The Washington Post National Weekly. January 12, 2020 by The Wenatchee World

SUNDAY, JANUARY 12, 2020

. IN COLLABORATION WITH

ABCDE National Weekly

The new paid family leave Some companies are offering paid time off to care for relatives, train a pet or get acquainted with new grandchildren PAGE PAGE 812

Politics Final stretch in Iowa 6

Nation More disaster for Puerto Ricans 8

5 Myths Diabetes 23

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KLMNO Weekly

Politics

U.S. was ready for Iranian strike

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

At least two intelligence sources gave Pentagon a heads up before missiles were fired BY S HANE H ARRIS, J OSH D AWSEY, D AN L AMOTHE AND M ISSY R YAN

he Iranian missile strike on American facilities in Iraq was a calibrated event intended to cause minimal casualties, give the Iranians a facesaving measure and provide an opportunity for both sides to step back from the brink of war, according to senior U.S. officials in Washington and the Middle East.

White House officials were bracing as early as Tuesday morning for Iran to respond to the U.S. killing of Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. U.S. officials said they knew by Tuesday afternoon that the Iranians intended to strike at American targets in Iraq. The early warning came from intelligence sources as well as from communications from Iraq that conveyed Iran’s intentions, officials said. “We knew, and the Iraqis told us, that this was coming many

hours in advance,” said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and diplomatic communications. “We had intelligence reports several hours in advance that the Iranians were seeking to strike the bases.” But others downplayed claims that the Iraqis had such a consequential role. A senior defense official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that if

the Iraqis provided warning, it certainly was not hours in advance. At the Pentagon, the most senior levels of military leadership gathered in anticipation of the Iranian missiles, and soon learned they were coming. “It was literally like right before” the Iranians launched their missiles, one senior defense official said. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper had convened the meeting with Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of

President Trump addresses the nation from the White House on Wednesday. Trump said no Americans were killed or wounded by the Iranian missiles.

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Politics Staff, and senior civilian leaders of the Defense Department. Esper was pulled out of the meeting when officials received notification that strikes were underway. “There was a lot of concern,” the senior defense official said. “It was anxious, wanting to get updates.” The advance warning gave military commanders time to get U.S. troops into safe, fortified positions at the bases. “It’s not luck that no one got killed,” a second senior defense official said. “Luck always plays a role. But military commanders on the ground made good judgment and had good response.” At least two sources of intelligence gave the United States time to prepare. First, there were indications before the launch that Iran was preparing to strike at targets in Iraq, officials said. It was not clear whether that information came from a person or some technical means, such as intercepted communications. A defense official said the U.S. military had “clear indications” of a strike prior to launch from information “internal to [the] U.S. government.” A second source of warning came from what one official described as technical means. The U.S. military has satellites that can detect a missile shortly after it is launched. U.S. officials alerted allies to the launches shortly after they occurred, according to one Western official. On Thursday, an Iranian military commander said the missiles were not aimed at inflicting casualties, in another sign that Iran was seeking to avoid any further escalation of hostilities. “We did not intend to kill,” said Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Force, according to Iranian state media. “We intended to hit the enemy’s military machinery.” During the attack, Iran launched 16 ballistic missiles, including 11 that landed at al-Asad air base and one in Irbil. The missile in Irbil landed in an empty area between the facility and the U.S. Consulate, according to residents who live nearby. It was not clear what happened to the four other missiles. U.S. officials began alerting reporters to the possibility of Iranian strikes beginning at 4 p.m. Tuesday, an hour before they oc-

Ho/Planet Labs Inc./Agence france-presse/Getty images

curred. Vice President Pence was scheduled to conduct a television interview that evening but canceled earlier in the day. In Iran, the regime positioned itself for a public messaging campaign. Tuesday afternoon, Iran transmitted a letter to the U.N. Security Council with a legal basis for military retaliation, but it was not made public, said a diplomat familiar with the document. Military officials were not sure, once the missiles were launched, which locations Iran targeted. It was hard to tell at the Pentagon which bases were under attack “until actual impact on two specific bases,” a senior U.S. military official said. “The attack spread out for more than an hour. . . . It was more than an hour from the first attack to the last attack.” “This was not a ‘boom’ and all of this hit at once,” the senior defense official said. “This was launch, launch, launch.” Once the bases were taking incoming fire, there was constant communication among the White House, Central Command and two other combatant commands: Northern Command and Strategic Command, the second senior defense official said. After the missiles hit, military officials began to assess damage. Pentagon officials called several partner nations and allies right after the Iranian attack, part of a concerted effort to communicate with them in the wake of the

Soleimani strike. By 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, officials at the White House had briefed Trump and were “able to pretty clearly say we don’t think any Americans are going to be killed,” the senior administration official said. “We knew that no Americans were hurt, either.” But U.S. officials were not certain there were no fatalities until Wednesday. The lack of casualties gave administration officials more confidence that the Iranians had intended to make a public show of force largely to save face at home, the senior administration official said. The official added that a consensus is building that Iran could have done more damage. But not all military officials were certain of Iran’s intentions. Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman, told reporters that he assessed Iran had intended to cause material destruction and kill Americans but that an intelligence estimate had not been completed. “I believe based on what I saw and what I know is that they were intended to cause structural damage, destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft and to kill personnel,” Milley said. “That’s my own personal assessment.” Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived at the White House around 7 p.m. Tuesday. About an hour later, Trump began calling lawmakers, includ-

A satellite image reportedly shows damage to the al-Asad U.S. air base in western Iraq, after being hit by rockets from Iran in Tuesday’s attack.

“We did not intend to kill,” Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Force, said on Thursday.

KLMNO Weekly

ing allies such as Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.). Trump told them that no Americans had been killed and that a path to negotiations had now opened, the senior administration official said. “The president doesn’t want a war, but he doesn’t want to tolerate provocation against American interests,” Graham said. Graham said he hoped that Iran’s attack was “a show of force for domestic purposes.” “They want a show of force,” he said, “but they want this to end, because they are scared of the president. I hope that is true.” Matt Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, told aides Tuesday afternoon that it would take at least two months to understand whether the U.S. strategy was working. “Our initial reaction has been, this was a domestic effort from the Iranians to save face, not to go to war, so we have proceeded in that vein,” said another senior administration official with knowledge of the analysis. The Pentagon and State Department sent staffers to the White House Wednesday to write Trump’s speech. He made some last-minute additions, including the decision to start his remarks by declaring, “As long as I am president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” “Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world,” Trump said. A third senior administration official said there was a sigh of relief when Trump agreed to read from prepared remarks and not take questions. Some aides were concerned Trump might deviate from the precise remarks and misspeak if he made extemporaneous remarks. Some officials acknowledged that Iran was likely to continue attacks via proxies and other means. But there was a growing sense among administration officials that killing Soleimani had sobered Iran up to Trump’s willingness to act. “We actually believe this will be de-escalation,” the senior administration official said. “We’re obviously going to be on alert for proxies with one-off attacks. But we think this worked.” n

