Columns

Wayward cattle

It’s the slowest and fastest of times here at the newspaper.

Thanksgiving and other holidays that are centered around a table full of family, friends and festive foods are a most welcome time for sociable conversations. And, boy, could we all use plenty of that right now. We have lots of catching up to do with post-fire and post-outage and pre-holidays. We don’t suppose everyone could leave their smart phones behind and drop any impulses to interject political chatter at the holiday table, could we?

Given the events of the last month, November truly feels like a month of gratitude for our whole community.

Annual Holiday Dinner • Thursday, Dec. 12 • 4 to 6 p.m. • $15 per person. 4 p.m. Doors open/appetizers, 4:30 p.m. Live entertainment, 5 p.m. Dinner & dessert

I was driving by the Luther Burbank Center and an upcoming show caught my eye: An Electric Christmas.

What links the outcomes of recent news stories about schoolteacher pay and strikes, SMART train expansion, mental health services, Kincade Fire recovery, expanded fire protection services, future Highway 101 improvements and happier holidays? Would you believe local shopping dollars?

It almost had us. The Kincade Fire came unbelievably close to consuming the town of Windsor. More and more residents are realizing we are under chronic threat. So what is to be done?

This time of year persimmons begin to color and ripen on the tree. Drive around Sonoma County and you cannot help but notice bursts of orange on lovely hardwood trees.

Our last month of the market season, November, snuck in this year, on the heels of an October so scary that we barely noticed the month had changed. Healdsburg was on the edge of being obliterated, which took most folks’ focus off life as they knew it, and propelled them into survival mode.