Columns

100 years ago - April 7, 1921

I  have been writing newspaper columns since the 1980s and I always try to alternate a serious one with a lighter one.

Last weekend a very good friend celebrated a milestone birthday, which she wanted to commemorate by having a “crafternoon” at her family’s cabin. Melissa gathered years’ worth of craft materials – pounds of buttons, miles of fabric, bags of saved mint tins, boxes of old maps, mod podge, glue guns, scissors, scrapping paper, paint, etc., etc., etc. – and several years’ worth of friends, and we crafted our hearts out.

Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the U.S., and on the second Monday of October in Canada. In the U.S., the date of Thanksgiving varied by state until it was proclaimed a federal holiday on the last Thursday of November by Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

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The student survivors of the Florida high school mass shootings are speaking out about school safety and gun violence. It seems they have the nation’s attention. They have provoked comments that “this time may be different.” Maybe these Florida students represent a new generation with a new voice and a new set of convictions. Maybe.

A bas-relief sculpture in Healdsburg along University Avenue harkens back to the days of manual labor when steel and iron workers built skyscrapers that changed America’s city skylines. The subject matter and style reflects Depression Era art coming from the Federal Emergency Relief Act, which...

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