Editorial

As we continue our mission to ensure every animal receives protection, compassion, love and care, the Sonoma Humane Society is proud to announce the final transfer of the unfinished shelter building on Bacchus Landing Way in Healdsburg from the Healdsburg Animal Shelter to the Sonoma Humane Society. With the final paperwork completed to transfer the building and remaining assets, our next steps include ensuring the safety and integrity of the building and developing plans to finish the facility in a manner which pays tribute to the generosity of Rodney and Charlotte Strong, and the generous and caring community who supported the project since its inception.

In the film “To Kill a Mockingbird” Gregory Peck explains the legacy of pocket watches passed on from father to son, and I thought how unlikely it will be that someone inherits a smart phone inscribed, “with love to my darling Atticus.”

While the originator’s attribution is uncertain, the following phrase, popularized by Mark Twain, seems particularly appropriate relative to the survey results recently presented to our City Council by HCSS (Healdsburg Citizens for Sustainable Solutions) on March 17 and April 7. To quote Mr. Twain, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

— Rollie Atkinson

What seems unignorable amidst all the winegrowers' yelping and

I worked at the Healdsburg Library for over 25 years before I retired last year. Something I always wanted to try with the library was to bring world class literary talent to Healdsburg.

Hold on to your butts — your cigarette butts, that is. Let’s face it: many smokers litter when discarding their cigarette butts. They are dropped on sidewalks, tossed out the car window, and left on beaches. A cigarette butt is so small, it is easy to feel like we’re really not littering at all. What’s a cigarette butt compared to tossing a bag of fast food wrappers into the street or pouring a can of used oil in the gutter?