Opinion

A company is like a family, and when disaster strikes one part of an organization—and communities we serve—it’s felt throughout. Our newspaper group publishes seven Bay Area weeklies, including the North Bay Bohemian, based in Santa Rosa.When devastating, uncontrolled flames struck Sonoma County on Oct. 8, the Bohemian’s office closed and staff scattered because of evacuations, smoke, closed roads and in one case, a lost home.  The first concern was for the staff’s safety. Everyone kept in touch with one another to ensure that everyone was accounted for. We tracked down people who hadn’t checked in.Our second mission was to put out that week’s newspaper. During times of crisis, reliable sources of information to explain events, inform and analyze are crucial.Luckily our systems are virtualized and they were put to the test. We found out that we don’t even need an office to publish a newspaper. Even though cellular and Internet connections were spotty or went out in some cases, our editors, writers, graphic artists and sales team members worked in cafes, from home or out of the homes of friends, relatives and good Samaritans, often in nearby counties.Our third item of business was to establish the Rebuild Sonoma Fund to rebuild Sonoma and Napa counties. Within a day, we registered the charitable fund with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, created a logo and url and built a website to accept donations at rebuildsonomafund.org.Californians have a generous spirit, and we have been encouraged by the early donations.Readers can make a difference. We can help our Bay Area neighbors rebuild their lives and communities by getting money directly to the impacted areas. The fund has no administrative overhead and gets money straight to the front lines of the relief effort.We have no control over when natural disasters strike, and this is one of California’s worst ones. We do have the power to make a difference, and by contributing to the effort, we can all be part of restoring some normalcy to our neighbors who’ve had their lives turned upside down these past two weeks.Donations can be made online at RebuildSonomaFund.org.

The season is winding down for those wonderful outdoor festivals. We only have a few events left, and then we’ll have to nourish our adventurous souls on memories or become more pack-like and venture out in small groups of friends and families over the winter.I realize that going out to these festivals is not for everyone, but I think they do hold something for just about everyone.There’s usually some food and some form of adult beverages, most likely music, shopping and nice people. Often, you get the owners of the businesses and brewery or winery right there serving and talking to you.What’s not to like?This weekend you get a double dose of fun. Both the Morgan Hill Downtown Association and the Wineries of Santa Clara Valley have events planned.Weather alert! It’s going to be in the 70s—perfect outdoor event weather, special ordered.Saturday afternoon, Oct. 14, the Downtown Association hosts the Brew Crawl. This event will bring in 19 breweries and a specialty drink (think selzer) to pour samples at various businesses in Morgan Hill’s downtown.The focus of the Brew Crawl is to bring in as many small craft breweries as possible to make the event special. Craft brews are taking the adult beverage world by storm and some of the finest will be here.This year there will be two check-in points to complement the two biggest sponsors of the event: The Trail Dust restaurant and Running Shop & Hops store and tap room.This event starts at 1pm and ends at 5pm, so enjoy those beverages and consider sticking around for dinner and shopping afterwards. Tickets are $35 in advance and $40 day of event (if there are any left…).The big weekend actually gets started a day earlier with the Wineries of Santa Clara Valley’s Passport Friday Night event. This is a private event, but you can find out how to be a part of it by purchasing tickets to the weekend of tasting for $40—that’s an entire weekend of tasting with over 25 wineries participating.Friday night, 19 wineries will be serving tasting pours all in one location—The Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center. This two-hour evening event (6 to 8pm) usually sees more of the winemakers themselves pouring their wines since it is a smaller crowd and shorter event. Don’t miss this intimate private event.If you got that Wine Passport you’ll have a pass to the over 25 wineries that will have all kinds of special treats in store all weekend for wine tasters on the prowl.The wineries really put on their best face for the weekend of tasting. Besides pouring samples of their fine wines, many will have entertainment and food. Some of the wineries are getting to be known for their special food offerings.  We should all be proud of our local wineries; their wines are just getting better and better, and tasting these wines in their festive settings just seems to make them even tastier.So get plenty of rest, eat well and get out starting Friday night to have a great time as you can only do right here in the South Valley.Brew Crawl info:morganhilldowntown.orgPassport Weekend info: santaclarawines.comJohn McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].

