Editorial

Here comes the year 2011, can you believe it? What happened to

As president of Sonoma County Winegrowers and on behalf of Sonoma County winegrape growers and their families, I wanted to take the opportunity to share how the local farming community is working together to preserve our agriculture character, including correcting the misinformation that has appeared in some local newspapers recently.

There’s been tremendous concern lately about what Healdsburg should do about the voter-adopted Growth Management Ordinance (GMO). People have packed council chambers expressing their concerns about the cost of housing. There’s no denying that we live in a very desirable community, which means demand for housing is high.

It is hard to believe, but in 1954, a deadly virus in the United States scared families, changed behaviors, and led to some panicky behavior, somewhat like Ebola is doing now. It was called by some a “plague” and it was said that the greatest fear of Americans in the 1950s were the atomic bomb and this illness. It would kill 8,000 people in the first years of the 1950s, and it would generally target young, healthy kids.  If it did not kill someone, it might cause significant paralysis, even to the point of that person not being able to walk, or lift an arm, or even to breathe.  And that paralysis could be permanent.

I promised myself that I would give the whole gun control issue a bit of a break. I find it depressing in the extreme and it only exacerbates my feeling of helplessness. I broke that promise to myself because a) no matter how I tried my thoughts still carom back to the subject, b) I had my fingers crossed when I made the promise and c) I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get the words ‘exacerbate’ and ‘carom’ in one paragraph.

For some reason, we have taxes on our minds this week. Tax Day (April 15) just happened and we’re busily wadding up all the extra forms with pencil mistakes and late night calculations. We just hit the “Send” button on our TurboTax or stubbornly filed our income taxes the old fashioned way with a licked stamp and envelope.

— Rollie Atkinson

There’s a lot of focus on teaching kids about bullying. There are laws against bullying. No name-calling weeks in schools. We urge kids not to be intimidated.