The Washington Post National Weekly - November 25, 2018

. IN. COLLABORATION SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018 IN COLLABORATION WITH SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018 WITH

ABCDE ABCDE NATIONALWEEKLY WEEKLY NATIONAL

Bulletproofboards boards Bulletproof andsecret secretsnipers snipers and School shootings fuel a $2.7 billion School shootings fuel a $2.7 billion campus safety industry PAGE PAGE 12 612 campus safety industry

Politics A more polarized electoral map 4 Nation Calif. fires displace pets 8 Books Top 10 for 2018 17

NOVEMBER 25, 2018 2 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018

3 SUNDAY, November, 25, 20183

KLMNO KLMNO WEEKLY WEEKLY

COURTS COURTS

Roberts takestakes a shota shot at Trump Roberts at Trump

BY R OBERT B ARNES

BY R OBERT B ARNES AND F ELICIA S ONMEZ AND F ELICIA S ONMEZ

States, they file their case in — almost — they States, theyAnd file ittheir case in — almost — they file their case in the 9th Circuit. means theirwhat caseyou in the an automatic loss no file matter do,9th no Circuit. And it means automatic loss no matter what you do, no matter how good your an case is.” hief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. directed case is.” hief at Justice John G. Roberts Jr. directed Trump added: “We matter will winhow thatgood caseyour in the a rare and pointed shot President Trump added: “We will win that case in the a rare and pointed shot at President Supreme Court of the United States.”

Trump this past week, defending the Supreme Court of the United States.” past week, defending the Lower courts have not been accommodating federal judiciary in theTrump wake ofthis Trump’s Lower courts not been accommodating federal judiciary to Trump’s efforts to crack down onhave illegal criticism of an “Obama judge” who ruledin the wake of Trump’s to Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal criticismattempt of an to “Obama immigration. They have temporarily blocked against the administration’s bar judge” who ruled They have temporarily blocked against theillegally administration’s attempt to bar Trump’s efforts to stripimmigration. funding from “sanctumigrants who cross the border from Trump’s efforts strip funding from “sanctumigrants who cross the border illegally from ary” cities and rescind temporary workto permits seeking asylum. ary” cities and rescind temporary work permits seekingjudges asylum. and deportation protections.

“We do not have Obama or Trump and last deportation protections.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump But the Supreme Court June upheld the judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts Butthose the Supreme Court last June upheld the judgesisoran Clinton judges,” Roberts president’s “travel ban” on from certain said in a statement. judges, “WhatBush we have president’s “travel ban” on those from certain in a statement.

Muslim-majority countries, in a 5-to-4 decision extraordinary group ofsaid dedicated judges doing“What we have is an Muslim-majority countries, in a 5-to-4 decision extraordinary of dedicated judges doing ROGELIO V. SOLIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS written by Roberts. He put aside comments their level best to do equal right group to those ROGELIO V. SOLIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

by Roberts. their level best to do equal rightRoberts to those that the president hadwritten made about MuslimsHe in put aside comments appearing before them.”

Justice said an independent judiciary that the president had made about Muslims in appearing before them.”

Justice said an independent judiciary ruling Trump had not exceeded his powers.

Delivered on Thanksgiving eve, Roberts “is something we should all beRoberts thankful for.” ruling Trump had not exceeded his powers.

Delivered eve, Roberts “is something we should all be“The thankful for.” issue before us is not whether to deadded: “That independent judiciaryonis Thanksgiving someissue the before us is not whether to deadded: “That judiciary is not somenounce the statements. It“The is instead signifiand “one party or one interest.” thing we should all be thankful for.” independent nation” nounce the statements. nation” not “one party one interest.” thing we should all be thankful for.” role is very clear: of those statements in reviewing a Presi-It is instead the signifi“Our We areand to interpret the orcance Supreme Court justices, and the chief in cance of those statements in reviewing a Presi“Our role is very clear: We are to interpret the Supreme Court justices, and the chief in dential directive, neutral on its face, addressing Constitution and laws of the United States, and particular, almost never issue statements on dential directive, neutral on its face, addressing Constitution of theaUnited particular, almost never issue statements onpolitical matterStates, withinand the core of executive responsito ensure that the branchesand act laws within news events. So it appeared Roberts was eager matter within not the core ensure that the political branches within news events.

Soasked it appeared Robertshe was eager bility. Inact doing so, we amust consider only of executive responsithem,” said.

“Thattojob obviously requires to counter Trump’s criticism when to bility. In doing so, webut must consider not only he branches. said. “That requires to counter Trump’s criticism when askedfrom to thethem,” the statements of a particular President, independence political Thejob obviously comment by the Associated Press.

The statethe statements of a particular President, but the political branches.

Theof the by the Associatedstory Press.ofThe also the authority Presidency itself.” the stateSupremeindependence Court wouldfrom be very ment did not mention comment the president. also the authority of the storyofof the Supreme Court Roberts would be ment did not mention the president. hasvery not commented on Trump be-Presidency itself.” different without that sort independence.”

Trump responded on Twitter, saying, “Sorry has not commented on Trump bethat sort offore, independence.”

Trump on Twitter, saying, even though duringRoberts the campaign Trump Trump on“Sorry Tuesday different had toldwithout reporters outChief Justice John Roberts, but responded you do indeed evena though during Tuesday had told Justice John Roberts, side but you do indeed as a reporters candidateoutcalled fore, Roberts “disaster” be- the campaign Trump the White House thatTrump he wason “going to put have ‘Obama judges,’ Chief and they have a much a candidate called Roberts a “disaster” beside thethe White House that hecause was “going putwithasthe ‘Obama judges,’ and they have complaint” a much against of his to vote court’s liberals to in a major federal judge different point of viewhave than the people who are cause of his vote with the court’s liberals to in a major complaint” against the federal judge point of view than the who areblocked uphold the Affordable Care Act,. whopeople temporarily his administration charged with the safetydifferent of our country.” theand Affordable Care Act,. who temporarily blocked his Liberals administration chargeddefender with the safety country.” who followuphold the court are often from denying asylum to migrants who illegally Roberts is an aggressive of theof our Liberals who follow the court and are often from denying asylum to migrants who illegallyapplauded Roberts is anworries aggressivecross defender of the border. critical of Roberts his statement. the southern judiciary, and has frequently expressed critical Roberts applauded his statement. cross the southern border. judiciary, and has frequently expressed worries “A remarkable rebuke of aofPresident by a U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar, who serves in about attacks on its impartiality, whether they rebuke U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar, serves about attacks on made its impartiality, whetherDistrict they of California, Chiefwho Justice — in offhand,“AI remarkable can’t think of any of a President by a the Northern ruled Moncome from the left or the right.

He had it Chief Justice — offhand, the Northern District of California, ruled Mon- even come from the left or the right. had madelaw it clearly historical analogy close.

But then again, I can’t think of any dayHe that federal states that migrants clear last month that he felt the recent partisan historical even close. But then again, day that federal clear last monthBrett that he partisan everythat daymigrants Trump breaches normsanalogy never before canrecent seek asylum anywhere on U.S. soil.law clearly states battle over the nomination of Justice M.felt the dayJustice TrumpRoberts breaches norms never before can seek asylum anywhere U.S. soil.Major kudosevery battle over theown nomination Justice erupted Brett M.about breached. to Chief the decision.

“This was on Kavanaugh had cast a shadow on his court. of Trump breached.

Major kudos to Chief Justice Roberts erupted about Kavanaughofhad cast a shadow his own court.And I’llTrump for doing“This the was right thing,” Georgetown law anon Obama judge. tell you what, it’s notthe decision.

At an event at the University Minnesota for doing rightn thing,” Georgetown law Obama judge. Trump And I’ll tellprofessor you what, it’s not At an event atRoberts the University Marty Lederman said inthe a tweet. goingoftoMinnesota happen likean this anymore,” just after Kavanaugh’s confirmation, professor Marty Lederman said in a tweet. n happen like this anymore,” Trump Robertsthat going said. “Everybody wants to to sue the United sought to assure thatjust theafter courtKavanaugh’s served “oneconfirmation, ©The Washington Post said. “Everybody that wants to sue the United sought to assure that the court served “one ©The Washington Post

C

C

LMNO KLMNO

CONTENTS

This publication was prepared by editors at The This publication was prepared Washington Post for printing and distribution by our by editors at The Washington Post All forarticles printingand and distribution by our partner publications across the country. partner publications across articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or onthe country. AllPOLITICS have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com andcolumns have been edited to fit this THE NATION and have been edited THE to fitWORLD this format. For questions orwashingtonpost.com comments regarding content, format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com.

If you have a COVER STORY weekly@washpost.com.

If youBOOKS have a question about printingplease quality,e-mail wish to subscribe, or question aboutplease printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, contact your INNOVATIONS would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department.

OPINION circulation department.PERSPECTIVE © 2018 The Washington Postlocal / Yearnewspaper’s 5, No. 7 © 2018 The Washington Post / Year 5, No. 7

WEEKLY WEEKLY

CONTENTS 4 8 10 12 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER Bullets stopped by ON THE COVER Bullets stopped by POLITICS 4 this armored classroom door, thisare armored classroom door, THEwhich NATION 8 costs up to $4,000, costs THElabeled WORLD 10 andwhich by the style caliber of up to $4,000, are labeled by the style and caliber of COVER STORY that 12 the weapon fired them.

