Tom Wright

1 month ago | santacruzsentinel.com | Tom Wright

Legislators and environmentalists are considering how to safeguard California’s wetlands after the Trump administration announced its plans to rein in — once again — the nation’s 53-year-old law protecting waterways. At stake are seasonal streams, ponds and pools, which are only inundated part of the time and found throughout the Southwest. In California, an estimated 80% of all linear miles of streams and rivers are ephemeral or intermittent.

1 month ago | santacruzsentinel.com | Tom Wright

A potential finding that Southern California Edison’s equipment ignited the deadly Eaton Fire could upend California’s effort to shield utilities from mounting wildfire losses as climate change drives more destructive blazes. The January blaze, which killed 17 people and destroyed 9,414 structures, remains under investigation, but residents already have filed several lawsuits blaming Edison for sparking the conflagration.

1 month ago | santacruzsentinel.com | Tom Wright

Perhaps no state has more to lose than California in the federal budget proposal House Republicans passed this week. That spending plan sets up significant cuts to Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people. California has taken just about every route and opportunity to expand the Medicaid program. Today, 14.9 million Californians are enrolled in it, and federal funding cuts would almost certainly roll back services and coverage for some of them.

1 month ago | tolerance.ca | Tom Wright

By Tom F. Wright, Reader in Rhetoric, University of Sussex So, it’s happened. You’re on stage, Oscar statue in hand, facing Hollywood’s finest and millions of viewers. You could keep it simple – thank your agent, your co-stars, your dog. Or you could use this moment to say something that matters.

1 month ago | stagewhispers.com.au | Tom Wright

To colonisers of Australia, the unknown vastness and mysteries of this ancient continent must have been terrifying. Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel about three schoolgirls and their French teacher who vanished at Hanging Rock in central Victoria – and then Peter Weir’s landmark film – is a masterpiece of this dark Gothic Australia. With such verisimilitude, it has the eery sense of a true story.  It happened on St Valentine’s Day, 1900.