The Washington Post National Weekly - June 30, 2019

SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 2019

.

IN COLLABORATION WITH

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY

WEDDING BILLS ARE RINGING

As couples toss out tradition, the price tag on marital bliss has grown higher PAGE 12

2 SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 2019

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019 3

KLMNO WEEKLY

THE FIX

The court’s split decisions BY

A ARON B LAKE

T

he Supreme Court issued two longawaited decisions this past week involving how the government counts people and draws legislative districts around them. And for both major political parties, there was something to cheer and jeer.

Democrats and liberal activists bemoaned the court’s precedent-setting ruling that it should not weigh in on partisan gerrymandering. This effectively allows politicians to gerrymander away, as long as the gerrymanders aren’t racial in nature and the state courts don’t reject them. Many quickly labeled this decision an attack on democracy itself.

Meanwhile, Republicans, including President Trump, were aghast that the new 5-to-4 conservative Supreme Court majority would halt the administration’s census citizenship question. The decision both drives at the heart of Republican concerns about illegal immigration and could deprive the party of a gamechanging new gerrymandering tool.

But while there are certainly winners and losers in the rulings near term, all hope is not lost for either side over the long haul.

For now, an open season on political gerrymandering will very likely benefit Republicans.

They still control the entire government in 22 states, compared with just 14 for Democrats.

But the GOP’s edge is considerably smaller than it was after 2010, when it controlled the redrawing of about four times as many congressional districts as Democrats. By winning governor’s races, Democrats have gained a seat at the redistricting table in three big states the GOP controlled back then: Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

What’s more, while it’s easier for Republicans to gerrymander when they’re in control,

KLMNO WEEKLY

JIM YOUNG/REUTERS

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sided with the majority in both of Thursday’s big cases.

given Democratic voters are increasingly clustered in urban areas and Republican voters are more spread out, that doesn’t mean this will always be a practice that favors them.

Then there is the movement to rein in gerrymandering at the state level, which is proceeding apace. Voters in several states have already taken this power out of the hands of lawmakers.

None of this is to sound Pollyannaish about how much the GOP has to gain from this decision, which is more than Democrats. Nor is it intended to dismiss genuine good-government concerns about gerrymandering, which tend to be more plentiful on the political left.

But it’s worth placing things in context. And it’s likely that Republicans will benefit in fewer states in 2020 than in 2010, and potentially fewer than that moving forward.

As to the census citizenship question, this was unquestionably an embarrassing setback for the Trump administration and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. A 5-to-4 majority opin-

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2019 The Washington Post / Year 5, No. 38

ion, written by GOP appointee and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., essentially accused them of obscuring the true motivation for the question, which they have claimed was to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Roberts wrote that “the VRA enforcement rationale — the sole stated reason — seems to have been contrived.”

But the decision didn’t strike down the question but rather sent the case back to a lower court, where the administration can revise its justification. Some have argued that Roberts may have provided a road map for getting the question approved.

Basically, the argument is that Roberts issued a narrow opinion that acknowledged Ross’s broad discretion to add questions to the census, as long as he provides the actual reason(s) and not a pretext. Given the four conservative justices argued that Ross had almost complete authority to add census questions, it’s not difficult to see Roberts eventually joining with them and upholding the question.

Despite this very real possibility, some Trump allies such as American Conservative Union head Matt Schlapp went so far as to call for Roberts’s impeachment. So in response to a potentially momentary setback, the remedy is apparently to launch a doomed impeachment effort against the guy who could guide a conservative Supreme Court majority for decades to come? Sounds like smart politics.

Schlapp’s is an extreme reaction, if there ever was one. But it also encapsulates the tendency to over-read the implications of these decisions and predict too much. Activists can feel truly aggrieved that causes they believe in suffered setbacks, provided they actually believe the decisions were wrongly decided and not just inconvenient for their politics. But that doesn’t mean these decisions will necessarily change U.S. politics for good. n

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY CINEMA BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

4 8 10 12 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER Weddings are becoming more personal, but those changes may come with a price.

Photo by KATHERINE FREY of The Washington Post

SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 20193

4SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019

KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Debates shake up Democratic race

DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

The two-night event exposed Biden’s vulnerabilities and showed divides within the party M ATT V ISER in Miami BY

F

our hours of debating spread out over two nights has scrambled the Democratic presidential primary race, exposing decades-old racial wounds and ripping open newfound divisions that moved the next phase of the race into uncertain territory.

The high-profile debates in the most crowded presidential primary in history helped clarify the race in several ways. Former vice president Joe Biden, whose standing atop the polls has been the

defining characteristic of the first months of the primary, showed how fragile his lead has become as his record, his age and his ideology came under repeated attack in the second session.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) had the most personal and captivating performance, delivering a drumbeat of searing lines Thursday that eventually led her to confront Biden as she questioned his 1970s-era stance — one he still holds — opposing federally ordered busing as a way to integrate schools.

“And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was

part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said, at times looking directly at Biden as he gazed elsewhere. “And that little girl was me.”

In a single moment, it allowed Harris to showcase her ability to tap into minority and female voters, the two guiding forces of the Democratic base, while simultaneously casting Biden as deeply out of touch. Biden attempted to defend his record — “it’s a mischaracterization of my position across the board” — but also appeared flustered by a full-frontal

From left, Democratic candidates Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Kamala D. Harris, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Michael F. Bennet and Rep. Eric Swalwell take the stage Thursday during the second night of debates in Miami.

attack that was raw and personal.

“I’m the guy that extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years,” he said. “I’ve also argued very strongly that we, in fact, deal with the notion of denying people access to the ballot box. I agree that everybody, once they, in fact — anyway, my time is up. I’m sorry.”

In a primary campaign that began six months ago and has grown to 24 candidates, the two days of debate offered the clearest opportunity yet for voters to begin bringing some order to the sprawling field.

By luck of the draw, Wednesday’s initial debate of 10 candi-

4 SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 2019

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019 5

POLITICS

JIM WATSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

dates featured only one of the most popular — Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — and while heavy with policy prescriptions, did not often venture onto charged turf. Thursday’s debate featured the two finishers in nearly all national polls, Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), and by contrast was often rambunctious, with candidates speaking over one another, jumping in without being called upon, and begging moderators to recognize them.

Most of the 10 onstage Thursday used their speaking opportunities to cast a positive image, attempting to take full advantage of the largest audience before which they had ever appeared.

They invoked President Trump’s name 69 times over two nights, using him as a main mobilizer of Democratic discontent, but they also showcased vastly different theories of how to win the general election and very different assumptions as to which positions would make it difficult to defeat Trump.

Candidates like Biden, as well as Sen. Michael F. Bennet (Colo.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, cast themselves as pragmatic and willing to build a broad bipartisan coalition. Oth-

ers — particularly Warren and Sanders — called for a revolution that would disrupt current economic and political systems.

The candidates divided on issues that could prove problematic in a general election, such as whether they favored abolishing private insurance in favor of a government health-care plan.

