Here are five things that caught my attention!
If you only read one thing: When I ran for Supervisor, I pledged to truly invest in real and tangible action to improve our mental health and substance abuse systems. We have a ways to go, but are seeing real progress. This piece in the Sunday Union Tribune outlines our progress.
Chasing coral: The desire to explore is a wonderful thing. As a kid I was captivated by space and dreamt of being an astronaut. In 3rd grade I called NASA and they helped me make a list of things to do—go to the Naval Academy, become a pilot, etc. Needing glasses around 8th grade crushed that dream, but in college I found SCUBA diving and the wonder of the world underwater. This incredible documentary, Chasing Coral, highlights the devastation of our coral reefs due to climate change and the warming of the oceans. It is both heartbreaking and motivating.
Deeper dive—young people and inflation: So much of our worldview, our values, and our fears are informed by our experiences. Here’s an interesting Times piece this week on the generation born in the 2000s that are experiencing so many things for the first time, including inflation. Young people are the primary consumers for so many of the goods and services that are seeing the biggest price bumps. As a group, millennials spend a larger share of their income on gas, are more likely to be renters, more likely to eat out, and more likely to regularly visit the laundromat. We don’t know how long this economic moment lasts but it’s already shaping the way young people feel about the future.
Book referral: I am fortunate to have a great network of friends who suggest more books than I could ever read). I research them, put them in a queue and work through them as quickly as possible. It is all very thoughtful and organized:) But on a recent trip, I took the rare step of impulse buying at an airport book store! The Moth and the Mountain is a true story of love, war and Mt. Everest. New Yorker writer Ed Caesar tells a fascinating true story that is too wild to believe really happened. But it did! In middle school, I was captivated by the Scott Turow novel, Presumed Innocent. I have read most of his books since then but picked up The Last Trial, his latest legal thriller. It doesn’t disappoint.
Sunrise: My wonderful wife loves to watch a sunrise (and a sunset). On a recent trip, that meant getting up well before dawn, hiking miles and then climbing a tree to get the right position to capture the time lapse. I am no photographer, but it was a beautiful morning.
