Bob Edwards: Trying Times Indeed

Holocausts, Shrinking Wine Sales, Dipping Gun Deaths, Meager Rain, Seismic Faults and Epstein Agonistes

Your correspondent senses that these are very trying times for many in our Valley. Trying, because many are just trying to ignore how trying Life has become, what with the unending affordable housing crisis and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named still in charge (allegedly) and becoming increasingly incoherent (obviously).

But enough of him.

The trying times are affecting our kids. Just last week, a local classroom reportedly erupted in argument over whether (when compared to 6,000,000 Jews killed in the Holocaust) the 60,000-plus Palestinians bombed and starved to death by Israel in Gaza is a bona fide holocaust, or merely one-percent of a holocaust. And if the latter, should U.S. bomb sales to Israel be stopped until Israel gets its numbers up?

Talk about trying! Thankfully, the recess bell sounded and the kids returned to porn on their phones.

Equally trying concerns are trying adults. Eager to boost shrinking revenue, our wine industry may form a Wine Improvement District to initiate a self-imposed tax on ‘direct-to-consumer sales,’ e.g., sales in tasting rooms. The revenue generated would be used to fund a marketing campaign aimed at promoting Sonoma County as a premier wine destination and address ‘industry challenges,’ such as falling interest in wine among Gen’s X, Y and/or Z. Reportedly, a release of the remaining wine served at the Last Supper is also being considered. Reportedly.

But that’s not our most trying challenge. In a nation accustomed to being Number One in everything, our mass shootings (four-or-more people killed-per-event) are dropping. With only 256 mass shootings this year as of August 1 – barely one a day – the nation is trailing its output of previous years. Fewer people may be shot to death in the U.S. this year than in Ukraine. Your correspondent has asked the NRA to explain this sub-par harvest but has not received a reply.

Trying natural disasters have also increased. Much of the U.S. is being ravaged by floods, hellacious rainstorms, lightning, tornadoes and triple-digit heat waves that have killed hundreds if not thousands. And hurricane season has only just begun.

Fortunately, our Valley’s weather has been very pleasant this year, but it’s our lack of rain that’s very trying, because wildfire danger has soared. Many residents sleep with go-bags at the ready and the car fully gassed in case they need to flee the terror of a middle-of-the-night blaze.

Or “A Big One” on the Rogers Creek fault. Hey, it could happen! Seismic faults around the globe are subducting one another and volcanoes are exploding willy-nilly. It’s only a matter of time before Schocken Hill erupts, burying Depot Park bocci courts in lava and triggering tsunamis in local creeks that inundate every pickleball court in the Valley.

Thankfully Congress has adjourned for the summer so, for now, the only trying political dramas are:

How many thousands of homes will the builder be allowed to cram onto the historic Sonoma Developmental Center site, and,
Will The Epstein Files be released by Halloween?

The first question cannot be answered until the usually reliable anonymous sources reveal whether, when and how much influence has been peddled by who to whom, and in how many wheelbarrows.

And while nationally-known politicians, businessmen and/or government officials may have flown with Jeffrey Epstein to Pedophilia Island, local residents are more interested in knowing: