California
California’s record rainstorms are a blessing, a hardship and a spiritual experience
In a state crippled by drought, how are we to make sense of the damaging storms which have led our governor to proclaim a state of emergency, whilst they fill our reservoirs and replenish our fields?
Right here ultimately is the life-giving water we’ve yearned for: nourishing, regenerative, cleaning and important, particularly within the wake of the state’s driest three-year interval on document. And but, these desperately wanted rains have been chargeable for mudslides, flooding, energy outages and, most tragically, the lack of 19 lives.
It could really feel like California is being cursed by the gods, however in truth humanity’s relationship with rain has at all times been paradoxical. Rain has the flexibility to create, and to destroy. And so it turns into a matter of religion: We pray for it, whilst we concern it.
“In Judaism there may be the idea of helpful rain,” mentioned Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback, senior rabbi at Stephen Clever Temple in Bel-Air. “We pray for rain in its correct quantity, and on the proper time.”
Judaism emerged within the Center East in a local weather very like Southern California’s. Rains got here within the winter; the summers had been lengthy and dry. Right now, Jewish individuals around the globe pray for rain starting on the final day of the autumn harvest pageant of Sukkot and proceed till Passover arrives within the spring.
The stress between an excessive amount of rain and never sufficient is embedded in an extended and poetic prayer, recited by worshipers for hundreds of years. It ends with these phrases:
You’re Adonai, our God
Who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall.
For blessing and never for curse.
For all times and never for demise.
For many and never for lack.
The biblical story of Noah’s Ark and the good flood, a foundational fable for Jewish individuals, and for Christians and Muslims as properly, demonstrates that torrential rain has lengthy been seen as a punishment.
“I don’t learn the Noah story actually, however I do see it as a sort of sacred fable that invitations me to consider how human habits can affect the bigger world,” Zweiback mentioned. “We are able to join that to local weather change and we will additionally join it to the best way we’re on the planet and the way that may have an effect on our surroundings in each sense of the phrase.”
In Islam, rain is taken into account a giver of life and related to resurrection, mentioned Muzammil Siddiqi, non secular director of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Backyard Grove. Rain is talked about a number of occasions within the Quran, together with in Chapter 25, verses 48-49, the place it’s written:
We ship down pure water from the sky. That with it We could give life to a useless land, and slake the thirst of issues We’ve got created, cattle and males in nice numbers.
In 2015, one other time of drought, Siddiqi led 20,000 Muslims in prayers on the finish of Ramadan, concluding with a prayer for rain by which he raised his arms to the heavens asking God for a “rain that may deliver profit to us, and won’t deliver any hurt to us.”
“On the one hand, rain is a blessing that makes our land produce extra and turn into fertile, and alternatively an excessive amount of rain means catastrophe,” Siddiqi mentioned.
On this stress of opposites he sees an invite to observe humility, a perspective that stands in distinction to California’s centuries-long, hubristic efforts to dam up, divert and tame rain and runoff. “Regardless of all of the issues we now have, we can not management rain,” he mentioned. “All we will do is flip to God and ask for blessings.”
Scientists say California will expertise extra excessive drought and extra excessive rainfall because the planet continues to heat due to human exercise, however in the end, the problem we’re experiencing — an excessive amount of or not sufficient — is one with which human societies have at all times needed to grapple.
“We’ve got these two emergencies, the drought and the rain,” mentioned Jennifer Savage of Humboldt County, who works on ocean coverage for the Surfrider Basis. “What’s incorrect with us that the reply to at least one ends in one other emergency?”
For Swami Sarvadevananda, the religious chief of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, the duality inherent in rain displays the duality current in all issues.
“The Vedantic thought is that this world is a mixture of good and unhealthy,” he mentioned. “There is no such thing as a absolute good and no absolute unhealthy. That’s the nature of creation.”
Relatively than battle this reality, Vedanta philosophy teaches practitioners to just accept duality, Sarvadevananda mentioned. And likewise, that this duality may be transcended by recognizing the singular consciousness that exists behind all issues.
“If you happen to see the divine solely within the temple, that’s one factor,” he mentioned. “However in case you see the divine in every little thing, that could be a higher religious observe. Worshiping isn’t restricted to the temple, but in addition in nature.”