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KLMNO Weekly

nATION

Stressed Puerto Ricans dig out again BY A RELIS R . H ERNÁNDEZ AND C RISTINA C ORUJO

in Guánica, Puerto Rico

aximiliano Belen’s suitcases stand near the front door of the tilted two-story home where he has lived his whole life. Gaping cracks mar the walls, and a Sacred Heart of Jesus statue lies shattered on the floor after falling off its pedestal. Jagged tiles jut from the staircase, threatening to slice Belen’s legs as he climbs toward his wife on the sloping balcony. He filled buckets with broken wine glasses and shards of porcelain, and the couple salvaged and cleaned what they could. It felt like a worthless exercise. “I don’t feel safe in my home,” Belen said. “Not in this residence. Not in Guánica. Not in Puerto Rico.” Since earthquakes rocked the island’s southwestern coastline this past week, Belen has been living with friends and neighbors, unsure whether the frame on his house would hold, whether the roof would cave, whether another temblor — maybe an even bigger one — would destroy it. This is life in Puerto Rico during the past two years of hurricanes, earthquakes, power outages, political upheaval: unstable. Hundreds of families were rendered similarly homeless by the latest natural disaster to upend this island, some because their homes were wobbly and others because they are afraid of what might come next. They were sleeping outside in tents and in hammocks and in cars, hoping to survive should another earthquake hit in the night. Tent cities have emerged in parks, baseball diamonds and parking lots across the pueblos of Guayanilla and Guánica, where the bulk of the damage is concentrated. Still reeling from a hurricane two years ago, many residents were again in the dark this past week, the island’s crippled power infrastructure again compromised. FEMA’s federal coordinating

Ricardo Arduengo/Agence rance-presse/Getty Images

Two years after deadly hurricanes, earthquakes shake the island — and frighten wary residents officer, Alex Amparo, said teams were in the affected municipalities assessing damage and that officials have met with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to try to develop a timeline for power restoration. “More than 1,100 people went to the shelter in Ponce. That’s a lot of displaced people,” Amparo said, referring to Puerto Rico’s second-largest city. He pointed to the more-than-half-dozen trucks stocked with food boxes and supplies rolling into a baseball field in Guayanilla. “We’ve learned. You can see here there is tight coordination between local, state and federal officials who are all aligned in this.” “We are in a very tight situation,” PREPA’s Jose Ortiz told CBS. The utility had expected to have most customers online Thursday, but Ortiz said bluntly: “It’s not going to happen.” For Belen and his wife, Nilza Almodobal, they are no longer willing to wait. They are headed to New York to live with family

there. They are giving up. “This is no place for old and sick people,” said Almodobal, who has high blood pressure and diabetes. “It’s been one thing after another, and it’s just too much.” After Hurricane Maria in 2017, Nidia Nazario developed a taste for warm bottled water, something that came after she lived without electricity for the refrigerator that once chilled it. She has 10 cases of bottled water on hand at all times and a bag full of medications for any emergency. But an earthquake was never part of her plan. “We need a break,” Nazario said while sitting in a lawn chair under a fig tree in the parking lot of a coliseum-turned-shelter in her hometown of Guánica. “With a hurricane, it comes and it goes. But we don’t know if or when these aftershocks will end.” She and others of Mother Nature’s refugees searched unsuccessfully for rest on camp cots in the hours after the earthquake, wrapping themselves in Red

A Puerto Rican flag waves on top of a pile of rubble as debris is removed from a main road in Guánica one day after a powerful earthquake destroyed homes and businesses.

Cross blankets in the pitch dark. Even when they managed one or two hours of sleep, a low rumble disturbed the peace, eliciting yelps. “I can’t tell anymore if it’s just me or the earth shaking,” Nazario said. The displaced townspeople were up before dawn, heading to gas stations or any open shop hoping to buy something to eat. By midmorning, people returned to their homes to find more clothes, salvage belongings or reflect on what they have lost. They packed cars with blankets and pillows and headed back to the camp by sundown for another restless night. Not every home in Guánica and Guayanilla’s barrios is compromised, but until authorities could evaluate each structure, few families were risking it. Marcial Ríos, who recently completed his undergraduate studies in psychology, was worried that this pattern was wearing down members of his community in Barrio La Laguna. Family after family started setting up camp in a baseball field in the center of the community, with each aftershock destroying whatever sense of security they had left. After Tuesday’s 6.4-magnitude earthquake, the number of families in the encampment tripled. “People are in shock. They are not crying but having panic attacks waiting for the next one,” Ríos said. He grew upset about the constant state of stress so he called his favorite professor. Gilda Rodriguez arrived at the camp Wednesday with a group of psychology students from Carlos Albizu University to assess the mental and emotional health of people staying there. “When Maria happened, it took us almost a week to get there, and by then, people burst into tears instantly in our arms,” said Rodriguez, whose team provides disaster counseling. “But this is different. We got here quickly, but people haven’t had a chance to process their emotions. They are numb, restless and can’t relax until the danger passes.” n

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Nation

KLMNO Weekly

Casualties of the ‘freight recession’ H EATHER L ONG in Roanoke BY

eff Hollandsworth was told to do something recently that he had never done before in his many years working for Norfolk Southern Railway: empty lockers. Norfolk Southern has let more than 3,500 employees go in the past year, including 175 in Roanoke, part of an aggressive push across the railroad industry to slash costs. As Hollandsworth cut the locks and removed his former co-workers’ coats, hats, power tools and hefty company rule books, he could not shake the feeling that the layoffs were different this time. Unlike in the past, his colleagues probably will not be coming back. “When you go to work now, it’s like going into a funeral home,” Hollandsworth said. “What three people used to do, one person is doing now.” While the U.S. economy overall is growing moderately, the railroad industry is a cautionary sign of the ongoing pain in the industrial sector and the deep structural changes underway in the economy that are eliminating middle-class jobs. President Trump’s trade war has hit agriculture and manufacturing hard, causing lower demand for companies that move freight. But railroad stocks soared in 2019 after rail executives embraced automation and cost-cutting to remain profitable, doubling down on the idea that rail’s future entails longer, faster trains and fewer workers. More than 20,000 rail workers have lost their jobs in the past year, the biggest layoffs in rail since the Great Recession and a nearly 10 percent decline in rail employment, according to Labor Department data through November. Volumes are down so much on major American railways in the past year that some economists say the nation is in the midst of a “freight recession.” Freight declines have typically foreshadowed trouble for the

Cooper Neill/Bloomberg News

To remain proﬁtable, railroads are putting faster, longer trains on the tracks and cutting workers broader economy because they are a barometer of how much stuff is heading to market. Every economic downturn since World War II has been precipitated by nose-diving freight traffic. There have also been periods such as 2015-16 when manufacturing, trucking and rail suffer, but the rest of the economy keeps growing. Today’s rail slump is partly a fallout from the trade war and partly the result of long-term trends, such as the United States becoming less reliant on coal, experts say. But the employment losses are being exacerbated by the industry’s embrace of new technology and a newly efficient technique of directing rail traffic known as Precision Scheduled Railroading, or PSR, that is transforming the economics of the business. “I’ve never seen conditions like this in my 45-year career,” said Jim Blaze, a railroad economist. “I’m calling this a freight recession for the railroads and trucking companies, but there’s this uncertainty

from trade. This cloud. This fog. It’s hard to predict if we’ll slide into an overall economic recession.” November marked the 10th straight month that rail freight deteriorated from last year’s stellar traffic levels. Rail freight carloads were down 7.4 percent this November versus the prior year, according to closely watched data from the Association of American Railroads. The volume decline is similar to what occurred at the end of 2015, although the job losses are worse. But now, rail industry leaders are cautiously optimistic. They foresee a rebound once Trump finalizes the trade deals with China, Mexico and Canada. “For our industry, trade has become just a huge part of what we do. Probably in the range of 35 to 45 percent of our business,” said John Gray, senior vice president of policy and economics at the Association of American Railroads, the industry’s main trade group. But even if Trump’s trade war

