Norman Lear popped up on my computer screen at the designated time, wearing his signature bucket hat. I’d waited weeks for the interview and knew I had to think fast, because Lear was busy — as always — juggling projects.
That was the point of the interview. He was 98 in 2020 and still working like an ambitious upstart. I was 30 years younger than him, contemplating retirement and researching a book about how to know when it’s time to go.
I’ll admit to being more than a little nervous. Lear, who died Dec. 5 at age 101, was a legend, for one thing, a pioneer in the realm of prime-time TV shows that delivered social commentary along with entertainment. As a much younger guy, I half feared Lear might tell me to quit wasting his time.
California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.
I asked Lear if he ever thought about retiring. He appeared to be in his kitchen, snacking on something, but he didn’t hesitate.
“Not for a second,” he said with an exclamation point, making me feel like maybe I should go get my own bucket hat, pull it down to my ears and get to work.
I had already talked to another Hollywood legend and Lear contemporary, Mel Brooks. I wanted to know if working, for them, was oxygen. If you stop working, you suffocate.
“When I go to sleep at night,” Lear told me, “I have something that I’m thinking. Among other things, it’s about something I’m doing tomorrow … a day in which there are things I wish to do. So today is over, and we’re on to the next.”
Here I was, making the vagaries of human existence more complicated than they needed to be as I tried to make sense of where I’d been and where I was headed in a year, in five, in 10.
Lear obligingly played therapist, saying he lived in the moment, which really is all any of us can do. He said that he was certainly grateful for all the accolades and awards tossed his way in an epic career, but that he didn’t dwell on the past as much as what was in front of him right now. Imagine you’re in a hammock, he said, and you’re swinging.
From over, to next. Over, to next.
Norman Lear joins actor Marla Gibbs at a ceremony to award her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Gibbs was a cast member on Lear’s TV sitcom “The Jeffersons.”
(Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)
“So long as I am interested in the next, I’m moving,” Lear said. “And there have been, for 98 years, a lot of wonderful nexts.”
Lear had an insatiable intellectual and spiritual hunger, and that, along with the luck of physical health, is key to a long and happy life. Recently, I hiked Griffith Park with a 100-year-old gent, Pete Teti, who is all about embracing change. As one friend explained: “He’s made two violins, he does engraving, he’s a painter, he’s currently creating animation, he’s constantly learning about physics, geometry, fractiles.”
At age 93, Lear once asked, in a New York Times interview, “Aren’t you expected to grow, learn more about yourself, learn more about the world? Why would you be less expected to grow when you’re 80? The culture dictates how you behave, and maybe the elderly buy into it, the way they grow old. My role here now is to say wait a minute. That’s not all there is. There’s a good time to be had at this age.”
Marty Kaplan, director of USC’s Norman Lear Center — established in 2000 by the Lear family to study the impact of entertainment on society — said Lear was attending writers’ meetings and giving notes on current projects right up until the end. Kaplan said in a tribute on the center’s website that Lear “moved our hearts and minds to embrace our common humanity and live up to what is best in us.”
But there was more to the man than work.
“The list of things associated with longevity — with centenarians — all apply to him,” Kaplan told me. “Family and love in your life is paramount, and for him, it always has been. And then, purpose, an awfully important thing. The sense that you matter.”
Another critical ingredient in the Lear recipe for aging well was gratitude, Kaplan said, citing Lear’s wartime service as a radio operator and gunner on dozens of World War II combat missions.
“He wasn’t just swinging in the hammock. He was reveling in the pleasure of being alive, in existence, and the sheer miracle of anything existing,” Kaplan said.
In our conversation, Lear wondered why I’d be contemplating retirement, given how much I loved my job. Well, I told him, there might be other things I’d love, but I’ve never had time to try them. I’d like to travel more, and maybe live in different places.
Lear suggested the best of both worlds was within reach. Maybe I could travel more, have new experiences, and write about it.
“It’s not retirement,” he said. “It’s on to the next.”
I took inspiration from Lear’s zest. Work might well have kept him breathing, but it was all of life he embraced. He kept probing, shining a light, speaking out about ignorance and division. He once had a pen pal relationship with President Reagan because he thought it was important to hear the perspectives of political opponents.
Kaplan wrote that Lear “moved our hearts and minds to embrace our common humanity and live up to what is best in us.”
He said that in the hours after Lear’s death, he was looking through his biography, “Even This I Get to Experience,” and was struck by the epigraph. It was a quote from George Bernard Shaw.
“You haven’t overcome the fear of death until you delight in your own life, believing it to be the carrying out of universal purpose.”
The Napier City Council plans to start design work in its proposed Emerson Street CBD revamp early in the New Year, although it is yet to finish the consultation.
The Revitalise Emerson pop-up shop has another week to run at 247 Emerson St, with feedback sought from anyone interested in sharing their thoughts.
It will be the biggest rethink of the shopping centre in the 30 years since it was transformed into a pedestrian shopping precinct, with single-lane vehicle access replacing the two-way traffic, from the days of the main-street drag.
Cruise visitors enjoy a stroll along Emerson St in Napier on Wednesday. Photo / NZME
Council’s City Activation lead Steph Kennard said that with some government funding the council is keen to make the most of that opportunity and “do something really cool for the community”.
The work includes gathering data around the movement of people, vehicles and micro-transport options like bikes and scooters, with interviews, observations and video analysis by a local research company.
Meanwhile, the week-long Squares in the City, focused on Clive and Memorial squares, is in full swing and the Napier Night Fiesta series starts its 2023-2024 season on December 8.
In a world filled with conflict and hostility, one of the most important skills we can learn in life is conflict resolution and our ability to negotiate peacefully and effectively.
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday appointed Carolyn Webb de Macias as chief of staff, succeeding Chris Thompson, who held the powerful post for less than a year.
Webb de Macias is a former senior advisor to former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and also worked for then-City Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas.
She also worked in the U.S. Department of Education as an appointee of President Obama, and as USC’s vice president of external relations, according to Bass’ office.
“I’ve known Carolyn for years and I know Los Angeles has benefited from her work for even longer than that,” Bass said in a statement. “Carolyn is thoughtful, skilled, dedicated and the right person for the job. I’m grateful she has agreed to join our team as we continue our work to move Los Angeles forward.”
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In a statement, Webb de Macias said she was “thrilled to work with Mayor Bass in executing her vision of improving the quality of life for all Angelenos.”
Webb de Macias, 75, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her LinkedIn profile said she serves on the boards of the water company Cadiz Inc. and Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit founded by Villaraigosa.
Thompson, Bass’ chief of staff since December, is returning to the private sector, Bass’ office said. A Bass spokesman declined to comment on his new job.
Thompson previously served as senior vice president of governmental relations for LA28, the private group putting on the Olympic Games. He had agreed to stay away from any Olympics issues at the city for a year out of concern about the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles will remain closed indefinitely as the California Department of Transportation moves to repair an overpass badly damaged by an intense fire early Saturday at two storage yards in an area with multiple homeless encampments.
The incident, which closed westbound and eastbound lanes of the busy freeway between Alameda Street and Santa Fe Avenue, will significantly affect traffic in the area, officials said at anews conference Sunday, without offering a timetable for reopening.
“Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that this is going to be over in a couple of days,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said. “We will need to come together and all cooperate until the freeway is rebuilt.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Saturday to help expedite the work. Acknowledging “the anxiety of millions and millions that live in this region,” Newsom noted that 300,000 vehicles travel through the freeway corridor daily. And he said he knew the question many are asking: “When the hell is this going to get reopened?”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attend a news conference Sunday at Caltrans headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Several things must occur before construction can begin — starting with an investigation into the cause of the fire. It is expected to be finished by 6 a.m. Monday. Mitigation of hazardous materials also needs to be completed before a detailed structural analysis of the damaged portions of the freeway can commence. Engineers will be inspecting the freeway’s columns and bridge deck.
“I am not going to understate the challenge here — it is significant,” California Transportation Secretary Toks Omishakin said. “This is not going to be an easy task for our structural engineers at Caltrans.”
Commuters were encouraged to take alternate routes, avoid the area altogether or use public transit to help ease traffic flow through the downtown area as work on the freeway continues.
This could be the most notable freeway closure in the Southland since the 1994 Northridge earthquake buckled portions of the 10 and other routes. The shutdown is expected to increase congestion on adjacent freeways where traffic is being diverted, among them the 5, 110 and 710.
Los Angeles firefighters continue to assess the damage from a fire under the 10 Freeway near downtown Los Angeles.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
The faint scent of smoke hung in the air Sunday morning as Caltrans workers examined a stretch of the freeway near 14th Street. Black marks were visible on the overpass where the Los Angeles City Fire Department responded to a reported rubbish fire at 12:22 a.m. a day earlier. The department said its first responders arrived to find a storage yard with pallets, trailers and vehicles “well involved in fire.”
Ultimately, firefighters from 26 companies and one helicopter responded to the scene; they were able to keep the blaze from spreading into nearby structures, though a firetruck was badly damage.
Newsom said officials are investigating whether anyone was living under the overpass at the time of the fire, but at the moment there are no known deaths from the incident. Bass said some homeless people living nearby evacuated because of the fire and that at least 16 have since been housed.
On X, the service formerly known as Twitter, users posted images that purportedly showed homeless encampments beneath the freeway at 14th Street. Newsom said that he and other officials cleaned up an encampment there in August 2022.
“I am intimately familiar with this site,” he said.
The incident could lead officials to study the safety of homeless encampments near freeways across the city. Peter Brown, a spokesman for L.A. City Councilman Kevin de León, whose district includes the site of the fire, said he believed the incident would “trigger a review” of such properties.
“We just want to make sure folks are as safe as possible,” Brown said. “Nine freeways crisscross through [de León’s] district.”
