Los Angeles Times - For this weekend’s Food section, the Food team marked the anniversary of the pandemic-related shutdowns and its rippling effects on Los Angeles’ dining and cooking culture. . . .

For [Bill Addison’s] contribution to the section, I asked myself what an L.A. food writer in 10 years might want to read to help make sense of the moment, so I pulled together a month-by-month timeline tracing the crucial moments of the last 14 months. . .

And the pain continues, as we watch the news about the Atlanta spa shootings this week — a heinous capstone in the escalation of anti-Asian hate crimes that have escalated since the pandemic’s inception. As Mary McNamara said in her Times column this week on Cherokee County sheriff’s office spokesman Capt. Jay Baker’s statements regarding the shooter: “The ‘bad day’ comment may go down as the official worst public statement ever made by a law enforcement officer, but honestly, the entire early narrative offered by Cherokee County was horrifying.”’

A jigsaw of societal failures led to this tragedy — the pieces are easy enough to fit together but collectively they’re difficult, maybe impossible, to solve. One place to start if you’re feeling as angry and answerless as I am: a donation to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.