My kind readers sent such lovely get-well notes 2 weeks ago when the vineyard next door put me in the emergency hospital as they started their annual bi-monthly spraying of their crop. Well, here we go again.

My husband and I had worked all day and night and had sat down for an hour of rest at the end of our long day. We had a little snack and I was going to do some embroidery for relaxation. I wasn’t paying much attention to the fact that I started to wheeze. I was so tired. Then I started to cough. And then I heard the machine. Outside, lighting up my yard and all my neighbors yards’ with vast ghostly plumes of light and deadly toxic chemicals, the ground spraying had resumed.

This is a photo taken by Maxina Ventura from Don’t Spray California of the ground spraying that is a nightly event in the alcohol country that is Sonoma Valley. Maxina has assembled the most comprehensive documentation about the toxic trespass residents and tourists to this area are subjected to between April-October, every year, year after year.

My husband and I are renters here. We are desperately looking for a new home in a less-toxic place, but in the meantime, our only choice is to jump up at 2 AM when the machines go on, cover our mouths with scarves, run to our car and drive away into the night, driving past vineyard after vineyard where the machines are going, filling the air with toxins that cause neurological disorders, disease like cancer and, obviously, death. It’s a world so few people see when marketers invite them for a romantic stay in the ‘Wine Country’. It’s a world which most residents are oblivious to, sound asleep as they are in their beds, living with diseases for years of their lives without ever connecting the dots.

Last night, we drove all the way to the ocean and back, trying to fill our lungs with the fresher air, trying not to complain too much about being tired, cold and evicted. We’ve been through this so many times now since I first got sick during last year’s spraying.

Eventually, you have to come home again. Dawn had just broken over the beautiful mountains here when we returned to the valley. Everywhere, neighbors were getting up to start their day. Doubtless some are wondering why they are having asthma-like symptoms. Why their eyes are burning. Why they have a rash. Why their mouth tastes like they were sucking on a piece of rusty metal in their sleep. Why the kids are throwing up. Why everyone around here dies of cancer. Maybe tragedy struck someone’s house last night and a family has awoken in my neighborhood to find their new baby a victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - cause unknown.

You’d think to yourself, “this has to be illegal!” How can one man decide to poison all his neighbors and not be sent to prison? How can this be?

But, here in the long, wide, populous Sonoma Valley, all agencies, all newspapers, everything bends over backward to protect the poisoner’s right to poison, calling it good business.

And now, as you’ve read, they’ve quarantined a portion of the valley because of the discovery of 2 little moths. The Sonoma City Council just passed their resolution against aerial spraying, but no resolution will be passed about what will actually happen here because of the moth. CDFA can come and put up as many toxic twist ties as they want, but I predict the billionaires who own the endless stretches of ugly vineyards won’t leave it at that. I predict that every vineyard in and along the spray zone will respond to the threat of quarantine by blanketing the land, air and water with even more organophosphates and other deadly toxins than usual. They will cause even more illness, even more deaths in their greedy pursuit of ever more billions of dollars.

Feeling pretty sick today. Time to go look at Craigslist again.

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