The Canyon Chronicle sends a heartfelt thank you to the Topanga community for seeing it through its infancy and wherever we are on the growth scale a year and a half later. As we start the new year, we look forward to welcoming to our pages our advertisers, the many artists, authors, letters, businesses, and amazing folk who live here. Especially, we thank our dedicated staff of journalists, artists, creative directors, and business advisors, without whom there would be no Canyon Chronicle. Please Note: We’ll be on hiatus from now until we start production on Monday, January 10, 2022, for the first issue of the year on Friday, January 21. We’ll give you a heads-up as the time grows closer. In this issue Local news and political updates on redistricting and what our State Senator Henry Stern is up to. Will he be our senator or supervisor after the mid-term elections next year? (Pages 4-7) Democracy in Danger! The idea of New Year Resolutions has columnist Joel Bellman Declaring for Democracy in these troubled times (Page 11). His commentary is the opening salvo when it comes to the next two years. Politics will dominate in the 2022 mid-term elections and into national elections in 2024. We’ll be covering as much of it as we can. As we at The Canyon Chronicle see it, American autocrats are undermining American democracy. This is what the founders foresaw when they referred to “enemies within.� Guardians at the gate like Kindergarten teacher Amy Weisberg, writes her first Opinion column, “Give Teachers the Gift of Time,� for us to ponder. (Page 6). Talk about essential workers! Since most everyone enjoys the celestial night sky, why is it disappearing from view? We explored the International Dark Sky Association (IDA) darksky.org, which has many suggestions on how we can reduce light pollution and find “Dark Sky places,� where you can still see the Milky Way (Page 8). End-of-year donations are welcome. For other pleasurable distractions, Linda Ballou introduces the pleasures of traveling California’s Central Coast, in the winter, no less (Page 9), and Paula LaBrot tracks the technical evolution of Christmas gift-giving (Page 12). Passages We announced in the last issue the passing of Arthur Nissman. On page 14, his wife, Susan, offers an official obituary that counts the many ways in which he embraced his beloved “village.� Topanga realtor Tanya Starcevich and her sister Dr. Lara Starcevich also note the passing and celebrate the life of their father, John Starcevich, also known as John Stark, a Canadian actor, director, and film producer