Letters to the Sonoma Index-Tribune for April 10

Apple pie and… drone light shows on July 4 – no more explosive fireworks

Editor: Who among our cities and Sonoma County communities will take the lead? While fireworks have been banned in most Sonoma County cities, the replacement for July 4 festivities is still up for optimal decisions.. Increasingly, our Sonoma County community members have come to understand the terribly harmful impacts of explosive fireworks – trauma - trauma for pets, birds, wildlife, animals, veterans and persons who live with post-traumatic stress disorder and/or pulmonary conditions. Air, noise and water pollution harms our environment.

We are asking decision makers to embrace the new, safer, popular trend of drone light shows for July 4 evening entertainment.

Who has already done this and what was their experience? In

2023, the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club made a change from fireworks to a drone light show. A budgeted fireworks show couldn’t occur due to concern for harm to sea lions in a nearby cove and water pollution caused by debris from falling fireworks into the ocean. The community shifted and the club hosted the first drone light show with 100 drones for a 15-minute evening program at a cost of about $15,000. According to Bill Kellogg, club manager, the experience was very enjoyable and will be repeated this year with 200 drones (higher expense); they’re exploring a way to add music for individual listening via a phone app or other non-noise- producing method. In La Jolla, a nonprofit organization was formed to raise funds to help defray expenses so the entire community can enjoy the new celebratory July 4 experience.

Also, in 2023, Los Angeles 7th District Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez hosted a day-long festival in her District, culminating with a highly enjoyed drone light show. Another festival is planned for 2024 with musical entertainment and an evening drone light show.

To watch a clip from the 2022 drone show, visit: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfr_TjsjRkx/ Press RSVP: Vanessa Diaz, vanessa.diaz@lacity.org, a Media press release.

Other cities, including Santa Monica and on the East Coast, Bedford, Massachusetts, have eliminated fireworks and embraced drone light shows, tailored for their communities.

“Migratory bird nesting season is February 15 to early September. July 4 is in the middle of this highly sensitive time for birds and their young. Why risk harming birds, animals and people? Let’s change.

Businesses and/or organizations may want to join with cities and communities to help raise funds and sponsor drone light shows on July 4.

From a practical standpoint, drone light shows on July 4, colorful and silent, or perhaps with innovative ways to listen to music via a phone app or other method, can help communities continue to adapt and positively change to support our environment and climate action.

Let's actively become more sensitive.

Sincerely,

Susan Kirks, president

Madrone Audubon, Sonoma County

More on Jack London and SDC

Editor: Citing Jack London (waxing eloquent about his ranch), (Will Shonbrun argues against the current plan for developing the SDC campus. "In short, what this plan adds up to is the creation of a new town in the midst of a rural and wildlife region in the heart of Sonoma Valley.”

New town? Let's remember that at its height the SDC housed 3,000 residents, with a staff of 1,500 coming in every day. It had a hospital, a school, a store, a factory, a farm, a major dining hall, a post office, and a fire department, as well as its own water and heating system.

What’s being threatened now is not an imagined wildlife corridor running through that campus, but the buildings that are actually there, empty and going to ruin while the Valley's homeless (some of them at least) live in sheds across Route 12.

The longterm solution to reusing the SDC campus (drive through it, it even looks like a campus) is housing for the Valley’s essential workers, who now live doubled up in the Springs or commute from Santa Rosa or Vallejo.

But court fights over the campus are likely to go on for years, if not decades. So the short-term solution is interim use of the SDC’s existing apartments to house low-income and homeless Valley residents — public use of public lands for what amounts to the real public.

As for Jack London, he envisioned the destruction of the SDC not with pleasure, but with bitterness.

In his futuristic 1907 revolutionary novel, "The Iron Heel," he imagines his ranch taken over by Wickson, a corporate oligarch, who by then owned “the whole eastern and northern slopes of Sonoma Mountain, running from the Spreckels estate to the divide of Bennett Valley."

“Out of it he had made a magnificent deer park,” London imagines, "where, over thousands of acres of sweet slopes and glades and canyons, the deer ran almost in primitive wilderness. The people who had owned the soil had been driven away."

"A state home for the feeble-minded had also been demolished to make room for the deer,” London concludes. That’s the SDC, of course.

With some wit, London located the hidden camp of his revolutionaries in Wickson's almost-wilderness. Is that what it takes?

Dave Ransom

Santa Rosa