Over two nights, four of the 20 candidates raised their hands in assent when asked if they favored a fully government-based system — Harris, Warren, Sanders and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio — while the rest favored some expansion of current medical coverage.

“There are a lot of politicians who say, ‘Oh, it’s just not possible.

We just can’t do it, have a lot of political reasons for this,’ ” Warren said. “What they’re really telling you is they just won’t fight for it. Well, health care is a basic human right, and I will fight for basic human rights.”

All 10 candidates on the second night said they would favor allowing undocumented immigrants access to a government health insurance plan, a more liberal position than that taken by President Barack Obama. (The question was not asked during

Wednesday’s debate.)

The shaking-out imposed on the race by the two-night event came in both positive and negative forms. Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and Obama administration Cabinet member who has struggled to gain attention, sought to capitalize on his speaking minutes Wednesday by touting a deep knowledge of policy, particularly on border issues; his positive reception has given his campaign hope that it will make a fresh impression on voters.

As he and Warren got off to strong starts Wednesday, one of their onstage challengers, former congressman Beto O’Rourke, struggled to demonstrate the energetic charisma that led him to burst onto the national stage last year during the U.S. Senate race in Texas.

On Thursday, as Harris took on Biden in a manner her campaign hopes will vault her into the top tier of candidates, another competitor, Sanders, campaigned on the same agenda as he did in 2016, albeit in a primary that is vastly more complicated.

While he argued that he was the first of the candidates to press on many liberal fronts, Sanders

From left, Democratic presidential hopefuls Julián Castro, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke were among the 10 candidates who appeared in the first night of the debates Wednesday.

KLMNO WEEKLY

took hits from challengers who said his democratic socialist ideology would backfire in a race against Trump.

“He has changed the game,” said Nina Turner, a co-chair of the Sanders campaign and a frequent surrogate. “He won the debate last night, and he won the debate tonight, because we’re having a conversation about his platform.”

Asked why voters might not instead vote for a younger candidate who has embraced Sanders’s ideas, she responded, “There’s a whole lot of copies, and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s easy for folks to come along in 2020, after he’s done all the heavy lifting.”

Along with political positioning, matters of race took on new urgency over the course of the two nights.

De Blasio talked about telling his son — who is biracial — that he needed to be cautious when dealing with police. Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) noted that he lived in a neighborhood that has experienced shootings.

But the biggest explosion came on Thursday night when Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, confronted Biden over his willingness to tout his work with segregationist senators, as well as his opposition to school busing.

Biden was one of the only candidates who did not come into the post-debate spin room to advocate for himself, leaving several surrogates to defend him.

Rep. Cedric L. Richmond, a co-chairman of Biden’s campaign, said he wasn’t certain about the entirety of Biden’s position on busing. But he suggested that it should not be a problem because voters should prioritize his partnership with Obama.

“All of that was out there when the first African American president of the United States decided to pick Joe Biden as his running mate and he had the vice president’s back every day of a week,” Richmond said. “So I’m not sure that voters are going back 40 years to a nuanced conversation to decide.”

Harris, however, had already moved on. Within hours of her onstage challenge to Biden, Tshirts were on sale on her campaign website featuring a picture of Harris as a child. The listing gave a name for the shirt: “That little girl was me.” n

SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 20195

6SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019

KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Court gives GOP gerrymandering win

BY R OBERT C OSTA AND J OHN W AGNER

D

emocrats confronted a political thunder clap after the Supreme Court’s ruling that partisan gerrymandering issues are beyond the reach of federal courts, sparking outrage among party leaders and giving new urgency to their efforts to win back seats in state legislatures.

The court’s 5-to-4 decision on Thursday also electrified the 2020 presidential campaign, putting state-level power at the forefront of a Democratic primary season so far dominated by national issues.

Many presidential candidates argued that beating President Trump is no longer enough, and warned that Republicans could control the contours of electoral maps for generations unless the party finds a way to secure more state legislative majorities.

“Today, the Supreme Court refused to stop politicians rigging our democracy by writing election rules for their own benefit,” said former vice president Joe Biden. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (DMass.), another candidate, called the decision an “abomination.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (DConn.) said “the stakes are so much higher in the election of state legislatures because after 2020, they [Republicans] can redraw the lines without any real constitutional strictures or guardrails. The future of both congressional districts and state legislative lines will be decided for years to come. It’s hard to exaggerate how this is a crossroads election.”

Democrats were further motivated by the dissent of Justice Elena Kagan, calling her scathingly written, gravely delivered counter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s ruling a call to action.

“Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one,” Kagan said from the bench. “The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government.”

Democrats, however, face significant obstacles as they attempt

MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES

Decision sparks outrage among Democrats and adds urgency to 2020 elections at the state level to ramp up their political success in the states. After last year’s elections, Republicans hold complete control in 30 states, compared with just 18 states for Democrats, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Republicans are also highly organized at the state level and in bolstering Trump’s federal judicial nominees, with outside groups and donors committed to battling Democrats at every turn.

“Democrats are going to be very mobilized,” former South Carolina governor Jim Hodges (D) said in an interview. “You see that on the ground already in places like South Carolina,” an early voting state in the presidential primary, “and in states where there isn’t an independent commission for redistricting, you’re going to see a push for that and fairness to the top of the agenda.”

Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general who leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said Thursday that he and other Democratic

leaders are active on four fronts: litigation, reform efforts, electing candidates “who support fair maps,” and grass-roots advocacy.

Holder told reporters that “the Roberts court” has “undermined” the nation. “We have a partisan majority that has done lasting damage,” he said.

But he also offered a note of hope.

“Just because the Supreme Court says the Republicans can gerrymander doesn’t mean the people of this country have to live with that decision,” Holder said, adding that Democrats’ biggest challenge will be “trying to break up” the gerrymandering put in place in 2011.

Republicans were not sitting idle even as they celebrated the court’s decision. Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, an official with the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said that Republicans would “battle to protect our country from Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s plan to hijack our elections.”

Interns run to deliver news from decisions handed down by the Supreme Court on Thursday. The high court ruled Thursday that the Constitution does not bar partisan gerrymandering and the federal courts have no say over the issue.

“Democrats will double down on flipping state Supreme Courts and bring more lawsuits to be heard by friendly judges they helped to elect, just like they have already done in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and tried to do in Wisconsin,” Walker predicted.

While Roberts faced criticism from the right for the court’s decision Thursday to put on hold the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census form sent to every household, several leading Republican and right-wing voices said the GOP should concentrate on the gerrymandering decision since it’s far more politically consequential, in their view.

“Conservatives coiled to condemn [the] Chief Justice over citizenship question need to focus on this incredibly important, far reaching and absolutely correct decision,” commentator Hugh Hewitt said of gerrymandering.

The Supreme Court was considering a Republican-drawn map in North Carolina and a Democratic gerrymander in Maryland. The five conservative justices decided that federal courts do not have a role to play in determining whether gerrymandered districts are too extreme, giving the political party in control of a state great leeway to draw electoral maps to its benefit.

