enduring

There’s no shortage of bands commemorating their glory days as decade anniversaries of albums fly by. Yet few landmark releases feel not only fresh but forward-thinking 20 years after they were recorded. My Morning Jacket stumbled onto this kind of brilliance in October 2004 when it released its fourth studio album “Z.” Across 10 tracks of lush, euphoria-driven rock ‘n’ roll, the band captured a notable tone shift in its sound that melded Southern rock, haunting folk, psychedelic soul laced with jam band energy. It’s a set of songs that still make up a huge chunk of the bands live show. In September the band performed the album in its entirety to a sold-out Hollywood Palladium for its 20th anniversary.

“We still play these songs all the time,” said frontman and principal songwriter Jim James in a recent conversation. “So it’s not like we broke up after we released ‘Z’ and then we got back together 20 years later to play these songs, and it’s such a trip. We’ve been playing them nonstop for 20 years.”

Shortly after the release of its 10th studio album “is,” the band put out a deluxe reissue of “Z” that includes four B-sides and a whole album’s worth of demo versions of songs like “Wordless Chorus,” “Off the Record” and Dodante. Recently James spoke to The Times about the enduring power of “Z” and the joy of going back to the beginning of the album’s origins to give himself and his fans a new appreciation for the groundbreaking sound the band created.

The rerelease of “Z” was prefaced earlier this year with a full-album show at the Palladium. What was it like revisiting the album on stage first before it came out (again) on vinyl and streaming?

This is our fourth album now to hit the 20-year mark. So we’ve got some experience now doing these album shows. And it’s funny because some of the earlier albums we don’t play all the songs from them so we had to go back and relearn a lot of songs. But the songs from “Z” we pretty much play all the songs all the time. So it’s pretty hilarious how it involved no effort. It just involved playing them in that order of the sequence of the album. But we kind of laughed about that. We’re like, man, we don’t really even have to do any research or anything. We were all kind of reflecting just on how grateful we are that we like playing all the songs still. It’s such a great feeling to play songs for 20 years and never really get tired of them. People still want to hear them and there’s still excitement there, and they still feel fresh. It’s really a beautiful thing.

This was your first album using an outside producer. What was that like for you as the songwriter to step in the studio with John Leckie to help you realize your vision with “Z”?

It was so great, because I really needed somebody who could work with me and not let our egos clash too much. John was just really great about coming in and respecting what I wanted to do, but also voicing his opinion and what he liked and what he didn’t like and when he thought we could do better. And it was just really so refreshing and so good for us to have him there. I mean, his track record speaks for itself, he’s somebody who you can trust right off the bat, just because of all the things they’ve done in the past. He’s such a soft-spoken gentleman but he also has this hilarious, brutal honesty about him, which was always really great.

Your lineup had also changed between the previous album “It Still Moves” and “Z” — adding keyboard player Bo Koster and guitarist Carl Broemel who are still in the band today. So was that like stepping in the studio with the “new guys” for the first time?

It was really nerve-racking and really exciting all at once. We had some touring experience under our belt with Bo and Carl, so we kind of knew that it was working out on that level, but we’d never really recorded before, so it was a real test for all of us. And I think we all knew that. So everybody brought their A game to the session and we took it really seriously, but we also had a lot of fun and just really kind of got to know each other. That was good to do that out in the middle of nowhere, out there in the Catskills, up at the studio. It gave us some time to really bond without a lot of the real-world stuff coming in or other people coming in. So I think that was really important, that we did it that way.

Do you remember what song came out of the sessions first?

“It Beats 4 U” was the first one, because that was one we had already played live before we started recording. So I think that was the first song that we started messing with. But I think they all were kind of coming to life around the same time. So by the time we got in there to start unpacking them, I had already written them and kind of made the demos of them and stuff.

It’s great that you included so many demo versions of your songs on this rerelease. What was the process like of locating these, sifting through and sequencing which ones you wanted to put on the album?