Since January, Brown said, the councilman’s office had conducted six “cleanup operations” of sites under the 10 Freeway that had moved 36 people into housing in the downtown area. Two of the visits were at the property where the fire occurred, he said.
The area around the burn site is home to many homeless encampments. A man named Enrique who has been living in his car near the now-damaged overpass for most of the last year said that he woke up early Saturday to police shouting for people to clear the area.
“They were big flames, higher than that building,” the 58-year-old said, pointing to a two-story structure on 14th Street.
Behind Enrique, who declined to give his last name, there was a series of makeshift dwellings. A woman walked out of one and wandered the streets with no pants or underwear.
Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin M. Crowley said that “as for any of the encampments in that area, we do not have any direct correlation at this point as to if that’s where it did start or didn’t.”
“We are going to have to standby and wait for the active investigation to be completed,” she said.
Homeless encampments have been the source of fires under and around freeways up and down the West Coast in recent years. In July 2022, a major blaze struck an encampment underneath the 880 Freeway in Oakland, destroying vehicles, snarling traffic and requiring the work of 60 firefighters to extinguish it. And in March, a fire in Tacoma, Wash., broke out in a tent beneath the 5 Freeway, leaving one person dead.
The 14th Street property where the fire occurred Saturday is owned by Caltrans, a spokesman for the agency said. Newsom said that site had been leased to an entity he declined to name. But the lease is expired, the entity is in arrears and it has been cited by state investigators, Newsom said.
He added that the state is in litigation with the lessee and believes it has been subleasing the space.
Omishakin said it’s common practice across the country to lease space under freeways. “This is something that is going to be reevaluated from a safety standpoint,” he said, including what is allowed to be stored underneath overpasses.
Southern California is no stranger to freeway closures. Far from it.
Mudslides, wildfires and snow storms have routinely shut down portions of freeways, highways and state routes — but those closures often are quickly resolved. The 5 Freeway, for example, was briefly shut down along the Grapevine a dozen times from 2018 to 2022 due to snow, Caltrans said. Some natural disasters have caused notable problems: In 2018, Highway 23, which connects Pacific Coast Highway and the 101 Freeway, was closed for about six weeks starting in November after the Woolsey fire ripped through nearly 100,000 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Man-made fires have also taken their toll on Southern California’s freeways. In 2013, a tanker truck carrying 8,500 gallons of gasoline crashed and caught fire, severely damaging a tunnel connecting the 5 and 2 freeways in Elysian Valley north of downtown. The conflagration burned through almost three inches of concrete and caused chunks of it to fall from the tunnel walls, necessitating a $16.5-million repair. The work wasn’t completed until January 2014.
But the biggest disruption to the freeway system occurred after the magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck L.A. on Jan. 17, 1994, killing dozens and causing tens of billions of dollars of property damage. Parts of one highway and six freeways, among them the 5 and the 10, were closed after the temblor collapsed overpasses and buckled roadways, The Times reported.
An accelerated construction effort — one spurred by round-the-clock work — led to reopenings ahead of schedule. In the case of the 10 Freeway, which saw two sections flattened by the quake, contractor C.C. Myers Inc. finished the project 74 days ahead of schedule, allowing it to reopen in April. The company had been offered a $200,000 bonus for every day the work was finished ahead of schedule, The Times reported.
Bass invoked that push on Sunday.
“For those of you that remember the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Caltrans worked around the clock to complete the emergency repairs to the freeways, and this structural damage calls for the same level of urgency and effort,” she said.
Newsom said the state is now determining whether to offer contractors incentives to finish repair work quickly.
“We are sober and mindful of the urgency to get this open,” Newsom said. “It is safety first, it’s speed second.”
Early on the morning of Oct. 12, David Mays woke up in the Chevrolet he had been living in for two years, knowing this day would be different.
Safe Parking L.A. had been a blessing, providing a covered space in a downtown garage, with on-site security and access to a bathroom. That was better than sleeping on the street with one eye open.
But Mays had been hobbled by the discomfort of sleeping in the driver’s seat for months on end, and the 69-year-old caregiver had developed health concerns of his own. His legs were stiff, swollen and sore, complicating his hope of returning to work. And he was beginning to doubt promises that his wait for a place of his own would end despite the best efforts of Demi Dominguez, his Safe Parking case manager, to get him indoors.
David Mays gives Demi Dominguez, his Safe Parking L.A. case manager, a hug of support after signing papers for his new apartment.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
And then it happened. Dominguez learned in late summer of a possible slot for Mays at a soon-to-open apartment building in East Hollywood. The Wilcox was to be managed by The People Concern, a homeless services nonprofit, with on-site supportive services for adults 62 or older –- one of the fastest-growing segments of the state’s vast unhoused population.
Mays drove to the Wilcox on the 12th, sat through an orientation and, finally, was escorted to his new home, a small but comfortable second-floor studio apartment.
He was not overwhelmed, as one might expect. It was too much to process.
California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.
“To be honest,” he told me, seated in his dining nook a few weeks after moving in, “I wasn’t aware. I wasn’t feeling it.”
Mays, who speaks deliberately, turned inward, searching for the right words.
“I had been taught to be justifiably cynical for so long, that when it finally happened, and it was real, and we’re doing this — this is your apartment — my brain almost kind of took a pause,” Mays said. “And then at some point, I realized — I think when I collapsed on that bed, and it took a couple of days for it to truly sink in –- this was my apartment.
After two years of living in his car, David Mays prepares to move some of his belongings into his new apartment.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“I had been out there so long that this was almost the equivalent of a daydream, because I had been so far removed from what I knew to be a normal life before it all went south, “ he said. “And then to come back to some semblance of that, after two years of nothing … it’s a quantum leap.”
Mays said the experience was “almost a shock wave … I’m lying there in that bed and I’m going, ‘Am I really here?’ I just laid out, and within 14 days, all the massive swelling went away. All of it.”
Mays’ story is a small victory in a city with roughly46,000 homeless people, but it’s also a window into a societal collapse and a grinding bureaucracy that has long been a symbol of government failure. Crippling housing and workforce shortages and a fragmented, dysfunctional response — along with entrenched poverty, unchecked mental illness and a raging drug epidemic — have produced a simmering humanitarian crisis visible to one and all.
David Mays enters his new apartment at the Wilcox in East Hollywood for the first time as community manager Daisy DePaz watches.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“The timeline for housing remains a multi-year process,” said Emily Uyeda Kantrim, who runs Safe Parking L.A. and said Mays was in the housing queue since 2021.
Mays readily admits to his frustration.
“I lost faith,” he said, telling me he came to believe that the “system” treats homelessness as a monolithic condition. In fact, it’s 46,000 puzzles, each with a different solution, but key pieces of each puzzle are missing.
Eventually, he was buoyedby Safe Parking’s continued efforts to make a connection for him. Safe Parking helps its clients — a third of whom are older adults — with car maintenance costs and other expenses while they look for permanent housing.
“They were with me through the whole process,” Mays said, right up to the time he moved into his new home.
David Mays shares his enthusiasm about finally getting a place to live with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
On Nov. 6, while Mays was in his room, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was downstairs in the courtyard, presiding over the official grand opening of the Wilcox. Tackling the homelessness crisis was at the top of her agenda when she was elected a year ago, and I recall traveling across the city with her when she was a candidate, as she talked about blowing up the bureaucracy, leveraging her contacts in Washington and Sacramento, working with — rather than at odds with — county supervisors, and lowering the cost of new housing and building it faster.
All of that remains a work in progress, but she gets high marks from some observers. Bass’ strategy of targeting problematic encampments, cutting through paperwork and leveraging her connections has changed the dynamic, said Miguel Santana, director of the California Community Foundation. Her background as a physician’s assistant has helped, too, he said, because she’s attuned to individual needs.
“She has placed the priority on the person who is unhoused and tries to advocate for them, not for the system,” Santana said. “She’s pushing against the system.”
“She has brought … real focus to this issue in a way no other administration has, and I’ve worked with several,” said John Maceri, director of The People Concern. “Her executive orders and directives, in terms of streamlining things, are real, and that has really expedited a lot of projects that had been languishing in the pipeline for a long time.”
“I had been taught to be justifiably cynical for so long, that when it finally happened, and it was real, and we’re doing this — this is your apartment — my brain almost kind of took a pause,” David Mays said.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Bass, like me, turned 70 in October. I had told her more than a year ago that while I was thinking it might be time to scale back my output, she was running for what would be the toughest job of her career. She told me she badly wanted the job.
“It’s been reported that one of the fastest-growing sectors of the unhoused population are our elders, and it is a scourge on society,” Bass told a small audience before doubling down on the need to continue addressing the crisis with a sense of urgency.
The mayor then wanted to meet some of the residents, and the first one she visited was Mays.
“How are you?” Mays asked when she stepped into his room, and Bass volleyed the question back at him.
“I’m disoriented a little bit,” Mays said. “I can’t believe that this is happening.”
They talked for several minutes about his career and his health, with Bass saying she wanted to make sure he was connected to the help he needed.
“You brighten up my day,” Bass said. “This is what we’re trying to do. This is the goal.”
Before the mayor arrived and after she left, Mays talked about his plans, which do not necessarily include a long-term stay at the Wilcox. He worked for years as a private in-home caregiver, with room and board included, but it’s a profession in which clients move on to nursing homes or die, and Mays ended up out of work and homeless.
David Mays walks past a billboard with the message: “Create Your Future.”
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Given multiple health challenges, he doesn’t think he can be a live-in caregiver again, but he’d like to work day shifts if he can find the right match. He said the problem is that if he were to make more than $1,000 a month, on top of his Social Security income, he’d no longer be eligible for the apartment he just moved into.
Mays said he’s got to figure out what to do about all of that, but emphasized that he doesn’t think of his arrival at the Wilcox as the end of his career or his aspirations.
“I have to work that out,” he said. “This, for me, is another rest stop. And it’s a vast improvement over the last one.”
