Lifestyle

This year’s Merry Healdsburg party is, surprisingly, only the fourth for this still-fresh city celebration, though the tradition of a tree-lighting the first week of December is much older. But it used to be a quieter affair—maybe the Community Band would play a program of holiday music from the gazebo stage or something, but the glamor and the glitz of Merry Healdsburg didn’t start until 2021...

The 75th annual Twilight Parade went off without a hitch—a blaze of color and familiar faces flowing through town like a river of lights. Don’t forget the music—including a marching band....

Much has been written about the awarding of culinary stars, ratings of 90-point wines and the ascendancy of the million-dollar, two-bedroom home. But one award made to a Healdsburg business should not slip through the cracks—the naming of the Healdsburg’s location as North America’s “World Gym of the Year.”

As Healdsburg’s celebrity has grown, so too has SingleThread’s. Now the destination restaurant has attained a new honor: It’s been named as one of the World’s Best Restaurants, sharing the honor with one other U.S. restaurant, La Bernardin in New York City, and seven more establishments on the global shortlist.

Debora Fudge has played a key role in shaping Windsor since 1994. With Fudge planning to step back from civic life, and heading out for a vacation in Europe this week, it seemed a good time to learn more about how she became so involved in Windsor and what she thinks of the town now.

"White walls reaching for an impossibly high ceiling, a haven that appeared like some Xanadu on the west side of the city square just when we needed to hide. Why we needed to hide is another matter," writes Daedalus Howell about finding a place to slake his dark thirst when he discovered Marine Layer Wines. ..

After pizza was more or less invented in Naples as a sauced-up flatbread, it took the globe by storm when American G.I.’s returned from World War II, bringing a fondness for pizza that led to a Cambrian explosion of different forms we know now. These include traditional Neapolitan styles, thin crust in New York, Detroit squares, sheet pans and deep-dish variants in Chicago, to name a few. You can find them all in California... and then some.

The 14th annual Turkey Trot got underway on a brisk but clear Thanksgiving morning, as more than 3,000 runners competed in what’s become known as the Live Like Drew challenge. It was a younger-than-normal crowd: Of the 2,679 who finished the 5k loop, half of the top 10 finishers were in their teens,...

& Food Experience, a four-day workout for the palate that draws upon local produce and product to offer a well-rounded “experience” for its participants....

While all the nominated plants are found in the area, Healdsburg Garden Club did limit its list to native plants, though some are widely found outside Healdsburg’s city limits. The proposal included four flowers: the Douglas iris, the yellow mariposa lily, scarlet fritillary and blue-eyed grass, the once ubiquitous California native grape, and the familiar oak trees of the region.