Democratic leaders who had hoped that federal courts would settle partisan gerrymandering issues have few options.

Challenging voting districts in state courts can also be difficult and deeply political since 38 states use elections as part of the process for choosing judges, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice.

“This decision pulls the plug on all litigation in the federal courts challenging partisan gerrymandering,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor and redistricting expert at New York University. The courts will continue to address racial gerrymandering issues, or the “one person, one vote” principle that seeks to ensure that voting districts across states are roughly equal in population. n

86

SUNDAY, June, 30,2019 2019 SUNDAY, JUNE 30,

KLMNO WEEKLY

NATION

Can’t-win climate challenge for Calif.

S COTT W ILSON in Mammoth Lakes, Calif.

BY

T

his early June morning is Boyd Shepler’s birthday, No. 66, and he is spending it in a classic California way: a few hours of skiing in a snowflake-filled morning, then a round of golf in the dry afternoon sun.

The snow here in the Sierra Nevada is epic, packed into a base that is more than double the historical average for early summer. Here on Mammoth Mountain, the ski lifts will be darunning into August. At lower altitudes, a spring of atmospheric rivers and hard rain has filled the state’s oncelanguishing reservoirs.

“The coverage at the top is as good as I have seen it in 30 years,” said Shepler, stoked after skiing Hangman’s Hollow in June for the first time in years before trading his waterproof pants for a pair of shorts and flip-flops. “We live for these summers up here.”

But the bounty of California’s have-it-both-ways climate has evolved into a can’t-win challenge, something former governor Jerry Brown called the “new abnormal.”

Awash in precious snow and water that will help meet the demands of the state’s 40 million residents, the wetness also is forcing California to confront an even greater threat of wildfire. The soaking spring nourishing the Jeffrey pines and sagebrush is giving way to a desert dry as soaring heat scorches the new growth into blankets of kindling.

At least eight wildfires have flared this month to the north and west of here, and the Bay Area hit record-high temperatures for early June. The utility company responsible for the state’s deadliest fire, which reduced the town of Paradise to ash last year, has begun preemptively shutting down power to tens of thousands of customers in fire-prone areas.

The shift to climate extremes also highlights years of inadequate forest management that has turned places such as the Inyo National Forest, which surrounds this mountain resort, into over-

MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

While wet winters buoy the state’s water supply and tourism, they also create more fuel for wildfires grown stands of fuel. Forest managers here are setting “controlled” fires months earlier than usual, and they have adopted plans that will allow vast stretches of state forest to burn if wildfires begin naturally.

The long-term goal is to return California forests to their conditions before 1850, when decades of European settlement culminated with the rapid population increase that accompanied the Gold Rush. What that means: Forests with far fewer trees.

The success of modern, aggressive fire suppression techniques has meant that forests, which once burned naturally, have for decades been prevented from doing so.

About 10 percent, or 500,000 acres, of Sierra forest now under federal management burned each year before 1850. Forest scientists say that is roughly the natural fuel quota that should be eliminated annually. But, in those same forests today, managers are clearing just 33,000 acres of fuel each year.

A century without fire The Inyo National Forest’s 1.9 million acres include the Sierra’s pine forests, steep canyons, expansive calderas and the highest peak in the Lower 48 states, Mount Whitney. There is no timber industry here in what is a rain shadow formed by the surrounding range.

“We are basically a forest on top of a desert,” said Eric Vane, the U.S. Forest Service’s vegetation planning manager for the northern Inyo.

Vane is 32 years old, a Michigan native, who has worked here for three years. Before that, he was in Stanislaus National Forest to the north where, unlike in the Inyo, a commercial timber industry thrived.

Inyo’s challenges are different — from its climate to its trees to its closer contact with a public that doesn’t always weigh the longterm goals of forest management against short-term challenges and inconveniences of controlled burns.

Firefighters start a controlled burn in the Inyo National Forest. Years of inadequate forest management have allowed the area to become overgrown.

Controlled fires are being set months earlier than usual, and plans allow vast stretches of state forest to burn if wildfires begin.

The Inyo is made up primarily of Jeffrey pine, a tree that has adapted to fire. Its bark is thick and reddish, and on those that existed before the Gold Rush, its horizontal branches begin far up the trunk. The trees shed their lower branches to prevent flames from climbing into their crowns.

Some stands here are a tangle of old and young pines, pale sage and bitter brush covering the small patches of ground between them.

This is unnatural, the bunching too close together to allow for healthy growth or the right allocation of water for all these straws.

“You read accounts from the mid-1800s, and people were taking horse and buggy through here,” Vane said, pointing at a stand so dense a hiker would have a hard time passing.

But, as the dirt road climbs and dips through the forest, signs of the last fire appear. Charred trunks, cut down by the forest service after the blaze, lie in haphazard piles.

In 2016, the Owens River Fire charred nearly 5,500 acres, about 700 of which burned here along the steep roadside. This was a “high-intensity” event because the flames reached into the tree canopy, spreading quickly through high branches rather than across the ground.

Over the next rise, a patch of blackened forest fills the valley before climbing along the canyon’s far wall toward the top of Bald Mountain. The trees here are black spikes, branchless.

“This was an area that had not seen fire in a hundred years, so all these dense patches were primed to burn at high severity,” Vane said. “The way this burned was an abnormality compared to how it would have a century ago.”

The severity of the state’s recent fire seasons, which have been longer and more intense than any in memory, prompted officials to update forest-management plans.

The one for Inyo had not been revised since 1988.

At the state level, all 175 fire districts have done the same.

Among the most significant measures adopted in some of the re-

97

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019 SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 2019

NATION vised plans is the designation of large tracks of forest as “let it burn” zones. In the three districts in the Sierras, the designation encompasses between 150,000 and 300,000 acres of forest that would be allowed to burn if a wildfire were to begin.

Lighting the forest on fire The readings are promising — light wind, blowing away from town, and humidity above 50 percent. Conditions auspicious enough to start a fire and, with much planning and dozens of well-trained men and women, control it.

On this June day, the forest service is going to burn 120 acres of the Inyo National Forest, an operation that would commonly wait until fall. But fire season seems to start — if it ends at all — earlier each year here.

“We want to keep this fire on the ground — scorch height, but no higher,” Jason Wingard, the burn boss, told his crew in the preignition briefing.

“What are we stressing most here?” asked Bren Townsend, a “holding team” leader assigned to keep the fire within its parameters.

“The wind,” Wingard answered.

The planning for even a burn of this modest size is painstaking and politically fraught. One misstep could turn a tool for wildfire prevention into a wildfire itself.

As a result, these burns are tiny bites of a large apple. California air quality rules limit prescribed burns to 200 acres a day, and even after extending the window for these operations, the goal for the year here is about 3,000 acres.

The crew breaks into groups — holding, ignition, water. Those who will be starting the fire with drip torches, each containing a mix of diesel and gasoline, huddle around the team leader who is sketching the contours of the slope in front of them in the dirt.

