MCT: Sunday, September 13, 2020

• Oak Fire
• August Complex
• Smoke Thinning
• Golden State
• 785 Cases
• Thomas Miller
• Pet Wiley
• Macdonald Book
• Housing Bill
• Feeding Nevermore
• Ed Notes
• Noyo Vista
• Voters Guide
• William Standley
• Yesterday's Catch
• Red Ryder
• Demoralized Pollinators
• Greenwood Rock
• Racist Friend
• Early Ukiah
• Story Life
• 2020 Treats
• Silence Types
• Reclaim Populism
• Hicks Sketch
• Tiny Spark
• Pandemic Consumption
• 2020 Calendar
• Really Stupid
• Interconnected Disasters
• Found Object

OAK FIRE AT 75% CONTAINED, STILL AT ABOUT 1100 ACRES as of Saturday evening. A few areas remain under evacuation orders including Third Gate, Skyview, Big John Road, Live Oak Drive and Tryan Creek Road west of Highway 101. The rest of Brooktrails has been allowed to return. The count of structure damage was reduced to 5 structures destroyed and ten damaged, plus 30 minor structures damaged or destroyed.

CALFIRE SAID SATURDAY MORNING, "Minimal fire behavior was observed Friday however interior fuels will continue to hold heat. Crews continued to construct direct line, mop-up, secure, and improve the existing fire line. Contingency lines were completed. Firefighters are adjusting tactics to align with current and expected weather forecasts.

The evaluation and mitigation of hazardous trees along Highway 101 and along fire's edge remains a priority.

Dry conditions with moderate daytime temperatures are expected through the end of the week. Winds are expected to remain fairly light and become westerly to southwesterly for the afternoon and evening. Overnight RH (relative humidity) should improve as the very dry air mass over the region slowly modifies in response to onshore winds each day."

THE HUGE AUGUST COMPLEX in the Mendo National Forest was listed at almost 900,000 acres Saturday evening. As best we can tell there is still no containment and firefighters are doing what they can to protect structures. 

• 

• 

• 

SMOKY AND HAZY INLAND, daytime highs near 80. Light winds. Some improvement in air quality expected Sunday and into the beginning of next week. Chance of rain late Tuesday night into Wednesday and Thursday. 

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: Smoke continues to thin along the coast today as a trough approaches from the west. A chance of rain is possible generally north of Highway 36 later this week.

SEVEN NEW COVID CASES IN MENDO SATURDAY, bringing total to 785. But the number of active cases was down to 59 with 5 in hospital or ICU care. 17 deaths. 

THOMAS LEE MILLER

Graveside services for Thomas Lee Miller of Ukiah will be held on Wednesday, September 9, 2020 at 2 p.m. at Evergreen Cemetery in Boonville with a visitation on Tuesday, September 8, 2020 from 2 to 8 p.m. at Eversole Mortuary.

Born November 3, 1933 in Los Angeles, Thomas passed away on Wednesday, September 2, 2020 in Petaluma. Thomas resided in Mendocino County for the past 41 years, 22 in Boonville followed by 19 in Ukiah. He was proud of his military service in the Army, 1st Cav. Air Mobil. He was awarded a Bronze Cross, Air Medal, Wings, Good Conduct, Republic of Viet Nam Service and Army of Occupation, Germany. He managed auto and industrial parts stores, was a life member of the V.F.W., A.L. and Kimmies of the Codgy Moshe (Boonville). He will be remembered for being a loving husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather, a loyal friend, good and kind person. Thomas is survived by his wife of 54 years Isabel O. Miller, Los Angeles, daughter Kelly Miller, Hesperia, Ca, son Jerry Ortiz, Ukiah, granddaughters Wendy Wise, Apple Valley, Ca, Erin Kirksey, Arizona, Lisa Ortiz, Ukiah, grandson Tommy Ortiz, Ukiah and great granddaughter Greenlee Groves, Ukiah. He was preceded in death by his son Johnnie Ray Ortiz.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK 

Wiley is the perfect medium-sized dog, and quite a trooper. When he arrived at the shelter, Wiley had a skin issue and was in need of a medicated bath. We’re pretty sure this was Wiley's first bath, and though we can say Wiley is not a fan of bath time, he was a very good boy and allowed us to lather him up and do what needed to be done! As we spent time with Wiley during his evaluation we observed an independent dog who wanted to find a way out of the room; maybe he's more comfortable being outside. Secure fencing will be important in his new home. We want Wiley to meet any potential canine housemates. Wiley is a 4 year old Husky, weighing in at a 45 svelte pounds. More about Wiley here:

mendoanimalshelter.com/dogblog/wiley

To see our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, events, and updates about covid-19 and the shelter, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com

We're on Facebook at: facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. 

THIS IS ONE OF THE PHOTOS WITHIN MY NEW COLLECTION, MENDOCINO INSPIRATIONS. 

This bear started me on the photography path in the summer of 2019. It allowed me to follow it on both sides of the Albion River, knowingly and not, for an hour. The photo was taken from across the river near the mouth of Slaughterhouse Gulch, an area rarely visited by humans.

Mendocino Inspirations contains dozens of other photos from familiar coastal locales to lesser known haunts in the wild. The limited edition book is available exclusively at Gallery Bookshop, corner of Main and Kasten Streets in Mendocino. Call them at 707-937-2665 or employ their easy to navigate website, gallerybookshop.com, where you can simply put Mendocino Inspirations in the search box and your ordering process will be simpler than those of the corporate giants.

(Malcolm Macdonald)

ENTROPY

Editor: 

At midnight on Aug. 31, SB 1120 had passed through both houses of the California Legislature and was subsequently killed.

The bill was held up until 11:30 p.m. but was finally approved by the Assembly, 42-17. To be sent to the governor's desk for signing, the bill had to go back to the state Senate for a final concurrence vote. Given that it had previously passed in the Senate by 39-0, passage was assured. But because the Assembly held back the bill until the very last moment, a concurrence vote could not be held before the Legislature closed at midnight, as prescribed by the state constitution.

SB 1120 would have allowed property owners to convert single-family homes into duplexes or to build two structures on what was once a single-home lot.

You may disagree with this idea. But when our Legislature, notorious for its inability to face our severe housing crisis, finally agrees on a solution but kills it anyhow, we should all be able to agree that any solution looks unlikely at best — and that our state actually appears ungovernable.

Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on a pledge of 3.5 million new homes for Californians. Leadership from his office might have prevented this absurdity.

Christopher Dolan

Santa Rosa

THE AVA’S CAMERA-SHY HOUSE CROW

ED NOTES

STILL haven't seen a Biden-Harris bumpersticker either in Mendo or on 101 or in Marin County. The young people I know were Berners and are now either going third party or vowing not to vote. I applaud their stand. Haven't seen any Trump signs, either, except for one flag on AV Way in Boonville, although I know there's a huge Trump vote in "liberal" Mendocino County. The lack of enthusiasm for Biden-Harris of course works to the advantage of Trump who, I see, is speculating publicly that Biden "seems like he's on drugs." But both of them are incoherent without teleprompters, and woe is US. 

JOKE OF THE DAY: Judged by yard signs, Biden is third after Trump and Garage Sales.

BOONVILLE'S freshly installed ATM at the Live Oak Building is brought to us by Ann Fashauer and the Redwood Credit Union, Ukiah branch. First banking amenity in the Anderson Valley since the old First National Bank whose headquarters were in Cloverdale. The First National was bought out by a chain bank who closed it because it wasn't turning a large enough profit, not that it was ever unprofitable. And we used to have a drug store, a justice court presided over by a locally elected judge, a bar, and, and, and…

FROM SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS: 

We asked the state for temporary, limited indoor dining with safe distancing in consideration of air quality risks. California Department of Public health responded, "The state is not granting any exemptions or waivers for indoor dining or any other indoor activities that are not allowed in a county based on the Tier they are in. We know this is a difficult time for all, and we urge Californians, especially in areas where wildfire smoke has impacted air quality, to stay at home and remain connected but maintain physical distance."

Recent letter writing efforts have targeted the BOS. It should be noted, the county does not have authority to override the state order.

ED NOTE: The great unwashed probably write to the Supervisors out of their delusion that the Supervisors represent their ground-floor leadership, toughing it out like everyone else with an onerous schedule of two Zooms a month for 84 grand a year with full monte fringes that only a blessed minority of Americans enjoy as the other half watch their lives fly off never to return. Which county is it whose Supes have dared go their own way regardless of the state’s one-size-fits-all directives? Progressive, har de har Mendo wouldn't dare, but why not? I suggest that the Supervisors place at least half their monthly pay into a HELP FUND, out of which the needy — local working people whose work has evaporated — could get some practical assistance. The crisis is here to stay, not that you'd know it from our Supervisors and their terrible-tempered, wildly over-compensated CEO they live in fear of.

REEL QUIK movie review: ‘Any Given Sunday,’ an Oliver Stone production. Lots of good stuff in this one — Ollie’s always interesting, isn’t he? — but the story line is all over the place, there’s a ton of jock movie-mawk, some positively weird sidebar episodes, a long, loving full-body visual of what may be the longest un-erect penis in America that in my admittedly limited experience is the most gratuitous visual I’ve seen in a movie, and about five thousand too many quick cuts that seemed more like bus collisions than football players running into each other. Objectively, the whole three hours is like a compendium of every football movie ever made but doesn’t convey the real speed and force of the game at the NFL level nearly as well as ‘North Dallas Forty’ did, a movie that relied, as I recall, on clips from real games taken at field-level. But Al Pacino, big-eyed and bellering as usual, is acceptable as the coach, Ann Margaret is real good as the middle-aged souse/spouse of the franchise’s founder, the daughter of the franchise founder is nicely played by Cameron Diaz who I thought was a man until I saw the movie and whose role is redundant to the story which could just as well left the team with Ann Margaret who’s more fun to watch because she’s been around the block many more times than Miss Diaz. I thought Jamie Foxx, a TV actor, was very, very good as the quarterback who edges out the vet well played by Dennis Quaid who at least looks and moves like an athlete. It’s also good to see a football movie that uses real football players in both speaking roles and as locker room back drop. (The longest penis in movie history is attached to a guy who looks like an NFL football player. He and his appendage are going to need agents now.) Former real life players Jim Brown and Lawrence Taylor are both first-rate in their roles as assistant coach and player respectively. James Wood is good as the corrupt medico, shooting up the key guys at half time at the risk of permanent injury to them, which is what NFL medicos do. Stone himself appears as a sportscaster, and the whole works rumbles along for two hours and fifty minutes plausibly enough so long as you pay no attention whatsoever to the story line, which is hopelessly confused, and when it isn’t confused, ridiculous. But Stone does make the overall point that pro football reflects the prevailing corruption like no other weekly winter event and even has a guy say, "Coach Pacino, I believe that the day the games were stopped for commercials ruined pro football forever." Yup, sure 'nuff. Oliver Stone is the only guy around making big time movies that depict the way we live which, if you haven’t noticed, is comprehensively horrifying. What’s unique about the film is its sound track, which manages somehow to fit in an amalgam of stadium sounds just like a player must hear through his helmet's ear hole. But I’d rather hear the words myself. The AVA gives ‘Any Given Sunday’ a “watchable but just barely.” 

SMOKEY NOYO FULL OF FISHERMEN (photos by Dick Whetstone)

CALMATTERS VOTING GUIDE

Come rain, shine, pandemic or crippling recession, California voters can always count on one thing: a very long, very complicated ballot.

Though the presidential race will gobble up most of the attention, the choice between GOP President Donald Trump and former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden will be an easy one for most California voters. The outcome statewide isn’t in doubt — nor was it before Biden picked California’s U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate. Trump won less than a third of the vote here in 2016, and a Republican presidential nominee hasn’t carried the state in more than three decades. 

But Californians will make other vital decisions:

Deciding the fate of 12 statewide ballot measures that seek to raise taxes or lower them; regulate some industries or ban others; and expand voting rights, tighten criminal sentencing and resurrect affirmative action. Determining the makeup of the Legislature, now controlled by a gigamajority of Democrats.Either affirming the sweeping gains Democrats made in California’s congressional delegation, or driving back 2018’s “blue wave.”

Confused about what’s at stake, which races to watch, how to vote during a pandemic or why you’re yet again voting on kidney dialysis? Consider this guide your one-stop-shop.

https://calmatters.org/election-2020-guide/

MENDO'S ETERNAL LEADING CITIZEN: Admiral William Standley (He even knew Stalin!)

William Harrison Standley was an admiral in the United States Navy, who served as Chief of Naval Operations from 1933 to 1937. He also served as the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1941 until 1943.

Born: December 18, 1872, Ukiah, CA

Died: October 25, 1963, San Diego, CA

Education: United States Naval Academy

Rank: Admiral

Battles and wars: Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War, World War I, World War II

(Wikipedia)

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 12, 2020

IZIK CABRERA, Fort Bragg. DUI, concealed weapon in vehicle with prior, felon-addict with firearm, alteration of firearm ID.

BENJAMIN CAMBEROS-CERVANTES, Geyserville/Ukiah. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

MARCO DAVILA, Point Arena. Probation revocation.

TAWANA HENRY, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, ammo possession by prohibited person, probation revocation.

CHRISTIAN HERNANDEZ, Ukiah. Controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, possession of assault weapon, loaded firearm in public. 

BRYAN LOCKWOOD, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, suspended license for reckless driving, controlled substance, paraphernalia, no license.

TASHEENA SHANNON, Willits. Controlled substance for sale and transportation, disobeying court order, failure to appear.

WILLIAM SMITH, Cleveland, Ohio/Ukiah. DUI.

JANICE ZEHER, Ukiah. Probation violation.

REPLACEMENT POLLINATORS

Editor,

Opportune, one might say it is, that at the very historical moment during which bees are increasingly absent from the fields and meadows and gardens, due probably to the genetic tinkering carried out by the megacorporate producers of agricultural ersatz, tens of millions of Americans have become available to hand-pollinate the crops. In addition to peons wages, the demoralized pollinators will be offered all the high-fructose corn syrup slurry then slurp down their swallerpipes.

Every morning as they trudge off to the fields and every evening as they return, they will be treated to a 160-decible rendition of our new national anthem: a duet between a leaf blower and a car alarm.

Malgre tout,

Volt Voort

San Francisco

GREENWOOD LUMBER ROCK

RACISM

by Paul Modic

I realized the other day that I have a racist friend.

“Dude, you're a racist,” I said. “Why don't you just admit that you like Trump?”

“Everyone likes Trump!” he said.

“No,” I said, “most people hate him, like me.”

He's the kind of racist who tries to deny it or pretends to himself that he's not. He brings up race a lot. He might be one of those “fragile white guys” who's way of thinking is under attack with all the BLM stuff going on. 

He's been talking like Trump for awhile and I try to steer the conversaion to something less polarizing. Finally I said, “Hey just don't talk about politics because you don't know what you're talking about. Talk about what you know about, like growing weed, women, and cattle. Otherwise you're just another asshole with an opinion. Dude, you're ignorant and uneducated and you live in a rural area. Trump's your guy. Quit trying to pretend.”

“How about just give every black $50,000 but then they have to shut up about everything forever!” he said yesterday. “If Trump doesn't get re-elected he might go to jail and if he wins a lot of people are going to jail including Hillary because of China and,” he said.

“Stop,” I said. “You don't know what you're talking about. You know nothing about 'Hillary and China.' When you talk about things you don't know about it just makes you sound stupid. Disliking someone because of the color of their skin is just stupid. I don't think you really want to be racist, you just listen to the idiots on right-wing radio or what your buddies say. You keep telling me all this bullshit you heard somewhere.” (Jerry Philbrick's letters-to-the-editor are his favorite feature in the Anderson Valley Advertiser.)

“You're one of those far-leftists,” he said.

“No, I'm actually pretty middle-of-the-road,” I said. “I watch the NBC nightly news, read the New York Times, and I never listen to Amy. Jeez, I just trashed a far left person for maligning Biden! Look, I know you're pretty harmless, you're not out there committing any overt racist acts, but stop talking politics to me because it's boring. Ask me if you want to know what's going on. How were you brought up anyway? Was your family racist? I was brought up anti-racist. My mother and I sat there in 1964 watching the march on Selma, Alabama on our little black and white TV. I was taught that if anyone said the word “nigger” to write them off, forever. So yeah, I didn't have many friends growing up in Indiana. This is a racist country, founded on slavery, we're all a little racist.” I told him an anecdote, a racist thought I had twenty years ago. “See, even me!”

I do want to keep my racist friend, we go way back and he's a good person who's helped me a lot over the years. The way I look at it I'm his best friend, ie, probably the only one to call him on his bullshit. 

EARLY UKIAH

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

THE CENTRALITY OF STORY 

by Matt Hamburg

As an undergraduate at Stanford University I had the chance to study from a breakthrough professor named Sylvia Wynter. Her central thesis is that human consciousness is not biologically programmed but rather programmed by narrative, or story. 

