Comstock's magazine

06/11/2026

Mount Rainier, the tallest peak in the contiguous United States, taps into some of our deepest fears.

Anyone who has studied the area’s history knows that reaching its stunning vistas can come at a cost. More than 90 people have perished trying to conquer the snowy peaks here, which are so high they often pierce the clouds. Those fatalities don’t even count the volcano’s most infamous enigma: On Dec. 10, 1946, a Curtiss R5C-1 Commando military transport plane collided with one of its 25 glaciers. The violent weather patterns on Rainier that winter were so dangerous that it took rangers nine months to locate the crash site. Once they did, threats of avalanches and rockslides were dire enough that the Pentagon decided to leave the bodies of 32 U.S. Marines permanently encased in the icy wreckage.

But that wasn’t the story that inspired writer Scott Thomas Anderson to see Mount Rainier. He is more interested in a near-tragedy that was avoided — a tale of heroics that would have lasting implications for cultural and wildlife preservation across our nation.

Read his travel essay here:

An 1898 rescue linked a photographer to two men who would help define conservation in the United States

06/10/2026

West Sacramento is making a pitch that it should be the home of the next Major League Baseball expansion franchise. What makes the city think it has a chance?

“We’re already playing ball here and now we’re ready to build a better venue,” Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said during opening comments on May 28 during a packed news conference at Drake's: The Barn. The campaign announced that a new ballpark, along with Bridge District waterfront mixed-use development, will go on a 50-acre parcel in West Sacramento near Sutter Health Park should the region get a bid when the 30-team MLB is scheduled to add two franchises — one in the east and another in the west — by 2029.

By throwing its hat in the ring, Sacramento’s admitted longshot bid will be competing with other cities trying for the same two prizes, including Nashville (the eastern favorite), Salt Lake City, Charlotte and Portland.

But Sacramento, leaning into its 175-year history as a baseball town, is the only one hosting a current MLB team. The Athletics, after 57 years in Oakland, are playing their second season of a planned three-year temporary residence at the 26-year-old, 14,000-seat Sutter Health Park (formerly Raley Field) in a unique sharing situation with the minor league River Cats before the Athletics’ planned move to Las Vegas in 2028. From the first news conference in March 2024 when A’s owner John Fisher announced the A’s would be playing in West Sacramento, officials said they considered the temporary stay as an opportunity to show that the region could successfully host the MLB.

Read more:

Region’s pitch for Major League Baseball leans on Sacramento area’s long baseball history and current A’s residency

06/08/2026

More than 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. What are Sacramento health systems doing to help prevent deaths and other complications for mothers?

The Sacramento region is feeling the pressure with birth centers closing and fewer physicians to go around. In the past decade, CBS Sacramento reports that more than 50 labor and delivery wards have closed at California hospitals, and 12 counties now lack any hospitals with labor and delivery services. But as demand strains hospitals and resources, health systems in the region are responding with remote tools and wraparound services to create a safer, more integrated maternity journey.

One of the biggest issues in maternal health is the delicate window after delivery. Many patients don’t come in for a standard check-up until six weeks postpartum. But a lot could go wrong in that time. Mahmee aims to fill this gap by offering breastfeeding support, postpartum monitoring and mental health services without strict visit limits. The company also employs doulas, non-medical workers who provide emotional and physical support during childbirth, as salaried workers with benefits, which is unusual in a field dominated by contract labor.

To keep track of vitals before they become emergencies, hospitals across the Sacramento region have turned to remote monitoring programs. Mercy Medical Group sends patients home with blood pressure cuffs connected to an app. Nurses monitor readings and ask patients about symptoms like headaches, blurry vision and abdominal pain. If numbers spike too high, patients are directed to the emergency department.

Last fall, Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento launched its Sutter Sync pilot program, which also uses blood pressure cuffs and a weight monitoring device synced to patients’ medical records. Video visits allow mothers to get support from home, which physicians say is especially helpful for postpartum mental healthcare.

