Columns

When spring is in the air, we hope that local families are thinking about ... coming to Storytime! We have many upcoming events that will appeal to residents of all ages at the Healdsburg Library...

Readers weight in on the latest news from the city on districts, parklets and Birds: "I spoke to the gentleman who had the contract to maintain the bikes a couple of months ago.  He told me how difficult the job was. He had to pay for all the replacement parts upfront, and wait for reimbursement from Bird. That is why so many bikes were in such a state of disrepair..."

San Francisco, the “City by the Bay,” was named after St. Francis, a wealthy, gregarious Italian. The son of a wealthy silk merchant, he was known for his love of earthly pleasures and spendthrift ways. Kind of appropriate for a big-city lifestyle...

Fun facts: The chances of finding a four-leaf clover are reportedly about 1 in 5,000. Luck is involved. Clovers, or trefoils, can have more than three leaves. Five-leaf clovers are two times rarer than four-leaf, and the most leaves ever found on a clover was 63, discovered in Japan in 2023.

At the Healdsburg Certified Farmers’ Market, strawberries are reaching their peak sweetness, their scent lingering in the air before they are even visible in the stalls. Spring onions and green garlic are tender, fava beans are shelled by the pound and sugar snap peas—the kind of bright green that seems to be omnipresent in my life lately—offer that crisp, wet-mouth crunch that makes them an irresistible snack...

The library and museum world is reeling from a new executive order issued on March 14, 2025, targeting the Institute for Museum and Library Services, which provides federal funding to support libraries in all 50 states. Sonoma County Library Director Erika Thibault reports...

'There’s a magic hour on Saturday mornings when the sun hasn’t quite burned through the morning mist and the scent of basil floats on the breeze. It’s in that moment—coffee in one hand, tote bag in the other—that Healdsburg wakes up..." Meet our new columnist, Liza Gershman.

When a girl wants to be a cheerleader at Healdsburg High School, all she has to do is go to the practices, find a sponsor, perform a cheer in front of the student body and get enough votes to be elected. Simple enough. But what happens when the cheerleading candidate is a boy? Flashback to 1975, when they figured out how to make it happen.

"I was flying from Nepal to Bangkok when the 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar. Mid-flight on March 28, news alerts began sounding. On landing, I learned that a massive earthquake had hit Myanmar, not far from where we had been working days earlier.:

Wisteria is associated with romance and spring, and it turns out spring love is more than a romantic idea. Longer days and increased warmth boosts phytochemicals in plants and hormones in animals. Plants transition from vegetative to reproductive growth (blooms and flowers) when Flowering Locus T (FT) is released.