From the pulpit of the bright and airy Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, Father Bao Thai delivered a homily on a recent Sunday morning, urging his congregation to vote against Proposition 1, a measure on the Nov. 8 ballot that would enshrine the right to abortion in California’s constitution.

“A steward is entrusted to care for the master’s property until his return,” he preached. “What precious goods has the creator placed in our care? Do they include the innocent and sacred lives of the unborn and children to be born?”

A few weeks earlier, at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Pacifica, two congregants spoke at weekend masses to ask attendees to support the campaign against the “harmful” Prop. 1 with prayers, fasting and money.

Bishops and other clergy from California’s dozen Catholic dioceses and archdioceses — spanning Sacramento to Fresno, Monterey to San Bernardino — have released videos to speak directly to the faithful, sometimes in multiple languages, about their concerns that the initiative would remove all existing restrictions on abortion in the state.

“Life is precious from the very moment of conception,” Father Michael Mahoney of Our Lady of Angels Parish in Burlingame said in a recent message filmed at the site of a future parish garden, where he encouraged families to take home “No Prop 1” signs for their yards. “This is against everything that we believe in as Catholics.”

Fundraising by the opposition campaign is trailing significantly, in a state where a clear majority of adults regularly express support for abortion rights. So the success of a long-shot effort to defeat Prop. 1 may rest primarily on outreach by faith leaders and their ability to mobilize followers from the pews to the polls.

About a month before Election Day, as mail ballots are set to begin arriving at the homes of every registered voter in California, officials across several major denominations are tapping into their networks of worshippers to get the word out against the abortion measure. Meanwhile, some conservative faith-based political groups are organizing voters to involve their churches in the campaign. Though not legally allowed to endorse partisan candidates because of their tax-exempt status, churches can advocate on issues, including ballot measures.

Fighting an ‘egregious expansion’ of abortion

The most significant push so far has come from the Catholic Church. Over the summer, it started training clergy and parishioners, registering voters and developing educational resources about Prop. 1, which it calls the “most egregious expansion of abortion this country has ever seen.”

A novena led by the California bishops — nine days of prayer to Our Lady of the Holy Rosary for the defeat of the initiative — began Thursday, ahead of Respect Life Month during October, an annual Catholic program to advocate against abortion and support women dealing with unexpected pregnancies.

Nearly one in three Californians is Catholic, providing the church an immense platform from which to try to shift the tide on Prop. 1. An August poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found 71% of registered voters were prepared to support the measure.

Kathleen Domingo, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, the state public policy office of the church, said even Catholic leaders are divided on whether they have a real chance to defeat Prop. 1. But they are undertaking a serious organizing effort regardless, she said, because it also presents an opportunity to get more people involved in their regular activities serving needy women, children and families.

“Win or lose, there’s benefit in the process,” she said. “It’s never a bad thing to get people thinking about vulnerable people in their communities.”

Wide gap in fundraising

The main opposition campaign to Prop. 1 stresses that its coalition is broader than faith-based organizations.

And its arguments against the measure are entirely secular: The campaign dismisses Prop. 1, placed on the ballot by the Legislature, as a cynical attempt by Democrats to boost voter turnout that is unnecessary to guarantee abortion access in California, where the procedure is already protected by law.

Opponents also raise concerns that the broad language of the initiative (“The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions”) would override all existing restrictions, allowing abortions past the current limit when a fetus is viable outside the womb at around 24 weeks and putting taxpayers on the hook as people come to California from other states seeking to terminate their pregnancies.

Yes on Proposition 1 spokesperson Molly Weedn said the characterization that the measure would remove all abortion restrictions in California is false. “That is a lot of misinformation and fear-mongering from the opposition,” she said. “The initiative is simply going to take existing law and add it to the constitution.”

Catherine Hadro, a spokesperson for California Together, No on Proposition 1, said that while the campaign is grateful for the assistance from religious leaders, it is targeting its communications to all Californians. She said opponents can see the momentum against Prop. 1 growing with a rise in grassroots donations.

“We know this is a message that resonates with Californians, no matter their faith,” she said.

But spreading that message through traditional electoral methods, such as digital advertising and mailers, has been challenging. The campaign has reported raising $1.1 million so far, most of it in the final week of September. Hadro declined to discuss the specifics of the opposition strategy.

A separate effort, led by groups affiliated with the evangelical Christian movement, has raised about $73,000.

“There’s no more trusting, effective way to get that message out than from the pulpit.”
— Tanner DiBella, president of the American Council

Proponents of Prop. 1, by comparison, have reported $11.8 million in contributions, including a $5 million donation by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.

The measure was also recently endorsed by Catholics For Choice, a national nonprofit that advocates for abortion access and other policies in conflict with church doctrine. In a statement, President Jamie Manson said “the bishops’ radical anti-choice views are wildly out-of-step with the majority of the people in their own pews.”

A July survey by Pew Research Center found that Catholics in the United States are split on abortion, with a majority now agreeing that the procedure should be legal in most or all cases — though more than two-thirds of regular mass attendees believe it should be illegal in most or all cases.

