Notes to my daughter

What if this really is the beginning of the end?

By Laura Paull

Point Richmond

     Been dealing with the chaos and fallout of the Nov. 8 coup — shall we start calling it what it really is? Like everyone. I’m not special. But as a writer, it also affects me this way: since that day I’ve had no more use for elegant or even revelatory words. Looking at the campaign year? They all failed. So now what?
     
     Yesterday, with the news of Trump’s oil-executive pick for Secretary of State, combined with the CIA report that the Russians really did hack the “election” — my spirit finally tripped and sprawled, ungracefully, in a rut I couldn’t get out of. All my piss and vinegar spilled out.
     
     In the evening when I met with my millennial daughter I was unable to get the funk off my face. I felt badly about it. A few sentences into my answer to “What’s wrong?” I had to stop myself.
     
     The meat of her life is still ahead of her. She still labors daily toward fulfillment; has an expectation — above all — of freedom; longs to plant a child of her own in this world. For how many years have I educated, guided, inspired her so that she might successfully launch? In how many ways have I planted in her the seeds of hope, the basic presumption of a sane society?
    
      And now? I see what is bearing down on us and am for the first time at a loss as to how to ‘present’ to her — to all the lovely youth of her generation and after — a view of the future that does not completely smother the natural impulses of a healthy young life.

(Click here for the full: 

NOTES TO MY DAUGHTER.)

What's 'The Point' here, anyway?

     In the last several decades, all across the U.S., traditional newspapers have watched their circulation numbers plummet, blaming most of that on the Internet, Craigslist and readers simply not being interested in news anymore.
         Some of that is true.
         At the same time, the print news industry decided to implement a strategy called 'hyperlocal news' - a madcap dash to focus in on very local news items and events - sort of neighborhood news - as a way of retaining and even gaining readers.
        And it worked, sort of.
       The problem has been that regional newspapers, like the East Bay Times or the San Francisco Chronicle, don't have space in their print editions - or enough boots on the ground in communities - to provide the news and information people need. And for too many reasons to go into here, they are also unwilling to use the unlimited space of their websites to dig deep and report hyperlocal news stories.
       Here in Point Richmond, that news would include the overwhelming bad smell emanating from Republic Services composting facilities, the new ferry service coming in 2018 - even the amazing good work done over at Milo.
       If you don't know what Milo is, you have a good example of why a local news outlet is important.
       Thus, The Point.
      On this page, The Point welcomes letters to the editor, op-eds - even cartoons for the sketch artists out there, subject to the caveats posted to the right of this editorial.
       See you around the point, and here in The Point.

Michael Fitzgerald