Travel: Madagascar boasts plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth

• April 12, 2023

Somewhere in the faraway Mozambique Channel, on Madagascar’s tiny, roadless, volcanic “Lemur Island,” a tawny-colored, wet-nosed, white-maned, utterly adorable lemur suddenly pounced from a tree in the tropical rainforest — and landed on my shoulder.

She leaned over, wrapped her eerily human-like hand around my wrist and, with a silky tongue, licked a squished piece of banana from my outstretched palm. Another golden-eyed lemur leapt atop my other shoulder and sniffed my hair. I was in crazy lemur love.

A pair of sifaka lemurs appear to play peek-a-boo near the Sacred Lake of Mangatsa. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

After all, I had swung halfway around the globe to view lemurs in Madagascar, the only place on Earth where the primitive primates are native, live in the wild (112 species at last count), and evolved here over millions of years. This troop of lemurs, on the turtle-shaped island officially called Nosy Komba, had been habituated to people. Others I encountered in Madagascar were not but they calmly and profoundly gazed with their big peepers at two-footed admirers. Funnily, some lemurs resembled mini panda bears or black papillon dogs.

“They are sacred animals for us. People think our ancestors’ spirits live in the lemur,” said Claudia Randrianasolo, a local Malagasy guide.

The luxury Ponant ship, Le Champlain, anchors along the west coast of Madagascar. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

Endearing lemurs were just part of my extraordinary, out-of-the-box odyssey. You see, I was on a Ponant small-ship expedition sailing its maiden voyage of an exotic brand-new way-off-the-tourist-track Indian Ocean itinerary, “Adventure in Madagascar.” During this inaugural 15-night cruise, the French luxury liner’s captain, crew and naturalists — along with its 132 well-traveled passengers —  were all authentically discovering the mysterious “eighth continent” of Madagascar together for the very first time.

Dancers in a Vezo fishing village welcome the first-ever cruise ship passengers to visit their shores. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

One afternoon, we arrived in rubber Zodiacs on a remote beach to visit rare “sea nomads” and found the entire fishing village turned out to greet the only cruise ship passengers they had ever met. Other days, we stood over a tribal king’s holy crocodile-infested lake, strolled among Madagascar’s iconic, towering “upside down” baobab trees, eyed three-eyed lizards, and snorkeled around stunning coral reefs. And we continually experienced the unique culture of this island nation 250 miles off east Africa’s coast —  women painting their faces with a paste ground from sandalwood as a sunscreen and for cosmetic beauty; fishermen hollowing out tree trunks to build traditional “lakana” canoes in a week; locals exclaiming “Maki! Maki!” meaning “Lemur! Lemur!”

The underwater Blue Eye aboard Le Champlain (and other Ponant explorer ships) has to be the most unique lounge on the planet’s seas. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

After every excursion, we returned to Le Champlain, our “explorer-class” ship featuring the Blue Eye, a “multi-sensory” underwater Jetson-style cocktail lounge with two large oval portholes to spy ocean creatures and hydrophones to pick up their sounds. While swathed in purplish-blue surroundings, you can quietly relax in curved, vibrating  “body listening sofas” and sip a complimentary Curacao-and-rum libation named the Blue Eye. No critters swam by for me, although digital projections of glowing jellyfish hypnotically wiggled up walls and pre-recorded audio played of whales, dolphins and other marine beings that had once vocalized near our ship.

The back deck of Le Champlain offers dining, a small infinity swimming pool, and breathtaking sunset views. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

Indeed, this trailblazing cruise was five-star like other Ponant journeys (note our caviar-and-champagne “tea time,” Laduree macarons, and the spa’s 24-karat gold hair follicle treatment). But onboard truly felt unpretentious. The easygoing French team of naturalists, often clad in tan safari clothes, presented eco-focused lectures; the affable  expedition leader, David Beaune, also conducted laughter yoga and had me cackling like an idiot. You also know the vibe is cool when the ship’s doctor dances in her red high heels to “Twist and Shout” with partying cruisers, some in their 80s.

The world’s second smallest chameleon is barely noticeable on the Madagascar island of Nosy Hara. It was the tiniest until scientists in 2021 discovered a more miniature one in Madagascar. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

Madagascar is astonishingly rich nature-wise, even boasting the world’s teeniest chameleon (we spotted the inch-long second puniest chameleon). Nearly 90 percent of its flora and fauna are found nowhere else on the planet. But economically Madagascar is one of the poorest countries; many inhabitants live on less than $2 a day. With tourism low but crucial, it’s satisfying to know our visit brought needed income — and Ponant, us.ponant.com, repeats the same route multiple times this year into 2024 (starting at $9,770).

“Mora mora,” the Malagasy guide Claudia said, referring to two words seen printed on women’s customary bright “lamba” sarongs. “It means slowly, slowly. It’s a philosophy for us. Taking what comes peacefully. I don’t have it today, but maybe tomorrow. Mora, mora.”

