Columns&Games Is my online romance going anywhere?

Dear Annie: I am in contact with this guy who is 52-years-old, and I am 58. I have never actually met him; he said he was planning to visit me, but when he arrived at the airport to fly to see me, he realized he needed more money for his flight. I told him to go home and said we can meet another time.

Then he told me he had to go to France for work, and we talked when he was there. After he returned to the states, it seemed that things had changed, that he was more serious about me.

I told him I was coming to visit him, and I spent Christmas in the town where he lives, but he ended up getting Covid and was not allowed to have visitors because he was in quarantine. So I came home. And now we talk, but not a lot.

However, after he saw how much I cared for him, he said he would visit me for two weeks with his “teammates,” and I’m not sure what that means. I really want to

ARIES (March 21-April 19).

Joy will be your spontaneous companion, sneaking up on you when you least expect it, erupting in your heart and smile and possibly in your dance. Why shouldn’t you let it take over the whole body? Joy wants to spread.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20).

There’s no benefit to trying to make yourself or your work absolutely perfect. Perfectionism can be a form of procrastination. Set the deadline and then send it when the alarm goes off. It will be good enough.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21).

You’re not extraordinarily materialistic. Possessions are not inherently precious to you; it’s their meaning that matters. You may not see eye-to-eye with everyone about what has value today, though you’ll work it out like a pro.

CANCER (June 22-July 22). You enjoy people who are easy to talk to, though it will be those self-entertaining types who will come up with a lot of interesting work and/or fun when you ask, “What do you want to do now?”

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22).

You have a gift for entering into the spirit of what’s going on around you while remaining true to yourself. This talent will broaden you and others simultaneously on this day of authentic interactions.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22).

The best talkers don’t always have the best ideas. It will be necessary to separate the cha-

Daily Cryptoquotes

believe him but don’t know anymore. I’ve tried to quit talking to him, and it’s not working. He says he loves me so much.

But I don’t know what to believe. — Relationship Question

Dear Relationship:

How can he love you so much if he has never met you? If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. In other words, it sounds like this relationship is not going anywhere.

Dear Annie: Over the years, I have seen letters in your column dealing with the question of what gifts to buy for people who have it all, and I wanted to share my thoughts in case any of your readers find them helpful.

Like many seniors, I don’t need much. At 73, I don’t have as much energy as I used to, but I still enjoy a plate of homemade cookies, banana or pumpkin bread, fudge or pies, all kinds of pies. My favorites are packed in small sizes so I can eat some now and

Today’s birthday

Experience will teach you what reading, thinking, imagining, researching, fearing and talking could not. This is your year to dive in and do it. Your boldness will be met with admiration. There’s a chance for something marvelous and lucrative. You’ll grab at it, which may work, and if not, your strategy will earn you success and the envy of all. Libra and Gemini adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 4, 30, 11, 28 and 1.

risma of a person from what they are expressing or proposing so that you can follow through with the best plan.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23).

The demands on you require you to be at top energy. It will be easier to stay on track when your environment supports your efficiency. Make sure you have the space, supplies and distraction-free time you need to get the job done.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). Social skills are important, but not more important than the ability to work quietly and privately, chasing your own muses and tuning into your own heart. You’re not being antisocial; you’re being pro-you.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22Dec. 21). You don’t have to prove yourself to the others, but you may have to reassure yourself of your own loyalty. You’ll freeze some for another week. Even a small casserole or two of comfort food like lasagna, meatloaf, or tuna and noodles goes a long way to help out. do what it takes to perform as you know you can, meet your own standard, protect and root for yourself.

There are so many things I enjoy but don’t take the time to make for myself anymore.

It might be a cliche, but some tasty smoked cheese, salami and crackers or bagel chips to munch on – those would be great gifts, so yummy when sitting home on a chilly winter night. They are things I don’t buy for myself. Mini bottles of wine, perhaps, so I don’t have to open and spoil a large bottle, are always appreciated. — Homemade is Best Dear Homemade: Thank you for sharing your gift giving suggestions. I have no doubt they will come in handy for many readers who want to do something special for friends or loved ones. Your gifts sound delicious.

Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@ creators.com.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22Jan. 19). Relationships are like places, each with their own weather patterns. Some are mild and sunny, and others put you on tornado watch. Are you in a storm-chasing mood or will you migrate until the stormy season is over?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20Feb. 18). Taking things too seriously usually makes them worse, but there’s hardly a situation that can’t improve with a lighter mood. Levity is like a spice that brightens the whole dish with just a pinch.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). People connect in the soft and vulnerable parts of their heart. This is why connection takes courage. On some level, we cannot bond without leaving ourselves open to pain. In this regard, you’re a warrior.

CELEBRITY PROFILES:

It’s been a second since Rihanna (2/20/1988) dropped music on the world, and the anticipation builds toward pop culture dreams. The soulful Pisces became the bestselling digital artist of all time and an eight-time Grammy Award winner. These days, her beauty and clothing lines share the center stage. Aries moon indicates a passionate and headstrong nature. Natal Mars in Sagittarius signals universal appeal.

Write Holiday Mathis at HolidayMathis.com.

Word Sleuth

Crossword by Phillip Alder

Bridge

Let The Opponents Do Your Dirty Work

There are some suit combinations that you would prefer not to have to play yourself. In these cases, try to force an opponent to lead the suit for you. West opens with a low diamond against your four-spade contract. How would you try to get them to help you find the heart queen?

East began with a textbook preemptive opening. South wanted to take a stronger action than a simple jump to four spades, but as North was a passed hand, South decided to hope that there wasn’t a slam in their cards. West understandably let the adverse vulnerability dissuade him from sacrificing, though five diamonds doubled would have cost only 200 points. Against this declarer, West was right to pass over four spades. South ruffed the diamond lead, drew trumps, cashed the heart ace and ran the heart jack. The finesse lost to the queen, and East promptly switched to the club jack, collecting three tricks in that suit to defeat the contract. Declarer played badly. True, West was more likely than East to have the heart queen, but South didn’t need to guess. After ruffing the first diamond lead, declarer should have played a spade to the dummy, ruffed a diamond, returned to dummy with another spade and ruffed the diamond jack. Then South could have cast adrift with a club. The defenders take three tricks in the suit, but what then? If West leads a heart, the guess evaporates. If he leads a minor-suit card, declarer ruffs in the dummy and sluffs his heart loser. In both cases, South is furnished with his 10th trick.

COPYRIGHT: 2023, UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE

Sudoku by Wayne Gould

2/20/23 and every 3x3 grid contains the digits 1 through 9, with no repeats. That means that no number is repeated in any row, column or box. Solution, tips and computer program at www.sudoku.com

Difficulty level: BRONZE

Solution to 2/18/20: of the fire, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reports. Five people were injured, including one first responder.

A total of 309 single-family homes were destroyed by the fire in rural Solano County. A total of 1,491 structures were destroyed across the larger fire complex.

Hennessey, eight fires that sparked in Napa County and quickly merged into one megafire, burned into Solano County and also across portions of Yolo, Lake and Colusa counties, charring nearly 477.58 square miles (305,651acres)–65.625square miles (42,000 acres) in Solano County. The larger fire complex includes two smaller fires in Sonoma County and charred more than 567.53 square miles (363,220 acres).

The overarching complex fire burned until Oct. 2, 2020.

Evacuation zones that are established in advance help first responders and emergency service agencies prepare before an emergency strikes and help to streamline the evacuation process, reducing confusion and allowing residents to leave quickly, the county reports. It also ensures that first responders and community members are on the same page with the same information.

All Solano County residents are encouraged to visit aware.zonehaven.com on or after March 1 and type their address in the search bar. They are then asked to write the zone name down, memorize it and post it in a high traffic location, like on the refrigerator.

