Columns

Computer Users Group • Monday, April 10 • 1-4 p.m. • $3, Newcomers Free

This Thanksgiving we find ourselves living under very stern public health warnings not to travel or gather in large groups due to the continuing spread of coronavirus cases here and almost everywhere across the continent. It looks like there will be no big table gathering at grandma’s house this year. We’ll be in our own homes, trying to make the best of things, adding stuffing a turkey to our other shelter-in-place routines like distance learning, working at home and watching too much TV.

Older Americans are fêted each May, but spring 2020 has seen many of us separated from our elders due to the coronavirus pandemic. Changes can occur or begin to occur at any time, but when elders have less socialization and interaction there can be sudden or accelerated change. It may start with not feeling like dressing since nobody will be around, and that can become holding off on bathing or wearing the same clothes too long. A senior parent with a normally active social life may not even reach out to call friends if quarantined alone.

The United States of America is a land of immigrants. In addition to those who we commonly perceive as an immigrant — someone who was born in another country — anyone whose ancestors came from Asia, Europe, South America, the Middle East, Africa (if you go back far enough, that includes all of us), or elsewhere, is the descendant of an immigrant.

Public safety and policing in Windsor and Sonoma County will be a topic we must wrestle with. The need to delineate specific defining features of our local policing policy is now a concern of significant proportions. I would like to comment for the record to our town leaders specific elements where there are limited, yet real, linkages between perceptions and legitimate concerns for when they take this issue up. 

This news organization and community journalism institution focuses on local news, leaving national and world events to larger news sources. But there are times when our close-to-home happenings are overtaken by historical occurrences. Certainly, the violent attack on Jan. 6, 2021 of our U.S. Capitol and Congress was such a date.

I was on the newspaper team that created The Windsor Times in 1987. I could claim to be one of its parents. My parental instincts are kicking in pretty hard right now, as we must make forced decisions about this newspaper’s fate. If you are among those who believe it takes a village to raise a child, then you would agree the same goes for a community newspaper. Unfortunately, a virus, a changed local economy and the loss of too many newspaper readers to Facebook, Google and elsewhere has put this newspaper on unsustainable footing.

The Summer of Love of hippies, love-ins, Monterey Pop, LSD, Sgt. Pepper, Haight-Ashbury flower children and Vietnam War protests happened without most of us who are now hearing about its 50th anniversary.