Columns

Over the last month, Sonoma hasn’t experienced the sunshine that Californians are used to.   With day after day of rain, it was especially uplifting to look out the window to sun beams backlighting this orchid, turning petals translucent purples and leaves light and dark contrasts...

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Much shade has been thrown toward the Green New Deal, some from actual shady people.

Reportedly it all started in Mesoamerica 4,000 years ago. In 1528, Cortez received cacao seeds from the Aztec emperor and introduced them to Spain. Spanish aristocrats mixed the seeds with honey and water. It took nearly one hundred years and a royal marriage till the French got jiggy with chocolate drinks...

What’s in a word or a phrase? Sometimes words reflect huge worlds. The annual northern California “Wine and Weed Symposium” isn’t scheduled until Aug. 8, 2019, but George Christie, the producer of the event, is already publicizing it. This year it will take place, as usual, at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Rosa, with panels, speakers, food, information and networking galore.

This is an attempt to wrap up the history of our Healdsburg Farmers Market within this column. It needs to cover my management from 1990 to 2004, followed by Mary Kelley’s 10 years of guidance bringing us up to 2014.

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

A world champion wrestler signed on to wrestle locally in Healdsburg, the environmental impact of geothermal energy development, and sending aid to a struggling post-War Europe in news from the Healdsburg Museum.

Sitting outside with friends last night overlooking the Russian River, my thoughts turned to George Gershwin and Ella Fitzgerald. I began to hum, “Summertime, And the livin’ is easy, Fish are jumpin, And the cotton is high…”