Photo theThe weapon that fired them. Photo BOOKS 17 for

by CASSI ALEXANDRA

by CASSI ALEXANDRA for The INNOVATIONS Washington Post18 Washington Post OPINION 20 PERSPECTIVE 23

3 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018

SUNDAY, November, 25, 2018 20

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

Facebook’s Zuckerberg is no friend of the truth MARGARET SULLIVAN is the Washington Post’s media columnist.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once set out a bit of digital­world wisdom that became his company’s informal motto: “Move fast and break things.” ¶ After the past week’s developments, the 34­year­old should declare mis­ sion accomplished — and find something else to do for the next few decades. ¶ Because he’s shown that he’s incapable of leading the broken behemoth that is Facebook. ¶ Lead­ ers — capable leaders — don’t do what Zuckerberg has done in the face of disaster that they themselves have pre­ sided over.

They don’t hide and deny.

They don’t shift blame.

And they don’t insist on speaking in the worst kind of fuzzy corporate cliches.

Two stunning pieces of journalism show the scope of the problem, and how out of his depth Facebook’s chairman and CEO is.

The first, a major investigation by the New York Times, revealed that, under fire for allowing misinformation to spread on its platform, Facebook hired an opposition-research company to plant false stories in the conservative blogosphere. Some, for example, suggested that George Soros, the liberal philanthropist, was bankrolling anti-Facebook protesters. To put it more bluntly, Facebook enabled a smear campaign against its critics.

As Max Read pithily observed in New York magazine: “Fake news isn’t just a problem for Facebook. It’s also a solution!”

The second, by the great feature writer Eli Saslow in The Washington Post, focused on a particular blogger who makes a living inventing viral lies that spread — and are believed — on a Facebook page called America’s Last Line of Defense.

Together, these stories tell us

once again what we already knew: That Facebook is a rudderless ship sailing toward the apocalypse — and we’re all along for the ride.

Bad and telling as they are, the latest developments are only more of the same.

This is the same company — with the same leadership — that denied the now-established truth that misinformation deeply infected the 2016 presidential campaign. (“A pretty crazy idea,” was Zuckerberg’s feint at the time.)

“The same people are leading that company that have always led that company,” observed Sheera Frankel, one of the Times reporters, in an interview with Kara Swisher on MSNBC Sunday night.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, the latest insane revelations were completely predictable.

Some Facebook investors are calling — again, and more vehemently — for a change at the top. If Zuckerberg is to stay at the helm, they at least want him to give up his dual role as CEO and chairman. Step down as chairman and appoint an independent director to oversee

MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears before senators on April 10 in a hearing concerning controversies over data privacy.

the board.

“A company with Facebook’s massive reach and influence requires robust oversight and that can only be achieved through an independent chair who is empowered to provide critical checks on company leadership,” said one of these investors, Scott Stringer, the New York City comptroller, according to Business Insider.

Zuckerberg controls 60 percent of the company and can do pretty much whatever he wants. And he doesn’t like that idea.

But it’s the right one. At the very least, it’s a move in a sensible direction. If there was ever a company that needed vigorous checks and balances, it’s this one.

Facebook is a $40 billion global giant with almost unimaginable power. It now has 2 billion users worldwide.

And its leadership — perhaps understandably — has shown itself simply not up to the task of dealing with the explosion of growth since its founding in 2004 in Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room.

Zuckerberg seems to be reaching new lows, threatening to fire employees who speak to the news media. Considering the smarmy lip service that Facebook pays to “transparency,” that’s especially appalling.

He also, according to Wall Street Journal reporting, blamed his second-in-command, Sheryl Sandberg, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke last spring. (The British research firm gained access to the sensitive data of millions of Facebook users.)

Although Zuckerberg often says the right words (“I started this place, I run it. I’m responsible for what happened here”), his behind-the-scenes behavior tells another story: The buck never seems to stop with Zuckerberg, despite his immense and closely held power.

There is no good solution here.

Government regulation of socialmedia platforms has dire implications for free speech. And the notion that Facebook is going to somehow fix itself has been proved wrong time and time again.

But the status quo is unacceptable — and dangerous.

If Zuckerberg really wants to be “responsible for what happened here,” he will step aside as chairman and encourage some stringent internal oversight. And, as part of that, true transparency to the public and the press.

Facebook, whether it wants to admit it or not, is in serious crisis.

And its power is such that the crisis extends to everyone it touches — and beyond. n

4 22 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018

KLMNO WEEKLY

SUNDAY, November,25, 25, 2018 2018 21 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER

OPINIONS

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

BY JOE HELLER FOR THE GREEN BAY PRESS-GAZETTE

It’s A bipartisan time to replace deal on Nancy drug Pelosi prices KATHLEEN EZEKIEL RICE EMANUEL is achair Democrat of the Department who represents of Medical Ethics New York’s and 4th Health Congressional Policy at theDistrict in University the House. of This was written Pennsylvania. for The He served Washington in President Post.

Barack Obama’s White House from 2009 to 2011. This was written for The Washington Post.

How As this did month’s Democrats elections win back madethe clear, House voters majority? still care a lot about health We did care. it with And exceptional chief amongcandidates their concerns — including are exorbitantly a record high number drug of prices. women, Theas only well point as a of wave disagreement of veterans is and how people to bring of color. themWe down. did it in theOddly face ofenough, serioushowever, institutional conservatives obstacles such and liberals as gerrymandered might be closer districts, on this issue voter than suppression you expect. and an avalanche of special interest money aimed Oneat party maintaining is calling the for price statusnegotiations quo. between the federal government We now have andthe drug chance manufacturers; to tackle thethe problems other isthe calling Republican for Medicare majority to unilaterally ignored setfor prices. the past eight years. We now have the responsibility Which one is and thethe Democratic authority proposal, to hold President and which Trump one is and Republican? his administration accountable for their actions.

Counterintuitively, it is President And weTrump now have andthe Health and opportunity Human Services to show Secretary votersAlex that we Azar will who deliver have on proposed the promise federal of change price controls on which forwe drugs. campaigned.

Yes, For that’s many right: House Republicans Democrats, — the that means supposed supporting champions new ofleadership the free for market speaker — have of the proposed House. tying U.S. Let drug me prices be clear: to those This isn’t set by 16 personal. foreign countries, As the top what House Trump Democrat and Azar dubbed since 2003, an Rep. Nancy Pelosi “international (Calif.) has price done index.” great things Many forofthe these Democratic countriesParty have— and, whatmore conservatives importantly, dismiss for the as American “socialistic” people. health-care As a woman systems, in politics, including I respect in Britain, howCanada, she made history Sweden,16Finland years ago. andShe France. is a role And model in somefor ofwomen those countries, and girls all over governments the country. use costeffectiveness But I also recognize calculations thattomany set of their thedrug candidates prices. who Of course, won us this majority Republicans promised may never the people of their acknowledge districts that that they they endorse would

cost-effectiveness thresholds for support drug prices. someone Yet while newunveiling to lead our his proposal, Azar called it “more party in Washington.

If they fall victim radical”toand the “more pressure, revolutionary” than anything for intimidation and arm-twisting which Democrats Washington offered.is For infamous, those of it won’t us whojust were be accused a brokenofcampaign wanting promise. to create “death It couldpanels” very well in the cost Affordable Care Act, this isfrom as them their seats two years now. surreal as it gets.

Democrats, onweek, the other Over the past we’vehand, heard have long Pelosi proposed and herempowering allies make the same federal arguments government we hear to any time negotiate she isMedicare challenged.

Part Opposing D drug prices.

UnderNo a bill Rep. her is sexist. oneby has herLloyd experience Doggett (D-Tex.) or legislative that has secured 100 Democratic co-sponsors, if knowledge. there There is no is agreement truth, and fiction, on a fair to both price,ofthen those pharmaceutical points. manufacturers There are people receive whono oppose FDA Nancy marketing Pelosi exclusivity because she andisother a woman, manufacturers and they can are immediately sexist. I am not market one generic of them,versions nor is any of other the

BY SHENEMAN

drug.

Democrat I know who wants new These areI two different leadership. wantvery more women approaches, they thein in leadershipbut — in theshare House, same principle: government the Senate, in theThe White House, in needs to play a bigeverywhere. role in the private sector, regulating prices.is It is truedrug that Pelosi A cynic might say the and exceptionally experienced Republican proposal is only crass knowledgeable.

Of course, she is. political pandering, given thatone it But the idea that there is only was unveiled less person capable of than doingtwo thisweeks job before the midterm elections.

In in a caucus of 230-plus members the 2016 campaign, Trump is absurd. promised to do about It may also besomething true that our drug prices, and two years later, party lacks an obvious candidate for notsuccession, much has changed. but that is Prices a for symptom all brand-named of stagnant drugs leadership. increased After 8 percent 2010,inwhen the first ouryear partyoflost 63 Trump’s more than seats, ourpresidency leadership—team remained four timesthe thesame. rate ofAnd inflation in the and twice ratesome of other healtheight yearsthe since, of our care increases. most talented members, including An observant some whom skepticPelosi would had say groomed the Republican to succeed planher, is designed left our to fail.to Indeed, Republican ranks pursuethe other opportunities. proposal is structured to enrage both druganother companies and doctors Here’s truth.

— a sure way tostill kill blessed the proposal Democrats are with many beforeintelligent, it is enacted. talented Underleaders this who plan,are physicians ready and would able to beprovide paid a flat fee leadership regardless for of the strong thedrug Democratic price, while under Party and the the current paymentSome formula, they receive a country. are women.

Some are percentage people of(currently color. Some 6 percent) are young of the drug people. price.

Some are all of the above.

But we should not embrace the cynic’s perspective too quickly.

But one thing that they all First, theisRepublican plan on possess a fresh perspective demonstrates even how to lead thethat House. conservatives arethey feeling pressure And one thing all must

to regulate drugnear-certain prices. The confront is the ideological challenge is how retribution they will face for to regulate It is going to be daring tothem. challenge the current difficult forWhy Republicans hierarchy. bother to repudiate their confronting thepresident status quoand when stonewall on the issue over the you have such powerful forces next fewagainst years. Perhaps, withwho aligned you — those more than could strip 90 youpercent of yourof committee Democratic and Republican assignments, stymie your voters supporting regulation, fundraising or impede your a bipartisan compromise might of ability to deliver for the people emerge. your district?

