Sonoma Valley Sun

01/11/2024

Diabetes Health Fair

Diabetes is a growing health problem in the United States, a typically “silent” disease until its effects become serious. Sometimes referred to as “high blood sugar” diabete…

01/11/2024

Share your Halloween photos please!!!

29/10/2024

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On October 22, Valley of the Moon Teachers Association (VMTA) sent out a press release announcing that an “historic agreement” had been reached on October 1 between the teachers and the…

29/10/2024

Halloween Day reception- costumes welcome!

Emily Marks is hosting an art show titled THE ART OF THE BOOK at the Alley Gallery, October 30-November 5, consisting of her original book art projects over the last decade. The exhibit will includ…

29/10/2024

Vision.

Our October 3 cover caption, “Sonoma Valley Ununified School District,” was a sadly accurate commentary on the current state of affairs in our Valley’s educational leadership. The recen…

28/10/2024

This is a lot.

At a recent special meeting, Sonoma’s Planning Commission reviewed modifications to the city’s SB9 ordinance, and at its next meeting will finalize its recommendations to the City Council. An illus…

28/10/2024

https://sonomasun.com/2024/10/28/john-mac-mcquown-creator-of-index-funds-and-owner-of-stone-edge-farm-dies-at-90/

Credited with creating the first stock index fund in 1971, Mac McQuown was the owner of Stone Edge Farm, where he developed a micro grid making the property energy self sufficient. He and his wife …

27/10/2024

I’m putting together a small business shopping guide. What are your favorite places to buy gifts in the valley?

If you’re planning to place an ad in the next issue of the Sun, please email me. My brain is mush and I can’t remember everything I talk to people about! Let’s promote small business and keep news free in Sonoma valley, together! ♥️ [email protected]

New ads get 20% off for small business Saturday!!!

26/10/2024

Break-in at Pushpak spurs new business opportunity!

Electric Trikes are Popular for Vineyard Tours By David Bolling Unless you’re a practicing Hindu, the name that Howard Sapper bestowed on his electric, Wine Country tour vehicles is a bit of a stre…

25/10/2024

 Sonoma Valley Sun is supporting small business by offering a 20% discount for ads in our Small Business Saturday Shopping Guide (November 21 issue) and we will create your ad for free. Offer good through November 18, 2024.
[email protected]

25/10/2024

How will this impact local restaurants?

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors today voted to establish a local program to permit small-scale residential retail food facilities, known as Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations, or MEHKOs…

24/10/2024

Please welcome Kathleen Thompson Hill back to the pages of the Sun!

Kathleen Hill, Sonoma’s Grand Dame of food, wine and culinary contraptions beyond measure, former food and wine editor for the Sonoma Index Tribune, and before that food and wine columnist for the …

23/10/2024

The Cooperage appeal has been upheld with new conditions.

On Monday night, Sonoma’s City Council upheld the appeal by the owners of the historic Cooperage Building, long a matter of controversy among the neighbors of northern First Street West. The appeal…

23/10/2024

The Sun is FREE and local. You will never run up against a paywall on a local story you want to read. News should be free!

The newspaper isn’t free to produce so this is our reminder to our community to advertise in the Sun, or make a donation to keep news free for all!

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Like public radio, we depend on community donations. Thank you for supporting your local newspaper!

https://www.zeffy.com/donation-form/a5fcefc9-548d-4a1d-8db4-edf57ccb15db

22/10/2024

Sonoma Valley Sun is supporting small business by offering a 20% discount for ads in our Small Business Saturday Shopping Guide (November 21 issue) and we will create your ad for free. Offer good through November 18, 2024.
[email protected]

22/10/2024

THE ECONOMY OF DESIRE

All and everything in the universe is moving. Matter, sub-atomic particles, energy and even ideas are on a 4.5 billion year trajectory, and it’s all happening at once.

And yet, borrowing from Physicist Richard Feynman’s ideas, each “object” has its own “world line,” a trajectory through spacetime that intersects with and separates from other world lines. This is true of every proton as well as every person. The discernible ways in which world lines intersect and diverge from each other is what we call history.

At a fundamental level this is why history interests us: we are products of history ourselves, and value things based upon their histories, be it genealogy that gives us a sense of self-importance or provenance of art that imparts financial gain. Even the history of ideas, as immaterial as ideas are, interests us.

The subject of repeated study is how and why world lines come together and separate. From a physical standpoint, factors like gravity, the curvature of space, black holes, the effects of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, the subatomic weak and strong forces, and time itself affect history but still defy complete understanding. So too the emotional forces of charisma, resonance, attraction, and repulsion affect the trajectory of world lines. It’s no surprise, therefore, that quantum experiments reveal that participation by an observer affects the movement history of subatomic particles. Like a craps player chanting “Daddy needs a new pair of shoes” before throwing a pair of dice, we often act as if our desires will alter outcomes, and they sometimes do.

How does order emerge from chaos? If we could answer this question, we might be able to fully understand the origins of life. Chaos theory posits that underlying the emergent order following the chaos of the Big Bang, the cataclysm that created our present universe of you, me and everything else, is the influence of a “strange attractor.” Could it be desire?

Religion leans in the direction of a Prime Mover, a god or gods that started the ball-of-order rolling. For many, this is enough, a welcome relief from having to otherwise explain our origins. The scientifically inclined use a reductionist approach, such as smashing subatomic particles together at high velocity to document the world lines produced by their collision and try to find out how and why things are as they are.

While on vacation in the Southwest, I collided with an object of desire: a handmade silver watchband adorned with turquoise stones. Each of the stones has its own history, its own world line, as does the silver, which itself began long ago as ore and was mined, smelted, and crafted. So too, the artist who designed and created the watchband, a Navajo descendant of a people living in America for tens of thousands of years. These world lines having intersected, the watchband is now on my wrist, securing my turquoise colored, battery-powered watch. After my passing, all will diverge and continue their own trajectories.

Four and a half billion years is a very long time, and this universe might be one of many, each with its own world line. Time as we know it may not exist outside of any universe and so too history, perhaps just an invention of human thought.

Participating in this miraculous coming together and falling apart brings me happiness, an example of what Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek calls “the economy of desire.” Just so, just so.

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22/10/2024

Sonoma Valley Sun is supporting small business by offering a 20% discount for ads in our Small Business Saturday Shopping Guide (November 30 issue) and we will create your ad for free. Offer good through November 26, 2024.
[email protected]

21/10/2024

Halloween in Sonoma Valley.

21/10/2024

Día de Mu***os in Sonoma Valley.

21/10/2024

The beginning…

The Springs community has been promised a community plaza since the last century. For any number of reasons, it just hasn’t come to be. Recently, a few promising cement blocks and picnic tables app…

21/10/2024

We now have a closer, larger Costco. Napa Costco is 157,000 sq ft and will have the largest wine selection of any Costco.

19/10/2024

Trick or treat?!

These are the times that try our souls. We’re watching clocks change to early night darkness and elections rocking our boats. This next round of no-light-after-5 p.m. begins soon. Why do they call …

17/10/2024

PG&E Emergency Relief Station is set up for those who lose power.

In anticipation of a major wind event beginning this afternoon, PG&E has set up an emergency relief station set up at the back parking lot of the first Congregational church with device chargin…