Berkeley community members are mourning the drowning of a young man who graduated last Friday from Berkeley High School and died Wednesday while swimming in Long Lake in Placer County, school officials and the Placer County Sheriff's Office said.

Efejon Ustenci, 17, known affectionately by some as "Efe," was a star player on the Berkeley Rhinos Youth Rugby Club and was planning to attend California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. -more-

Borrowing a storyline from his American cousin, Donald Trump, (seems like they share the same hairdresser) Britain’s very own Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London, promised to make Britain great again by diverting membership Euro dues to critical domestic needs. To bolster his “Leave” crusade, the effervescent, Johnson played fast and loose with the truth. -more-

A loudmouthed bully hangs nasty monikers on his adversaries. He calls Cruz "Lying Ted," and Rubio "Little Marco." Now he's calling Senator Clinton "Crooked Hillary." "Liar," "Little," and "Crooked" seem like powerful insults to the man who hurls them because they actually describe his own shifty character. The more people see through this small-time grifter's con, the more insecure he becomes, and the louder he yells. -more-

Among so many other lessons to be learned from the mid-June mass-murder shooting at Pulse, the Orlando LGBT club, is a caution against locking ourselves into assumptions and conclusions before enough information is gathered and known. Now that a few weeks have passed since the horrific event, and the initial furor has cooled off a bit, we can more easily see where some of those early assumptions and conclusions wrong.

Many—including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump—shut off all further analysis once they learned that the lone American-born shooter was a practicing Muslim, had an Arabic name—Omar Mir Seddique Mateen—and that he had both identified himself as an "Islamic soldier" and pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (commonly known as either ISIS or ISIL) in 911 calls he made in the midst of the shootings. From that moment on, many declared the Orlando massacre to be an act of "radical Islamic international terrorism."

In addition, many of our more conservative friends concluded that the tragedy might have been averted had there been either "some" or "more" armed security inside the club itself.

Of course, there was always an alternate theory that the American-born Mateen was less motivated by radical Muslim theory than he was by traditional American-bred homophobia. And within a day or so of the shooting, evidence emerged—though it has still been not been fully substantiated—that he may have been a self-hating gay, and that the public allegiance to ISIL might have merely been a way to paste on a higher motivation to the shooting and cover up conflicted feelings about his own sexuality.

In addition, timelines released by several news outlets showed that an armed off-duty Orlando police officer was working at the club, and engaged in a shootout with Mr. Mateen before Mateen entered the nightclub, and that two on-duty officers entered the club within minutes and exchanged gunfire with the shooter, forcing him to retreat to a bathroom.

But even though some of this information was available within hours of the first reports of the Orlando gay nightclub shooting, it was ignored in many minds because it included facts that conflicted with convenient conclusions already drawn. -more-

When will Congress stop obliging the NRA? Can Congress talking endlessly about the Second Amendment save the public from gun violence? It seems that NRA and its money has persuaded Congress to make laws which hurt communities but help the NRA. Members of Congress have verbal sympathy for families targeted by gunners but they do not seem to hear the crying of those who have directly experienced the loss of loved ones. -more-

Foreigners who put their lives on the line to support American military, and support personnel are being horribly treated. For the past five years, thousands of Afghans who worked as interpreters were promised visas have been left in the lurch through Congressional ineptness. A 2017 defense bill that would have provided 4,000 additional visas has been blocked. American’s image as a safe haven and whose promises are sacrosanct has been badly shattered. With the world facing the worst refugee crisis since World War II, America has taken miniscule 2,174 Syrian refugees. It seems we have shut the door tightly for refugees yearning to be free. The Lady of Liberty must be weeping. -more-

SOMEWHERE IN MARYLAND--The news about the sit-ins at the House came as a text from a friend just as we were getting ready to rent a car in Manhattan in order to drive from one family gathering to another one with another branch of the family in the D.C. Area. Like an old fire horse hearing the sound of the fire bell, I itched to get on the road in time to see the action, but these days things just don't move very fast. In due time, with massive assistance from GPS, I got to the Capitol early yesterday afternoon, just in time to learn that I was too late.

The valiant Congresspersons had departed about 12:30 after the electricity, including the air conditioning, had been turned off in the chamber. With temperatures in the high eighties and humidity to match, no surprise that they'd had to vacate--you can't survive in D.C. in the summer without power cooling.

The nice man in the Congressional Periodical Press Gallery gave me a temporary Press sticker and suggested that there might still be some action out in front of the building on the east side. After running up and down several flights of stairs, I got there, only to learn that the representatives had come and gone already.

A rump faction of the sizable group which had gathered outside the Capitol overnight was still there, a nice assortment which included elderly white women, young black men and everything in between, several sporting rowdy homemade signs supporting the sitters. One woman told me she'd been there in a tour group when the sit-in started, and she just stayed to cheer them on. She said that the House participants had frequently come out to talk to their fans during the night, and there had been a cordial exchange of complementary pizza orders from time to time.

As I was about to retreat to the comfort of the air-conditioned suburban hotel which had been chosen for the out-of-town family members, a couple of straggling congressmen showed up for one last briefing. It turned out that they were from Michigan, a state that I used to know well politically. One was from East Lansing, home of Michigan State, and the other, Dan Kildee, comes from Flint, a city much in the news lately.

