Opinion

Hello, Healdsburg. The start of summer means long, light-filled days, family vacations and hot weather. It also heralds the advent of another wildfire season and with the current drought situation, it’s even more dry than usual. Here’s what we’re doing to help our community — and here’s what you can do — to prepare for disasters such as wildfires.

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.

We keep getting told by national and so-called social media that we are living in very divisive times with an America that seems split right down the middle. We get messages and news feeds that render our nation as being full of right and leftist political extremists, mass murderers, lots of bad cops, greedy corporations, sham politicians and a very small sliver of families and people just trying to get by, stay out of the way and be left alone.

These days, just about everywhere we look, we are being “halved.” For instance, half of all Americans have now had their COVID-19 vaccinations. (Half of the other half doesn’t believe in vaccinations.) According to one recent opinion poll, half of Republican voters still think the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen from Trump. Half of the rest of us can’t believe this is happening.

Two questions: How will the city of Healdsburg use water to prioritize livability not profitability?

Joining the Northern Sonoma County Fire Protection District

Sonoma County and its residents have become victims of too many cumulative impacts. We have backroads with too many wineries and valleys with not enough water. We’ve had tons of illegal cannabis for decades and are now fighting to figure out how to make it legal and grow it in the right places. Farmers need lawyers and land use consultants just to plant a crop or plow a hillside. We’ve had a generation-long debate about preserving our rural character but we can’t even agree on what the term exactly means.

100 years ago – May 19, 1921

Gratitude for children’s librarians

We’re happy to report that the first few weeks of in-person express services at the Healdsburg Library have gone very well. It’s been heartwarming to see our community inside the library again and we encourage you to give it a try. For the moment, we are open for specific hours — on Monday and Tuesday, we are open from 1-2 p.m. and 5-6 p.m.; from Wednesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-noon and 3-4 p.m. We’ll still offer our curbside services for anyone who prefers that to coming into the library. You can make a reservation online or by giving us a call at 707-433-3772; but so far, we have not had to turn anyone away because of capacity requirements. In coming weeks, we do intend to expand our express services further, so please keep an eye out for additional updates.