by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

The end goal of fatherhood for me has always been that my kids are better than their old man. It’s a simple credo, and admittedly not a particularly high bar to shoot for, but there you have it.

I’ve tried to set an example for them. I have some good qualities, but I’ve also made mistakes and taken shortcuts I don’t want them to emulate. Mostly I’ve been lazy. Yes, I’ve worked hard at times to accomplish things, and I’m proud of the fruits of those periods of industriousness, but truth told I’ve not always tried as hard as I could or should have.

This inherent slothfulness has manifested in various ways. The common theme has been an inability to see things through to completion. I get bored or distracted and put things aside to be addressed at a later date, and that date keeps slipping off into the finite future. My nightstand is piled high with half-finished books, an ever-expanding symbol of my lack of focus.

Perhaps the most glaring example of this unfortunate trait has been in my education, and here’s where the shameful truth comes out: I never finished college. Yep, I’m a two-time college dropout.

I’ve held this shame close for as long as I can remember. In journalism I’ve been lucky to have been hired by trusting folk who took a chance on me, and I’ve learned on the job. And while I’ve done fine, my lack of a complete formal education has been a tender spot I’ve avoided writing about it or even discussing in public.

Why now? Well, there’s been a development …

My middle daughter Grace graduated from San Francisco State University last week. Yes, the Rhodes family’s college diploma drought has ended. Her class numbered more than 7,200, and as such the grads were conferred en masse. Though impersonal, watching Grace turn her tassel from right to left still brought tears.

I’ve made mistakes as a dad, but this wasn’t one of them. My kid is a college graduate, and I am very proud.

College graduations are the norm, business as usual for most families. But not mine. Neither my mom nor dad attended a day of higher education. Same for their parents, and on and on, back as far as the eye and 23andMe can see. In fact, my maternal grandfather — who built an upper-middle-class life for himself and his family in Glendora — made it only to the sixth grade. He learned through books and with his innate intelligence moved up through the ranks of the company he worked for from 1945 until his retirement in the late ‘70s. He too learned on the job. And still he was the wisest man I’ve ever known.

Three generations later, Grace overcame all kinds of obstacles to earn her bachelor’s degree. Her parents’ needlessly tempestuous divorce tops the list, but she’s also a member of Claremont High’s class of 2020 — you know, that doomed group that didn’t get a prom, a graduation ceremony, or the other benefits and privileges bestowed on high school seniors. SFSU’s big to-do on May 21 at Oracle Park didn’t replace those lost milestone events, but I believe it helped. It was gratifying to finally see her get her flowers.

Grace kept telling me in the months leading up to graduation that it was “no big deal.” She knew about the massive ceremony to come and how there would be no smiling photo of her shaking hands with the college president. That was fine with me. This wasn’t at all about the photo. It was about pride and celebrating her hard-won accomplishment as a “first gen” college grad.

We had a celebratory dinner with her mom and siblings at one of San Francisco’s great seafood restaurants, Scoma’s, in Fisherman’s Wharf. Gifts and cards were given. We closed the joint. Outside, the fog rolled in, enveloping us in its damp, gloomy beauty.

Later, back at the hotel I lay in bed thinking about all the work Grace put in, and felt immense pride. The dream that my kids would be better than me felt a little closer. Momentum, I thought, is surely on our side now.

Just two more kids to go and this newly outed college dropout can rest easy.

Vote as if your democracy depends on it

I am horrified by the state-sponsored violence being normalized by our federal government. Federal immigration agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, and it appears no one will be held accountable.

The astonishing level of naked corruption emanating from Washington, with slush funds being established for convicted felons who attacked the capitol, no-bid contracts for companies the president’s sons are involved with, Trump himself making billions while cutting healthcare for millions of Americans, grows more disheartening by the day.

And the truth is both parties are deeply flawed.

The Republicans have sold their souls to a convicted felon, sexual assailant, liar, thief, cheat, and hateful malignant narcissist. Since January The Heritage Foundation’s soldiers have been  gleefully clear-cutting the country’s democratic institutions in a long-planned effort to permanently cement corporate control over the levers of power.

The “opposition party” in name only, the Democrats, have for the most part sat on their hands and offered only camera-ready displays of empty outrage as all this has gone down, fearful of angering their corporate and special interest bosses, just like their GOP colleagues. (See the Democrats’ recent “autopsy” of Kamala Harris’s failed 2024 presidential bid for proof of just how out of touch and captured by special interests they are.)

They’re two sides of the same coin, really.

Meanwhile, the common perception is California is a solidly Democratic, left-leaning sure thing. But we’ve elected loads of Republican governors, as recently as 2006 when Arnold Schwartzenegger was returned to office. Through it all, the Golden State — with it massive GDP — has historically mostly been able to surf above whatever idiocy Washington throws our way.

But in 2026 the wave of awful is bigger than anyone could have ever imagined. “Sanctuary” states like California are under attack. Federal disaster funds are being withheld. Immigration agents are rounding up brown people — children, the elderly, sick people, citizens and immigrants alike — and stashing them by the thousands in unmonitored, for-profit concentration camps.

And the spray-tanned orange despot in Washington is making all kinds of heretofore unimaginable demands of fealty from Republican governors. That’s why next week’s election is crucial for the majority of Californians who want nothing to do with Trump.

This is not an endorsement of any one candidate for governor. It is simply a reminder that our state’s fortification from the once mildly infuriating volatility of Washington is under threat.

My own dissatisfaction with both parties runs deep. But these are serious times, and Californians need to act accordingly and mobilize behind whomever stands the best chance of keeping the crazy at bay.