Editorial

Justice, in the form of protecting the innocent public from

Last year, I was lucky enough to have been selected as Corp Member for Teach for America, a non-profit organization that places teachers in high need schools throughout the United States. My placement is in the Mississippi Delta, a region that has experienced long-standing high poverty, low graduation, and very poor college admission rates. Here, I have taught English to some wonderful students at Amanda Elzy High School in Greenwood, Mississippi. Unfortunately, many of these students are years behind grade level in a variety of subjects and often do not have the resources or opportunities that I was fortunate enough to receive in Healdsburg.

—Rollie Atkinson

T’was the night before Christmas and all things were a Twitter. Yes, the mice, all the other creatures and the rest of the house was abuzz and full of clattering. The stockings were not hung by the chimney with care; they were overstuffed with “stuff.” When was it that getting through Christmas Eve started feeling like making it to the finish line of a race?

It is time to come together and sit around the Thanksgiving table. Family members, from near and far, will be together again. We’ll eat turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. There will be pies and a family blessing. The couch will be full after the meal and a football game will probably be on the TV, just the way the original Pilgrims celebrated the very first Thanksgiving in 1621.

It seems to me unseemly that our leaders object so strenuously to the State of California wanting to charge $8 for visiting the State Beaches along our magnificent coast while at the same time saying it makes sense for the County of Sonoma to charge a $7 fee for visiting its own parks.

Summer time and the living is easy. Especially in our cozy, friendly small towns we call home and where we welcome streams of visitors, seeking respite, fun and some genuine modern Americana.