Norfolk Southern locomotives idle near downtown Roanoke. Rail employment losses are being exacerbated by the industry’s embrace of new technology and a newly efficent technique of directing rail traffic.

ebbs, many of the $70,000-a-year conductor and maintenance jobs are unlikely to return. The rail industry, which once employed more than a million Americans, fell below 200,000 employees in 2019, the first time that has happened since the Labor Department started keeping track of railroad employment in the 1940s. “We fundamentally changed the way we operate over the last 21/2 years,” said Bryan Tucker, vice president of communications at CSX. “It’s a different way of running a railroad.” A Norfolk Southern spokeswoman said the company was focused on increasing efficiency and profitable growth and that “as our business changes, so too do our personnel needs.” Union Pacific stressed the environmental benefits of moving goods by rail instead of truck. Even if business bounces back, the industry embrace of PSR promises to hold down the need for more workers. Freight railroads used to run trains carrying just one type of good, and the trains could sit in yards for hours or days until they had enough of a load to justify departing. Now, after PSR, railroads are running more trains with mixed goods and on a set schedule that leaves no matter what. The goal now is to minimize stoppage and use the same locomotive and crew as much as possible, akin to the way the same airplane shuttles constantly between the Washington area and New York City. Rail executives say these changes are delivering more reliable service that can better compete against trucks. But PSR is also causing railroads to turn away some business that isn’t profitable enough, says Peter Swan, associate professor of logistics at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg. Some routes are now gone or downsized. “Shareholders at railroads are looking at the financial success of PSR and now every single big railroad is trying to adopt some form of this,” Swan said. “If you’re trying to save money, you cut people like crazy.” n

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World

KLMNO Weekly

Harry and Meghan quit the castle B Y K ARLA A DAM AND W ILLIAM B OOTH

in London

arry and Meghan were the royal couple who were going to modernize the monarchy. Both young and popular, and she an American who spoke proudly about her feminism and bi-racial background, they brought their own style and swagger to Buckingham Palace and were helping rejuvenate the beloved but fusty royal brand. Now, full stop. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are taking a flier; they’re looking for new digs and gigs across the pond. The couple dramatically announced Wednesday that they would be “stepping back” from royal duties and split their time between the United Kingdom and North America — which most suspect means Canada. They said they want to become “financially independent,” stating they “value the ability to earn a professional income.” But no one is sure how cleanly they are cutting the cord or how else they plan to generate income. On their shiny new website, Sussexroyal.com, they explain they will no longer accept money from the taxpayer-funded Sovereign Fund, which has covered 5 percent of their expenses. They are silent on whether they will continue to get support from Harry’s father, Prince Charles. Last year, Charles paid the Sussexes around $6.5 million from funds he receives via his Duchy of Cornwall estate, covering what they said were 95 percent of their costs. Either way, they shouldn’t have to worry too much about paying the bills. According to British press reports, Harry’s net worth is estimated to be around $39 million, most of it inherited from his mother, Princess Diana, and his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother. Meghan’s net worth is estimated to be around $5 million, much of it coming from her acting role on the TV series “Suits.” Still, the Sussexes seem to be chafing against the arrangements

Daniel Leal-Olivas/Pool/Agence france-presse/Getty Images

The Sussexes say they want to become financially independent, but who’s paying for the butler? for “senior” royals, who regularly carry out duties on behalf of the queen and are not allowed to take an outside salary. They do not endorse products. They do not get paid to speak. They also do not pay taxes. But if they are no longer fulltime working royals, Harry and Meghan may be able to have both royal titles and paid jobs — like Harry’s cousins, Princess Beatrice, who works in finance, and Princess Eugenie, an art gallery director. In their effort to get away from royal restrictions, Harry and Meghan are also seeking more control over which journalists have access to them. They said they would no longer take part in Buckingham Palace’s royal rota, in place for decades, which gives accredited journalists access to official events, on a pooled and rotating basis. But likely the bigger issue is that the royal rota includes British tab-

loids, and it is no secret that Harry and Meghan loathe the tabloids. In fact, they have sued them — twice — over phone hacking and copyright infringement. Going forward, the couple say they would like to engage with “young, up-and-coming journalists,” alongside “credible media” and “specialist media.” They also want to speak to the public directly through their social media accounts. Roy Greenslade, a media commentator, said that it is possible that things will not get easier for the couple. He imagined that “ceaseless and relentless” media interest will only increase when the couple make the transition into their new roles inside and outside the royal family. Greenslade said Princess Diana endured more attacks by the British tabloids after her divorce from Charles, in part because she did not have the same access to protection officers.

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, leave Canada House in London on Tuesday after thanking officials there for their hospitality during their recent Canada trip. The couple announced Wednesday that they would split their time between the United Kingdom and North America — which most suspect means Canada.

Despite some notable exceptions, Greenslade said mainstream media coverage of Harry and Meghan has been largely sympathetic. And when they attend royal events, they are usually greeted with adoration and adulation. You never hear boos or catcalls when Harry and Meghan greet the crowds, he said. The couple’s decision to fly the royal coop has been met with applause and dismay. The BBC’s royal correspondent reported that “no other member of the Royal Family was consulted before Harry and Meghan issued their personal statement [and] the Palace is understood to be ‘disappointed.’ ” It was clear from the beginning that Harry and Meghan would try to carve out their own path. In November 2016, the first time that Harry acknowledged that he was in a relationship with Meghan Markle, he did so with a highly unusual statement that said sections of the media had “crossed” a line with its “racial undertones” and “outright sexism.” Meghan is biracial. “This is not a game,” Harry said. The couple have rarely been out of the headlines since that statement — and newspapers, especially British tabloids, can giveth and taketh away. Meghan received oodles of positive coverage in the lead-up to her nuptials. The press also went gaga over their baby Archie. But the couple, too, were criticized for being too private, for not giving enough of themselves to the media. They initially withheld details about where Archie was born and didn’t reveal the names of his godparents, facts normally made public. And then there was the reported rift between the Sussexes and the Cambridges — Harry’s brother Prince William and his wife Catherine — which some blamed on Meghan. In the fall, when Harry was asked about a reported rift between him and William, he told ITV that the two were “on different paths at the moment.” n

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Environment

KLMNO Weekly

A frightening future for butterﬂies

Monarch butterflies primarily winter in Mexico, and in the summer they migrate as far north as Canada, the northernmost extent of the milkweed plant range. Seasonal migration route

