Columns

This Week in H’burg is a weekly column featuring photos and fun facts from local photographer Pierre Ratté. Each week we’ll feature a new photo from Ratté along with a fact about the subject matter of the photo.

Over the last month, Sonoma hasn’t experienced the sunshine that Californians are used to.   With day after day of rain, it was especially uplifting to look out the window to sun beams backlighting this orchid, turning petals translucent purples and leaves light and dark contrasts...

What we need in our world are more dreamers. At least, that’s what we say. We need antidotes to what’s gray and dreary, serious and sad, half full and half empty. We need lightness and laughter and cups that runneth over. (Well, at least we can dream.)

Kitty Alarm 

Bob Weir took to the road and toured for 60 years. On Jan. 10, 2026, he passed into the land of the bands he founded: the Grateful Dead, the Dead and Dead & Company. He left a legacy of heartful music going beyond hit songs measured in gold records...

The Sonoma County Growers Alliance (SCGA) has closely studied Measure A, the Sonoma County Cannabis Business Tax, weighing benefits and concerns. It is with great disappointment that the Sonoma County Growers Alliance Board of Directors found itself in opposition to Measure A. We want to explain how our board came to this decision, and offer our support to work to craft future policy that has the best interest of the community and local economy in mind.

In the early years of the United States, small groups of Christian believers were widely scattered in rural areas. This led to the need for itinerant pastors, known as “circuit riders,” who rode horseback from one small community to another to preach the gospel, minister to settlers and organize congregations.

I am a terrible parent. I’m sure many of you feel the same way. Not that I (me) am a terrible parent, but that you are a terrible parent.

The status quo has got to go. It’s not healthy for the community, doesn’t adequately support our officers and costs the county money. John Mutz is running for Sonoma County Sheriff in order to cultivate a fundamental, long-term, cultural shift — based on community engagement and relationships — to keep our community safer, reduce costs and improve department morale.

Last week’s column mistakenly identified California Spanish moss as Spanish moss. Oops—apologies.  What commonly hangs from trees in Sonoma is lace lichen (Ramalina menziesii), officially designated the state lichen by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016. Lace lichen, also called fishnet lichen, is mistaken for Spanish...