You never know how a relationships evolve, but it always has hidden surprises…both good and challenging. Despite the current work at home atmosphere, hard work is praised in most of the corporate world. Research indicates workaholism hits between 27% and 30% of the working population. In popular culture, “workaholism” is a buzzword often used to describe devotion to work in a positive light — by defining themselves as workaholics, people often think they are showcasing their passion for their jobs. But it can put big stress on a relationship. Here are the best ways to cope with a workaholic partner.
Couples therapist Karen Hirscheimer shares there’s a clear difference between a workaholic and a hard worker, and it’s important for their romantic partners to know the difference. While the hard workers might find themselves spending some late nights at work, the workaholics can’t step away from it, even when they’re on their free time. Hirscheimer also says that it’s important to be aware of the nature of your partner’s job; if they hold an important position that comes with a heavy workload, it’s on you to be understanding.
It serves no purpose to compare your relationship with other couples who get to spend more time together. Everyone’s relationship and situation is different, and it’s important to keep that in mind before you add that extra pressure on your relationship. Think about the positive aspects of your partner and the benefits of the time that you get to spend together.
Use Calendars
Schedule important appointments and events that matter to you, like dinner with friends or parents. It’s also important for your partner to use the calendar so they can add in important meetings and days where they’ll be unavailable. This precaution will help you both avoid misunderstandings and will make you happier in the long term.
Make the time you spend together count
Make the most out of the time you have together by making fun dinner plans or by simply using the free time to watch a TV show or have sex. It’s also important for you to enjoy your alone time and to find stuff that makes you happy, that way both of you will feel fulfilled with your lives and individual paths.
Try to appreciate your partner’s passion for their work
People who feel fulfilled with their jobs tend to be happy with their existence, so try to appreciate that since it’s not easy to find. “When my client loves what they do, that joy and fulfillment ripples through their relationships and results in positive outcomes,” says Naz Beheshti a wellness coach and consultant.
Approach relationship problems as if they were work problems
Take advantage of their workaholic traits and try to apply them to your relationship, prioritizing communication and problem solving behaviors. Schedule in weekly conversations where you discuss your problems, the things you have in mind and the objectives you’d like to accomplish.
Warning: This story includes discussion of suicide.
The suicide deaths of four current and former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department employees over a 24-hour span have prompted a plea from Sheriff Robert Luna urging deputies to check on the well-being of their colleagues and friends.
“We are stunned to learn of these deaths, and it has sent shock waves of emotions throughout the department as we try and cope with the loss of not just one, but four beloved active and retired members of our department family,” Luna said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “During trying times like these it’s important for personnel regardless of rank or position to check on the well-being of other colleagues and friends.”
Suicide prevention and crisis counseling resources
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek help from a professional and call 9-8-8. The United States’ first nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline 988 will connect callers with trained mental health counselors. Text “HOME” to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.
Luna said he had the “deepest concern for our employees’ well-being,” adding that the department was “urgently exploring avenues to reduce work stress factors to support our employees’ work and personal lives.” He said the department’s Homicide Bureau would investigate the deaths.
There is no indication that that the deaths were related or that foul play was involved, but department sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said the third and fourth deaths were discovered as word of the earlier deaths were spreading through the agency.
Luna’s comments came a day after the suicides of one former and three current employees, which occurred within a 24-hour span that began Monday.
Among them was Cmdr. Darren Harris, who became a recognizable figure on TV news over a 25-year career during which he served as a chief department spokesperson. Harris was found dead in his home in Santa Clarita on Monday morning, according to multiple sources. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said the sources, who agreed to speak with The Times on the condition of anonymity because his death hasn’t been publicly acknowledged.
Harris rose steadily through department ranks, with several stopovers in media relations, along with stints in which he oversaw the Transit Services Bureau and ran the Santa Clarita station.
Sometime after noon Monday, authorities found the body of Greg Hovland, a sergeant who worked in the Antelope Valley before his retirement, at his Quartz Hill home, according to the sources. Another employee was found dead shortly after sunset at a residence in Stevenson Ranch. The fourth death was reported at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, when sheriff’s homicide detectives responded to a hospital in Pomona where an employee died from suicide.
Observers said the suicides underscored a long-standing problem for law enforcement officers across Los Angeles as elsewhere. In recent years, studies have shown that more officers have died by suicide than the number killed in the line of duty. Officers also have higher risks of suicide than the general population, a disparity that some researchers have attributed to the stresses of police work and heightened public scrutiny over recent high-profile law enforcement killings — combined with their easy access to firearms.
The risk is particularly acute among members of smaller departments, researchers say, which tend to have fewer resources available for officers struggling with suicidal thoughts. According to the website Blue H.E.L.P., which tracks officer suicides, 81 officers have taken their lives this year across the country; in 2022, there were 172 suicides.
In his statement, Luna said the department’s Psychological Services Bureau and the Injury and Health Support Unit were working to provide counseling and other resources to the families of the officers.
“Additionally, the department has a Peer Support Program that members can use for additional assistance,” Luna said in his statement.
Four other Sheriff’s Department employees died by suicide this year, said Nicole Nishida, an agency spokesperson.
Miriam del Carmen Ramirez was walking back into the carrot fields in New Cuyama after a brief work break, and looked over her shoulder to check on her mother, who was just a few yards behind.
As a crew of about 60 workers were headed back to finish picking the field, she heard the engine of a truck nearby, then panicked yelling.
“You could hear people screaming, and I couldn’t see my mom,” the 24-year-old farmworker said.
A truck driver driving in reverse had struck her mother, Rosa Miriam Sanchez, 58, prompting workers to scream for the driver to stop. Ramirez said she ran to her mother, who died in her arms as she called 911 for help.
As tragic as the death was, witnesses told The Times that they were further incensed when the workers at Grimmway Farms were told to finish picking the carrot fields while Sanchez’s body lay under a blanket a few feet away and authorities inquired about the incident.
The Sept. 20 accident in Santa Barbara County has prompted an investigation by Grimmway Farms and Cal/OSHA — the state agency that regulates workplace safety. But farmworkers say they also want an investigation into supervisors’ decision to order laborers to finish picking carrots while Sanchez’s body still lay in the dirt. Some workers said the incident had left them shaken, and some have chosen to look for other work rather than return to the farm.
“I don’t know who gave that order for them to continue working, but I found it extremely disrespectful, and that specific order just proved that they don’t care about us for nothing,” said Ernesto Perez, a farmworker who saw what happened and ran over to help Sanchez. “Even a worker losing their their life wasn’t going to stop them from finishing the work. We’re just a piece of trash for them.”
In a statement, Grimmway Farms said it was conducting an internal investigation into the circumstances of Sanchez’s death, as well as reviewing why workers returned to work after the crash. But President and Chief Executive Jeff Huckaby said in the statement that the company did not believe the directive to keep working was made by Grimmway Farms.
“We are heartbroken by Ms. Sanchez’s death and for all those impacted by this accident,” the statement read. “Based on early findings from our ongoing internal investigations, we do not believe a directive was made by Grimmway to continue work on the day of the accident. However, it is evident that work should have ceased immediately.”
An investigation by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office determined that the crash was an accident, a spokesperson for the agency told The Times.
But Ramirez and other farmworkers are calling for an investigation into how the incident was handled. They are also demanding an inquiry into safety concerns that they had about the truck and the driver involved, and why workers were told to finish picking the carrot field with Sanchez’s body nearby.
A spokesperson for Cal/OSHA confirmed the agency had opened an investigation into the incident. The agency has also opened inspections of the contractors involved, including Esparza Enterprises Inc., which hired the workers, and M & M Labor Inc., which hired the unidentified driver. The agency would not confirm details of the investigation.
As with many commercial farms in the country, Grimmway often uses labor provided by a network of contractors that hire the employees to work on the farms.
Those contractors, such as in Sanchez’s case, often supervise and direct the workers while they’re in the field. Ramirez said she and her mom had been working at Grimmway Farms since May under the supervision of Esparza Enterprises.
Representatives of Esparza Enterprises and M & M Labor did not return calls seeking comment for this story.
Video taken by farmworkers shows a body covered by a blanket behind a flat-bed truck. A few feet away, workers are seen bent over in the field, picking carrots from the dirt.
“They went back to work right away,” Ramirez said. “My mom was right next to it, but a different crew went over and finished that piece.”
One witness said one of Sanchez’s co-workers walked over at one point and put a cross on her covered body.
A spokesperson for Grimmway Farms said that the company had no confirmation from its internal review that people were instructed to continue working, but added that the farm was considering new communications training and procedures “to ensure this does not happen again.”
“In the tragedy of the moment, while help was being called, aid was being rendered, and the scene was being secured so investigations could be conducted, we regret that a formal announcement was not made immediately that all work should be stopped in the field,” the spokesperson said.
One farmworker, who witnessed the incident and asked not to be identified for fear of losing her job, told The Times that one of the work crews was asked to finish picking the field that Sanchez and her crew had been tasked with that day. The second crew was told that if they declined, a different crew would replace them to finish the field.
“That same day, they proved that even if you lose your life, they’re going to continue,” Perez said. “As long as we make them money, they don’t care about us.”
Perez and Ramirez said workers had aired safety concerns about the truck and the driver to supervisors before the accident, including worries that the truck did not sound an audio alert when it was driving in reverse, and concerns that the driver drove down the field at high speeds.
The truck routinely drives near farmworkers on the field, picking up crates of carrots as the laborers move down the field, workers said.
The three farmworkers who spoke with The Times said workers had also aired concerns about the driver hitting things in the past, including water jugs and the mirror of a tractor.
A spokesperson for Grimmway Farms said the company was unaware of any previous concerns about the driver.
“To our knowledge, concerns regarding the driver were never relayed to the Grimmway safety department or leadership,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Our investigation is ongoing, and we will take appropriate actions based on the findings.”
