Columns

The last few decades have featured a slow, steady migration of personal and business communication online, a phenomenon that has left a lot of people wondering how to keep up.

Is there anything more assuring than the first rains of harvest season to remind us of what’s most permanent and important in a world that often seems too full of calamity, change and commercialism?

When we first read about the goal for Sonoma County to see 138,000 new electric vehicles (EVs) replace gas-powered cars by the year 2030, we chortled in disbelief. We wondered about how realistic the Center for Climate Protection was being in its new “Beyond Combustion” white paper on the county’s goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels.

Covering big disaster stories like floods and fires always has presented extra challenges to us local journalists. We not only have to report on the disaster — but we have to live through it, too.

For a few weeks now, my teen son has been feverishly writing poetry. Poetry is actually something he enjoys, and he takes it pretty seriously. For school, his sophomore class hosted a poetry slam on Friday night for all of us parents, grandparents and siblings to attend. What caught my eye on the invite was the warning sign: explicit language and subject matter might apply. Well, I thought, this shall be an interesting evening.

The “big day” is coming. No, this “big day” is not the day to file income tax returns. Nor is it Mother’s Day that’s celebrated this year on May 14. In this instance the “big day” is April 20, known to marijuana smokers, growers...

We’ve hit the six-week mark of the shelter-in-place order, and I have a lot of random thoughts pinging around inside my head. Sometimes it feels like random thoughts are all we have in these odd times.

100 years ago – October 24, 1918

In the fall, the city applied to the World Health Organization's Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities to become the first city in Sonoma County to receive an Age-Friendly designation. At the core of the Age-Friendly City concept is Eight-to-Eighty, meaning that when a community is designed for an 8-year-old, it also fits an 80-year-old and ultimately everybody. Age-Friendly communities have walkable streets, housing and transportation options, and access to key services and opportunities for residents to participate in community activities.