Georgia Hall makes rapid climb up LA Open leaderboard in third round

• April 2, 2023

PALOS VERDES — Saturday was moving day at the LPGA DIO Implant LA Open at Palos Verdes Golf Club and no player in the field did more moving than Georgia Hall.

Starting the day nine shots behind the leaders, Hall went out and matched her career low score of 9-under, highlighted by a front nine 29 which included two eagles in the span of three holes. As a result of her spectacular play Hall finds herself alone in third place at 10-under 203, four shots behind leader Ruoning Yin heading into Sunday’s final round.

“I was like 7-under after 9 and I was like, wow, I’ve never had this before,” Hall said. “I was just trying to forget about my previous holes (on the back nine) and take each shot one at a time It’s been quite nice to me so far this week.”

Hall finished second at last week’s LPGA event in Arizona, losing to Celine Boutier in a playoff. She said her early season success has given her plenty of confidence coming into this week’s tournament.

“Although I lost in the playoff, I hit some really good shots and long game was really solid today,” Hall said. “So, just really pleased where I’m playing and just trying to keep it going.”

Yin fired a third round 4-under 67, giving her a two-shot cushion on Hyo Joo Kim who posted a 2-under 69 on Saturday. Hall is third, followed by a large group of players at 9 under that includes former Westlake Village resident Danielle Kang. Like Hall, Kang used a strong third round performance to put herself in contention, firing a 6-under 65 on Saturday.

Based on how well Yin has played through the first three rounds, it’s going to take a monumental effort by anyone in the field to rally from behind and catch the second-year pro on Sunday. Yin started the round tied with Kim at 10 under, and after some front nine struggles, she found herself three off the lead.

But a birdie on the ninth gave Yin some momentum heading into the back nine and thanks to a stretch where she had four birdies in five holes, Yin raced to the top of the leaderboard. Since she’s never won on the LPGA Tour, the 20-year-old professional expects to have a few nerves on the first tee Sunday but said after she hits that first tee ball it should be business as usual.

“I’ll just play my game,” Yin said. “I know I can make birdies so I just need to be patient. I will stick to my routine, wake up, go work out and then come to the course.”

Yin plans to call upon the experience she gained on the China LPGA Tour where she won three consecutive tournaments. Having confidence in her game was a key to rebounding from her slow start and getting her game on track.

“After I made a bogey on 8 with a three-putt (her second consecutive three-putt), I just told myself and I told my caddie, we just got to trust the line and putt it. We’ll make some putts,” Yin said.

That’s exactly what she did, using a hot putter to make three straight birdies and four in five holes, giving her the two-shot lead she holds at 54-holes, the first time in her career she has held the 54-hole lead.”

Through the first nine holes on Saturday, it looked like Kim might be the player at the top of the leaderboard by day’s end as she used a hot putter to build a three-shot lead. But when her putter cooled on the back nine, Kim had difficulty scoring, causing her to scramble to stay in contention.

Now in her eighth year on the LPGA Tour and having won five times, including the 2014 Evian Championship, Kim knows what it will take on Sunday to win. Despite being two shots down she said if she plays her game over the final 18 holes she feels she has a good chance to win.

For Kang, Sunday represents an opportunity to try to win a tournament in front of the many friends and family members who always turn out to support her when she plays in Southern California.

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Despite having to deal with mud on her ball throughout the round because of the recent rains, Kang managed to find a way to hit enough good shots to put herself in contention.

“This golf course is just testing a lot of people’s patience,” Kang said. “The greens are not as easy as it may seem. I know we have a lot of scorable holes with wedges in your hands, but, it does test all parts of your game, and I think it’s a really good place to play golf. Brad, my caddie, keeps telling me don’t get frustrated on the greens. You know you’re hitting it well. Today I didn’t hit it as well and I putted well, so that’s just how golf works.”

As for winning at home, Kang said it would be special.

“I do want to win in California,” Kang said. “Watching Max Homa win in hometowns is really, really cool, right? Sometimes you have that hometown crowd. It’s really fun to play in front of my friends and my — they call them my entourage, but it’s cool to have them come out. I know they’re a bit loud, so I apologize. It’s been fun.”