Seasonal range CANADA

SUMMER

OU Y M

SUMMER UNITED STATES

NTA

WINTER

INS

o one knows when millions of monarch butterflies began crisscrossing North America, spending their winters clustered on the same hillsides in Central Mexico, a blaze of orange wings in the green forest. But over the centuries, they were mythologized by generations of humans. Locals believed they carried the souls of their ancestors. Scientists saw the migration as the proof of insect evolution — a brittle organism that could fly 6,000 miles a year to avoid severe weather. Now, the monarch has morphed into a different kind of symbol. One of the world’s oldest, most resilient species could be decimated — and soon — by climate change. The butterflies are among the world’s experts in climate adaptation. They spend their summers in the northern United States and Canada; they breed in the southern United States during the fall and spring; and most spend their winters here in Central Mexico. Their life cycles are driven by a search for optimal conditions: temperatures ideally between 55 and the low 70s when they migrate, some rain during their winters and plenty of milkweed when they mate. The criteria are narrow — and dependent on relatively consistent weather patterns. That consistency no longer exists. Now summer temperatures in the Midwest are soaring. The milkweed in Texas is drying up. Winter storms, once rare, are snaking through central Mexico regularly as air warms over the Pacific Ocean and blows across the region. “The question we’re asking is ‘Can one of the world’s most adaptive insects adapt to climate change?’” asked Karen Oberhauser, who studies the species at the University of Wisconsin. “We are changing the conditions and just waiting to see.” While almost all species could

A 2,000-mile journey

Every year, millions of monarch butterflies migrate to the same remote stretch of forest in Rosario, Mexico, to spend their winters.

K EVIN S IEFF in Rosario, Mexico BY

Climate change and its effects have put monarchs at risk of extinction

ATLANTIC

SPRING

PACIFIC

MEXICO

OCEAN

Gulf of Mexico

WINTER

WINTER 500 MILES

Source: University of Kansas Monarch Watch

THE WASHINGTON POST

Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post

eventually be consumed by a changing climate and habitat loss, few are as likely to vanish as abruptly as the monarch. Between 1990 and 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says, a billion butterflies vanished. Because over 95 percent of the population migrates en masse to a few patches of Mexican forest, each smaller than half a football field, a single storm or heat stroke could effectively kill off the population.

That nearly happened in 2002, when a winter storm killed about 75 percent of monarchs. And again in 2012, when a heat wave in the Midwest killed tens of thousands. “At every stage in their migration, they are threatened by climate change,” said Eduardo Rendón, the monarch butterfly coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico. Each time, they rebounded — but barely. Last year, the population grew when a cold front in

North Texas forced butterflies to stay in South Texas for longer than usual, increasing the length of their breeding season. But this past year brought another scare, as temperatures in Oklahoma and Kansas soared as monarchs passed through. It was the second hottest September in 125 years in those states. The impact on the population has not yet been calculated. “If you’re talking 20, 30, 40 years out, we’re not going to be talking about monarchs anymore,” said Chip Taylor, the founder of Monarch Watch and a professor at the University of Kansas. The United Nations reported this year that 1 million species of plants and animals face possible extinction “within decades” — due in large part to climate change. The monarch is among them. American scientists spent more than a century trying to find the population in Mexico. A National Geographic headline celebrated their discovery by the Canadian zoologist Fred Urquhart in August 1976: “Discovered: The Monarch’s Mexican Haven.” Yet the people of Rosario had seen the butterflies land here for centuries. It was their own private spectacle, remote enough that no Americans had located it. Pre-Hispanic pottery has been found with images of butterflies. “Our grandparents told us, ‘Take care of them. They’re angels,’” said Homero Gomez González, the former commissioner of Rosario. He remembers the mid-1970s, when the American scientists started to arrive. And then, soon after, the American tourists. “We came to believe that the tourism could be good for us,” he said. González and other local leaders tried to restore the forest that had been badly damaged by illegal logging, which in turn displaced clusters of butterflies. That restoration has largely been successful. But now climate change poses a greater threat. “The migration will disappear unless we solve climate change,” Taylor said. n

SUNDAY, January, 12, 2020

COVER STORY

Paid leave isn’t just for new parents anymore

Illustrations by Hannah Li For The Washington Post

BY JENA MCGREGOR

he United States remains the only industrialized country that does not guarantee workers paid family leave. In 2018, just 17 percent of civilian workers could get paid time off from work to care for a new child or ill family member, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure dips to 11 percent at the smallest companies. ¶ But a tightening labor market and a vast cohort of millennial workers beginning to start families are putting pressure on employers to expand their benefits to attract and retain workers. Eight states, plus the District of Columbia, have also passed laws that require workers or their employer to pay into state paid leave funds through payroll contributions. And President Trump has signed a bill that, for the first time, will provide paid leave for the federal government’s estimated 2.1 million civilian employees following the birth, adoption or fostering of a child. ¶ Large employers are offering more weeks of paid leave to employees trying to meet family obligations, such as caring for an elderly parent or sick older child, coping with the death of a family member, or in some instances taking care of a new pet. ¶ “We’re seeing an increasing trend in interest in covering things that plague families beyond parental leave,” said Carol Sladek, who leads work-life consulting for the human resources consulting firm Aon. “It’s definitely bubbling up from employees: ‘But what about me? I’ve already raised my kid. I’m in my 50s, and my 85-year-old mom is sick.’ ” ¶ Here are some stories, edited for length and clarity, of how some workers are using these broader definitions of paid leave.

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Cover Story

y mother died in the fall of 2017. She lived with cancer for about five years, but the last couple of months were probably the most trying. I have two pretty small children — at that time they were 8 years old — and it was very hard for me. I was taking an awful lot of paid time off and working from home as much as I could. I had the best support from my leaders and colleagues. But what was present was a lot of guilt. If I was at an appointment with her, I was always skimming email. There wasn’t this approved, defined leave that I was on. Then in February of this year, we found out my father had very aggressive mesothelioma. When his decline started, it was rapid. He didn’t feel good and nothing sounded good to eat. You prepare [food] and you carefully put it in front of them, and they will not eat any of it. There are all the side effects: Trouble-shooting constipation with your dad while sitting outside the bathroom door. That is the day of a caregiver. And then there’s the worrying. I just couldn’t sleep well. There was a Saturday where he said: “I don’t know what else you can do for me.” He was basically asking to embark on hospice. I thought to myself: I’m going to have to deploy that four weeks [of leave]. The first week he was in hospice, he was on these medicines that you can really only get there. He was able to walk pretty well with a walker, and he had pretty good energy. There was this one day where he felt good — like surprisingly good — and I pulled my boys out of their summer care program and brought them over to play a board game. We could do something happy with him. If I hadn’t had the leave, and I heard that my dad was feeling good, I would have thought “Dad feels good today,

maybe my brother will go down and watch a baseball game with him.” But with the leave, I felt able to go there and just be there with Dad. —Jackie Christie, project manager, Best Buy, Richfield, Minn. Company offers paid family caregiving leave of up to four weeks.

eorgia was the first Coppel girl to be born into my family since the late 1950s. So it’s pretty special. She’s two now, and she’s taught me how to play with dolls and have tea parties. I always tell her she’s my princess. I’m very, very close to her — when she sees me, she’ll get very excited. It was great to be able to take extra leave just to bond with her. I didn’t take three straight days, but just took the time here or there. You have to take the three days within the child’s first year of life. It was a new benefit, and I hadn’t talked to anybody who had done it. It was great to have the flexibility just to be able to throw in a few extra days. Twice I provided day care for the day. The first couple of days it was just me, proudly walking around the neighborhood with a baby carriage. I had to make sure I stuck by her schedule. Another time we went to a petting zoo. With my grandson, I had to take paid [vacation], and I gladly did that. But it was nice not having to do that the second time around. [Having a named paid leave for grandparents] codifies the opportunity. It’s structured. It’s very apparent that this is what the company wants you to do.

