Columns

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?

John Necker makes it fun to read about the city council

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.

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

On reach codes

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.

Simply the best