​ Orange County Register 

Biden and his 2024 campaign: Waiting for some big decisions

• April 2, 2023

By ZEKE MILLER and WILL WEISSERT

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has all but announced he’s running for reelection, but key questions about the 2024 campaign are unresolved: Who will manage it? Where will it be based? When will he finally make it official?

Advisers have long said he planned to wait until after March, when the year’s first fundraising period wraps up. That was an effort to help manage expectations because many donors who gave generously to Democratic causes during last fall’s elections were looking for a break.

But an announcement isn’t imminent even now, aides insist, and probably won’t come until at least after Biden returns from an expected trip to Ireland in mid-April.

Working on his own timeline could counter Biden’s low approval ratings and questions about his age — the 80-year-old would turn 86 before the end of a second term. It also means Biden won’t be hurried by pressure from former President Donald Trump, who’s already announced his 2024 campaign, or other top Republicans who may enter the race, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former Vice President Mike Pence.

“He’s earned the luxury of making the timetable,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist in Washington. “The longer he can keep this thing focused on his duties in the White House, and less about the campaign back-and-forth, the better off he’s going to be.”

That said, Biden aides are mindful that Trump has been indicted for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn actor, and they say Biden will look to time his announcement to a point when he won’t share the political spotlight with the man he beat in the 2020 election.

Biden’s inner political circle is ready to begin executing on the campaign’s strategy from Day One and sees no drawbacks to the president taking his time. Biden faces no significant Democratic challenger for the nomination. The self-help guru Marianne Williamson is the sole contender at this point in the primary race.

It will also be up to Biden to decide where next year’s Democratic National Convention is held among the three finalist cities of Atlanta, Chicago and New York. But with the logistical groundwork mostly laid, there is little pressure for that decision until the president is ready to make it, organizers say.

Much of the reelection effort will be run from the White House, where Biden’s most senior advisers are expected to remain. Still, the campaign manager and top staff will be responsible for raising vast sums of money, reaching millions of voters and making the case for Biden at Americans’ doors and online while he is still occupied with governing.

One top Biden adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a reelection campaign that hasn’t yet been announced, noted that Biden’s 2020 bid was a $1.7 billion operation and that the effort this time would be larger. The adviser said a key will be finding “validators,” or non-Washington voices who can spread the campaign’s message at a time when many people have lost faith in everything political.

Aides and allies are discussing how to build the appropriate 2024 race infrastructure. The circumstances are different from 2020 for Biden, whose race then was conducted while the country was largely shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The political environment is different, too, as technological and cultural shifts have continued to change how people communicate. Biden’s advisers are preparing a new model of campaigning fit for the moment to activate his base and identify and woo the persuadable center — essentially a customized communication strategy for each target voter.

Aba Blankson, chief marketing and communications officer for the NAACP, said her organization is nonpartisan but found success mobilizing Black voters — an important part of Biden’s base — before last November’s elections using similarly targeted political messaging. That included text messages, radio ads and knocking on doors to promote “peer-to-peer” organizing in areas capable of swinging pivotal races.

“I think his timing is what his timing is,” Bankson said. “But, for us, it is an every-year reality.”

The choice of Biden’s campaign headquarters has been narrowed to Philadelphia, the 2020 location, and Wilmington, Delaware, where his home is and where the president spends many weekends away from the White House. While Biden tends to prefer Delaware on all matters, some top Democrats worry that recruiting top campaign talent to Wilmington will be difficult.

The Biden adviser downplayed the importance of choosing between the two immediately. And Biden waited until weeks after the start of his 2020 campaign to announce that he had settled on Philadelphia, making a commitment to an important battleground state.

More challenging has been filling the job of campaign manager. Some potential candidates view it as a thankless task, with so much of the decision-making confined to the White House, though the adviser said whomever is ultimately chosen will be empowered with wide latitude to run 2024.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s 2020 campaign manager, is now a deputy White House chief of staff and plans to remain in her job. Many potential candidates have expressed interest in the campaign manager position, but among those on the short list are Julie Chavez Rodriguez, director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and a deputy campaign manager of Biden’s 2020 campaign, and Sam Cornale, executive director of the Democratic National Committee.

