Community

When Sydney Gorham was five years old, she started her first business, “Sydney’s Outdoor Chore Service.” The tiny entrepreneur waddled throughout her San Jose neighborhood with a bucket of cleaning supplies and a stack of handmade business cards in hand; Gorham went door-to-door and...

The landscape is so lush in May. Shades of green are everywhere you look — apple green, grass green, forest green, spring green, pine, olive, lime, jade, chartreuse, kelp, sage. Did you know the human eye can identify more than 200,000 shades of green?

Tuesday night my partner received an alert on her phone that Boulder Creek was getting evacuated, the fire was spreading and from that point on is when everything took a turn for the worst. Coming from the Bay Area of San Jose and moving to Felton has all been very new territory and uncommon experiences from what I’m used to. Being evacuated from my home has been an experience I never thought I’d have to encounter. Emotions have been high, feelings of uncertainty, fear, and possible loss of my home have been running through me in waves this past week.

Some of my houseplants look a little sad. They were forced to give up their regular place for the Christmas tree and table top decorations and the leaves are droopy. They need to be returned to normal where they can feed on toxins. Houseplants absorb toxins from the air in your house. We spend more time indoors in the winter and create more toxins. The plant’s natural anti-toxin job is an important function so let your houseplants work for you to keep clean air in your house.

I was talking with a neighbor the other day, and I asked him how life was going. He replied, ‘Oh, you know, it’s like an EKG graph; up and down.”  This got me thinking about the heartbeat of life. It does consist of up and down phases. With Covid-19, social justice issues, and politics, this has been a challenging year. These stressors are on top of the other difficulties we are already experiencing in our own personal lives. Then came the fires, which pushed most all of us over the edge into emotional exhaustion. In the heartbeat of life, we are definitely experiencing a down phase on that EKG graph!

Listen to Think Local First Radio's Show on August 1st, to hear a little about the current COVID state of the Press Banner from our Managing Editor Cherie La France-Anderson.  Here's the link: http://zbsradio.com/play-episode/id/16181/play-time/0.  Cherie's interview begins at 20:00.