Letters & Opinions

AB 1703 will ensure that students have an opportunity to learn the factual accounts of history involving Indigenous people of California. Generations of Native American youth have reached adolescence facing an identity crisis, caught between two cultural forces: the depiction of Native Americans taught in schools and the cultural heritage passed down from their ancestors and woven into their very being.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the reaction, or lack thereof, by the feckless and incoherent Biden Administration has spawned a fissure within conservative circles. Some on the right are beating the war drums for increased intervention beyond supplying Ukraine with advanced weaponry while others cower paralyzed with fear that any step to substantially help the Ukrainians defeat Putin and the Russians will precipitate World War III.

According to Merriam-Webster, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of definitions of “kind.” Anything of the kind; be kind enough; be so kind, five of a kind, in-kind, kind of, nothing of the kind, of one kind or another, anything of the kind, nothing of the kind, be kind enough, be so kind. The uses go on ad-infinitum. Take your choice. The one I’d like to discuss is the kind of way we treat each other.

One sunny afternoon, as Bob and I drove down Lamb’s Canyon, we noticed about fifteen people lined up along the top of a deep ravine, just staring down into the side of the canyon. Thinking something was amiss, we pulled over and joined the lookie-loos. And then we saw it - a car had plunged down the steep side of the hill and had flipped over at the bottom, leaving two scared teens in distress. One was standing but his friend was not moving and laying flat on his back.

Pardon me for a little of what we used to call a “reporter’s notebook” story. An old truism exists in broadcast journalism that “there’s a story around every corner.” I first learned that in 1996 but, unfortunately, I just learned it again today. Russian bombs and bullets, and Putin’s psychotic ego, have destroyed one of the very few good things to come out of a worldwide disaster 35 years ago.