Marijuana might be legal
Editor: Sonoma City Councilwoman Joanne Sanders certainly got it wrong when, in justification of her vote against medical marijuana dispensaries, she said, “I’m not going to vote for this. (Marijuana) is against the law. We should not encourage lawlessness.” First of all, medical marijuana is not against the law. California’s Prop. 215 has been the law for more than 12 years. Perhaps Ms. Sanders should study up on the law before making inaccurate statements about it. In addition, the establishment of dispensaries, if properly run, conforms to guidelines issued by the Attorney General of California. Thus, by erecting a framework for regulation of dispensaries, the city would be actually discouraging lawlessness, and encouraging lawfulness.
John Malmo
Sonoma
[Editor’s note: Medical marijuana is not recognized under federal law, and dispensaries in California have been subject to raid by federal law enforcement agencies, as recently as March of this year.]
Considers council walk-out rude
Editor: Four visitors from Petaluma attending Wednesday’s City Council meeting left with a lowered opinion about Sonoma. They were offended by the disrespectful behavior of [council members] Joanne Sanders and Aug Sebastiani who walked out of the meeting.
Two Petaluma council members and two women from a group called “Moms for Clean Air” were at the meeting, because the Sonoma City Council agenda included the consideration of sending a letter to the Board of Supervisors supporting the Petaluma City Council’s position regarding locating an asphalt plant on the Petaluma River next to a popular County park. The city councils of Healdsburg, Cloverdale, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa have also taken such action.
Individuals and groups from one end of Sonoma County to another have taken a stand on this project, due to the number of environmental, economic and land use issues involved. Construction companies are concerned about access to the materials the plant will produce, environmentalists are concerned about negative impacts to habitat and air quality.
The proposed plant is within Petaluma’s urban growth boundary. The Petaluma Council believes an alternative site can be found. It unanimously signed a letter to the County Supervisors asking to be allowed to work with the project’s applicant to find another location. How the Board of Supervisors handles this request is a concern to the city councils who have sent letters, because they want to have a say regarding development within their urban growth boundaries. This was also the opinion of the majority of the Sonoma City Council, who voted 3-0 to send a letter.
Despite the fact this is a county-wide issue, with implications for cities, Sanders and Sebastiani walked off the dais and out of the room before the discussion began. They said they had nothing to offer, as if Sonoma County’s air, wildlife and economy were confined to city and county boundaries.
I spoke with the Petaluma visitors afterwards. They said no other city council has members who treated them so rudely. If Sanders and Sebastiani didn’t agree with sending a letter, they should have stayed on the dais and voted no or abstained.
Gina Cuclis
Sonoma
Emmy’s neighbors upset
Editor: I was disappointed to read that there are Sonoma residents who lack concern for or understanding of the residents of the town of Sonoma. My husband and I and most of our neighbors are the “Nimbys” referred to by Deborah Emery in her letter published last week. We reside on France Street, very close to the site of the former Deuce Restaurant. We all take great pride in the simple beauty of our area and in the peace and quiet we experience here, as well as the proximity to the Square, giving us opportunity to participate in the community and town life.
Music is frequently played during festivities on the Square for large numbers of local people and tourists. The sound reaches our homes but we accept that as a part of the festivities during the day and during warm weather months. A restaurant/nightclub located in the middle of Broadway Street with close proximity and certainly “sound” proximity to our homes, on an everyday and evening basis, all year long is another matter. This is something we dread.
A number of us, and not a small number, attended the Planning Commission meeting last week. We were not very well organized as a group but, individually, were all prepared to speak and express our feelings and ideas for protecting our residential area. We were informed by the Planning Commission that Emmy’s application for a “restaurant/nightclub” had been changed that afternoon by Emmy to a “restaurant with music.” I suppose this was supposed to change everything for us.
We were given no opportunity at the meeting to review the new application. Larry Murphy, a neighbor and spokesman and a former mayor of Sonoma, requested time to review the document. None was granted. When the meeting was opened we were admonished by the commission not to come to the microphone and repeat what had already been said. We, as a group, honored that request. A number of us had written comments, but we let a few people speak for us and put away our own prepared statements. Many other individuals, friends and supporters of Emmy’s, did speak, however, all saying the same thing.
At the end of the evening a six-month permit was granted to “The Spaghetti Shack” where music will be played daily outdoors and indoors from 11 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. depending on the day of the week and hour of the day. The reason for granting the permit, as expressed by commission member Ray Gallian, was because the support in favor of a permit, in the room, was running about two to one. By my calculations, had everyone in the room gone to the microphone to state their reason for being present, the number of protestors would have at least equaled the number of supporters of the permit.
Many of the people who spoke in favor of “The Spaghetti Shack” did not appear to be either residents or property owners in Sonoma. They seemed to be old friends of Emmy.
Constance Majoy Woodward
Sonoma
Editor: Regarding the controversy about the new spaghetti restaurant replacing Deuce, I was very shocked to hear one of the proponents say (I will paraphrase) that we, the neighbors, were old farts who were going to croak soon anyway, that it was only right to ignore us and make place for the fun-loving young people. Not his exact words, but the meaning was clear.
At 68, I am not ready to die yet, and I do not object to having fun. What I am concerned about is about being a good neighbor and good neighbors do not infringe on other people’s right to do what they want inside their dwelling.
