Columns

On March 28, four high school students from West Sonoma County presented the case for a Green New Deal to the Windsor Democratic Club. These students are part of a group called Youth vs. Apocalypse. Because of an increase in greenhouse gases, the earth is warming rapidly. Older generations have not taken adequate actions to minimize climate change, but our students have decided they can’t leave this cause to others. They feel that they must rally the rest of us so their generation and the earth doesn’t suffer an apocalypse.

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.

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...

This newspaper publisher has long been predisposed to remind his readers that there is no such thing as a free press. It takes money, lots of it, to hire dedicated journalists and buy newsprint, ink and computers to produce news. It cost Sonoma West Publishers just over $1.2 million last year to provide a steady stream of vital and reliable news for the four communities we serve in north and west Sonoma County. And, even with all that, we still lost almost $200,000 at the end of the year. Now, during the pandemic-caused economic shutdown, our financial challenge looks nearly impossible some days. But that’s another story for another day.

Is America headed to a “worst-case” scenario on its way to attempting to hold a free and fair election? According to several nonpartisan and bipartisan studies, commissions and government watchdogs, the answer is a scary and sobering “yes.” The only wavering in these opinions is over which of several imagined worst-case scenarios will prevail over all others.

By Rick Massell