Our society and all of its educational disciplines are based on the idea that essentially biology determines consciousness—i.e. the story of Evolution. She challenged that definition of the human as a purely biological being by putting forward the idea that we program our consciousness with narrative and that the purely biological definition is, itself, a story. 

Needless to say, the validity of her thesis has huge ramifications. Story, in her thesis, is the factor in determining what type of world humans are to live in. From small tribes up to but not including our present society, the centrality of story has not been too downplayed. The assumption the West makes about itself, though, is that it is reality, meaning outside of story. But what if we, our present “modern” order is as much based on story, in this case, the story of Evolution, as was the first one that emerged out of Africa and all others to follow it. Truly we would live in a radically different world as our entire body of knowledge would have to be rewritten. 

Most people assume that the mind has evolved out of Africa and “improved” over time, which has created a paradigm of racism and a “Bell Curve” mentality when it comes to “intelligence.” When Wynter’s thesis is put forward, the idea that the mind evolved beyond having the capacity for language and symbolic thought and the ability to constitute its own consciousness through myth and narrative, is debunked. She puts forward the thesis that once the human entered into symbolic thought it was a complete rupture from all other forms of biological life. For once it developed the capacity for language and symbolic thought the human was, unlike all other species, constituting its consciousness through narrative and outside of evolution in a new and distinct way. Genes are able to tell you whether you are predisposed to certain diseases and what you will look like but they do not determine what type of consciousness you will have.

Presently, Evolution acts as the story that holds our social order in place. It is the origin narrative account of what we are--i.e., from a relationship of pure continuity with the primates (rather than being a new type of entity that constitutes its own consciousness through myth and narrative)-and of how we are to behave — i.e., Evolution puts forward that humans, like animals are biologically programmed to compete amongst ourselves in a free market for resources that are “naturally scarce.” 

Our entire educational system, including all the disciplines in academia (not just economics), is based on the idea that the genes have determined consciousness. Wynter’s challenge to the foundational paradigm of Evolution (in its self-conception as the Agent of history and, specifically, that the mind still evolves) is tantamount to the challenges made to Genesis as the origin narrative for the medieval order. When Genesis was challenged by a new narrative (as in The Great Chain of Being as put forward by Pico della Mirandola during the Renaissance) a new social order emerged where the State and Laity could then assert hegemony over the Church. The State and Laity (the Monarchy and the landed gentry) were then to be challenged during the “Enlightenment” by the bourgeoisie and their narrative of evolution as the story which puts in place the “free market” (and, obviously, race). From these two examples one can get a blueprint as the how narrative changes bring in new consciousness, new behaviors, new hierarchies, and therefore, a new social order.

In addition, her analysis transforms the “nature” versus “nurture” debate into a “nature” versus “culture” debate. This means that for the matrix identities of “white” and “black,” for instance, to even exist a story had to be put in place--the story of evolution. Clearly we are socialized in the context of that story, as identity has so much to do with the way in which we accept that narrative and its racism or fight against it.

Against the mainstream of academia, therefore, Wynter puts forward the thesis that Evolution is not the author of the social order, any more than gods, God, ancestors, the spirits of nature had been for other peoples. It is the belief in the story of Evolution, and its manifestation through the disciplines of academia, that brings our social order into being and makes “reality,” “race” and “class,” for instance, in our case, experienceable as true. 

In sum, the Western body of knowledge is based on a Two Event thesis. These two unexplainable Events are the creation of the universe in time and the emergence of biological life (from the so-called lightning bolt that hit the swamp). What Wynter puts forward is that there was a “Third Event” to be taken account of: the emergence of the human as a pure rupture with purely biological life. If she is right we are headed towards a radically new world.

(Matt Hamburg is the son of former Supervisor Dan Hamburg. He can be reached at mrhamburg@stanfordalumni.org.)

NOT SPEAKING and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.

— Paul Goodman

WE NEED TO RECLAIM 'POPULISM' from the right. It has a long, proud leftwing history | Thomas Frank

"The Populist party, as it came to be known, was part of a leftwing flowering then happening around the world, the rough American equivalent of the labor parties and social-democratic unions springing up in other lands. “Populism”, as its adherents saw it, was a fine and hopeful thing, a mass movement of farmers and industrial workers demanding action by the government to improve the economic situation of ordinary people and, while they were at it, a war on corruption as well." 

