The Latest Stories By Catherine Barnett
Beginning Wednesday, Press Democrat readers will see a new newspaper, with more local news in the front section and increased coverage of the outdoors and other topics.
The Press Democrat asked you what you value most in your local paper, and more than 1,500 of you answered.
We started meeting with readers this fall to discuss some possible changes to the newspaper, and now we would like to invite you to join the conversation.
Today marks the return of a separate local business
section to The Press Democrat an additional three days a week.
Sally LaFranchi lived more than 90 years in Sonoma County, many of them on the same quarter-acre in Sebastopol where she died Sunday. She was two years old when her parents Stanley and Belle Jenkins moved in 1919 to the dirt road on the outskirts of Sebastopol that became Murphy Avenue.
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What do you think? Now that you?ve seen the first Santa Rosa Magazine, we?d like to hear from you.
TO OUR READERS:
The Press Democrat you hold today is only two sections -- representing the
most visible change during a week when we will roll out consolidated sections
designed to save newsprint.
TO OUR READERS:
Changes coming this week to The Press Democrat will mean looking for news
in different places.
Finding the sparkle in winter
Anyone can find the shimmer when light glances off the blazing vineyards
of autumn.
Over time, a newspaper and its community shape one another.
One-hundred-fifty years ago, a four-page weekly rolled off a hand-cranked
printing press on Third Street and the frontier town of Santa Rosa got its
newspaper.
Summer's green melts into the gold of autumn as vineyards give up their
fruit to harvest. With gondolas of grapes trundling down back roads to feed
the crush, the pace quickens during Wine Country's richest season.
Summer as it lives in memory is infused with the still valley heat that
lingers late into those uniquely long, carefree nights.
Life returns by layers to the vineyards - first the light, then the warmth
and finally the color. After the chill of this especially penetrating winter,
this spring the warmth may be most welcome of all.
Fruit hanging heavy on vine and branch captures the abundance that is the
essence of summer. Everywhere there is more of everything.
After the deluge of this new year, this new season arrives with particular
promise. The sheets of unrelenting rain are gone, replaced by the belief that
perhaps once again we can trust the skies.
Harvest once again is repeating its rituals as the last bursts of intense
heat complete the vineyard ripening.
Originally published March 18, 2001
Pace defines summer far more than temperature in Wine Country. The fog so
integral to the grape-growing cycle is a fickle influence here, sometimes
stealing the season's heat and chilling the nights just when we're hoping
they'll linger warm and still.
Each spring, the sky captures the uncertainty that is the season. One day,
mounds of clouds skitter across the forbidding gray, chased by a bitter wind.
Summer, the season of escape, is upon us. It can be as simple as fleeing
the workaday pace to a slower rhythm that allows for some spontaneity.
Spring arrives in this, the most tentative of months. There is the sense of
renewal in the buds and the mustard and of course the green that exists at no
other time of year.
In ways large and small, all of us will pause this week to reflect on the
terrible day that transformed our country a year ago.
