Rude Awakenings

Catherine Sevenau is a writer and storyteller who is out to capture your skittery mind. She's penned three books, compiled numerous collections of family genealogy, and has been a regular columnist in the SUN since 2016. She can be reached at [email protected].

Dharma

“We’ve been brought here for a very short time, against our will, and we don’t know why.” I love that line. What is the point of our birth and life and death? Why are we here? What is our true purpose? These thoughts keep some... Continue

The street vendor

Beep, Boop! Beep, Boop! The street vendor is here! Jumping up like a dog trained to respond to the sound of a bicycle horn, I grabbed a few dollars from my purse and headed out the front door. “Hola. ¿Cómo está?” I had seen this... Continue

Biochemical me

Is the self physical or metaphysical? That is the question. The nature of self is hotly debated. Buddhist non-materialists consider the self to be a sustained hallucination, an opinion supported by some current-day neurologists who, despite all their attempts, cannot find a source of the... Continue

Bless this mess

I’m hard-wired for formal prayer. I find myself reciting the Our Father when an earthquake hits, and oftentimes at night as I go to sleep. “How weird,” I think, stopping in the middle, but then a Hail Mary (a woman about whom I hold equally... Continue

A Tale of Two Churches

On November 19, 2023 I attended a church service held by the Sonoma Collective Church in the theater at Sonoma Valley High School. I am not a religious person, though I had a Catholic upbringing. My mother was a devout Catholic and never missed mass. ... Continue

Finding time and space

Think about how strange yet ordinary are space and time, here and now. Neither can be held, or for that matter seen or heard, and yet both play an undeniably important role in everyday existence. In order to experience and use them, we’ve created tangible... Continue

Why write?

Why write? It’s complicated. I never had any intention of becoming a writer, to externalize my life and expose it on paper. But as life would have it, I had a meltdown as the result of a course I was taking, and out of that... Continue

Passing the citizenship test

A proposal is rumored to be circulating in the Valley (well, at least around my desk) which, if adopted, could have profound implications for school districts & students nationwide. It goes something like this: To graduate from high school, all students must be able to... Continue

The power of dialogue

I want to submit my first column since Val Robichaud’s death saying that he is in my heart every time I push the send button. He was a dedicated and witty magician - committed to the circulation of words and ideas in this newspaper and... Continue

On dying happy

There are as many ways of dying as there are of living. Often, they are the same. My father Norman, for example, was an anxious man. He wanted to be in control always. We’d go out to eat dinner as a family and he’d make... Continue

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