Grimmway farms is also working with the contractor that employed the unidentified driver, Garcia Trucking and its affiliate M & M Trucking, to install cameras and alarms on the vehicles, the spokesperson said.
Perez said that when he saw the truck run over Sanchez on Sept. 20, about seven people nearby began to yell at the driver to stop.
“When I saw her, I started freaking out,” he said of Sanchez.
The driver stopped, Perez said, and then drove the truck forward, running over Sanchez a second time.
“She passed right there on the filed,” Perez said. “There was no way to help her.”
The driver no longer drives for Garcia Trucking and is not permitted to drive on Grimmway Farms property, the farm spokesperson said.
Perez said that the incident left him shaken and that he had not returned to work for the contractor since, even though he’s struggling to find ways to make a living.
He had grown close to Sanchez over the years, he said, carpooling to the fields at times. When his mother died, Perez said, Sanchez helped him through his grief.
“She had her own way of showing you her love,” he said. “She always spoke her mind, like my mother. She didn’t let anyone give her [grief], and I liked that.”
Her death has been devastating, but seeing workers ordered to finish harvesting the field while her body was still lying on the ground has left him angry, he said.
“They didn’t value her life for anything — it was like roadkill for them,” he said. “I can’t go back. After seeing that, I can’t go back to that.”
Instead, he’s picked up odd jobs in construction.
Since her mother’s death, Ramirez said, she too has stopped working for the contractor. She has returned to the fields for work, but she and her younger brother are now saving money to move away from the area.
“We’re going to try to move,” she said, “and just live as normally as we can.”
OAKLAND, CA: A job seeker looks at job listings posted at the East Bay Works One-Stop Career Center … [+] in Oakland, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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For college students and those nearing graduation, it’s common to think about the future, including their career. Every year, undergrads call, email, and communicate with me on social media to ask for advice. They’re typically focused on finding their first full-time paying job.
While gaining employment and becoming self-sustaining is essential to cover living expenses, I always warn that making decisions based on compensation alone can be a dangerous trap. It’s often more important to ensure you’re doing something you enjoy. It will help make the workload easier, and you won’t mind putting in the extra hours when needed at the office.
Follow these steps when looking to match your first job with your passion.
Ask Others To Share Their Expertise
Reaching out to your close network can be a great starting point. Rather than telling them you’re looking for a job and want their help, request a brief call. Take 15 minutes or less to ask them about their experience and what insight they would share for someone who’s just starting out in their field. Do research before making the call so you’re not coming in entirely cold.
Here’s why this step can be helpful: once you’ve had a chance to talk to a dozen or more people in various fields, you can gain a better sense of what would be of interest to you. Moreover, you might be able to determine what part of the industry you would like to get involved in. For example, in the realm of real estate brokerage, you might begin as an analyst if you’re apt with numbers. Or you could start as a sales associate and work for a senior broker. Evaluate the different roles and then match your skill set to the job description.
Reflect On Your Past Jobs
If you had internships in the past, it can be helpful to remember what you liked about them. Also think through parts that you didn’t enjoy. Sometimes the downsides are just as helpful—if not more important—than the aspects that you did appreciate. I spent a summer working for a big corporation in the auto industry. It was a very nice, plush, 9 to 5 job, complete with golf outings. Yet as I spent time there, I noticed there didn’t seem to be much upside potential in the roles. Many of the middle managers, for instance, had been doing the same thing for the past 10 or 15 years. While they had great jobs, I realized that I was looking or something a little more entrepreneurial.
Shadow Someone for a Day
It might seem that to really learn about an industry or job, you need to invest an entire summer at a company. However, I’ve found that even spending a day with someone can give you incredible insight into their world and what they do.
At my workplace, we recently had over two dozen college students come in on individual days to shadow one of our brokers. It was a great way for individuals to learn about brokerage, especially if they were unable to get an internship in the highly competitive market.
Be Open To Learning
Once you’ve found a job that aligns with your interests, keep in mind that you may not need an extensive background to get started. After you get hired, you might find a mentor who is willing to give you advice and help you move forward. When I started my career, I was fortunate to have two incredible mentors, Paul Massey and Bob Knakal, who taught me an immense amount about real estate. Most of the learning I did was on the job, as I sat next to them in the office and absorbed everything they had to say. It was a small company, and as I observed them, I gained incredible knowledge that helped throughout my career.
Over time, you’ll also come to see that a lot of the learning goes on outside of the workplace. I’ve been in real estate for more than 25 years, and I’m still a voracious consumer of news and trade publications, along with books and podcasts. I’m always challenging myself to learn new things about the business in my free time.
I was very lucky in that my first job out of college, I worked for the company for 17 years until it sold, and then I stayed on for another three years. Effectively, I was at the same job for 20 years. You might change jobs more often (though bear in mind that employers might look negatively on hopping from place to place too frequently). Once you find a place that suits your interests, you may be inclined to stay and continue learning to further advance your career. Ideally, if you align your passions with your employment, you won’t dread Mondays and overall, the workload won’t seem like work. You’ll be doing what you enjoy and eager to learn more.
An $18,500 stipend to help pay for graduate school. Student loan forgiveness. Free on-the-job training. All license fees paid. And the chance to serve the under-served — “with dignity.”
“Do Worthwhile Work,” the new marketing campaign of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, highlights these perks on its website in the hope that job candidates will see the benefits of public sector mental health work, and apply.
“Your work can change lives,” the campaign reads. “Leave today better than you found it, LA County DMH has a place for you.”
Many places, in fact: As of mid-September, the agency had a vacancy rate of 28%, with 1,890 vacant positions and just over 4,800 employees, according to county data.
For decades, the department didn’t need marketing campaigns or too many perks to get people to apply for jobs. But in recent years, the largest county mental health department in America has seen a decline in applicants.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for mental health practitioners was already exceeding the supply. Many in California were retiring, and master’s programs and medical schools were not turning out enough therapists, psychologists or psychiatrists to replace retirees, or meet the growing demand, according to recent research on the state’s behavioral health workforce.
If workforce trends continue, California is projected to experience a shortage of 5,000 mental health practitioners by 2026, according to research by consulting firm Mercer.
Cristina Rodriguez, a psychiatric social worker, counsels a client on a video call at the East San Gabriel Valley Mental Health Center.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
Demand has only grown as more Americans than ever, struck by the uncertainty and misery brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, sign up for therapy. New therapists who would have traditionally started out in the public sector are being recruited by private companies that offer bonuses, flexible schedules and remote work — and patients who, while still struggling, aren’t unhoused or suffering from acute psychosis made worse by years of life outside.
Internally, the Department of Mental Health still hasn’t recovered from the 18-month countywide hiring freeze, implemented by the Board of Supervisors at the start of the pandemic to save money amid disaster. That left many important administrative positions unfilled. And it can still take months to get hired at the county because of civil service rules that dictate how hiring must be carried out.
Of the 103 people the department hired in August , it took an average of 227 days from the time the candidate submitted an application to when they started their job.
The department’s vacancies have stymied progress in addressing L.A. County’s homelessness crisis as pressure mounts from an impatient public. A lack of workers has meant longer response times from teams who respond to mental health crises called in on the 988 hotline. It has delayed care — in 2021, it took an average of 27 days to see a county psychiatrist in clinic. It has also led to burnout among existing staff, who work longer hours to make up for the lack of new talent, a point supervisors discussed at a recent meeting.
And it’s made implementing changes coming down from Sacramento challenging. On Dec. 1, L.A. County will launch Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court. If they don’t have enough staff hired, they’ll pull people from existing programs until hiring is complete, according to department documents.
“There is no doubt we have two crises — the immense mental health crisis in our communities and the challenge in our own Department of Mental Health to hire enough people to respond to it,” Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn said in a statement. “My vision is that we will have enough mental health professionals to not only be in encampments working with people suffering from mental illness on our streets, but also enough to respond immediately to emergency mental health calls, and hiring has held us back.”
These challenges have forced the Department of Mental Health to get creative.
It has started holding hiring fairs where applicants get offers on the same day they interview. These events have especially targeted hard-to-fill positions — and are showing results.
In the last five months, Hahn said, the mental health department hired 272 people at fairs, including 37 to join its homeless outreach teams and 30 who will respond to emergency mental health calls, which have seen a recent improvement in response times.
These hiring events are like a speed-dating session between employers and applicants. On a recent Thursday at the department’s headquarters in Koreatown, dozens of recent master’s of social work graduates filed into a meeting room to hear elevator pitches from almost 20 mental health clinics.
Each hiring manager briefly explained the benefits of working at their location.
“We’re one of the busiest clinics” in our service area in Willowbrook, one manager said. “What helps in our work is to have purpose and meaning, and you can find it there,” a manager from a Compton clinic said.
A supervisor from a San Pedro clinic said it has “one of the strongest housing programs” in its area. “We like to celebrate,” a manager from a Long Beach clinic said, describing its many potlucks and nacho dinners. “We try to support one another.”
The energy among participants was jovial, a mix of nerves and polite laughter — until a social worker in the audience asked about caseloads.
The supervisor from a Skid Row clinic shot straight. If hired there, she said, they’ll have about 150 clients, which will include patients who come in twice a year for check-ups of their medicine regimen as well as clients in crisis who come in frequently.
“Many of these other clinics have that many [on their caseloads] too,” she added, to polite laughter around the room.
Marina Barrios, a substance abuse counselor, meets with a client at L.A. County’s East San Gabriel Valley Mental Health Center. The county is trying to fill hundreds of mental health positions.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
Nicole Pyles sat nearby, reminding herself to start breathing again. Pyles, a recent graduate of the USC School of Social Work, had ranked that Skid Row clinic as her No. 1 choice before the event started.
“I thought, ‘Pssh, I got this, I’m not worried about it, I’ve had caseloads as high as 30 people,’ ” said Pyles, 47. “When she said 150 people, I think my heart jumped out of my mouth and was somewhere on the floor.”
