Old Courthouse Square, Railroad Square and all of downtown Santa Rosa will lose two potent advocates when councilmembers Steve Rabino-
witsh and Janet Condron step down in January.
I see Santa Rosa Main Street will honor the pair with a breakfast Dec. 6 at the Vineyard Creek Hotel. It's well deserved.
The heart of Santa Rosa still has its issues, goodness knows it does. But Rabinowitsh and Condron are in large measure responsible for its current vitality and vision, the Prince Memorial Greenway and the First Friday art walks.
Rabinowitsh said Monday that as he prepares to leave the council he hopes downtown will continue to evolve into a true cultural center.
He envisions a new Civic Center with a city hall and performing arts venue, a reunited Old Courthouse Square and a connecting boulevard that opens Santa Rosa Plaza to the rest of downtown.
Rabinowitsh says he knows that will take time and money. Perhaps most urgently, as he and Condron near the end of their council terms, he says, downtown needs a new champion on the council.
Anyone?
SOME DAY, SOMEWHERE: One minute we shivered out in front of Santa Rosa Junior College.
The next, several hundred of us with tickets to the Saturday night performance of West Side Story melted at the voice and stage presence of 17-year-old Emily Brown and the rest of the powerful cast.
Faces in the opening-weekend audiences included some surviving veterans of the JC's 1962 production of West Side Story, the fatal love story that mourns street gangs' senseless violence and hatred.
Naturally the production changed over 44 years, but nowhere near as much as Sonoma County has.
Gangs in Sonoma County? It was unthinkable in '62. Now there are about 3,000 known gang members here, and we all know what happens when they clash.
I'd pay $40 to send a gang member and a date to West Side Story. Might not help him, but couldn't hurt.
SHOW AND TELL: It was the best thing that could have happened for the global-warming foes in Sonoma County who are promoting their 2007 "Ecobabes" calendar.
In Arcata, the unamused office manager at the Northcoast Environ-
mental Center denounced it as oppressive to women.
Ta-da. That criticism made the calendar controversial and earned it a Page 1 banner story in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle.
In a flash, other media phoned the Graton-based Climate Protection Campaign, the calendar's sponsor. A spurt of prospective buyers signed onto the Ecobabes Web site.
Anyone expecting nature girls in the buff may be disappointed. The portraits in the calendar, proceeds from which benefit one of the nation's most ambitious local efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, are non-nude and nonsexual.
Accompanying each month's photo is a short story that tells who the woman is and what she does for the environment. Truly, the words are more revealing than the pictures.
GRAVEYARD SHIFT: In some counties, believe it or not, simple old cemeteries for the poor have been paved over. Not in Sonoma County, not if Jeremy Nichols has a say.
Next Tuesday, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors will honor Jeremy for spearheading a project to beautify and place markers on hundreds of unmarked graves at the 130-year-old Chanate Historic Cemetery off Chanate Road.
Jeremy (cemeterian@ tombstone
amnesty.org) says he's had a great deal of help at the graveyard, final resting place to more than 1,500 indigents and expatriate Chinese workers. He's not too proud to say he could use a lot more.
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