The strategy is to bring the fire down the hill, against the wind, and into the flats. The sage and bitter brush is the primary target, not the larger trees that, at least here, are spaced far enough apart to indicate a healthy forest.

The burn will take all day. But the weather holds, and after several hours, Wingard is pleased with the fire’s course.

“It’s going about as well as it could be going,” he said. n

KLMNO WEEKLY

The first living Medal of Honor recipient for Iraq War BY

D AN L AMOTHE

I

n the middle of a pitched battle in Iraq came a call for help: Members of Staff Sgt. David Bellavia’s platoon of soldiers were pinned down in a dark house under intense close-range machine-gun fire.

Bellavia stepped into a doorway and squeezed the trigger of his belt-fed M249 squad automatic weapon until it ran dry of ammunition. The Americans, including Bellavia, retreated from the house successfully into the night as insurgents continued to fire on them. But that was just the beginning of Bellavia’s valor on Nov. 10, 2004, according to Army accounts of the battle and those of veterans who served with him.

This past week, Bellavia, 43, of Lyndonville, N.Y., became the first living American to receive the Medal of Honor for actions in the nearly nine-year Iraq War. President Trump draped the award around his neck during a White House ceremony as friends and family members as well as 32 people who served with Bellavia in Iraq watched and then cheered.

Bellavia, who left the Army in 2005, is credited with braving enemy fire to free fellow soldiers from the kill zone, and reentering the house in the city of Fallujah to chase down and kill other insurgents, including one in hand-tohand combat with a knife.

“Alone in the dark, David killed four insurgents and seriously wounded a fifth, saving his soldiers and facing the enemies of civilization,” Trump said on Tuesday.

Bellavia, who was previously awarded the Silver Star for his actions that day, is among a group of service members who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan whose awards for valor were upgraded after a review launched by thenDefense Secretary Ashton B. Carter in 2016.

In March, on the basis of the same review, Army Staff Sgt. Travis Atkins was posthumously

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Retired Army Staff Sgt. David Bellavia, front, is congratulated after he received the Medal of Honor from President Trump on Tuesday.

awarded the Medal of Honor for smothering a grenade in Iraq in 2007 to save the lives of fellow soldiers. More than 100 awards have been upgraded.

The awarding of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest recognition for valor in combat, to a living recipient comes after years of frustration among veterans over the lack of such recognition.

How, they wondered, could no one be worthy of such recognition after all of the intense urban combat of Iraq?

In a meeting with reporters at the Pentagon on Monday, soldiers who fought alongside Bellavia credited him with saving their lives.

“He put himself in the line of that fire and laid down a base of fire, overwhelmed the enemy long enough for me to get myself and the members of my squad out,” said retired 1st Sgt. Colin Fitts, one of the soldiers pinned down in the house. “Were it not for David Bellavia, I wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

Bellavia was fighting in Operation Phantom Fury, in which more than 10,000 U.S. troops took back what had once been a city of more than 350,000 people from 3,000 to 4,000 deeply entrenched insurgents. The intense clash, commonly known as the Second Battle of

Fallujah, included scores of pointblank gun battles in house-tohouse fighting.

Col. Douglas Walter, Bellavia’s former company commander, said he nominated Bellavia for the Medal of Honor early in 2005.

Walter knew that senior military officials would scrutinize his recommendation, and “initially we weren’t sure what happened to it.”

Bellavia said Trump notified him late last year that he had been approved for an upgrade.

“I always felt that there was the opportunity to have it reevaluated and looked at, and obviously, apparently that did happen,” Walter said. “So regardless of the process, we’re sitting here today and we’re honoring a great soldier and a great American for some pretty incredible things.”

Bellavia has been a talk-show host in Buffalo and ran for Congress as a Republican. But he indicated Monday that he is now interested in helping the Army in some capacity to find the next generation of soldiers.

“Look, there is a million and five reasons why we are divided in this country,” he said. “I never cared what your skin color was, who you worshiped or who you loved. If you are willing to get shot at for me and my buddies, I will follow you, and I will lead you anywhere.” n

8

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019

COVER STORY

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes paying off the loan Amid growing demand for help financing nuptials, lenders are marketing products to brides and grooms

BY ABHA BHATTARAI

S

kyler Ramirez has a loan for his house, his car — and now his fiancee’s engagement ring.

The 26-year-old had already picked out the diamond solitaire from Tiffany & Co., when he happened upon an ad for wedding-related loans while he was checking his credit score on Credit Karma.

“I thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to be making a pretty sizable purchase,’" said Ramirez, a general contractor in Fort Myers, Fla., who proposed on Valentine’s Day. “I didn’t want to be using cash or pulling money from savings or investments accounts.”

It took about 15 minutes to get approval for the five-figure loan. At an interest rate of about 8 percent, it will take more than three years — and $300 a month — to pay it off. And it might not be the last loan he takes out as he prepares to get married.

Demand among Americans, who are already holding record levels of debt, for help financing weddings are giving rise to an

industry of personal loans marketed specifically to brides and grooms.

Online lenders say they are issuing up to four times as many “wedding loans” as they did a year ago, as they look to reach a fast-growing demographic: Couples who are picking up the tab for their own nuptials, either by choice or by necessity. Financial technology companies with snappy names like Prosper, Upstart and Earnest are promoting wedding-specific loans with interest rates as high as 30 percent to cash-strapped couples. The loans are often marketed as a way to fund extras like custom calligraphy, doughnut displays and “Instagram-worthy” venues, though some borrowers say they rely on the loans to fund their entire wedding.

“People are carrying more debt, they want to get married but don’t have the funds to do so,” said David Green, chief product officer at Earnest, a San Francisco-based online lender. “These

9

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019

PHOTOS BY KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST

loans are a way to thread the needle.”

Demand for wedding loans has quadrupled in the past year, he said, making it the company’s fastest-growing line of business. Couples borrow, on average, $16,000 and typically pay it off within three years. Interest rates range from about 7 percent to 18 percent, making it a cheaper option than many credit cards. (The company’s tagline: Inspired by Pinterest?

Make it happen with low interest.)

The popularity of these loans, experts say, comes amid a shift in how families are paying for weddings. There is less expectation, they said, that the bride’s parents will pick up the tab. Instead, both sets of parents, as well as grandparents, are increasingly contributing. The bride and groom are chipping in, too.

“Couples are getting married later, so they are more willing to pay,” said David Wood, president of the Association of Bridal

Consultants. “At the same time, their parents are older, they may be on a retirement income and not have the means to pay for the wedding either.”

The average cost of an American wedding is rising, according to financial advisers. At the same time, Americans have more student loan debt than ever before — nearly $1.5 trillion of it.

They are saving less and spending more on basics such as housing, food and transportation.

“What’s driving this growth? Weddings are getting more expensive and people are waiting longer to get married,” said Todd Nelson, director of strategic partnerships for LightStream, a lending division of SunTrust bank. “It used to be, generally speaking, the father of the bride was on the hook for paying for the wedding. That’s not necessarily the expectation anymore.”