Pyles previously worked as a substance abuse counselor, which doesn’t require a master’s degree to get certified and see clients.
But Pyles knew that for many of her clients, their addiction was much more complicated than brain chemicals making them crave a substance. She wanted to get to the root of the problem, namely the trauma fueling their addiction. Such work requires a master’s degree.
Pyles was happy enough, though, working in her last job with pregnant and postpartum clients struggling with substance use disorders.
That was until a client who’d diligently worked with the program for a few months asked for help. The client’s court date to keep custody over her newborn baby had been moved from Monterey Park to the Antelope Valley, and she needed a ride.
Pyles thought she could help with that. Her supervisor, though, told Pyles she was “enabling” this woman and declined the request.
In that moment, Pyles realized she wanted the power to help in a bigger and more meaningful way.
“A friend of mine told me, ‘If you want to make those calls, and you want to be able to make the decisions, you’ve got to get your education,’ ” Pyles said. “And that’s exactly what I did.”
After finishing her master’s at USC, she agreed to work at the downtown Skid Row clinic — committing to the county for a year after accepting an $18,500 stipend. “My goal is to remain at DMH, and move up to leadership,” she said.
These are the kinds of practitioners that Lisa H. Wong, director of the Department of Mental Health, said her department has started to attract.
The department and its contract agencies did take a hit early in the pandemic, when workers across the country reassessed the type of work they wanted.
Wong said when she worked as a clinical supervisor at a facility in Skid Row 15 years ago, she held recruitment events that brought in dozens of candidates who wanted to work there, even though “admittedly [it] is not for everyone.”
Comparatively, about a year and a half ago, when she held a recruitment effort for adult mental health positions across the county, she got just 13 applicants.
But in recent months, Wong said the department has noticed another shift.
“I know I’ve been accused of being an optimist at times, I do think the tide is turning,” Wong said, noting that hiring and promotions have increased 200% this year. “What we’re seeing now is sort of the blessing in disguise of the nationwide staffing shortage — who we’re getting now are those people who are the true believers, the urban missionaries.”
Beyond the hiring fairs, the department is also renewing academic affiliations with graduate programs, which will lead to more internships there, and for the first time, will start recruiting at conferences and campuses out of state.
The department went to recruit at the American Psychological Assn. conference in Washington, D.C., where LGBTQ+ clinicians told county staff they really wanted to move to California because they didn’t feel safe in their home states.
“But alongside that, we had a lot of people say, ‘I would love to move to California, I would love to live in L.A., but I don’t think I can afford it,’ ” Wong said.
Wong said they will focus much of their attention on recruiting at historically Black colleges and universities, bringing current county staff who are alumni to talk about working at the department.
“We need more clinicians who look like our community,” Wong said. “I would love for an African American little boy to be able to meet with a Black psychologist, and know that not only can they open up and have some cultural understanding but also this is somebody he can aspire to be as well.”
Just a few days after terrorists attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, as Congress rushed to give President George W. Bush wide-ranging power to invade Afghanistan, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) faced a decision that would come to define her career.
As she weighed her vote, Lee thought of a lesson she’d learned in an earlier job running a community mental health center: “Don’t make critical decisions when you’re grieving and mourning, angry, confused.”
Lee decided that the authorization as written “could set the stage for forever wars,” she told The Times in a recent interview. After intense deliberation, she decided to vote no — the only member of Congress to oppose the bill.
Twenty-two years later, Lee, Burbank Rep. Adam B. Schiff, and Irvine Rep. Katie Porter are the top Democrats in the race for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Dianne Feinstein, for decades a key player on foreign and national security policy.
California voters now face a choice among candidates with vastly divergent approaches to — and experience with — foreign policy.
“Our country has a responsibility, I believe, to call for a cease-fire and to call for the whole world to come together to try to stop the escalation of what is taking place in the Middle East. And peace is possible if we can bring all parties together to talk,” she said at a candidate forum the weekend of the attack.
Schiff sounded a different note:
“The only sentiment I want to express right now when Israel is going through its own 9/11 is unequivocal support for the security and the right of Israel to defend itself,” he said.
Lee and Schiff’s decades of work on foreign policy issues contrast with the relative inexperience of Porter, a third-term lawmaker whose House career has focused more on domestic issues.
In her answer at the forum, Porter pivoted to a hawkish line about Iran that sounded a lot like what some leading Republicans said in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
“I stand with Israel in this time and I condemn the loss of lives — both of Palestinians and Israelis who are being victims of this terror,” she said, asserting that “the United States has allowed terrorism to flourish and has refused to take a strong enough stance against Iran” — which backs the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
When asked what specific Iran policy Porter was referring to, a spokesperson pointed to President Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty aimed at curtailing Iran’s nuclear program.
Lee and Schiff have long differed on foreign policy.
Besides voting against the war in Afghanistan, Lee voted against authorizing the Iraq war and the Patriot Act, which expanded government surveillance powers. Schiff voted for all three. (He has since said he regretted his Iraq vote.) Lee opposed the Obama administration’s 2011 missile strikes in Libya, while Schiff conditionally supported them.
Schiff voted to approve final passage of the last seven annual defense funding bills; Lee, who has long pushed to slash Pentagon spending, voted against every one. (Porter voted against the most recent two spending bills but voted for them the first two years she was in Congress.)
Lee told The Times before the Hamas attack that Schiff was “part of the status quo thinking” in Washington on foreign policy, and argued that Porter “doesn’t have a foreign policy record to stand on because she just hasn’t been in Congress long enough.”
Schiff declined to directly contrast his record with his opponents’ in an interview shortly before the Hamas attack. But he emphasized his years as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and the opportunity that’s given him to get to know world leaders.
“I’ve been deeply engaged in both foreign policy issues, national security issues and intelligence issues,” Schiff said. “It’s given me, I think, a wealth of experience to deal with and address some of the paramount national security challenges facing the country.”
Schiff’s years leading the House Intelligence Committee helped prepare him to prosecute Trump at his first impeachment trial — where diplomats and military officials testified that the then-president had tried to pressure Ukraine into launching an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for U.S. weapons the country wanted to defend itself against Russian aggression.
“In terms of his impeachment efforts, he did a very good job,” Lee said of Schiff.
Lee got her introduction to Capitol Hill foreign policy debates in the 1980s as a senior staffer for longtime Oakland Rep. Ron Dellums, then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. During that time, Dellums led the bipartisan charge to sanction apartheid-era South Africa.
In recent years, she’s been able to gain allies in her quest to rein in presidents’ expansive war powers — partly because elements of both parties had moved her way. Lee helped draft the Democratic National Committee’s national platform in 2016 and pushed the party’s official foreign policy stance in a much more dovish direction. Her once-lonely crusade to repeal the 2001 and 2002 authorizations of military force has gained strong bipartisan support.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said Lee’s views on war and peace were a key reason for his decision to endorse her.
“I view Barbara Lee as the strongest voice against endless war, not just in the race, but in the entire Congress,” he told The Times
Schiff leads the Senate race in delegation endorsements — 22 of California’s 40 House Democrats have backed him, compared with three for Lee and none for Porter.
A number of his colleagues cited his foreign policy experience and work leading the Intelligence Committee as a major reason they’re backing him.
“That was a big part of why I chose to endorse Adam,” Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) said. “There’s only 100 senators. So foreign policy experience is incredibly important.”
Whoever wins the seat will be replacing a senator who played a crucial role on foreign policy, privacy and civil liberties issues for decades — at times to her fellow Democrats’ consternation.
Feinstein was the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 through 2016, and often hewed in a more interventionist direction than many in her party.
She voted to authorize the war in Iraq and was a major supporter of the Patriot Act. One of U.S. intelligence agencies’ staunchest Democratic allies for much of her career, Feinstein sided with Republicans to expand the government’s ability to covertly monitor Americans’ calls and emails without a warrant and supported giving immunity to telephone companies that had allowed the U.S. government to listen in on calls between suspected terrorists and people on American soil. When former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the government’s vast data-gathering operation, Feinstein accused him of treason. She also was a fierce defender of drone strikes and blocked President Obama from moving control of the drone strike program from the CIA to the Defense Department.
But she also was key in defending Obama’s deal to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons and led the charge to investigate and declassify a report on the CIA’s secret torture program. The document would never have seen daylight if not for her work.
Schiff is probably the closest of the three candidates to Feinstein in terms of worldview and experience.
The two worked closely together as the top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, they pushed hard for the Obama administration to publicly call out Russia for meddling in the election. After being rebuffed, they put out a joint statement in late September 2016 declaring they’d seen evidence Russia was trying to influence the U.S. election — weeks before Obama officials finally said the same.
“Far too late,” Schiff lamented.
In recent years, the foreign policy differences between Schiff and Lee have not been as far apart as earlier in their political careers.
While Lee has fought to severely limit the CIA’s long-running drone strike program, Schiff hasn’t gone as that far — but in 2015 introduced legislation to put the program under Defense Department control. Schiff has also backed Lee’s work to repeal the 2002 law authorizing military force in Iraq. That effort has strong bipartisan support, including from Biden, and passed the House back when it was in Democratic hands in 2021 but has yet to become law.
Schiff worked across the aisle to reform the Patriot Act and end its warrantless wiretapping program. He also said the lesson he drew from his vote to back the Iraq invasion based on incorrect intelligence provided by the Bush administration led him to push to reform American intelligence-gathering services’ reports so that dissenting views are aired and “group think” is avoided.
“Seeing how an administration could mislead the country and use intelligence to do it was a very powerful motivator for me to work on reforms of the intelligence community,” he told The Times.
Both Schiff and Lee criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, but praised him for deciding to do so.
All three leading Democratic Senate candidates generally have strongly backed U.S. military aid for Ukraine, but voted against supplying that nation with cluster munitions.
