Columns

Hans Brinker was a hero. I dreamed of being Hans. I envied Hans’ skating long distances on frozen canals. I thrilled to my mother’s stories of the Bronx River freezing when people could skate from one town to the next. Once, in seventh grade...

Ultimately, there is no real good that comes with the historic devastation and destruction of property and loss of lives that Hurricane Harvey visited upon Houston and the nearby Gulf Coast. Twenty trillion gallons of rain fell on the area, 60 lives have been lost, 185,000 homes destroyed, almost 500,000 people displaced and an estimated total of $180 billion in damages to be expected.

Over a period of two years, pictures of this sculpture surrounded by a hedge at the crossing of two streets in Healdsburg failed to make the cut.  I’ve wanted to write about it. I walk or drive by often. Several attempts to find the right...

Looking for a lost pet or a new four-legged friend? See the list of incoming strays and the slideshow of cats and dogs available for adoption from the Sonoma Humane Society, Healdsburg Center.

Summer is upon us. We have completed our spring cleanup around the yard, made sure no standing water is present on our properties attracting mosquitos and set up our outdoor furniture. Summer also marks an important time of the year for water conservation. By using water wisely in the summer, it helps preserve our healthy watershed for the remainder of the year. Even though we received a lot of rainfall this winter, it is important to minimize water waste throughout our community.

Mankind has had a very long association with masks, probably dating to the Stone Age some 200,000 years ago. Masks have been a part of ritual, religion and play. But through all those epochs of time, it’s been very rare that a civilization donned...

My beloved van is on its last legs, so Matt and I have been looking at possible replacement vehicles. We’ve narrowed it down to two makes and models, so we went down to test drive one of the contenders at Car Max in Santa Rosa. The car was nice, with many of the features we’re looking for… but it was a really, really weird dark brown. Luckily we’re in a nice position of not NEEDING a car, and we can keep looking, because I am not at ALL partial to brown, and by that I mean I hated it.

Healdsburg’s fields and gardens are filled with flowers that a snapshot can’t display.. As if on cue, sunshine and flowers broke out for spring’s March 15th debut. Cherry blossoms, fields of daffodils (Narcissus) and yards with calla lilies (Zantedeschia aethiopica).

splash of acacia