Editorial

When it comes to Obamacare, what matters most is what we, as individual patients and consumers do next and not what the U.S. Supreme Court just did.

D r. Jim Wood doesn’t seem like a person who would pursue higher office, because he’s not. When asked when he first wanted to go after a second career in politics, he replied that he never did and that it’s just one of those things in a person’s life that happens – that it just evolved organically. As he takes his seat, he is one of the state’s 28 new members of California’s Assembly.

Pests, whether ants in the kitchen or weeds in the garden, are a frustrating reality in any home or garden. While many of us think of a pesticide as the quick solution, it is not the safest alternative for our family’s heath and for the environment. Our watershed, creeks, rivers and local water bodies can be contaminated with pesticides and other chemicals that we commonly use. These chemicals are not only a threat to aquatic life, but can also affect the quality of our drinking water and our health. So, how can we control pests safely? What are alternatives to pesticides? Should pesticides ever be used?

I thank both Anna Darden and Wayne Rogers for their responses,

Editor: I continue to be baffled by the City Council’s unswerving resolve to build a roundabout at the five corners area. This project has been in the works for 10 years. It has been pointed out by several that a better, less disruptive, and simpler means of achieving smooth traffic flow into and out of our city would be to add a southbound 101 freeway entrance on Westside Road, and a northbound exit off Westside Road.

Hold on to your butts — your cigarette butts, that is. Let’s face it: many smokers litter when discarding their cigarette butts. They are dropped on sidewalks, tossed out the car window, and left on beaches. A cigarette butt is so small, it is easy to feel like we’re really not littering at all. What’s a cigarette butt compared to tossing a bag of fast food wrappers into the street or pouring a can of used oil in the gutter?

We were hoping the Board of Supervisors would prove to be “fast learners,” but we’re afraid they have already showed up too late for their latest big test — the annual budget hearings this week. After the taxpayers’ trouncing of their Measure A sales tax increase proposal in the June 2 election, we expected our county’s leaders to do some extra studying, rethink their political blunders and ask the public for some after-school tutoring.

It is time to come together and sit around the Thanksgiving table. Family members, from near and far, will be together again. We’ll eat turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. There will be pies and a family blessing. The couch will be full after the meal and a football game will probably be on the TV, just the way the original Pilgrims celebrated the very first Thanksgiving in 1621.

So you’re turning 65. Congratulations! It’s time to start taking advantage of your Medicare benefits. And just how do you do that?

A fascinating new rationale is going around to explain why wineries have to throw so many big parties. It has to do with a relatively new social force called “wine club pressure.”