There are two progressive candidates running for the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors in the coming election. They are both women and, if elected, they will transform the Board from a male-dominated and strongly-conservative governing body. And with the inclusion of District 3 Supervisor Chris... Continue
As I See It
Far too often the word community gets thrown around when linked with disparate groups of people, as in “the gay community,” or “the Black community,” or “the religious community,” and so on. All of which renders the key word meaningless. Even we at The Sun... Continue
Water and Economic Sustainability Then there’s sustainability in an economic context. Presently, Sonoma County’s economy is both dependent on, and intertwined with, wine grape farming and wine production. But who can say this will always be so? Prior to wine grapes, Sonoma agriculture centered on... Continue
I consider myself a born iconoclast. From as early as I can remember I learned not to trust what I was told by those ostensibly in the know. I chalk it all up to having been put in a boarding school at the age of... Continue
(Editor’s note: This is the second of two reports on death row inmate Jarvis Masters, a practicing Buddhist convicted of producing a weapon used to kill a prison guard at San Quentin. Masters is a prolific author, writer, poet and media presence with a broad... Continue
His name is Jarvis Masters, and he has been on Death Row since 1990 for a crime he did not commit. Jarvis writes, “When I think about the fact that society, a nation, has sentenced me to death, all I can do is turn inside... Continue
A Place Beyond Words and Language Jenny died in the fall of 1976. She was my dog. To say I loved that animal doesn’t say anything. To tell you she died 50 years ago and hardly a day passes that she doesn’t come to mind,... Continue
It is generally agreed that the Civil Rights Movement in this country began officially in 1965 with the Supreme Court's decisive ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, ending the heretofore legal and widely accepted segregation and separation of the races in U.S. schools, with... Continue
In a famous and well -worn phrase attributed to Benjamin Franklin when asked what kind of government the Constitution gave us, he replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it". Whether that quote is accurate is questionable, but it is indeed an accurate definition of... Continue
Some 40 years ago, upon landing in Northern California, I took a course in Death and Dying based on the book by Stephen Levine, Who Dies, and the work about those themes by American guru Baba Ram Dass. It was a fascinating study over the... Continue