The Conversation

You'll likely be hearing a lot of talk about the Panama Canal over the next couple of years.

Every election year in California can prove dangerous for bystanders. But 2012 is shaping up to be a meteor storm of colliding causes and ballot initiatives. Here are a few:

Aaron Bassler lived in a Depression-era cabin in the North Coast town of Fort Bragg and drew pictures of the invasion from outer space he believed was imminent. In August, he shot and killed two men. After a 36-day manhunt, he died in a fusillade of bullets fired by sheriff's sharpshooters.

After a rampage by a mentally ill man claimed their daughter, her parents blazed a trail to transform a broken system.

A dispiriting gridlock continues to grip Washington and Sacramento, undermining the public's faith that democracy can solve our problems. As we write, the so-called supercommittee of Congress, convened to figure a way out of the nation's fiscal crisis, remains hopelessly paralyzed along familiar partisan lines. Everyone knows the sad story in Sacramento.

In Redding, a state-of-the-art $88 million veterans home is nearly finished. Advocates say it's badly needed. The problem: There's no money to run it.

The surge of military veterans returning to California – already about 30,000 a year – will grow as the wars wrap up. Is the state prepared to help them transition to civilian life?

All this month, the market has been saturated with pink-ribbon products sold in the name of breast cancer awareness, some with dubious ties to good health. How about some pink-certified wine? Or how about a Smith & Wesson handgun with a pink grip and engraved ribbon insignia?

After the 10-for-one sales on school supplies, long before the Valley nights turn from hot and still to cold and windy, the school fundraising season officially begins. Up for sale: magazine subscriptions, pre-formed balls of cookie dough, chocolates and nuts, wrapping paper, substantial and glittering for the upcoming holiday season.

The 10th anniversary today of Sept. 11 is a day when we honor those who died in the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. As is to be expected, the milestone is also eliciting lots of commentary about how we've all been transformed, how our lives have changed dramatically, how we've all sacrificed.

Millions of California workers don't have much to celebrate this Labor Day. State unemployment once again has crept up to a lacerating 12 percent, second-highest in the nation, and the specter looms of a double-dip recession.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jordan: all brilliant at their craft, all guilty of at least one comeback too many.