So far this year the company has funded three times as many wedding loans as it did a year ago, Nelson said. LightStream

10 14

SUNDAY, June, 30,2019 2019 SUNDAY, JUNE 30,

KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

considers a combination of factors, including credit history, employment and income, when approving applicants for personal loans.

While borrowing itself is nothing new — credit cards and family members have funded weddings for years — financial advisers say these types of online loans take lending a step further, by directly targeting 20- and 30somethings on their computers. Ads for wedding loans, they say, have become commonplace on social media, as well as financial planning sites like Lending Tree, NerdWallet and LendEdu. LightStream’s online ads promise wedding loans with interest rates “as low as 5.74 percent.” Upstart, meanwhile, has a partnership with the wedding site the Knot, which frequently promotes its loans.

“Financial companies have become very good at making you feel okay about borrowing money,” said Roger Ma, a financial planner in New York. “In the end, though, they just want you to spend money you don’t have, and that’s never a good idea.”

As for Ramirez, he proposed on Valentine’s Day during a trip to Key West. (She said yes.)

The couple is now planning a November wedding for 200 guests, though they have yet to decide exactly who will pay for it, or how.

“We’re asking family members — moms, dad, grandparents — if they can help,” Ramirez said. “But depending on what happens, we might be back for another loan.”

When Mary Naklicki got married in 1977, her parents paid $10 per person for her reception. Naklicki may have to pay 11 times that for her daughter’s November wedding.

“There’s so much more to pay for now,” said Naklicki, 62, who lives in Millsboro, Del. “These kids have photo booths and videographers. There was none of that when I got married. I paid for my gown, flowers and the photographer and that was it.”

Naklicki and her husband recently took out a five-year, $10,000 loan from the online lender Upstart to pay for their daughter’s wedding at a local country club. They had just paid for a family trip to Disney World over Thanksgiving when they got word that their younger daughter’s boyfriend planned to propose.

“We said, oh gosh, that means she’s going to want to plan a wedding,” said Naklicki, who plans to retire from her job as a traffic coordinator for a manufacturing company in three years. “We’d just spent all this money and figured a loan was our best option.”

Financial planners say they’ve seen an uptick in clients who are tempted to take out loans to cover wedding costs. But, they say, they try to steer clients toward less expensive options, or to encourage them to put off the reception while they save.

“The problem is, you don’t want to rely on a personal loan for something that isn’t necessary — and there is nothing necessary about an expensive wedding,” said Stefanie O’Connell, a personal finance expert and author of “The Broke and Beautiful Life.” “Everything about weddings is discretionary, aside from

“These loans sound great when you’re planning your wedding, but afterward, I hear a lot of regret.”

Stefanie O’Connell, personal finance expert

what you pay the county clerk.”

O’Connell, who is getting married in August (and paying for the wedding in cash), said she also encourages couples to think about their long-term plans.

“You have to put it in context,” she said.

“You could spend $30,000 on a one-day celebration, or you could use it to put a down payment on a house. These loans sound great when you’re planning your wedding, but afterward, I hear a lot of regret.”

Brad Pritchett and David Chadd had hoped to pay for their wedding with cash. But about a month before their February nuptials, they realized they were $13,000 over budget.

“Quite frankly, we both have a taste level where we weren’t willing to compromise,” said Pritchett, 38, vice president of marketing for the American Heart Association. “It was important for us to have a great party to celebrate our love.”

He and Chadd, 27, took out a loan to cover

costs. The process itself was “shockingly easy,” he said.

“Neither of us talked to a person, ever,” said Pritchett, who also has student loans. “The money landed in our account, and we were like, ‘It feels like we just did something illegal.’

It was crazy.”

About 150 guests attended their wedding at an upscale hotel near Dallas. The grooms wore custom bow ties, and their dogs (also in bow ties) walked down the aisle with them.

There were confetti cannons and a surprise flash mob dance performance.

“It was just perfect,” Pritchett said. “We had the best time.”

The couple has set up automatic monthly payments to their lender, Prosper, and are hoping to pay off the two-year loan early.

Pritchett said he has no regrets.

“But,” he added, “there are times when we think: Maybe in another life, eloping doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.” n

11 15

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019 SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 2019

COVER STORY

Cakes are over.

Here comes the pie.

BY LAURA REILEY

M

illennials laid waste to paper napkins, put the final nails in golf’s coffin. And now, it appears, they’re in the process of killing wedding cake.

Three towering tiers of joy, rosettes clustered in filigreed buttercream bouquets. Like the marriage itself, it should stand the test of time, be sweet and tender, and everyone in attendance should sigh in the sheer rightness of it all. With rituals like the inexpert twoarmed slicing and the face smush, wedding cake is a sacrosanct capper to the ultimate day.

Unless it’s not.

Cakes, according to caterers and wedding experts, are out. Nearly a third of would-be newlyweds are opting for other sweet endings, according to experts like Los Angeles powercaterer Lulu Powers, who does weddings around the country. Cutting the cake puts a pause on the reception. The buzzwords these days are “interactional,” “grazing” and “fun.”

In cake’s stead? Cobbler carts and cookie bars with big apothecary jars of toppings.

Macaron displays, fruit pies or a waffle station.

Tiny desserts with little bourbon pairings.

Individual sweet treats served on the dance

“The pivot usually has to do with a couple having a special experience that they want to convey through the dessert.”

Tiffany MacIsaac, pastry chef/owner of Buttercream Bakeshop

floor. In large measure, this trend is not cost-driven.

All desserts are made from similar building blocks of flour, sugar, butter and eggs — relatively cheap ingredients — so it’s the expertise and workmanship that ratchets up the price. And new trends in wedding sweets, from doughnut walls to Mason jar parfaits, are disseminated at lightning speed through Pinterest boards and Instagram feeds.

Hayley Richards, 27, will wed Cristin Barth, 32, on Nantucket on June 22, with Powers as their caterer. They opted for a different type of sweet.

“Something important for us is just doing things a little differently,” Richards said. “We knew music was going to play a big role. We’re having East Coast Soul, an amazing sevenpiece band. The last thing we wanted to do is stop the party to have people watch us cut a cake.”

Barth explained their thought process about dessert: “We felt really strongly that after dinner we wanted to have everyone start the party, with a sweet that is super mobile.”

The answer was cake pops in different flavors, served in a yet-to-be-determined dramatic but fun way. “We got pushback from our families about keeping some traditions, but cake wasn’t one of them,” said Barth. “For a lot of our family and friends this is their first same-sex wedding. I want people to come away from it saying ‘What a great wedding,’ not, ‘What a great gay wedding.’ ” Matt Toigo and his bride-to-be Katie Hanley wanted something nontraditional for their wedding at Khimaira Farm, a converted goat

KLMNO WEEKLY

farm in Luray, Va., something that would go with barbecued brisket and mac ‘n’ cheese.

