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she always likes to help Hayes in any way she can.
“I just really believe in Myrna,” she said.
Veterans in attendance included Carl Bresette, who wore a “Native Veteran” hat to honor his Chippewa roots. Roger “Mo” Mojica was also present, noting that he had served on the USS LCS-102 that allows a window into the past for those who board it. Veteran Dave Wood is a volunteer docent who leads tours of the Mighty Midget. Wood especially likes regaling listeners with stories of Kamakazis, or Japanese suicide pilots.
“They knew they were on a one-way mission,” he said.
A total of 52 vessels were lost at sea during World War II, according to Hayes. To remember those with ties to Mare Island is to keep them alive in our hearts, she said.
The ceremony ended with every active service member, veteran or family of a military person lifting the wreath in unison and sliding it into the brackish Napa River that runs by the former Navy shipyard. The Service Veterans Northern California Volunteer Honor Guard released a rifle volley and played taps before retiring the colors in a flag-folding ceremony.
Authors
From Page One
that I could one day be a swan. It allowed me to understand things I never knew. The gift of reading allowed me to go anywhere in the world.”
Jan Stevens, the president of the Library Foundation board of directors, was thrilled to have a live gathering, even though those attending had to show proof of vaccination and wear a mask when they weren’t eating at their tables.
“I’m thankful to celebrate this premier event in literacy that brings out authors, readers and people from throughout the community,” Stevens said. “I’m most grateful for our ongoing fight and our mission of lighting a path to literacy.”
Paris has done a lot after football, including serving a time as a sports analyst at KGO-TV in San Francisco, as a columnist, an ordained minister and a professional speaker. The opportunity to write his own story and share his story in his own words was a crowning achievement to him.
Other authors included Michelle Richmond, a New York Times bestselling writer of eight novels and story collections. Her latest is a Silicon Valley thriller, “The Wonder Test.”
“I’ve been reading books my whole life,” Richmond said. “I didn’t grow up among writers. My grandfather loved to read and I grew up reading the Bible and Bible stories.”
Claire Splan shared her story and her awardwinning “California Month-By-Month Gardening” and “California Fruit and Vegetable Gardening.” She is currently working on a narrative nonfiction book about a 1901 shipwreck.
“Librarians always step up to a segment of the community that doesn’t regularly get served,” Splan said. “One of my first jobs was as a librarian.”
Alexandra Boiger was also present at the luncheon. She is a creator and illustrator of the New York Times bestselling “Max and Marla” children’s books.
“We all are more than one story and we are a ripple effect to our next generation,” Boiger said. “It’s important for children to see themselves in every book so they can grow up to tell their own story.”
Alice Wilson-Fried shared her story and writings. She now lives in Vacaville after growing
— Alexandra Boiger
up in New Orleans. Her published works include “Menopause, Sisterhood and Tennis,” a nonfiction effort, and the first two books of a trilogy of mysteries set in New Orleans, “Outside Child” and “One Drop.”
“Outside Child” received the 2008 Silver Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing.
“Reading led to me becoming a writer,” Wilson-Fried said. “That was the foundation that helped me become a sculptor, carving my way through life and writing about every moment.”
Cherelyn Ellington Hunt, who serves as the adult literacy services manager, talked about the struggles through Covid and the fight for literacy in Solano County. Literacy struggles continue in the county and the state continues to have the lowest literacy rate in the country.
“Many libraries are having to look at a total rebuild,” Hunt said. “We were able to pivot hard into Zoom teaching. The thing that helped us through this was relationships that we built, and the students are coming back to the library.”
Teresa Lavell, the Reach Out and Read coordinator, said that 310,000 books have been distributed throughout the community.
“We’ve been able to reach a community that is often unreachable,” Lavell said.
Stevens summed up the purpose of the Authors Luncheon in her opening statement on the program.
“The job and benefits of literacy cannot be underestimated,” Shevens wrote. “From Reach Out and Read to Tutor.com and many others, the literacy program of Solano County Library help to improve the lives and fortunes of Solano County citizens every day. Thank you for partnering with us to continue to make this happen.”
California Lottery | Sunday
Fantasy 5 Numbers picked
Match all five for top prize. Match at least three for other prizes. 6, 11, 17, 30, 33
Daily 4 Numbers picked 9, 6, 5, 4
Match four in order for top prize; combinations for other prizes. Daily Derby 1st place 3, Hot Shot 2nd place 6, Whirl Win 3rd place 9, Winning Spirit Race time 1:40.44 now,” said 18-year-old Marc Medina, who had watched Scott rap from center stage Friday. He stared at the T-shirts that hung from the fence.
