Columns

Here's what's happening at the Senior Center in September:

Public safety and policing in Windsor and Sonoma County will be a topic we must wrestle with. The need to delineate specific defining features of our local policing policy is now a concern of significant proportions. I would like to comment for the record to our town leaders specific elements where there are limited, yet real, linkages between perceptions and legitimate concerns for when they take this issue up. 

Long, long ago in 1897 a little girl named Virginia wrote to her local newspaper asking if Santa Claus was real. The editor replied: “(you) have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age” as he defended the spirit of love, generosity and childlike faith. “How dreary would the world be if there were no Santa Claus,” he wrote.

Have you ever been with your teenager and experienced a Jekyll and Hyde moment? When everything seems fine but within seconds their mood dramatically changes and you are left puzzling over what just happened? There are times as a parent of two teenagers that I have to stop and make sure that I am not in the Matrix. The teenage “being” is a very complex, extremely hormonal and difficult thing to understand. It often leaves us parents feeling overwhelmed and bewildered. Sometimes it’s easy to handle their behavior with humor, and other times it’s emotionally draining. Right now, my tank is pretty empty.

A shelter-in-place public health order is a not always a safe option for those at risk of intimate partner violence. Social isolation is a common tactic used by abusers to gain power and control over their victims. Isolation is all but guaranteed during the COVID pandemic. Studies have also shown an increase in intimate partner violence in the aftermath of natural disaster. Victims in Sonoma County are now more vulnerable than ever, with tempers fueled by the stress of COVID, wildfires, displacement, financial instability and increased alcohol and drug abuse.

Over a period of two years, pictures of this sculpture surrounded by a hedge at the crossing of two streets in Healdsburg failed to make the cut.  I’ve wanted to write about it. I walk or drive by often. Several attempts to find the right...

Among other local news this week, we’d like to announce that the Windsor Times has new owners — more than two dozen in fact. Our new owners are community members and readers just like you. They are individuals and couples who have invested $1,000 to $20,000 with our Direct Public Offer that is funding Sonoma West Publishers’ new vision for quality community journalism.