Columns

In the early years of the United States, small groups of Christian believers were widely scattered in rural areas. This led to the need for itinerant pastors, known as “circuit riders,” who rode horseback from one small community to another to preach the gospel, minister to settlers and organize congregations.

As our nation just completed its 115th Congressional election with almost 120 million people voting amid thunderbolt issues such as immigration, national security and voter suppression, we took special notice of the unique viewpoint shared by a very small cohort — the continent’s Native Americans.

Looking for a lost pet or a new four-legged friend? See the list of incoming strays and the slideshow (above) of cats and dogs available for adoption from the Sonoma Humane Society, Healdsburg Center.

Sebastopol’s nationally renowned, MD, Jeff Hergenrather has been recommending cannabis for all kinds of ailments ever since he served as the doctor at “The Farm,” a rural countercultural community in Tennessee 40 years ago.

The following snippets of history are drawn from the pages of the Healdsburg Tribune, the Healdsburg Enterprise and the Sotoyome Scimitar, and are prepared by the volunteers at the Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society. Admission is always free at the museum, open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“Ask not what you country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Today, we flip the calendar to the new month of November, and we wish we could also turn the page on all the recent news about mail bombs, another horrific mass shooting, bitter political divisions and dismal news about pending climate and global doom. Maybe our post-election period will cast glimmers of hope, new and positive energies or a reminder that “these things too shall pass.”

Have you ever been on automatic pilot, doing something routine, and suddenly you realize you can’t actually recall several minutes that obviously happened? Like, your brain just sort of checked out and your body continued on doing what it was supposed to do? I kind of have that memory for a lot of my life. I haven’t decided if my brain deletes information it figures we don’t need long-term, or if it just gets written over by more information being added.

I was 32 years old the first time I donated blood. It wasn’t like the chance hadn’t come up. You’d be hard pressed to live in a community that doesn’t host a blood drive within driving distance at least once a month.

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”