Second, thehope. timing for In a word: regulation The Democratic is soonerParty thanhas most always people think. believed Given in the that power of pharmaceutical hope.

One of ourmanufacturers brightest stars keep raising well above actually ran aprices successful inflation andcampaign are poisedon tothe presidential introduce treatments pushing the idea. $1 Fear million andprice intimidation? tag, publicThose anger are is unlikely the tools tothat abate.

Republicans This will force the issue the top the 2020 have usedtoagain andofagain to campaign unless something advance their agenda.

Just ask the current meaningful occupant is done ofsooner. the White After the election, many in House.

Washington As Democrats will be look searching back at how for we issues wonthat ouranew Democratic House majority, House, a Republican Senate White let’s not forget whatand got the us here: A House can on A together. promise of work change. focus on the future.

Although Inspiring this policy those seems who like havea desperate ploy, it grown sicklate-campaign of the status quo and are alsodesperate signals something for new leadership.

A important: belief thatDrug tomorrow pricing can is one be of better those rare thanissues todaythat if weanimates set aside both parties, suggesting a voices politics-as-usual and let the consensus might be possible. This of the people be heard. is good notthings only for Thosenews, are the wepatients should andwant taxpayers for our all in ourbut nextalso House fracturednpolitical system. n speaker.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018 SUNDAY, November, 25, 2018

11 5

WORLD

KLMNO WEEKLY

Italy’s controversial welfare proposal B Y C HICO H ARLAN in Civitavecchia, Italy

F

or the thousands in this economically battered town who can’t find work, the local state-run employment center advertised one day a few weeks ago just a single job: for a part-time social worker who can fill in during somebody’s six-month maternity leave.

Recently, though, people have started walking into the center asking about something else — the welfare benefits, aimed at struggling and jobless Italians, planned by the country’s populist government.

The center’s director, Enrico Caricaterra, said staffers field questions about the policy almost every day. When will it start? How can one apply? And will it make a difference?

“If people are desperate, they will look for anything,” Caricaterra said.

Those planned benefits are a core component of Italy’s controversial proposal to salve, and maybe jump-start, one of the world’s most troubled developed economies. The plan is an antiausterity clarion call, and it has sparked a confrontation with the European Union.

Officials in Brussels say Italy is trying to defy European fiscal rules and recklessly spend money it doesn’t have. The E.U. cannot veto Italy’s plans, but in recent weeks Europe’s executive branch has applied as much pressure as it can, most recently calling for unprecedented financial sanctions.

Populist leaders in Rome counter that the norms of Europe haven’t worked for the euro zone’s third-largest economy — and that now it is time to upend them.

Italy’s new budget defies E.U. guidelines calling for heavily indebted countries to reduce their burden. The plan, which would pay for welfare programs, tax cuts and pension reforms, targets a budget deficit that is 2.4 percent of gross domestic product.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe

ANTONIO MASIELLO/GETTY IMAGES

E.U. and Rome clash over populist pledge for salve and possible jump-start to hurting economy Conte has said that the needs of Italians, “for once,” will come first.

In the current political climate, Italian leaders stand to gain by adopting an anti-E.U. stance. But Italy’s populists are responding to one of the underlying forces that helped sweep them into power: potent frustration about an economy that has all but forgotten how to grow.

While other once-troubled economies across the continent have rebounded, Italy’s economy remains smaller than it was at the turn of the century — a result, analysts say, of an aging population, some onerous regulations and low productivity, among other factors. The country has the euro zone’s third-highest unemployment rate, and legions of young people flee for jobs elsewhere in Europe and beyond.

During the past 10 years, accord-

ing to government data, the number of Italians living in absolute poverty has nearly tripled.

The new spending measures have proved popular with voters.

But the plan comes with significant peril. Italy is among the world’s most heavily indebted nations, analysts note. It is vowing to disregard a rule that was drawn up to prevent future European economic crises.

Markets have shown jitters.

Bond yields have risen, though they haven’t spiked to crisis levels. Some economists say Italy has increased the risk of a dangerous spiral — especially if the new spending doesn’t stimulate growth.

In a worst-case scenario, investors would start to sell off Italian bonds at a greater clip, worried the loans might not be repaid. The bonds would lose value. Italy’s interest rates would

Supporters of the left-leaning Five Star Movement rally last month in Rome. The party drew broad support in poorer regions with its “citizens’ income” welfare proposal.

rise. Italy would be forced to pay more and more to service its debt, sending ripples through banks across Europe and prompting lending, and growth, to shrivel.

If Italy’s debt becomes unsustainable, it’s unclear what would happen next, including whether Europe could marshal the political will to bail out a defiant member of the bloc. Any bailout deal would be tied to Italy accepting reforms — the very austerity measures that its government is now trying to spurn.

Italy has said it is committed to the common currency of the euro. The two parties that make up its government — the leftleaning Five Star Movement and the far-right League — have clashed over some aspects of running the country. But the parties’ leaders, Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, have spoken similarly about changing the nature of Europe from within and winning followers for their brands of populism.

Salvini, of the League, recently said that two top E.U. authorities had “ruined Europe and our country.” He said E.U. measures had “made Italy poor.”

“Salvini and Di Maio want to remain part of the euro zone without respecting the rules; that is the inherent contradiction in the position they are articulating,” said Mujtaba Rahman, the Eurasia Group’s managing director for Europe. “That is the contradiction at the heart of what the Italian government is doing today, and that is the fundamental problem for Europe.”

Europe has proved capable in the past of imposing its will on rebellious members, most notably Greece. The European Commission rejected Italy’s budget, saying it did not comply with E.U. rules. Its officials have said Italy is overestimating the growth that would stem from its spending.

On Wednesday the commission took the first step in E.U. disciplinary proceedings, which could result in fines. n ©The Washington Post

6 12

SUNDAY, November,25, 25, 2018 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER

COVER STORY

Pitching products as lifesavers B Y J OHN W OODROW C OX AND S TEVEN R ICH in Orlando

T

he expo had finally begun, and now hundreds of school administrators streamed into a sprawling, chandeliered ballroom where entrepreneurs awaited, each eager to explain why their product, above all others, was the one worth buying.

Waiters in white button-downs poured glasses of chardonnay and served meatballs wrapped with bacon. In one corner, guests posed with colorful boas and silly hats at a photo booth as a band played Jimmy Buffett covers to the rhythm of a steel drum. For a moment, the festive summer

scene, in a hotel 10 miles from Walt Disney World, masked what had brought them all there.

This was the thriving business of campus safety, an industry fueled by an overwhelmingly American form of violence: school shootings.

At one booth, two gray-haired men were selling a 300-pound ballistic whiteboard — adorned with adorable animal illustrations and pocked with five bullet holes — that cost more than $2,900.

“What we want to do is just to give the kids, the teachers, a chance,” one of them said.

“So they can buy a few minutes,” the other added.

Elsewhere at the July confer-

Billions are being spent to protect children from school shootings. Does any of it work? ence, vendors peddled tourniquets and pepper-ball guns, facial-recognition software and a security proposal that would turn former Special Operations officers into undercover teachers.

Threaded into every pitch, just five months after a Parkland, Fla., massacre, was the implication that their product or service would make students safer.

What few of the salespeople could offer, however, was proof.

Although school security has

This Orlando expo for school-security products had a record 105 vendors in July, 75 percent more than last year’s.

grown into a $2.7 billion market — an estimate that does not account for the billions more spent on armed campus police officers — little research has been done on which safety measures do and do not protect students from gun violence. Earlier this fall, The Washington Post sent surveys to every school in its database that had endured a shooting of some kind since the 2012 killings of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Conn., which prompted a surge of secu-

SUNDAY, November, 25, 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018

7 13

rity spending by districts across the country.

Of the 79 schools contacted, 34 provided answers, including Sandy Hook Elementary. Their responses to questions about what they learned — some brief, but many rich in detail — provide valuable insight from administrators in urban, suburban and rural districts who, as a group, have faced the full spectrum of campus gun violence: targeted, indiscriminate, accidental and self-inflicted.

When asked what, if anything, could have prevented the shootings at their schools, nearly half replied that there was nothing they could have done. Several,

enced gun violence consistently cited simple, well-established safety measures as most effective at minimizing harm: drills that teach rapid lockdown and evacuation strategies, doors that can be secured in seconds and resource officers, or other adults, who act quickly.

But fear has long dictated what schools invest in, and although campus shootings remain extremely rare, many superintendents are under intense pressure from parents to do something — anything — to make their kids safer. It was the nation’s renewed anxiety, after 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in February, that had drawn so many administrators to the National School Safety Conference at the Florida hotel, 200 miles north of Parkland.

Also there, hoping to capture some piece of the new spending, were 105 vendors, an all-time high for the expo and a 75 percent increase over the previous year.

“This is our first school conference that we’ve ever done,” said SAM Medical sales director Denise Ehlert, who, at one point that evening, knelt down and encouraged a 6-year-old girl to tighten a tourniquet on a woman’s arm as a way to demonstrate that anyone could do it.

“This is brand new. . . . This is our first show,” said Paul Noe, who had come to sell a high-tech, armored classroom door that, for the price of $4,000, he claimed could stop bullets, identify the weapon, photograph the shooter and notify police. The bright yellow one they’d put on display had been shot 57 times.

“We just released it in the past couple of months to be available to schools, and we’ve been obviously overwhelmed with interest,” said Monte Scott, who sells guns that fire balls packed with a potent pepper mixture meant to disable a shooter. Scott had just returned from training U.S. troops in Afghanistan on how to use the weapons in a combat zone.