“Patients find it’s hard to get into the office with small children,” says Dr. Carrie Yiakis, an OB-GYN with Sutter Medical Group and one of the physician leaders for Sutter Health’s Women’s Service Line. “We know depression is such a significant risk, impacting so many women. A lot of people feel comfortable communicating from home, particularly those who just had a procedure or had a child.”

Read more:

Hospitals and startups are using remote monitoring, virtual visits and data-driven care to reduce maternal health risks

06/05/2026

Last June, during finals week, Chaitanya Agarwal was in the library at UC Davis, and the students were all complaining about how much their backs and necks were hurting. He decided to build something that could help.

Agarwal, a senior economics student, grew up building things. He loved Lego and created a fleet of custom ships from Star Wars parts. He sees this tool as an extension of that interest. But his first design was painfully inaccurate. To test out the product, he posted on various socials and found his initial users on Reddit, engaging with the posture community.

Using the open-source MediaPipe by Google, Agarwal designed the tool that tracked six (now seven) key points on a user’s face and body. One challenge early on was estimating head position from 2D camera input. But he solved this by calibrating the system for each user. Instead of relying on a fixed baseline, SitSense allows for more accurate, individualized tracking.

SitSense is a posture coach powered by AI to alert users when they’re slouching in real time. The tool uses your we**am to monitor your sitting position and provide data on how to adjust.

Adam Steiner is a customer in London, who has been giving Agarwal feedback about his experience and offering suggestions.

“I came across SitSense, I think, via Google Gemini, which suggested it as an alternative to the straps and devices I’d tried in the past,” Steiner says. “Posture correction seems a surprisingly uncrowded market. While many companies offer variations on elasticated braces, orthopedic chairs, etc., I’ve seen little innovation until recently.”

Meet our June .

The founder of SitSense says neck pain, slouching and long hours at a desk inspired his AI-powered posture coach

06/04/2026

Only about one in three employees trust their executives. What can CEOs do to help rebuild that trust?

Robert L. Lorber, CEO of The Lorber Kamai Consulting Group, insists that the most important driver for business success is the trust created, nurtured and reinforced by executive teams. As an HR executive, his daughter Tracie Lorber believes that the future of work will test that trust more than ever.

"In my HR role, I see how distrust drives turnover," Tracie writes in an opinion piece for Comstock's. "When one area had attrition nearly double the company average, employee interviews pointed to inconsistent communication from managers. After implementing structured huddles, communication platforms, authentic recognition and pay equity transparency tools, attrition was cut nearly in half within months. Trust can’t be earned through slogans — it requires systems."

Read more:

A father and daughter duo's views on trust and the future of work

06/04/2026

Comstock's June cover photo features Caltrans HQ spokesperson Sergio Ochoa Sánchez, who gave us a tour of some of the construction sites associated with the long Fix50 project. Read the full story at the link below, and stay tuned for more articles from the June issue.
https://buff.ly/vLOY8MW

06/03/2026

An HR manager says the boss can't hold boozy happy hours at work, so he brings in non-alcoholic beer. She's still annoyed. Is this a her problem, or a company problem?

Here's the question:
I’m the HR manager, and I report to the company president. I’ve already talked to him about the Friday 4 p.m. happy hours he hosts in the office. I told him I don’t think it’s appropriate and that it could create real liability issues — especially if someone leaves the parking lot impaired. He basically brushed me off and kept doing it. Then, this past Friday, we had a company tailgate on the production floor at 11:30 a.m., and he brought … non-alcoholic beer.

So now I’m wondering — am I overreacting here, or is this still a problem? He didn’t hold the happy hour, so maybe he’ll stop drinking altogether? This isn’t the only issue. He tends to undermine me, leaves me out of important meetings and generally doesn’t seem interested in anything I have to say. I like my job, but I’m really struggling with him as a boss — and I’ve started looking for other opportunities. Am I making too big a deal out of this, or would it bother you too?