On Oct. 31, 1517, a fairly obscure professor and monk posted theses for an academic discussion. That action—and Martin Luther’s life of writing, teaching, preaching and standing up to the emperor and pope—sparked a Reformation that changed the world.Luther asks some of the most basic questions of human existence. He was on a quest for the right relationship between God and people, and how to show love for others in need. This speaks to the basic universal hunger we have to find our ground of being and to find an orientation that helps us to explain, “Why am I here?” and, “Where am I going?” and that then has an impact on how we actually live in this world.As we mark 500 years, I would like to personally invite you to any or all of three big community events this month hosted at our congregation, Advent Lutheran Church.• Faith of Our Neighbors: Christianity in the Lutheran Tradition presentation, sponsored by the Interfaith Community of South County, 4 p.m. Oct. 15• Reformation Hymn Festival, 5:30 p.m. Oct. 22• Catholic–Lutheran Common Prayer Service, 7 p.m. Oct. 30.Luther is an example of how one can stand up on the basis of one’s faith against institutions and individuals who are hurting people. When Michael King, Sr., visited Germany in 1934, he was so inspired by how Martin Luther changed society without a call to take up arms, that he changed his name, and his son’s name, to Martin Luther King. Ideas do matter.We will claim Luther and at the same time we will disagree with Luther. Along with my church denomination, I refute in the strongest terms Luther’s anti-Jewish writing late in his life. Luther himself was a clear example of one of his teachings: that each person is at one time both a saint and a sinner.He was simultaneously the most loved and most hated person in the Western world. No one in history left behind a more detailed written record—130 volumes—and no one seemed to feel the need to edit him. Nearly 1 billion Protestant Christians in the world today have been influenced by him.His influence extends far beyond the church. He unleashed new ways of thinking that profoundly shaped the secular world. For example, as a vocal advocate for the universal education of children, including girls, Luther paved the way for the now-ubiquitous public school system.He was the first to prove the power of the media to amplify the marketplace of ideas and to provide a check on government. He set in motion cultural changes that would lay the groundwork for democracies in the U.S. and Europe.I joyfully participate in the life of our South County community alongside people of many faiths. In the worship, teaching and life of today’s Lutheran church, we continue to share faith and service from Luther’s insight into the grace of God in Christ Jesus as attested in the scriptures. Five hundred years later, we may well be at another hinge of history. Our time, too, requires deep theological and ethical reflection to lead to courageous living.Anita R. Warner is the Pastor for Advent Lutheran Church of Morgan Hill, 16870 Murphy Ave. She wrote this guest view for the Morgan Hill Times. For more information about this month’s events and the church, visit advent-lutheran.org.

In light of recent events, and letters defending David Wolfsmith (a 51-year-old personal trainer and former owner of a Morgan Hill gym, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting more than a dozen female victims—one of them a child), I would like to share some thoughts, from a victim of sexual abuse as a 7-year-old.  Being a victim of such acts changes your entire life. I suffered in silence, and felt fear, shame and guilt daily. Now I know that those feelings belong to the perpetrator of my abuse—NOT ME.  It took me 25 years to speak about what happened to me as a child, and it is still not easy. I want other victims to know that it may take years, as it did for me, to realize that what happened to you was NOT your fault. There is help. Therapy has helped save my life.To those people who say things like, “He is a good man,” or, “I never saw those things happen,” that’s how abusers work. They keep up the appearance of a good upstanding citizen, while being a monster behind the disguise. That’s how they are able to keep abusing more victims.  I’m not claiming to know every detail of this particular case, but blaming the victims or saying, “They’re just in it for a payday,” is harmful to the victims who are already suffering enough.  NO amount of money can fix what’s been done to you and restore your trust in people. There is no big payday for victims of sexual assault. Many victims can’t even speak about what happened to them, let alone pursue their case legally.So many victims suffer in silence. I want those victims to know they are NOT alone. There are others who know your pain, believe you, and will support you. It is not an easy road; anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD—it’s all real, but if we support each other, instead of adding more pain to people already suffering, that is at least a start.Sandra WillsonSan Martin  

I would like to join the many voters in Morgan Hill that agree with John McKay’s “Our Town” commentary (from the Sept. 15 edition of the Morgan Hill Times) regarding district elections. Not only is district voting a travesty, but it is an insult to every voter in our city!We do not need to be told how to vote or who to vote for. The fact is, our city council has enjoyed amazing representation of the diversity of Morgan Hill. When we had a choice to vote someone out of council and vote for a new candidate, we did. This district voting scheme is just that: another way for losing candidates to force themselves on the voting public!Look at what has happened at the Morgan Hill Unified School District! In the last election, we had one district with only one candidate, because other very qualified candidates lived outside that district.District elections narrow our choices and may very well force the voters to send an unqualified candidate to office.On the MHUSD board, we have a split board that rarely, if ever agrees with one another, and we have a board member that we know very little about that ran unopposed from her district. We, in Morgan Hill, deserve better than this on our school board and at city council!Please don’t insult our intelligence with district elections and term limits. Let the voters decide who is best qualified and aligns with our values in order to address the complicated issues we face.This insult is being forced upon us because of a few losers that ran and did not win want an advantage to their losing cause.A threat of a lawsuit is a challenge, not a reason to roll over and give these losers an advantage. Shame on us!Ever Onward,Swanee EdwardsMorgan Hill