The first three letters represent the name of the city in which a resident lives, or if you are in an unincorporated area, the county. The numbers are the unique code that distinguishes each resident’s zone from the others in their area. This system is consistent across Solano County and helps first responders to plan and execute evacuations. Each zone has a globally unique name so there is not confusion about which zone is being referred to.

The rollout of Zonehaven locally is the result of a collaborative process.

Solano County law enforcement agencies, fire agencies and Office of Emergency Services worked together to identify emergency evacuation zones for the entire county. Solano County and its cities worked directly with Zonehaven to add and approve all information for the zones. Emergency response personnel update the statuses and information during emergencies. n Evacuation Warning: There is a potential threat to life and/or property. Those who require additional time to evacuate, and those with pets and/or livestock, are encouraged to leave immediately. n Shelter in Place: Go indoors. Shut and lock your doors and windows and be prepared to self-sustain until further notice and/ or you are contacted by emergency personnel for additional direction. n Evacuation Orders n Hard Closure: Closed to all traffic except fire and law enforcement personnel. n Soft Closure: Closed to all traffic except fire and law enforcement personnel as well as critical incident resources such as utility, Caltrans, city or county road crews, or those needed to repair or restore infrastructure. n Resident Only Closure: Soft closure with the additional allowance of residents and local government agencies assisting with response and recovery. by Rodríguez’s community when it briefly enjoyed, and then abruptly lost, a basic resource.

Zonehaven is not meant to replace Solano County’s Alert Solano program that sends emergency notifications to those who register. Rather, it is another tool to help keep people safe in the event of an emergency. Solano County resident should be signed up to receive emergency notifications via Alert Solano, the county reports. Zone names will be used in Alert Solano notifications, which makes it important for residents to know their zone.

People may sign up at any time to receive emergency notifications at alertsolano.com. For more about the Zonehaven program, visit https:// www.solanocounty.com/ depts/oes/evacuation.asp.

First-responders remind residents about what basic terminology related to evacuations represents. The terminology used in Solano County is consistent with California statewide standards.

Evacuation and Road Closure Terminology n Evacuation Order: There is an immediate threat to life. It is a lawful order to leave now and the area is lawfully closed to public access. It is important to note that not all evacuation orders begin with an evacuation warning.

Lifted: This is the formal announcement lifting evacuations in an area currently under evacuation.

Lifting up disadvantaged populations is a relatively new and growing part of California’s spending to avert the worst consequences of climate change. Yet Cantua Creek has become a cautionary tale for shortsighted projects that can leave the state’s neediest further behind.

Van y Vienen, come and go

Rodríguez, 47, lives in Tres Piedras, or Three Rocks, a community of a few dozen families whose members work in the fields several miles down the road from Cantua Creek.

The neighborhoods are 20 miles away from the nearest big box store and over 30 from the closest hospital. A majority of residents live below the poverty line, with a median household income of $36,000. Both communities are 100% Latino, according to census data.

P ublic transit is sparse and, like many of her neighbors, Rodríguez doesn’t drive. But she often needs to travel to Fresno and Clovis for doctor visits. Typically she relies on lifts, planned a week in advance from friends who drive cars, or rides from others who charge as much as $60.

“If we want to get groceries or other things, or do something else, we can’t go,” she said. “There are people in the community who help us, who do us favors, but they don’t always have the time to drive everyone.” goal was to improve transportation access and electric vehicle use in rural areas, plus offer a way for those driving community members to make some extra income.

A nearly $2 million program called the Valley ZEV Mobility Project promised to solve that problem with zeroemission car sharing in low-income communities across Fresno, Merced and Kern counties.

In a November 2019 launch, the San Joaquin Valley Air District officials heralded the arrival of four shared vehicles in Cantua Creek –two Tesla Model X’s and two Chevy Bolts. Through the program, community members could volunteer to drive through an app set up by a private ride-sharing company called Green Commuter. Rides cost passengers between $5 and $10, depending on distance.

