Smokeless in Sonoma, sleepless in the Springs; Dispatch from Katmandu; Public art attack, and more
The Sonoma City Council passed a tobacco ordinance to limit to the sale of regular and e-cigarettes, namely to curb underage smoking. Existing retailers will have to buy a $246 annual license. And no new licenses will ever be issued, so if selling cherry or chocolate flavored e-cigs was in your business plan, forget it… Another provision outlaws the sale of a single cigar of less than $5. The thinking there, if there was any, is that a kid (required by law to show an I.D., but never mind) can’t scrape up that kind of cash. Is that figure tied to allowance inflation? Applying that kind of logic to the liquor store would leave the cold case of 40’s, Four Loco and strawberry wine locked down forever.
Bob Guglielmino is heading back to Sonoma after a month in Katmandu doing humanitarian aid work – coordinating the delivery of fresh water — after the earthquake there. “Lots to do with many before I leave,” he wrote. “Tonight is dinner with Parliament members who are terrified on one hand of another revolution and feeling the great failure of their government on the other… it’s great humanity and great tragedy simultaneously… people have returned to sleeping in tents due to the after shocks, as the earth has swallowed up all they have known.”
Georgia Kelly, leading a Praxis Peace Institute group in Spain, couldn’t get much peace on night one of the trip. Her roommate was snoring. Reports Kelly, “I am sleepless in Seville.”
Similar reports from the Springs, where its road construction that’s keeping everybody up at night. The stereotype of a PG&E crew – group of guys in funny vests pointing to another guy, in a hole – is being profanely embellished by locals fed up with jackhammers at 3 a.m. The project has been delayed by soil compacted so tight that larger machinery won’t cut it. At least one resident vented complaint by wandering outside and screaming at the roadway, “F*#% PG&E!” Predictably, amid the clamor, the suggestion fell on deaf ears.
“They’re at it again and I couldn’t be more proud,” says teacher and provocateur Walt Williams of his Creekside High School crew. This year’s “Better Out Than In” – a week of public art, features a new installation each day from May 26 through June 1. Examples: adding ‘Empathy,’ as in a large sign, to the school campus, an outdoor poetry reading, and a free movie screening Monday at the Sebastiani Theatre. The goal, Williams says, is to make you think, “which you don’t do enough of, by the way. About students, about art, about issues and about yourself and how you fit into this big town and small world.” See the daily updates at creeksidehs.org.
