Fourteen years ago the brutal civil war in Syria, now much of the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, Sudan—ongoing, unnecessary, heartbreaking. I’ve spent some time in Syria and Eastern Europe, but what I know best are California and Italy, neither actively at war. This is only luck, given the disastrous state of international diplomacy. Meanwhile, I post my reflections on fires and floods in Venice, fires, homelessness, and guns in California, and climate change and migration everywhere.

When people were still reading print on paper, I wrote a column about books and authors, and another column on whatever. When my afternoon paper died, I wrote a comic novel about a failing afternoon paper– in a college town with a gourmet ghetto, an active soup kitchen, and a fatuous academy. These days, it’s harder to laugh.