SMITH: Ty, our Handcar guy, walks on

Ty, our Handcar guy, walks on: Ty Jones, the endlessly imaginative co-founder of one of the greatest excuses ever to dress down and meet your friends in downtown Santa Rosa, is recovering nicely from a serious stroke.

"I was home washing dishes," said Ty, who created and produced the Great Handcar Regatta in Railroad Square with ex-business partner Spring Maxfield in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. "I just started to feel tired, sweating and breathing very heavy."

Thank goodness a friend was with him as he hit the floor that day a couple of months ago. The stroke caused significant left-side

paralysis and knocked out his short-term memory.

Since then, Ty, who's 51, has come a long way back.

"You know what," he said, "I can talk. I can walk. I can eat."

And he can declare that his Aug. 25 successor festival to the Regatta, "Dr. E.P. Wunderkammer, Featuring the Great Sonoma County Handcar Races," is a go.

ANYBODY HOLMES? Melissa Kort teaches English at SRJC and she's quite thrilled that this fall all freshmen taking English 1A will read and write about Sherlock Holmes.

To enrich the experience, Kort and fellow instructors will endeavor to expose the students to all manner of Holmes films, lectures, trivia, memorabilia, what have you.

"I just have this instinct that there are Holmes lovers wandering the streets of Santa Rosa who would love a heads-up about this project and would have something to teach or share," Kort said.

She wonders if you might be a keeper of Holmes books or collectibles, or belong to "a mystery book club that drinks tea and smokes pipes."

If there's something you might add to the experience when students plunge into the works of Arthur Conan Doyle like Sherlock into a tantalizing case, Kort would savor hearing from you at mkort@santarosa.edu.

HOMELY NO MORE: For years, one of the ugliest, most obviously outdated commercial buildings in Santa Rosa has been that two-story former title-company edifice on College Avenue, a bit west of Mendocino Avenue.

That's it, the one with the metal sunshade screens that extend two-thirds of they way from the roof to the ground.

A new tenant hasn't done much with the exterior of the long-vacant structure, but check out what the proud occupant has done inside - and what's happening there.

Memorial Hospice has moved in. Having outgrown three former residential homes a few blocks up Mendocino, hospice is able to consolidate all of its counseling, training and administrative functions within the College Avenue building.

The interior has been completely upgraded, the nicest touch being the steel-roofed, free-standing room within a room that seats up to 60 for community education presentations, volunteer training and such.

Office spaces on the periphery are for sessions with people who've lost loved ones, and for the volunteers who go out and care for about 100 people a day who are facing the end of life.

It's a beautiful thing.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.