And it actually worked.

Rodríguez and several neighbors said they got to their jobs, classes and doctors appointments smoothly. They relied less on family members who would have to skip a day of work and precious income. Beyond commuter trips, the cars were available to rent for longer drives at around $20 a day.

“The drivers would be ready the next day, take you to the doctor and wait for you until your appointment ended to bring you back,” said Celia Nazarit de Franco, a senior Cantua Creek resident. “You could take care of your business and not worry about the return trip home. It was comfortable.”

Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a social justice organization that applied for the grant, said the car sharing venture was a success for the time it ran. The organization called it ‘Van y Vienen,’ a play on words meaning ‘come and go’ in Spanish.

“If you put decisionmaking and design of transportation services in the hands of communities to formalize practices they already have, there’s buy-in and people use it,” said Veronica Garibay, the organization’s director. “Then it stopped because of Covid-19, and it just never came back.” driver. Her house is down the street from the empty EV charging stations, which sit next to a now derelict former fire station turned preschool. Despite the ridesharing program’s brief success, no one is responsible for maintaining the charging infrastructure. Mendoza now uses her own van to take neighbors to important health care visits, but the time and gas money add up.

CARB designed the program as a pilot, intended to run until early 2022. Agency staff said they planned to secure more local, state or even federal funding after demonstrating its success.

“Elderly community members came to my house asking for rides,” Mendoza said. “Sometimes I’d wake up at 5 a.m. to take (them) to their eye surgeries so they could see. This last year I drove two women who had no means of transportation, neither their parents or their partners drive, and they were pregnant.” low-income and senior housing sites, may also end before its scheduled 2025 shutdown. CARB staff said the Sac Metro Air District is running out of funds after pandemic needs sucked up much of its total $5.8 million allocation.

Lessons learned CARB, the agency tasked with setting the state’s ambitious climate agenda, has seen its budget soar in recent years, with money for clean transportation nearly tripling from hundreds of millions in 2018 to $2.61 billion this year.

The agency said 70% of that money is for underserved communities and those disproportionately burdened by environmental pollution, calling it “the state’s largest investment in equity.” In this undertaking, Cantua Creek is a sign of growing pains.

Sam Gregor, who manages mobility programs at CARB, said the ZEV Mobility Project taught the agency a major lesson. State grants for people with few alternatives need to come with long term plans, he said, because even policy experiments with the best intentions have human consequences.

Rey León, mayor of Huron, has sustained an electric vehicle rideshare program in the San Joaquin Valley called Green Raiteros for four years now. He said Cantua Creek would have been far better served by a grassroots nonprofit than a private company based in Los Angeles. “Green Raiteros was something born from us and for us, not a parachuting program that will dissolve when there’s no more money,” León said.

“I’ve seen my mother’s struggle, my father was a bracero farm worker for 57 years. It’s unfortunate that they set up this program the way they did, because it’s a terrible way of serving the people.”

Cantua Creek also illustrated shortcomings in California’s traditional model for infrastructure development, said Alvaro Sanchez, vice president of policy at Greenlining Institute, an Oakland policy research and advocacy organization. Typically the state provides capital investment up front and local jurisdictions are left to figure out ongoing operations.

“The kinds of innovation that many communities need don’t fit nicely into that paradigm,” Sanchez said, because of limited resources on the local level. “So the question becomes ‘How do you structure these programs so that they have a viable financial plan for sustainability?’” were crossed multiple times, while Russia itself has been exposed as a less powerful military force than had been feared.

This program isn’t a complete failure even if it ended with a series of mistakes, said Ethan Elkind, climate program director at the University of California, Berkeley Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. The cars may be elsewhere and the chargers sit unused, but at least they exist.

Ukraine’s future membership of the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization were both considered distant prospects at best before the war. Now they are taken as givens.

