Columns

The Memorial Day holiday has become a day with dual and contrasting sets of activities and mindsets. Memorial Day is both a solemn occasion for remembering and honoring our war dead and it is also the “unofficial” beginning of warm weather picnics, outdoor activities and family gatherings.

Among other local news this week, we’d like to announce that the Windsor Times has new owners — more than two dozen in fact. Our new owners are community members and readers just like you. They are individuals and couples who have invested $1,000 to $20,000 with our Direct Public Offer that is funding Sonoma West Publishers’ new vision for quality community journalism.

Don’t look now, but is the whole state of California at risk of splitting off from the rest of America? We don’t mean from a cataclysmic earthquake along the San Andreas Fault line but from a political hailstorm that dominates all the lands and other states east of the Sierras?

100 years ago, the Tracy-Waldron Fruit Co. Saturday completed arrangements for leasing the Cerri warehouse on the railroad near North street, for a term of years, and will use the entire building as their headquarters for shipping fruit.

For a few weeks now, my teen son has been feverishly writing poetry. Poetry is actually something he enjoys, and he takes it pretty seriously. For school, his sophomore class hosted a poetry slam on Friday night for all of us parents, grandparents and siblings to attend. What caught my eye on the invite was the warning sign: explicit language and subject matter might apply. Well, I thought, this shall be an interesting evening.

Above all of our more physical challenges of wildfires and a wild virus, we find ourselves also living in an age of hoaxes. A hoax is a deliberate lie told to create a false reality where the hoaxer takes advantage of the innocent and unaware. Unchecked, these false realities can spread widely enough among us to be more real than the real real.

So, is the world now coming to an end or not? Hurricanes are devastating Florida, Houston and a swath of Caribbean islands. A severe earthquake just struck Mexico and the western part of North America from Los Angeles to Canada is on fire. Here, in Sonoma County we just suffered a series of days where the official temperature set all-time historic records above 115 degrees.

February may be a short month, but there is still time to celebrate Presidents’ Day, the Lunar New Year (it’s the Year of the Rooster – Gung Hay Fat Choy), Mardi Gras (with beignets at Parish?) and more. Send your news on festivities to IDlewood 3…” at [email protected]. Idlewood was the original telephone exchange for Healdsburg. Now, “Hedda Healdsburg” wants to know all!