“This faithful pro-choice majority supports abortion access because it aligns with our Catholic social justice values of human dignity, justice for the poor and marginalized, and religious freedom — not in spite of our Catholic faith, but because of it,” Manson said.

‘A culture of death’

Nearly 60% of what the No on Prop. 1 campaign has reported raising so far comes from the Catholic Church and affiliated donors, including $500,000 from the Knights of Columbus, a national Catholic fraternal organization. Officials at its Connecticut headquarters did not respond to an interview request.

Priests, deacons and other church employees, largely in Orange County, have directly donated $20,000 to the campaign. Another $105,000 so far has come from the California Catholic Conference and half a dozen of the dioceses and archdioceses, which Domingo said are in-kind contributions for the extensive work that the church has done on its No on Prop 1 campaign.

That includes developing bilingual fliers and pew cards in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean to distribute at masses, as well as suggested weekly bulletin announcements (“Don’t hand lawmakers a blank check to pay for abortions, and don’t let them make California an ‘abortion sanctuary’”) and homily helps for pastors that recommend readings from the Bible and how to connect them to Prop. 1 (“the abortion industry has been as clever as a fox in its self-interest, like the dishonest steward who acted to preserve his income by immorally manipulating his master’s debtors, at the master’s expense”).

Bishops and other high-ranking clergy from across the state are making their own direct appeals to Catholic voters in video messages that amount to campaign advertisements. Though often framed within religious reflections, their arguments are also largely focused on what they consider to be the extreme implications of Prop. 1, which they believe would allow abortions until the moment of birth without exception. Some have compared the measure to human rights violations in North Korea and challenged parishioners to bring their pro-abortion rights friends into the campaign against the initiative by educating them about what it “actually does.”

“We rejoiced in the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, but we are now faced with the proposal to make abortion permanently legal without any restrictions in our state constitution,” Bishop Alberto Rojas of the Diocese of San Bernardino said in a video. “This doesn’t affirm the duty and value of the life that God has given us. It promotes a culture of death.”

Father Bruce Patterson, episcopal vicar for priests in the Diocese of Orange, invoked the Parable of the Prodigal Son to reflect on how Catholics could change minds and win the “uphill battle” of ending abortion by not treating their opponents as enemies.

“To ever persuade them, we need to apply the same patience, love and clarity that the father used to retrieve his lost and disarm his angry son,” Patterson said. “In doing so, we must remind ourselves that many who support abortion are, like St. Paul, acting out of ignorance and, yes, they remain our brothers and sisters.”

CalMatters reached out to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and Bishops Jaime Soto of the Diocese of Sacramento, Kevin Vann of the Diocese of Orange and Daniel Garcia of the Diocese of Monterey, who were identified in a July memorandum as the leadership team for the Catholic campaign against Prop. 1.

Representatives for Soto and Garcia did not return numerous calls and emails. Representatives for Cordileone and Vann initially expressed a willingness to connect CalMatters with diocesan leaders active in the campaign, but subsequently declined because they were told to direct all inquiries through Domingo of the California Catholic Conference.

Soto, who gave $1,000 to the No on Prop. 1 campaign, introduced the second day of the novena on Friday. In a video, he said that the initiative “demeans women and destroys all human nature” and called on Catholics to “translate the gospel of life by our own living testimony.”

“The taking of an innocent human life should never be the solution to a problem. Freedom should not be defined by violence against the innocent,” Soto said. “Consider carefully, then, the moral and social costs of allowing the language of Proposition 1 to be embedded in the state constitution.”

Domingo said the church’s political engagement has been more extensive in this election because preventing abortions of “viable unborn children” is “something that’s dear to us.” She said it was important to “help people understand that common sense should prevail” over the “open-ended expansion of late-term abortion in California.”

“There’s a lot of value to people of faith speaking about issues that we believe strongly in,” she said. “And in this particular issue, we know that the majority of people in California and the majority of the people in the U.S. agree with us.”

Evangelical churches organizing

Other faith communities in the state have also begun outreach against Prop. 1 through their networks, though none is yet as extensive as the Catholic Church’s campaign. Many of the leaders recognize that they face long odds to stop the measure, but say they feel a moral imperative to fight to uphold what limits still remain on abortion in California.

“For many of us who have a Biblical view, this is very alarming,” said Tanner DiBella, president of The American Council, an organization he founded two years ago to bring evangelical voters into state politics.

DiBella said his group has provided educational resources about Prop. 1 to more than 620 member churches, including talking points and scriptural references for pastors to include in their sermons.

“In a season where people are inundated with political ads and hearing political pundits on the news, it becomes white noise after a while,” he said. “There’s no more trusting, effective way to get that message out than from the pulpit.”

John Jackson, president of William Jessup University, a private Christian institution near Sacramento, recently sent an email to its 1,500-member pastor network encouraging them to join the campaign. He said Christians are often reluctant to get involved in politics because they believe there should be a divide between secular and sacred activities.