“It takes a lot of work to make a cake, and a lot of pressure,” Toigo explained. “We didn’t want one big thing, but rather something more fluid and fun for our guests that would be a better fit for a farm wedding.”

They’d been to Key West and eaten their share of Key lime pie, and talk of Key lime pie begot visions of a profusion of pies: strawberry rhubarb and apple, strawberry cream and winterberry, arrayed casually on a serve-yourself table. Sugar, flour and butter were put to new uses, with fruit making it a little healthier but a bit more dry-cleaning risky.

“The baker made one fancier, more ornate pie for us to cut,” Toigo said. “People ate a lot more dessert because they wanted to try different pies.”

Toigo says pie might have represented a cost savings.

“We paid $13 per pie and had 16 pies for a 100-person wedding. This came to $208 total and assuming eight slices per pie, this was only $1.63 per slice, so it came in cheaper than a cake.”

Tiffany MacIsaac, pastry chef/owner of Buttercream Bakeshop, a go-to wedding cake baker in Washington, D.C., said she personally hasn’t observed a significant decline in wedding cakes, but she says many people are opting to add croquembouche (stacked cream puffs) and macaron towers to traditional tiered cakes. They are getting smaller cakes, sized to feed only half the guests, supplementing with other tiny, stunning desserts (she cites Key lime pie bars and “cronies” with layers of cookie dough, Oreo and brownie).

Buttercream’s tiered wedding cakes start at $5.75 per slice and go up based on the intricacy of the design. For dessert tables, Buttercream suggests cake for 40 to 50 percent of guests and 1.5 to 2 pieces of mini desserts per person (most of which are between $1.95 to $3.50 each). So, for a wedding of 100 people, that’s $287.50 for cake and another $700 in mini dessert — so this strategy can cause the price to balloon.

MacIsaac says croquembouche can range from $4.50 to $7 per person, but cupcakes, at $3 to $3.50 each (customization is additional), can represent a budget-friendly option.

“The pivot usually has to do with a couple having a special experience that they want to convey through the dessert,” MacIsaac said.

“For example, perhaps a couple got engaged in Paris and therefore want a macaron tower featured at their wedding. There is also a certain aesthetic appeal to something beautiful, and bit outside the traditional box. Towers are lovely as well because they function as finger foods. The pieces are easy to eat with a cocktail in hand or while tearing up the dance floor.”

This fits precisely with the other big wedding catering trends: reflective of a more personal, autobiographical narrative; accommodating of dietary restrictions and individual food choices; less tradition-bound; and a whole lot more portable and interactive. n

12 16

SUNDAY, June, 30,2019 2019 SUNDAY, JUNE 30,

KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

F

or their November wedding, Ann Marie Amick and Michael Martin spent hours fine-tuning their registry. They requested steak knives and serving bowls, picture frames and pitchers.

And then, after some soul-searching, they added this: tickets to Harry Potter World.

“You get engaged and you’re like, ‘What do I do? What’s proper and what isn’t?’” said Amick, 31, a photographer in Brooklyn. “I literally Googled, ‘Is it in poor taste to ask for TSA pre-check?’" (Answer: No. She added it to her registry.)

The rules of wedding registries are changing. It’s been nearly a century since Marshall Field’s, the now-defunct department store chain, popularized the idea of buying preselected wedding gifts. For decades, Americans dutifully asked for — and bought — housewares, china, bedding and other household staples from retailers’ registries.

But today, 15 percent of 25- to 34-yearolds live together without marriage, up from 12 percent a decade ago, according to the census. That means they have less need for new towels, duvets or baking pans when they get married. Instead, they are registering for, among other things, honeymoons, home down payments and wedding expenses. Also on their wish lists: Funding for fertility treatments, help paying off student loans and, in some cases, contributions to their future children’s college funds.

Amick and Martin have been living together for almost three years, so after some requisite kitchen and bedding items, they quickly ran out of gifts they needed, or wanted, for their Brooklyn apartment. Although neither had planned to ask for cash, they ended up padding their registry with requests for round-trip tickets to the Philippines, Jet Ski rentals and a snorkeling adventure for two.

“Our home is pretty put together,” Amick said. “If we don’t get new bedding, it’s not the end of the world.”

Retailers, restaurants and start-ups are taking note. A single wedding registry can bring in tens of thousands of dollars in sales, and companies are increasingly thinking beyond kitchen gadgets and housewares in courting couples. Domino’s Pizza, REI and

Marrying millennials rethink registries

BY ABHA BHATTARAI

“If we don’t get new bedding, it’s not the end of the world.”

Ann Marie Amick, who is set to be wed in November

Walmart all offer wedding registries, as does Home Depot.

“The trends really reflect the demographic of people who are getting married today, which is millennials,” said Jennifer Spector, brand director for Zola, a wedding registry site that allows couples to ask for cash and experiences. “Couples are living together beforehand, they’re older and have more refined taste.”

That’s not to say brides and grooms are forgoing housewares all together. When they do ask for traditional gifts, they tend to be higher-ticket “upgrade” items, Spector said.

“The number-one gift on Zola is — and always will be — the KitchenAid mixer,” she said. “Number two? A $100 Airbnb gift card.”

Other popular items on the site include

gift cards for Uber and SoulCycle, as well as airlines and travel sites.

At Domino’s Pizza, registry orders bring in millions of dollars of business each year.

The company introduced the service two years ago as a “fun and surprising way” to reach its most loyal customers, spokeswoman Jenny Fouracre-Petko said. Since then, invitees have purchased more than 150,000 gifts, including the company’s most popular option, a “post-honeymoon adjustment to real life” package for $25.

The Domino’s registry came in handy for Tara and Nick Logothetis, who got married in December. The couple also created an Amazon registry, where they asked for more traditional items including a Kitchen-Aid mixer, as a well as a third registry for honeymoon funds. But after some thought, Tara Logothetis said she decided three registries was “overkill.” One had to go.

“When it came down to it, pizza won over the honeymoon fund,” said Tara, 31, a dental hygienist in Pennington, N.J. “Everyone thought it was very ‘us.’” And they enjoyed pizzas with tomatoes, onions and hot sauce — delivered to their hotel room during their honeymoon in Sedona, Ariz.

Tori Pelham and Shaun Durkan’s wedding registry, meanwhile, includes $1,200 worth of Airbnb gift cards — enough, they said, to fund six weekend getaways to Napa Valley or the beach. The couple, who are moving to San Francisco from Brooklyn later this year, have been living together for four years. They are also asking for contributions for a house down payment, a honeymoon in Greece and a service that will handle Pelham’s last-name change (valued at $69).

“My parents’ generation, my grandparents’ generation, they really want to buy you the sheets or the vacuum cleaner,” said Pelham, a 31-year-old interior designer. “But people our age, they understand that we’ve got a lot of stuff. Getting more stuff is meaningless.”

Although, there is some stuff she would like: The registry also includes confetti-patterned serving bowls, banana-print bedsheets and a gnome-shaped stool.

