Opinion
by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com When I took this job last July I made a shortlist of priorities. The first entry was to convince Jan Wheatcroft to return to the fold. In an email with the subject line of “I miss you!” I described the Jan-sized hole in the Courier and urged her to consider a return. […]
by Donald Gould In the 1946 film classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” community banker George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) is besieged by depositors demanding their money after the despised Mr. Potter spurs a run on the bank for his own gain. George says to the anxious crowd, “No, but you … you … you’re […]
I’ve always been a curious student. Raised a Christian, I used to clearly separate my religious beliefs with academic pursuits. I would spend Friday mornings absorbing a lecture on how European colonizers used religion to subjugate and oppress indigenous peoples across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, learning how white Christianity became a weapon for racial segregation and white savior complex. At night, I would attend youth group meetings at my local church, falling back into the warm, loving God that I know so well, not the textbook version who brought so much suffering.
Everytown For Gun Safety reported 636 mass shootings in the United States in 2022, which followed 686 in 2021, a grim record.
The Gun Violence Archive reports that as of Wednesday morning there have been 165 mass shootings over the first 109 days of 2023, exceeding the pace of 2022.
Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children in the United States.
This is who we are.
Biodiversity (plants, animals, fungi, and microbes) is too often an underappreciated component of many sustainable policies. If we are striving to become a regional leader on sustainable issues, as Claremont’s sustainability plan suggests, we must create holistic sustainability approaches which incorporate biodiversity, carbon storage, and other ecosystem services into how we manage our urban forest.
This disconnect between protecting biodiversity and how we manage our urban forest is most evident in spring. If you have driven around Claremont lately, it is almost impossible not to have witnessed the extensive amount of tree trimming being conducted. The timing of this trimming could not be worse for the birds with which we share this city.
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.