The candidates overlap on some issues regarding Israel as well.
Schiff pointed out at the forum that he has criticized Israeli settlers’ expansion into the West Bank as well as Israel’s recent “move away from democracy” — alluding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to undermine the independence of the judiciary.
Lee has consistently voted to provide funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. But she was also one of 16 House Democrats to vote against a nonbinding resolution that condemned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which looks to block investments in Israel, and co-sponsored legislation to bar U.S. aid from going toward Israel’s annexation of West Bank land or detention of Palestinian children.
The reemergence of Israel as a global flashpoint puts their differences back on display.
Schiff continues to offer a full-throated defense of Israel.
“It is crucial that Congress works quickly to provide Israel with the security assistance, humanitarian aid and intelligence support it needs to defend itself and to safely recover the hostages taken,” he said in a statement. “Words matter and our allies around the world — as well as our adversaries — are watching us closely. It’s important, now more than ever, for the U.S. to stand united with Israel.”
Lee recently joined a letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus to President Biden expressing deep concern about Israel’s actions in Gaza and calling for an end to the siege and a humanitarian corridor to deliver lifesaving supplies.
“Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas, but must do so within the framework of international law,” she wrote in a statement, calling on the U.S. to “protect innocent civilians & ensure delivery of humanitarian assistance.”
Porter released a five-minute video a few days later touting her support for Israel, strongly criticizing Iran and making only brief mention of Palestinian civilians’ suffering.
“We cannot give in to Iran’s efforts to weaken our long-standing special relationship with Israel,” she said.
Porter, whose district includes a large Iranian American community, has long spoken out against the Iranian government’s brutal oppression of women and other protesters.
Porter’s campaign declined to make her available for an interview, but pointed to her work to trim defense spending and her successful push for an amendment banning senior Pentagon officials from owning stock in defense contractors as examples of her foreign policy work.
At the forum, Porter was asked a question about her lack of foreign policy experience and responded that she was a quick study.
“I have done the work and always do the work. I was a professor, so I take doing your homework pretty seriously,” she said. “I’m committed to continuing to learn.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom comforted a mother whose son was kidnapped by Hamas, and visited a hospital where Israelis were recovering from injuries from the Oct. 7 attacks. He met with top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and saw videos of beheadings.
“We went to show solidarity and support, to gain a deeper understanding and ultimately, to meet with these families, particularly connected to California, and notably the hostages, to see what we can do,” Newsom said during a brief conversation with reporters Monday in Hong Kong.
The voyage marks a sudden leap into foreign affairs for the Democratic governor who insists he is not angling to run for president. It comes at an especially fraught time, with Israel and Hamas engaged in a war that appears poised to escalate and U.S.-China relations growing increasingly tense. While the international exposure could help burnish Newsom’s resume if he ever does run for president, he also faces political risks by stepping into global conflicts that are outside a governor’s authority.
On Israel, Newsom has largely followed President Biden’s strong pro-Israel stance, visiting Tel Aviv days after Biden’s visit and echoing his outrage at the Hamas attacks that killed about 1,400 Israelis, took about 200 Israeli civilians hostage and prompted Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes that have pummeled the Gaza Strip for two weeks. The bombardment has killed more than 5,000 Palestinians, according the Hamas-led Health Authority in Gaza.
Though polls show Americans broadly support Israel in the war with Hamas, opinion is more divided among several Democratic constituencies, including young voters, progressives and people of color. Newsom did not attempt to visit Gaza on his brief trip to Israel, citing the logistical challenges involved. He said California is sending medical aid to Gaza to help establish field hospitals, including wheelchairs, IVs, defibrillators and 50 beds.
“We are working with an aid organization to get that into Gaza, separately and above from the aid we are providing for Israel,” Newsom said.
Asked if he called for a cease-fire during his meetings with Israeli authorities, Newsom demurred, saying, “I have a limited scope.”
In China, Newsom aims to keep his visit focused on areas where California and China can cooperate to fight climate change. His itinerary is filled with events meant to promote electric vehicles, offshore wind energy and other clean technologies. He’s scheduled to sign five compacts with regional governments, tour manufacturing sites and visit a wetlands preserve. In fostering climate-friendly partnerships with local officials, Newsom hopes to steer clear of a slew of international flashpoints.
That could prove difficult.
Tensions between the U.S. and China that have been rising for years may be further strained by the Israel-Hamas war. China and Russia announced last week that they intend to work together on creating an alliance that could attempt to counter U.S. support for Israel. While the U.S. and Europe consider Hamas a terrorist group, Beijing describes it as a “resistance movement.”
“China and Russia have the same position on the Palestine question, and China is ready to maintain communication and coordination with Russia to promote de-escalation of the situation,” China’s special envoy to the Middle East said on Friday, the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Pentagon says China is building up its nuclear weapons arsenal at a faster pace than previously projected and is likely studying Russia’s war in Ukraine to get a sense of how a conflict over self-governing Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, could play out.
“China is… very belligerent, aggressive, expansive and cannot be ignored. And Gavin Newsom has to be mindful,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.
“I think it’s actually a good thing for a governor to try to keep some doors open to China. But you cannot go in just naively believing that you’re going to ignore which way the wind is blowing on global politics.”
The geopolitical tensions are also playing out in California, where an Orange County family is asking Newsom and the U.S. government to help free David Lin, a Christian pastor held since 2006 whom the U.S. State Department considers wrongfully detained by China following his work for Christian churches.
Lin’s daughter, Alice, said she hopes Newsom and other American officials will discuss the plight of wrongfully detained Americans. She urged the governor to raise the issue of her father’s imprisonment as well as that of Kai Li, a Long Island resident sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage charges, and Mark Swidan, a Texas businessman detained for over a decade.
“Any officials who are meeting with Chinese counterparts should raise the names of our loved ones at every opportunity,” Alice Lin said in an interview with The Times.
She said her father is a man of “incredible faith” and doesn’t like to talk much about his health with his family during the brief phone calls they’re allowed. But she knows he’s getting frail. She said he’s lost six teeth recently, which she pins on malnutrition.
“The last time we saw him, he was already very, very thin,” she said.
That was roughly 13 years ago. She said when her father was first imprisoned, she and her brother would take turns visiting him every year. But after flying to Beijing in 2010, she said her visit was arbitrarily canceled. Nobody would tell her why.
She hasn’t seen him since.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) has been working to secure Lin’s release, said her spokesperson Peter Opitz. The congresswoman “supports Gov. Newsom doing what he can to bring David home to his family,” Opitz said.
Human rights activists are concerned that California’s work to collaborate with China on environmental issues brushes aside China’s human rights abuses of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, a region rich in lithium and other minerals essential to developing batteries for electric vehicles. A United Nations report says China’s treatment of Uyghurs “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity” and the United States has banned imports from the Xinjiang region due to concerns of forced labor.
Yet a Washington Post investigation last month found that Tesla is among many electric vehicle makers that have suppliers with connections in Xinjiang. Newsom is scheduled to visit a massive Tesla factory in Shanghai later this week.
Maya Wang, Asia associate director of Human Rights Watch, criticized Newsom’s plans to focus on environmental issues in China while leaving thorny human rights issues to federal authorities.
“This framing that it’s either climate or human rights is dangerous, counterproductive, and also inconsistent with his own policies in California,” Wang said in an interview with The Times.
“It’s disappointing, and we expect better and we hope to see better.”
Newsom’s trip is paid for by the California State Protocol Foundation, which is supported by donors. Public disclosures show that he has given more than $3 million to the protocol foundation from his inaugural committees since 2019.
Gov. Gavin Newsom tours the campus of the University of Hong Kong with school president Xiang Zhang on Monday.
(Elex Michaelson / Fox11)
His first official meeting of the China trip was Monday at the University of Hong Kong, where he spoke to a lecture hall full of students and faculty about California’s work to fight climate change by transitioning to the use of clean energy.
“This is the greatest economic opportunity of our lifetime,” Newsom said.
As he walked through the campus, Newsom passed a sign hanging above a large empty bulletin board: “Democracy Wall” it said in English and Chinese. The board was once covered with students’ political posters, according to several mediareports, but they were removed during the massive protests that swept Hong Kong in 2019 as China’s communist government clamped down on pro-democracy activists.
Newsom did not mention Hong Kong’s democracy movement during his public remarks at the university. His aides said the campus was chosen as the governor’s first stop because it is a premier research university akin to UC Berkeley.
The uprising in Hong Kong marks yet another big change from the last time a California governor visited China. Though Newsom is the third consecutive California governor to travel to China in search of climate-friendly partnerships with businesses and local governments, the U.S. relationship with China is “radically different” now compared with when former Gov. Jerry Brown visited in 2013 and 2017, said Schell of the Asia Society.
China has a tendency to use “well-meaning earnest interactions” by American officials to advance its own agenda, Schell said, which could be damaging to Newsom.
“Gov. Newsom is going to have to be extremely careful that what he does in the world of climate change, energy and these kinds of actually very constructive places where we do need to interact with China, don’t run at cross purposes with Washington,” Schell said.
“I think he can do this and he’s really smart and able, but I think it’s going to be a slalom course.”
Times staff writer Rebecca Ellis and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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If you’re like me, you’ve designed your living and working spaces in a way that suits you best.
You want them to be functional areas, but also have elements that reflect your personality and the things that are important to you–such as displayed photographs of family and friends.
You create your space on your own terms because it is where you spend most of your time.
But have you ever thought about how you
design the less tangible things in your life, like landing your dream job, who
your friends are, the kind of person you want to be, and how you want to spend your time?
Designing your life on your own terms
makes a lot of sense when you think of it in this way. You don’t have other people organizing your desk drawers in a way that
they think works best for you, so why would anyone else organize your life?
In this article, we are going to talk about where the concept of lifestyle design originated and how you can get started with designing your own lifestyle.
