Columns

Three candidates for the Windsor Unified School District Board of Trustees have been endorsed by the Sonoma County Democratic Party and the Windsor Democratic Club.

Folks are lining up to play pickleball in Healdsburg. There’s a paddle rack and new courts at Healdsburg High School. The bright green and blue colors perk up the tennis facility, now the Pickleball/Tennis facility. Scheduled play and available courts in Healdsburg, both public and...

Many of us of a certain age remember learning how to spell “encyclopedia” from Jiminy Cricket. This small Walt Disney character advised us that if we were full of curiosity and wanted to know the answers, we should get the … (sing it with me now … ) E-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a.

Having lived a few years sometimes seems to confuse my thinking. I get confused between what I grew up with and what I live with today — for example, customer service. When I was young, customer service meant someone would be trying to help me, the “customer,” with some “service.”  Often, businesses were rated on their customer service. 

Whether we are just entering our earliest decades of life or cresting into our final decades, no matter our ages, all of us will forever share these times of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. And, next we will share a new decade beginning with 2021 that we submit will be the most life-changing and world-shattering years since the last pandemic of 1920. The extraordinary binary choices we will be facing have very little to do with a virus, although we can expect more pandemics to come. We pray we will be more prepared and disciplined next time.

Ten years ago, the Healdsburg Unified School District (HUSD) became a community funded district, meaning that local property taxes are our primary source of revenue. This funding model, often referred to as Basic Aid, is different from the funding model of most school districts in California, which are funded on a per student basis by the state.

I have been responding to spills in the city of Santa Rosa for the last 17 years.

Famous and quirky chess players include: Jose Capablanca (1888-1942), a famous Cuban grandmaster who continuously smoked cigars while playing; Alexander Alakine (1892-1946), who brought and petted his cat named “Chess”; and Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) who had all of his dental fillings removed to escape radio transmissions.

Labor Day came and went without much notice. Between the fires, the smoke, the heat, the pandemic, the politics, Labor Day was passed by. Having a three-day weekend isn’t special when you can’t leave home. As sad as it makes me feel, prior to the lockdown, having the three-day weekend was probably the thing most people enjoyed about Labor Day. Somewhere along our winding path we lost track from where we came.