He’s had a hard time sleeping since that night, he said – every time he closed his eyes, he thought about a man he saw on the ground whose face had turned purple.
“If you see bodies like that, it’s hard to forget,” he said.
A criminal investigation is underway in Houston, led by homicide detectives, as law enforcement officials seek to understand what happened to the eight who died and the scores more who were injured at the sold-out event.
“This is now a criminal investigation that’s going to involve our homicide division as well as narcotics, and we’re going to get down to the bottom of it,” Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference Saturday. The “all-encompassing” investigation is being led by the homicide division, and “everybody that needs to be involved will be involved,” Jodi Silva, a spokeswoman for the Houston Police Department, said Sunday.
The investigation probably will go on for “quite some time to determine what exactly happened,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, D, said Saturday, noting that it could be days or weeks or “even longer.”
On Sunday, between the two memorials along the fences, security guards let in concert attendees who had left belongings in lockers or who wanted to search the lost and found.
The dead ranged in age from teens to young adults: a 14-year-old, a 16-year-old, two 21-yearolds, two 23-year-olds, a 27-year-old and a male whose age was unknown.
At least 25 people were taken to a hospital Friday night, and 13 were still hospitalized Saturday afternoon, including five juveniles. A 10-yearold child was in critical condition, officials said.
Finner urged people not to speculate on potential causes of the tragedy but acknowledged rumors that someone had injected fans with drugs.
Turner also said officials were investigating “what happened” and “where missteps may have occurred” at the concert, including through interviews of witnesses and of representatives for the concert organizers Live Nation Entertainment and for Scott.
An estimated 50,000 people attended the Friday show, part of an event organized by Scott, whose concerts have a reputation for rowdiness.
On Saturday, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, D, a county executive who presides over emergency management, called for an “objective, independent investigation as to what went on and how it could have been prevented.”
Kurt Arnold, a Houston trial lawyer who specializes in catastrophic personal injury cases, said he anticipates lawsuits arising from the Astroworld tragedy to be wide-ranging in their targets.
“What’s unique in this situation is that there was prior notice; this wasn’t a split-second situation like a sudden stage collapse,” he said about the chaotic tone of the day. “When you look at the trampling at the barricade . . . it’s just crazy.”
Live Nation will be the biggest target but hardly the only one, he said. The entertainment giant has been on the defensive before, with a history of federal safety complaints.
A video reconstruction of the night shows a chaotic scene in which concertgoers tried to yell for help but were drowned out by loud music. It’s not clear how many of the cries Scott heard, given that he was onstage and wearing in-ear monitors. Scott paused his performance at least four times but ultimately kept going until the concert stopped roughly an hour after videos from the crowd showed concertgoers in distress.
In videos posted to his Instagram story Saturday, Scott said he is working with Houston officials to understand what happened and help the families of the victims. “My fans really mean the world to me,” he said. “I am honestly just devastated.”
“Any time I could make out anything that was going on, I stopped the show and helped them get the help they need,” he added. “I could just never imagine the severity of the situation” – an apparent reference to the scale of the injuries in the crowd.
Turner, the mayor, said about 530 Houston police officers and 755 private security officers hired by Live Nation were at the event.
Asked why authorities had not ended the show sooner, Finner on Saturday said it would have been unsafe. “You cannot just close when you have 50,000 individuals. You have to worry about riots when you have a group that young.”
Covid
From Page One
mandates, posted lower vaccination rates and saw larger outbreaks over the summer. California’s case rate is now well above Texas’ and double Florida’s, which along with the rest of the Gulf Coast are down to the CDC’s orange “substantial” transmission level.
“There are early indications that the decline in the delta surge at the national level in the U.S. has ended,” said Ali H. Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington, which runs a widely followed model projecting the course of the pandemic. Currently, 19 states have increasing transmission, including several like California “that had previously appeared to have been declining.”
And while much of the Golden State’s current coronavirus woes are driven by virus spread in the less-vaccinated and restricted inland counties, the Bay Area hasn’t been immune. Most Bay Area counties that hoped to reach the yellow moderate level by now remain stubbornly stuck in orange. Marin and Santa Cruz counties, which had reached the yellow level, are back up to orange. San Francisco is the only county in yellow.
For Bay Area residents, that has real consequence. Local health officers have reimposed indoor face-mask wearing regardless of vaccination status and say they will lift the order only after their counties have dropped below the orange level for three weeks, among other conditions.
So why aren’t Golden Staters reaping more reward for their adherence to health guidance while the virus gives freewheeling Dixie a break?
“You’re paying for your success, which is weird,” Mokdad said. “You succeed in controlling the virus, and now you’re having infections.”
But he and other health experts say it’s not because the health guidance isn’t sound. Outbreaks burn out once the virus runs out of enough new people without immunity to infect. And people can gain immunity both from infection recovery and vaccines.
With higher vaccination levels than in the Southeast, California saw a smaller wave of cases over the summer as the delta variant ripped through the country, mostly infecting those who hadn’t been vaccinated. Now that they’ve recovered, they have immunity too, cutting off avenues for the virus to spread.
“These regions are now being partly protected by high prior infection rates,” said Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the medical department at the University of California-San Francisco. “But these people whose immunity comes from Covid-19 are not very well protected, and their immunity will wane with time.”
While California’s vaccination rate compares well with many other states, it still isn’t enough to snuff outbreaks. Currently 62% of California’s total population is fully vaccinated, compared with 60% in Florida, 54% in Texas, 49% in Georgia, 48% in Louisiana, 46% in Mississippi and 45% in Alabama. That still leaves more than one in three Californians unvaccinated.
In California, indoor face mask orders imposed over the summer for schools statewide and for other public buildings in the Bay Area and Los Angeles also helped keep the virus in check. But the state’s unvaccinated – especially those who haven’t been infected – remain vulnerable.
States in the Southeast hammered with big summer case surges now are faring better simply because, with their combination of vaccinations and infections, they have fewer left who are susceptible to the virus than in California, Mokdad said. But “they got there at a heavy price.”
Other factors also are in play. The Southeast’s hot, humid summers drive people to the airconditioned indoors where the virus spreads easily, while Californians enjoy moderate weather out in the surf and sand. But the autumn chill is now bringing Californians inside, too.
What’s more, immunity through vaccination or infection wanes over time. Californians who were quick to line up for vaccines early in the spring are now wondering how long their protection will last.
Booster shots have been authorized mostly for older adults, people with weakened immunity or those with high exposure risk, which will spur their protection from infection. But among those 65 and older, just 30% in California got the extra shot, similar to the 29% in Texas and 27% in Florida.
Mokdad said immunizing newly eligible kids and unvaccinated adults, giving booster shots and encouraging or requiring mask wearing can blunt a projected winter rise in infections.
Canada
From Page One
even the briefest of visits on the American side – must present a negative coronavirus molecular test result within 72 hours of arrival. Lawmakers, businesses and residents say the costly requirement – some tests are $200 – will deter the daytrippers, shoppers and families for which their economies have yearned.
“It’s exciting, but we’re also realistic,” said Corey Fram, the director of tourism for the Thousand Islands International Tourism Council. “We know there’s going to be a bump in southbound traffic,” he said, “but we know it’s going to be limited. It’s not where we want to be just yet.”
Drew Dilkens, the mayor of Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, told a local radio station last month that the testing requirement would dissuade the kind of short cross-border trips that are common there, for celebrating a family birthday or watching a Detroit Lions game.
“If you just want to head over for a funeral or to visit someone in the hospital, the expectation is you’re going to have to pay $200 to have a PCR test to return to Canada,” he said. “I think for most that’s going to be a deal killer.”
Canada and the United States closed their land border to nonessential travel in March 2020. Trade and the movement of essential workers continued. The curbs strained personal relationships, hit the tourism industry and upended life in border communities in ways large and small.
Canadians initially backed the restrictions as they watched the cases of covid-19 surge south of the border. But as one month turned to six and then 12, pressure mounted among some lawmakers, business groups and residents in both countries to begin relaxing the controls.
Canada welcomed fully vaccinated Americans in August. But the United States declined to reciprocate, a decision that deepened frustration, particularly in communities reliant on day-trippers, shoppers or tourism. (The United States always allowed Canadians to enter by air for nonessential travel.)
Land traffic into Canada this year is higher than it was in 2020 but remains below pre-pandemic levels.
In 2019, about 15 million tourists visited Canada from the United States, according to Statistics Canada. They made up two-thirds of Canada’s tourist arrivals. Most traveled by car.
From Aug. 9, when Canada began allowing fully vaccinated Americans to cross its land border, to Oct. 24, the most recent date for which data is available, there were an average of roughly 167,500 noncommercial crossings per week, according to the Canada Border Services Agency. That’s 15% of the average volume over the same period in 2019.
“Even though we did in early August open up the borders to American visitors . . . we definitely did not see any huge impact or a real change,” said Bill Stewart, the executive director of the 1000 Islands Chamber of Commerce in Gananoque, Ontario.
Many of the Americans who have crossed have been people with relatives or cottages in Canada, he said; far fewer have been day-trippers. He attributed this primarily to the testing requirement but also said some people might have firmed up their holiday plans well before Canada announced it was easing the curbs on its side.
