Columns

This month, I have a few updates to offer on library services that you already know and love. We are always glad to hear your questions and concerns, and we're hoping that our upcoming plans will help with our community's information needs. 

Anybody got a plan?

I have mentioned before that I am taking classes at the Junior College. It is taking a long time, because I am taking one class a semester, but eventually I will have a certificate showing that I am proficient to be an office assistant. Some...

Covering big disaster stories like floods and fires always has presented extra challenges to us local journalists. We not only have to report on the disaster — but we have to live through it, too.

Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Christina Stafford knew people were hungry. As a regular volunteer for Your Tiny Farm, she had a vision to raise money for this local nonprofit whose mission is to turn vacant, plantable city spaces and backyards into vibrant fruit and vegetable gardens. Creativity is second nature to Stafford, who owns Stafford Gallery on the Healdsburg Plaza. She and her collaborators, Doralice Handal and Nicole Rubio, wanted something other than your run-of-the-mill fundraiser — something that would combine farming, harvest and Halloween. So, a “make your own” scarecrow contest seemed like the perfect event.

Lots going on this week and last. St. Patrick’s Day last Friday, the first day of spring Monday and more rain—yeah, there’s that. Mother Earth drinking it in, replenishing underground water tables.  Rain can be good for farmers; however it can also be ruinous. During...

Sonoma County’s COVID-19 case data shows a climbing line upward, marking hundreds of new positive cases each week and a quadrupling of deaths in just the last month. All predictions are for this line to keep moving upward across the page to the right where it might meet up with a “second wave” of coronavirus infections just when flu season gets here in a few months.

The other day, I took my teenage daughter shopping for some new school items. We ended up at one of those large, overwhelming, colorful makeup stores. I gave her a budget and told her I would meet her in the front of the store in half an hour. I happened to see her talking with one of the sales associates. She was animated and happy; in her element if you will. I could honestly see her becoming a makeup artist for movies, plays and weddings.