Editorial

What should parents do when they notice their kindergartener or

There are 78 million dogs in the U.S. today. They eat and then each eliminates almost a pound of poop every day. The resulting 3.6 billion pounds of dog poop produced in a year can fill 800 footballs fields, one foot deep! This is no small nuisance. Sonoma County’s 43,000 dogs produce over 32,000 pounds daily. Cleaning up your pet’s waste helps keep our pets, the environment, and each other healthy.

Every year at this time a fever descends upon one or two regions

While America is heading toward its first “billionaires-only” election for a new president next November, is there anything us local peons can do to save next year’s important elections for new county government leaders?

It was a hard fought soccer game. The boys were aggressively moving around the field, challenging one another. Several collided and one, from the other team, fell and took his time getting up. One of my 8 year-old’s teammates began pressing towards the goal. “Get up! Get off the floor!” yelled a spectator for the other team. Wait…floor? The game was outdoors, on natural grass, at Badger Park. Was it just a slip? Clearly he meant ground. But he was relentless in his error, continuing to choose THAT word. “Get up off the floor!” “Stop rolling around on the floor!”

In December I went to a Regional Climate Protection Authority presentation at the Healdsburg city council chambers. The RCPA was created in 2009 to improve coordination on climate change issues and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as was mandated by the ten county government’s partnership with the Climate Protection Campaign in 2005. The goal is to reduce county GHG emissions to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2015. It was the CPC that first championed Sonoma Clean Power in 2004.

Usually when things are made too easy for us we begin to take

Come journey to the antebellum south, tune your ear to the tender sounds of Bach and Beethoven, and take a cultural tour of Paris through the ages with stops in Medieval times, the Enlightenment, the Belle Epoque, and the 1920s. All of this is available here in Sonoma County with no tests, no grades and no required reading. The magic is, you don’t have to leave the area to start this journey. Sonoma State University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) program is pleased to present three of our most popular instructors this fall at our Healdsburg satellite campus, where we have served hundreds of lifelong learners since 2012. Mick Chantler, Kayleen Asbo, and Bruce Elliott are a powerful trio, often referred to as the Pied Pipers of OLLI, as our members follow them everywhere and take anything they might teach.

I am shocked to see the misleading signs regarding Drakes Bay Oyster Company popping up around the Sonoma and Marin Counties. These signs should say Save Point Reyes Wilderness. I strongly support organic sustainable agriculture and I love oysters but the attempt by Drakes Oyster Company and their corporate allies to deny wilderness status to Drakes Estero has nothing to do with farming and everything to do with opening publicly owned wilderness lands to development. Pt. Reyes National Seashore is a wonderful example of cooperation between agriculture, the national park system, and wilderness.

In addition to Breast Cancer Awareness, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Yes, there is less fan-fare or major community activity, still, Men Evolving Non-Violently (M.E.N.) is quietly celebrating the efforts made towards greater awareness about an issue that has been under the radar for far too long.  Laws have been changed and more services are available to women and children who have been abused or are in danger, yet we still have a long way to go.