The restaurant owners and their patrons have the right to have music inside as loud as they want. It is when their music is piped outside and therefore heard by the neighbors that they are not being respectful of the latter’s right to live in peace. We did not choose to move into this neighborhood, the new restaurant’s owner did.
Another point: During the Planning Commission meeting and after quite a few people had expressed their view, it became obvious that only three points were addressed again and again. The moderator asked that, from now on, would the speakers only come forward if they had something new to contribute. Those of us near the proposed restaurant respectfully stopped coming forward. But not so the proponents of the project. It is interesting to note that none of them live nearby Broadway and some live quite a distance from here.
Pierrette Duriez
Sonoma
Kate rocks
Editor: I wanted to comment on the article written by Kate Williams regarding the 15 year old in her writing group who shared her empathetic sorrow and personal fear about the recent loss of her brother’s friend and classmate from Kenwood. I read Kate’s column every week when I receive the paper. I read it because it moves me in some way. It moves me to think. It moves me to laugh. Sometimes it moves me to write. Today it moved me to tears. Those who missed it can find it under the title “Large-Hearted-H-.” The author is Kate Williams who will forever more be seen by me as “Large-Hearted-K-.”
Thanks Kate.
Diana MacCarthy
Sonoma
McKale gets it right
Editor: How we enjoyed your Swiss Italian Article [by City Historian George McKale]. You did your homework and gave a real feel to what happened at the turn of the century in Switzerland and California. My father’s family came from Chiggiogna, Switzerland in 1854. Initially there were three brothers. They lost their shirts trying to find gold.
The story goes that one night the eldest brother went out for a stroll on the Barbary Coast on the San Francisco shoreline. He was “shanghaied,” later returning to Switzerland and swearing never to set foot in California again!
The two remaining brothers, Cherubino and Joseph established themselves in California, returning to what they knew, cattle and the land. They had dairy farms and cattle ranches. They were butchers and sausage makers. Later there were orchards in the County of Monterey. They worked hard. Today we enjoy the fruits of their labor. The lower ranch survives in the Sierra foothills and as well as the upper ranch west of Tahoe.
If there is a Swiss-Italian organization in Sonoma, we would surely like to find out more about our Ticino ancestors. There definitely is distinction among the Swiss-Italians. We are proud of our heritage and its relationship with the establishment of California.
Thank you for the recognition.
Linda Dobbas Haake
Sonoma
Loves the Sun,
when he can
Editor: I am one of those people who never developed a newspaper habit, other than on Sunday. I get my news from NPR, and am just too overwhelmed with day-to-day life to read about local life. My reading diet generally takes me into other worlds, through novels and short stories. Although I feel mildly guilty about not keeping up with the Sun (let alone the IT, which I haven’t looked at in about 15 years), and thus have only just become aware of your request for a delivery fee (gladly paid), I want to say that every time I DO pick up the Sun, I find something interesting, thought provoking, charming, and/or surprising. I am heartened and relieved to find alternative views, with genuine conversations. Ten bucks is practically nothing, and I would be happy to pay the $52 annual fee, except it was not clear how this was to be paid on the delivery fee form.
Thank you for your continued work.
David Ross
Sonoma
Joan just might
be right
Editor: In response to a recent letter writer’s rather dismissive putdown last week of Joan Huguenard as a “proponent of alternative medicine … with antidotal (sic) stories …”
Wherever the misspelling may have originated, the correct word here is “anecdotal” and, for the benefit of readers possibly not familiar with the use of the term in medical/scientific circles, “refers to evidence based on reports of specific individual cases rather than controlled clinical trials” or “a single case report not yet substantiated by studies using large numbers.” (Thank you, Wikipedia.)
In this sense, of course, the case of Joan’s friend Barbara and her return literally from death’s door to perky aliveness now some three months after she was supposed to have been dead, is anecdotal. It is however, I would offer, not insignificant, as I suspect you would agree were the anecdote in regard to someone of significance in your own life. And, “although such evidence is not regarded as scientific, it is sometimes regarded as an invitation to more rigorous scientific study of the phenomenon in question.”
I would say “amen” to that. It so happens that, just prior to Joan’s first column describing Barbara’s experience, I had read a book by a British herbalist named Gerald Green called “Breaking Through the Untouchable Diseases” in which he recounts bringing his brother back from death’s door due to cancer, in a manner similar to Barbara’s recovery, as well as successfully treating numerous cases of serious auto-immune disease, including multiple sclerosis. I am now in the middle of Ty Bollinger’s “Cancer: Step Outside the Box,” an excellent course in “Cancer 101” and a culling, compilation and condensation of numerous successful “alternative” cancer treatments.
From reading Ty’s work, it would appear that much of what has been referred to as “alternative” cancer treatment work has been done by highly respected scientists, clinicians, and researchers – that is, “highly respected” until they let slip that they were having success with approaches other than the medical “gold standard” of surgery, chemo, and radiation. At that point, their careers were suddenly “shocked” by ridicule, loss of grant money, falsification of third party “trials,” etc. There’s something fishy going on here when, after fifty-plus years of research costing billions upon billions of dollars, nothing safer and more effective than the same toxic-and-less-than-successful “big three” treatments has been found (or so the story goes).
I hope you’ll read Bollinger’s book and maybe talk with the Porrinos (at Sonoma Naturopathic Medicine). I trust that what you discover will allow you to consider retracting the ridicule that you have (in my opinion unjustly) directed at Joan. I, for one, very much appreciate her bringing this subject to public attention.
Bill Schuhle
Sonoma