Columns

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.

Recently, I was asked, “What is the value of your library card?”

Are unused and expired medications filling up your medicine cabinet? Don’t flush them down the drain because they will end up in creeks and streams and are harmful to fish. Don’t throw them in the trash because they can leach into the ground when they end up in a landfill and can contaminate groundwater. Help protect your family and the environment by taking your unwanted medications to a participating take-back location.

Among the many other benefits of living in beautiful and bountiful Sonoma County are our relative low level of crime and a feeling of safety in our neighborhoods, towns and highways. We should neither take this sense of security for granted nor disregard how dear a price we pay for our law enforcement and safekeeping.

Do you remember your first crush? I do, it was in 8th grade, that final year before high school and adventures beyond. A first crush is kind of like a rite of passage.     

In the 1950s, we had Halford E. Luccock writing the back page of “The Christian Century,” a journal of more or less progressive Christian news, scholarship, and opinion that still comes out every week. During Luccock’s time, readers went immediately to the back page to see what he was up to, much like people look through the New Yorker for the cartoons before turning to whatever else might be there.

When I was growing up I remember often complaining to my parents that I was bored. They would always say, "Go outside, ride your bike, put your roller skates on." And I did just that; I would ride around my street or lace up my skates. It passed the time and helped ease my boredom. Those memories of my teen nostalgia got me thinking. The world seemed simpler then, less chaotic. What I wouldn't do to transport my teenagers back to the ‘80s so they could get a glimpse of life less complicated. So they could truly understand what my teen years looked like.  

A few weekends ago I went antique shopping with my teen daughter and my mom. It’s something the three of us really enjoy doing together. Knick knacks of the past are cooler, better crafted and remind me of good memories and simpler times. Things just happen to find us, forgotten items, dusty and old that seem to shout “remember me, bring me home.”

Everyone I meet believes this year has flown by. True, we lost weeks immersed in a fire storm. But, even that doesn’t explain why the months seem shorter. Before the fires, the winter had morphed into summer and summer into what? Thanksgiving.

100 years ago – October 4, 1917