“Things that make life fun,” she said. “We still want some tradition.” n

13 SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 2019

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019 18

KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

The enduring popularity of Sherlock F ICTION

l

REVIEWED BY

M ICHAEL D IRDA

I

t’s been said that Sherlock Holmes is the most famous man who never lived and who, consequently, can never die. Just in the past decade, Holmes has repeatedly dazzled us with his deductions in blockbuster movies, two popular television series and dozens of new stories and novels. More than ever, enthusiastic devotees crowd exhibitions about the great detective, attend conventions in his honor and join “scion societies” of the revered Baker Street Irregulars, including the Red Circle of Washington.

However, given that “Elementary” is now on its final season, might Holmes’s caseload finally be growing lighter? Perhaps a little, though fans don’t need to worry about losing their Baker Street fix. This fall, for instance, Nicholas Meyer — whose 1974 novel, “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,” set the bar for later writers of Sherlockian pastiche — will bring out “The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols.” Aficionados can also consult any issue of the Baker Street Journal, which always allots several pages to recent books about Holmes and his world. Such as, you ask?

Edited by the eminent English Sherlockian Nicholas Utechin, “The Complete Paget Portfolio” (Gasogene) showcases — in the words of its subtitle — “Every Sherlock Holmes Illustration by Sidney Paget Reproduced Directly from ‘The Strand’ Magazine, Including the Surviving Original Artwork.”

These early depictions of Holmes are nearly as iconic as Dr. Watson’s accounts of his investigations. The lean face, aquiline nose, piercing eyes — all are here from the beginning. Sidney Paget reportedly modeled the detective after his brother Walter and a photograph of the latter makes that a near certainty. As it happens, both Pagets were artists — I own an edition of “Robinson Cru-

MIMOMY/ISTOCK

soe” beautifully illustrated by Walter Paget — and Sidney apparently got the Holmes commission through a mix-up: The Strand initially wanted Walter to do the art.

“The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes,” edited by Graeme Davis (Pegasus), features exploits of both the great detective’s predecessors — such as Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin — and his numerous literary progeny, including R. Austin Freeman’s scientific Dr. Thorndyke and Ernest Bramah’s blind Max Carrados.

Holmes authority Leslie S. Klinger opens the anthology with a generous background essay, after which Davis reprints a variety of excellent stories not already available in “The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes,” edited by Hugh Greene (followed by three companion volumes), and “Rivals of Sherlock Holmes,” edited by Alan K. Russell (followed by “More Rivals” of you know whom). My recommendation: Buy any and every collection you see titled

“The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.”

Last year, publishing’s debonair crime lord Otto Penzler inaugurated a uniform line of attractive hardbacks called the American Mystery Classics. Among the highlights of this season’s batch is H.F. Heard’s “A Taste for Honey,” in which a shrewd elderly gentleman named Mr. Mycroft, now retired to the country to keep bees, confronts an ingenious murderer. It’s a quick, briskly told tale, narrated by the self-centered and fussy Sidney Silchester, though without much mystery to it. Raymond Chandler, more accurately, called the book “a very clever thriller.”

As it is, any would-be Baker Street Irregular will enjoy detecting the bits of Holmesiana strewn throughout the narrative, starting with its opening sentence: “Someone has said that the countryside is really as grim as any big city.” (Compare “The Copper Beeches”: “It is my belief, Watson . . . that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a

more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”) What’s more, the book ends with a shocking irony almost certainly borrowed from the conclusion of Anatole France’s little masterpiece, “The Procurator of Judea.”

Sherlock Holmes has long invited affectionate parody. For instance, in one of Robert L. Fish’s hilarious accounts of Schlock Homes of Bagel Street, Watney notices that a disguised Homes is much shorter than his normal height, to which the detective replies, “Special shoes.” Terence Faherty’s “The True Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Annotated Edition” (Gasogene) can be just as ingeniously wacky. In its pages, we read Watson’s initial drafts of several celebrated cases, further enhanced with the doctor’s marginal notes to himself.

Thus, in the original opening of “The Red-Headed League,” Watson drops in at Baker Street and discovers Holmes with a client.

“Not being in the mood to listen to yet another improbable tale of woe (soften?), I attempted to slip away but Holmes dragged me back in. “ ‘Not so fast, Watson,’ he said in a whisper. ‘If I have to sit through this, so do you.’ ” Throughout, Faherty neatly evokes a much put-upon Watson, henpecked and terrified of his (rightly) jealous wife, the former Mary Morstan of “The Sign of Four.” We also learn that the world’s foremost detective dearly loves a pint, that his pub is the Needle and Thread, (giving new meaning to the expression, “Quick, Watson, the Needle!’), and that stories we thought we knew are actually quite sedate compared with the surreal madness of these head-spinning “true adventures.” n Dirda reviews books each Thursday in the Style section of The Washington Post.

14 20

SUNDAY, June, 30,2019 2019 SUNDAY, JUNE 30,

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

Megan Rapinoe isn’t here to make you comfortable JERRY BREWER is a sports columnist at The Washington Post.

It’s hard to keep count of all the polarizing ways that people describe Megan Rapinoe. The U.S. women’s soccer forward is a star, and she’s a pariah. She’s fun­loving, and she’s annoying. She’s exuberant, and she’s excessive. She’s a necessary voice, and she’s an irreverent troublemaker. She’s delightful, and she’s disgraceful. She’s essential to the U.S. team, and when she declines to sing “The Star­Spangled Banner” with her teammates, she’s inappropriate for our world­class ego. ¶ She’s America, too, by the way. Oh, she’s America. And there is no counter to that.

Rapinoe is just a person unafraid to express the good, bad and unflinchingly ugly in our diverse and complicated country, and that allows her to be a mirror.

The way you react to Rapinoe reflects an image of America. It can be depressing to see, but at least it is true. This is the point of her audacity, of her declaration that she is a “walking protest.” She forces you to care.

Love or hate her, celebrate with or root against her, dig or diss her colorful hairstyles. She’s still going to represent the United States and do so with athletic grace and grit.

She’s still the woman who scored two goals on penalty kicks to lead the U.S. team past Spain and into the World Cup quarterfinals. You will pay attention to her, and if you’re not too busy listening to your own voice, perhaps you will learn something.

So let’s add the two most accurate descriptions of Rapinoe: gifted and unavoidable. Her presence on this team makes her too good to be ignored. For the past 20 years, the U.S. women’s national team has been one of sports’ greatest forces for gender equality and female empowerment. The roster changes and the results vary, but a gold standard of performance remains.

Going back even before the

legendary 1999 squad, there has been a special combination that binds the program: sense of mission and embrace of individuality. Many believe there’s almost a mindless submission of self required to make a team work.

It’s the all-for-one, one-for-all theory. In reality, that decision is a conscious one, and the best teams remember that they are a group of individuals, not an easily homogenized creation.

