I sort of live in Southern California

With detours + stories on politics, the Philippines, Gaza + recs

One thing led to another, and I followed someone to an area of inland Southern California that currently looks like this:

At one point, I considered preparing a go bag in case of evacuation, but it’s apparently normal/seasonal to be only ten miles away from fifty thousand acres of fire. A magical wooded mountaintop creek that I sunk myself into on a 110-degree day some weeks ago may not exist anymore :(

Also, I can’t get used to driving for thirty minutes, seventy miles per hour, to go out for dinner. Trying to walk, bike, take public transit (the Metrolink and Silver Streak function pretty damn well)—mostly carless, day to day.

Upsides of life here: Chicano/Asian history and life and food, alien foliage, converted-old-CRV camping (with every inch of skin covered in technical fabrics that promise smooth-dermised immortality), proximity to my parents in Tacoma, theoretical proximity to surfing beaches, Nachtmusik in a Japanese garden:

Brooklyn is still home; going back and forth and reporting as much as I can. Some stuff I published recently (let me know if you need a PDF of anything):

• Duterte’s no longer the president of the Philippines, but the drug war is still on. What’s it all about, and what can journalism do in the face of mass death? My New York Review of Books essay on Patricia Evangelista’s “Some People Need Killing.”

• Trump country is everywhere now. My New Yorker reporting on Black and Latino Trumpers in deep-blue NYC.

• A journalist and single mom escapes Gaza and tries to rebuild in Egypt. My Lux magazine interview with Amal Touman, member-leader of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, with diaristic photos and captions by Amal.

• The Kamala–Walz honeymoon may have passed, or has it? My New Yorker comment on a possible youth-vote turnaround.

Edible highlights from the road: a Caesar (what Bloody Marys are called elsewhere?) in Basin, Montana; perfectly caramelized tomato pie (with scissors! the best kitchen tool in the world) in Edmonton, Alberta.

Some things I’ve loved recently:

• Snap peas 🫛

• Lap swimming

• New Jack White album, which still sounds like old Jack and Meg

• Rescue vs. policing on the border, by border cops(?), in High Country News

• Comics of ennui, from the early smartphone era, by Gabrielle Bell

• The Sex Lives of College Girls, a weirdly good, actually funny Mindy Kaling comedy series on Max in which all the muscly “boys” are at least 31yo

• Pepe Mujica, a philosopher president who’s embarrassed by palaces and motorcades and capitalism

• “State and Main,” a David Mamet movie about movies and plays and celebrity mischief and white people

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Bicoastally yours, tammy 💘