The twin nature of rain can also be current within the cosmology of the Aztecs who named their rain god Tlāloc. Worshiped alongside the solar god Huitzilopochtli within the nice Aztec temple, Tlāloc was portrayed as each fearsome and exquisite with royal blue pores and skin, round eyes fabricated from serpents and thick crimson fangs.
The title Tlāloc means “He who makes issues sprout,” which in itself signifies a sort of violence, mentioned Davíd Carrasco, a historian of religions at Harvard College.
“What do seeds do once they sprout? They break open,” he mentioned. “And what do the rains do? They break open the Earth. So there may be this sense of genesis with this nice water, however you possibly can’t regenerate the world except the world has come to an finish. We don’t prefer it, however that’s the best way it’s.”
The themes of violence and regeneration round water proceed to resonate as California braces for but extra rain.
“In a battle to subdue nature, we’re not going to win,” Savage mentioned. “We are able to preserve attempting to tech our method out of it or construct our method out of it, however we’re not going to win.”
As for praying for rain, typically that’s not simply the purview of clerics and religion traditions. In 2011, as Texas weathered a punishing drought, Gov. Rick Perry, an evangelical Christian, declared April 22 to 24 as “Days of Prayer for Rain.”
“I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions,” he declared, “to supply prayers on that day for the therapeutic of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our regular and strong lifestyle.”
The prayers weren’t instantly profitable, and the share of the state experiencing distinctive drought greater than doubled over the next month.
It was one other sage reminder that whereas people can attempt to intercede with their gods to deliver the rain, or make it cease, there are some forces on the planet which are eternally past our management.
Southern California’s bosses added 80,700 workers in the past year to a record 8.06 million jobs – but that hiring pace is roughly half of the pre-pandemic job market’s gains.
My trusty spreadsheet – filled with state job figures for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties – compared employment changes for the region and 15 industries in the year ended in October with the average yearly hiring pace before coronavirus upended the economy.
Yes, there have never been more Southern Californians employed. However, the recent hirings that created the all-time high staffing are far below the average job creation of 159,600 a year in 2015-19.
This is one of many signals of cooler business trends. It’s a chill significantly tied to the Federal Reserve’s attempts to slow what was once an overheated economy.
But Southern California bosses have another challenge – a shortage of workers. The region’s workforce, a measure of labor supply, is basically flat comparing 2024 to 2015-19. Fewer choices of workers have added difficulty for local businesses trying to meet their staffing needs.
Think of that when you learn that among the 15 Southern California business sectors tracked – hiring in 10 industries is below pre-pandemic years compared with five industries with improvements.
The downs
First, contemplate the 10 industries where the hiring pace has weakened, ranked by the size of the decline …
Professional-business services: 1.14 million workers in October – down 4,600 in a year vs. 24,100 annual gains in 2015-19. This net downturn of 28,700 jobs is unnerving because this white-collar work typically pays above-average salaries.
Construction: 378,700 workers – down 3,100 in a year vs. 16,200 annual gains in 2015-19. A building slowdown due to lofty mortgage rates created this 19,300 reversal.
Logistics-utilities: 820,800 workers – up 6,800 in a year vs. 25,800 annual gains in 2015-19. What’s at least a temporary oversupply of warehouses in the region may be behind this 19,000 slowdown.
Manufacturing: 558,400 workers – down 15,300 in a year vs. 4,100 annual cuts in 2015-19. This 11,200 drop is continued losses of local factory work tied to high cost of doing business in the region.
Fast-food restaurants: 359,400 workers – up 3,400 in a year vs. 12,400 annual gains in 2015-19. Weaker consumer spending and a hike in the industry’s minimum wage contribute to this 9,000 drop.
Hotels/entertainment/recreation: 268,300 workers – up 3,400 in a year vs. 9,600 annual gains in 2015-19. This 6,200 cooling reflects worker shortages.
Full-service eateries/food service: 339,100 workers – up 1,600 in a year vs. 6,600 annual gains in 2015-19. Inflation making shoppers pickier is part of this 5,000 cooling.
Information: 214,200 workers – down 100 in a year vs. 3,700 annual gains in 2015-19. Weakness in tech businesses and Hollywood productions created the 3,800 net downturn.
Personal services: 266,600 workers – up 500 in a year vs. 3,200 annual gains in 2015-19. Again, it is hard to find people to do this work. Thus, a 2,700 cooling.
