Columns

100 years ago – September 9, 1920

September marks several dedicated efforts throughout California that signify the importance of clean water and promote cleanups of local waterways. Pollution Prevention Week (starting on the third Monday of September), Creek Week (starting the fourth week of September), and California’s Coastal Cleanup Day all coincide in September to encourage public participation in keeping our water free of harmful pollutants, with a primary focus on removing trash from local waterways.

During the years of the Spanish Flu pandemic (1918-20) only some public gatherings were banned. As with our current COVID-19 pandemic, sports leagues and teams persisted in finding ways to keep the games happening. Major League baseball played a normal schedule in 1918 and it was later proved that the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs was a virus “super spreader” event. Professional football’s popularity was yet to happen and college football was still king of the sport. Most colleges played on with only 18 prominent schools canceling their games. (Don’t forget, these were also the years of World War I.)

Mankind has lived with fire almost forever. We couldn’t live without fire unless we switched to eating only raw food and figured out some other way to keep alive and warm during winter weather. Those illustrations of caveman life found in elementary school textbooks never looked that desirable or comfy. But, as we know all too well, there is good fire and there is really bad fire.

America is an idea that is made up by many voices. The only way to limit the American ideal of democracy and a more perfect union is to discourage or deny even one of these voices. Seldom in America’s history has there been more topics or reasons to raise our voices, listen intently and engage in purposeful conversations. We find ourselves living in times of a global pandemic, whirling natural disasters, national political turmoil, racial awakening and economic uncertainty. Voices are cascading, clashing, clamoring and crescendoing everywhere.

We keep saying we are living in “unprecedented” times. Last week, it was 130 degrees in Death Valley and two hurricanes swirled toward the Gulf of Mexico at the same time, both being historical events. By the middle of the week there were 375 wildfires across California that burned 400,000 acres, a landmass the size of Rhode Island. Big Basin Redwoods, California’s oldest state park, was gutted by fire and Healdsburg’s Daniels School on Mill Creek that had survived 136 years of fire seasons was consumed by the Walbridge Fire.

It’s the job of all journalists to tell the truth. Some of us are better at this than others. And, sadly, there are many people today who claim to be journalists and are not. Worse, way too many people mistake people they see on TV or in their Facebook feed as real journalists. All of this is making the job of professional journalists tougher and tougher by the day. The way you can tell who is a real journalist and who isn’t can be found in the tools, methods and sources they use to uncover the news, check the facts and report with total fairness.

Sonoma County’s COVID-19 case data shows a climbing line upward, marking hundreds of new positive cases each week and a quadrupling of deaths in just the last month. All predictions are for this line to keep moving upward across the page to the right where it might meet up with a “second wave” of coronavirus infections just when flu season gets here in a few months.

While most people are at staying close to home due to shelter -in-place orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sanitation workers are still out in the field providing essential services such as garbage, recycling and organics pick-up. All curbside collection services in Sonoma County continue to operate normally, although temporary routing changes may result in drivers arriving earlier or later than usual.