Read the answer in this month's Evil HR Lady.

Dilemma of the Month: An HR manager's workplace battle exposed a bigger issue

06/02/2026

After years of closures and congestion, Sacramento’s largest freeway projects are entering their final stretch. But not everyone agrees that they were the best use of transportation funds.

If you live and drive in the Capital Region, you can’t help but be aware of the huge road construction projects on the major highways. These projects are designed ultimately to improve traffic flow and safety on I-50, I-80 and I-5, as well as to make journeys more manageable for cyclists.

But commuters have seen on-again, off-again lane and ramp closures for the past several years, since the Fix50 project, running from Watt Avenue west to the I-5 connector, got underway in 2021 at the height of the pandemic. Some nights, so many lanes and off-ramps were closed for construction that unfortunate drivers had to crawl in traffic for additional miles until they found an open off-ramp and then made a circuitous way back home from there.

Not everyone is convinced, however, of the wisdom of these projects. Yes, in the short term it might reduce commute times. But ultimately, as those commute times are reduced, the goal is to allow more vehicles to use the roads without clogging them up. And that, says post-doctoral scholar Amy Lee at UC Davis’ Institute for Transportation Studies, is self-defeating. In the long run, it is going to be bad for the state’s goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as for air quality mandates codified by the Clean Air Act.

Moreover, she argues, once all the additional drivers are drawn into commutes on the newly expanded highways, over the coming years the traffic snarl conditions will once again return — with the additional lanes simply being taken up by additional vehicles. “If you’re trying to minimize those things, widening highways is not the route I’d be taking,” Lee says.

Read more:

Major projects on Highway 50, I-80 and I-5 are nearing completion, promising smoother commutes while reigniting debates over transportation priorities

06/01/2026

In an old joke, a teacher asks a high school student, “Do you even know what the words ‘ignorance’ and ‘apathy’ mean?” The student replies, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Some call the times we’re living in the Era of Technology, the Epoch of AI or the Century of Social Media. But what we seem to be approaching, from frustration with our elected leaders and the ubiquitousness of social media, is an Age of Apathy.

Our news and opinions are fed to us in a 24-hour blather cycle. Wars are being fought around the world but as long as they don’t interrupt our regular TV programs or streaming schedule, we’re okay with that. We may have strong opinions, but we feel we can’t do anything about it, even when we post record turnouts at the polls. Yes, we’ve been very excited to elect people. But once we do, many of them become inaccessible, working to stay in office rather than follow through on promises they made to us.

Why do we shrug off betrayal or consider it “politics as usual”? That’s apathy born of frustration.

Read more from Comstock's magazine President and Publisher Winnie Comstock-Carlson's June opening letter:

FROM THE PUBLISHER: What happens when citizens stop believing their voices matter

05/29/2026

Why is the Alfred Hitchcock Festival, which draws fans from around the world, in Scotts Valley? It might have something to do with the deep affinity the filmmaker had for California.

“Shadow of a Doubt” was filmed and set in Santa Rosa. “Vertigo” was shot around the gloomy elegance of mid-century San Francisco. “Psycho” is a story that hinges on the isolation of Central Valley towns like Tulare. These projects — along with a vivid rendering of Bodega Bay in “The Birds” — have immortalized the Golden State in glowing ways on celluloid.

California’s life on film was, in fact, why the Hitchcock festival was being held in a tree-lined enclave 12 miles east of the Beach Boardwalk rather than the director’s hometown of London. For decades, Scotts Valley was Hitchcock’s summer home away from Hollywood. In 2022, long after the icon’s passing, Scotts Valley conceived the Hitchcock Festival as a way to raise money for a local theater group. I had arrived at its fourth go-around, which was called “100 Years of Hitchcock” because 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of his first silent film, “The Pleasure Garden.”

Read more:

For the Last Word column, a journalist muses on the lasting draw of Hitchcock films