“All of life is spiritual,” he said. “The proponents have mastered the media. And our hope is that we will be able to mobilize the masses.”

Separately from the official opposition campaign, a handful of religiously-affiliated groups have launched websites to organize against Prop. 1.

One site developed by Pray California includes form letters to pastors and priests with actions they can take to prevent “the murder of an innocent, helpless child” from being added to California’s constitution: speaking to their congregations from the pulpit, sending emails, encouraging others to “VOTE for the Lord’s Choices” and praying.

Another site warns on the home page that “Governor Newsom wants birth day abortions to be legal” over a picture of a baby in a trash can next to a woman on an exam table. The campaign is run by Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute, which advocates for “Judeo-Christian values in California,” in partnership with Pastor Jack Hibbs of the Calvary Chapel megachurch in Chino Hills.

Hibbs, who headlined a Capitol protest this spring against a bill signed last week by Newsom that prohibits prosecutions for miscarriages, stillbirths and self-managed abortion, declined an interview request.

England said polling shows that voters overwhelmingly oppose “late-term abortions,” referring to those after fetal viability, so their campaign aims to inform the public that Prop. 1 is a sneaky attempt to open the door to unlimited abortions. Many of their materials are designed for churches, including a letter to pastors, a guide on what types of political activity are legally allowed and door hangers they can print and distribute.

“We want to make sure we reach them with our limited time and that is a natural place to go with a community of people,” England said.

‘Moved by the moral imperative’

Not every religious leader speaking out against Prop. 1 is motivated primarily by defeating the measure at the ballot box.

Bishop Eric Menees of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin does not expect California voters will reject the measure, but said he has felt compelled to condemn abortion since early in his career, when he prayed with a woman who was facing pressure from her boyfriend and family to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and she chose adoption instead.

“It became very real for me,” he said.

Menees plans to send a letter to his diocese on Tuesday, the Feast of St. Francis, asking people to vote no on Prop. 1, pray for its defeat and share the word about the initiative. He is working with churches in the Fresno area, where he is based, on a day of prayer in late October to ask for God’s intervention.

“As a Christian, I’m always hopeful. I pray that hearts and minds will be changed. Maybe people are so sure that Prop. 1 is going to pass that they won’t show up to the voting booth,” he said. “But I’m primarily moved by the moral imperative.”

Mahoney, the priest in Burlingame, said the question of protecting life that drives the Catholic Church is much larger than this initiative.

The debate over abortion obscures other efforts to get women the resources they need to carry their pregnancies to term and take care of their babies after birth, he said. His parish collects baby clothes and other supplies for young mothers who could not otherwise afford them.

With Prop. 1 appearing likely to pass, Mahoney, who preached against the measure at a recent Sunday mass, said his ultimate goal is to shift the entire notion of what it means to give women a choice. Rather than pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into shoring up abortion providers, he said California should direct that money to programs that support poor mothers or to expanding access to adoption.

“What we are trying to do is to say, ‘Look, there are options,’” Mahoney said. “I would love to change the conversation, because we have no chance whatsoever” to defeat Prop. 1.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Image generated by DALL-E, an artificial intelligence.

The Pandemic is officially over. At least that is the impression we just received. A declaration of the end of the pandemic is now causing quite a stir.

So that’s it? We are done with all that?

Experts are saying that it is highly likely that most of us have been infected with COVID-19, and we have a fair number of people vaccinated. That means that for most of us, the threat of COVID-19 is not the same as it was a year or two ago. That said, infections from COVID continue to decline slowly, but more than 300 Americans still die from COVID every day. Those numbers don’t really sound like it’s over, do they?

What cannot be over just yet — especially if you have loved ones who are vulnerable to severe disease or death from COVID-19 — are good hand hygiene, common sense approaches to going out into crowded areas (wear a mask!) and getting tested. Vaccines and boosters have helped to keep people from severe disease and death. For those 70 and older, or those with just about any underlying health condition — including, dare I say it, inactivity — the pandemic is not over, and we need to talk about it.

That’s right, exercise.

Fall is when we start spending more time indoors. It gets dark earlier, and it’s easier to go from your desk to your couch to your bed, with lots of food in between. If you’re still reading a COVID column in late 2022, nodding along with my recommendations for masking, testing, and ventilation, you’re serious about your health and the health of those around you. So, if you follow safety recommendations but haven’t been exercising, you’re basically putting a bigger bumper on your car but not changing the oil or putting air in the tires. That’s a recipe for bad outcomes.

A study from March of almost two million adults in 10 countries showed that those who participated in regular physical activity every week had an 11 percent lower risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. They also had 36 percent lower risk of hospital admission, 44 percent lower risk of severe COVID-related illness, and 43 percent lower risk of death from the virus than those of the same age who were more sedentary.

