An early look back at 2022

2022 is only weeks old and even cynics must admit that it is shaping up to be a Great Good News Year. Considering what we’ve been through in the last — what? — five, ten, 240 years, we can probably all agree that we deserve a break from the tsunami of American Exceptionalism.

Compared to previous years, it’s hard to argue that the New Year’s news, and/or the lack of it, has been anything but Happy so far. The Committee of Concerned Scientists at Steiner’s Tavern has put together a list of the Good News tidbits that have come in over the transom since midnight on December 31, and through news feeds from the world’s broadcast networks, cable outlets, blogs, streamers, podcasters and bloviators. Here are just a few items:

• Sonoma Valley Unified School District’s new superintendent hasn’t yet quit or been fired this year, nor have any teachers, principals, or administrators.  At this rate, Sonoma Valley students could soon be the envy of every schoolgirl in Afghanistan.
• Covid is more than half-way through the Greek alphabet but thanks to America’s state-and-local-option, business-friendly, politically flexible, rope-a-dope lockdown responses, we’ve kept them from killing any more than 822,000+ Americans so far. That’s an average of 1,126 people a day, a rate which nations burdened by functioning healthcare systems have been unable to achieve.   With pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi and omega still on the shelf, it could be March before CDC must resort to 我们现在真的完蛋and了to label new strains.
• The City’s “Drought Warning” signs in the Plaza and neighborhood parks are now soggy and slumping over from the rain, and possibly because park sprinkler systems were never turned off.
• Congress returned to work January 3 to commemorate the first anniversary of the “Insurrection of January 6.”  The occasion featured stentorian speeches praising Democracy and Unity, and a flurry of across-the-aisle rude gestures.
• So far in 2022, no newly elected or appointed member of City Council has resigned.
• The Sun has concluded that President Biden’s adorable new puppy, Commander, is probably being house-trained on no more than one of the portraits of previous presidents.  
• A local physician opined that if anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers continue to resist vaccination, testing and masking, Americans still alive at year-end 2022 will likely be 100% vax’d and masked.  
• With its profusion of vineyards, wineries, craft breweries, tasting rooms, bars and cannabis dispensaries, Sonoma Valley has surpassed Silicon Valley as the leading marketer of Virtual Reality.
• As of press time, no county Sheriff’s deputy has been caught on camera shooting, beating, choking, bashing, tasing, stomping on or otherwise abusing-to-death a single homeless, mentally ill, aged or BIPOCWLBGTQX person, or a family pet.
• Despite strong Second Amendment Christmas sales and Covid facemasks that confound surveillance cameras, 2022 has yet to record a single mass shooting at any Valley retail shop, school, public park, shopping center, farmers market, house of worship, coffee shop, hospital, fireworks display, swimming pool, gym, dance studio, bar, vineyard, winery, restaurant, sporting event, prayer breakfast, or meeting of any legislative body or advisory committee.   

Applying higher-level mathematics to their data, the Steiner’s scientists determined by Last Call that 2022 will be much better than 2021 for an America wracked by internal divisions because . . . Well, because they found that “2022” was really easy to divide by 2.