We will look at specific strategies that you can use to plan your life on your own terms as well as resources that will be helpful with getting you started.
First, let’s take a deeper look into what lifestyle design is and where the idea came from.
What Is Lifestyle Design?
Think about the typical progression of a lifetime. People go to school until they’re in their mid-20s (or thereabout), and then start their professional career.
And on a weekly basis, you work 40+ hours a week to have 2 days off to complete the tedious tasks of life–grocery shopping, laundry, food prep, etc.
Once retirement comes, your prime has passed.
Your energy and physical abilities are declining, and you have essentially deferred really “living” the life you want until
it’s almost too late to enjoy some of the more amazing things that life has
to offer.
Designing your own lifestyle has become increasingly popular since Time Ferriss published his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. In his book, Ferriss does an excellent job of challenging people to rethink this typical 9-5 way of life and reevaluate how to make the best use of their time.
He strongly supports using the digital technology that is now available to us to work efficiently and take advantage of having the ability to work outside of a typical office setting.
As a side note, the video below provides a a simple 9-step process about building habits that you can immediately implement as part of your lifestyle design.
Lifestyle design isn’t about avoiding doing work so you can spend your whole life lounging on the beach.
Having more leisure time won’t necessarily bring you more satisfaction in life, but designing your life around work that is meaningful to you can give you the sense of purpose you need in order to be happy in life.
Lifestyle design is about setting up your life in a way that allows you to work on your own terms, its definition is really different for everyone. It’s about living with a sense of intention that allows you to align your actions and behaviors with your values and goals.
It’s about having your own ideals and living according to them rather than following someone else’s.
It’s not about getting out of doing work, but rather setting up your lifestyle so you can get the most satisfaction and fulfillment out of the work that you do.
The point here is that lifestyle design is about looking at your goals and thinking in unconventional ways about how to make your ideal life possible sooner rather than later.
It’s about taking charge of your life instead of letting society tell you what to do–so you will have to be prepared to decide exactly how doing that will work for you.
But, assuming that the idea of living your
life more on your own terms appeals to you, let’s look at some strategies you
can use to get started with this practice.
How to Get Started Designing Your
Lifestyle
Oftentimes when people think about starting a lifestyle design, their mind automatically goes to quitting their job, finding a source of passive income, and then spending their days doing just…whatever…as their money grows on its own.
Not only is this not a strategic way to go about lifestyle design, it’s also not sustainable. So let’s look at how you should actually approach this idea before you walk out of your cubicle.
One activity you can do to help reflect on these things is to write a personal mission statement. Completing this task is a great way to develop a basis for determining the things that you want to get out of life and why you believe your goals are important.
Your mission statement can give you a sense of direction when it comes to your habits, everyday routines, and the choices that you make.
You should
review your personal mission statement every so often because your values,
goals, and circumstances will change with time and you want to make sure that
you’re adjusting your actions accordingly.
2.
What do you want out of life?
People seek a sense of social acceptance–to the point of hiding their true identity.
For example, it’s socially acceptable to go to college and then become an accountant. But, if you share your truth with people that you’re joining a band and traveling around the country looking for opportunities to play your music…you might get some raised eyebrows.
In the interest of
being comfortable with your ultimate life choices, you have to be brave enough
to share your passions with other people. You
need to own who you are in order to make the commitment to yourself that
you will remain dedicated to the life that you design.
When you’re considering your purpose for creating a lifestyle design, you will naturally consider what you want for your life rather than what other people may try to convince you what’s best for you.
By taking a self-inventory of your wants and needs, you will be greatly increasing your chances for success. You have to know yourself as well as possible in order to design your lifestyle on your own terms.
When you tell other people about the ways in which you want to make a change in the world, you’ll automatically look and sound more enthusiastic than when you’re talking about a current job that is unfulfilling but pays your bills.
Your excitement will be evident and lend its way toward an engaging conversation. You may even inspire the other person to design their own lifestyle as well.
Finally, when
you’re figuring out what you want to get out of life, you also have to
determine the things you don’t want, which starts by doing a purge. The act of purging will help you recognize the things
that are important to you and the things that aren’t.
You will be greatly increasing your chances for success by taking a self-inventory of your wants and needs.
Anything that doesn’t have a productive function in the lifestyle design that you’re aiming to have can be let go because all it’s doing is holding you back.
The
act of purging will allow you to start reframing your mindset to one that
aligns with the new story that you’re writing for your life.
3.
Calculate your costs.
Do you know how much money you need to bring in each month to live the lifestyle that you want? While you most likely know your annual salary, you might not realize your annual expenditures.
To give yourself an estimate, add up all of the expenses that you paid last year, including credit card payments, cash withdrawals, monthly payments, food expenses, etc.
Once you have that number, determine how much of a financial cushion you have–do you have enough money to live your current lifestyle for a year without having any money coming in? This is where the next step comes into play…
4. Become financially
independent.
The first step to becoming financially
independent is to pay off any revolving debt. The amount of
interest that you pay each month toward your credit cards if your balance
remains high can be jarring.
While saving often seems overwhelming, planning on how you can save will help you find ways that you can line up your spending habits with your lifestyle design goal. And planning is certainly a critical component to becoming financially independent.
After you have a plan in hand for saving, you have to create a budget (and stick to it) to ensure that you’re following through with your intended progress on savings. So, measure your income, deduct your expenses, and determine how you can redirect the remainder toward your goals.
However, if you want to design the lifestyle of your dreams, you need to let go of any dependence you have on any type of external financial support.
5. Create a source of income that
isn’t tied to a specific location.
If you’re “location independent”, it means that you can live and work wherever you want to. You’re not tied to an office or a certain city that is the home base for your company.
When you think of people who have this luxury, your mind probably goes to bloggers and consultants of some sort. But there are a lot of careers that can allow you to be location independent.
Here are some examples:
Even teachers have the opportunity to be location independent due to the advancement of technology that has allowed educators to effectively teach classes online while still maintaining an emotional connection with their students through video interactions.
Creating a source of income that isn’t tied to a specific location, means that you can live and work wherever you want to.
If you’re not tied to a specific location,
you’re able to open up your opportunities and gain the freedom that you need to
go anywhere in the world that will help you live the lifestyle that you’ve
determined is the best fit for you.
6. Start living it.
Once you know your purpose, you know your
realistic budget, you have the financial and regional freedom to make your own
choices in those regards, you simply need to start aligning your habits with the design
you’ve created.
Embrace
the idea of developing your own habits rather than copying someone else’s. Doing this will help ensure that you’re able to stick to your habits
because they will be in line with your unique lifestyle choices.
To ensure your habits are parallel to your lifestyle design, assess your current habits and determine which ones support your new way of life and which ones are futile.
Then, identify the keystone habits that you can start practicing every day that will support your lifestyle design and your ultimate goals. This could mean amping up an existing habit, starting something new, or even replacing a current bad habit with one that is more helpful.
Committing
yourself to appropriate daily habits will increase your determination for
making the necessary changes in your life that are required for your lifestyle
design.
Now that you’re ready to start designing your
own lifestyle, let’s look at some additional resources you can use to help you
through this process.
Additional Resources for
Designing Your Lifestyle
The 4-Hour Work Week – Tim Ferriss teaches readers in this book how (and why) to do away with outdated methods for success (working 40+ hours per week until retirement, etc.) and replacing this traditional schedule with a new way of living that allows you to live the life you want.
His method allows readers to free up a lot of time during the week to spend on doing the things that they actually want to do.
This free course on financial independence will help you go from financial literacy to the ability to be financially independent. Taking this course will help you learn the basics of earning and maintaining your own wealth. This is a 101-level course that is offered to everyone free of charge.
Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett is a book that can help you see how design thinking can transform your life to one that is fulfilling and purposeful, no matter your age or background. Burnett argues that the same method of designing technology and new products can be applied to your life and career, allowing you to be creative and have the constant ability to make adjustments.
The first step to designing your lifestyle is
to figure out what you want out of life. Even if you only have a broad idea,
you’re probably ahead of most other people.
Do what you can to start learning about yourself so you can design your lifestyle to line up with your values and ideals.
You can develop this necessary sense of self-awareness by taking an objective look at your life, practicing reflection through journaling, being mindful of your everyday behaviors, and even turning to friends you trust to help give you an outside look at who you are.
Your self-awareness helps determine your habits, both positive and negative. As you continue to learn about yourself, you will be able to recognize your habits that have the greatest impact on helping you achieve your goals and live the life that you want.
Now, if you’re looking for more inspiration to get started on your lifestyle design, check out these articles:
Connie Mathers is a professional editor and freelance writer. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and a Master’s Degree in Social Work. When she is not writing, Connie is either spending time with her daughter and two dogs, running, or working at her full-time job as a social worker in Richmond, VA.
On television, late night host Jimmy Fallon has cultivated a friendly, charming personality among guests and audiences. But according to an investigation by Rolling Stone that was published Thursday, behind closed doors Fallon created a toxic environment for the staff at “The Tonight Show.”
According to two current and 14 former unnamed employees that Rolling Stone interviewed, Fallon’s unpredictable behavior made the show a toxic workplace. The anonymous employees described a mercurial, moody boss who would belittle and berate staff with passive-aggressive comments and outbursts on “bad Jimmy days.” Eight former staffers alleged that his behavior at work “seemed to be dependent on if he appeared to be hungover from the night before.”
“It was like, if Jimmy is in a bad mood, everyone’s day is fucked,” one former employee told Rolling Stone. “People wouldn’t joke around in the office, and they wouldn’t stand around and talk to each other. It was very much like, focus on whatever it is that you have to do because Jimmy’s in a bad mood, and if he sees that, he might fly off.”
In an all-hands meeting after the exposé, Fallon reportedly apologized to staff. “Sorry if I embarrassed you and your family and friends… I feel so bad I can’t even tell you,” he said, according to two people on the Zoom call.
