Editorial

After a smoky and dry summer and a year of pandemic shutdowns, we are (mostly) sending our kids back to school. But we’re not exactly sure what we are teaching them. We have mixed lessons about wearing a facial mask. Maybe they help limit the spread of coronavirus droplets, but do mandated masks violate our personal freedoms? At the same time, there’s an ironclad prohibition that no student may walk into a school barefooted. What’s the lesson here? Is it that risking the spread of a deadly virus is less serious than exposing one’s toes?

County system needs some thought

100 years ago this week: With many residents of this city and its outlying valleys and many visitors from other parts of the county present, a new subordinate grange was organized in Healdsburg Monday night. The organization meeting was held in Red Men’s Hall, 43 persons having signed as charter members. The charter is to be kept open until next Saturday, when a meeting will be held for the purpose of closing it.

An eye for Healdsburg

The big cheese

There are lots of big topics dominating the news these days. We’re getting pretty darn tired of most of them, like the omicron variant of the coronavirus, the open-shut door carousel at our local schools, renewed sheltering-in-place orders, a drought that comes with a tsunami warning and muddy feet and distant drumbeats about what’s being called “existential threats” to our democracy. But the biggest — and most real — current news topic is probably inflation, an economic menace we haven’t had to face for almost 40 years. 

This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that requires large employers in California to offer workers up to 80 hours of COVID-related paid sick leave.