This is an open letter to our state legislators:

Seems there's talk a'brewing about Bloggermania II, building on the success of last month's first-ever gathering of those who comment online to Register articles.

Our job as journalists is to keep you informed about what is taking place in your community. In the year-plus that I’ve been working exclusively online, I’ve seen how we can expand what we do so we can respond almost immediately to what you want to know about.

Wednesday we celebrated the greatest day in our national history. Sound ridiculous? Not to John Adams, who in 1776 wrote to his wife, Abigail: “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. ... It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfire and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Dear editor, Five Boy Scouts from Troop 777, sponsored by First Christian Church of Napa, have earned Boy Scouts of America’s highest rank of Eagle Scout. Over the last one-and-a-half years Kyle Ebeling, Geoff Lyle, David Laning, Dustin Jones and Kiel Gordon have fulfilled the requirements of Eagle Scout. To obtain this rank, numerous merit badges are earned along with one final “Eagle Scout Project” each Scout must plan, coordinate and follow through to completion. The Eagle Project is a project that must be of benefit to the community.

Dear editor, Ladies, if you are driving a vehicle with some body damage you might be approached by a tall, dark-complexioned man driving a large black truck who will offer to save you money, fix your paint job (on the spot), like new, for considerable cash.

Dear editor, Napa County residents are facing a sales tax increase to 8.25 percent in the November election. The transportation authority, with the full approval of each city council and the county supervisors, wants a new transportation tax. They want more taxes just when hard-pressed taxpayers, homeowners and families are facing an unemployment rate of almost 7 percent in California, gas prices approaching $4.75 a gallon, food costs escalating, sewer fees increasing, rising garbage fees, rising water rates and families losing their homes due to mortgage fraud.

A populist frustration increasingly finding voice in Napa County is that the wine and hospitality industries are pulling in services and attractions that cater principally to upscale vacationers and tourists, while neglecting any sense of a local living wage and inadvertently threatening the very Ag preserve that those industries depend on through, among other things, jumbo-sized developments and hotel mega-resorts in areas that were once only the purview of B&B’s.  

I am surveying the latest news to think over what I want to say about the Obama-McCain race at this point and I can’t help but feeling that the world is breaking down into a lot of chaos right now. I know, I know, it always seems that way, nothing new under the sun, but yet right now ... the problems just seem to be piling up. And there is a gathering sense that things are really out of control. And I am not hearing any answers, just the same old tired propaganda.