Columns

Season’s greetings from the Healdsburg Library. We have a lot going on at the library right now and are pleased to offer a few fun opportunities:

Hope you had a happy Valentine’s Day! I'm sure you had a chocolate cake in the shape of a heart on the sideboard waiting to be enjoyed; a warming fire, definitely in the fireplace, if you are allowed one of those in your neighborhood;...

With newly confirmed Amy Coney Barrett now the sixth conservative on the bench, the next several months should be fascinating if not terrifying for those concerned about health care, the environment and the concentration of wealth. As expected, little was revealed during her confirmation hearing with all votes determined long before it started (although Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski took a few days to say so). Now we wait to see if Biden can win the presidency and the Democrats can take the Senate. If both of those things happen, we’ll see how long it takes them to add justices to the court to reduce the conservative super majority to a minority. Adding, say, four liberal justices to the court would send Republicans howling, and probably increasing the number yet again if they ever retake the White House and the Senate. 

This is Sunshine Week, the annual tribute to America’s free press, coordinated by the American Society of News Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. It coincides with the birthday (March 16) of our fourth president James Madison, the author of much of our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Marijuana continues to be in the local news just as we promised last year that it would. The latest news is next week’s special election to create a “cannabis business tax” in the unincorporated areas of Sonoma County. The single ballot item is called Measure A.