David Wesley Page will sleep in a week from Monday.
Page has been an early bird since before he started working mornings at landmark AM station KSRO in 1985 with Steve Garner, Merle Ross and the late, great Jim Grady. He especially cherishes his years co-anchoring with Grady.
"He did the jokes, and I tried to bring us back to he real world," he said.
But morning radio is pretty tough. How'd you like to pull out of bed every weekday at 3?
"I'm in the door at 4, on the air at 6," said David, who also taught broadcasting at Sonoma State for 20 years.
He will retire from KSRO on Friday. Then, no more getting to bed by 8:30.
"It's going to change completely," said David, who's 61. "I'm going to be able to stay up until 9 o'clock now."
IF YOU'RE HOMELESS you're invited to dinner March 28 in Santa Rosa.
"Pasta King" Art Ibleto will prepare a meal to be served at about 4 p.m. on the grounds of Catholic Charities' Family Support Center on A Street. There will be activities for children and advocates of community resources.
It's free, of course. If you'd like to help, the shelter's Jennielynn Holmes would be pleased for you to drop her a line at jholmes@srcharities.org.
BIN LADEN'S LAUNDRY: Leon Panetta and Sal Rosano were classmates a few years back, say 60, at Monterey High.
Rosano went into law enforcement, a career that continues still and that included decades as Santa Rosa's police chief. Panetta entered politics and public service and did it all: he was a Congressman, President Bill Clinton's chief of staff, until a year ago President Barack Obama's Secretary of Defense and from 2009 to '11 director of the CIA.
The two former school pals caught up a bit at the California Police Chiefs Conference in Monterey. And Panetta addressed the group, sharing a low-tech element of the CIA's search for Osama Bin Laden.
Rosano said Panetta recounted that as the CIA worked to confirm that Bin Laden was holed up in a compound in Pakistan, agents determined how many wives and children he lived with.
Someone struck upon a way to establish if that many people were indeed present in the compound: The agents doing the surveillance counted and inventoried the pieces of apparel hung on the clothesline.
The clothing count matched the size of Bin Laden's family, and contributed to the decision to send in the Navy SEALs.
BIT O' GREEN: Coins dropped into green kettles will bring good luck Monday - perhaps for those doing the dropping and certainly for those who'll benefit from the generosity.
The Salvation Army will post St. Patrick's Day bell-ringers beside emerald holiday kettles accustomed to wearing crimson.
Volunteers dressed for the occasion will invite donations outside 15 Santa Rosa pubs and stores. You know where Russ Swart will be.
From about 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday, the local Salvation Army's most productive kettler will charm passerby from his post at the Bennett Valley Safeway.
GOLD HALL, TO GREEN: It was a magical moment, a crowning glory, when conductor Andris Nelsons raised his arms and the first sweet strains from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra resonated through Green Music Center.
This was a high note in the short history of the hall at SSU because the Vienna orchestra is one of the world's finest, and its first visit here was also something of a homecoming.
The orchestra's magnificent, 1870 performance venue, Musikverein - "Golden hall" - was an inspiration for the design of the Green Music Center's tall, rectangular Weill Hall.
Shoeboxes, the architects call them. Weill Hall seemed to fit the visitors from Vienna perfectly.
(Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.)
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