Columns

Finally, a common sense answer to gun violence and the seemingly weekly school massacres.

Next Tuesday, Aug. 14, at 1 p.m. the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors will hear the Westside Farms proposal for a winery, hospitality facilities and 22 events at 7097 Westside Road, Healdsburg. This is a decision-making hearing where the supervisors can approve, approve with changes, or deny this project plan and inform the applicant as to the changes needed.

As the months roll by, the Healdsburg Library Modernization Project continues along its steady path. Week by week, the contractors complete one task after another, bringing us closer to the reopening of the 139 Piper St. library we all know and love.

Over a period of two years, pictures of this sculpture surrounded by a hedge at the crossing of two streets in Healdsburg failed to make the cut.  I’ve wanted to write about it. I walk or drive by often. Several attempts to find the right...

It’s more than luck that us folks living in Sonoma County have things pretty good.

Earlier this year, the city of Healdsburg embarked on the public engagement and outreach process for its next five-year plan, the 2020-25 Strategic Plan.  Our 2020-25 Strategic Plan is intended to provide a road map that helps city leaders develop a vision for the future.  A strategic plan helps us determine the priorities, procedures and operations to achieve that vision, as well as create consensus on expectations and provide guidelines on how to use our limited resources.

In my last column I wrote about how I was responding to stress by sewing. I guess the current totals can attest to my method being a) soothing, b) proactive, and c) extremely productive: in four weeks I have started and completed one quilt (for a Christmas present), two dog blankets, two flannel comfort blankets for teens who lost their homes — and started another two — and I’m halfway through another comfort quilt for a friend who lost her home. I’m in rhythms of cutting, pinning, sewing, and it’s incredibly meditative.

Maybe it was irresponsible. But I was recently within earshot of the following comments at an outdoor event at which I was the only one wearing a mask an hour after reading in the morning paper that COVID-19 cases were spiking in several states, including California, and several counties, including Sonoma: