Columns

When I sit down to write my column, I draw on experiences in my life and hope they connect with you as a reader. I describe my writings as Erma Bombeck-like, a humor/slice-of-life commentary (and then have to explain who Erma Bombeck was to anyone younger than myself), but I hope you have felt that I am honest and as open as privacy allows.

Here’s what’s happening at the Senior Center this month:

Our bi-weekly collection of articles from 125, 75 and 50 years ago uncovers severral stories about school days long ago...

Lots of meetings and talk going on in our community regarding Wikiup Commons.

With Astronauts gracing the covers of LIFE and Look and other weekly magazines, the American space program was big news in the '60s. These brave test pilots were presented as the epitome of American maleness, and the only females we saw who were part of the space program were the women who quilted the multiple layers of fabric for each custom-fitted space suit! Fifty years later, Theodore Melfi’s perfectly named film Hidden Figures brings the unsung heroes of the space program out from the shadows—and we finally discover that several of the mathematical geniuses who made the program a success were female African Americans! In this retelling of the quintessential American fable, those dashing spacemen are little more than passengers aboard a heaving, clunking, fuel-spewing chunk of hardware. The real heroes are the genius “slide-rule-jockey’s-of-color” (beautifully portrayed by Viola Davis, Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae), who figured out how to loosen gravity’s inexorable hold on we frail human beings. It’s nice to have a film where the audience cheers for the underlying decency and determined humanity epitomized by the three women combating the solidly built wall of racism, sexism and chauvinism that were signatures for that time and place.

It’s the middle of summer, and every day is a whirlwind of activity at the Healdsburg Regional Library. We enjoy seeing our local families take advantage of the free lunch program every weekday from noon to 12:30pm.  We have hosted extremely popular programs for families,...