Columns

Barbra Friedman, who recently won an award for raising the most money in Barb's Tri, a new triathalon that raises money for cancer patients, submitted the following thank you note to the West County community:

The outdoor cannabis growing season, now more than half over, is rapidly approaching the harvest, which is the most exciting as well as the most perilous time of the year. Exciting because the plants are beautiful to behold; perilous because there’s the risk of rip-offs and arrests. Many factors, including the weather, determine when the harvest begins and ends, though there isn’t a grower who doesn’t fear heavy autumn rains and crave hot, dry days and warm nights.

Call for hotel ban

Do we still remember how we voted last November in the U.S. Presidential election? Maybe we penned a write-in protest vote for Bernie. Or, did we pull the lever to support the status quo transition from Obama back to a Clinton? The other choice was for a candidate who promised to “blow up” the Washington, D.C. establishment. He promised to make America great again by taking aim at a bigly lineup of our society’s institutions.

One for all?

Fourth District Supervisor James Gore spoke at the Windsor Democratic Club on July 27. With a tone of informality, the 39-year-old Gore, who will become the board’s chair in January, gave some insight into the broad range of issues he faces daily.

Many of us of a certain age remember learning how to spell “encyclopedia” from Jiminy Cricket. This small Walt Disney character advised us that if we were full of curiosity and wanted to know the answers, we should get the … (sing it with me now … ) E-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a.

Sitting outside with friends last night overlooking the Russian River, my thoughts turned to George Gershwin and Ella Fitzgerald. I began to hum, “Summertime, And the livin’ is easy, Fish are jumpin, And the cotton is high…”

I am a newspaper reader. I like holding the paper and scanning the pages. I look at headlines, photos, graphics, study the ad design. I like being able to jump from topic to topic, read a crime story, read a sports story, read my horoscope, in no particular order. I like newsprint. I like how it feels and I like kicking the paper with my knee to bend back the pages.  But newspapers in print are all scaling back in size, pages and distribution. Everyone is moving to a digital format. Young people already do all their news reading on a computer or smart phone. It’s us older fogies that need to adjust.

Rebuttal to Mr. Mortensen