Well, I love demos for a lot of my favorite bands — I love it when I get to hear the demos from the albums. So I’m always saving all that stuff; with my own stuff I’m always compiling all the demos, because that’s half the fun to me. Because sometimes you get this just like a beautiful glimpse into the song. Quite often, I end up liking the demo more than I like the actual album, song because you get a whole, whole new view of it. It’s also interesting when you’re sequencing for vinyl, because you don’t have unlimited time so you kind of got to pick and choose, and that kind of forces you to just choose the best. There’s a whole other round of band demos and then there were my demos, so there were a lot of things to choose from. But it kind of helps me to look at it in vinyl format. There’s still something about the vinyl time limit that helps with quality control. Just kind of pick the ones that I feel are most effective and then try and make a fun sequence so that hopefully, if somebody’s into them, it’s kind of like you get a bonus album that you can listen to.

We had four true songs, B-sides, that we really love too, that weren’t demos. So that was really nice to finally get those out, because those had been on different soundtracks. And then one wasn’t even released. So I don’t think that those weren’t even on streaming or anything for years and years. So it’s really cool to have those out kind of everywhere now, because I’ve always liked all those songs and been proud of those songs too. And I think most bands know the feeling of you know when you make a record. Sometimes songs just don’t fit the record, even if you still love the songs.

MMJ during the “Z” era.

(Sam Erickson)

Were you playing any of those live at the point where you released the album the first round, or did you shelve them for later?

We’ve always played “Where to Begin” live — off and on. We’ve also tried “Chills” a couple times, and I think we did “How Could I Know” a couple times. We’ve never played “The Devil’s Peanut Butter,” we kinda forgot that one existed until this whole [album rerelease] process started, and I found that song again. So we’ll probably play that one somewhere out on the next leg.

Was this process something that you enjoy doing, like, in terms of your how to, sort of like, reexamine an album?

I really love it because I just feel so grateful that anybody even gives a s–, you know? I mean, so there’s that part of me that’s just so grateful to even still be in the game, talking about this. But beyond that, it’s really cool for me because it’s like jumping in a time machine and going back and looking at that point in my life and getting perspective on where I am now, and seeing how I’ve grown and asking “where have I changed? Where have I not changed?” I look back and with all of these albums as they come up to this 20-year mark, and I see I’ve always been really mean and hard on myself, on Jim, but I know that Jim was doing the best he could at each time. That’s the one thing I’ve always kind of been able to see, to get myself through, to not be too hard on myself. I know I was giving it everything I had, so whether I would change things about it as I am today or not — we all look back on the past, and maybe there’s things we’d do differently, but it gives me a lot of comfort to know that I was trying as hard as I could, and all the guys in the band were trying as hard as they could. It really makes me feel proud of us for just putting in the time and effort.

I get the feeling that the world divides into two very different halves as my two-hour train from Paris pulls into the splendid half-timbered station of Trouville-Deauville, with holidaymakers either turning left towards chic, luxurious Deauville, the Saint-Tropez of Normandy, or branching right, across the Touques River, to Trouville-sur-Mer, a more historic, easy-going destination.

I have opted to stay at Trouville, known as La Reine des Plages (The Queen of the Beaches), a tiny fishing port that was transformed from the 1820s onwards into one of France’s first fashionable bathing resorts by bohemian artists and writers, seduced by the unique coastal light, and the Parisian bourgeoisie looking for a healthy dose of sea air and a flutter in the glamorous municipal casino.

It is Wednesday morning, market day, and the high street that leads into town is teeming with stalls showcasing Normandy goodies: creamy Pont-l’Évêque and pungent Livarot cheeses, cider and apple juice, peppery andouille sausage, freshly harvested fruits and vegetables. The families of local fishers do a brisk trade at stands piled high with still-wriggling sole, plaice, mackerel, crab and red mullet that have come straight from the nets of small boats docked below on the quayside.

