Opinion

Anyone over a certain age who has driven the freeways of the Bay Area or Southern California knows that widening highways doesn’t work to reduce congestion beyond the short-term.

For the last 18 years, I taught a special education class in the Pajaro Valley. Many of my students were farmworker children with learning disabilities: problems paying attention, reading difficulties, hyperactivity, autism, lower IQ and struggles with self-control. I was shocked to discover that one of the most widely used pesticides in the world — chlorpyrifos — has, after over 20 years of solid research at UC Davis, Berkeley, Columbia University and elsewhere, been linked to these difficulties in learning and behavior.

This January, Santa Cruz County is celebrating Positive Parenting Awareness Month for the seventh year in a row, and several other counties in California are joining in — Inyo, Napa, Mendocino, Sonoma and possibly more.

By DeAnne Hart, of Watsonville I return to my country home with two canisters of propane for the camp stove and lantern in anticipation of a third long dark evening without power. My husband and helper Joelle meet me at the door, pulling up a chair...