Quentin Fulks, campaign manager for Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection victory last fall, has been mentioned.

Biden led Democrats to a stronger than expected midterm performance in 2022 by urging voters to reject “extreme” adherents to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. So bringing in an outsider who ran successful Democratic campaigns last fall is a possibility. But party leaders acknowledge that breaking into Biden’s famously tight inner circle has at times been challenging.

An exception is O’Malley Dillon, who was a late 2020 entrant to Biden’s orbit after leading former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s failed presidential bid.

Trump hasn’t named a campaign manager despite announcing his candidacy months ago. But others aren’t waiting to staff up.

Republican Nikki Haley, Trump’s U.N. ambassador and a former South Carolina governor, picked Betsy Ankney, executive director of Haley’s Stand for America political action committee, to manager her presidential campaign . The super PAC linked to DeSantis brought on former Trump aide Matt Wolking and strategist Jeff Roe, the architect of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign and Republican Glenn Youngkin winning campaign for Virginia governor in 2021.

Even with the unanswered questions about his campaign structure, the outlines of Biden’s pitch to voters are forming.

From the State of the Union address in February to speeches to donors, the president has begun making the case that Americans should let him “finish the job” he started. He’s also tried framing the race as a choice between himself and “MAGA Republicans” who, he argues, will undermine the nation’s core values.

Biden has spent recent months traveling to promote what he sees as his administration’s key policy accomplishments, including a bipartisan public works package, and plans more of the same going forward. That would let him use this year to test political messaging that can best resonate in 2024, aides said.

“He’s not going to win reelection or lose reelection based on what happens in his campaign,” Bannon predicted. “He’s going to win it based on his performance as president and the performance of his opponent, whoever it is.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Ukrainian court puts an Orthodox leader under house arrest

• April 2, 2023

By KARL RITTER and ELENA BECATOROS

KYIV, Ukraine — A Kyiv court ordered a leading priest to be put under house arrest Saturday after Ukraine’s top security agency said he was suspected of justifying Russian aggression, a criminal offense. It was the latest move in a bitter dispute over a famed Orthodox monastery.

Metropolitan Pavel is the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, Ukraine’s most revered Orthodox site. He has denied the charges and resisted the authorities’ order to vacate the complex.

In a court hearing earlier in the day, the metropolitan said the claim by the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, that he condoned Russia’s invasion was politically driven and that he had “never been on the side of aggression.”

After the court’s ruling, a monitoring bracelet was placed around his ankle, despite his objections that he has diabetes and should not wear it. The house arrest was to last two months.

“I am accepting this,” he said shortly before the bracelet was attached. “Christ was crucified on the cross, so why shouldn’t I accept this?”

Earlier in the week, he cursed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, threatening him with damnation.

The monks in the monastery belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has been accused of having links to Russia. The dispute surrounding the property, also known as the Monastery of the Caves, is part of a wider religious conflict that has unfolded in parallel with the war.

The Ukrainian government has cracked down on the UOC over its historic ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader, Patriarch Kirill, has supported Russian President Vladimir Putin in the invasion of Ukraine.

Many Orthodox communities in Ukraine have cut their ties with the UOC and transitioned to the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which more than four years ago received recognition from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The UOC has insisted that it’s loyal to Ukraine and has denounced the Russian invasion. But Ukrainian security agencies say some in the church have maintained close ties with Moscow. The agencies have raided numerous holy sites of the church and then posted photos of rubles, Russian passports, and leaflets with messages from the Moscow patriarch as proof that some church officials have been loyal to Russia.

The government had ordered the monks to leave the compound by March 29. It claims they violated their lease by making alterations to the historic site, and other technical infractions. The monks rejected the claim as a pretext.

Dozens of UOC supporters gathered outside the monastery on Saturday, singing hymns in the rain. A smaller group of protesters also turned up, accusing the other side of sympathizing with Moscow.

“They wash the brains of people with Russian support, and they are very dangerous for Ukraine,” said Senia Kravchuk, a 38-year-old software developer from Kyiv. “They sing songs in support of Russia, and that’s horrible, here, in the center of Kyiv.”

