The option to work together
The No on R signs with their ominous “Protect Healdsburg” byline remind me of the dad we met at the farmers’ market whose icebreaker question was “What do you do for work that you can live here?”— as though we belong to a special club and not a town. Or the guy in Parkland Farms who told me he wasn’t concerned about the Saggio Hills development because, “That’s all going to be high end stuff … What I’m worried about are the apartments they want to build downtown— it’ll look like Rohnert Park.”
Head Start For Housing
If the people of Healdsburg truly want their children, young families and local workers to be able to rent and buy homes here, then it is time for new initiatives, real action and bigger efforts.
Way to know
Oct. 2-8 is being celebrated as National Newspaper Week. This is the 76th annual observance dating to 1940, covering a span of time that has included great changes to the business of newspapers, as well as throughout our society.
GMO free belongs here
Sonoma County’s food consumers, farmers, families and all registered voters are being asked to vote on Nov. 8 on whether they want to ban genetically engineered organisms from local farming operations and the open environment.
Election Endorsements
Do you remember the first time you voted in a presidential or other election? Was it for Nixon or Kennedy, Bush or Clinton? Are you old enough to have “liked Ike?” Or, did you become a “none of the above” voter and maybe voted for Eugene McCarthy, Ross Perot or Ralph Nader? Did you “recall” California Governor Gray Davis and vote for the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger? Who was the last person you supported for county supervisor, city council or the local school board?
Friendship, not fear
This week, in the middle of a calendar encapsulating patriotic 9/11 remembrances, the holiest of Muslim holidays, football players refusing to stand for the National Anthem and a presidential campaign full of racist epithets, our county’s Board of Supervisors passed an official resolution declaring Sonoma County as an “Islamophobia-free community.”
Our Hispanic Horizon
The physical landscape and human culture of Sonoma County is a multi-layered tapestry of many ethnic paths, heritages and contributions. But if we were to only celebrate one perhaps it should be Latinos and Hispanics, as we now seek to do with National Hispanic Heritage Month from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15.