However you feel about Fallon after reading the report, know that you’re not alone if you relate to the anonymous staffers’ fears and frustrations.
An unpredictable boss who can reward you one day and punish you the next is the worst kind of bad boss to have.
“When you have a boss, the power center, that acts erratically and you don’t have any certainty, it actually impacts your fight-or-flight system, putting you on high alert all the time,” said Mary Abbajay, president of the leadership development consultancy Careerstone Group and author of “Managing Up: How To Move Up, Win at Work, and Succeed With Any Type of Boss.”
In some ways, having mixed feelings about your boss can be worse than just having a consistently unpleasant boss.
“If your boss is always unpleasant, you almost have an easier time of developing some coping strategies for your interactions with them. You probably won’t care about them very much, gossip about them with your co-workers, and get out of that work situation whenever you can,” said Lauren Appio, a psychologist, executive coach and organizational consultant who specializes in mental health at work.
“But if your boss is unpredictable — sometimes warm or supportive, other times irritable, moody or demanding — you’re always a little bit on your toes trying to anticipate their mood and read their behavior,” Appio said.
“When you have a boss, the power center, that acts erratically and you don’t have any certainty, it actually impacts your fight-or-flight system.”
– Mary Abbajay
Research backs up how unsettling we find inconsistent bosses. Allan Lee, an organizational behavior researcher at the University of Exeter Business School, has examined what happens when employees feel conflicted and ambivalent about the relationship they have with their boss, meaning they feel sometimes supported and sometimes not.
In a 2017 study published in the Journal of Management, he and other researchers found that employees who felt most ambivalent about their managers got rated with the lowest job performance. Feeling conflicted made good and bad relationships with managers worse.
“As humans we tend to like consistency and predictability in our environment. This is argued to be a fundamental motive for people,” Lee told HuffPost. “Ambivalence or mixed feelings create cognitive dissonance, and this is very stressful, especially when it is about something important like a leader-manager relationship.”
Ideally, when leadership at the top is chaotic and erratic, your direct manager can provide the certainty and support you need to do your job well.
“If I’m a grumpy boss, and then I have a manager working for me, hopefully that manager becomes a buffer for the people below,” Abbajay said.
But according to the Rolling Stone report, the ever-changing showrunners who reported to Fallon were not helpful to staffers.
As one former staffer put it: “Nobody told Jimmy, ‘No.’ Everybody walked on eggshells, especially showrunners. … You never knew which Jimmy we were going to get and when he was going to throw a hissy fit. Look how many showrunners went so quickly.”
“When you have middle managers like their showrunners absorb that grumpiness and they spill that toxicity down, that’s what makes it really bad. Because they should be buffers,” Abbajay said.
Here’s how to deal with an unpredictable boss until you find a new job.
“Not having any idea about what you’re getting every day really causes stress on your mental and physical being,” Abbajay said.
It’s not going to be possible to thrive under an unpredictable boss with mood swings, but there are strategies to surviving and protecting yourself against their leadership until you can find a different job. Here’s how:
Look for patterns of what triggers a “bad day” for your boss.
The Rolling Stone report detailed how employees warned each other about Fallon’s less-than-good days around the office with the phrase “we’re up against it.”
That’s actually a good warning system to have when dealing with this kind of boss, Abbajay said.
“The more that you can be on the lookout for their patterns of toxicity, their patterns of being erratic, the better you can at least mentally prepare for it,” Abbajay said. “HR can’t help you. So it’s really kind of a thing where the employees have to band together to create their own support system for each other.”
If you feel comfortable, talk to your boss about how they are making you feel.
“If you can risk it, have a conversation with your boss about how you can best communicate with each other when stress is high, and then remind them of these expectations when they step out of line,” Appio said.
Join forces with co-workers, and be cautious about telling HR.
If talking with your boss is a nonstarter, focus on what you can control.
“Resist getting caught in the trap of always ‘trying harder’ to avoid negative interactions with them. It won’t work consistently,” Appio advised. “Instead, focus on consolidating your power: grow your network inside and outside of your organization, and keep trusted colleagues in the loop about your work. And avoid one-on-one interactions with your boss when possible.”
Ideally, human resources representatives can help mediate conflicts between management and employees, but they work in the best interests of the company, and may not be on an employee’s side. In the Rolling Stone report, former “Tonight Show” staffers shared that they did not feel supported when sharing their experiences with human resources.
Abbajay said to be cautious about going to HR. First, ask colleagues how human resources has handled situations like this in the past to see if it will make your situation worse, she said.
Set boundaries between your work and home life.
When work is hell, try to make sure that what you come home to is a sanctuary.
“In some of my more recent research, I found that people who have a more ambivalent relationship with their boss tend to ruminate and think about it outside of work,” Lee said. “This tends to have negative consequences, so I would generally say that it is important to try and separate work from home.”
Abbajay suggested setting a date that you know you’ll quit by, so that you can detach psychologically. “Just knowing there’s an endgame can help give you the strength to not internalize that toxicity,” she said.
No dream job is worth ruining your health over. “It’s always OK to leave a job for any reason — you never have to wait until your mental health is ‘bad enough’ to justify leaving,” Appio said.
The big increase in the jobless rate — from 3.5% in July — stemmed almost entirely from more people in the labor force.
People generally look for a job when they think it’s easy to find one and the pay is good. That’s a sign of a robust labor market, not a weakening one.
An estimated 736,000 people entered the labor force last month, but only about one-third found a job.
The other half million didn’t find a job right away, so they would be considered unemployed. The government includes anyone without a job who is actively searching for work in the unemployment rate.
Ergo, that’s why the jobless rate jumped three-tenths to 3.8%.
Digging a little deeper, the summer-jobs market for young people may have played an outsized role.
About 45% of the people who reportedly entered the labor force in August were between the ages of between 16 and 24 years old, noted Omair Sharif, president of Inflation Insights.
As it turns out, a similar 724,000 spike in the size of the labor force took place in August 2022. And once again it was driven by an increase in young jobseekers.
What’s going on? Young people working summer jobs may have simply stayed on a bit longer than the government’s employment survey could account for.
“This looks like an anomaly associated with the summer jobs market,” said chief economist Stephen Stanley of Santander Capital Markets.
What happened after August 2022? The size of the labor force fell or moved sideways for the next three months. The unemployment rate also declined.
If the same scenario plays out again this fall and the labor force shrinks, the unemployment rate could drop back down again in the next few months.
There also could be another, less positive, explanation for the large increase in the number of people seeking work in August. Maybe they need the spending money to keep their current standard of living in light of high inflation and the depletion of their Covid-era savings.
“This could also be a possible sign of stress, with households having to come back to the labor market to pay bills and maintain current spending habits,” said senior economist Sam Bullard of Wells Fargo.
After spending the last year and a half working from home, I need some reminders about how to get dressed up again, so I’m relying on an office capsule wardrobe more than ever. In the mornings, I don’t like to spend time thinking about what I’m wearing. Instead of trying on endless outfits, I would rather spend my time sipping a morning latte, catching up on the news, and scrolling through the latest updates on my Instagram feed. To cut back on the time I’m spending deciding on what I’m wearing to the office, I’ve narrowed down my options to some key office essentials to develop an easy work capsule wardrobe.
Ahead, see the 18 pieces I rely on for my outfits to wear to the Who What Wear office. I will admit that these are pieces I wear to a fashion-centric work environment (that take the latest trends into mind), so they may not be suitable for every workplace, but you can tailor them to your particular workspace. Go on to see my outfits and shop the workwear staples I can’t live without.
Stepping into the office should never mean you have to leave your personal sense of style at the door. For those of us who commute weekly—*ahem* me and all of my co-workers—finding the perfect blend of fashion and functionality in our work attire is a daily mission. I personally think of our day in the office as my opportunity to wear something cute that’s been hanging in my closet.
The work life of a fashion editor is anything but ordinary. We’re often found shuffling from downtown to uptown and every showroom in between. In-person meetings, office visits, and events keep us on our feet all day, so we know that the right pair of shoes can make all the difference. In this guide, we’re excited to share our top picks for cute work shoes that not only meet the office dress code but also keep you comfortable and confident throughout your busy day. Join us on this fashion journey as we explore the shoes that seamlessly marry fashion and function. My co-workers tap into the shoes that can make your daily grind look effortlessly chic.
There are plenty of ways to make any Halloween costume work appropriate, whether it’s by adding some office-friendly layers or making an easy clothing swap, such as bike shorts for long pants. Depending on your inspiration (pop culture, cartoons, celebrities, etc.), start by considering your team’s dress code, then take the styling details from there — toning down certain elements as you see fit. Especially given how your atmosphere and coworkers might have adjusted since the pandemic, it’s probably best to keep over-the-top accessories to a minimum. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun by keeping your outfit sensible and classy.
Consider a play on Jackie Kennedy, for example, who wore plenty of monochrome skirt suits, pillbox hats, gloves, headscarves, and ’70s-shaped sunglasses, most of which you probably have lying around your closet. Or grab a colleague and be Cher Horowitz and Dionne Davenport from “Clueless.” With the multitude of checked co-ords you can scoop up from popular retailers like ASOS, Zara, and H&M, you’re sure to find something cute to fit the bill, which you can then repurpose later in your everyday wardrobe.
Finally, if most of your team is not yet back in the office and still calling into the party from Zoom or Hangouts, consider DIYing a headpiece, ears, crown, or hat to be anything from Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” to a classic cat or mouse with a pair of ears and a simple LBD.
Ahead, find 66 different costume ideas with simple fashion hacks to prepare you for the upcoming Halloween season.
— Additional reporting by Hilary White, Haley Lyndes, and Lauren Harano
“David Fielding” was only paid $150 to play Zordon in 1993’s Power Rangers. He shared that he only showed up to work one day at the Power Rangers recording set, and he was never called back, Zordon was in every episode of Power Rangers in 1993.
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