Columns

You’ve probably heard that your hometown golf course is hilly, which means you play a hole that’s several hundred yards downhill, which makes the ball carry forever, and makes you think, “You know, I’m pretty good at this.”  Then you take a sharp turn to...

Jana Adams, a Sonoma County real estate broker, has an extensive support group. She needs it and so does her daughter, Brooke, who just turned 6, and who has Dravet Syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy that typically begins in infancy or early childhood and that’s characterized by seizures that can last minutes or hours. The name for the syndrome comes from Charlotte Dravet, a French doctor who discovered the gene mutation that was later named after her.

It’s the middle of summer, and every day is a whirlwind of activity at the Healdsburg Regional Library. We enjoy seeing our local families take advantage of the free lunch program every weekday from noon to 12:30pm.  We have hosted extremely popular programs for families,...

Excerpts from back issues of the Healdsburg Tribune, as curated by the Healdsburg Museum and Historic Society, from 100, 75 and 50 years ago...

By Pierre Ratte The Luther Burbank Center for the Arts (LBC) featured swan cake, not Swan Lake, this past weekend at its annual fund-raising gala: The Art of Dessert. Table centerpieces are designer cakes from local bakeries. This swan cake with feathers of white chocolate...

It was racing day in Kentucky this past weekend. These horses were not there. I see these two most every day. They are good buddies, usually grazing side by side. It was unusual to see them lying down.  Pastured horses don’t lie down much because...

The Healdsburg Library has been very busy so far in 2024, writes Branch Librarian John Haupt. "Our in-person visits continue to rise as we see people of all ages coming to study alone or in groups, play games, attend a musical event or get help accessing a digital audiobook. The library and the staff look forward to helping you when you visit for these activities and more."

This Week in H’burg is a weekly column featuring photos and fun facts from local photographer Pierre Ratté. Each week we’ll feature a new photo from Ratté along with a fact about the subject matter of the photo.

With newly confirmed Amy Coney Barrett now the sixth conservative on the bench, the next several months should be fascinating if not terrifying for those concerned about health care, the environment and the concentration of wealth. As expected, little was revealed during her confirmation hearing with all votes determined long before it started (although Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski took a few days to say so). Now we wait to see if Biden can win the presidency and the Democrats can take the Senate. If both of those things happen, we’ll see how long it takes them to add justices to the court to reduce the conservative super majority to a minority. Adding, say, four liberal justices to the court would send Republicans howling, and probably increasing the number yet again if they ever retake the White House and the Senate. 

Our cities are facing the most difficult financial crisis in decades due to COVID-19. City councils face hard decisions. How deep can they cut budgets without paralyzing basic public services? Furlough part-time workers? Reduce salaries among management and other full-time employees? Buy new police cars or maintain public parks and recreation facilities? Continue generous, but unfunded, pension plans, or defer planned payments to the Public Safety Pension Stabilization Fund? Ask employees to forego contractual increases in salary, or endure workforce cuts?