“There can be no more gray areas,” said Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, arguing that her country would have faced the same fate as Ukraine by now if it hadn’t joined NATO.

Ukraine’s situation remains grim, with Russia pouring newly mobilized troops into the eastern Donbas region as it tries to take back offensive momentum it lost in the fall. So far Russian progress has been slow and has come at a high cost in terms of casualties for both sides.

Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials in Munich urged more speed in the delivery of weapons and ammunition, but there was little public tension in Munich. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, once derided for responding to Putin’s invasion with the offer of helmets, even urged others to be quicker in delivering tanks to Ukraine.

At a total $1.9 million, the project was funded with $749,800 from California Air Resources Board (CARB) using revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade program, which sells carbon pollution permits to industrial greenhouse gas emitters. Green Commuter contributed $1.1 million, and the Valley Air District chipped in the rest.

Throughout the region, nine electric vehicles and 30 charging stations were placed in Cantua Creek, Delhi and Atwater. The

But Van y Vienen ended in April 2020, just four months after it began, as a precaution against the spread of Covid-19. To the disappointment of people in Cantua Creek, Green Commuter absorbed the vehicles into its Los Angeles fleet per terms of the grant.

Nearly three years later, none of the players involved take full responsibility for the project’s demise. CARB said the Air District couldn’t supplement state funds to sustain it, and the Air District points to Green Commuter’s business model as the core problem.

“It was so sad when the cars were taken,” said Julia Mendoza, a Cantua Creek resident who often volunteered as an EV

“I’ve talked to those folks. I’ve heard stories about trips they made that they couldn’t have made, and I feel terrible that these projects have ended,” Gregor said. “What I can say is if we get more money allocated we’ll do our best to try and relaunch services but it’s going to take the support of many different teams.”

Similar EV ride-sharing programs projects continue to operate in low-resourced communities around the state, from Los Angeles to the Bay Area and Sacramento. All of them, however, are threatened by proposed budget cuts.

The Sacramento project, which deployed 18 EVs at nine

“That’ll make it easier to reactivate (the chargers) as we move to all electric vehicles going forward,” Elkind said, also pointing to lessons learned by the agency as California hopes to model a smooth transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy.

But Rosario Rodríguez and her neighbors want solutions now. They have plenty of ideas – small buses that shuttle to and from Mendota, Kerman and Fresno for one. It’s unclear to her whether anyone is listening.

“People from Sacramento already came to our town and we spoke with them,” Rodríguez said. “I don’t know what they do or how much help they can provide, but they leave. I don’t know if they forget about us or what, because we are not seeing any results.” arrowheads. turned into bona fide tourist attractions. The high school that Carter and Rosalynn attended is a national historic site. A red-white-and-blue sign reminds tourists they’ve entered the home of “Our 39th President.”

Locals see him as one of their own because, well, he is. He presided for years over the town’s annual Peanut Parade from the balcony of the Plains Historic Inn, cheerfully handing out awards to the proud farmers showing off their antique tractors. He rarely missed a board meeting of the

Plains Better Hometown Program or milestone shows at the elegant Rylander Theatre in Americus. His regular Sunday school lessons at Maranatha brought visitors from across the planet – some who camped out for nights in the church parking lot to assure themselves a place in the pews. Afterward, he delighted in snapping pictures with his visitors.

“My doctor tells me I have to sit during photographs,” he told one of the last groups to partake in his lesson. “Please don’t take my sitting to mean that I think I’m better than you.”

Longtime residents recounted stories of Carter dropping by the local ice cream parlor for dessert or swinging by a coffee shop to chat up patrons.

A former lifeguard told the story of how he once blew the whistle at a group horse-playing in the town’s public pool – only to realize all the splashing came from Carter as he tried to dunk a Secret Service agent.