Third-year seminary student David, 21, disagreed. Dressed in a priest’s robes and with a Ukrainian flag draped round his shoulders, he insisted the Lavra priests and residents were in no way pro-Russian. The state, he said, was trying to evict hundreds of people from Lavra without a court order.

“Look at me. I’m in priest’s clothes, with a Ukrainian flag and a cross around my neck. Could you say that I’m pro-Russian?” said David, who declined to give his last name because of the tensions surrounding the issue. “The priests are currently singing a Ukrainian hymn, and they’re being called pro-Russian. Can you believe it?”

In other news Saturday, Zelenskyy condemned the U.N. Security Council for allowing Russia to assume its presidency. The council’s 15 members each serve as president for a month, on a rotating basis.

Zelenskyy said Russian artillery had killed a 5-month-old boy in the town of Avdiivka on Friday, “one of hundreds of artillery attacks” each day, and added that Russia presiding over the Security Council “proves the complete bankruptcy of such institutions.”

Two civilians were reported killed in Russian shelling on Saturday, one each in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, Ukrainian authorities there said.

Zelenskyy also said he spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday about defense cooperation.

While Ukraine is preparing for a counteroffensive expected later this spring, Russian forces have kept pressing their effort to capture the city of Bakhmut. Fighting in that stronghold in Ukraine’s east has dragged on for eight months.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a Saturday visit to the military headquarters overseeing the action in Ukraine that Russia’s defense industries have boosted production of ammunition “by several times.”

The U.K. Defense Ministry said in an analysis Saturday that the Russian offensive overseen by Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian military, has fizzled.

“Gerasimov’s tenure has been characterized by an effort to launch a general winter offensive with the aim of extending Russian control over the whole of the Donbas region,” the British ministry said on Twitter. “Eighty days on, it is increasingly apparent that this project has failed.”

The ministry said Russian forces have made only marginal gains in the Donbas “at the cost of tens of thousands of casualties.” Russia was “largely squandering its temporary advantage in personnel” from a partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists Putin ordered in the fall, the U.K. analysis said.

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​ Orange County Register 

California city to provide services to homeless encampment

• April 2, 2023

Associated Press

SACRAMENTO — A Northern California city said it will let a homeless encampment stay on some public land, agreeing to provide trailers and other services for up to four months.

A group of homeless people, mostly women, have been living on a lot owned by the city of Sacramento, California, for more than a year, the Sacramento Bee reported.

On Friday, city officials announced they had leased the land for free to Safe Ground Sacramento, a nonprofit group, for up to four months. People can park their cars or RVs on the property, and the city will provide up to 33 trailers for people to live in.

The city said the site will be self-governed by what it calls a “resident council,” along with an operations plan that must be approved by the City Council in the next 30 days.

“I am incredibly proud that through months of hard work and open communication we found an innovative solution for this site that benefits our entire community,” Councilmember Sean Loloee, whose district includes the land, said in a city blog post.

For decades, major cities across California have been grappling with homelessness, a problem that has only worsened in recent years as a housing shortage has increased rents and made it difficult to find an affordable place to live. California now has nearly a third of the nation’s homeless population, according to federal data.

Cities have tried lots of different approaches to address the issue. In San Jose, a city of nearly 1 million people at the south end of the San Francisco Bay, officials installed about 500 small homes for homeless people to live in. The program reduced the rate of the city’s homeless people who were unsheltered for the first time in years, Mayor Matt Mahan said.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the state would build 1,200 of these small homes across the state — homes that are as small as 120 square feet (11 square meters) that have electricity but no running water. Sacramento is scheduled to get 350 of those homes, most of which will likely be at the state fairgrounds, according to Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

Across California, local governments have plans for a 15% reduction in homelessness by 2025. Those plans originally called for a 2% reduction in homelessness, a goal that angered Newsom because he thought it was too low. Local governments revised those plans after Newsom threatened to withhold state funding.

The homeless encampment in Sacramento, known as “Camp Resolution,” is not meant to be permanent. The city said the initial lease will run for four months. But the lease can be renewed until “all the residents obtain permanent housing.”

“We are anxious to assist Camp Resolution residents to demonstrate that homeless people can self-govern and assist each other to obtain permanent housing,” said Mark Merin, executive director for Safe Ground Sacramento.