He turns out to be the nephew of Dale Kildee, whom I'd known when he was one of the more liberal members of the Michigan legislature in the 60s, who later went on to be elected to the U.S. Congress from Flint. All politics these days is quasi-dynastic, not necessarily a bad thing. -more-

In the end, the Brexit—the vote on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union (EU) or be the first in the 29-member trade group to bail out—was a close fought matter, but for all the sturm und drang about a pivotal moment for the EU, the June 23 referendum that saw the Brexit pass was a very British affair. -more-

When political historians look back on the 2016 presidential contest, they’ll likely consider May 4th to the present as the decisive period. On May 4th, Donald Trump won the Indiana Republican primary; his last competitor, Ted Cruz, dropped out; and the press labeled Trump the presumptive GOP candidate. A week later, Trump got a polls “bump” and was effectively tied with Hillary Clinton. Then Donald lost his mojo. -more-

To begin with, this is a horrible tragedy, something worse than I could ever imagine dealing with, nor could I ever fathom the grief of the friends and families of those killed. Those affected by this awful act have my deepest condolences. -more-

For San Francisco Opera’s performance on June 29 of Verdi’s Don Carlo, veteran bass Ferruccio Furlanetto replaced René Pape as King Philip II of Spain. Furlanetto first sang this role in 1986 at Salzburg, and I have a VHS video of that performance, which launched Furlanetto as a major interpreter of that role. Now, at age 67, Furlanetto sings just as magnificently as he did thirty years earlier. Indeed, he is generally acclaimed as the greatest Philip II of the current generation. -more-

Last weekend I went to a show more or less off-the-cuff, at the behest of a friend who wanted me to see a production of 'King Lear' by a small company I'd never heard of with a funny name--Ninjaz of Drama.

'Lear' is, of course, a tough classic to pull off, to communicate whole, as a living, breathing work of art. I can count on one hand the productions I've seen where the whole play came through, not just great scenes or performances, and all of them were by professional companies, or companies dominated by professional actors.

(One of the most promising versions I've ever gone to, at the Old Vic with a famous director and first-rate cast, bogged down by the storm scene and proceeded to break apart into just that--scenes and individual performances of greater and lesser worth.)

So it was one of those delightful surprises that make everything else worthwhile to watch the Ninjaz bring off one of the clearest, most articulate performances of 'Lear' in terms of story and detail I've seen. With the fine direction of San Francisco native Rey Carolino (who also played several minor roles) and excellent script editing of David Abad, the actors of various degrees of stage experience became an ensemble dedicated to the exposition of this thematically complex, emotionally difficult masterpiece. -more-

On Sunday, June 26, at 3:00 in the afternoon, with all the pandemonium of Gay Pride celebrations going on outside in the Civic Center, the Cypress String Quartet performed their Farewell Concert in the newly opened Taube Atrium Theatre of San Francisco’s War Memorial Building. After twenty years of playing together (fifteen years with Ethan Filner as violist), the Cypress String Quartet, composed of Cecily Ward and Tom Stone on violin, Jennifer Kloetzel on cello, and Ethan Filner on viola), is now disbanding to allow each member to pursue other musical endeavors. During their twenty-year run, the San Francisco-based Cypress Quartet has made many recordings, including the complete Beethoven String Quartets, and has been internationally recognized as one of the very best string quartets in the world. They have also carried out an extensive outreach program to bring classical music into classrooms at all levels, from inner city elementary schools in San Jose to high schools and universities throughout the Bay Area. The Cypress Quartet also spent two full weeks in May of this year performing the complete Beethoven String Quartets in a free series of public concerts at outdoor venues throughout all neighborhoods of San Francisco. If they are now disbanding, we can only be grateful, not only for twenty years of wonderful music-making, but also for the way the Cypress Quartet has gone out with a bang, sharing with us all their joy in music-making. -more-

After performing separately on Thursday, June 9, as part of the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition, produced by the San Francisco Early Music Society, violinist Rachel Podger and keyboard artist Kristian Bezuidenhout teamed up on Saturday, June 11, for an all-Bach program. This time Bezuidenhout played harpsichord, and, as always, Podger played her 1739 Pezzolini baroque violin. Together, these two artists performed works by Johann Sebastian Bach, especially his Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord. -more-

Czech composer Leoš Janáček’s opera Jenufa tells a simple story, one set in a Moravian farming village similar to the one where Janáček himself grew up; but it tells this tale in music of searing intensity. As a young composer Janáček traveled throughoutšŠMoravia, studying the folk songs and rhythms of speech among the villagers. From these early years of research, Janáček created a unique musical idiom that is quite different from the musical styles of his fellow Czech composers Antonin Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana. For the opera Jenufa, Janáček wrote the libretto himself based on a play, Jeji pastorkyna – literally, Her Stepdaughter, by Gabriela Preissová. The unnamed Her of the title refers to Kostelnička Buryjovka, sung here by the great Finnish soprano Karita Mattila; and her stepdaughter is Jenufa, sung here by up-and-coming Swedish soprano Malin Byström. Individually and together, Mattila and Bystrom sang resplendently. The third cast member noteworthy of our appreciation was tenor William Burden as Laca, the villager who competes for Jenufa’s love with his stepbrother, the handsome village rake, Števa, sung here by Scott Quinn. -more-

On Thursday evening, June 16, the San Francisco Opera held a gala concert celebrating the ten-year reign of David Gockley as General Director of the company. Gockley, who is retiring at the end of the current summer season, came to SF Opera in 2006 from Houston Grand Opera, where he spent 33 seasons as General Director.

During his long career, Gockley has commissioned no less than 45 new operas. -more-