I’m going to borrow bravery from an article sent to me from my friend Walt. In it, Thomas Friedman reminds us of the woman who stood in front of cameras speaking up about the brutal disappearance of media in Ukraine. Such stories as Marina Ovsyannikova... Continue
Columnist
Truth can be elusive, so much so that the entirety of the scientific method may be seen as a systematic attempt to find it. Our scientific age, roughly 300 years old, was preceded by uncountable eons of magical thinking and mythology, variously employed to explain... Continue
I passed Cap'n Snark on the Plaza recently and made the mistake of nodding “hello.” Immediately he restrained me by the elbow and launched into one of his high-decibel rants. “Them rules about humane war is messin' up this Ukraine thing!" “OK .... Continue
Neither of my parents were observant Jews. Yes, we belonged to a reform temple and would attend services there for the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but other than that, we were mostly Jews in name only. We ate bagels, cream... Continue
I am Ukrainian – or, more precisely, of Ukrainian origin. Like many Jewish Americans, my ancestral roots reach back to Eastern Europe. My father was born in Kiev (now Kyiv) and thought he was a Russian. Other relatives lived in the Pale of Settlement between... Continue
March 2020 feels like a lifetime ago. COVID-19 has warped our sense of time, and though there are firm event markers – among them Sonoma County’s first Shelter in Place order almost exactly two years ago – the experience as a whole has been incredibly... Continue
As a psychotherapist, I've spent much of my life helping people get along and trying to learn it myself. Now, watching this brutal war in Ukraine I’m derailed seeing destruction again coming from dictators and other human beings. Why do we have so many cruel... Continue
Walking seems such a simple thing. I used to think nothing of jumping up and heading out of the house when I was a boy; following the impulse to move felt seamless, an act so natural as to be thoughtless. My father Norman was a... Continue
Chapter 29: 1947 • Sonora ~ On his twelfth Christmas, Larry received a small five-year leather-bound diary with room enough on each page for three lines per day. Jan 1 Am just getting over sickness and added a small piece to my room in which... Continue
The 2022 Sonoma County Sheriff contest is down one candidate, Kevin Burke, Healdsburg Police Chief, who dropped out of the race last week. As the meeting secretary for CBSC (Citizens for a Better Sonoma County), I get to participate in the candidate interviews. We interviewed... Continue