For visitors who have booked one of Trouville’s numerous self-catering apartments, the market is an ideal place to shop for dinner or a picnic, but I carry on into the centre of town to the unbeatably priced Hôtel Le Fer à Cheval (doubles from just €59 room-only in winter/around€140 in peak season). Identical twins Virginie and Sonia Bisson created their smart, welcoming hotel from three adjoining mansions 20 years ago, and are a mine of insider tips. So after checking in my bags, I take their advice and head straight for the beach bar Le Galatée a couple of hundred yards away from the hotel.

An iconic wooden boardwalk, Promenade Savignac, runs parallel to the lapping waves for more than a kilometre, the scene pretty much unchanged from Claude Monet’s 1870 impressionist masterpiece Promenade à Trouville. The terrace of Le Galatée is certainly the strategic place to sit, indulging in their famous chocolat chaud or an ice-cream sundae while taking the pulse of what is now a buzzing family resort.

The Reine des Plages now resembles a stately dowager, spoiling holidaymakers with classic seaside treats such as pony rides on the beach, mini golf and petanque. The boardwalk is lined with Normandy’s distinctive 19th-century half-timbered villas and palatial mansions, each trying to outdo its neighbour for opulence and grandeur. The iconic Hôtel Les Roches Noires – again immortalised by Monet, whose painting now hangs in the Musée d’Orsay – is a luxurious hotel, as many of these stately piles once were until they were converted into private apartments.

While Deauville’s boardwalk is lined with art deco bathing cabins dedicated to Hollywood stars who have attended the Deauville American Film Festival, such as Gene Kelly, Kirk Douglas and Marilyn Monroe, Trouville offers plain wooden benches bearing the names of writers drawn here for inspiration: Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. Just behind Les Roches Noires, I walk uphill to the imposing Villa Montebello, home of the municipal museum, where I discover that Trouville was also a favourite destination for the 19th-century painters Courbet, Corot, Caillebotte and above all Eugène Boudin, later acclaimed as the father of impressionism

Aside from lazing on the beach, browsing retro fashion boutiques such as À La Petite Jeannette and Devred 1902, or exploring Trouville’s distinctive maze of narrow alleyways and steep staircases that climb high above the main town, the big draw here is eating out. Like every visitor, I am charmed by the raucous fishmongers lining the landmark Marché aux Poissons. With tables along the pavement, they serve plateaux de fruits de mer piled high with oysters, clams, prawns, whelks, cockles and mussels. Lunch is a memorable occasion, especially accompanied by a chilled bottle of Muscadet, though beware the bill – the prices you see on the stall are for takeaway, with a mark-up when served at the table. As Stéphane Brassy, president of the Trouville fishmongers association, tells me between shucking oysters: “We have queues of tourists lining up here every day of the week. Everyone loves the banter and understands that the quality of our fish and seafood comes at a certain price.”

In the evening, plush brasseries such as Les Vapeurs and Le Central are packed, but in the back streets I discover two exceptional addresses that have both been open for less than a year. The romantic Chez Ginette is decorated with checked tablecloths and chintzy wallpaper, presenting a bistronomique menu of grand-mère recipes such as eggs mimosa with smoked mackerel (€4.90), chicken cordon bleu (€17.90) or juicy bavette steak, frites and creamy camembert sauce (€18.90).

The funky Turbulent is like no other diner in town, with young chef Jarvis Scott proposing a daring five-course tasting menu for €70. His name betrays Anglo-French roots, but Jarvis says that, “even though I was brought up on baked beans and fried sausages, my cooking inspiration is very much French. I was looking to escape the high-pressure cooking world of Parisian fine dining and Trouville was the perfect solution, especially with the wonderful local produce from small boat fishers and organic farmers.” His menu changes every week and includes dishes such as deep-fried artichoke resting on a creamy chicken liver mousse, frogs’ legs alongside spicy merguez sausage, smoked beetroot with tapenade and wild sorrel.