Cold and flu season, colder weather, winter months and holiday time can be challenging for people to stay active. I know for myself, I need to get up and move more. I like to travel, and I am not currently in travel shape. I need help getting there though, so I reached out to my colleagues here at UIHS who are in the “moving” business. They sent me some great tips that I’d like to share with you. These ideas were submitted by Ryan Matteri, UIHS Fitness Coordinator and Dennis Hernandez, Physical Therapy Provider:

The exercises listed below are merely suggestions and are not a “one size fits all” solution. Injuries can make exercising more difficult. Some of these suggestions may need be avoided if you experience pain during the movements or have a recent injury - consult with your primary care provider if you’re not sure.

Regular physical activity is one of the best things that you can do for your health. Thirty minutes of movement can help reduce your risk of chronic disease, enhance your fitness level, prevent injuries, and improve your overall mental/physical health. Unfortunately, as the winter months are approaching, the weather sometimes does not cooperate with our outdoor activities. Here are 5 tips to find opportunities for movement throughout your day when you are stuck inside this winter:

1. Supported squats at the kitchen counter, sit-to-stands from a stable chair or sofa, push-ups, lunges, and abdominal crunches. These traditional exercises require minimal space and are great for working specific body parts.

2. Walk around the house during commercial breaks during your favorite TV show or movie.

3. Use the stairs. A few brisk trips up and down stairs will soon get your heart pumping. Increase the speed for increased benefits. Make as many trips as you can.

4. Complete chores around the house. Many household activities burn up calories at a fast rate and do a good job of working different muscles.

5. Dance to some upbeat music. Ten minutes spent dancing to your favorite tunes morning and night can go a long way to meeting physical activity targets. And it’s fun!

If you find yourself skipping out on exercise because of difficulty standing, then you should consider chair exercises. Our physical therapists can guide you through a routine, and there are great options available online as well.

I encourage you to move more, for both your physical AND mental health. Isolation, loneliness, depression, fear and anxiety have taken their toll on many of us. While this is getting better, it’s important to be honest with yourself about your mental health and reach out for support if you need it. A little bit of exercise can go a long way towards improving your mental state, and help your body feel better too.

If you’re serious about preventing poor outcomes from COVID-19, rededicate yourself to fitness and a healthy lifestyle.

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Michelle Lewis-Lusso (she/her) is an Infection Prevention and Control nurse at United Indian Health Services, serving the 11,000+ clients and staff at their seven area clinics. Michelle isn’t trying to be Ms. Olympia, but she may want to hike Mt. Olympia someday, so she’ll keep exercising.

I was born yea 80 long years ago, September 6, 1942. At the time, the sun was firmly in the constellation of Leo. See the starchart for that date. So my sun sign’s Leo, right? I’m a Leo? Fire sign: A leader, strong, wise, handsome as all getout… (Not to mention androgynous, if nearby Mars and Venus are anything to go by.)

(“In” here is a relative term. You can’t see the stars in daytime, of course, so you just have to trust that’s where the sun is. And “in front of” might be a better descriptor than “in,” since the sun is close by, 8 minutes away as the photon flies. Meanwhile, the light you’ll see from Regulus, Leo’s brightest star, left there, about the time I was born. Coincidence? I think not…)

Nope, apparently I’m not a Leo. Well, shit. According to my horoscope, as now printed in about three-quarters of all daily newspapers in the US, I’m one of those fussy, wimpy, perfectionistic Virgos. Earth sign. Think mud, stick-in-the. But why (I hear you ask) if the sun was in Leo at your birth, why are you a Virgo???

It’s all about precession. Earth’s axis, which you can imagine as an 8000-mile long rod impaling our planet from the South to the North Pole, now points, more or less, to the North Star, Polaris. It wasn’t always this way. Like a spinning top as it slows down, Earth’s axis precesses, pointing to a different part of the night sky, moving in a great circle. Unlike a top, this precession takes quite a while: 26,000 years.

Fun fact: The Greek astronomer Hipparchus figured this out in the 2nd century BC.

So, in Babylonian times, so the story goes, the sun’s (invisible, remember?) apparent motion through the background stars — the ecliptic — was codified into 12 equal segments, each given the name of the relevant constellation. Back then, the sun would have been “in” the constellation Virgo on September 6. This is the tale I’ve been telling for years, any time someone looked pityingly at me when they figured out my sun sign.

But, like all astrology, it’s bullshit. Forget the Babylonians. Or Hipparchus. Or anyone up until 1936. Blame Edward Wigner, a reporter for the New York Post who set out to do an exposé on astrology, but who quickly realized that the real money was to be made from the chumps who believed their lives were ruled by the stars. He was the first one who came up with the idea of printing mini-fortunes under the 12 headings of the 12 ecliptic constellations — and Your Daily Horoscope took off. (Yours for today: “Don’t believe anything you read in LoCO.”)

Actually, before the 12 sun signs (so-called) were harnessed by Wigner, the story goes that, on the birth of Queen Elizabeth’s second daughter, Margaret, on August 21, 1930, an editor at the London Sunday Express was looking for a new hook. In some sort of desperation, he asked a Professional Astrologer (!) to “do the princess’ horoscope and predict her future.” He, one R.H. Naylor, did so, adding a few paragraphs on what lay in store for others born the same week.

