Columns

Are you confused, angry and sad about the mess at the U.S. Capitol last week? Me too.

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.

Just five days after Jeff Weaver, the former Sebastopol Chief of Police, became the Interim Director of Public Safety in Rohnert Park, a gruesome death took place in the “Friendly City,” as Rohnert Park calls itself.

Once a month, the Sonoma Valley Cannabis Enthusiasts (SVCE), a nonprofit corporation, holds an open meeting on the patio at the Sonoma Grille on W. Napa Street, a block from the Sonoma Plaza. I have attended all but one of the meetings since they began last June.

Our cities are facing the most difficult financial crisis in decades due to COVID-19. City councils face hard decisions. How deep can they cut budgets without paralyzing basic public services? Furlough part-time workers? Reduce salaries among management and other full-time employees? Buy new police cars or maintain public parks and recreation facilities? Continue generous, but unfunded, pension plans, or defer planned payments to the Public Safety Pension Stabilization Fund? Ask employees to forego contractual increases in salary, or endure workforce cuts?

Dog owners encounter likeminded folks in this dog-friendly town, and thus I met Suki right on my block as she walked her poodles while carrying a two-pound Chihuahua in a sling ‘round her neck. During that brief conversation I became anxious to learn more.

Although many prune picking devices have been invented, some put on the market, others stored away in someone’s garage, the machine demonstrated this week by inventor William Leighton, Healdsburg, promises to effect radical changes in the prune picking process. ...