Madagascar has more than 300 species of reptiles — most endemic — so it’s easy to spot weird scaly creatures. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

Vehicles are scarce, but after our Zodiacs washed up to port city Majunga, locals ferried us in 4X4s for a lengthy bumpy ride past rice paddies, mangroves and zebu cattle-pulled carts to the myth-shrouded transparent Sacred Lake filled with carp, eels and crocodiles. We were among the Sakalava tribe, one of 18 ethnic groups in Madagascar.

“Hello White people!” smiling, waving children yelled in the Malagasy language as we slowly drove on a rutted dusty road dotted with their families’ thatched huts. My Sakalava guide told me locals pray and ask for blessings at the Sacred Lake because a Sakalava king’s zebu died in quicksand there. Or the other story is a king’s angry sorcerer transformed a village into the lake and villagers into fishes. As we walked on a long dirt trail to the lake, accompanied by a spunky 10-year-old Sakalava boy with a myna bird atop his shoulder, we looked up at tree branches — white-and-brown teddy bear-faced sifaka lemurs stared back. Shortly, we’d see more. At the compact lake, tamarind trees sheathed in red and white fabric signified “holiness” and “respect.” A crocodile snapped out of the water to catch a chunk of thrown raw meat.

Zebu-pulled carts navigate rickshaws and foot traffic in the Malagasy town of Toliara. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

On a different day, beyond the busy town of Toliara, we passed hundreds of bicycled rickshaws and, again, rustic wagons drawn by humped, horned zebu used for plowing, transportation, and hauling goods.

“In Madagascar, the zebu is very very important.  It’s a sign of being rich,” explained Sambo Ruffin, a Malagasy guide. “The zebu is like a bank. We put our money in the zebu. There is a tribe that steals zebu — it’s a custom but it is against the law. Sometimes, you have to wrestle a zebu to marry a woman. And when a man dies, his zebu is sacrificed and eaten.”

Most heartwarming was our visit to Sarodrano’s simple coastal village of Vezo fishermen, known as “sea nomads” because their survival for centuries depends solely on the ocean. Sambo earlier informed me the Vezo can purportedly hold their breath underwater for 15 minutes and women give birth in the ocean to instill babies with strong marine skills.

Side by side, a Vezo outrigger and Ponant Zodiac signify an incredible cultural exchange in the village of Sarodrano. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

What I didn’t expect was the enthusiastic welcome as we alighted from Zodiacs into the knee-high tide, the first cruise ship voyagers to ever appear on their shores (and also mainly White and French). A tribal elder emphatically blew a whistle as she and others joyously danced, including male celebrants shaking fishing spears. Rows and rows of villagers watched, some looking curious or perhaps unsure. Afterward, we walked around with a Malagasy guide and witnessed daily life — women untangling seaweed (some sold to China for cosmetics); men repairing fishing nets; youngsters gleefully sliding down sand dunes on plastic water containers. When we ambled by one thatched hut, a mother surprisingly invited us inside to see her 2-day-old baby boy, Augustin.

Vezo kids, unaccustomed to visitors in their small village, ham it up for a camera. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

None of the Vezo seemed to speak English but we all understood each other. I soon was in the middle of the ocean bobbing in a five-person canoe hand-dug by my bow paddler, a Vezo fisherman named Bier. More Ponant passengers glided in similar outrigger canoes. At the same time, our naturalists encouraged village children to jump in our 10-person Zodiacs for rides. Kids boisterously piled in, a huge heap of them howling in laughter and shrieking out to sea. At day’s end, the fishermen lined up their guest-occupied canoes in the water; the boatman next to me energetically strummed a handmade guitar while his buddies whooped in song. Bier forcefully beat his paddles against our canoe like drums. Vezo boys and girls waded into the surf, uncontrollably giggling with our naturalists.

Later, from my Zodiac, as I waved goodbye to the Vezo, I actually choked up.

Dubbed “mothers of the forest,” baobab trees are an iconic symbol of Madagascar. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

A couple days before, we meandered through the Reniala Reserve “spiny forest” among bulbous, soaring baobab trees, some 1,200 years old. “Many people believe spirits live inside the baobab and they will pray to it and bring offerings,” said Malagasy guide Rivo Rarivosoa. Other people, he added, use the inner bark to make ropes, the leaves to cure stomach aches, and the spongy trunks to help in droughts. (Incredibly, a baobab can collect up to 26,000 gallons of rainwater.) Reniala is also a lemur rescue, so we caught a glimpse of caged ring-tailed ones being rehabbed from the illegal pet and bushmeat trade before their return to the wild.