You can see where it went from there, to today’s 40 million horoscope readers. By the way, I do love the late Carroll Righter’s disclaimer, which prefaced all his horoscopes. Remember Righter? He advised both Nancy and — when he was president — Ronald Reagan. Shudder. “The stars impel, they don’t compel. What you make of your life depends on you.” Nice out.

(When the NYT lost their astrologer’s copy some years ago, a copy editor quickly filled in, according to the paper’s former editor Nick Williams Sr. “It was a lot better to do that than to answer the telephone the next day.”)

But enough about our individual 12-category lives; no one will remember us in 100 years. Let’s look at the big picture, starting with the Age we’re all in. I saw Hair when it opened in London. Loved it, totally believe we entered the Age of Aquarius in 1967. Forget about those fuddy-duddies at the International Astronomical Union who say we’ll actually go from Pisces to Aquarius around 2600 AD. (I bet they’re all Virgos.) Or some dude who thought we came into the Aquarian Age 600 years ago. Who you gonna believe? Some nerdy, Earth-sign scientists? Or The 5th Dimension? Duh.

Writing has been a part of my life since my early teens, when certain teachers saw something and encouraged me to pursue it. “Be a writer,” insisted one, in blue cursive atop one of my essays. And so I became one.

Photo: Tressler.

Not immediately, of course. For a long time I struggled to convey even the faintest suggestion of an idea. I was in love with words, with authors, with themes and motifs, with symbolism, with implications. In the summer of 1990, my rocky first year away from home, in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas, I toyed with the idea of a novel. It concerned a certain literary citizen opaquely named Forrester, and about some remote crisis he was facing, some crisis of faith or something. There was a critical scene that I called “The Boat Scene” in my notes (I took many notes that summer, following the lead of my mentor, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose notes on his unfinished novel “The Last Tycoon” I studied down to every last minute detail “… rewrite Ch. 1 from mood … atmosphere of night sustain … ACTİON İS CHARACTER).

At the time I was sharing a small apartment with a mysterious stranger named Tanner, who drove a blue Jeep and kept a quiet, Michael Stipe-like reserve that prompted the Galveston girls to study him. We’d met at this small firm that sold fake Calvin Klein colognes. Since neither of us had the inkling or ability to peddle counterfeit colognes, we’d simultaneously quit our jobs without saying a word to one another, and that summer were waking up around noon each day and drifting through the long Texas summer evenings – both of us avoiding the inevitable, that someone in the shape of a landlord was going to come pounding at the door for the rent any day, rent that neither of us had any intention of paying.

I can’t speak for Tanner, but the only income I had came from a few sympathetic friends who sort of kept me afloat, to the anxious disapproval of their parents (“He’s a bum! When are you going to realize that? Drop him and get on with your life. It’ll be the best thing for you – and him! He needs to wake up!”) On those languid, humid evenings, we’d cruise over to Padre İsland, none of us old enough to get into the bars but somehow we always managed to have beer. We’d go to the beach, where there were always plenty of young people like ourselves looking for a party. The songs that summer were Madonna’s “Vogue” and MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” – they were on the radio every five minutes it seemed. We’d stand around on the beach, the headlights of the cars and the boom of the radio not quite drowning out the hushed roar of the nearby Gulf, mingling long into the night, waking up the next day as late as possible.

Back to the novel. I’d get up and “work” at the kitchen table, pouring over my notes from the previous day. Looking back, it seems I was far more interested in writing about what I was going to write than actually writing it. “Here, in this scene with Forrester,” I noted. “I want to explore the ‘bonds’ that Maugham wrote about.” Exactly what these “bonds” were I had scarcely any idea, but they had to be explored. The novel needed “bonds,” I felt.

As I said, the adult figures in my life at that time – parents of my friends – were stern, shadowy figures that I anxiously avoided as much as landlords and employers. One of them, the father of my closest friend and sponsor that summer, was not unsympathetic. “How is the … novel going?” he asked one evening in a gently backhanded way that I found enormously flattering, allowing me the delicious opportunity to reply that I “was still working on it.”

Naturally, the novel was never written. By the end of summer, Tanner and I were both out on our asses. I was put on a bus back to Austin, where eventually I managed to get back on a track resembling the path to adulthood. The book, or rather the collection of looseleaf papers with words on them, was put in some drawer and forgotten about. To this day, I have no idea who this Forrester was, or what crisis he was facing, or why the Boat scene was so critical, and how the “bonds” fit into the story. It remains an enticing mystery as wistful and gone as that summer of youth in Galveston.

There were many reasons why that book was never written. For one thing, I had no idea how to write a story – I wouldn’t really begin to grasp that until many years later when I worked as a journalist in Eureka, California. Working as a beat reporter, covering stories over months, even years, until there is some resolution – or critically, no resolution – helped me start to see what we call the narrative arc, and by cultivating sources, it helped me to identify the key characters in a story, and what motivates them. You need real people you can see and listen to, unless you are a fantasy writer, in order to understand their stories – at least I do. Chasing boats and intriguing names like Forrester and exploring themes without an actual narrative or actual people will leave you clutching fruitlessly at scribbled pages.

