Priorities
I could not help but laugh when I saw the headline in the Press Democrat,
“SR Square Project Upsets Business.” Uh, yeah . . . But business owners already knew that when they (though not all of them) said yes to this project. Why write about it? Quit your freaking crying.
I am crying for the homeless who need our help. The $9.2 million our great city leaders decided to spend on this project could have gone to do something for the people who need shelter and/or maybe buy some buses with showers to help them out. What is wrong with this picture? Spending millions to make our downtown prettier than Sonoma and Healdsburg and spending little money for those who need it the most. Seems to me our city leaders have got their heads up their you-know-whats.
Santa Rosa
Go Greens
Thanks to Ari LeVaux for the nice plug for chickories (“Bitter Is Better,” July 6)! I, too, am a fan of these delicious greens and grow some in my garden every year and promote them in my classes. And, like most things in life and the produce world, timing is everything.
The best-tasting leaf chickories and radicchios mature during cool or cold weather. Low temperatures reduce bitterness and a bit of frost adds some sweetness (starches turn to sugar for natural anti-freeze), resulting in delightfully complex flavors and a crisp texture that makes these the very best winter salads.
Seeds for the slower to mature types that head up like radicchios can be sown now through mid-August, but the faster to mature leaf chickories can be sown in September. I sow escarole and endive seeds in late September for harvest in February and March, when there is little else “new” in the garden.
Santa Rosa
I Heart Santa Rosa
It has been one year since we finally made the leap from our urban life to Santa Rosa. While we were excited, we were also apprehensive, as my wife had grown up in London and we had both spent much of our adult lives in big cities. What if it was too quiet, what if we felt alone and alienated or even discriminated against as lesbians, what if we didn’t fit in? How unfounded our worries were.
As we settled in, every store we frequented had people going out of their way to help us. At every restaurant we’d meet people who welcomed us to Santa Rosa and gave us suggestions for places to go and new restaurants to try. We saw the river otters at Lake Ralphine, we learned so much about plants at the Luther Burbank Gardens, we were amazed by McDonald Avenue on Halloween, we walked Hartley Drive admiring Christmas lights and took a free carriage ride through Railroad Square, we viewed local artists at SOFA open studios, and we danced with a crowd to a Rod Stewart cover band at Montgomery Village.
We fell in love with Santa Rosa and it’s people again and again, and we can’t wait for what the next year in Santa Rosa brings.
Santa Rosa
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