Columns

Note: This week in H’burg is a new 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.

Are you confused, angry and sad about the mess at the U.S. Capitol last week? Me too.

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.

All across America teachers are going on or threatening to go on strike and it disgusts me. It disgusts me that this is necessary; next to a parent or a preacher, who has more influence on our children, and our future, than a teacher? Americans...

Rainbow colors on this Healdsburg fence and the flags celebrating Pride Month symbolize freedom, overarching beauty, something special and something joyful. Looking upon colorful flags and the happiness of Pride parades, it’s easy to forget the history that led to these colors and today’s freedoms....

Chris Markell’s career as a winemaker tells a story of the evolving Sonoma County wine business throughout the past four decades. 

I recently received an email from a reputable reporter who works for a reputable newspaper. The reporter said she reads my Cannabis Country columns and wanted to know what I knew about organized crime in the marijuana industry. Her email to me was prompted by a conversation she had with an elected official who claimed that “Bulgarian organized crime runs cannabis in Humboldt County, Laotian organized crime runs cannabis in Trinity and Cal Fire wouldn't go into those areas without law enforcement accompanying them.”

Out to summer dinner in Healdsburg the other night, a few of us sat around a table set on a driveway. Yeah, it’s an H’burg thing in the pandemic. Passersby walking dogs chatted, bicyclists waved.  Oh my goodness, the fresh Moroccan fare from start...