That absolutely makes a big difference. It’s there in black and white — there’s no doubt about whether my manager is going to support that. It takes an element of stress off your shoulders. There’s not going to be any ramifications. —Steve Coppel, systems engineering manager, Cisco, Owings Mills, Md. Company offers three paid days off for new grandparents.

e are a blended family. When my husband’s daughter Maddie came back from summer camp in 2017, she was feeling a lot of tingling in her digits. She had previously been diagnosed with something called POTS, or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. She had had hundreds — literally hundreds — of tests below her neck to get to that diagnosis. Her pediatrician said [the finger tingling] sounds neurological, and the only thing left to do is a brain scan. And with that scan we saw she had a brain tumor. She had surgery, followed by 33 treatments of proton radiation. In March, she had another MRI and we saw very quickly that the tumor grew back. The doctors said, “This is a very mean tumor, a very determined tumor.” She was immediately scheduled for a second surgery. She went through five cycles of different kinds of chemo combinations, none of which worked. In November 2018 she went on a last ditch effort, an immunotherapy drug. We had been managing as a family well enough. But on Jan. 19 we received a panicked phone call from Alexandra, Maddie’s mom, that she was in the middle of

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Cover Story having a major seizure. That ended up being the trigger for my taking leave. Maddie became paralyzed on the right side. She had to be intubated in the ambulance, and then was taken from New Jersey down to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in a horrific snowstorm. It became very clear to us we were really receiving therapy to have her condition not deteriorate any further. My leave started on Jan. 21 and Maddie passed away on March 3, 2019. While I was on leave, I was sort of the family unit manager: What’s the schedule today? Who needs to be where? What medicines need to be taken? I truly believe that Alexandra and Tom knew that these were the last weeks, days and hours with Maddie. I was the go person, because I wanted to give them the time that they wanted and needed to be with their daughter. I took 12 weeks off. We have eight weeks paid through the caregiver leave and there was an allowance for an additional four weeks that was unpaid [by BMS]. But I took some additional time just to grieve. There was still so much to do after Maddie passed. [Without the leave], I don’t even know how we would have handled it. —Jodi Hutchison-Sanford, communications leader, manufacturing; Bristol-Myers Squibb, New Brunswick, N.J. Company offers eight weeks of paid caregiver leave, with the option of an additional four weeks unpaid.

I’

m the chairman for the union at Revere Copper. Not only have I used New York’s Paid Family Leave program, but I’ve helped numerous members sign up for it. Most of my guys are using it for the birth of a child. It’s made a huge difference — they never would have done that [before the state program]. They would have taken a day or two for the delivery and then, right back to work. I have a diabetic daughter. It was Thanksgiving Day, 2013 when we found out. She didn’t eat much, she didn’t feel good. The next day she looked very pale, unresponsive — I looked at my wife and said, “We’ve got to go. There’s something wrong.” Once we got her to the hospital in Syracuse, they actually had to put her in a medical induced coma to slowly bring her back. We were by the bedside 24 hours a day for nine days. When we got done with that, we had some answering to do. My wife didn’t get a paycheck. I didn’t get a paycheck. It was a wicked impact on our family. Christmas was right around the corner, there was fuel oil — it’s an expensive time of year. We had to plan on tax rebates coming in the next year to get caught up on a few of the bills we had to let go. [The state paid leave] program has been a lifechanger. I’ve used probably 12 days of it. My daughter has had, at bare minimum, one appointment every three months. If she has a morning appointment, by the time I get to Syracuse, get done with the appointment and get her back to school, the workday’s almost over. Or I might get a phone call saying “I’m not feeling good.” She’s 14 years old, and the responsibility factor hasn’t quite hit with them yet at that age. It’s not like a normal person getting sick. Someone has to be there with her and make her test her sugar every hour on the hour. The state benefit is about 55 percent of my pay, so really you’re only getting a half day of pay, but still, it

helps with that sting. My daughter has always felt guilty that because of her illness, she was taking away from the family. Her insulin cost money. Her appointments cost money. She’s even made the statement that “it’s nice we don’t have to worry about you getting paid today.” It’s also a comfort for her. —Brian Wiggins, shop chairman, Revere Copper Products, Rome, N.Y. The state’s paid family leave program is funded by the employee only, and provides up to 60 percent of the state’s average weekly wage.

was at work one morning and received a group text message about one of my great-nieces who needed to be placed within a home. There was a domestic situation between the parents, and the child, then a 5-month-old baby, could have possibly gone into foster care with the state. The mother did not feel like she was equipped to be able to take care of the child, and she requested someone take temporary custody. I didn’t know how I was going to manage it — I am a single mother and also have a 5-year-old — but I stepped up to take care of her. I notified my manager, and he said, “You may want to contact H.R. — you may be eligible to take family leave.” I left and went to the family’s house about 10:00 in the morning, and by 12:00 I had social services coming out, inspecting my home to make sure it was a safe place for the child. By noon I had a 5-month-old. Within a couple of days, I submitted that documentation, and my leave was approved for the full 16 weeks. It was a very easy, simple stress-free process. The paid leave, number one, enabled me to stay up with an infant at night. I had gotten past that phase with my daughter — getting up in the middle of night and comforting her and feeding her and rocking her back to sleep. Young children still understand the trauma of being away from their parents, no matter how small they are. It took a lot of time to cuddle her and make her comfortable in my home. Sometimes she would be a little fussy and a little aggravated, and it took time for her to bond with me and become more comfortable with me. I was able to be home with her and not have to worry about or stress about having child care. My daughter was such a big helper — but being a single mother, then bringing another child into the home, the time off was much needed to bond with my child and a foster child. —Kimberly DaCosta, financial services consultant, TIAA, Charlotte, N.C. Company offers 16 weeks paid leave for foster parents.

his is my first time being a dog owner. I was very nervous — I think my girlfriend and I waited over a year on the breeder’s wait list. Everyone says getting a puppy is a lot of work, but that doesn’t really capture how much work it is. The first night was actually okay because the puppy was really tired. The second night was a nightmare. We made a bunch of rookie mistakes: We kept the crate too big, so he pooped in the crate. We were told to let him bark it out, but that was a terrible idea because he was literally laying in his own poop. He started barking about 2 a.m. and at 4:30 a.m. we took him out, gave him a bath and cleaned out his crate. My girlfriend took the first week off, and then he went