But Trouville-sur-mer is not just a seaside destination, as the idyllic Normandy countryside of the Pays d’Auge begins just outside town. Les Trouvillaises bike shop recommends hiring an ebike (€35 per day) to comfortably explore the region’s rolling hills, and a leisurely 22-mile (35km) ride allows for stop-offs at an artisan dairy farm and ancient cidrerie.

At La Ferme Martin, Thierry and Caroline Martin are the fourth generation to produce artisan, raw-milk Pont-l’Évêque cheese. Each morning, Caroline takes the still-warm milk, fresh from their 60-cow herd, and makes cheeses in her tiny dairy, where a steady stream of locals and tourists turn up to buy direct from the farm.

Just outside the bustling market town of Pont-l’Évêque lies the sprawling 17th-century manor and orchards of Maison Drouin, the perfect place to discover the secrets of cider and calvados. Half a dozen Norman colombage (half-timbered) outbuildings house a press for creating the apple juice, vats to ferment and age the cider, an alembic still for distilling, a barrel room to age the calvados, and a busy boutique. No reservation is necessary, and as Guillaume Drouin explains, “We offer the chance to taste all our products, take a tour explaining our orchards with 36 varieties of apples, then see how we make everything. There is no charge, because I want our visitors to try, to understand and enjoy, rather than thinking they are paying to enter some kind of tourist attraction.”

Back in Trouville, on the way to the station, I cannot resist a glimpse inside the fabulous belle epoque Casino Barrière, an opulent reminder that this was one of the early magnets drawing travellers to Normandy a century ago. Just outside, in a former police building, a new attraction is opening at the end of October: Le Ciné Bistro is the brainchild of Claude Lelouch, director of the acclaimed Un Homme et Une Femme (1966), which he filmed in Trouville, and will offer an evening movie screening followed by dinner. Definitely a good reason to come back.

The trip was provided by Calvados Attractivité. Further information can be found at Trouville-sur-Mer and Terre d’Auge Tourisme

Lord Palmerston’s maxim that “We have no eternal allies nor perpetual enemies. “Our interests are eternal and perpetual,” aptly describes the rapidly changing nature of India-China relations. Border strife has been the norm between the two nations for decades, shaping their strategic stances. However, October 2024 saw a minor thaw in relations, with New Delhi and Beijing coming to terms with a major agreement on patrolling protocols along the disputed LAC. This breakthrough led to a series of high-level diplomatic engagements in a carefully measured but pragmatic manner. More importantly, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping engaged in direct bilateral talks at the BRICS Summit in Kazan, which was followed by a defense ministers’ conversation during the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting in November. The momentum then carried over into December in the form of the revival of the India–China Special Representatives Meeting, one of the important strategic platforms that had been asleep for five years. Although these developments do not eliminate deeply ingrained strategic distrust, they demonstrate a realist convergence; both nations are putting national interests ahead of ideological or historical animosities, embracing engagement rather than isolation as a way to manage competition and maintain regional stability.

In August 2025, Mr. Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Affairs Minister, visited India after three years for the improvement of the relationship between the two nuclear and emerging regional states. During his stay in India, Wang Yi co-chaired the 24th round of the Special Representatives’ Dialogue on the Boundary Question between India and China with the National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval. He also had bilateral discussions with Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar and met Prime Minister Modi. His visit after the 2020 Galwan clashes between India and China primarily concentrated on bilateral issues like border stabilization, economic cooperation, and regional security.

Therefore, Mr. Wang Yi’s visit to India marks a recalibration of ties based on a healthy and stable India-China relationship that serves the long-term interests of both countries.Secondly, the visit preceded PM Modi’s trip to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, his first visit in seven years, thereby laying the groundwork for stronger bilateral engagements. Thirdly, the visit came at a crucial time, as both countries face pressure from shifting US trade orientations, resulting in a push for pragmatic recalibration of ties and a strategic embrace on both sides.