“He’s part of the fabric of the community. And he immerses himself here. He and Rosalynn are omnipresent in this town,” said Evan Kutzler, a history professor who met the Carters shortly after moving to Plains in 2015.

They soon shared a meal of hot dogs and wine together, engaging in a discussion not about weighty global problems but of their shared childhood joy of searching for

Still, Kutzler said, despite their friendship he could never call Carter “Mr. Jimmy.”

That honorific, he said, “belongs to those who actually grew up here.” stuck at the airport in Los Angeles, struggling to catch an Uber ride to the clinic. She had never taken an app-based ride before. She didn’t have a credit card, so Ghane and fellow navigators had to walk her through every step of her journey. When she finally arrived at the clinic, Ghane was waiting for her. She was not just her navigator, but her nurse, too. But an ultrasound – the first that the patient had received – revealed her pregnancy had progressed past the legal limit to perform an abortion in California. (Abortions can be performed up until about 24 weeks of a pregnancy or unless the patient’s health or life is at risk.) respond to naloxone.”

After Carter publicly disclosed his battle with melanoma cancer in 2015, he and Rosalynn scaled back a busy regimen of international trips observing elections and meeting with heads of state to return to his hometown for his final campaign.

And the people of Plains rallied around their ailing native son, showering him with support – “Jimmy Carter: Cancer Survivor” signs sprouted up on lawns across town – and some much-needed tough love.

It was too late.

“When the ultrasound technician came and told me, I was so filled with emotions,” Ghane said. She sat at the nurses’ station, struggling to compose herself. She had to, she said. She had three other patients to treat. A colleague gave her a supportive hug and asked whether she wanted to take the rest of the day off. She didn’t. She finished her shift.

That case haunts Ghane “because of the fact that she came to us for help. And I couldn’t help her.

She didn’t want to continue a pregnancy. And because of how far along she was, we couldn’t help her. I couldn’t help her.”

Ghane wonders what the woman is doing now.

“Was she able to get prenatal care? Does she have the support that she needs to have? Have her and her boyfriend figured out their financial needs for them to support each other to support this baby? Those are the questions that run through my mind. And I don’t know the answers to those.”

Nevertheless, Ghane remains optimistic, in a sense, after the first seven months, post-Roe: “It has just reaffirmed to me how resilient women are.” xylazine could even hamper the effect of naloxone in fentanyl and heroin overdoses. There is no known medicine to reverse the effects of xylazine.

The FDA recommended officials continue to use naloxone for suspected opioid overdoses, and “provide appropriate supportive measures to patients who do not

Catholic bishop shot to death near Los Angeles, officials say

A high-ranking Catholic clergyman in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who was known for having “a heart for the poor,” was shot to death Saturday, according to law enforcement officials and the archdiocese.

Despite naloxone having no effect on xylazine, Tsai agreed that it still makes sense to use naloxone in the case of an overdose in an effort to reverse the effects caused by opioids and increase the chance of survival.

Like most parts of the country, Los Angeles County has seen a dramatic and alarming increase in the number of overdose deaths in recent years, largely fueled by fentanyl’s rapid spread and its use in illegal drugs.

Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell, 69, was killed about 1 p.m. local time in a residential area of Hacienda Heights, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

Sheriff’s deputies said they responded to a medical emergency call and found O’Connell suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pro- nounced dead at the scene. Deputy Lizette Falcon declined to specify whether O’Connell was at a home when he was killed.

In 2019, the county recorded 1,652 accidental overdose deaths, including 462 linked to fentanyl, according to the county’s Department of Public Health. By 2021, the number of accidental overdose deaths in the county had risen to 2,741, with 1,504 caused by fentanyl.

L.A. County health officials have reached out to local law enforcement agencies and the county coroner to inquire about and increase awareness of xylazine.

“We can only imagine how the community is suffering because of this senseless murder,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. “Bishop O’Connell was a guiding light for so many, and his legacy will continue to live on through the community that he helped build.”

–The Washington Post