​ Orange County Register 

Angels blow out A’s on the strength of an 11-run inning

• April 2, 2023

OAKLAND — Once the Angels returned to action Saturday, it didn’t take them long to bury the frustration of an Opening Day loss and the controversy that followed on the subsequent day off.

The Angels exploded for 11 runs in the third inning of a 13-1 pummeling of the Oakland A’s.

It made for a much happier walk from the dugout to the clubhouse than on Thursday night, when the Angels were stinging from a one-run loss just as third baseman Anthony Rendon engaged in an altercation with a fan.

The Angels are still waiting to hear from Major League Baseball to find out if Rendon will face any discipline, but in the meantime they took care of their on-field business with a comfortable victory.

“It was great,” said Taylor Ward, who drove in three on a single and a homer in the third. “Definitely the start we needed, I think. Just bring the fire like that. I think that’s what we need to do every game, just keep the foot on the pedal.”

For the first two innings, the Angels had no answers for Japanese right-hander Shintaro Fujinami, who was making his big-league debut. The Angels went in order, with four strikeouts against his assortment of 99 mph fastballs and diving splitters.

In the third, though, the Angels knocked Fujinami out quickly.

Luis Rengifo walked and Gio Urshela, Logan O’Hoppe and Ward had consecutive hits, producing two runs. Mike Trout walked to load the bases.

Shohei Ohtani – who had faced Fujinami in high school in Japan – smoked a line drive off the left-field fence. Runners had to hold in case it was caught, so it went as a single, scoring one more run.

Rendon hit a sacrifice fly. Hunter Renfroe walked. Jake Lamb singled, ending Fujinami’s day.

Rengifo then walked again. Urshela singled again. O’Hoppe hit a sacrifice fly. Ward then blasted a two-run homer, completing the 11-run outburst.

Manager Phil Nevin said the spark to the inning was Rengifo having a disciplined plate appearance and drawing a walk.

“Knowing there’s the potential for losing the strike zone a little bit, we have to be patient and stick with our approach,” Nevin said. “Luis’ at-bat was exactly what we talked about.”

Angels starter Patrick Sandoval was the beneficiary of the outburst, picking up a victory with five innings of work on 86 pitches. He gave up just one run on a Ramon Laureano homer.

“All right, pretty good,” Sandoval said of his outing. “I made some pitches. I also didn’t make some pitches. But getting through five with an 11-run lead and not screwing it up, I’m happy about it.”

Left-hander Tucker Davidson pitched the final four innings. Davidson is expected to be the Angels’ No. 6 starter, but they don’t need him to fill that role until April 12, so it was convenient to get him some work in a blowout to start sharp.

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When it was over, Davidson qualified for his first big-league save by virtue of working at least three innings to close out a victory. That earned him a beer shower from his teammates.

All in all, it was a happy clubhouse, although Sandoval wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was a relief after what had transpired in the previous two days.

“Just another game,” he said. “Game 2 of a long season. Business as usual.”

​ Orange County Register 

The Queen Mary is officially open for public tours — sparking excitement about what’s to come

• April 2, 2023

Long Beach’s historic World War II-era ship, the Queen Mary, finally reopened for public tours on Saturday, April 1, after a three-year closure — marking the first event in what officials say will be a grand reopening slated to kick off in the coming weeks.

Groups of about 30 people each gathered on the ship’s Promenade Deck starting at about 11 a.m. on Saturday to partake in their choice of three different tours: The Glory Days Historical Tour, the Haunted Encounters Tour and the Steam & Steel Tour — each which take about an hour and are available until 6 p.m. daily.

For some, including Gail Hurst — a tourist from England — Saturday’s reopening offered a chance to experience the ship for the first time. Hurst and her husband decided to visit the Queen Mary on a whim, as their trip with Princess Cruise Line boarded just across the parking lot from the vessel.

“My mom and dad had their 40th wedding anniversary on it — so we got to see where they were for the first time,” Hurst said in an interview after disembarking from her tour of the ship. “It was fabulous. We plan (to visit again) if we ever come to America.”