However, during the month of February 2025, the Indian government ordered the erasure of 119 Chinese applications from the Google Play Store and, by June, announced a five-year tariff on imports of Chinese industrial inputs, which read as putting up a false facade of resistance against Beijing. However, the most compelling contrast comes from the diplomatic posture of India; calling for normalization with China while acting tough on them quite literally sounded like shouting at a neighbor while still borrowing sugar from them. Abandonment by America becomes evident for Modi; therefore, his choice of dialogue with Beijing reinforces both strategic weakness and duplicitous diplomacy. After many years during which warnings on Chinese expansionism were issued, the border may remain tense, but New Delhi seems determined to maintain good relations with China. This very decision of shaking hands underscored India’s inability to match China on political, strategic, and economic fronts. Meanwhile, Wang Yi’s parallel visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan highlight Beijing’s much broader regional priorities, reminding New Delhi just how far it is from being at the very center of China’s diplomacy.

The SCO Summit in Beijing saw the attendance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who sought to mend ties between China and India after a period of tension; however, unresolved grievances cast serious doubts on the sustainability of this rapprochement. In the short term, ties may improve, since India has realized how great the necessity for cooperation with China has become in pushing its economic ambitions. This necessity to engage China more aggressively is driven especially in light of strained relations with the US under Trump’s steep tariffs. However, deep sensitivities on sovereignty and territorial integrity argue against any form of a sustainable relationship with China, beginning at the Sino-Indian border conflict and continuing through Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir to China’s stance on Tibet. Mutual suspicion over regional engagements also exists, fueled by Beijing’s relations with Pakistan and New Delhi’s burgeoning naval cooperation in Asia. Contrasting language in the Modi–Xi meeting readouts, with India stressing a “multi-polar Asia” while China glossed over it, further reflects differing perspectives on the regional order. Through the stopover of Modi in Japan before going to Beijing and participation in the SCO Summit while skipping China’s Victory Day celebrations, it shows India’s cautious attempts to consolidate strategic autonomy, moving closer to both China and Russia while not disturbing the US or the West. If there is not any forward movement on the substantive disputes, the tensions will resurface in time, making any sustainable rapprochement between India and China again very unlikely, even if large-scale conflict does not seem to be a strong possibility.

In short, India and China may converge temporarily out of pragmatism, but without resolving core disputes, trust will remain elusive. New Delhi’s balancing act between Beijing, Washington, and Moscow highlights both its ambitions and vulnerabilities. Lasting peace requires more than symbolic summits—it demands substantive compromises on sovereignty, security, and regional influence. Until then, rapprochement will remain fragile, an uneasy truce rather than a genuine transformation.

Josh Jackson’s “The Enduring Wild: A Journey Into California’s Public Lands” is a story of adventures across 41 California landscapes, with photos of beautiful places you are unlikely to have seen, in locations ranging from the Mojave Desert to the Elkhorn Ridge Wilderness in Mendocino County. Early on, the author lays out mind-bending stats: more than 618 million acres in the United States are federally owned public land and 245 million of those belong to the Bureau of Land Management.

Public lands, he notes, “are areas of land and water owned collectively by the citizens and managed by the Federal government.” These lands “are our common ground, a gift of seismic proportions that belongs to all of us.”

Drive across the United States and consider that 28% of all of that is yours. Ours.

Jackson’s assertion that we are all landowners is a clarion call amid a GOP-led push to sell off public land. The shadow of the current assault on public lands weighs heavy while reading this lovely book.

The book has endearing origins. When Jackson could not get a reservation for weekend camping with his kids, a buddy suggested that he try the BLM. Until that moment he had never even heard of the Bureau of Land Management. Yet, 15.3% of the total landmass in California is … BLM.

Jackson starts out with history: All these lands were taken from Native American peoples, and he does not overlook that BLM used to be jokingly referred to as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. In 1976, a turnaround came via the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which built a multi-use mandate to emphasize hiking and conservation as much grazing and extraction (a.k.a. mining). This effort to soften the heavy use of public lands by for-profit individuals and companies led to the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion and the election of President Reagan. Arguably, we’ve been struggling with finding the multi-use balance ever after.