Echoing a frequent refrain at the expo, Justin Kuhn said his own children, not money, led him to found his company, which produces an elaborate door-security and weapons-detection system.

Although Kuhn, who had previously invented a scraper blade and a car wax, acknowledged he did not know whether his new

CASSI ALEXANDRA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

however, emphasized the critical importance of their staffs developing deep, trusting relationships with students, who often hear about threats before teachers do.

Only one school suggested that any kind of safety technology might have made a difference.

Many had robust security plans already in place but still couldn’t stop the incidents.

In 2016, Utah’s Union Middle School had a surveillance system, external doors that could be accessed only with IDs and an armed policewoman, known as a resource officer, when a 14-yearold boy shot another student twice in the head during a confrontation outside the building

“Even if we would have had metal detectors, it would not have mattered.”

Jeffrey P. Haney, spokesman for Union Middle’s school district

just after classes ended.

“Even if we would have had metal detectors, it would not have mattered,” wrote Jeffrey P. Haney, district spokesman. “If we would have had armed guards at the entrance of the school, it would not have mattered. If we would have required students to have see-through backpacks and bags, it would not have mattered.”

The survey responses are consistent with a federally funded 2016 study by Johns Hopkins University that concluded there was “limited and conflicting evidence in the literature on the short- and long-term effectiveness of school safety technology.”

The schools that have experi-

8 14

SUNDAY, November,25, 25, 2018 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER

KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

product would have stopped the attack at Stoneman Douglas, he had still tried to leverage the bloodshed. Standing next to his company’s 2,500-pound aluminum-framed vestibule, he recalled a meeting in Indiana with one district’s head of school safety who had noted that the price tag for Kuhn’s entire system seemed steep.

“If you think $500,000 is expensive, go down to Parkland, Florida, and tell 17 people $500,000 is expensive. That’s $29,000 a kid,” Kuhn recalled saying. “Every person would pay $29,000 a kid to have their kid alive.”

B

y this spring, Huffman High in Birmingham, Ala., had, in security parlance, been “hardened,” a term that in recent years has migrated from anti-terrorism circles to school board meetings. Surveillance cameras were mounted inside and out, and Huffman’s 1,370 students were periodically checked for weapons, both with handheld and walkthrough metal detectors, administrators say. Three resource officers patrolled the hallways.

But none of those measures saved the life of Courtlin Arrington, a senior who was about to leave school one afternoon in March when a boy showing off a handgun unintentionally fired it, sending a round through the girl’s chest two months before her graduation.

How the weapon got into Huffman remains unclear — Arrington’s family has sued the district, limiting what administrators can say — but the incident highlights a theme that appears throughout the survey responses: No amount of investment in security can guarantee a school protection from gun violence.

Much of what can be done to prevent harm is beyond any school’s control because, in a country with more guns — nearly 400 million — than people, children are at risk of being shot no matter where they are. A 2016 study in the American Journal of Medicine found that, among high-income nations, 91 percent of children younger than 15 who were killed by gunfire lived in the United States.

But several administrators did point to specific steps that at least contained the attacks on their

RAJAH BOSE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Freeman High in Rockford, Wash., upgraded its cameras to high definition after last year’s shooting.

schools.

At Florida’s Forest High in April, for example, teachers and teens who had undergone safety training locked classroom doors and barricaded them with chairs and desks just seconds after realizing that a man with a shotgun was in the hallway. He fired through one door and wounded a student but surrendered shortly after failing to get inside.

A month later, at Dixon High in Illinois, resource officer Mark Dallas heard shots near the school gym, rushed toward the noise and in, an exchange of gunfire, struck the shooter, who was quickly arrested.

Seven of the 23 surveyed schools that had officers at the time of their shootings indicated that they played a direct role in limiting the harm done. Still, what Dallas did is exceedingly rare. The Post’s analysis identified just one other case over the past 19 years in which a resource officer gunned down an active shooter. (To put that in perspective, at least seven shootings in the same

period were halted by malfunctioning weapons or by the gunman’s inability to handle them.)

While the mere presence of the officers may deter some gun violence, The Post found that, in dozens of cases, it didn’t: Among the more than 225 incidents on campuses since 1999, at least 40 percent of the affected schools employed an officer.

Beyond armed security or any other particular safety measure, survey respondents emphasized that nothing was more important to minimizing the violence than preparation.

Last November, staff at Rancho Tehama Elementary, a school in rural Northern California, heard what sounded like gunshots and hustled the children outside into the building. All students and staff had locked down, something they regularly practiced, 48 seconds after a secretary called for it — and just 10 seconds before a man with an AR-15-style rifle reached the quad. The gunman, who had already killed five people during his rampage, fired more

than 100 rounds, shattering glass and tearing holes in walls.

He tried to enter classrooms and the main office, but all were secured. Six minutes after arriving, he gave up and left, taking his own life a short time later. One student, age 6, was wounded but survived.

The school’s security plan worked “flawlessly,” wrote Superintendent Richard Fitzpatrick, but that didn’t diminish the indignation he felt that his students and staff had suffered through the terror — and that so little had been to done ensure someone else couldn’t attempt to do the same thing, there or at any other American school.

The attacker, who had been stripped of his guns by a judge, had built the weapons he used with parts, many of which are readily available online.

Without what Fitzpatrick called “sensible gun control . . .

We are largely powerless from determined shooters with highcapacity, high-velocity, semiautomatic assault rifles.”

9 15

SUNDAY, November, 25, 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018

COVER STORY “The beauty of it is it’s all for the price of a Netflix subscription, so it’s really hard to argue with me about, ‘Well, it costs too much.”

Jordan Goudreau, whose business embeds former Special Ops agents inside schools

“Isn’t it scary that we literally have to go through this — that all of these vendors are here?”

Desiree Gant, wife of an assistant principal, while attending a campus safety expo

T

he idea for Jordan Goudreau’s business came to him in Puerto Rico, where he had traveled to work in private security in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Goudreau, a U.S. Army combat veteran, was making lots of money on the island, he said, but the new opportunity was too enticing to pass up.

“I saw Parkland, and I was like, ‘Well, nobody’s really tackling this, so I want to fix this,’ ” Goudreau explained at the expo in Florida, where the state legislature had just committed more than a quarter-billion dollars to school safety.

The solution, Goudreau concluded, was to embed former Special Operations agents, posing as teachers, inside schools. He argued that the benefits over resource officers were obvious.

First, because the children wouldn’t know who his guys really are, students would be more likely to open up, giving agents a chance to glean information that could expose a potential threat.

“He’s just a — he’s a cool shop teacher: ‘Hey, what’s up, fellas,’ ” said Goudreau, 42, envisioning a potential conversation with a child. “I go sit down with a kid who’s alone, playing ‘Dungeons and Dragons,’ and I just try to see whether there’s any problems.”

Second, Goudreau said, his men all thrive in combat and could quickly snipe a shooter.

“The beauty of it is it’s all for the price of a Netflix subscription, so it’s really hard to argue with me about, ‘Well, it costs too much.’

You can’t tell me that,” insisted Goudreau, hair buzzed and jaw square.

No schools had yet signed on for the program, and he still hadn’t worked out a number of the business plan’s precise details, but Goudreau was certain that he wanted to bill the parents of each student directly (for $8.99 a month) so his staff could remain independent from any district’s “chain of command.”

When the media relations liaison standing beside him at their booth suggested that, if necessary, they could go through school boards and accept government money, Goudreau cut him off.

“But we don’t want to. We don’t want that,” he said. “We want private money, because it’s faster.”

Among the many challenges educators face in trying to protect

Increased spending on school resource officers After the February shooting in Parkland, many school districts in Florida sharply increased the amount they spent per school year for armed officers.

ST. LUCIE COUNTY

HIGHLANDS COUNTY

$1.6M

$1.1M

$400K

Parkland shooting

’15-’16

$472K

’18-’19

’15-’16

SUWANNEE COUNTY

’18-’19 MADISON COUNTY

$396K $180K

$310K $121K

’15-’16

’18-’19

’15-’16 DESOTO COUNTY

UNION COUNTY

$249K $45K ’15-’16

’18-’19

’18-’19

$81K ’15-’16

Sources: Data provided by school districts and compiled by The Post

their students from harm is determining what product, or person, to trust.

As Home Depot and Walmart market $150 bulletproof backpacks to frightened parents, administrators are being inundated with pitches from entrepreneurs pushing new concepts that make grand promises. One superintendent who responded to the survey said that within hours of a shooting earlier this year, her inbox was “flooded from vendors with some pretty disrespectful and tacky statements: ‘had you had this . . .’; ‘if you had this . . .’ ” The industry is also rife with self-appointed experts and consultants who claim to know what

$206K

’18-’19 THE WASHINGTON POST

safety measures are most effective, but given that so little government or academic research has been done on what insulates students from on-campus gun violence, it’s enormously difficult for schools to reach conclusions based in fact.

For administrators at the expo, trying to understand which vendors were true authorities was especially tricky, in part because, like Goudreau, dozens had worked in other industries before pivoting to school security.

Joe Taylor, co-founder of Nightlock, created a residential door barricade 15 years ago after someone tried to break into his parents’ home. Back then, he never

KLMNO WEEKLY

envisioned producing a version for classrooms. Now, schools make up 95 percent of his business.

As he explained that the company had made the transition after being bombarded with requests following the Sandy Hook shooting, a man approached his booth.

“I just bought about $7,000 worth of these,” said Cas Gant, an assistant principal from a charter school in Panama City, Fla. Taylor noted that, at one point, his devices were back-ordered nearly two months.

“Right after the Parkland shooting —” he said, pausing.

