After several days of deliberations, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in June 14th to adopt a $1.78 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2019-2020. Each year I write about the budget to help our community understand the balancing act that takes place to... Continue
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I fully expect that the county Chamber or the Golden State Restaurant Association will deploy some local business spokespeople to complain about the new Sonoma minimum wage ordinance. There is a kernel of truth in their assertion. Historically, small business retailers have often relied on... Continue
Why, oh why, did people vote for a bully as our President of the United States? When something bothers me this much, affecting my sleep, my gut, and my moods, I just have to blurt out an emotional hairball, to try and understand why we... Continue
This column focuses on organic, local food growing and production, which is, admittedly, a minute component of our overall agriculture economy. At the Springs Community Hall, our motto is “Healthy Farms, Healthy Food, Healthy Community.” Without healthy farms, we lose a vital component of the... Continue
I'm not a dog owner. As I frequently quip when asked if I have a dog, "I don't have a dog, I have grandchildren." On my daily walk around town I do encounter many dog owners; in some cases, the dogs are so large and... Continue
Many readers are now realizing that the biggest immediate threat to humanity is not global warming, but humans and all the super-germs we’re spreading. Yep. Not only are we and our environment-altering activities (coal-fired power plants, carbon-belching automobiles, belching cows, more wineries) responsible for global... Continue
Righteous Indignation ~ I pick up my granddaughter from school on her third day of kindergarten. “So, how was it?” “Well,” she says, arms akimbo, “they have a lot of rules here.” “Like what? “You can’t throw rocks, you can't throw the bark, you can’t tear... Continue
When I was a little girl, every year my grandparents would send me a birthday card with a little check in it so I could put it toward a gift I really wanted. The worst part about the gift was that before I was allowed... Continue
On the heels of City Council’s vote to approve a trend-setting minimum wage ordinance, some in town are now awaiting the Economic Apocalypse, foretold in campfire ghost stories by a few employers in a failed effort to dissuade Council from mandating that employees be paid... Continue
Sense of "self" is just one among a constellation of mental states, and the experience of "I" varies considerably. "I" is described by some neurologists as a stable form of hallucination, which is to say, a subjective experience of being "in here" that seems to... Continue