A mask with many meanings

Posted on October 31, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Pam P.

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Buying a win with billions

Posted on October 31, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Mike C.

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Young Washington voters say cost of living is their top concern

Posted on October 31, 2024 by Jim deMaine

For most residents 18-35, the dream of home ownership is dead, and rising costs of food and transportation hit hard as the state grows more unaffordable.

by Nate Sanford/ October 31, 2024 in Crosscut

Brandon Borg fills up his car with gas

Brandon Borg, 21, fills his gas tank in Everett, Oct. 24, 2024. Borg must drive long distances for work, and is worried about how the rise in gas prices will affect his ability to save money for his future. (Caroline Walker Evans for Cascade PBS)

Voters of all age groups say the economy is one of their top factors in deciding who to choose for Washington’s next governor. But the issue appears to be top-of-mind for younger voters — specifically the cost of basic necessities.

It makes sense: Young people are new to the workforce and typically make lower wages. They have less money saved, take on more credit-card debt and are more often renters. 

“It’s like you scrape by for everything,” said Xihucoatl Alvarado, 24, a Seattle resident who works as a paid canvasser for Greenpeace. “You have to live with at least one roommate to make any ends meet out here.”

People of different ages have varied concepts about what it means to be worried about the economy, said Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University.

Older people might associate the economy with questions like “What’s my investment portfolio doing?” Donovan said. Young people, however, tend to be focused on more immediate cost of living concerns like “Where am I going to be living next year?”

“Those are two very different worlds that people are living in,” Donovan said.

Young adults interviewed for this article all gave similar answers when asked about their biggest economic stressors: housing, food and transportation. (continued on page 2)

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Gifting

Posted on October 31, 2024 by Jim deMaine
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Hell yes! The Seattle Times edit board endorses Harris for president

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Jim deMaine

By Frank Blethen and Kate Riley – Seattle Times publisher and Times editorial page editor

As one of the country’s very few family-owned and -operated metro newspapers left, The Seattle Times is also apparently one of the few whose editorial board is willing to endorse presidential candidates. (For the record, the board, which operates independently of the newsroom, backed Vice President Kamala Harris Sept. 1.)

This is unfathomable, given that the other leading candidate clearly threatens the foundation of our 248-year-old American democracy and the rule of law.

How does it happen that someone as selfish and destructive as former President Donald Trump could actually become our president — again? After he fanned the Jan. 6 insurgency, after his felony convictions and after a civil court ruled he committed sexual assault?

One answer is the demise of local newspapers across our country.

Once the pride of rural communities and big cities alike, about half the country’s daily newspapers have been lost. Too many of the rest are inferior products being milked to death by absent mercenary investors.   

Since my great-grandfather, Alden Blethen, founded The Seattle Times in 1896, the Blethen family has proudly guided The Seattle Times. Our current fourth generation has been in control since 1985.

We take our journalism and community service very seriously. We have been preparing our fifth generation for Times leadership when I step down at the end of 2025. And members of the sixth interned in our newsroom this summer.

So it is with consternation that I and editorial page editor Kate Riley learned that the publishers of two of America’s most venerable newspapers on both coasts decided not to weigh in at all, even though their editorial boards were preparing Harris endorsements.

The decisions appear to have been made by the billionaire owners — Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times. That prompted protests and resignations at both papers. The reasons given were about political divisions, wanting to let voters make up their own minds and to restore public trust, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.

Bezos, founder of Amazon, explained his decision in an op-ed on the Post’s Opinion page. Read it here: st.news/bezos

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None,” Bezos wrote. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

At The Times, we have a wall between the newsroom and the editorial board. Editorial writers do not ask news staff about their opinions, nor do we get involved in their coverage. We do our own reporting.

We were pleased The New York Times joined our editorial board in endorsing Kamala Harris. In fact, NYT Opinion doubled down, making a dramatic statement by filling the front of its Sunday section with just 23 words. In large, bold type, the NYT editorial board made this indictment:

DONALD TRUMP SAYS HE WILL
PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES
ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS
USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS
ABANDON ALLIES
PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS
BELIEVE HIM.

Trump has become shameless in his pronouncements of his plans and his denouncements of so many Americans. He can only set the country back and put our nation at risk.

The Seattle Times editorial board, and the Blethen family, enthusiastically endorse Kamala Harris.

Frank Blethen; is publisher of The Seattle Times and the great-grandson of the 128-year-old company’s founder.

Kate Riley; is the editorial page editor at The Seattle Times: kriley@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @k8riley.

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The enemy?

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Jim deMaine
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If You Think You Can Hold a Grudge, Consider the Crow

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: Did you know s group of crows is called a “murder” – this is likely due to old superstitions associating crows with death and scavenging. Sure you may know a group of deer is called a herd, or a group of birds is called a flock, but what do call a group of rhinoceroses or porcupines? Click here to find a plethora of animal group names (none are called Interest Groups though).

By Thomas Fuller in the NYT

Photographs by Alana Paterson

Over and over, the crows attacked Lisa Joyce as she ran screaming down a Vancouver street.

They dive bombed, landing on her head and taking off again eight times by Ms. Joyce’s count. With hundreds of people gathered outdoors to watch fireworks that July evening, Ms. Joyce wondered why she had been singled out.

“I’m not a fraidy-cat, I’m not generally nervous of wildlife,” said Ms. Joyce, whose crow encounters grew so frequent this past summer that she changed her commute to work to avoid the birds.

“But it was so relentless,” she said, “and quite terrifying.”

Ms. Joyce is far from alone in fearing the wrath of the crow. CrowTrax, a website started eight years ago by Jim O’Leary, a Vancouver resident, has since received more than 8,000 reports of crow attacks in the leafy city, where crows are relatively abundant. And such encounters stretch well beyond the Pacific Northwest.

A Los Angeles resident, Neil Dave, described crows attacking his house, slamming their beaks against his glass door to the point where he was afraid it would shatter. Jim Ru, an artist in Brunswick, Maine, said crows destroyed the wiper blades of dozens of cars in the parking lot of his senior living apartment complex. Nothing seemed to dissuade them.

A flock of crows in flight over power lines and high rises in the greater Vancouver area against a partly cloudy pink sky.
Attacks by aggrieved crows can become the stuff of horror films, with lives being seemingly transformed into the Hitchcockian nightmare of “The Birds.”

Renowned for their intelligence, crows can mimic human speech, use tools and gather for what seem to be funeral rites when a member of their murder, as groups of crows are known, dies or is killed. They can identify and remember faces, even among large crowds. (click on page 2 to continue)

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Bezos and Musk in Fierce Contest to See Who Can Lose More Customers

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Brendan Smialowski, Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

SEATTLE (The Borowitz Report)—A heated battle has erupted between two of the world’s richest men as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk compete to see who can shed more customers, industry observers reported on Tuesday.

Davis Logsdon, who teaches a course about sociopathic CEOs at the University of Minnesota, said that both men “have what it takes” to send customers fleeing in droves.

“You might think that Musk, endowed with such world-class obnoxiousness, would be unbeatable as a customer-repellent,” he said. “But it’s impressive what Bezos has managed to do through sheer cowardice.”

“In the past 48 hours, for example, hundreds of people have tried to sell their used Teslas in the Washington Post classifieds,” he said. “Unfortunately for them, only 9 people still subscribe to the Washington Post.”

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Physician Altruism and Spending, Hospital Admissions, and Emergency Department Visits

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Rick B.

Ed note: I don’t doubt that patients have a much better experience with an altruistic medical provider who offers listening, time and doesn’t feel economic pressure as they advocate for your care. The practical problem–how can we find such a practitioner in these times of shortage and corporate takeover of our health care? Not everyone can afford a concierge physician (who provides the kind of care that used to be standard). There is no clear answer at present.

Key takeaways:

  • Patients of altruistic physicians had improved odds for several health outcomes.
  • Practices and policymakers should consider incentives and cultures that improve altruism, the researchers said.

Physician altruism corresponded with more positive patient outcomes, such as lower spending and a reduced risk for hospital admission, a study published in JAMA Health Forum showed.

Lawrence P. Casalino, MD, PhD, MPH, the Livingston Farrand Professor in the department of health care policy and research at Weill Cornell Medical College told Healio that physician professionalism and altruism in health care — defined as putting the patient first — is important for several reasons “but has not been measured in practicing physicians, and there is no research linking professionalism with outcomes.”

PC1024Casalino_Graphic_01_WEB
Data derived from: Casalino L, et al. JAMA Health Forum. 2024;doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2024.3383. (continued)
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“Floating pile of garbage”

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Commentary by Heather Cox Richardson

I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way. 

It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight. 

There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas. 

Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.  

Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024. 

On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump. 

Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.  (click on Page 2 to continue)

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Lessons for Industry from Boeing’s Wanton Self-Immolation

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Jim deMaine

By James S. Russell in Post Alley (thanks to Ed M.)

The 2018 crash of two airliners, one in Indonesia (in which 189 people died), the other in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which killed 157, underscore that America needs to revive its hollowed-out industry—suddenly beloved of politicians across the aisles. Yet those crashes, and the flaws they revealed in the nearly new planes involved, were the consequence of plane-maker Boeing’s fealty to the shareholder-value obsession of U.S. business that has predominated since the 1980s. 

I am working on a book that examines the intertwining of city culture and successful and admired businesses—with Seattle (my hometown) as the backbone. Hence I have dived deeply into Boeing’s extraordinary success and its appalling downward spiral. 

With the economy so high on peoples’ minds this election, Boeing’s story says much about America’s economic future.

A vibrant, innovative, and enduring industrial sector cannot grow without addressing the obsession with profits over all other considerations that continues to have much of American business in its grip. Boeing, which was long America’s industrial leader, is the  most prominent of the many victims of such profit obsession. 

Its extraordinary success since transforming air travel with the first commercially viable jets in 1958 had more than a little to do with the way engineers in vast drafting rooms could walk over to the factory floor and solve problems with machinists assembling the planes. Its no-glamour corporate headquarters was embedded in Plant 2, in South Seattle as well. That proximity—and the ease with which problems could be addressed, along with the need to get along day-to-day—forged a closeness that had long been one of Boeing’s secret weapons.

So what happened?

Boeing’s enduring success stood out amid decades of US industrial disinvestment that left a trail of abandoned factories and polluted land across much of the Northeast and Midwest. I grew up in Seattle when Boeing was the dominant employer and riding high. Its commitment to engineering prowess was woven into Seattle’s sense of itself as a place that hatched great companies which built quality products and aspired to great things. Boeing long has been—and perhaps remains for all its travails—America’s largest industrial exporter. (click on Page 2 to continue)

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Why, why?

Posted on October 27, 2024 by Jim deMaine
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Make your own Trumpkin

Posted on October 27, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Ed Note: A real downer that the owner of the Washington Post (Bezos) did not allow the editorial staff of his paper to endorse the Harris/Walz ticket.

Thanks to Tim B.

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The Presidio Pet Cemetery: A Resting Place for Furry Friends

Posted on October 27, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Olivia Allen-Price from KQED (thanks to Bob P.)

Tombstones in a cemetery.

Tombstones at the Presidio of San Francisco Pet Cemetery in San Francisco on Oct. 16, 2024. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

View the full episode transcript.

San Francisco has long been a tough place to be dead. For the past hundred years, burying the dead within San Francisco city limits has been banned.

One exception to this rule was the Presidio Pet Cemetery — a paradise where the pets of military families were laid to rest for 52 years.

A building and cemetery in the distance underneath an overpass.
The Presidio of San Francisco Pet Cemetery in San Francisco on Oct. 16, 2024. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

Directly beneath the Presidio Parkway overpass, a small plot of land in the Presidio holds the remains of over 400 beloved pets. While the cemetery doesn’t have the tidy rows you might imagine, it’s still beautiful. It’s raw and overgrown, with big bushes of white and magenta flowers and charming wooden grave markers peeking out of the greenery. The cemetery is backdropped with a picturesque view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

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Commentary by Heather Cox Richardson

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Jim deMaine

A bombshell story last night from the Wall Street Journal reported that billionaire Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, who is backing the election of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with a daily million-dollar sweepstakes giveaway and gifts of tens of millions to the campaign, has been in regular contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin since late 2022. Reporters Thomas Grove, Warren P. Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold, and Sam Schechner said that the conversations “touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.” 

Musk’s SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite system, won a $1.8 billion contract with U.S. military and intelligence agencies in 2021. It is the major rocket launcher for NASA and the Pentagon, and Musk has a security clearance; he says it is a top-secret clearance.

Today, NASA administrator Bill Nelson called for an investigation into the story. “If the story is true that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia,” Nelson told Burgess Everett of Semafor, “then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.”

Musk appears to be making a bid for control of the Republican Party for a number of possible reasons, including so he can continue to score federal contracts and because the high tariffs Trump has promised to place on Chinese imports would guarantee that Musk would have leverage in the electrical vehicle market. 

But Musk has competition for control of the party. Today, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who lead the establishment Republican faction and the MAGAs, respectively, and thus are usually at loggerheads, issued a joint statement condemning Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris for “labeling [Trump] as a ‘fascist.’” They suggest she is “inviting yet another would-be assassin to try robbing voters of their choice before Election Day.” 

Observers immediately pointed out that, in fact, it is Trump who has repeatedly called Harris a fascist—as well as a Marxist and a communist—and that those calling Trump a fascist are former members of his own administration like former White House chief of staff General John Kelly, or leaders like former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, whom Trump himself appointed to his position and who called Trump “the most dangerous person to this country.” (click Page 2 to continue)

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Posted in Ethics, Government, Politics | 2 Comments

Jeff Bezos Sells Washington Post’s Integrity in Latest Amazon Prime Deal

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Jim deMaine

SEATTLE (The Borowitz Report)—Urging Prime customers not to miss out, on Friday Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered to sell the Washington Post’s integrity as a “once-in-a-lifetime Black Friday Deal.”

Calling the Post’s integrity “a signature feature that made this former newspaper great,” the product page for the item listed it at $4.99 with free shipping.

According to the product page, Amazon customers interested in the Post’s integrity were also interested in the Los Angeles Times’s integrity, which was priced at $3.99.

Customers shopping for Bezos’s spine, soul, and human decency got an “Uh oh, something went wrong” error message, indicating that the products did not exist.

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Elon Musk Offers Million Dollars to Anyone Willing to Give Up Human Rights

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Jim deMaine

PITTSBURGH (The Borowitz Report)—Deepening his engagement with American democracy, on Friday the Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered a million dollars to anyone willing to forfeit their human rights.

“Giving up your rights is like riding in a driverless car,” he told a Republican rally audience. “Before you know it, you won’t miss having any control.”

“Just sign over your voting, civil, and reproductive rights and the check is yours!” he yelled.

Sweetening the deal, Musk also offered a million dollars to anyone who can stand hearing him talk for four minutes.

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An ugly moment

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Bob P.

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Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) for Medicare

Posted on October 24, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: Virginia Mason has sent out this information which I found useful. Due to the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans or standalone Medicare Prescription Drug plans (PDP), are often showing significant changes in benefits and/or premiums in 2025. Please review the Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) letter sent to you. If you have questions, it’s best to go to the Medicare.gov web site or call 1-800-MEDICARE. Do it early on to avoid long wait times. The changes can be made between now and December 7th. I found it interesting that if you are involuntarily losing your Advantage Plan that you can return to Original Medicare and have no underwriting for a supplemental plan.

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Every river has its people

Posted on October 24, 2024 by Jim deMaine

If “every river has its people,” can The People restore their river?

Thanks to Ed M.

Davus Burge in Post Alley

Of Native Americans and their world on Puget Sound, here ar the words of John, a Swinomish elder born in the 1880s, who said: “Every river has its people.”  In our tradition, a corollary would be, “Every city has its river.”  Think of Rome, Paris, London, New York, and…Tukwila.  Seattle also has the Duwamish river, but few in Seattle have ever seen it. 

If you travel I-5 down to Sea-Tac, the river is just visible (don’t blink).  In that split-second the ditch beneath the low overpass is easily missed.  From the West Seattle freeway bridge, the East and West Duwamish waterways that cut through its delta are extensions of Elliott Bay.  If you ferry across Elliott Bay and look south: the river’s once bucolic mouth is hidden by a forest of cargo cranes.

Either way, it is disappointing to learn that the storied Duwamish is now only 12 miles long and a toxic superfund site.  Ride the tide up the waterways to where a weedy slough in Tukwila stagnates on the east bank, and it becomes Green River. 

In Lushootseed, the native language spoken here, the river is dxwdǝwɁ, home of the dxwdǝwɁabš, the Duwamish people.  If you can’t pronounce these, and few can, English letters and combinations approximate native pronunciation. I write dxwdǝwɁ as DKHW duw, the whispered prefix DKHW, “place, where,” capitalized because it is stressed.  And duw, “inside,” voiced in a high tone, names the river. (continued)

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Another way to lower your blood pressure

Posted on October 24, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Bob P.

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The puppet master

Posted on October 24, 2024 by Jim deMaine

thanks to Bob P.

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How long can you stand on one foot? The answer may predict your fall risk.

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Jim deMaine

“If you can’t stand on your leg for five seconds, you’re at risk of falls,” said Kenton Kaufman, the senior author of the Mayo Clinic study.