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get in trouble for what I say. A lot of times I think it’s because of what I don’t say, because generally when I’m in trouble I didn’t mean what got me there.Sound familiar?Frequently, I’ll start to make a comment and before I finish, someone else takes it and runs with it. You know it’s never the same when you try to corral that conversation and finish your statement. It always feels like you’re changing your comment or being wishy washy. Makes me crazy, probably makes me sound crazy too.Like most people, I get asked questions about how I feel about things or what I know about something. I always try to be straightforward in what I say, but sometimes I think it might be better in the long run to taking the heat for politely walking away.I will often say something, but then realize that there is a whole conversation of conditions about what I said behind the comment. And then there’s the added dimension of not knowing if you might just ignite a debate when you weren’t looking for one.An example of that situation is being asked, “How do you feel about the growth in Morgan Hill?” This has come up with more frequency these days, and I have found that I rarely get it right. The reason I give includes a lot of background information, an exhaustive analysis of that information, and then I use that to inform my conclusion. But I have yet to find a person who is hopelessly interested in what I have say, or I have little enough sympathy for a human being to launch it on them.It’s times like those that remind me I’ve got to learn how to redirect the conversation. Ever notice how some politicians are terrible at redirection and others are masterful? One seems awfully guilty of something and the other a brilliant orator who knew better about where the conversation should be headed.Maybe that’s not the best example… Still, I could learn a thing or two about redirecting.I also think about what we say to our friends, but probably more importantly what we say to people we don’t know or don’t know well. Your friends tend to understand where you’re coming from, but others will take your comments at face value without further confirmation.Too often, I’ve heard someone repeat a rumor or state a blatant falsehood at a gathering or public setting. This is especially egregious when they are uttered by people that are respected because, well, they’re respected by others. People who are respected tend to be trusted, and that’s why respected people need to be the most honest (sorry if you feel like I’ve focused on you because you’re respected). Their words can affect many so if you’re respected, so maybe it’s best to have good information before passing it on. By the way, it only takes one other person to be respected.I promise to always be honest with you, or maybe we’ll just talk about something else.So in the process of writing this I have probably upset someone, please give me a chance to explain myself…John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, a city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].

After the November 2016 election, many of us in this community watched in horror as hate crimes against people of color and Jewish people began to rise. The reputable Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracked such events, rolled out a terrifying monthly toll that climbed and climbed.Rather than sit feeling helpless, a group of us felt moved to act as so many others in our community have already done. SURJ—Showing Up For Racial Justice—is a national group that organized after Barack Obama’s election drew intense, overt racism out of the woodwork, with the belief that it is up to white people to dismantle racism—specifically white supremacy.We started a local chapter, SURJ South County, to carry on SURJ National’s mission. We do not wish to be seen as “white saviors,” but rather to educate ourselves and others about the injustices against people of color, past and present, to bring awareness to the ways in which systems of oppression work against thriving communities and to hold ourselves accountable for change.We build upon the efforts of our local accountability partners, who have already been doing important, related work, like SIREN, CARAS, Indivisible South Valley, The Interfaith Council, The Learning and Loving Center, and more. We rally together with those targeted by systems of oppression. Not only do we hope to counter, with education and love, the agenda of hate that some feel emboldened to enact, we recognize that this country is founded on a history of white supremacy, violence and aggression against people of color, including the Native Americans whose lands were stolen and lives torn asunder.Since our group is not solely comprised of white folks, SURJ South County took liberties with SURJ National’s mission statement: we are a local group of individuals organizing people for racial justice. SURJ promotes all people acting as part of a multiracial society for social justice with passion and accountability.Our group also acknowledges the intersectionality of the ways in which systems of oppression affect marginalized groups (based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, ability/disability status, and more). SURJ provides a space to build relationships, skills and political analysis to act for change.      So if you see us standing holding signs on the street corners in defense of DACA, the “Dreamer” act, or in solidarity with any person of color who has suffered as a result of this system, know that we are here to say, as Australian Aboriginal activist Lila Watson stated so eloquently, “If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time…But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."SURJ South County will host a screening of the documentary “13th,” about how mass incarceration of people of color is a modern form of slavery, at the Morgan Hill Library, 660 W. Main Ave., with guest speakers after, from 6 to 9 p.m. Nov. 15.For more information, email Morgan Hill resident Jordan Rosenfeld at [email protected].

