Columns

It was racing day in Kentucky this past weekend. These horses were not there. I see these two most every day. They are good buddies, usually grazing side by side. It was unusual to see them lying down.  Pastured horses don’t lie down much because...

With gasoline prices surging, household budgets struggle. Fortunately, there are significant charitable organizations addressing needs in and around Sonoma County.

This Week in H’burg is a weekly column featuring photos and fun facts from local photographer Pierre Ratté. Each week we’ll feature a new photo from Ratté along with a fact about the subject matter of the photo.

Most of us have heard their names around town or read their letters to the editor regarding local hotel development and excess tourism vs. small town quality of life. They’re intelligent, involved and outspoken.

Our cities are facing the most difficult financial crisis in decades due to COVID-19. City councils face hard decisions. How deep can they cut budgets without paralyzing basic public services? Furlough part-time workers? Reduce salaries among management and other full-time employees? Buy new police cars or maintain public parks and recreation facilities? Continue generous, but unfunded, pension plans, or defer planned payments to the Public Safety Pension Stabilization Fund? Ask employees to forego contractual increases in salary, or endure workforce cuts?

This Week in H’burg is a weekly column featuring photos and fun facts from local photographer Pierre Ratté. Each week we’ll feature a new photo from Ratté along with a fact about the subject matter of the photo.

Not all of the many changes to our daily routines, work, school, forms of communication and personal frustrations can be blamed on the coronavirus pandemic. And, not all of the disruptions and changes are temporary. Not everything will be returning to “normal” after everyone has finally been vaccinated.

Out to summer dinner in Healdsburg the other night, a few of us sat around a table set on a driveway. Yeah, it’s an H’burg thing in the pandemic. Passersby walking dogs chatted, bicyclists waved.  Oh my goodness, the fresh Moroccan fare from start...

Just five days after Jeff Weaver, the former Sebastopol Chief of Police, became the Interim Director of Public Safety in Rohnert Park, a gruesome death took place in the “Friendly City,” as Rohnert Park calls itself.