Columns

A jeweled dress offsets youthful bronze skin and a smile reflecting three generations of family and friends who gather.

Our shared disdain for PG&E turning the lights out on us while we were running from the threat of the Kincade wildfire is not the only thing that should be uniting us right now. This time there was no loss of life. This time we “only” lost 141 homes in Sonoma County, nothing close to the 5,600 torched by the Tubbs fire in 2017. But this time the economic impact in evacuation costs, days of lost work, a week of lost business revenues, canceled trips to our Wine Country and possibly the permanent closure of some local businesses is much more widespread.

Out of the smoldering ashes of the Kincade wildfire and after the days of darkness from the massive PG&E power shut-offs, an all-embracing “war plan” about how we manage our power utilities, avoid wildfires, harden our telecommunications systems and avoid unnecessary costs must be established post haste.

A jeweled dress offsets youthful bronze skin and a smile reflecting three generations of family and friends who gather.

This time of year persimmons begin to color and ripen on the tree.

Like most of you, we evacuated Windsor with the mandatory evacuation warning. Like most of you, our lives were completely upended for a good week, but with an aura of absolute gratitude overlaying all the stresses and upheaval contained in that week.

By Rick Massell

Greetings from the Library, where we saw many of you during the power outages of early October.

This unsurprising announcement issued forth from my son, Martin, when we crossed paths in the shop this morning.

I know I could never be a bus driver. I don’t even know where to start on the reasons why, but my hat is off to all those intrepid souls who navigate barges on wheels each and every day.