A sifaka lemur, like other kinds of lemurs, only exist in the wild on the island nation of Madagascar. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

Yes, not everyone believes lemurs are sacred.  All species — including the itty-bitty mouse lemur — are considered endangered and threatened with extinction due to deforestation and poaching. It’s mind-boggling, since lemurs supposedly floated here 60 million years ago on rafts of vegetation after Madagascar broke off from Africa. On Lemur Island, the forested sanctuary where lemurs are free to roam (although, remember, habituated ones will jump on humans to eat that handheld piece of banana), the long-tailed residents are protected by villagers who use tourism income from entry fees and handicraft sales to survive. We were also fortunate to see insanely cute “maki” (specifically the common brown lemur species) while hiking on the uninhabited island of Nosy Tanikely, a national park.

A Ponant Zodiac motors to a beautiful snorkeling beach in Madagascar. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

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Our expedition voyage spanned 2,633 nautical miles, and although centered on Madagascar, as planned it encompassed other international stopovers. We started in the idyllic island nation of Seychelles, where the world’s largest bats — known as flying foxes — eerily swooped over white-sand beaches and a vivacious community guide disclosed how to make booze from coconuts. Eventually, our ship had to leave Madagascar earlier than intended because of threatening Cyclone Freddy winds and we had to reach Reunion island before that French territory went on strike. We disembarked in the country of Mauritius and there I enjoyed a Ponant post-cruise tour that included time at an elaborate Hindu shrine where a priestess blessed me with a red dot between my eyes.

I already felt extremely blessed to have visited isolated, unparalleled Madagascar.  And now back home in California, I keep thinking of what guide Claudia so poignantly urged: “Please remember the smiles of the Malagasy people. Mora Mora.”

​ Orange County Register 

10 ways to celebrate Earth Day in Southern California

• April 12, 2023

Earth Day is a global environmental movement where we’re all asked to think about and maybe even actually do something to better our world on Saturday, April 22.

Typically, inhabitants of Earth participate on this day by volunteering and taking part in events that help the planet and all of the creatures living on it. There are plenty of events happening on Earth Day as well as several green-themed happenings taking place in the days leading up to and post-Earth Day.

Here 10 ways to celebrate the holiday around Southern California.

Earth Day at Quail Hill Community Center

Quail Hill Community Center, 39 Shady Canyon Drive, Irvine. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, April 15. 949-724-6814 or cityofirvine.org. Free.

The city’s Quail Hill center will team up with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy to offer guided hikes in honor of Earth Day. And for those wanting to help the Earth at home there will be a compost demonstration at noon.

CicLAvia – Mid City Meets Pico Union

Mid City and Pico Union. 9 a.m.- 4 p.m. Sunday, April 16, ciclavia.org. Free.

This event takes place in various parts of the city and encourages participants to get out of their cars and get on bikes or walk on foot, ride skateboards or any other type of people-powered means of transportation by closing down a stretch of street to cars. The Earth Day event takes place in the Mid City and Pico Union area with the Mid City route starting on La Brea Avenue and heading down Washington Boulevard to 7th Street then turning up to Venice Boulevard with the route extending to Hoover Avenue.

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Getting “Wiggly” with Composting

Cypress Library, 5331 Orange Ave., Cypress. 5-7 p.m. Tuesday, April 18. 714-826-0350 or ocpl.org. Free.

Young kids can learn all about the Earth during a special story time and about composting with worms from a Discovery Cube Science Center educator. It all ends with kids making the “Ants on a Log” desert, which is celery decorated with chocolates and raisins to look like ants walking on a log.

CSUDH Earth Day Festival

Cal State Dominguez Hills, 1000 E Victoria Street, Carson. 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. April 18. 310-243-2303 or eventbrite.com. Free.

The school celebrates Earth Day at the weekly Farmers Market located on the East and South Walkways with about two dozen environmentally-themed booths, bingo games as well as e-waste, battery and shoe recycling and an upcycled art exhibit. From 2:30-3 p.m., environmental and feminist artist Kim Abeles will be speaking on the library’s fifth floor.

Earth Day Cleanup

Crown Valley Park Amphitheater, 29751 Crown Valley Parkway, Laguna Niguel. 8:30-11:30 a.m. Saturday,  April 22. 949-362-4300 or cityoflagunaniguel.org. Free

Since Earth Day is all about treating the Earth nicely, the city of Laguna Nigel is looking for volunteers to help clean the Niguel Botanical Preserve. Volunteers plant, weed, add mulch, and clean up areas of the gardens. Pre-registration is required.

Earth Day at the White Point Nature Preserve

White Point Nature Preserve, 1600 Paseo del Mar, San Pedro, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. April 22. Register at pvplc.volunteerhub.com. Free

Volunteers can help the wildlife at the preserve by removing invasive vegetation, planting native species, cleaning seeds, spreading mulch and other activities. The day will also include a guided garden walk, a native plant sale, scavenger hunt and a raffle.

Glendora Earth Day Festival

Glendora City Hall, 116 E. Foothill Blvd., Glendora, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. April 22. 626-914-8228 or cityofglendora.org. Free

The city is going all out for Earth Day with activities that include a community bike ride, a reptile show plus a scavenger hunt and face painting for kids. The city will also offer free shuttles that will take residents on an eco-tour of Glendora and to the Dalton Wilderness Area.

