Editorial

We rarely quote our president, Donald Trump, but here goes: “I’m proud to be a citizen, you’re proud to be a citizen. The only people that are not proud to be citizens are the ones who are fighting us all the way about the word ‘citizen.’”

Effective June 3, we will require all our website visitors to log in with their email and password to read the newspaper online. Online-only subscriptions will be $5 a month.

The month of May, now almost over, is/was Small Business Month in California and May 5 through 11 was National Small Business Week.

It’s more than luck that us folks living in Sonoma County have things pretty good.

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...

Commentary:

He went by a single name, “Spence,” and was equally singular in his focus on community and a very large circle of friends in his adopted hometown of Healdsburg. His full name was Donald Lamarion Spence and he died Dec. 13 after a long fight against lung cancer. He was 56. A large portion of his circle of friends held a candlelight memorial in the city’s Plaza last Friday, Dec. 14.

TIME magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ for 2018 is a group of imprisoned and slain journalists. The selection honors journalists as “guardians of the truth.” Besides being slain and jailed, journalists everywhere now face toughening challenges to investigate, report and defend the truth. This is true in oppressive non-democratic countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Myanmar and it is true right here where economic factors are eliminating journalist’s jobs and where our president calls journalists “enemies of the people.”

The past year has been one of the most taxing that we’ve faced together. The October fires took 24 lives from us. It burned more than 173 square miles and rendered almost 7,000 homes and businesses into ash. It was a disaster in every sense. Last October, I was devastated by the losses of my friends, family and neighbors throughout Sonoma County.

As the public school district serving the Healdsburg community, we are committed to continuous improvement and innovation to better meet the needs of all of our students. In this spirit, we are excited to announce the combining of two effective instructional models in Healdsburg Elementary School.