Commentary: Sonoma County defies wildfire public safety standards
While many Sonoma County residents feel wildland fire fatigue, we should embrace some hard facts about the underlying factors that have contributed to the situation. California, our county, the nature of the wildland-urban interface, climate change and human factors have led us to a critical and troubling wake up call. Decisions about fire safe roads and development in high fire risk areas are being made at the state and county levels that will determine our future.
Someday we’ll laugh about this . . . right? Classrooms . . . more than just books and miscellaneous stuff
One of the perks of working in schools and having a best friend who is a teacher is the fact that we have always been on the same schedule. We count down the days to breaks and vacations together, and if you shook one of us awake from a sound sleep in late April or early May, chances are we could bark out the exact number of “wake ups” we have left before summer.
Where there is smoke there is usually fire
It is with a heavy heart that I feel the need to comment on an apparent wave of racism, covert and overt, manifest in the Citizen’s for Windsor’s (CFW) movement against the Pomo Lytton band settling in the Urban Growth Boundary off of Windsor River Road between Starr Road and Eastside Road. I am not calling anyone in particular a racist because that is an assumption I cannot make, and yet the group’s narrative contains numerous racist messages. I will explain by putting CFW’s arguments in quotation marks.
Decoding Teenagers: I’m bored
When I was growing up I remember often complaining to my parents that I was bored. They would always say, "Go outside, ride your bike, put your roller skates on." And I did just that; I would ride around my street or lace up my skates. It passed the time and helped ease my boredom. Those memories of my teen nostalgia got me thinking. The world seemed simpler then, less chaotic. What I wouldn't do to transport my teenagers back to the ‘80s so they could get a glimpse of life less complicated. So they could truly understand what my teen years looked like.
An operating manual for S.I.P.
Our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic continues. This is what it’s like: we’re all in this together, six feet apart or “sheltered in place.” Half the time it feels like we are living inside a science fiction movie, and other times it all seems...
Can’t get here from there
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.”
Newsroom Notebook: Holiday cheer—and tradition—comes in many forms
It’s the slowest and fastest of times here at the newspaper.
Commentary: Looking at the language of the SDAT
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part commentary discussing the Cerri/Purity building.
Arts & Entertainment
Yale Whiffenpoofs to land on Raven stage Sunday
The very name “Whiffenpoofs” is whimsical, but followers of the collegiate music space know that the repertoire and reputation of this Yale University a cappella group is anything but laughable. Sure there are old Yale drinking songs, certainly a bit of jazz-era energy, as well as more modern pop. But are they classical? And what exactly is a “whiffenpoof” anyway?