Riverside Insect Fair

Riverside Main Library, 3900 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. April 22. 951-826-5408 or riversideca.gov/insectfair. Free

The buzz on this event is that bugs will be teaching kids about the Earth with the help of Entomology students who will be showing off bugs like beetles, butterflies and all sorts of other insects to exhibit importance of nature. Also on hand will be the Wyland Mobile Learning Experience, a mobile truck that will teach kids all about the water cycle.

Teen Climate Fest: Earth Day Edition 

Aquarium of the Pacific, 100 Aquarium Way, Long Beach, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. April 22. 562-590-3100 or aquariumofpacific.org. Paid admission to Aquarium required. Admission is $36.95 per adult, $26.95 per child, $33.95 per senior  and free for Aquarium members.

The Earth is in the hands of the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Teen Climate Council as they put on a stylish event in Long Beach. The day will include an upcycled fashion show featuring recycled items, panels discussing environmentally-friendly fashion as well as booths manned by fashion companies and teen environmental researchers.

Wild & Scenic Film Festival On Tour

Warner Grand Theatre, 478 W. Sixth Street, San Pedro, 4-6 p.m. Sunday, April 23, pvplc.org. Tickets are $15 online or $20 at the door.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy will present 14 films at the Warner Grand Theatre in honor of Earth Day. Topics will range from kayaking to Alaskan dog sledding to stories about saving wildlife and other conservation efforts.

​ Orange County Register 

Feds get no interest in auction of iconic Ziggurat building in Laguna Niguel

• April 12, 2023

The distinctive, pyramid-esque Chet Holifield Federal Building in Laguna Niguel, nicknamed the Ziggurat, has been on the auction block for the last month, but failed to draw a single bid by Wednesday’s 9 a.m. deadline, April 12.

U.S. General Services Administration officials will now try to determine why the building, which the federal government has decided is surplus property, didn’t sell and what is the next steps, a spokesman said, adding that the starting bid of $70 million was suggested because “that was what the market dictated.”

The building near Alicia Parkway has been a landmark in South Orange County for half a century. It was designed by William Pereira, who is known for the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco and the Los Angeles International Airport.

For decades, the building – named in 1978 after the longtime congressman from California  – housed thousands of federal employees from up to 12 agencies, including about 2,000 from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. For the past several years, it has only been about half full.

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The Ziggurat building was among a dozen buildings identified in 2021 by federal officials for sale under the Federal Asset Sale and Transfer Act. Under the FASTA legislation, proceeds from property sales will be used to consolidate further and sell off excess federal properties, officials said.

Another federal building on about 17 acres in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park with a suggested price tag of $120 million also went without any bids.

The Ziggurat is near several strip shopping malls as well as the Aliso & Wood Canyons Wilderness Park.

With the property’s size and location, it was advertised by the GSA as offering “a unique development opportunity as one of the largest land parcels available in the market within highly desired South Orange County” and officials highlighted its “Unparalleled flexibility and growth potential with a unique location, size, view amenities, and re-zoning potential.”

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​ Orange County Register 

How John Sayles transformed ‘Jamie MacGillivray’ into an epic historical novel

• April 12, 2023

Writer-director John Sayles is best known for movies he’s made, such as “Passion Fish” and “Lone Star,” both of which earned him Oscar nominations for his original screenplays.

But Sayles, 72, didn’t start his career with filmmaking in mind. By the time of his movie debut with “Return of the Secaucus 7” in 1980, Sayles already had written a pair of acclaimed novels, including “Union Dues, a finalist for the 1978 National Book Award.

“There’s two big differences,” Sayles says of the challenges that a blank page presents at the start of a screenplay or novel. “One is that when you’re writing a movie, you have to deal with time.

“In a feature, you always have to think: ‘Am I 10 minutes into this? Am I an hour into this? What should people know by now? What do they think is going to happen next?’” he says.

“Whereas, when you’re writing a novel, nobody’s going to sit and read a 700-page novel in one sitting,” Sayles says. “So you have time to walk around in the story a little bit more. You can have chapters that are telling you more about the world that the people are in but don’t necessarily advance the plot. And you can have more points of view.”

His new work, “Jamie MacGillivray,” was intended to be a film before the vagaries of independent filmmaking left Sayles’ screenplay gathering dust for two decades.

Sayles never doubted that the story had good bones. Its fictional protagonist, Jamie MacGillivray, is a young Highland Scot whose clan backed the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, which sought to overthrow King George II and restore the Stuart monarchy to the British throne.

When that uprising was crushed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, MacGillivray escapes the noose for banishment to the American colonies, where his story moves from indentured servitude to life with a Native American tribe and fighting the English in the French and Indian War.

“I just felt like it’s such a good story I should do something with it,” Sayles says of the decision to rework it into a historical novel. “It was a kind of interesting and nice process to be able to go deeper into the history and into the characters.

“Now, I would say it’s much more like a miniseries that lasts a couple of years instead of a feature.”

Scouting expeditions

The story behind the novel began more than 20 years ago when Sayles answered the phone to find Scottish actor Robert Carlyle, then not long removed from his successes in “Trainspotting” and “The Full Monty,” on the line.

Carlyle had been recommended to Sayles as a screenwriter who might be interested in a story he wanted to develop – the story of Jamie MacGillivray, whose imagined adventures reflect the real lives of ordinary historical figures.

“I liked the idea so much I wrote a screenplay on spec,” Sayles says, using the technical term for writing a screenplay without pay or a contract lined up. “Then Robert Carlyle and Maggie (Renzi), who I live with and was the producer on it, and I scouted the Highlands of Scotland with Robert, and then came back and scouted a bunch of locations that show up in the book here in the states and in Canada.

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“And we just were never able to raise the money to make it, which is kind of the story of our lives as independent filmmakers,” he says.

Two decades later, not long before COVID-19 hit, Sayles dusted off the screenplay to see if it might work as a novel.

“In that process, of course, all those stops in between (in the script) became more stops and more characters,” he says. A young Scottish woman who briefly encounters Jamie as the book begins was chief among the characters whose stories grew as the novel expanded to 696 pages.

“Jenny was originally a very minor character who showed up only at the beginning and at the very end of the story,” Sayles says. “And doing the novel, I was able to follow her: How did she get to the New World? What was her path and how was it different than Jamie’s?”

History lessened

Sayles was raised in Schenectady, New York, a region over which the French, English and Native Americans fought before, during and after the time period of the novel.

“I kind of grew up with the official story,” he says of the French and Indian War in particular, and the early settlement of North America in general. “Which was interesting, but not the complete story, you know, or not the complex story that when you really jump into the history you realize.

“It was much more complicated than that,” Sayles says. “It was still being taught as these rough but civilized people coming over from Europe and encountering these savages. And when the two superpowers, the French and the English, got involved with each other, it became a dirty war because they had to enlist Native allies who murdered and scalped people.

“That was the official story for a long, long time, certainly in the mind of the public,” he says. “Doing the research for the screenplay gave me the basic historical structure that the novel is hung on. But doing it as a novel, I was able to get into much more of the real detail of what led to what, and just how complicated it was.”

From contemporary history, Sayles worked his way further and further back to the original documents of the times. He found the logs from sailing ships that transported convicts like Jamie and Jenny to America. He found records of an English convict ship seized by the French, its human cargo liberated and taken to the island of Martinique as happens in the novel.

There were court transcripts from the trial of Simon Fraser, the Scottish leader known as Lord Lovat, who backed the Jacobite rebellion and is a character in the book. Like Jamie, Lovat is taken to London and tried for treason, though his story ends not in the New World but on the executioner’s block.

Recent works by Native American scholars helped illuminate the history of the tribes who were squeezed between the French and English. “George Washington and the Indians,” a new history published around the time Sayles started work on the novel, provided fresh insights into the role played by the future Founding Father, who also appears as a character in the book.

Along with research, Sayles suggests that imagination can fill in the gaps if you’ve dug into the records enough.

“I always tell people, ‘Look, I adapted the novel ‘The Clan of the Cave Bear,’ where there’s like three skeletons that they’re basing everything on,” he says. “The 1740s and ’50s? That’s easy compared to that.”

Language lessons

One of the things that readers will notice throughout “Jamie MacGillivray” is Sayles’s use of dialect and other languages for the characters.

Jamie and his fellow Scots speak in the dialect of the Highlands, though Jamie himself also speaks English and French. When Jenny arrives in Martinique, she’s faced with a French-speaking populace. Later, in the colonies, Jamie realizes that to survive his time with the Lenape, or Delaware, Indians he will need to learn their language.

All of that can create a challenge for readers accustomed to standard English, no matter the period, people or place, but to Sayles it was an important way to get at the truth of the story.

“The main reason I went with it is because of Jamie and the other people who are kind of ripped out of the life that they thought that they were going to live,” he says. “They had to deal with new languages and people who didn’t speak their language. Even Highlanders would have had a hard time sometimes being understood in the Lowlands of Scotland.

“Jamie’s trying to survive, and if I don’t understand what they’re saying, I don’t know when to run away,” Sayles says. “I wanted the reader, the audience, to have to do some of that themselves.”

In a way, the verisimilitude of the dialogue helps Sayles deliver the feeling of truth that fiction can achieve and traditional history sometimes cannot.

“It’s one of the advantages,” he says of writing fiction that hews close to real events and serious research. “You can come at it from the inside out.”

A military history of the Battle of Culloden will provide the battalions and tactics and outcomes, Sayles says. The novelist’s imagination can fill in the thoughts and feelings of those who are there.