KLMNO Weekly

to “puppy school” each day for just under a month. I then took one week of “pet-ternity” leave and one week I worked from home. Reddit has a generous vacation policy — it’s unlimited PTO. So practically speaking, there isn’t a huge difference between taking vacation leave and taking time off for a new pet. But unlimited PTO is also at a manager’s discretion, and you have to be performing your job to expectations. [With the new pet leave], the company is carving the time out for you. It’s a nice gesture from the company that says we recognize you have a new pet and we think you may want to do this. —Yuhao Ding, senior engineering manager, Reddit, San Francisco, Calif. Company offers one week paid time off and one week flexible work schedules after pet adoption.

t was sort of a gradual progression at first — my mom was less mobile than she had been. She began losing weight. We thought it was Lyme Disease at the time, but she was much sicker than we realized. She had had a previous bout of breast cancer when I was in high school, but it had been so long that it just didn’t jump immediately to our minds that maybe it had come back. I was traveling for work and got a call from my dad and it was confirmed that she had cancer. It had spread to her bones, to her lymph nodes, to her brain and skull. I got support from my project to take some time off. I wasn’t sure if I might want work to distract me to some degree, but I knew I wanted to spend all my time and energy on my family. My dad had been taking care of her near full time for a couple of months, and I knew he needed my help. My sister moved back as well, but she had just come off maternity leave and was working full time and had her hands full with a 4-month-old. I started out mainly helping with preparing food and helping her go to the bathroom. My dad and I would have to clean her and change her; later on it would include things like rolling her over and making sure she didn’t get bedsores. But just as important was having conversations with her, recounting memories, bringing some small moments of happiness. My fiance Brittany and I had been dating for five years. We realized we both really wanted to make sure she could participate in our wedding. So we approached my mom with the idea of having an intimate ceremony in the house. We flew in Brittany’s immediate family, we had my sisters and my dad there. We got married in the hallway to my mom’s bedroom. She loved it. Her funeral was at the end of March. I decided to take some extra weeks for bereavement. I began transcribing my mom’s journals into digital copies so I could go back and read through and get a better understanding of who she was, earlier in my life. When my wife and I have kids, the ability to stay home on leave will be huge. But I would say that taking care of a sick family member can sometimes be just as important. The fact that [Deloitte] doesn’t discriminate between the types of leave — that they provide some level of freedom for the employee to determine whether they need more time to focus on family — it’s a huge benefit. n —Brendan Ricci, senior consultant, Deloitte, Arlington, Va. Company offers 16 weeks paid leave for the addition of a child, or to care for an ill family member.

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KLMNO Weekly

books

Donald Trump Jr. previews 2024 run N ONFICTION

REVIEWED BY

C ARLOS L OZADA

D TRIGGERED How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us By Donald Trump Jr. Center Street. 294 pp. $30

onald Trump Jr.’s bestselling new book, “Triggered,” fails as memoir and as polemic: Its analysis is facile, its hypocrisy relentless, its self-awareness marginal. (The writing is wretched, even by the standards of political vanity projects.) But the point of “Triggered” is not autobiographical, literary or analytic, and it should not be read or evaluated on such grounds. Rather, the book is most useful as a preview of a possible Donald Trump Jr. 2024 presidential campaign, the contours of which grow clearer the deeper one wades into these pages. “There’s been a fair amount of speculation as to where my own political career might take me,” Don Jr. notes with satisfaction. This book provides an answer, presenting its author as the natural heir to the MAGA movement: a troller of lefties and warrior of culture. Yet Don Jr. also attempts to establish some differences, even if stylistic. His positions on immigration are no less hard-line than his father’s, for instance, yet he invokes his own immigrant roots and friendships with immigrants — legal ones, of course, the good ones — to soften the edges. And more important, Don Jr. portrays himself as an authentic representative of the aggrieved heartland, in some ways more so than his father. He dedicates his book to “the deplorables,” saluting the patriotism and values of the everyman Trump supporter. “I am proudly one of you,” he writes. And he almost seems to believe it. Throughout “Triggered,” Don Jr. claims both his political and familial inheritance. “From the moment the nurses at New York Hospital inked the name ‘Donald John Trump Jr.’ onto my birth certificate,” he writes, “you might say I’ve been following in the footsteps of my father.” He claims to share his father’s “killer instinct” and writes that speaking bluntly is “just one of those things that got

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

Donald Trump Jr. addresses a “Keep America Great” rally in Cincinnati in August. “There’s been a fair amount of speculation as to where my own political career might take me,” he writes.

passed down in the genes!” The connection is not just genetic but mystical: “The energy that flows through my father is the same energy that flowed through my grandfather and great-grandfather before him. . . . The same energy also flows through me.” So when he brags about receiving so many death threats (“second only to my father”), Don Jr.’s message to the base is clear: The left hates me nearly as much as they hate my dad, so you should love me nearly as much as you love him. There are clear parallels between Don Jr.’s “Triggered” and his father’s “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” both of which were published when the authors were 41. Don Jr: “We would arrive early in the morning as the crews were setting up, and I would walk with my dad while he inspected the concrete foundations and metal stairways.” Trump Sr.: “I remember very well as a kid, accompanying my father to inspect buildings.

. . . We’d spend hours in the building, checking every refrigerator and sink, looking over the boiler and the roof and the lobby.” The son also lingers on his various construction projects and real estate deals and how they were completed “on time and under budget,” another standard Trumpism. The latest book is also littered with familiar Trump put-downs, talking points, omissions and pats on the back. “Crooked Hillary” and “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” make cameos. Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is derided as “FullofSchiff.” Robert Mueller is an “old, over-the-hill puppet,” although Don Jr. still invokes Mueller’s investigation to contend that there was “no collusion” with Russia and “no obstruction” of justice. Don Jr. insists that his father’s opposition to Barack Obama was about policy and not race, making no mention of how Trump built his political brand on the lie of birtherism. And he trashes the

news media — only his father’s Twitter feed and his own provide the “unfiltered truth,” he asserts — yet is quick to point out news stories discussing his political potential and popularity with conservative audiences. He dismisses a recent Atlantic cover story about his rivalry with his sister Ivanka Trump as “mostly false,” then proceeds to quote portions he finds personally flattering. Don Jr. also displays his father’s eagerness to stoke culture wars and deploy wedge issues, devoting entire chapters to the fake 2019 attack on actor Jussie Smollett and to transgender athletes “smashing women’s hard-earned records” in weightlifting and track and field. Don Jr. appears obsessed with questions of gender identity — he says the ultimate Democratic presidential candidate would be “a nonbinary minority who identifies as a dolphin” — and never ceases to trumpet his supposed good looks (“hey, I’m a Trump”) and his tenacious heterosexuality.

