What is on YOUR Mind

Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition, Sebastopol TrailMakers, BikeWalk Sebastopol, and citizens of Petaluma have come together in support of Sonoma County Regional Parks’ efforts to build a visionary trail. The Petaluma Sebastopol Trail is an 11-mile, paved, multi-use trail that will link the cities of Sebastopol and Petaluma. The trail will offer a safe, dedicated route for transportation and recreation by people who walk, bike, use wheelchairs, ride horses, and use other non-motorized modes.

“Don't waste any more time or energy on the presidential election than it takes to get to your polling station and pull a lever for a third-party candidate-—just enough to register your obstruction and defiance—and then get back out onto the street. That is where the question of real power is being decided.” Chris Hedges, May 2012

Where were you when…

By Vesta Copestakes

I just came from my home town Town Meeting. I am impressed, thrilled and disappointed all at the same time.

Impressed and enthralled with the people who put countless hours of their personal time into maintaining the integrity of our home – and disappointed at the people who don't see the value in their contribution.

Random thoughts about the Great Gun Debate:

1.     Protected from tyrannical government by the 2^nd Amendment since 1787, millions of Americans have been shot to death under the watchful eye of our benevolent government.

When one really looks at the problem caused by nuts with firearms, one must look at the second amendment and realize that it was an opening of Pandora’s Box. It is true that what came out of that deadly box were not guns.  It was a law that put them into the hands of many of the wrong people. There are responsible gun owners and Gun Nuts. The law straight out of the box did not discriminate.  Just as most of us own automobiles that some turn into deadly weapons, we do our very best to regulate them with law.

In Praise of the Press Democrat

The banner headline across the top of the front page of the Jan. 16 Press Democrat (Jan 17th Print Edition) and the article that followed were stunning. They were among the best in my nearly daily reading of the PD for 20 years. 

There is an old saying that, among Jews and African Americans, the word "paranoia" has no meaning, because people really are out to kill us. What's ironic and troubling today is that a rising number of middle class white folks, Presbyterians and Baptists and Methodists living in quiet suburban enclaves, are experiencing this same feeling. Paranoia, that is. They're buying guns to protect themselves from the government who wants to register and (maybe) take away their guns. 

I've never been very good at picking winning horses at the track, but nonetheless, I would like to go out on a limb and say that 2013 is going to be a good year. I say that with the full knowledge that while 2012 was pretty good as years go, the truth is we haven't really had a spectacular year, a year to write home about, since way back in 2007, and even that, if you'll recall, ended on a bad note.

NRA and gun industry spokesman, Wayne LaPierre, is just passing gas, obnoxious but not lethal, when he pronounces that the answer to mass murders by guns is armed guards in every school in America. LaPierre knows full well this is a b---s--- answer, but people who lie for a living don’t care about such things. Let’s take a minute and look at that idiot suggestion.

By Shepherd Bliss

 “Sustainability” has become a buzzword. But what does it really mean? One definition is that it requires a triple-E bottom line—economics, the environment and equity. However, this word sometimes is used to “green-wash” and promote things that are not sustainable. An authentic application of the word requires that it be evidence-based. But language can be used to conceal rather than reveal.

Abstract: Interviews of 16 Department Chairs at Sonoma State University during the spring 2012 semester indicate that over the past 15 years there has been an overall decline in the quality of education at the University. Chairs reported that, the administration’s focus on building the Green Music Center during this period has negatively impacted academics on campus. The opportunity costs of the Green Music Center to the University have not been properly addressed in the push for completion of a world-class concert hall at a small under-funded public university.

Small town Sebastopol is on the front-lines of a national battle against Chase Bank, CVS Pharmacy, and Armstrong Development. I was glad that a couple of speakers on July 19 from Petaluma mentioned the similar struggles they are engaging in against Chase and CVS. 

No sooner had the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) granted customers the choice of opting-out of the SmartMeter program, then PG&E told its customers they would have to pay an up front fee and a monthly charge if they chose to Opt-Out.  We at Burbank Heights & Orchards in Sebastopol are circulating the following petition.  We hope, if you agree with us, that you will let the CPUC know.

Dear Secretary,

What better way to solve the illegal immigration problem than to annex Mexico, give it commonwealth status, and turn all those illegals into instant legals? No more surreptitious sneaking back and forth, no more sucking off our colonial teats, no more bitter, largely uneducated, "second class" citizens depleting resources that are under another country's stewardship, no more avoiding taxes and sneering in the face of the USA legal system by making a dash for the border. After all, if we're truly the Land of Plenty, lets acommodate the "tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to be free". 

Another Fourth of July has marched in and out. Small towns across America like Sonoma parade in patriotic fervor, even permitting the dissidents and dissenters their voice in the march, past reviewing stands with waving local politicos. Happy, joyous, bright, stepping to the local band, adorable gaggles of children in costumes, wannabe cowboys and girls on horses, old-time fancy cars and their proud papa owners, fire truck squirting the kids and barbecue and fire works to top it off.  

And here comes Bill Moyers to piss on the parade. To remind us in that soft Texas drawl, that annoying sting of truth and morality to pop the bubble of belief of the myths that sustain us. The Fourth: Independence Day, Freedom and Liberty Day, to welcome in a new world order, a new kind of government that guaranteed equality and justice and rights for all. 

By Tony Adler

All things change and evolve with time, some for the better and some for the worse. Take the English language. It originated from the Germanic language of the Angles and the Saxons mixed with Celtic and after the 11^th Century French and Latin. What we have today is a far cry from any of these especially in America, as Henry Higgins once stated. “In America English completely disappears.”