California

Readers have been writing to me about ways that, despite all the tragedy, Covid brought something unexpectedly positive into their lives.An empty Santa Monica beach in March 2020, a day before Californians were ordered to stay home.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesIt was four years ago today that Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered all Californians to stay home to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. For many people, the drastic move was the moment when the pandemic became truly, horribly real.Covid has since killed more than 1.18 million people nationwide, and the virus continues to circulate. At the peak of the recent surge in January, 2,400 people were dying of the disease each week. For many Americans, the pandemic has permanently reshaped life, as my colleague Julie Bosman wrote recently.Not all of those changes have been for the worse. Readers have been writing to me recently about pandemic silver linings — ways that, despite all the tragedy, Covid brought something unexpectedly positive into their lives. Those stories of reconnecting with far-flung friends, picking up new hobbies or slowing down for the better were touching. Thanks to all who sent them in.Feel free to email me your own pandemic silver lining story at CAtoday@nytimes.com. Please include your full name and the city where you live.Here are some, lightly edited:“My adult son, who lives in Los Angeles, gathered his remote-work tools and joined our family pod in Escondido. His sister, who had already been planning a temporary move-in during her home’s remodel, packed up her husband, two small children and two dogs and moved into our house. This is where we all rode out the early months of the pandemic. Three months. We never would have had that in the before times.” — Gretchen Pelletier, Escondido“I am an autistic adult living in a society not meant for me. It was nice that the world slowed down to a pace that I was comfortable with. I also loved teaching remotely with my adult E.S.L. [English as a second language] students. Even though I am required to teach in person again, the techniques I used to guide students made me a better blended-hybrid teacher now.” — Robert B. Gomez, SalinasWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

In a city known as a progressive bastion, voters resoundingly passed two conservative-leaning ballot measures this week, on police authority and drug screening.Department of Elections workers transported a box of ballots at the San Francisco City Hall voting center on Tuesday.Loren Elliott/ReutersHave San Francisco voters lost the bleeding hearts they have been known for — or are they just frustrated?City voters resoundingly passed two ballot measures this week that probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day a few years ago. One measure gives more power to the police, and the other requires welfare recipients who are thought to have a drug addiction to enter treatment as a condition of continuing to receive benefits.Critics of the measures said that residents had veered to the right and that billionaires had bought the city by throwing money at campaigns for the measures. But Mayor London Breed, who faces a tough race for re-election in November and who placed the two measures on the ballot, brushed off claims that the city had lost its liberal soul.In her annual State of the City address on Thursday, Breed argued that it was progressive to invest in public safety to protect vulnerable older residents and immigrants, and to push for drug treatment for those who need it.“We are a progressive, diverse city, living together, celebrating each other,” she said, standing at a podium at the city’s cruise ship terminal, apparently to highlight the rebound of San Francisco’s tourism industry. “That has not changed, and it will not change.”San Francisco’s reputation has plummeted — unfairly, many residents say — since the start of the pandemic, because of open-air drug use, property crime and the sharp drop in office occupancy downtown. Breed, a political moderate by San Francisco standards, has responded by tacking to the right, and this week voters backed her priorities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Our clocks will have to spring forward an hour on Sunday, as in most of the country.One of the oldest arguments for the time change is that it saves energy, but there have been many conflicting studies about whether that’s true.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesAt 2 a.m. on Sunday, clocks in California will jump forward an hour, as we make the switch to daylight saving time.The impending loss of 60 minutes of precious sleep got me wondering why the state hasn’t abandoned the twice-a-year changing of the clocks, even though I’ve been hearing about that possibility for years.It turns out to be complicated.As a refresher: Each year in the United States, we spring forward an hour in March, and then go back to standard time in November. The idea is to shift an hour of sunlight from the early morning to the evening, when more people can make use of it. One of the oldest arguments for the time change is that it saves energy, but there have been many conflicting studies about whether that’s true.Changing our clocks has been linked not only to disrupted sleep, as you might expect, but also to a higher risk of car accidents, heart attacks and more. The only states that don’t make the biannual switch are Arizona and Hawaii.In November 2018, Californians overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to allow the Legislature to change the daylight saving time period. But the measure didn’t actually end it.There have been several failed attempts since then to abolish the time change by making daylight saving time permanent. But federal law does not currently allow for such a thing. In the last five years, 19 states have enacted legislation or passed resolutions to move to daylight saving time year-round, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but they’re all contingent on congressional action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Representative Adam Schiff and the former M.L.B. player Steve Garvey will face off in November for a U.S. Senate seat.Voting at the Glendale Express Hotel in Glendale on Tuesday.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesA number of races from Tuesday’s primary election in California remain too close to call, but the most-watched contest is a done deal.Representative Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, and Steve Garvey, a former Major League Baseball player, will advance to the general election in November for a full term in the U.S. Senate seat that Dianne Feinstein held for more than three decades before she died last year.As of early this morning, with just under half of the ballots counted, Schiff, a Democrat, had about 33 percent of the vote and Garvey, a Republican, had 32 percent. Representative Katie Porter, an Orange County Democrat, was running a distant third with about 14 percent of the vote, and Representative Barbara Lee, a progressive Democrat from Oakland, was fourth with 7 percent.The results were effectively the same in the special primary being conducted at the same time to fill the last few weeks of the current Senate term, from Election Day in November until the end of the year. In that contest, which attracted fewer minor candidates, Garvey was running ahead of Schiff, 35 percent to 31 percent, with Porter at 16 percent and Lee at 9 percent.California’s election system pits all candidates against one another in the same primary, regardless of party, and the top two vote-getters advance. So the general election could have been a contest between Schiff and another Democrat, Porter or Lee. That kind of intraparty battle for a Senate seat has happened twice before in California.But this time, Garvey’s name recognition as a former star first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres helped consolidate Republicans behind his campaign — and so did Schiff’s advertising strategy, as my colleague Shawn Hubler reported.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More