Good morning. It’s Monday, Oct. 31.
- Man accused in Paul Pelosi attack described as troubled.
- Storm poised to deliver first real snow of the wet season.
- And the hell that awaits Elon Musk at Twitter.
Please note: There will be no newsletter Tuesday. Back in your inbox Wednesday.
Pelosi attack
1.
The man accused of attacking Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband carried zip ties and duct tape when he broke into the couple’s San Francisco home on Friday, multiple reports said, citing law enforcement. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins on Sunday confirmed reports that the suspect, David DePape, 42, had been looking for the Democratic lawmaker and had confronted Paul Pelosi, 82, on the second floor of his home, shouting, “Where is Nancy?” CNN | A.P. | S.F. Chronicle
2.
Family and friends described DePape as a pro-nudity activist who slept in a bus in Berkeley and had fallen prey to isolation and troubling thoughts. Linda Schneider, 65, knew DePape for a couple years starting in 2009. She said he was painfully shy and that he frightened her when he started equating himself with Jesus Christ. Gypsy Taub, a fellow nudist-rights activist with whom DePape has two children, said he was “mentally ill.” Blog posts under his name included rants about aliens, communists, antiwhite racism, and the conspiracy theory QAnon. KGO | N.Y. Times
3.
Other developments:
- Paul Pelosi appears to have alerted police to the intruder by surreptitiously dialing 911, then leaving the phone line open. The authorities praised an emergency dispatcher for ascertaining something was off. S.F. Chronicle | USA Today
- “Darth Nancy.” “Crazyface Pelosi.” “Crazy Nancy.” Republicans have spent years portraying Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the most sinister Democratic villain of all. She’s now one of the most threatened members of Congress at a time of rising political violence. N.Y. Times | Politico
- Elon Musk had only owned Twitter for a few days Sunday when he used the platform to spread a sensationalist article claiming Paul Pelosi was “in a dispute with a male prostitute.” After a widespread backlash, he deleted the post. Washington Post | L.A. Times
Statewide
4.
The first significant storm of the wet season is poised to roll across California in the middle of this week, forecasters said. Models predicted the storm system would push south from the Pacific Northwest between Tuesday and Thursday, soaking low-lying areas and dumping up to a foot of snow at higher elevations in the Sierra. Inland temperatures are expected to plummet into the 30s overnight. Weather Underground | SFGATE
Skiers and snowboarders are getting excited for the season. Mammoth Mountain, pictured on a recent morning above, plans to open Nov. 11. Snowbrains
5.
Strange spiky plants have been rising from California’s parched farmlands. Agave requires barely any water to survive, but the distilled spirits made from the plant’s heart — used in tequila and mezcal — have been soaring in popularity. Stuart Woolf, a prominent California grower, is so enthusiastic about agave he donated $100,000 for an agave research center at UC Davis. “All I have now is a test plot, land, and a desire,” he said. Civil Eats
6.
The New Yorker shared its picks for the best books of 2022, so far. Several intersected with California:
- John Markoff’s “Whole Earth” is a biography of the visionary behind the “Whole Earth Catalog.” “[Stewart] Brand was not a beatnik,” Markoff writes, “nor would he become a hippie. He was far too ambitious to fit in comfortably with his peers. As often as not he has found a way to go against the grain. He has floated upstream.”
- Marianne Wiggins’ “Properties of Thirst” follows a ranching family in the Owens Valley at the time of Japanese internment. “It’s a narrative,” wrote the L.A. Times, “Wiggins infuses with grace and grit so that readers will feel the heat and the wind that blows off the sepia landscape.”
- Richard White’s “Who Killed Jane Stanford?” investigates the mysterious death of Jane Stanford, the widow of the railroad tycoon Leland Stanford, in 1905. The authorities insisted she couldn’t have been poisoned because she had no enemies. But the reality “was both more scandalous and more strange.”
Northern California
7.
People have been living on boats off Sausalito since the 1950s, when bohemians and artists established the lawless floating village known as the “anchor-outs” of Richardson Bay. But during the pandemic, they were forced into an encampment on shore. Then in August, the city announced what appears to be an unprecedented settlement: It paid the former anchor-outs $18,000 each in a bid to buy its way out of a humanitarian crisis. S.F. Chronicle
8.
In an essay directed at Elon Musk, the technology writer Nilay Patel welcomed him to “hell”:
“Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.” The Verge
9.
On Saturday, CNN ran this headline: “8-year-old boy becomes youngest person to climb California’s El Capitan.” But the highly publicized quest has drawn eye rolls from Yosemite rock climbers. That’s because it was accomplished not by climbing rock but by sliding up fixed ropes set by guides. Tom Evans, a photographer who followed the ascent from the valley floor, called it a “publicity hoax.” S.F. Chronicle | Daily Beast
Southern California
10.
In Pico-Union, the rate of overcrowding — defined as more than one person per room — is 40%. That makes the community in Los Angeles one of the most cramped places in America: 40,000 people living in 1.3 square miles without a skyscraper in sight. Here’s a fascinating account of how Los Angeles blocked the construction of apartments, taller buildings, and public housing to serve the vision of a paradise of single-family homes. 👉 L.A. Times
11.
Maurice Hastings spent 38 years in prison for the 1983 kidnapping and murder of Roberta Wydermyer in Inglewood. On Friday, he was freed after DNA testing pointed to another suspect, a man convicted of kidnapping and raping other women. That man, whose name was not disclosed, died in prison in 2020. Hastings, 69, who maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration, said he wasn’t bitter. “I just want to enjoy my life now while I have it,” he said. A.P. | L.A. Times
12.
Some homes along the California coast seem to be taunting mother nature. An ostentatious house at Laguna Beach’s Table Rock Beach, known to locals simply as the Table Rock house, perches at the very edge of a promontory jutting into the Pacific. Last year, a boulder the size of a car broke off the bluffs nearby. Above, a photographer captured a great view of the Table Rock house made to look like a toy with the photographic trickery of tilt shift.
● ●
A daredevil once filmed himself sneaking onto the Table Rock home’s balcony and leaping into the sea. 👉 YouTube
Thanks for reading!
The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
Make a one-time contribution to the California Sun.
Give the gift of the Sun.
Get a California Sun mug, T-shirt, phone case, or hoodie.
Forward this email to a friend.
Click here to stop delivery, and here to update your billing information or cancel your support.
The California Sun, PO Box 6868, Los Osos, CA 93412
Wake up to must-read news from around the Golden State delivered to your inbox each morning.