Jackson’s first BLM foray was out to the Trona Pinnacles in the Mojave Desert, where he and his two older children camped, playing in a wonderland where “hundreds of tufa spires protrude like drip-style sand castles out of the wide-open desert floor that extend for miles in every direction,” while his wife, Kari, an E.R. nurse, stayed home with their newborn. The pandemic shutdown in 2020 inspired Kari’s suggestion, “Why don’t you start going to see all these BLM lands?”

Jackson’s love affair with BLM lands was not immediate, as just a few miles into his next hike in the Rainbow Basin Natural Area near Barstow, he was underwhelmed, like he was missing something. A few miles later, he sat and considered a Terry Tempest Williams quote from “Refuge”: “If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.” Revisiting this quote on repeat, Jackson had an emotional shift, deciding to stop hiking and … start walking.

On his next trip to the Amargosa Canyon, Jackson began by reaching out to the Amargosa Conservancy, learning about the Timbisha Shoshone people whose ancestral land this is, about past mining and dozens of plant and animal species. Committed to going at the pace of discovery, he admired the enchanting, striated geology of Rainbow Mountain, cherished creosote, mesquite and the brave diversity of desert flora and was struck by the gaze of an arrogant coyote. On his return, he found that in three hours, he had only traveled … a mile.

Yet it was during this meander that his writing made a steep drop into seeing, feeling, connecting, plunging toward transcendence.

A highlight of the book is a repeat trip to Central California’s Carrizo Plain, first during a drought, silenced by its sere magnificence. After the heavy rains of 2023, he joined Cal Poly San Luis Obispo botanist Emma Fryer and was overcome by the delirious beauty of a superbloom, feeling like “I had wandered into the Land of Oz.” Fryer observed that the drought was so severe that only the hardy native seed survived within the soil, releasing their beauty the moment water allowed them to come to life. Seeing the same place twice was revelatory, both familiar and completely new.

It’s hard to tell if the places he visits gets more beautiful over the course of the book or his capacity to appreciate them and share his joy has grown. Despite the frequent paucity of BLM cartographic resources, apparently Jackson never got lost or worried about dropping the thread of a trail. Describing his father, Jackson might as well be talking about himself: “I have no memories of my dad being worried or fearful in unfamiliar situations.” Nevertheless, toward the end of the book, when he and his hardy father camped next to the rushing Eel River, Jackson did worry about bears breaking into their tent. Fortunately, the bears did not arrive but, inspired by William Cronon’s “The Trouble With Wilderness,” Jackson’s heart opened as he realized that “Nature” is not out there; nature is wherever we are.

Back in Los Angeles taking long walks with his daughter, past bodegas and car washes, he saw jacaranda, heard owls and coyotes and realized the wild had been here all along. An urban sycamore claimed its space regardless of enclosing cement and car exhaust, as spectacular and venerable as any sycamore in the state.

Can the places Jackson visited for his book endure public larceny? He is tracking the answer to this question, real time, on his Substack, where he’s currently describing the shocking attempts to sell millions of acres of BLM land.

“It’s been a wild few weeks for BLM lands. 540,385 acres in Nevada and Utah were on the chopping block to be sold off,” Jackson recently noted. “Everyone was talking about the land totals — but no one was showing what the landscapes actually looked like. So, I decided to go see them.”

Great advice: Bring a friend, pack water and go.

Watts’ writing has appeared in Earth Island Journal, New York Times motherlode blog, Sierra Magazine and local venues. Her first novel is “Tree.”

UN chief Antonio Guterres says Gazans are enduring “the cruelest phase” of the war. He denounced Israel’s blockade, calling the 400 trucks cleared to enter Gaza so far “a teaspoon of aid” when “a flood of assistance is required.”