“You have a character who’s hoping to not get shot down and hoping to cover enough ground so that his side overruns the others,” Sayles says. “That character’s a warrior. He’s done this before. He knows what battle is.

“And you have a very personal experience of that battle.”

Searching for screentime

In the two decades since the story of Jamie MacGillivray began, cable networks and streaming services have expanded the landscape for limited series. For now, Sayles says there are no plans to adapt the novel.

He’s currently got a pair of movie projects he’d like to make if financing can be found. There’s a Western based on the 1926 novel “Pasó Por Aquí” – “I Passed This Way” – by the cowboy writer Eugene Manlove Rhodes. “Patronage,” an original screenplay, is set in a Chicago bar on the night that rioting broke out during the 1968 Democratic Convention.

And there’s also an almost-finished novel emerging from the bones of another unmade screenplay. “To Save the Man” is set at the Carlisle Indian School in the early 1890s.

“In an interesting way, I have to be much more visual when I’m writing a book than I do when writing a screenplay,” Sayles says, noting how his prose has to carry the descriptions that a camera might otherwise handle.

“You really have to provide much more visual detail,” he says. “On the other hand, if you want the sun to shine and you’re writing a book, the sun is shining. I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of times I wished I could do that as a director.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Juul agrees to pay $462 million e-cigarette settlement to 6 states, including California

• April 12, 2023

By KAREN MATTHEWS

NEW YORK — Embattled electronic cigarette-maker Juul Labs Inc. will pay $462 million to six states and the District of Columbia, marking the largest settlement the company has reached so far for its role in the youth vaping surge, New York Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday.

The agreement with New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Washington, D.C. marks the latest in a string of recent legal settlements Juul has reached across the country with cities and states.

The vaping company, which has laid off hundreds of employees, will pay $7.9 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the company violated the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act by marketing its products to underage users, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Monday. Last month, the company paid Chicago $23.8 million to settle a lawsuit.

Minnesota’s case against Juul went to trial last month with the state’s Attorney General Keith Ellison asserting that the company “baited, deceived and addicted a whole new generation of kids after Minnesotans slashed youth smoking rates down to the lowest level in a generation.”

Like some other settlements reached by Juul, this latest agreement includes various restrictions on the marketing, sale and distribution of the company’s vaping products. For example, it is barred from any direct or indirect marketing that targets youth, which includes anyone under age 35. Juul is also required to limit the amount of purchases customers can make in retail stores and online.

“Juul lit a nationwide public health crisis by putting addictive products in the hands of minors and convincing them that it’s harmless,” James said in a statement. “Today they are paying the price for the harm they caused.”

James said the $112.7 million due to New York will pay for underage smoking abatement programs across the state.

District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement that Juul “knew how addictive and dangerous its products were and actively tried to cover up that medical truth.”

A spokesperson for the Washington D.C.-based Juul said that with Wednesday’s settlement, “we are nearing total resolution of the company’s historical legal challenges and securing certainty for our future.”

The spokesperson added that underage use of Juul products has declined by 95% since 2019 based on the National Youth Tobacco Survey. According to the CDC though, since surveys were administered online instead of on school campuses during the pandemic, the results cannot be compared to prior years.

In September, Juul agreed to pay nearly $440 million over a period of six to 10 years to settle a two-year investigation by 33 states into the marketing of its high-nicotine vaping products to young people. That settlement amounted to about 25% of Juul’s U.S. sales of $1.9 billion in 2021.

Three months later, the company said it had secured an equity investment to settle thousands of lawsuits over its e-cigarettes brought by individuals and families of Juul users, school districts, city governments and Native American tribes.

Juul rocketed to the top of the U.S. vaping market about five years ago with the popularity of flavors like mango, mint and crème brûlée. But the startup’s rise was fueled by use among teenagers, some of whom became hooked on Juul’s high-nicotine pods.

Parents, school administrators and politicians have largely blamed the company for a surge in underage vaping.

​ Orange County Register 

Alexander: Are the Lakers the team that won’t die?

• April 12, 2023

LOS ANGELES — Maybe it was fate that pushed the Lakers into their triumphant moment Tuesday night.

Maybe the frenzied ending and the explosions of noise from the faithful had to happen the way they did, after the home team had trailed by 15 against a Minnesota club that entered the night shorthanded and a heavy underdog but took the fight to the Lakers and had them on their heels for much of the first three quarters.

The home team’s ultimate 108-102 victory in overtime was, for sure, a reminder to never assume. It was also a reminder that the failures and struggles of earlier in the season might have been building blocks.

It was, for large stretches, absolutely inelegant. The quality of play and the spottiness of the Lakers’ efficiency for much of the night were certainly no endorsements for picking the No. 7 seed Lakers over the No. 2 seed Memphis Grizzlies when their best-of-seven first-round series begins Sunday, no matter how many “team nobody wants to face” descriptions we’ll hear in coming days about any team that starts with LeBron James and Anthony Davis and goes from there.

And yet … maybe we’re looking at a true zombie team here, The Team That Wouldn’t Die. A team that started the year 2-10, dealt with injuries and personnel changes and stayed in the fight, and somehow is still in it.

Maybe there truly is something to Coach Darvin Ham’s insistence that W and L stands just as much for Wisdom and Lessons as for Wins and Losses, though the latter is what tends to determine how long a coach stays employed.

“I think some of the huge disappointing losses we experienced early on – whether it was a defensive breakdown, whether it was an unfortunate foul, whether it was missed free throws, whether it was running out of gas in overtime – it’s totally uncomfortable when you’re in the moment and going through those things,” Ham said.

“But again, you have to find the silver lining in things, whether it’s basketball, major sports in general, in life. You constantly got to look for a silver lining and look forward and learn from these mistakes so that, you know, they’re not repetitive, they don’t become repetitive.”

It’s a multi-faceted process. The transactions that brought people like D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, Rui Hachimura and Malik Beasley to the roster at midseason also brought opportunities for both newcomers and holdovers to share experiences, create dialogue and figure out ways for individuals to become part of the whole.

“And you go to that process and once you get to the end of things, to have everyone healthy, to be playing in the type of rhythm we’re playing in, to defend at the level that we’re defending at going into the most important time of the year, you can’t ask for a better situation,” Ham said.

The craziness of the late stages of regulation – a dead-on 3-pointer by Dennis Schröder to give the Lakers a 98-95 lead with 1.4 seconds left, followed by a questionable foul call against Anthony Davis on a 3-point try by Minnesota’s Mike Conley with one-tenth of a second left and Conley’s three free throws to re-tie the score – probably didn’t faze the Lakers because the entire journey from 2-10 to the playoffs has been crazy.

“With the mindset that we have, it was just, ‘Next play,’” Austin Reaves said. “We did not dwell on it or anything like that. That just shows the resilience of the team.”

That, James said, is something his team has been very good at, being “able to stick with the game and find a way to gut it out and win – (despite) slow starts or not finishing the game off the way we’d like to.

“You know, just always trying to find a way. And tonight was another instance of that versus a very, very, very good team.”

It was a true playoff atmosphere, even if the NBA doesn’t consider these games part of the playoffs but instead, the “Play-In Tournament” (with, of course, a title sponsor).

The capacity crowd raised the noise level exponentially as the game got tighter and crazier, and particular plays – Schröder’s 3-pointer at the end of regulation, Hachimura’s 3-pointer in the first minute of overtime, and Davis’ inside basket over Karl-Anthony Towns with 1:40 left in overtime for a 105-100 lead – had to have had Apple Watches throughout the building issuing “loud environment” warnings.

“It’s playoff intensified out there,” James said. “You dive for loose balls, you’re taking charges, you run guys off the line trying to keep your body in front of ’em.

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“Basically you’re just takin’ the gas down to E, then try to refuel as much as you can save as a reserve tank. … You can always find a way to make one more play, one more steal, one more block and one more rebound, you know, or get one more stop.”

Next play … next game … next series … this is how the Lakers’ 2022-23 season has been built, with the lessons of the bad times informing the decisions of the better ones.

“That’s been our mantra, what’s represented us the entire season: Just trying to move forward,” Ham said. “Not constantly belaboring an issue, a problem, what went wrong, but just constantly trying to find solutions to make sure we don’t make the same mistake twice.”

That mentality, and having been in urgency mode for most of the previous month, has gotten them here. And now they’ve reached the time of the basketball year that, at least for this proud franchise, truly defines success or failure.

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​ Orange County Register 

John Stossel: Media self-censorship during the COVID pandemic

• April 12, 2023

Over the past three years, we reporters learned there were certain things that we weren’t allowed to say. Not long ago, in fact, my new video may have been censored.

One dangerous idea, we were told, was that COVID might have been created in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That seems very possible, since the institute studied coronaviruses in bats, and America’s National Institutes of Health gave the lab money to perform “gain-of-function” research, experiments where scientists try to make a virus more virulent or transmissible.

A Washington Post writer worried the lab leak theory “could increase racist attacks against Chinese people and further fuel anti-Asian hate.”

The establishment media fell in line, insisting that COVID most likely came from a local market that sold animals.

Left-wing TV mocked the lab theory as a “fringe idea” that came from “a certain corner of the right.”

“This coronavirus was not manmade,” said MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, confidently, “That is not a possibility.”

Not even a possibility?

Debate about it, we were told, posed a new threat: misinformation.

Facebook banned the lab leak theory, calling it a “false claim.”

But now the U.S. Department of Energy says the pandemic most likely came from a lab leak. FBI director Christopher Wray now says the origin of the pandemic is “most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”

For two years, the most likely explanation was censored.