“A surge?” asked Gant’s wife, Desiree.

“There was a big surge,” he said.

“But we’re finally caught up.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Anything to keep our babies safe.”

As the men continued discussing the door lock, Desiree looked around, taking in the scene. Her husband had attended school safety expos before, but this was her first.

“This is sad. I came in here with my mouth wide open,” she murmured. “Isn’t it scary that we literally have to go through this — that all of these vendors are here?”

Carl Manna, an assistant principal at another Florida high school, felt the same way as he wandered the room, though none of this was new to him.

At one booth, he paused to stare at a photo from Forest High showing the desks and chairs that had been stacked to the classroom’s ceiling to keep the gunman out. Months earlier, Manna had pretended to be an active shooter in a training video his school produced.

“That,” he said, “is what the room looked like after I left.”

T

he video opens with Manna, in jeans and a dark hoodie, stalking Branford High’s hallways. In his right hand, he holds a water pistol wrapped with black tape.

Manna, also the narrator, explains that the video would review “ALICE” training, a set of strategies developed by an Ohiobased company that teaches people how to respond to active shooters. The acronym stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. “The proper use of these five steps could save your

10 16

SUNDAY, November,25, 25, 2018 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER

KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

life,” he says, as the video illustrates a series of widely accepted approaches to staying safe in an active-shooter situation.

Then, at the 2:13 mark, a plastic Germ-X hand sanitizer bottle appears on the screen, followed by a 20-ounce Mountain Dew, a travel mug and an Adobe Photoshop hardcover textbook.

“Once you have locked and barricaded the door, quickly move to an area out of sight,” Manna says.

“Grab several items you can use to protect yourself.”

Seconds later, the video shows Manna and a disguised administrator at another high school each entering classrooms, their guns raised. When Manna walks in, he’s bombarded with flying bottles, books and a backpack before the teenagers rush him. In the other video, kids tackle the man to the floor directly beneath an American flag mounted to the wall.

This is what the ALICE Training Institute describes as “counter.”

The drills have grown in popularity in recent years, and many schools, including some of those surveyed, have credited its conventional lockdown and evacuation training with saving the lives of students and staff. But numerous ALICE critics — including consultants, school psychologists, safety experts and parents — have argued that teaching children to physically confront gunmen, under any circumstances, is dangerous and irresponsible.

“What if the person is ex-military or the person has police training, and you’re teaching the student to throw a can of green beans or attack?” asked Joe E. Carter, vice president of business development and marketing at United Educators, an insurance company that covers more than 800 K-12 schools around the country. “I haven’t seen any data out there — real data — that this is something that makes it safer.”

Representatives from ALICE, which was founded by a former police officer, insist that the counter strategies should be used as a last resort and that schools are responsible for deciding what’s suitable for their students. Colleen Lerch, a marketing specialist at the company, said their instructors recommend “SWARM” techniques — in which kids may gang tackle shooters — only to students

the shooter (e.g., hit the shooter with the book or rock, knock them down, etc.) again in a crisis situation, the ability to not accidentally hurt a classmate, the reality that unsuccessfully going on the attack might make that student a more likely target of the shooter.”

N

RAJAH BOSE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Superintendent Randy Russell checks camera feeds at Freeman High, which spent about $200,000 on new security after a deadly shooting.

who are at least 13 or 14 years old.

“At this age, it is statistically very high that the shooter will be the same age as potential victims.

A room full of 14 year old’s can easily control another 14 year old,” Lerch asserted in an email to The Post, though she provided no evidence to support either claim.

In fact, a third of shooters who attack middle and high schools are older than their victims, according to a Post analysis. Also, while The Post found that adults who were not members of law enforcement have subdued more than a dozen school shooters over the past 19 years — including on at least three campuses that underwent ALICE training — the company could not point to a single case in which students used its counter techniques to take down a gunman.

On multiple occasions, however, students who have confronted armed attackers, whether on purpose or accidentally, have been killed or wounded. Last year, a 15-year-old boy was shot to death at Freeman High, just outside Spokane in rural Rockford, Wash., after he tried to stop an armed student in the hallway.

Three months later, a 17-year-old was killed when he came upon a gunman in the bathroom who was readying an attack at Aztec High in New Mexico, and a 17year-old girl was wounded when she did the same thing at Alpine

High in Texas two years ago.

Malcolm Hines, head of safety for the Florida district where Manna participated in the activeshooter video, understood criticisms of the counter training but said he also suspected some parents would object if the kids weren’t taught how to defend themselves.

“This is an option for them to at least fight back,” said Hines, whose district has paid ALICE more than $7,500 since late last year.

In numerous ALICE training videos online, the plan always works to perfection: Students pelt the faux shooter with objects the moment he appears, then — without hesitation — several kids charge the intruder, easily bringing him to the ground before he fires a shot.

It’s ludicrous, critics say, to think that children would behave with such decisiveness and precision if they were facing a real gunman.

“There is no research/evidence . . . that teaching students to attack a shooter is either effective or safe,” Katherine C. Cowan, spokeswoman for the National Association of School Psychologists, wrote in a statement to The Post. “It presumes an ability to transform psychologically from a frightened kid to an attacker in the moment of crisis, the ability to successfully execute the attack on

icole Hockley, whose 6year-old son, Dylan, was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, concluded long ago that much of America looks at school safety the wrong way.

“It’s so much focus on imminent danger and what you do in the moment,” she said, “as opposed to what you do to stop it from happening in the first place.”

Hockley and her colleagues at Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit she co-founded, have argued that reforming gun laws would make a difference, but she knows that there are other, perhaps more attainable, ways to prevent harm, too. In March, her organization launched the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System, which allows users to privately submit safety concerns through a computer, phone or app.

Because many, if not most, shooters offer some indication of their intentions through comments to friends or online, Hockley has for years encouraged students to speak up if they’re aware of a potential threat. Often, though, kids said that they feared repercussions, a concern that the anonymity should alleviate.

The service, which is free and will be adopted by more than 650 districts by January, has already produced meaningful results.

At the start of this school year, the organization said, a tipster informed the crisis center that a student who might have access to guns had talked about shooting gay classmates. Staff immediately contacted local law enforcement and school district leaders, who intervened. In another case, someone reported that an eighthgrade friend was cutting herself and considering suicide. Sandy Hook Promise said the girl is now receiving treatment.

The system and others like it address what several of the surveyed schools said was the only thing that could have stopped the shootings on their campuses: a tip from someone who knew it might happen. n ©The Washington Post

119

SUNDAY, November, 25, 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018

NATION

KLMNO WEEKLY

NASA’s next Mars mission? A crater.

BY S ARAH K APLAN AND B EN G UARINO

I

n a search for ancient life on Mars, NASA will send its next rover to explore Jezero Crater — the site of a former delta and lake.

The rover, which is scheduled to launch in 2020, is equipped with a drilling system that can collect and store rock samples that contain clues to Mars’s ancient past. Once the samples are cached, NASA hopes to send follow-up missions to retrieve the samples and return them to Earth.

“Getting samples from this lake-delta system will revolutionize how we think about Mars and its ability to harbor life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science.

The landing site selection, announced this past Monday, came after years of research and days of fierce debate over the best spot to look for evidence of ancient life on an alien world. Among the alternatives being considered were Columbia Hills, an ancient hot spring that was explored by the now-defunct rover Spirit, and Northeast Syrtis, a network of ancient mesas that may have harbored underground water.

Ultimately, Zurbuchen said, Jezero was selected for the diversity of its terrain. Each type of rock at the site — from clays that could preserve signs of ancient organisms to volcanic rocks that hint at Mars’s planetary evolution — should help the rover achieve its two main science goals. First, to determine what the Red Planet’s environment was like deep in the past. And second, to figure out whether life ever got going there.

Mars 2020 project scientist Ken Farley described delta systems as “extremely good at preserving biosignatures.” On Earth, not only are these ecosystems rich in life but also headwater organisms swept downriver can be trapped in delta sediment.

“We want to seek evidence of possible ancient life on Mars,” Farley said. They do not expect to find anything alive. “Currently

NASA/WALLOPS/NASA/WALLOPS

A rover is set to be sent in 2020 to search for possible signs of life in an ancient dried-up delta the surface of Mars is too dry, too cold and has too much radiation for life as we know it to survive.”

Results from past missions have revealed that Mars was not always the desolate desert world we see today. Dormant volcanoes suggest it once boasted intense volcanic activity. And landforms like the dried-up delta at Jezero Crater demonstrate that liquid water existed on the surface — which means Mars may have had a thicker atmosphere to keep the water from boiling away.

Jezero Crater is the best place on Mars to probe that question, said Tim Goudge, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin who is one of the leading advocates for the site. Deltas are beloved by scientists because of the way they gather sediments from across a watershed and deposit them in layers, which eventually harden into rock. Many of the

most ancient fossils found on Earth come from this kind of environment.

If a microbe ever swam in Mars’s waterways, its organic remains may still be buried in the mudstones along the rim of Jezero Crater.

“Sedimentary rocks tell us the history of what’s been happening at a site,” Goudge said. “It’s recorded in the layers, and you can read them like a book.”

In a memo announcing his selection, Zurbuchen noted that Jezero offered opportunities for exploration after its initial mission, which will last 1.5 Martian years (or about 2.8 Earth years).

The crater is not far from an area known as Midway, which shares many characteristics with Northeast Syrtis. At a recent workshop to assess the potential landing sites, members of the project science team for Mars 2020 said that

A rocket launch on Oct. 4 was the first round of the Mars 2020 mission’s parachute-testing series.

an extended mission connecting Jezero to Midway might allow scientists to explore the best of both sites.

