Decoding Teenagers: Holiday Time
It’s the holidays. I can feel the anticipation as Christmas break draws near, two glorious weeks off school for my teenagers. But I also feel the two stress balls festering as their workload doubles in the next few weeks as classes wrap up for the new year. So, what kind of holiday season will it be? “Bah-humbug or “let’s be merry and bright.”
Commentary: Anti-children policies affect the future
From family separation to arguments over border walls, matters of immigration are never far from the national spotlight these days. Many of these debates seem centered on far-away places and people. But they have serious impacts for Sonoma County families, children and schools.
Smoke tainted
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.
Voices
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.
But I Digress … Happy glass is half-fullidays!
“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