The ship’s operators, Evolution Hospitality, initially announced that the ship would re-open to the public earlier this week.

Long Beach city officials and Evolution, which took over the ship’s day-to-day management last June, have been working to revitalize the vessel after it fell into massive disrepair under its previous operator, Urban Commons.

The Queen Mary initially closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 — but a 2021 city audit found that Urban Commons had not completed $23 million dollars worth of repairs, which the city had funded. Urban Commons forfeited its 66-year lease on the ship that same year, bringing the Queen Mary back under city control for the first time in nearly 40 years.

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Long Beach allocates extra $1 million for Queen Mary repairs, reopening delayed
Last round of critical Queen Mary repairs underway, Long Beach says
Queen Mary welcomes passengers aboard for the 1st time in nearly 3 years

After the City Council approved the new management contract with Evolution last year, both found that several critical repairs needed to be completed before the Queen Mary could reopen to the public. Those included replacing the ship’s boilers, elevators and restrooms, repairing the plumbing, and upgrading parking.

Those fixes have been underway since last year — but are finally close to being finished, according to Steve Caloca, the Queen Mary’s managing director.

The installation of new boilers, heat exchangers, and a new emergency generator — which are necessary to have hot water on board and ensure the ship’s safety in the case of an emergency — should be complete within the next few days, Caloca said in a Saturday interview.

And other repairs — including aesthetic fixes all around the Queen Mary — are currently underway.

“All of the main hall floor is going to be redone,” Caloca siad. “The Promenade Deck, all of those those floors, have been restored to the original teak  — and we probably have just another 200 feet to go.”

But the ongoing nature of those repairs didn’t seem to bother 7-year-old Tristan Rodriguez — whose fascination with ships prompted his parents book a time slot on the Steam & Steel tour on Saturday afternoon.

“We’ve been checking in on the refurbishment just because he (Tristan) got really interested and wanted to come and see this,” Tristan’s mom, Elianny Rodriguez, said. “We kept checking back and just waiting for it to reopen.”

The younger Rodriguez has been fascinated with all things engineering since he was just two-years-old, according to his mom. He’s gone so far as to create piece-by-piece replicas of famous ships — including the Queen Mary — in Minecraft from scratch, a skill he picked up by watching YouTube tutorials.

“We wanted to check out like the steam engine when (Tristan) saw the tour because we knew how much he was into them,” Rodriguez said, “And (we knew) it would teach us facts about certain ships that we weren’t even aware of so we could talk about it with him.”

Tristan, for his part, carried a miniature model of the Queen Mary throughout his entire tour, which gave him an up close look at the Queen Mary’s engine room and propellors.

He said he loves ships so much because “they float and they have lots of stuff deep” within them — and he likes learning how they work.

“The propellers push the ship and they also steer,” Tristan said, pointing out where the propellors are located on his model of the ship — shortly before letting out a yell of excitement and taking a brief run around the ship’s Observation Deck.

The Rodriguez’s, meanwhile, said they’re all excited to come back soon to visit the ship.

Evolution and the city, meanwhile, are planning to open up other parts of the ship — including the restaurants and bars — soon, though a date has yet to be confirmed. The Queen Mary Hotel, while not quite open yet, is currently accepting room reservations for stays starting in May.

“Thousands of people have already signed up to stay here or to experience a tour within days of reopening registration,” Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said on Saturday. “There’s a lot of progress, but there’s still a lot of work to do — in the weeks to come, there’ll be more and more things opened.

“But bottom line,” Richardson added, “The Queen Mary’s best days are ahead.”

​ Orange County Register 

Don’t fret about getting old; just refuse to BE old

• April 2, 2023

“Rain, rain, go away.”

No, wait!

“Rain, rain, stay and end the drought.”

No, wait!

What do I want?

It would be nice if we could control the weather to our preferences, but that’s not going to happen. The delightful thing is that we can control our thoughts about the weather. It may not always be easy, but taking charge of our thinking works for having a positive experience, even in the midst of a not-so-good day.

A student driving on the freeway in the rain got caught in traffic. She sent a text to her instructor: “I’ll be late. I’m stuck in traffic.” Unfortunately, the spell checker sent, “I’ll be late. I’m stuck in tragic.”