Government: 1.03 million workers – up 11,600 in a year vs. 12,500 annual gains in 2015-19. This 900 dip is status quo.
The ups
Ponder the five industries where the hiring pace rose in the past year, ranked by the size of the gains …
Social assistance: 512,300 workers – up 28,200 in a year vs. 18,300 annual gains in 2015-19. The 9,900 addition comes as more folks need help at home for healthcare and child care.
Healthcare: 836,700 workers – up 30,100 in a year vs. 20,900 annual gains in 2015-19. The 9,200 growth parallels the region’s aging population and its need for medical services.
Retailing: 748,300 workers – up 8,300 in a year vs. 300 annual cuts in 2015-19. This somewhat surprising 8,600 improvement may be consumers tiring of online commerce and wanting to get out to shop.
Financial: 364,100 workers – up 4,400 in a year vs. 3,900 annual gains in 2015-19. The minor 500 improvement is a return to normalcy. Super-heated hiring came in the pandemic days thanks to a brief drop in mortgage rates to historic lows.
Private education: 215,700 workers – up 5,500 in a year vs. 5,100 annual gains in 2015-19. This 400 uptick reflects the growing interest in alternatives to public schooling.
Bottom line
While it’s rare for all industries to be growing at the same time – minus, say, just after an economic downturn – this 2024 edition of the winners vs. losers list raises an important issue.
It appears much of the past year’s job creation is coming from industries that historically pay meager wages. That’s an especially worrisome trend in high-cost Southern California.
Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com
The California Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Nov. 27, 2024, results for each game:
Powerball
01-06-07-13-40, Powerball: 05, Power Play: 5
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Daily 3
Midday: 7-1-0
Evening: 4-9-6
Check Daily 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Daily Derby
1st:11 Money Bags-2nd:3 Hot Shot-3rd:8 Gorgeous George, Race Time: 1:47.44
Check Daily Derby payouts and previous drawings here.
Fantasy 5
03-10-12-29-33
Check Fantasy 5 payouts and previous drawings here.
Daily 4
6-1-3-2
Check Daily 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
SuperLotto Plus
03-05-15-16-42, Mega Ball: 24
Check SuperLotto Plus payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Desert Sun producer. You can send feedback using this form.
Democrat Derek Tran ousted Republican Michelle Steel in a southern California House district Wednesday that was specifically drawn to give Asian Americans a stronger voice on Capitol Hill.
Steel said in a statement: “Like all journeys, this one is ending for a new one to begin.” When she captured the seat in 2020, Steel joined Washington state Democrat Marilyn Strickland and California Republican Young Kim as the first Korean American women elected to Congress.
Tran, a lawyer and worker rights advocate and the son of Vietnamese refugees, declared victory earlier this week. He said his win “is a testament to the spirit and resilience of our community. As the son of Vietnamese refugees, I understand firsthand the journey and sacrifices many families in our district have made for a better life.”
The contest is one of the last to be decided this year, with Republicans now holding 220 seats in the House, with Democrats at 214. The Associated Press has not declared a winner in California’s 13th district, where Democrat Adam Gray was leading Republican John Duarte by a couple of hundred votes.
Steel held an early edge after election day, but late-counted ballots pushed Tran over the top.
Steel filed a statement of candidacy on Monday with federal regulators, which would allow her to continue raising funds. It wasn’t immediately clear if she planned to seek a return to Congress.
In the campaign, Tran warned of Republican threats to abortion rights. Steel opposes abortion with exceptions for rape, incest or to save the life of the pregnant woman, while not going so far as to support a federal ban. Tran also warned that Donald Trump’s return to the White House would put democracy at risk.
On Capitol Hill, Steel has been outspoken in resisting tax increases and says she stands strongly with Israel in its war with Hamas. “As our greatest ally in the Middle East, the United States must always stand with Israel,” she said. She advocates for more police funding and has spotlighted her efforts on domestic violence and sexual abuse.
The largest demographic in the district, which is anchored in Orange county, south-east of Los Angeles, is Asian Americans, and it includes the nation’s biggest Vietnamese community. Democrats hold a four-point registration edge.
Incomplete returns showed that Steel was winning in Orange county, the bulk of the district. Tran’s winning margin came from a small slice of the district in Los Angeles county, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly two to one.
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