It is easy to disagree with Rapinoe’s actions and declare her a bad teammate or a bad American. But her defiance exemplifies the U.S. women’s soccer tradition. This program was built on personality, distinct characters and outspokenness. It was built on trailblazing. And it was built, through excellence, on combating prejudiced views of what’s possible and what’s proper for female athletes. The ongoing fight for equal pay is one important example. Rapinoe is helping with that fight and waging some battles of her own against other types of injustice, including her mission to strengthen LGBTQ rights. Her stances don’t make her different from her teammates and a detriment to this great soccer program. They verify that she is a product of a revolutionary tradition.

LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Megan Rapinoe celebrates after scoring a goal for the U.S. team during its Women’s World Cup soccer match against Spain on Monday.

Inevitably, Rapinoe became a recipient of President Trump’s admonishment this past week for opting not to sing the national anthem with her teammates.

Athletes peacefully protesting during the anthem is his pet sports issue. Patriotism is a complex concept, but for many, it is a sacrilegious act to behave in any manner deemed improper during the anthem and before the American flag.

The topic is so uncomfortable, which is what Rapinoe wants.

After Colin Kaepernick began his kneeling protest three years ago, Rapinoe became the first prominent white or female athlete to do the same before a Seattle Reign match in September 2016.

In response to her protest, the National Women’s Soccer League and U.S. Soccer Federation have spelled out their policies and tried to curtail Rapinoe’s acts. But she has continued to express herself in various forms. Standing tightlipped during the anthem is essentially a compromise, but the image continues to look rebellious.

During the World Cup, the pride of country turns excessive and magnifies such a stance. As much as I love these international sporting events, they also make me feel queasy because of the potential for jingoism. There is no single way to be American.

Rapinoe isn’t anti-American for refusing to smile and sing through

her disappointment. She’s simply a disappointed American. But few ever ask why and listen to her concerns. Instead, they make ridiculous statements about waiting for a proper time to protest. When is the time right?

When no one’s paying attention?

When no one’s around to feel uncomfortable?

The point of civil disobedience is to make the ignoring stop.

For those who want Rapinoe to shut up and kick because she makes a good living and enjoys a level of freedom that other countries don’t have, perhaps Rapinoe should write “SORRY” into her hair the next time she wants to change her ’do. Society cannot advance if the fortunate declares selfishly: “I’ve got it pretty good. Best wishes to the rest of y’all.”

It takes a privileged person to speak to privilege. “You’ve got it good” shouldn’t be a pacifier. It should be a motivator to help others have it better. Rapinoe wants more for herself and for others, and that’s the kind of compassionate pursuit of success that should make you want to sing.

Disagree with her? Fine. But there she is, striving to add to our women’s soccer prestige. She’s America. Like her or not, Rapinoe represents us, and all of our spectacular complications.

She is a mirror, unflattering, uncomfortable. Unavoidable. n

15 SUNDAY, JUNE 30, 2019

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019 22

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

BY SCHOT FOR DE VOLKSKRANT [NETHERLANDS]

The toll of an erratic work schedule DANIEL SCHNEIDER AND KRISTEN HARKNETT Schneider is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley.

Harknett is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California at San Francisco.

Stacey, a single mother, was getting 30 hours a week when she first started working at a big-box store in the Bay Area, in early 2015. But her hours had grown erratic by the time we interviewed her, a few months later: 20 hours one week, 12 the next, then 12 again, and then only eight.

The following week was even worse: just four hours, and on a Saturday — meaning she’d need to pay for child care for her 8-year-old son.

When we talked with Stacey (a pseudonym, as required by the research-ethics rules we worked under), the single mother was making a little better than California’s minimum wage of $9, and she relied on ultra-highinterest payday loans to get through the slow periods.

The rallying cry for millions of workers is a $15-an-hour minimum wage. But in addition to low pay, erratic schedules are another bane of American workers, particularly in food service and retail: They interfere mightily with family life and are associated, our research finds, with poor sleep, psychological distress and lower levels of happiness.

It makes sense that unpredictable hours cause unhappiness, but until now there’s been no data to explore the question. Since 2016, through a

study called The Shift Project, we’ve been exploring the contours and consequences of just-in-time scheduling across the country.

We’ve surveyed 84,000 people, focusing on workers in 80 of the largest food-service companies and retail chains, because those sectors are notorious for their use of erratic schedules.

Unpredictable schedules make sense from the employer’s point of view, from a purely economic perspective: The point is to precisely align staffing with demand. But this approach has big costs in terms of employee welfare.

Our survey affirmed the scope of the problem. Only about one in five of the people we surveyed work a regular daytime shift.

About two-thirds of workers receive their weekly work schedule with less than two weeks’ notice, and one third get

BY MARGULIES

less than one week’s notice.

Sixteen percent get less than 72 hours’ notice — a scenario that makes it basically impossible to plan child care, family meals or homework time.

A particular onerous task demanded of retail and foodservice workers is to work a closing shift and then, immediately afterward, the opening shift (say, closing the store at 11 p.m. then returning to open a few hours later). That’s called a “clopening,” and half of our respondents said they’d worked one.

More than a quarter reported they’d been asked to be on call — meaning they set aside a block of time for the company but might not end up working or getting paid.

This kind of work exerts a toll.

Forty-six percent of the people in our sample at least some psychological distress (defined in the survey as nervousness, feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness, and a sense of being overwhelmed). That appears to be significantly higher than for the typical low-income worker, though precise comparisons are difficult. And our analysis of the data showed that the distress increased as notices of scheduled hours grew shorter, when workers had shifts

canceled with little notice, and when they worked “clopenings.”

Sixty-four percent of workers who had had shifts canceled reported psychological distress, for example, compared with 43 percent of those who did not.

The picture was similar with sleep. Seventy-four percent of our respondents reported “poor” or “fair” sleep — and the more irregular hours, the worse the reported sleep.

Based on the connection we identified between schedule uncertainty and psychological distress, we estimated what would happen if certain policies changed in a city or state currently lacking any schedule regulation. If companies were required to give at least 72 hours’ notice of a shift change, up from less than that, average rates of psychological distress would drop by 4.5 percentage points for the affected workers. Eliminating oncall work would reduce distress by an impressive 15 percentage points. Meanwhile, raising the minimum wage by $4 would cause distress to drop by only 2 percentage points.

We often hear calls to “make work pay,” but for workers’ lives to be manageable, employers — possibly with a strong push from lawmakers — also need to make work predictable. n

16

SUNDAY, June, 30, 2019

JOIN OUR LOYALTY PROGRAM EARN $5 OFF FOR EVERY $100 YOU SPEND

LARGEST SELECTION

EDIBLES • TOPICALS • CBD FLOWER • PRE-ROLLS & MORE craftwenatchee.com 1510 N. Wenatchee Ave. | 509-667-9999 | Open 8am - 8pm

21+

This product has intoxicating effects and may be habit forming. Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination, and judgment. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this product.

For use only by adults twenty-one and older. Keep out of the reach of children.