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/12/we-need-to-reclaim-populism-from-the-right-it-has-a-long-proud-leftwing-history

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

In Southern Oregon there are THOUSANDS of people without housing as of three days ago. There is NOWHERE to rent and if one lucks out the monthly payment is astronomical. Mom and Dad's spare room was filled years ago and any space in the yard or out front on the street was spoken for by last April. One tiny spark from a passing car on I5 southbound and the entire facade is no more. One tiny spark we are all from the next bardo. Reno is CONSTANT smoke with only 3 clear days here since 2 August. So much for my great escape.

THE PANDEMIC HAS NOT SPARED BOOKS. Booksellers responded to shelter-in-place orders by skateboarding packages to curbsides, organizing Instagram reading groups, branding face masks. None of this saved revenues from plummeting. Before the first month of lockdown was over, one survey showed that 80% of independent bookstores had furloughed or laid off workers. Supermarkets and big-box stores that remained open cut book orders; some Walmart branches roped off paperback racks as “nonessential.” Online sales fared better, but not by much. Although printed books are easier to ship than many commodities—books were e-commerce sites’ earliest proof of concept partly because nonperishable rectangles fit in the mail—Jeff Bezos cast his company as a public utility by ostentatiously prioritizing “essential goods” such as lentils and hair dye over Amazon’s signature product. School closings cut demand for textbooks, along with most parents’ time for leisure reading. By early April, bookstore sales were 11% lower than they had been the previous spring.

That’s not so bad, compared to the 50% drop in sales of clothing. The lockdowns that depressed purchasing power also opened up time soon filled by fiction, traditionally consumed by old or female readers—that is, people stuck at home. By April, even literary preppers stocked with triplicates of Saramago’s Blindness resorted to price-gouged coloring books to stem our children’s 24/7 demands for readalouds. Books categorized as “games, activities and hobbies” sold 25% more—a smaller gain than markers, which spiked 81%. Board books, those chunky hardbacks laminated to protect against drool (and, more recently, wet wipes) sold 30% more in the first full week of April than they had the previous year.

Other genres weathered the crisis in digital form. Audiobook consumption, initially down as cars idled in driveways, rebounded even more spectacularly in libraries than on direct-to-consumer platforms such as the Amazon-owned Audible. In the first week of April, Overdrive, the largest distributor of e-books and audiobooks for US libraries, reported a 30% increase in borrowing worldwide. While nationwide statistics are not yet available, one Florida library system saw a 22% jump in the use of their primary e-book supplier, and a 68% increase for their supplier of children’s and young adult books. Lockdown changed not just how much Americans read, but what. Back in March, sales of Camus’s The Plague followed the upward curve of Covid test results. Couples stuck at home together borrowed Relationship Goals: How to Win at Dating, Marriage, and Sex. Search engines gave Nora Roberts’s 2018 thriller-romance Shelter in Place a new lease on life. The worst of times for travel guides was the best of times for cookbook downloads: What good is panic-bought yeast if you haven’t panic-borrowed books that tell you what to do with it?

— Leah Price, NY Review of Books

2020 CALENDAR

AND McCASKILL ISN’T EXACTLY A MASTERMIND

Former Senator Claire McCaskill: 

Think about this for a minute; let's dwell on this just for a second. He's obviously never read a Woodward book. He doesn't understand what Woodward books are. And so that's strike one. 

Strike two is he sits for 18 interviews. Okay, who in their right mind who's running for office in a year, within the year, sits for 18 interviews with a journalist? This is not a smart thing to do. This is beyond folly; this is ultimate stupidity. He is so stupid, and he knows...he did the last interview like a month ago. He did the last interview a month ago. The book is coming out within two months of his election, with tapes. Eighteen hours of tapes. Hours and hours of tapes. 

So this president is the stupidest president that has ever held the office. Forget about for a minute all of his followers. Forget about the integrity issue, forget about the character issue. 

This guy is too dumb to lead this country, because this was really, really stupid.

A LOT OF FOLKS ACTING AS IF 2020 has just been a string of bewildering bad luck, rather than what it truly is: a concentration of widely and reliably predicted and interconnected disasters that advanced nations of the world could have mitigated or prevented but chose not to.

— Kane Wishart

FOUND OBJECT