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books Don Jr. and his wife, Vanessa Trump, divorced in 2018, and in his book he constantly brings up his new relationship with former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle. A fixation on masculinity is at the core of Don Jr.’s efforts to appeal to his father’s base. He recounts the summers he spent as a child in his mother’s native Czechoslovakia, where his maternal grandfather showed him how to shoot a bow, start a fire, swing an ax and throw a knife — “all that guy stuff,” he explains. Don Jr. looks back on his years at an elite boarding school in rural Pennsylvania and his time at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to prove his Rust Belt bona fides, and cites his sojourn hunting and fishing in the Rockies after college as proof of his regular-guyness. Like so many second-generation dynastic hopefuls, Don Jr. attempts to be his father and his own man as well. For all his efforts to seize the Trump legacy — by my count, the phrases “my father” and “my dad” appear 299 times in this 294-page book — Don Jr. also wants to establish distance from the Trump glitz. “I didn’t take to the opulent lifestyle the way some children of billionaires do,” he writes. Don Jr. stresses that he got along well with the former New York City cops who provided security at Trump Tower and that some of his early relationships were with the chefs who worked for his parents. He means to highlight his relatability, but the anecdote also underscores his childhood isolation. It is, inadvertently, one of the most revealing moments in “Triggered.” Yet it is such connections that inform Don Jr.’s political self-image. While his father may appeal to the struggling working-class voter, the 2016 campaign convinced Don Jr. that he is the working-class voter. “I was able to talk to people who came to events in a way that other surrogates, even candidates, couldn’t,” he writes. “I had spent most of my youth out in the Rust Belt. In a very real sense, these were my people. Unlike many New York City socialites, I didn’t have to try to connect with them. I was one of them.” The reference to “New York City socialites” could be a dig at Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, and their own longings of succession. While Ivanka and

Jared played the inside game, landing favored White House positions, Don Jr. went outside, playing to Fox News and the base. Rather than try to influence Dad, he sought to emulate him. Don Jr.’s generic tales of Rust Belt affinity feel awfully pat at times. He describes a campaign encounter with a Midwestern carpenter who backed Trump but felt torn by his family’s longtime Democratic allegiances. Don Jr. gives him the pseudonym “Rusty” and convinces him that today’s socialist, amnesty-loving Democrats are not like those of old. He meets an Ethiopian immigrant at a Colorado coffee shop who tells him that she voted for Trump because of his immigration policies. “Your father’s right,” she whispered. “People who think they can just come into America and get whatever they want makes it so much harder for people like me.” And shortly after Trump called for a shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, a cabdriver whom Don Jr. describes as “Middle Eastern” told him he agreed. “I’ve heard your father’s comments. I think he’s one hundred percent right. I know it’s the ones who are preaching hate, oppressing women, killing people who ruin it for us all.” How convenient to always run into suitably representative strangers eager to affirm your worldview in perfectly quotable sentences, and to have the presence of mind to take verbatim notes! And, of course, there is the frontiersman persona, which Don Jr. pushes so hard. Among the book’s many photographs are images of the author fishing, scuba diving, hunting and hiking. “Trekking down a mountain in the Yukon Territory of Canada with a caribou rack,” reads one of the photo captions. “It took several trips to retrieve all the meat.” There’s plenty of meat in “Triggered,” and all of it is red. Here, the outdoors are not a place for reflection or introspection. Donald Trump Jr. went to the woods because he wished to troll deliberately. In his introduction, he summarizes his political project — and any future campaign — in one line: “Anything that makes the veins in a few liberal foreheads bulge out is fine by me.” n Lozada is the nonfiction book critic of The Washington Post.

KLMNO Weekly

Two sisters amid the drug epidemic F ICTION

‘A LONG BRIGHT RIVER By Liz Moore Riverhead. 496 pp. $26

REVIEWED BY

M AUREEN C ORRIGAN

world gone wrong.” Of all the signature lines that Raymond Chandler bequeathed to the world, this one may be his most resonant. It appears in the introductory essay of his 1950 collection of short stories, “Trouble Is My Business.” There, Chandler tries to account for the power of his early, unsophisticated detective stories: “Their characters lived in a world gone wrong, a world in which, long before the atom bomb, civilization had created the machinery of its own destruction, and was beginning to use it with all the moronic delight of a gangster trying out his first machine gun.” That phrase has since become one of the defining elements of hard-boiled detective fiction, a genre that, above all, investigates “a world gone wrong.” The historical forces that corrupt the world have changed with time. For Chandler, the culprits were the Great Depression and two World Wars. For Liz Moore, author of the extraordinary new crime novel, “Long Bright River,” it’s the opioid epidemic that ravages the once cohesive world of Kensington, a historically working-class neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia. Like Bedford Falls in the famous noir sequence of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the mundane has been made menacing in Kensington, where rowhouses that once were crammed with families (however imperfect), now shelter a shifting population of addicts; where factories that once produced hats and carpets have deteriorated into open-air drug markets. A world gone wrong, indeed. The detective who must navigate this nightmare cityscape is Mickey Fitzpatrick, a 30-something patrol officer in the Philadelphia Police Department. Mickey’s younger sister, Kacey, walks the streets of Kensington for a different reason: She’s an addict who supports her habit by turning

tricks, catering to the commuter trade that drives through Kensington to buy drugs. If that premise sounds contrived, Moore’s nuanced development of Mickey’s troubled character banishes all reservations. As Mickey recalls in flashbacks interspersed throughout the main narrative, she stepped into the role of Kacey’s caretaker early, when the two girls were abandoned to the stinting care of their grandmother after their parents fell victim to drugs. Kacey subsequently began using — and overdosing — in high school. As she was drawn deeper into the netherworld, Mickey found refuge in an afterschool program run by the Police Athletic League. One volunteer, in particular, a handsome divorced officer named Simon Cleare, took an interest in Mickey — too much of an interest, as it turns out. He inspired her with a vocation for police work and left her with a now 4-year-old son, Thomas. Moore is an astute social observer. Her depictions of Mickey’s isolation are sharp-eyed to the point of pain. Becoming a police officer and aspiring for a better education for her son has cut off Mickey from Kacey and her extended family. But her workingclass background and carefully budgeted income distance her from the mothers of Thomas’s private preschool classmates. “Long Bright River” nervously twists, turns and subverts readers’ expectations till its very last pages. Simultaneously, it also manages to grow into something else: a sweeping, elegiac novel about a blighted city. As Chandler did for Los Angeles, Moore — who lives in Philadelphia — excavates Kensington and surrounding areas in Philadelphia, illuminating the rot, the shiny facades of gentrification and the sturdy endurance of small pockets of community life. n Corrigan, who teaches literature at Georgetown University, is the book critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air.”

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KLMNO Weekly

Opinions

In Australia, climate denial goes up in smoke Jennifer Mills is the author of the novel “Dyschronia” and a volunteer firefighter in rural South Australia.

Much of Australia’s forested East Coast was already on fire by the time images emerged this past month of Scott Morrison, our prime minister, holidaying in Hawaii. Sydney was blanketed in smoke. I had been frantically updating emergency-services maps, checking on friends and relatives in four states, making sure my parents knew which kind of masks to get. I wondered whether Morrison realized he was on the verge of a Hurricane Katrina moment — whether he would rush back with a swift response, if only out of fear for his own political reputation. ¶ “I don’t hold a hose, mate,” he said on talk radio from Hawaii. “I don’t sit in a control room.” Like many volunteer firefighters, I am furious. Six months before the fires, and then again in September, Morrison declined to meet with a group of former fire chiefs who wanted to warn him that an emergency like this was on the horizon. Rural firefighting services in Australia are statebased and largely voluntary. They are often woefully underresourced, and some have been subject to recent budget cuts. Volunteer firefighters like me watched this season approach — the deadly combination of intense heat and Australia’s worst drought in decades — with dread. Where were the extra resources we needed? And why was Australia still refusing to act on the climate emergency? And so 2020 has begun with mass evacuations of towns in New South Wales and Victoria, as families flee in an unprecedented internal migration. On social media, Australians wish each other a safe new year as we scroll images of the sea blackened by soot, of families sheltering on red-lit beaches, of children rowing onto a lake in P2 face