How many people get stuck in “tragic” as they age? How often do you hear someone say, “It’s terrible to get old?”

There’s even a name for being afraid of old age. It is called gerascophobia. What can you do about your age? Not much.

Like the weather, it’s not in our control, but we can refuse to be old. That doesn’t mean to deny our signs of aging but to wear them proudly. After all, we’ve made it through all of our worst storms so far. We can let go of the yearning to be younger and embrace all the wonderful things we can do and be now.

Sophia Bush wrote, “You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously.”

So, what can we do to distract us from our “tragic aging” thoughts? Don’t hesitate to ask for help if we are having a bad day. It can be tough to put oneself in a vulnerable position, especially if we have always been able to do everything for ourselves.

In his book “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” Charlie Mackesy wrote, “Asking for help isn’t giving up, said the horse. It’s refusing to give up.”

No matter our physical condition, we can continue to learn more and more about ourselves – especially if the spirit with which we approach each day is about getting to the heart of who we are and loving it.

Our lives can be about doing things wholeheartedly because we get to – this is our one unique chance to experience our particular life.

Louise Hay wrote, “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself (and your age) and see what happens.”

Rain, rain, do what you want – you are not in charge of me.

The Rev. Linda McNamar is a Laguna Woods Village resident.

​ Orange County Register 

Tornado survivors recount flying debris, destroyed buildings

• April 2, 2023

By ADRIAN SAINZ and ANDREW SELSKY

WYNNE, Ark. — With tornadoes hitting the Midwest and the South this weekend, some survivors said they emerged from their homes to find buildings ripped apart, vehicles tossed around like toys, shattered glass and felled trees.

J.W. Spencer, 88, had never experienced a tornado before, but when he and his wife saw on TV that a tornado was nearing their small town of Wynne, Arkansas, he opened a front window and rear door in his house to relieve air pressure. The couple scurried into the bathroom, where they got into the bathtub and covered themselves with quilts and blankets for protection.

Fifteen minutes later, the storm unleashed its fury. Debris came whistling through the house.

“We just rode it out,” Spencer said on Saturday. “We heard stuff falling, loud noises. And then it quit. It got quiet.”

After it passed, the couple emerged to see their neighborhood devastated by the tornado. Many large trees were down. Houses were severely damaged. The high school’s roof was shredded and the windows were blown out. But Spencer and his wife were not injured. The giant trees on their property lay sideways on the lawn and the house had some minor damage.

“We come through it real good, as far as the physical part,” Spencer said.

Near a theater in Belvidere, Illinois, where a tornado killed one man and injured 40 concertgoers, Ross Potter picked up glass shards Friday in front of his building. The last time the town was devastated to this extent from a tornado was in 1967.

Ambulances whirred by after the theater was hit.

“They took, I can’t even remember how many people,” Potter said. He was lucky — only a few of his building’s windows were broken, mostly on the second floor. Across the street, most of the brick siding on a storefront was ripped away.

Back in Wynne in northeastern Arkansas, Alan Purser stopped in his pickup truck to chat with Spencer. Purser described how he rode out the tornado with his cats in his home, which is being remodeled. He took a risk, sheltering in the sun room which is covered by glass, but it was one of the few rooms not being remodeled.

“I just lay down with my cats, and lay a blanket over me, and let it rumble,” he said of the tornado that flipped over the camper van parked outside.

RELATED: At least 21 dead after tornadoes rake US Midwest, South

When a tornado hit Little Rock, Arkansas, nine firefighters were in Fire Station No. 9, located in one of the most devastated areas of the city. They sheltered in the chief’s office as the tornado damaged their building.

“If I said it wasn’t scary, I’d be lying,” Capt. Ben Hammond said Saturday.

Once the tornado passed, the firefighters began working to help injured residents and to clear debris blocking their equipment.

“Once you address all the people you can see, then you’ve got to start looking for the people you can’t see,” he said.

The fire station has served as a shelter for neighbors amid fears that another storm was coming.

Associated Press reporters Harm Venhuizen in Belvidere, Illinois, and Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this story. Selsky reported from Salem, Oregon.

​ Orange County Register