I know many of you are feeling anxious and unsettled these days. You can’t sleep. You are irritable, perhaps a little at odds with your spouse or children.

Believe me, I feel it too, this feeling of dread that weighs on my soul like a hippopotamus sitting on a chihuahua.

But people, we have to stay strong. The day we all dread is almost here, but trust me, everything will be fine.

We just need us all to come together as a nation and realize our common bond. We can survive this national nightmare and somehow… support the end of DST, which is probably the stupidest idea since the Electoral College.

In the meantime, as a balm for our tormented spirits, I would like to share with you all a little good news. In fact, this is very good news.

As loyal readers will remember, we do Give the Editor Turkey Bird Reader once again this year, where we’re all digging deep to help the less fortunate in our community, not just the people who can’t seem to figure out this whole spring and fall thing.

I’m talking about people who have real problems, like not having enough to eat. Last year alone, the Redwood Empire Food Bank served an average of 61,000 people per month, more than 4,000 more people per month than last year. One of the saddest parts of this statistic is that, among those 61,000 people, there are on average 840 new families per month.

And although the people of our community have been as generous as they have been in previous years, charitable donations have not kept pace with inflation, even if needs have continued to grow.

Childhood hunger has long been one of my favorite causes, and last year I asked the folks at the food bank if I could host a small holiday turkey drive to help our readers find a way to ensure that more people have a way to feed themselves. the table.

We ended up raising $50,000 in a few weeks. This year, we still do itbut we increased our goal by 50%, to $75,000, which, at $25 a turkey, comes to 3,000 birds.

To be honest, I was a little nervous about the goal. Actually, more than a little. The snitch in a prison is nervous, if you must know.

Then on Tuesday I received the aforementioned good news from our friends at Bank of poppies via an early morning social media post from their fearless leader, Khalid Acheckzai, who wrote that they were donating 500 turkeys!

Their donation of $12,500 brings us to just over $30,000 raised so far.

We still have a long way to go, but I feel much better about our goal. Speaking of which, you can help us achieve this goal by by clicking here or go to refb.org/givethebird.

And keep in mind that if – no When – we reach that goal, my part of the deal is to contribute $1,000 of my own money, which I receive by panhandling in front of the old Press Democrat building in Mendocino. And on top of that, our esteemed editor, Eric Johnston, will also make a large sum of the money he receives providing tonsural advice to CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

As I mentioned in our kickoff column, people who donate $100 or more will be entered into a drawing to win some fabulous prizes, including a private wine tasting for you and a few alumni friends Peg Melnik, Democratic wine writer, whose name I butchered, I am ashamed to say, in my last column. (In my defense, this column had over 900 words, and all the others were spelled write.)

Regardless, I’ll save the big reveal about our second celebrity prize – beers with a great Bay Area sports character – until I can make sure I know how to spell his name correctly.

So I guess that means you’ll have to put up with more columns from me, at least until we reach our goal.

And if that doesn’t increase your anxiety levels, nothing will.

John D’Anna is editor-in-chief of The Press Democrat. Contact him at [email protected].