Jezero Crater is a more treacherous environment than the kinds NASA usually lands in. Often, landers have to arrive at what scientists jokingly refer to as a “parking lot” — a flat, featureless region — and then drive long distances to reach rocks of actual interest. But an innovative new technology called terrain relative navigation (TRN), which allows the spacecraft to compare images of the landscape beneath it to a map of known hazards, should make it possible for the rover to land safely.

Only about 40 percent of Mars missions have been successful.

And Mars 2020 is not a low-risk endeavor. There is no backup plan,” Zurbuchen said Monday.

Since TRN has never been deployed before, Zurbuchen asked engineers for an additional analysis of the technology. Without assurance that the technology will work as designed, the complex environment at Jezero might pose too high a risk for landing.

But Zurbuchen said he was happy with the progress on TRN so far.

Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, told reporters that this mission will define the next decade of Martian exploration. “The more we understand about the Mars environment, the better equipped we’re gonna be to send humans,” she said.

The launch window for Mars 2020 opens July 17, 2020, with an expected landing in February 2021. NASA plans to launch a mission in the late 2020s to collect the cached Jezero Crater samples, according to Zurbuchen. If the rendezvous on Mars succeeds, a returning spacecraft will make a delivery to Earth in the early 2030s.

“We’re not going to go to any other place any time soon,” Zurbuchen said. “Mars is the obvious place, after the moon, to extend our presence deeper and deeper into space.” n ©The Washington Post

12 18

SUNDAY, November,25, 25, 2018 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER

KLMNO WEEKLY

INNOVATIONS

On sunless farms, LEDs shine bright A DRIAN H IGGINS in Cincinnati BY

M

ike Zelkind stands at one end of what was once a shipping container and opens the door to the future.

Thousands of young collard greens are growing vigorously under a glow of pink-purple lamps in a scene that seems to have come from a sci-fi movie, or at least a NASA experiment. But Zelkind is at the helm of an earthbound enterprise. He is chief executive of 80 Acres Farms, with a plant factory in an uptown Cincinnati neighborhood where warehouses sit cheek by jowl with detached houses.

Since plants emerged on Earth, they have relied on the light of the sun to feed and grow through the process of photosynthesis.

But Zelkind is part of a radical shift in agriculture — decades in the making — in which plants can be grown commercially without a single sunbeam. A number of technological advances have made this possible, but none more so than innovations in LED lighting.

“What is sunlight from a plant’s perspective?” Zelkind asks. “It’s a bunch of photons.”

Diode lights, which work by passing a current between semiconductors, have come a long way since they showed up in calculator displays in the 1970s. Compared with other forms of electrical illumination, light-emitting diodes use less energy, give off little heat and can be manipulated to optimize plant growth.

In agricultural applications, LED lights are used in ways that seem to border on alchemy, changing how plants grow, when they flower, how they taste and even their levels of vitamins and antioxidants. The lights can also prolong their shelf life.

“People haven’t begun to think about the real impact of what we are doing,” says Zelkind, who is using light recipes to grow, for example, two types of basil from the same plant: sweeter ones for the grocery store and more pi-

PHOTOS BY MADDIE MCGARVEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Cutting-edge technology can alter how plants grow and taste quant versions for chefs.

For Zelkind, a former food company executive, his indoor farm and its leading-edge lighting change not just the way plants are grown but also the entire convoluted system of food production, pricing and distribution in the United States.

High-tech plant factories are sprouting across the United States and around the world. Entrepreneurs are drawn to the idea of disrupting the status quo, confronting climate change and playing with a suite of high-tech systems, not least the LED lights.

Indoor farming, in sum, is cool.

It has its critics, however, who see it as an agricultural sideshow unlikely to fulfill promises of feed-

ing a growing urbanized population.

Zelkind agrees that some of the expectations are unrealistic, but he offers an energetic pitch: He says his stacked shelves of crops are fresh, raised without pesticides and consumed locally within a day or two of harvest. They require a fraction of the land, water and fertilizers of greens raised in conventional agriculture. He doesn’t need varieties bred for disease resistance over flavor or plants genetically modified to handle the stresses of the field.

And his harvest isn’t shipped across the country in refrigerated trucks from farms vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

“We think climate change is

Grower Julie Flickner inspects kale at 80 Acres Farms in Cincinnati. Growing year-round, the vertical farm can produce 15 or more crops annually.

making it much more difficult for a lot of farms around the country, around the world,” he says, speaking from his office overlooking a demonstration kitchen for visiting chefs and others.

In addition to shaping the plants, LEDs allow speedy, yearround crop cycles. This permits Zelkind and his team of growers and technicians to produce 200,000 pounds of leafy greens, vine crops, herbs and microgreens annually in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse, an amount that would require 80 acres of farmland (hence the company’s name).

Zelkind says he can grow spinach, for example, in a quarter of the time it takes in a field and half the time in a greenhouse. Growing

13 19

SUNDAY, November, 25, 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018

INNOVATIONS

year-round, no matter the weather outside, he can produce 15 or more crops a year. “Then multiply that by the number of levels and you can see the productivity,” he said.

Zelkind and his business partner, 80 Acres President Tisha Livingston, acquired the abandoned warehouse, added two shipping containers and converted the interior into several growing zones with sophisticated environmental systems that constantly monitor and regulate temperature, humidity, air flow, carbon dioxide levels and crop health. Grown hydroponically, the plant roots are bathed in nutrient-rich water. The moisture and unused nutrients exhaled by the plants are recycled.

But it is the LED lighting that has changed the game. Conventional greenhouses have relied on high-pressure sodium lamps to supplement sunlight, but HPS lights can be ill-suited to solar-free farms because they consume far more power to produce the same light levels. They also throw off too much heat to place near young greens or another favored factory farm crop, microgreens. Greenhouses, still the bulk of enclosed

At 80 Acres, grower David Litvin, left, inspects vine crops under LED lights while farm operations tech Devon Brown prepares labels for packaging.

environment agriculture, are moving to a combination of HPS and LED lighting for supplemental lighting, though analysts see a time when they are lit by LEDs alone.

In the past three years, Zelkind says, LED lighting costs have halved, and their efficacy, or light energy, has more than doubled.

Production in the Cincinnati location began in December 2016.

In September, the company broke ground on the first phase of a major expansion 30 miles away in Hamilton, Ohio, that will eventually have three fully automated indoor farms totaling 150,000 square feet and a fourth for 30,000 square feet of vine crops in a converted factory. (The company also has indoor growing operations in Alabama, North Carolina and Arkansas, which acted as proving grounds for the technology.)

The visible spectrum is measured in minuscule wavelengths, shifting at one end from violetblue light through green to red at the other. For decades, scientists have known that photosynthesis is optimized within the red band, but plants also need blue lightwaves to prevent stretching and

enhance leaf color. A barely visible range beyond red, known as far red, promotes larger leaves, branching and flowering. With advances in LED technology, light recipes — determining the number of hours illuminated, the intensity of photons directed at plants and the mix of colors — can be finely tuned to each crop and even to each stage in a crop’s life.

Given the evolving nature of the technology and its enormous commercial potential, light manufacturers and universities, often in collaboration, are actively involved in research and development.

“We have a completely new era of research,” says Leo Marcelis, a horticulture professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Tweaking light recipes has allowed researchers to manipulate crops in a way never seen before. In the lab, chrysanthemums have been forced into bloom without the traditional practice of curtailing their daily exposure to daylight. This will allow growers to produce bigger plants in flower.

“It’s to do with playing around with the blue light at the right

KLMNO WEEKLY

moment of the day,” Marcelis says.

“Its internal clock is affected differently, so it doesn’t completely recognize it’s still day. There are so many amazing responses of the plant to the light.”

Although the permutations are still under study, the sun suddenly seems so analog. “The spectrum from sunlight isn’t necessarily the best or most desirable for plants,” says Erik Runkle, a plant scientist at Michigan State University. “I think we can produce a better plant” with LED lights, he says.

“The question becomes: Can you do it in a way that is cost-effective considering the cost of plants indoors?”

The answer seems to be yes.

LED light shipments to growers worldwide are expected to grow at an annual average rate of 32 percent until 2027, according to a market report by analysts with Navigant Research in Boulder, Colo. Shipments of LED lights will overtake those of legacy lights starting next year, says Krystal Maxwell, who wrote the report with Courtney Marshall.

Most of the growth will be as supplemental lighting in greenhouses, but vertical farms are seen as an alternative production system that will develop alongside greenhouses, not displace them, Marcelis says.

Zelkind declined to reveal his capital costs, but for start-up entrepreneurs, LED-driven vertical farms can be one of the most lucrative forms of agriculture.

“Based on manufacturers and growers I have talked to, that’s where the money is,” Marshall says.

Critics argue that a lot of the hype around indoor farming is unwarranted, saying it won’t fulfill promises of feeding an increasingly urbanized planet and reverse the environmental harm of industrialized agriculture, not least because most staples, such as corn, wheat and rice, cannot be grown viably indoors.

Also, to build enough indoor farms for millions, or billions, of people would be absurdly expensive.

Runkle says vertical farming “shouldn’t be considered as a way to solve most of our world’s food problems.” But it is a viable way of producing consistently high-quality, and high-value, greens and other plants year-round. n ©The Washington Post

814

SUNDAY, November, 25,2018 2018 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25,

KLMNO WEEKLY

NATION

After Calif. fires, getting pets home BY

A NGELA F RITZ

B

aylee Danz didn’t panic when she woke to the news of a wildfire nearby.

Fires came with the territory in this place she had lived all her life, at the intersection between mountainous national forests and populated Northern California towns. Until now, her family had been safe in Magalia, Calif., just north of Paradise.

