Columns

Swung the roof down

Note: This column originally appeared eleven years ago. Our friends’ now-nineteen-year-old daughter—who checks straws as a matter-of-fact routine—did not know why or how the habit began. This is for you, Kate.

All you readers out there know by now that I’m constantly at war with the technology that infiltrates the lives of my two teenagers. Their cell phones are my worst enemies, my son’s Xbox coming in second. I often write about my frustration with competing for their attention and their lack of participation in our house.

You’re invited to stop in soon to meet Aleta Dimas, our library’s new branch manager. As a memory aid, I told her that I would simply remember that A-Leader is here. She appreciated the jest, and said that when she was little, her dad’s friend had said: “She’s not a litre, she’s a half gallon.”

John Sugg, 62, had a ringside seat for some of the biggest blazes that swept across Santa Rosa this past October. The President of the Sonoma Patient Group, which is the second oldest medical cannabis dispensary in northern California, Sugg lives west of 101 near Cleveland Avenue.

Hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes — our human doings can seem piddling by comparison. So, once again, preachers and other more or less religious types proclaim signs of the end and portents of divine disfavor.

Kitty Alarm 

It’s only just beginning. Hundreds and hundreds of first-person accounts of both tragedy and loss and heroics and generosity will soon grow into thousands of interwoven threads that will become the history of the firestorm of October 2017. With time, the beginning hours of the wind-whipped firebombs and mass evacuations that started with a spark on Oct. 7 and 8 will be joined in historic texts by countless tales of rescue, relief and recovery.

Marijuana continues to be in the local news just as we promised last year that it would. The latest news is next week’s special election to create a “cannabis business tax” in the unincorporated areas of Sonoma County. The single ballot item is called Measure A.