Columns

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.

Last month I wrote my column a week before our beautiful county went up in flames. I went on about fall and pumpkins, excited about the festival, craft market and the upcoming remainder of the season. Little could any of us have known what Mother Nature had in store for us. I know many suffered losses, great and small, and my heart goes out to all who were impacted. This was a tragedy like no other in our history, and will affect us for a long time to come.

In 1966 the movie “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” was filmed along the local Mendocino-Sonoma coast. In the plot, a lone enemy submarine crashes offshore, igniting a runaway rumor chain that almost leads to a machine gun battle, hostage taking and a U.S. Air Force strike. We can only imagine that if the players in the film all had Facebook and Twitter accounts how much faster the rumors of attack would have flown and how World War III might not have been avoidable.

Windsor wonder twins protect Wine Country by day, distill spirits by night

100 years ago – November 1, 1917

ash is near weightless

Since the air quality has improved from the fires I have felt compelled to get outdoors. Just to take in the changing color of the leaves and to enjoy the chillier mornings.

In a reversal of the folksy joke “you can’t get there from here,” local shoppers should take heed that when they drive south to patronize big box stores or click on virtual shopping carts at Amazon.com they are forever exporting dollars that will almost never return. In other words that’s money that “can’t get here from there.”

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.

The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. —William Wordsworth