Only a few hours later, she was fleeing from the deadliest blaze in state history with her mother, father and grandmother. Her neighbor’s house was already burning down. The Camp Fire was at their heels, and Danz said she sobbed from loss and regret. Not only was she about to lose her childhood home, but she also couldn’t find her cats, Coco and Pebbles, before they had to leave.

“I didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation until I saw the flames,” she said, “and by then, it was too late.”

Nearly 10,000 homes around Paradise and Magalia have been destroyed since the Camp Fire ignited early Nov. 8. The fire spread so fast, people barely had time to save themselves, let alone their pets.

First responders have carried thousands of injured animals out of the ashes to emergency veterinary hospitals.

Many of them were found sitting in the smoldering rubble of their former homes, burned and dazed.

At VCA Valley Oak Veterinary Center in Chico, Calif., the staff canceled regular appointments so doctors could focus on wildfire victims. Hundreds of pets, mostly cats, were dropped off over the course of five days.

“We’ve run out of space,” said Daniel Gebhart, the co-medical director at Valley Oak. Injuries include smoke inhalation, dehydration and severe burns, Gebhart said. The animals in the worst condition, with thirddegree burns all over their bodies, have had to be euthanized. Fortunately, the vast majority of the animals that have come through

MASON TRINCA/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Vets, rescue groups, volunteers use social media to reunite animal survivors with their owners Valley Oak’s door have been saved, Gebhart said.

The Small Animal Clinic at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine took in 32 cats with burn-related injuries over a two-day period, according to the clinic’s chief of emergency services, Steven Epstein.

“Most of the injuries are related to actual burns, mainly to their feet,” Epstein said. “A lot of foot pad injuries that take two to three weeks to heal.”

Their ear tips and faces also have been singed or even burned down to the skin in many cases.

There might be lower-airway disease if they were breathing toxic gases. Some come in with burns in their nasal cavities or their mouths if they were surrounded by fire, which has another effect, Epstein says. “They need feeding tubes because they don’t want to eat.”

Emergency room doctors often say human burn victims are the most difficult to care for because of the agony the injuries cause for the patient. Epstein said it’s similar for veterinarians.

First-degree burns might take only a few days to heal, he said.

More severe burns take weeks to months.

“My staff are very emotional right now,” Gebhart said. They are stressed and fatigued, but caring for the community’s animals is “the most important thing we can do.”

Of the nearly 2,000 animals the North Valley Animal Disaster Group has taken into its shelters, most have been cats. But there have been hundreds of dogs, rabbits and chickens and dozens of larger animals such as horses, goats, sheep and cows.

Then comes an equally difficult task: connecting injured pets with their owners.

Dan Sauvageau takes in stray dogs from evacuated homes in Paradise, Calif.

Lucky animals have microchips, tiny implants that, when scanned, display their owners’ contact information. Without microchips or tags, the identification process can be difficult because of the nature of the injuries. Whiskers are singed off. Ears are painfully burned at the edges. What fur is left is shaved to facilitate treatment. Some could be unrecognizable.

Vets, rescue groups and volunteers are using social media to reunite pets with their humans.

Facebook groups have launched since the wildfire started with the sole purpose of reconnecting Camp Fire survivors with their cats and dogs.

Danz shared photos of Coco and Pebbles on her personal Facebook page. “If anyone sees them, please contact me,” she wrote.

Soon she had a small army of strangers and friends searching for her cats in photos tagged “found” — dozens of pets with bandaged paws, cone collars, whiskers burned down to nubs.

“One thing I’ve noticed in this tragedy is the kindness of others, even strangers,” Danz said. “People I didn’t even know would comment on my posts. I had this whole invisible team looking for my cats.”

A good Samaritan found Coco on the UC Davis Facebook page.

Her paws were burned in the fire, and three were still wrapped when Danz saw her Thursday. An animal control rescue team found Coco three streets away from her former home.

“She is in good condition, though,” Danz said. “She’s eating and loves to be petted.”

Pebbles is still missing, but she’s alive. Someone found her stalking around the rubble of Danz’s former home in Magalia. “She was always a bit of a wild one,” Danz said, “and definitely a survivor.”

Her childhood home is a heap of ash and blackened rubble now, but at least she has Coco, her childhood cat.

“We do want to stay in the area,” Danz said. “We want to try and rebuild.” n ©The Washington Post

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER November, 25, 2018 SUNDAY, 25, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018 2018

KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

T

1517 15

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018

KLMNO COVERBOOKS STORY WEEKLY

Our top 10 for 2018

KLMNO WEEKLY

Our top

he idea for Jordan Gouenvisioned producing a version Increased spending on school resource officers “The beauty dreau’s business came to for classrooms. Now, schools After the February shooting in Parkland, many school districts in Florida him in Puerto Rico, where make up 95 percent of his busiof it is it’s all sharply increased the amount they spent per school year for armed officers. he had traveled to work in private ness. security in the aftermath of HurriAs he explained that the comfor the price cane Maria. Goudreau, a U.S. pany had made the transition HIGHLANDS COUNTY ST. LUCIE COUNTY $1.6M combat veteran, was makafter being bombarded with reof a Netflixill 2018 go Army down yearon of the island, presidential exposé? It felt that way at times. As the new year dawned, Michael Wolff “Fire and lit up political ing lotsasofthe money he following the Sandy Hook ill 2018 go down as’squests the year of Fury” the presidential exposé? It fel and literary conversations, only to be overshadowed by a parade of tell-alls, from the pyrotechnics of and Omarosa Manigault Newman’s “Unhinged” to the said, but the new opportunity was shooting, a man approached his by a pa literary conversations, only to be overshadowed $1.1M subscription, trenchant reporting of to Bob Woodward’s “Fear.” Each release followed a pattern: presidential tweets claiming fake news,booth. followed by excerpts and hotEach release too enticing pass up. trenchant reporting of Bob Woodward’s “Fear.” takes and indignation from alland sides.

“I saw Parkland, I was like, justallbought takes and indignation“Ifrom sides. about $7,000 Parkland so it’s really But for every thattackling monopolized talk-show chyrons, there were many quieter releases that truly deserved animated discussion — so an ‘Well,bombshell nobody’s title really worth oftitle these,” said Cas Gant, But for every bombshell that monopolized talk-show shooting $472K $400K many thought-provoking novels, shattering memoirs and astute histories that had nothing to do with presidential power struggles or Russian collusion.

Our annual this, so I want to fix this,’ ” Gouassistant principal from a charter many thought-provoking novels, shattering memoirs and astute histories hard to argue dreau compendium of best books includes these at 10 that reallyin stuck with us. We have another 100 fiction and nonfiction titles worth adding to your listreally at washingtonexplained the expo school into-do Panama City, Fla. compendium of best books includes these 10 that stuck with us. We post.com, favorite where poetry,the romance novels, thrillers and more. — Stephanie Merry, Book World editor state legislaTaylorromance noted that, at onethrillers point, and mo post.com, alongnwith our favorite poetry, novels, with mealong with ourFlorida, ture had just committed more his devices were back-ordered a quarter-billion dollars to nearly two months. about, ‘Well, it than ’15-’16 ’18-’19 ’15-’16 ’18-’19 school safety.

“Right after the Parkland The solution, Goudreau conshooting —” he said, pausing. costs too cluded, was to embed former Spe“A surge?” asked Gant’s wife, SUWANNEE COUNTY MADISON COUNTY cial Operations agents, posing as Desiree. much.” teachers, inside schools. He ar“There was a big surge,” he said.

W

Jordan Goudreau, whose business embeds former Special Ops agents inside schools

W

gued that the benefits over resource officers were obvious.

First, because the children wouldn’t know who his guys real$396K $310K ly are, students would be more ON DESPERATE GROUND: purgingAND voters, gerrymandering, GOOD AND MAD: THE LINE BECOMES A RIVER : GOOD MAD: likely to open up, giving agents a instituting voter ID laws, closing The Revolutionary Powerchance of From the Border$180K The Marines at The Reservoir, $121K The Revolutionary Power of toDispatches glean information that the Korean War’s Greatest polling places and preventing Women’s Anger By Francisco Cantú (Riverhead) Women’s Anger could expose a potential threat. felons from Traister voting. Her bleak

By Rebecca Traister By Rebecca In lyrical prose, Cantú captures’15-’16Battle “He’s just a — he’s a cool shop ’18-’19 ’15-’16 ’18-’19in

By Hampton Sides (Doubleday) conclusion: “In short, we’re (Simon & Schuster) (Simon & Schuster) his experience asfellas,’ a Border teacher: ‘Hey, what’s up, ” trouble.”

Sides’s account of unlikely The author of “All the Singlesaid Goudreau, Patrol agent in the American The author of “All the Single 42, envisioning a survival horrifying carnage Ladies” pays tribute to female Even his mother UNIONamid COUNTY DESOTO COUNTY Ladies” pays tribute to female potential Southwest. conversation with a THEwith OVERSTORY during the Korean War serves as rage rage with a look at the history of “I go can’t her son, a look at the history of child. situnderstand down withwhy a kid

By Richard a cautionary tale for what women who got things donewho’s by alone, whose grandfather was women who Powers got things done by playing ‘Dungeons (W.W. Norton) happens when an egocentric publicly expressing their and Dragons,’ Mexican, want join publicly expressing their and would I just try toto see and paranoid leader refuses to Powers, whofrom wonthe a National indignation, from the suffragettes such anany organization, indignation, suffragettes whether there’s problems.”but Cantú acknowledge reality. In this Book Award foractivists “The Echo to the #MeToo activists who put be dissuaded. doesn’t to the #MeToo who put Second,can’t Goudreau said,Hehis case, it was Gen. Douglas Maker,” delivers (among a poignant and Harvey Weinstein (among others) so farin as combat regrettingand the Harvey Weinstein others) men all go thrive MacArthur, who remained urgent to trees through out of a job. Of course, society decision, the indignities he out of a ode job. Of course, societythe could quickly snipebut a shooter. $249K willfully ignorant when he was tales of an expansive cast of has a complicated relationship“The beauty witnesses atit’s theall hands of his $206K has a complicated relationship of it is for the $81K $45K tactically outmaneuvered, characters, from aand fighter pilot with female anger, and Traister agents leave himso forever with female anger, Traister price of afellow Netflix subscription, leaving his men exposed — both delves who owes to particularly a banyan to delves into that, too, particularly into his that,life too, it’s reallychanged. hard to argue with me to the harsh elements in the a scientist convinced that a the double standards ’15-’16 ’18-’19 the double standards ’15-’16 ’18-’19 about, ‘Well, it costs too much.’

THE MAZE AT WINDERMERE Korean mountains and to an forest’s leafyour inhabitants are surrounding our collective You can’t tell me that,” insisted surrounding collective

By Gregory Blake Smith onslaught soldiers communicating.

The plantsPOST in acceptance of male aggression. male aggression.

Goudreau,(Viking) hair buzzed and jaw Sources: Data providedof byChinese school districts and compiledacceptance

by The Post of THE WASHINGTON the five-star general should have this environmental epic aren’t square.

THE LIBRARY BOOK THE BOOK They’re This complex takes seen coming. mereLIBRARY window dressing.

No schools had yetnovel signed on place

By Susan Orlean By Susan Orlean in one location — Newport, R.I. as measures sympatheticare as most the people, for the program, and he still their students from harm is detersafety effec(Simon & Schuster) (Simon & Schuster) — though covers of someminingONE effect which to be PERSON, : hadn’t worked outit aalso number what product,NO or VOTE person, tive,an but given thatproves so little govground with five different The New Yorker writer and the business The New writer research and powerfully galvanizing — and not plan’s precise details, to trust.How Voter Suppression ernment orYorker academic narratives spanning three author of “The Orchid Thief” has of “The Thief” has a moment too soon.

Is Destroying OurWalmart Democracy has author but Goudreau was certain that he As Home Depot and been done onOrchid what insulates Those range from the written another winner withwanted a written from another winner withgun a Carol bulletproof Anderson tocenturies. bill the parents of each marketBy$150 backstudents on-campus of a womanizing narrative that revolves around narrative around (Bloomsbury) A PLACE FORrevolves US student tale directly (for $8.99tennis a packs to frightened parents, adviolence, it’s that enormously difficult to the writerremain Henry James the devastating Los Angeles devastating Losconclusions Angeles

By Fatima Mirza month) soplayer his staff could ministrators areofbeing schools to Farheen reach In a kind sequelinundated to her book for the as hefrom ponders creative with pitches from entrepreneurs library fire that ruined or independent library fire that ruined or (SJP for Hogarth) anyhis district’s based in fact.

“White Rage,” Anderson Smith’s talents damaged 1 million books in“chain of process. damaged 1 million books command.” pushing new concepts that make For administrators at the in expo, examines voter suppression What initially set Mirza’s first transcend ability to 1986. But what starts out as aWhen the 1986. what as a media his relations liaigrand promises.

One to But understand which ventactics since thesuperintenpassage of the trying novel apart wasstarts that itout launched interweave stories masterfully written tale of true written tale of true son standing besidethese him at theirin ways dent who responded to the survey wereJessica true authorities was 1965 Voting Rights Act that, shedorsmasterfully Sarah Parker’s new that brilliantly one another. crime turns into a sprawling look suggested crime turns into sprawling booth that, ifecho necessary, said that within hours for of athe shootespecially tricky, inapart argues, account imprint.

As it turns out,because, the look He captures with stunning at the Los Angeles library they could the Los Angeles libraryThis go through school ing earlier this year, her inbox was likeat Goudreau, had precipitous decline of black actress has greatdozens taste. accuracy voices as disparate “flooded as system before pivoting intoboards a system before pivoting a and accept government frominvendors some worked in other industries before voters the 2016with election. beautifully crafted storyinto begins a 17th-century Quaker a heartfelt tribute librariesmoney, as heartfelt tribute to alibraries Goudreau cut him off. girl andpretty disrespectful pivoting to school Desireeto Gant, According to the and Emorytacky with the returnsecurity. of prodigalasson, during the institutions devoted to making“But weBritish institutions devoted toof making don’t officer want to.

We don’t statements: ‘had that you drop-off had thiswas . . .’;not Joe Taylor, Night-of wife of an assistant professor, then shiftsco-founder into an exploration American Revolution. life better.principal, In otherwhile words, it’s better.

Ina other words, it’s want that,” he said.

“We want ‘if you had this . . .’anomaly ” created residential door a one-time but rather lock,life the dynamics within a Muslim everyattending bookworm’s dream read. every bookworm’s dream read. private money, because it’s faster.”

The evidence industryofisa also rife hijacking with barricade years ago after somea campus systemic family15 living in California.

Mirza’s Among the many challenges self-appointed experts that and involved conone book triedistoa promising break intodebut, his parsafety expo of our democracy yes, educators face in trying to protect sultants who claim to know what ents’ home. Back then, he never

“Isn’t it scary that we literally have to go through this — that all of these vendors are here?”

“But we’re finally caught up.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Anything to keep our babies safe.”

As the men continued discussing the door lock, Desiree looked but that ultimately undersells THE LINE BECOMES Ascene.

RIVERHer : around, taking in the such a mature examination of Dispatches From the Border husband had attended school what it means to belong.

By Francisco Cantú (Riverhead) safety expos before, but this was In lyrical her first. prose, Cantú captures THERE his experience a Border “This isTHERE sad. Ias came in here with By Tommy Orange (Knopf) Patrol agent in the American my mouth wide open,” she murThis shattering by that a Southwest.

Even his mother mured.

“Isn’t itdebut scary we member of the Cheyenne and can’t understand why her son, literally have to go through this — Arapaho tribesvendors pulls together whose grandfather was that all of these are here?” divergent talesan of modern-day Mexican, would want to join prinCarl Manna, assistant Native and such an organization, but around Cantú cipal atAmericans another inFlorida high Oakland, Calif., to examine the can’t befelt dissuaded.

Heway doesn’t school, the same as he thorny of identity — and all go so farissue as regretting the wandered the room, though none the and the indignities he ofdecision, thisshame wasbut new topride him.it inspires.

As prepare to witnesses the hands of his to Atcharacters one at booth, he paused converge on aleave powwow at the fellow him forever stare atagents a photo from Forest High Oaklandthe Coliseum — some with changed. showing desks and chairs that nefarious aims — it to becomes had been stacked the classTHE AT WINDERMERE clearMAZE that there’s no single room’s ceiling to keep the gunman By Gregory Blake Smith Native American experience, out.

Months earlier, Manna had (Viking) even if so to many of active those shooter pretended be an novel takes experiences informed by a inThis a complex trainingfeel video hisplace school inlegacy one location — Newport, R.I. of subjugation. produced.

—“That,” though it covers healso said, “is some what the ground with five WASHINGTON BLACK room looked likedifferent after I left.” narratives spanning three

By Esi Edugyan (Knopf) centuries.

Those range from he video opens with Manna, In Edugyan’s third novel, a the tale of womanizing tennis inaslave jeans and a dark hoodie, young escapes a brutal player to the Henry James stalking High’s existence onwriter a Branford Barbados sugar as he ponders hisright creative hallways.

Inbyhis hand, he plantation hot air balloon, process.

Smith’s talents holds a water pistol wrapped with but this isn’t simply a transcend ability black tape. his fantastical fairy tale.toThe story interweave thesethe stories in ways Manna, narrator, exkicks into also gear when “Wash” that brilliantly echo one another. plains that the video would reBlack floats away with his He captures with stunning view “ALICE” training, a setof of master’s brother — inventor accuracy voices as disparate as strategies developed by an Ohiothe lighter-than-air contraption a—17th-century girl and a based that teaches butcompany goes onQuaker to explore thepeoBritish officer during the ple how to respond to active pair’s freighted dynamic as they American Revolution. shooters.

The acronym stands for travel the world and discover Alert, Lockdown, that injustice can Inform, never beCountruly terescaped. and Evacuate. “The proper use of these five steps could save your

T

ON DE The M the Ko Battle

By Ham Sides’s surviva during a cauti happen and pa acknow case, it MacArt willfully tactica leaving to the h Korean onslau the five seen c

ONE P How V Is Des

By Car (Bloom In a kin “White examin tactics 1965 V argues precipi voters Accord profess a one-t eviden of our d

16

SUNDAY, November, 25, 2018

Want more good reads?

Check out these popular publications from The Wenatchee World.

Foothills Magazine

Wenatchee Valley Business World

A bi-monthly lifestyle magazine about North Central Washington.

The region’s leading business magazine.

ALL OF NORTH

CENTRAL WAS

HINGTON

OOTHILLS WENATCHEE

◆

◆ AND ◆ CHE LAN LEAVENWORTH

Wenatchee Valley

YOUR FAMILY- OWN

ED BUSINES S MAG

AZINE

ld r o w s s e n i s u B NOVEMBER 2018

er 2018 November-Decemb

| $2

Get t ing in t he b lac k

LIDAYS UN T ON THE HO RE TA IL ERS COSe e pa ge 18

WINTER

BLISS

thrills for chills and ‘Tis the season

Read online at

STA RR’S ORGA NIC FRUIT BAG CU TS PL AS TIC USE

INDIA HOUSE TURNS 6 Se e pa ge 3

BUSINESS WOR

LD’S PRESENTI

Se e pa ge 22

NG SPONSORS

Read online at

ncwfoothills.com/digital/

wvbusinessworld.com/digital/

No subscription required.

No subscription required.