I’m Lance Wolfsmith, Dave Wolfsmith’s son. Despite the local smear campaign against my father, my family and I couldn’t be prouder to call Morgan Hill home. I’m eternally grateful for amazing support my family has received from many in the community.I’ve been a Wolfpak member for 20 years, and I know every victim personally. What you’ve seen in the media is the perception of less than 2 percent of the athletes my father coached. I refuse to let this be his legacy.My father’s passion and conviction makes him polarizing. You don’t hire a coach if you're satisfied with your current situation, and when you hire my dad, your success becomes his priority. Through expert knowledge, passion and accountability, his clients achieved amazing results.The most profound memory with my dad was before my freshman year of high school when he set aside time for goal setting. Measurable goals were inappropriate because my ability was unknown, so my father simply asked me how good I wanted to be. Naturally, I wanted to be the best, so he made known the sacrifice and hard work that would be required. He assured me that together, we would accomplish my goals, and until those goals changed he would hold me accountable. Because of my father’s commitment to me, I was blessed with a lot of success during my high school and collegiate athletic career.What’s amazing is that commitment wasn’t exclusive to me. Over his 30-year career, nearly 1,000 clients received his commitment. He trained the full spectrum of athletes—from children and soccer moms, to collegiate athletes and elite military operators. Not once did my father advertise; every client was the result of a praising recommendation.I’ll never know the “why” behind these accusations. I have years of great memories with each victim and knew these people better than many members of my own family. Many trained years ago, a few came and went multiple times, but all continued to train at their own will after their assaults. The toughest for me to wrap my head around is that a group of victims trained with my father up until his arrest.My intent isn't to attack any victims, but to shed light on the other side to this story. I believe most people in our community have good intentions, but they've only been exposed to an extremely biased fraction of the story.Martin Luther King said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”Sexual assault accusations do not always require physical evidence for a conviction, which leaves no tolerance for ignorance. Before his plea, my father’s accusations were broadcasted to millions, his business was taken, and he spent nearly a year in jail. As a community, that should concern everyone.I was raised a strong supporter of the law, but my family learned the hard way that innocence until proven guilty is nothing but a fantasy reserved for those wealthy enough to fight.I urge you to critically exam what you read in the news and see on TV. Too often, you're only exposed to a fraction of the story and as good as your intentions may be, they can be misguided.The bond I have with my father and family has only grown stronger. Together we will pass this test and remain unshaken, because we know the complete story and will continue to stand by my father.Lance Wolfsmith, 1Lt, USAFEditor’s note: Former Morgan Hill personal trainer David Wolfsmith pleaded guilty June 23 to 12 counts of sexual battery by fraudulent purpose, and one count of lewd and lascivious acts against a child younger than 14 and a misdemeanor child molestation charge. On Aug. 23, he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

I feel like talking a little bit about a whole bunch of things, maybe throw out some news and food for thought.Morgan Hill is about to say goodbye to a huge community asset. Steve Rymer will be heading back to a region familiar to him to be another lucky city’s city manager. I understand that there was virtually only one city that could draw him and his wife, Helene, away from Morgan Hill and even when that opportunity opened up he had to be the best of 300 candidates. Statistically speaking, the odds of all this coming together were pretty staggering. However, if you know Steve then it’s no surprise at all.We’ll miss you Steve and Helene.So with that sad news we get to announce some good news. We have a new city manager.The city council decided they didn’t need to look far for a new city manager with the quality of the existing teammates within Morgan Hill City Hall. I feel that the vision, values and culture that exist there are unique for a city office. Quite frankly, I was worried that the culture might be affected by someone coming from outside that might not “get it.” Culture is one of those things that can easily change with no conscious effort.Looking within, the city council found and selected Christina Turner. I used the term “teammate” because the culture at City Hall is that of a big team, and now Christina will be the leader and biggest cheerleader for city staff and the entire community. Christina is also one of the women highlighted during Women’s Week—we walk the walk in Morgan Hill.Okay, so what else is going on?How about the growth of a little corner of Morgan Hill that is on the verge of exploding. Over at the Granary (at First and Depot streets), two new shops are coming on line: a bike shop and wine bar. When you combine these two with Running Shop and Hops you will undoubtedly have the healthiest and happiest corner in Morgan Hill.Both of these unique new shops will be run by people who believe in Morgan Hill and want to make their shops and Morgan Hill stand out in the region.Bike Therapy is open now and The Grapevine will have a soft opening around the weekend of the Taste of Morgan Hill (Sept. 23-24).In other good news, the parking garage just got safer. I thought it was already pretty safe to begin with, but admit at times I was a little annoyed with the activities of some of the loiterers. Apparently not much enforcement was being done in the past because you need to have the right laws in place before you can enforce them. New laws are in place and the enforcement has begun (also: a fence has been placed limiting access to part of the garage and improvements are being made so people can’t access places they shouldn’t).If you have noticed something different about the fence around the future Granada Hotel site (corner of First and Monterey Road), you are seeing the results of an effort to make the downtown look just a little nicer during all the construction. The Leal organization took on the challenge and it’s nice. Take a look for yourself.Congratulations Morgan Hill, good stuff is happening.John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, a city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance. He can be reached at [email protected].

Gym owner is a loving dad