By Teddy Amenabar in the Washington Post (thanks to Tim and Tony)

How long you can stand on one leg — specifically, your nondominant leg — is a telltale sign of age-related decline, according to a study led by researchers at Mayo Clinic.

Researchers found that a person’s ability to balance on one leg deteriorated with age faster than measurements of walking gait, grip and knee strength. Participants, ages 52 to 83, were compared with each other in a cross-sectional study.

“If you have poor balance, you’re more likely to fall,” said Kenton Kaufman, the senior author of the study and a musculoskeletal research professor at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

The ability to balance on one leg is “an important predictor” of someone’s risk of falling, he said.

“If you can’t stand on your leg for five seconds, you’re at risk of falls,” Kaufman said. “If a person can stand on their leg for 30 seconds, they’re doing really well, especially if they’re older.”

More than 1 in 4 people ages 65 and older fall every year, according to the National Institute on Aging. It is a leading cause of injury and injury-related death for older adults.

On average, the study’s participants could stand on their nondominant leg for 17 seconds. Among participants older than 65, the average was 11 seconds.

(Abbey Lossing for The Washington Post)

The facts

  • The researchers recruited 40 healthy men and women who live around Rochester. Half of the participants were 50 to 65 years old; the rest were older than 65.
  • Participants completed a series of tests measuring their balance, walking gait, grip and knee strength. Researchers controlled the results for body size (weight and height) to determine if there were age-related changes.
  • During balance tests, participants stood on a platform that measured how much they shifted their weight. They stood on both feet with eyes open, then eyes closed. Next they stood on their dominant leg, then their non-dominant leg with eyes open for up to 30 seconds.
  • Researchers told participants to balance on one leg in whatever way they prefer. Results included how long they could stand on one foot and how much they shifted their weight.

The study published in PLOS One on Wednesday. (continued)

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Waiting

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Mike C.

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Brazil elects record-high number of Indigenous mayors, vice mayors & councilors

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Jim deMaine

Karla Mendes in Mongabay (thanks to Pam P.)

A record-high number of Indigenous people were elected in Brazil’s recent municipal elections, a key move to ensure the fulfillment of Indigenous rights, public services and assistance and should pave the way to increase the number of Indigenous people elected in the 2026 state and federal ballots, advocates and activists say.

On Oct. 6, 256 Indigenous people were elected mayors, vice mayors and city councilors in all Brazilian regions, an 8% increase compared with 236 elected in the 2020 ballot. In total, 2,506 Indigenous candidates from 169 groups received 1,635,530 votes, up from 2,212 candidates from 71 groups in 2020. Indigenous candidates were the only group that recorded growth in votes this year, compared with candidates who self-declared white, pardo (brown), Black and Asian, which saw a reduction of around 20% altogether, according to a survey from the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the country’s main Indigenous association, which used data from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

After 351 years since its foundation, Florianópolis, capital of the southern state of Santa Catarina, elected its first Indigenous city councilor, Ingrid Sateré Mawé, with 3,430 votes. “This election represents the result of a struggle that has been built for a long time for those of us who are organized as Indigenous women,” Ingrid Sateré Mawé tells Mongabay in a phone interview. “Beyond starting a process of historical reparation, it’s bringing to light that we really do exist and resist.”

Ingrid Sateré Mawé says her election wasn’t “out of the blue.” She was born in Manaus, capital of the Amazonian state of Amazonas, where she says she started as an environmental activist and became part of the student movement. She moved to Florianópolis 18 years ago, where she taught biology and didactics for mathematics, she says, and was a teacher instructor focused on the history and culture of Indigenous peoples for non-Indigenous schools.

Ingrid Sateré Mawé says her election wasn't "out of the blue."
Ingrid Sateré Mawé says her election wasn’t “out of the blue.” She moved to Florianópolis 18 years ago, where she was a teacher focused on the history and culture of Indigenous peoples for non-Indigenous schools and she has also worked as a biologist and as a “guardian of archaeological sites,” assessing and monitoring the impact of large enterprises around the Indigenous territories in the region. Image courtesy of Carol Esmanhotto.

She has worked as a biologist and as a “guardian of archaeological sites” assessing and monitoring the impact of large enterprises around the Indigenous territories in the region, especially for the Guarani people, “who are my brothers; we’re from the same linguistic trunk,” the elected city councilor says, adding that this oversight will be prioritized during her 2025-28 term. (continued)

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