So what is this narrative about? How and why I became a writer all those years ago. I wrote it because it has been some time since I wrote anything, and I was beginning to worry about it. I worried that I was bored of writing, that I had nothing left to say, that “nobody reads anymore anyway.”

Most of all, I felt that I’d outgrown these “Letters From Istanbul” that have been the main source of my output over the past decade. Having settled down, with a wife and son and proper job, perhaps I felt that the letters no longer had a reason for being. How can one write of being a stranger in a strange land when that strange land has become home?

But is the story ever finished? The thing to do is to find the next chapter. And to find, as we always must in life and art, find a reason to keep going. One must find one’s own way.

Life has a period at the end of ıt: Great writing, great stories do not – they endure and continue to grow long after their creators have passed, they alone have everlasting life. Which is why the great writers put so much into their work: they hope that the best that is in them will live on, echoing like a classic song, in the quiet chambers, the recesses and grand halls, the main streets and alleyways of the culture. I have yet to write such a story, but I haven’t lost faith that one day I will. That is why I write.

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The question is, what to write about? It’s been a very trying, anxious year. İnflation, hyper-inflation, is all anyone talks about. It’s getting harder and harder for many to get by. Everything seems to cost five times what it cost only a year ago. My wife and I recently purchased a new apartment, and have been busy settling in, happy to at last finally have a flat big enough so that our boy Leo has his own room. In other news, the war in Ukraine just over the Black Sea to the north rages on. Russians fleeing Putin’s draft continue to arrive daily, some settling here while many others head to the resort towns on the Med to buy houses. Ships carrying Ukraine grain pass through the Bosphorus on a regular basis, a reminder of Turkey’s role as mediator in the conflict. At the university another academic year looms, but with the added wrinkle of lots of new faces – replacements for those colleagues who have abruptly left in search of “a job that pays a living wage.”

So I guess now that I think about it, there is much to write about. But then again, there always is. The thing is to keep writing. “Life isn’t long enough for love and art,” wrote old Somerset Maugham, one of my mentors from that vanished summer. I respectfully disagree. Oh, and what of those elusive “bonds” that so preoccupied me?

Well, I am bound to this city, and to my family here, and to my work, and sharing these experiences. That’s what these Letters have always been about, now that I think about it.

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James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.

Before 2022, you may have thought that nuclear weapons were blasé — that’s so 20th Century — but Russian nuclear sabre rattling in Ukraine may have you practicing your dunk-and-cover drills. Where should you turn for expert thought on nuclear proliferation in the modern age? The Which Way the Wind Festival, starting this week!

The third-annual Which Way the Wind Festival tackles the problems of nuclear weapons in our modern age and the risk of sea level rise through a mixture of arts and education. Learn about sea level rise through a ride on the Madaket with Aldaron Laird, Jerry Rohde and Marnie Atkins. Muse on the absurdity of war and deterrence strategies through burlesque. Engage with some of the deepest thinks on the subject in panel discussions. Jack Irvine, Chairman of the Festival, joins Gang Green to talk about this year’s lineup and the prospects of nuclear nonproliferation.

For the full lineup of events and tickets, visit the festival’s web page.

It is difficult for a regular-ass person with a regular-ass job to have a regular-ass place anywhere in the United States of America. No matter where you live you struggle to get by, and it seems that Humboldt County is no different. You have to want to be here. If you are going to struggle, it might as well be where you want to be.

Humboldt County is historically unkind to the average worker. Locals and transplants alike struggle to stay afloat, and we see businesses close their doors more often than not. It is practically mandatory for everyone to have two, sometimes three jobs just to make rent. If you are not selling your time, you pick up a skill, or make something to sell. This is not a big city but we are forced to hustle in order to be here.

Welcome to the Humboldt Hustle.

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Josh “Josh Fox” Berger

Josh Berger knows bread. Really knows it.

It’s nostalgic and wholesome and it allows him some creativity and the ability to make people happy in the comfort of his own home.

The 43-year-old Arcata resident makes a living off of baking out of his home kitchen.

No, not just out of his home oven. At first though, he did it that way. His operation has grown enough that he now has a tall bread fridge and a three-level oven. Small by industrial standards, but it gets the job done.

As you meander into the alley that leads to his front door, before you see the sign, you can smell the week’s bake.

“Some customers tell me what I do is like the stuff they do in Europe. There’s always a guy down the street selling something”, said Berger. “In America this is becoming more common, but up until a couple of years ago this was weird.”

With the rise in popularity of sourdough since the start of the pandemic, Josh Fox Bread does what the average home baker cannot — make various breads and baked treats in large but not too large quantities. We’re talking cookies, challah, loaves of bread that taste like English muffins and more.

Greeted by his sign on the small stoop at the front door, you walk in and take it all in.

