is the largest blood vessel in the body. It starts in the heart and runs through the abdomen, supplying blood to vital organs along the way before it branches into the major arteries in the legs.
We are in the Christian Easter season. A season that fosters mixed emotions and can challenge our beliefs. “Christ” is not necessarily Jesus’ last name nor, I believe, is the second coming a single person
The aorta is the largest blood vessel in the body. It starts in the heart and runs through the abdomen, supplying blood to vital organs along the way before it branches into the major arteries in the legs.
The slow but steady death of live original music in the Claremont area sustained two massive body blows this week, leaving one to wonder if the art form might just vanish entirely from the 91711.
For weeks, the news media has been warning of an impending crisis if the two houses of Congress and the president are unable to reach agreement on raising the debt ceiling. Let’s look at what’s going on here and whether you should be losing sleep.
In this century, the United States has run a budget surplus exactly once, in 2001. More typically, we run an annual deficit, meaning the federal government spends more than it collects in taxes. During the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the deficit averaged nearly $3 trillion per year due to massive government stimulus, before dropping to $1.4 trillion last year. The government borrows to cover these annual shortfalls, issuing U.S. Treasury securities (bonds, notes, and bills) that range in maturity from just a few weeks to as long as 30 years.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
― Mark Twain, “The Innocents Abroad”
Those words were rattling around in my head as I made a hasty exit from Tijuana, Mexico on Monday after gunshots rang out near the migrant shelter from which I was reporting, causing panic among its already shell shocked residents.
It was an abrupt, if poignant ending to a day that shattered my preconceptions about the refugees trying to make their way to the United States at our San Ysidro border with Mexico.
It was only a month or so ago, in January and even February, that I was complaining that there was never any snow below Baldy Village. Or that there was barely any in the village. At least not for a long time.
I was telling friends about the time I went up Baldy Road, and there was no snow, or barely any, until I went into one of the tunnels and came out, suddenly, into a white wonderland. I couldn’t remember if it happened 15 years ago or if I remembered 15 years ago that it had happened years earlier.
I’ve consistently stood on the left side of the Covid fault line. Righteously filtering aerosols through my surgical mask, I dispensed public health facts and hand sanitizer with near religious fervor. Yet, I was seismically shaken to find my belief system undermined by individuals who stood with me on what I had considered the fact based side of the tectonic divide.
It appears the petition drive to compel Claremont Unified School District to pony up an estimated $273,000 for a special election will succeed.
What a shame.
What a waste.
In a passage from the World War II novel, “From Here to Eternity,” a U.S. Army captain based at Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks contemplates how he “liked to climb the stairs to HQ building. They did not look like concrete, they looked like old marble streaked gray and black. Age had polished down the once porous concrete and rounded the raw edges with rain and feet, and given it a smooth slick gloss. When the stains were wet they always caught and perpetuated the rainbow, like a promise. There will always be an Army, they said to him.”
The passage reflects a common human desire for continuity. In the face of inevitable change, it can be comforting to count on a beloved institution always being there to evoke proud memories and carry on its original vision. And like the stairs, a familiar object or landscape feature can embody that continuity.
As I reported last week, our neighbor Cashman “Cash” Whiteley is on the mend.
That is a joyful sentence to write.
Some may recall my August 12 story and subsequent columns about the 59-year-old unhoused man who had been suffering for several years with a large, open, and growing mystery wound on the left side of his face. The wound is a mystery no more: it is skin cancer.
But with the diagnosis has come an unlikely renaissance.