As you have probably heard, the US Post Office has been sabotaged by Trump appointee Louis DeJoy. What you may not be aware of is exactly how bad the damage is.

I recently had a box of perishable pastries mailed to me from one section of Los Angeles to another. When they arrived, the postmark showed that they had been sent Priority 1-Day mail on ( Read more... )

CA election results in close races often come in late. This is because voting by mail is common and the ballots must by postmarked (as opposed to received) by Election Day. So we just got the results of one of the midterm elections, CA-21, on the 28th ( Read more... )

I'm cutting this for c&p-ing some news articles behind paywalls. Nothing graphic described. Two medium-length articles explaining some of what went wrong and why, plus some highly dubious-sounding justifications from city officials. Plus commentary by me. Please chime in with thoughts or further info, if you've found any ( Read more... )

The small town of Paradise was completely destroyed. Many of the survivors are senior citizens with disabilities or illnesses, and didn't have much money to begin with. Here are some links for helping them ( Read more... )

What I thought I'd be doing today, tomorrow, and the next day: writing ( Read more... )

I've spent the last six months or so registering voters and campaigning for Katie Hill, the Democratic Congressional candidate for my nearest swing district. The incumbent, Steve Knight, voted with Trump 98% of the time and is loathsome in every way. Katie is a staunch liberal who used to run an organization to help homeless people and veterans. ( Read more... )

A couple nights ago I attended a meeting of the city council on whether to declare my city, Culver City, a sanctuary city. It was already acting as one, but the measure made it actual law ( Read more... )

Yesterday night, when I had a long and grueling tech rehearsal for the Virginia Avenue Project (a theatre mentoring group for low-income kids that I've volunteered with for the last fourteen years), summed up my feelings about the last election: joy and sorrow, anger and hope ( Read more... )

This is a really bittersweet election-- Obama won, but so did the loathesome, cruel, discriminatory Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage in California. The legal status of thousands of married couples is now completely up in the air ( Read more... )

Adrian has informed me that he may not be available for dinner on Tuesday, as "I'm expecting to stand in line at the polls for ten hours! And if anyone tries to intimidate anyone from voting, I'm going to stop that! So I might get arrested ( Read more... )