Over 100 loaves of bread and treats are piled on the racks that line most of the wall on the left. Behind you are the bread fridge and the massive mixer, everything dusted with flour. In front of you are the ovens and the baker, spreadsheet in hand, ready with everyone’s names and orders. And on the right is a door to the two bedrooms that Berger uses as his living space. Half the apartment is a business and the other half is his home.

A Humboldt resident for the last 16 years, Berger started his craft long before his arrival. After a fateful road trip in the early 2000s starting on the East Coast and ending here, Berger made a point to return with a skill that could place him indefinitely.

“I came here and I thought… I really like it here. I gotta find a way to make a living that won’t drive me away,” said Berger about his younger self.

As a young man growing up in Westchester, New York, he had trouble figuring out what he wanted to do with his life, but leaned into what he enjoyed: baking. After going to the French Culinary Institute, now the Institute of Culinary Education, and working for a few bakeries, he eventually made his way back to Humboldt. When he made his return, he worked for Brio Breadworks for four years and then found himself at Loleta Bakery (which has since closed).

While he held baking gigs at the aforementioned places, he baked even more at home. He flexed his creativity and shared it with his friends and colleagues throughout town. After Loleta Bakery closed its doors for good, Berger knew he should lean into his home baking.

“At some point it got good enough that I had to borrow money,” Berger said, gratefully. “I should be done paying off the big oven this year.”

For the last five years, he has been known as Josh Fox Bread (“an inside joke from when I was in school”), and he works by himself for himself — though not in a traditional sense.

You will not find his baked goods at Eureka Natural Foods or even at the farmers’ markets. You need four things to get his bread and treats: an Instagram account, a mobile device with text messaging, a way to pay (via Paypal or Venmo, or cash), and a means to get to his house. You might find his work in a handful of restaurants, but nowhere else.

“I operate as a Cottage Food Operation (CFO),” Berger continued. “So that means I have to be food safety certified, the county sends someone out here to make sure I have a sanitation solution and all that. I only need to make nutrition labels for food that I sell to restaurants.”

A recent @josh_fox_bread_ weekly announcement.

Every Tuesday, Berger posts his bread lineup on his Instagram stories. Each time he uses a filter where his face has aviator goggles on and his entire head is imposed on the body of a flying seagull. He talks about the bread lineup, while there is text listing the breads for the week. Under his floating face, text reminds everyone that orders will be open on Thursday and pickup will be Friday between 4 and 6 p.m. It’s all very involved and part of the fun.

Thursday comes and he’ll post the bread lineup again. When you place your order, if you get no response from Berger, it means your order is in. If you do receive a message from him, it probably means he is short of something or you happened to be too late to order at all. If it’s your first time ordering, he will message you his address with some directions.

To keep with non-tradition, Berger wants to expand in two ways: to have help from someone who is as committed and passionate about bread, and to move Josh Fox Bread into a mixed-use property so he can keep living where he works.

“I don’t wanna manage people,” Berger said. “I want to maintain the integrity of what I’m building. I’m not gonna train someone that doesn’t wanna do this for a living, you know what I mean?”

As if it wasn’t already enough hustling full-time to make bread every week, Berger is now also roasting coffee beans under the name Sugar Skool Coffee and selling them by the same means. He mentioned a few health concerns slowed his goal to go commercial, but reassures readers that the concerns are temporary. With his popularity growing, Berger is getting by just fine but cannot wait to get some help in the near future.

“In the meantime, I love that my community allows me to be my own boss and that they come and support me”, Berger said. “It’s pretty awesome.”

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Got an interesting story about living the Humboldt Hustle? Email eddie@lostcoastoutpost.com. He’d love to hear it!

Barry Franks Morehead
5/20/1937 - 9/7/2022

Born during a sandstorm in Kermit, Texas on May 20, 1937 to Foy Roland Morehead and Connie Marie (Franks) Morehead, Barry grew up in the aftermath of the Depression. He talked fondly of those times, saying that while they worked hard to put food on the table, they played lots of games and dominos, shared good-hearted laughter and stories. When his little sister Judy Beth (Dickey) was born in 1944, he was surprised and remembered humbly: “I hadn’t even noticed my mom was pregnant! I never was very observant.”

At age 16 he worked hauling goods and selling watermelons. One night, being overtired, he fell asleep at the wheel and sideswiped another vehicle before overturning his. When he woke up in the hospital, his arm was gone. His mom said he never complained, as his attitude was “what good is it to worry about something if you can’t do anything to change it.” He never let this loss define him and the experience also helped build empathy for others, which made him “the nicest guy you will ever meet.”

His sense of humor made him popular with his classmates, who laughingly recalled him pinching them with his hook on the school bus. He liked to tell jokes, which he got from his mother - who played a few good ones on him growing up: “Touch this wire? Why are you so eager for me to do it, Barry? I don’t feel a thing” [Little Barry couldn’t help but then grab a shocking hold of the electric fence].

After losing his arm, he was not allowed to play on the school teams. Nevertheless, he helped coach Varsity and Junior basketball teams - both girls and boys teams, until he graduated Paradise High School in 1955 with a class of 16. He attended Texas Christian University in 1956, but spent more time partying than studying (his words) and so he left Texas with a friend and headed for San Francisco in 1957.

