Greetings anew from Manhattan Beach, California. And how are things? Thanks for asking! People are sick and dying because of the coronavirus. Also, a chunk of the state — bigger than Rhode Island — is ablaze after a siege of spectacular lightning strikes, some 12,000 over the past week, 100 on Friday; on the ground, the destruction is already savage; the air smoky and unhealthy; beyond, it’s only August and fire season has weeks to go. Meanwhile, the utilities are ordering rolling electricity blackouts. School started again but, you know, not in person so no one is happy about that.

Then there’s the political angst, President Obama finally going off on his successor. Here’s a fact: the selection of California Senator Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden’s running mate makes her the first person in the history of the Democratic Party to be nominated — as president or vice-president — as a representative of a state west of the Rocky Mountains.

We are living in weird times. In all of this, there seems to be an element of the apocalyptic. Even the setting sun is not yellow but an iridescent red. Thus the mind quite naturally goes, especially as the red sun sinks into the Pacific, to matters existential or, at the least, consequential.