Do the media gatekeepers apologize for their censorship? No.

The closest to an admission of guilt I found was from Chris Hayes, who eventually said, “There’s a kernel of truth to the idea that some folks were too quick to shut down the lab leak theory.”

There was more than “a kernel of truth.” Again and again, politically correct media silenced people who spoke the truth.

Facebook throttled the reach of science journalist John Tierney’s articles simply because he reported, accurately, that requiring masks can hurt kids.

YouTube suspended Sen. Rand Paul for saying, “Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work.”

But what they said is true. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance to say cloth masks are not very effective. And now a big study failed to find evidence that wearing even good masks stops the spread of viruses.

Probably the most blatant censorship was Twitter’s shutting down the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Twitter wouldn’t let users decide for themselves. The company just called the Post’s report “potentially harmful” and blocked users from sharing it.

Facebook, as usual, was sneakier, suppressing the story instead of banning it outright. That’s what they do to my climate change reporting.

Today, the media admit the Post story is true. But they don’t admit they were wrong. Now they just say things like, “Nobody cares about Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

Bad as the media are, what’s worse is that government wanted to censor.

Sen. Mark Warner complained, “We’ve done nothing in terms of content regulation!”

Fortunately, his colleagues were not as irresponsible as he; no censorship legislation passed. But government did apply lots of pressure.

The White House asked Facebook to kill what they called “disinformation,” even urging them to censor private WhatsApp messages.

Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter and opened up the company’s internal files, we know that censorhip requests came from “every corner” of government, as journalist Matt Taibbi put it.

Even individual politicians tried to censor.

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Maine Sen. Angus King’s staff complained about Twitter accounts that they considered “anti-King.” Rep. Adam Schiff’s office asked Twitter to suppress search results.

Fortunately, Twitter refused.

But the sad truth is that lots of government agencies and media tyrants want to limit what you read and hear.

At least now, we can speak the truth:

COVID probably was created in a Chinese lab.

Masks are unlikely to provide much protection and requiring them can harm kids. Hunter Biden did lots of sleazy things.

Self-appointed censors tried to shut us up, but eventually, the truth almost always comes out.

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”

​ Orange County Register 

Mind your own state, Governor Gavin Newsom

• April 12, 2023

In an interview with former White House spokesperson and now MSNBC host Jen Psaki, Gov. Gavin Newsom offered some political advice to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“I’d tell him to pack up and wait a few years,” he said. “And actually do some of the hard work, which actually includes governing, not identity and culture wars.”

Newsom could well have been talking about himself.

The governor offered those remarks while on a multi-state tour funded by his newly formed political action committee to fight “rising authoritarianism” — or to raise his national profile for a future presidential campaign — depending on one’s naivete.

To be sure, both Gov. Newsom and Gov. DeSantis have a knack for grabbing national headlines over big culture war fights.

DeSantis has sparred with Disney for opposing a Florida law restricting discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity to young children. DeSantis has also signed legislation banning transgender athletes from participating in sports intended for biological women and girls.

Newsom, for his part, has purchased billboards in Republican states advertising California as a sanctuary for women seeking abortion in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling giving states the authority to restrict or permit abortion. Newsom has signed legislation offering “sanctuary” protections for transgender minors seeking medical procedures in California from other states.

Reasonable people can differ on the appropriate policy approaches to hot button culture war issues. But the reality is that both Newsom and DeSantis have participated in the culture war, scoring plenty of political points for their efforts.

Newsom, obviously, has been eager to establish himself as a national Democratic figure and possible successor to President Joe Biden.

About this time last year, Newsom began unloading on the national Democratic Party after the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, saying, “Where the hell is my party? Where’s the Democratic Party? … Why aren’t we calling this out? This is a concerted, coordinated effort. And, yes, [Republicans are] winning.”

Indeed, Newsom spent much of last year trying to grab the national spotlight by needling his own part, prompting some warnings from loyalists to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. “I like what Newsom is doing, but I don’t want him to be Icarus, and sometimes he gets too close to the sun,” one Harris loyalist told Politico last year.

Newsom obviously hasn’t let up the perpetual campaigning.

Meanwhile, the big issues facing California when he was first elected lieutenant governor, of all things, still persist. From high housing costs and homelessness to high rates of poverty and poorly performing K-12 schools, California has no shortage of serious problems that demand serious focus from the governor.

Longtime political observers are no doubt mindful of Newsom’s historical tendency to boldly promise major results, only to get bored and move on to the next issue. In 2008, then-Mayor Newsom pledged to end chronic homelessness in San Francisco. We all know how that went.

Four years ago, as governor, he called for a “Marshall Plan for affordable housing” and said it was time to “get real” about the high-speed rail project. Four years later, the housing crisis is as challenging as ever and the bullet train has only ballooned in costs and been delayed further.

So, before Newsom tries to lecture the rest of the country, he should mind his own store.

​ Orange County Register