Columns

Earlier this year, the city of Healdsburg embarked on the public engagement and outreach process for its next five-year plan, the 2020-25 Strategic Plan.  Our 2020-25 Strategic Plan is intended to provide a road map that helps city leaders develop a vision for the future.  A strategic plan helps us determine the priorities, procedures and operations to achieve that vision, as well as create consensus on expectations and provide guidelines on how to use our limited resources.

Some folks believe they should talk to their plants. How does one do that?

Whether you call it weed abatement, vegetation management, or just plain old weed eating, folks, it has to be done.

We are a racist country with a culture of tolerating it. This can’t be news to anyone.

If a single picture is worth a thousand words — as the old saying goes — what is the worth of even the shortest of documentary films, shot at the equivalent of 16 frames per second? (An eight-minute short has 7,680 individual pics.) We dare say, “priceless.”

This is a tale of two unlikely brilliant scientists who revolutionized wine in California, one a Russian immigrant and the other a trailblazing woman. The intersection between the lives and work of André Tchelistcheff and MaryAnn Graf offers insight into our modern day wine business.

August is the last official month of the summer, and the time to celebrate National Water Quality Month.

Outside it was 99 degrees, even in the shade, and way too hot for humans and dogs, too. Inside, with the air conditioning blasting away, Red Door Remedies felt like a cool oasis on the edge of a desert. Opened only since mid-April, the cannabis dispensary on S. Cloverdale Boulevard is still forging its identity, but it already has a wide variety of top-notch marijuana products and a loyal clientele who come from nearby and from distant hills and dales.

The Sonoma County Fair begins its 83rd running today (Aug. 1 through 11) offering all of us a mid-summer showcase of both our agricultural roots and our more contemporary wine country trappings and pursuits. A Hall of Flowers, evening concerts, daily youth livestock judging, horse races, carnival rides, craft beers, cotton candy and fried everything — what’s not to like?

We are a racist country with a culture of tolerating it. This can’t be news to anyone.