Columns

Mattie Washburn has been extremely busy training staff on Google Classroom, getting the devices in the hands of our students, making phone calls to assist families with logging on and implementing Google Classroom and Zoom meetings successfully for the past few weeks.  

On Thursday, Aug. 22, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Windsor Round Table Pizza restaurant, the Windsor Democratic Club will hear from Mayor Dominic Foppoli on the state of the Town of Windsor.

This is not a woe is me article. It’s proof that with belief, a willingness to fail, and some encouraging words from friends and family members, anything is possible. Quick background—by now regular readers will likely know I lost my leg above the knee two years ago due to a bad infection. Back in November 2016 I woke up from my surgery in the Kaiser Santa Rosa I.C.U to the television declaring Donald Trump the new president of the United States. Let’s just say it wasn’t the best day of my life.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

I’m more of a rom-com Halloween girl, versus a horror movie Halloween girl. I love fall, and all things pumpkin patch-y and handing out candy and seeing the kiddos all dressed up in their cute costumes. But, I wouldn’t mind never seeing a zombie or cackling spooky skull and if those creepy clowns with balloons could go away forever, that would be great.

While growing up my house was always in a sort of rotation amongst us sisters. One was in high school, the other in college, the other already graduated. While in different stages of our lives, things at home could often get murky. We came and went, chores were missed, messes thrown about.

We hear it a lot, about how certain conditions or phenomena are the “new normal.”

When he was still the managing editor for this newspaper, Ray Holley, had a hand lettered sign on a piece of cardboard like you’d see in the hands of a homeless person on a street corner. His sign read: “Will write for food.” He meant it is a visual joke but he also intended to impart a message that local journalists need to get paid. Holley has moved on and, like two other of his predecessor managing editors, is now working in the public sector and getting paid with taxpayer funds.

For the most part, voters of Sonoma County have given strong endorsements to their local state senators Mike McGuire and Bill Dodd and assembly members Jim Wood and Marc Levine. These men just cast big votes to support affordable housing, parks and water projects, climate and environmental protection and for a sanctuary state declaration to limit federal raids on innocent undocumented residents.

“We are the newspaper that listens,” was the title and message of our first editorial written in 1996 under our current ownership of Sonoma West Publishers. That message and mission has not changed, but just about everything else in the newspaper business has.