Last week, it felt as though the  California fire season for 2008 was well in the rear-view mirror.

This letter is in reference to an editorial that was published in the Napa Valley Register on Sept. 17, cleverly titled “Vote no on Proposition 8.”

People are getting pretty nervous, and a lot are in shock looking at their pension accounts. One friend has been saving for twenty years in a brokerage account which lost 40% of its value in the last two weeks. We own two rental houses and over the weekend found out one person hadn’t paid the rent in two months, the other was already vacated two months ago with no renters in sight. It feels like the clock is ticking on a big economic collapse and recession that is hanging over our heads and no one knows where it is going to go and how it is going to affect them. My sense is that there are a lot of nervous people out there right now, including me.

For the first time in a while McCain sounded like he used to, a normal person instead of a shrill, screaming negative campaigner yesterday. I actually started to like him a little bit again yesterday. Instead of slamming Obama for these fringe issues like Ayers and Acorn he is starting to talk about his own views. When a campaign devolves into nothing but screaming about how bad the other guy is you know it is over.

Today the credit markets showed the first sign of unfreezing thanks to the massive government intervention going on. The rapidly becoming famous TED spread, which is the spread between US government Treasury securities (T) and eurodollars (ED) which is now actually measured by London's interbank lending rate (LIBOR), is a measure of how much banks are charging each other for short term loans. This is the critical measure of how liquid that market is, and it dropped significantly this morning. Technical perhaps, but very good news. If there is no money flowing between banks, there is no money flowing between businesses either, for your non technical definition.

Recently, the Register editorial board sat down with the two candidates for state Assembly. They are incumbent 7th District Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, a Democrat, and challenger Doris Gentry, a businesswoman from Napa and a Republican who has not held elective office.

Dear editor, I’d like to echo the words of the person who wrote about the wild driver on Linda Vista Avenue. Although I do not drive on that road frequently, I am on Foster Road quite a bit, and there are plenty of wild drivers who like to speed along that road, completely ignoring the fact that there is an elementary school not far from the KVYN/KVON studio.

Dear editor, when I moved to California from the East Coast, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the state is not all freeways. The winding, twisting country roads of the mountain ridges and canyons make for some of the most scenic drives in the country and I thoroughly enjoy exploring them.

Dear editor, if Keith Caldwell admits mistakes in judgment by approving payments to employees for questionable “life experience diplomas,” we really should be looking at the labor agreement that he has acknowledged that he negotiated on behalf of the American Canyon Fire District.

Dear editor, supporters of the Table filled Dreamweavers Theater on Sept. 25 for a benefit performance of Bernard Slade’s “Same Time Next Year.” Proceeds of the evening went to the Table to help cover expenses of providing meals to more than 100 diners every weekday afternoon.

Barack Obama chose Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate ... what do you think of the choice?

(Editor's note: The comments on this crashed about 9:30 a.m Friday, right after McCain's announcement. We were able to rebuild most but not all of the comments)