Ten years ago the civil war in Syria, today the war in Ukraine, both ongoing, unnecessary, heartbreaking. I’ve needed somehow to think and write about them both. In between, my reflections and images of 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. As the years pass, it’s harder to laugh.