Columns

The Zucchini Festival takes place Sept. 14 at the Healdsburg Farmers Market: zucchini decorating competitions, giant zucchini contests and zucchini car races. It is such a blast to be a part of and/or to watch.

Our foggy COVID-19 brains can’t remember if Santa Claus visited us last year or not. Many of us feel as if he didn’t. But this year is different. We’ve already seen the jolly old fellow at several community gatherings around the county following the recent Thanksgiving holiday. He was waving to crowds from a lighted tractor float at the Geyserville Lighted Tractor Parade last week. This past Sunday he arrived at the Forestville Community Holiday Tree Lighting on a fire truck and the jolly old elf promises to be in downtown Sebastopol this Thursday (Dec. 2) for another tree lighting ceremony. He has a full calendar of appearances and you can follow him on our website at soconews.org.

Whenever the topic of mental health or mental illness is in the news, it is seldom a good thing. The mass killings at a Florida high school by a sick and troubled youth wrought moments of national grief over yet another preventable tragedy. If only 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz had received the counseling and support he needed, 17 students and teachers might still be alive today.

On the debate

Livability and tourism

Have you ever been on automatic pilot, doing something routine, and suddenly you realize you can’t actually recall several minutes that obviously happened? Like, your brain just sort of checked out and your body continued on doing what it was supposed to do? I kind of have that memory for a lot of my life. I haven’t decided if my brain deletes information it figures we don’t need long-term, or if it just gets written over by more information being added.