masks to escape the flames. Our holiday snaps are hashtagged #apocalypse. Since November, at least 23 people have died as a direct result of the fires, three of them volunteer firefighters. The severe health impacts from this smoke-filled summer will be harder to quantify. Morrison did come home from Hawaii a little early, and he then wandered onto the fire ground in search of caring imagery. But out of the smoke has emerged a man of ashes. Video is making the rounds of this desperately awkward man getting a cold reception in the New South Wales town of Cobargo, where three people died and the main street burned to the ground a few weeks ago. “I don’t really want to shake your hand,” muttered an exhausted-looking firefighter. “Piss off,” residents called after Morrison as he fled his own media event. Australians see ourselves as tough characters who take care of each other in a crisis. Country people don’t express our feelings easily; we don’t like to make a fuss. But in rural areas, volunteer firefighters give up days and nights to respond to

Tracey Nearmy/Reuters

Resident John Aish looks at a destroyed home this past Sunday in the Australian town of Cobargo, whose main street burned to the ground.

incidents as they arise. We do this because someone has to. When we rise to challenges such as this one, we expect something similar from our leaders. Firefighters are learning and adapting to changing conditions. After 173 people died in Victoria’s Black Saturday fires in 2009, warning and evacuation systems were overhauled. Catastrophic fire danger warnings were introduced; trucks have been upgraded. All brigades are required to undertake annual burnover drills, which teach us how to avoid death inside our trucks in the event they are overtaken by fire. But these fires are occurring at an intensity, duration and scale we have not seen before. That fewer lives have been lost so far is a testament to these upgrades, to the dedication of firefighters and to public education about the risks. Sadly, the fires are also an illustration of the principle that while a nation might share the same facts, its people can still refuse to share a reality. Morrison likes to note that Australia produces just 1.3 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. But Australia is also the world’s biggest exporter of coal, and we have regularly sided with other

big, fossil-fuel-dependent nations to stymie global climate negotiations. At December’s climate talks in Madrid, we came under fire for attempting to fiddle with the books to hide increased emissions. Australia is not just dragging its feet on climate change; it is actively making things worse. Internationally, there is a sense that we are getting what we deserve. Months into the crisis, defense force reserves are finally being deployed to provide muchneeded logistical support to firefighters. But Morrison still must answer for all the delays, for failing to communicate with rural fire services and for his government’s continued advocacy of fossil fuels. “This is not about any one individual,” Morrison said when asked about the public anger he is facing, and in a way he is right. Experts have been warning governments about the effects of warming for at least 30 years, and few in Canberra — or in Washington, or in so many other centers of power around the world — have listened. But no longer can the climate emergency be posed as a problem of the future. We are moving beyond denial and into a hazy twilight of blame. n

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KLMNO Weekly

Five Myths

Diabetes BY

H EATHER F ERRIS

More than 100 million U.S. adults live with diabetes or prediabetes, making the disease one of the most serious health risks in modern society: It is a major cause of blindness, amputation and kidney failure, as well as a contributor to heart disease and stroke. Yet despite its prevalence and severity, misconceptions about diabetes abound. Here are five of the most persistent. Myth No. 1 Only kids get Type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is still often called “juvenile diabetes,” pegging it as an affliction of children and teenagers. But of the approximately 64,000 Type 1 cases diagnosed in the United States each year, less than half — about 27,000 — occur in people under the age of 20, typically when they are between 10 and 14. The other 37,000 are adults between 20 and 65. And it’s not unheard of for someone in their 70s or 80s to receive a new diagnosis. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that causes a person’s body to attack its pancreas, destroying its ability to produce insulin, a hormone that regulates the processing of glucose. The only way to treat it is with insulin injections or an insulin pump. (With Type 2 diabetes, patients generate insulin but are resistant to its effects.) Myth No. 2 ‘Walmart insulin’ is just as good as the expensive kind. A vial of Levemir, one of the newer insulins, retails for about $380, and many people need more than one vial per month. In September, Minnesota state Rep. Jeremy Munson posted a video to Facebook showing himself purchasing a vial of insulin at Walmart for $24.88. “There’s affordable options out there,” he said. But the insulins sold at Walmart are not the same as the

modern insulins that people with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes rely on. Over-the-counter insulin has been around since the 1980s, when scientists first learned to program bacteria to produce human insulin. But using them safely requires an incredibly strict diet and exercise regimen. There are more than a halfdozen brands of modern insulins introduced in the 1990s and 2000s. These allow patients to eat late or skip a meal with fewer episodes of dangerous — and potentially fatal — low blood sugar. They’re infinitely more forgiving when you’re trying to live a normal life. Myth No. 3 Eating sugar gives you diabetes. Because monitoring sugar levels plays such an important role in managing diabetes, many people assume that sugar is also its cause. But as an autoimmune disorder, Type 1 diabetes develops as a result of genetic risk and an unclear trigger; it’s not caused by eating sugar — or anything else. The story for Type 2 diabetes is a bit more complicated. Obesity and inactivity play huge roles in the risk for the disease, but genetics are also a factor, even more so than for Type 1. Many people eat diets laden with fat and sugar but never develop diabetes because their pancreases can produce large amounts of insulin on demand; others are not so lucky. Too much sugar, per se, won’t give you

FREDERICK FLORIN/Agence France-Presse/getty Images

People with Type 1 diabetes must control their blood sugar with insulin, such as from these insulin pens. Reports claiming that patients have found other treatments or “cures” should be met with skepticism.

diabetes. But it can make you overweight, increasing your risk for Type 2. Myth No. 4 You can’t eat sweet foods if you have diabetes. Granted, eating too many sweets isn’t a great idea for someone with diabetes — but it isn’t good for someone without diabetes, either. People with Type 1 or Type 2 already pay close attention to their blood sugar levels, monitoring such things as sugar intake, carbohydrate content, total calories, exercise levels and insulin administration. When you do all that, the occasional large dessert is fine. If you take insulin, you’ll take a bit more to offset the chocolate cake. If you take medication, like metformin, to manage Type 2, a walk around the block might suffice. It turns out that fat, not sugar, is what really makes blood sugars hard to control for many people with diabetes. In my clinic, when I see a high blood-sugar reading from a patient whose numbers are usually in the normal range, my first question is whether they

had pizza or Chinese takeout the night before. Myth No. 5 You can treat Type 1 diabetes without insulin. When you hear of someone with Type 1 who does not need insulin, invariably they have either just been diagnosed — or have been misdiagnosed or are confused about which type they have. People with newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes can sometimes come off insulin soon after their blood sugars are brought under control. This is what’s known as a “honeymoon period,” in which patients can keep their symptoms largely in check through diet, weight loss and exercise. In some cases, the honeymoon period can last months or (rarely) years. But this isn’t a reversal of their condition: The patients have just reduced the burden placed on their weakened pancreas. n Ferris is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia. She cares for patients with diabetes and studies the impact of diabetes on the brain.

SUNDAY, January, 12, 2020

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