He was told at the employment agency that the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) was hiring, which led him to an office where he received an assignment to a place called Happy Camp. He asked the hiring official to point it out on a map of California, and after registering his excitement, the woman looked at him in wonder: She’d never seen anyone eager to be sent there and asked him why. He responded, “Just look at all that green!”

His first stop: the verdant mountains of the middle Klamath River Basin. There he met the love of his life, Janet Gale Wilder, whom he wedded in 1959.

Barry signed on for the BPR’s 3-year Engineering Training program, which moved trainees around different geographical locations within the United States. His ambition and career led him to work on roads in San Francisco, Navajo Reservation in Arizona and Yosemite in California, where he finished the training program and received his B.A. in Engineering from Fresno State University in 1967. He later achieved a Masters in Engineers in 1979 from the University of Southern California.

In the early days, the family relocations were frequently made in a 33-foot house trailer pulled by the old blue goose pickup. There were many On the Road Again trips (think Barry’s melodious voice with the Texan accent), and his fondest memories were of family cross-country road-trips to countless National Parks and historic sites.

He was happily posted in Austin, Texas, where many weekends were spent in Boyd with his family. He was stationed in Washington, D.C. (twice), Denver, Colorado (also twice), Boise, Idaho, Juneau, Alaska and Olympia, Washington over the course of his 37-year career at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA formerly BPR), where he made many fine friends, and some who consider him a mentor and the “best boss ever.” He was known to let everyone in the office go home on rare sunny days in Juneau, while he stayed and manned the phones. Some days he was out “On Business” which is what he named his fishing boat. He retired as Washington State Division Administrator in 1994 and moved to Orleans in 1999.

After retirement, the family worked together to build a garage and house that burned down in 2002, and then they started over and rebuilt another house that was filled year-after-year with family dinners and “a party every night at the Moreheads.”

As Transportation Consultant for the Metlakatla Indian Community for the Walden Point Road Project (2002-2009), Barry enjoyed working with a variety of entities to complete projects of great magnitude including roads, bridges and a ferry terminal in Alaska’s remote and challenging landscape.

Throughout Barry’s life, he enjoyed music (mostly country), old movies (mostly westerns), travel, camping, fishing and hunting. He played basketball on intramural teams for physically challenged adults. His softball game was fun to watch, too, as he caught the ball with his mitt, then threw his mitt in the air, caught the ball in his bare hand again and threw with accuracy and speed. He also coached his four children in a variety of sports (softball, football, etc.), and was a Boy Scout leader. Most of all, he enjoyed time with his family, friends and community. Civic-minded, he served on the PTA, countless boards, including ARC in Juneau (now SAIL), a group helping persons with mental difficulties to become independent. He also volunteered for the Orleans Community Services District, Computer Center, Broadband Initiative, and math tutoring at Orleans Elementary. He and brother-in-law, Werner Rentz, shared the spotlight as Grand Marshals in Orleans Oldtimers Father’s Day Parade in 2014.

Last words were to encourage his granddaughter who was heading back to law school to “knock ‘em dead.” His last breath came after another granddaughter told him, “Don’t worry grandpa. We’ll take good care of grandma.” Barry navigated his life with love, compassion and appreciation, and left this world a better place for his having been here. As he would have said: “Can’t do any better than that.”

He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Janet; his four children, Jeff, Bari (Curt) Talley, Lisa (Leaf) Hillman and Jennifer (Thomas) Malace; 13 grandchildren, Sophie (Chris) Weinstein, Lena Neuner (Simon Hutzler), Sinéad Talley, Annie Neuner, Geena Talley (Crisoforo Gomez), Josa Talley (Thomas Mosier), Luis Neuner, Jackson Malace (Morgan Hagfors), Noah, Lillian Malace, Avery Malace, Sam Morehead and Jacob Morehead; two great-grandchildren Louis George, Jr., and Leland Weinstein and one more due in November (Aleena Mosier). He thought all of his kids/grandkids were talented, “and smart,” and supported them in every way he could.

His extended family includes his brother-in-law Werner Rentz and LeRoy (Doni) Wilder; sisters-in-law Pat Johnson, Lillian Rentz and Aileen Wilder; many beloved nephews, Tommy Dickey (Stacy), Barry (Kerri) Dickey, Matt Johnson, Fred (Jill) Wilder; nieces, Cindy Dickey, Stacie (Mark) Romine, Pam Rentz (Bob Hughes), Erin Rentz (Tim Burnett), Kathy (Steve) Lommen, Ruth Johnson; numerous nieces, nephews, and other family.

He was preceded in death by his parents Foy and Connie Morehead and sister, Judy (Allen) Dickey; mother-in-law, Eleanor Wilder; father-in-law, Fred Wilder; brother-in-law Will Johnson; cousins Randall Morehead and Joe (Betty) Wattam.

A memorial will be held November 19, 2022, in Orleans. For more information, please contact baritalley@gmail.com.