I did a rough, unscientific count of contributors to Hopkins from 1/1/16 to 4/23/16 totaling about $123K.
Some of the contributions are from people associated to business, some are direct.
This was...

Campaign finance reports are now out and you can follow the money by clicking here: https://campaigndocs.sonoma-county.org/searchscreen.asp?searchtype=0&checkforyearrange=0&yearrange

Type in the...

Update on Ernie's Assessment of the Hopkins Campaign: Firstly, it's getting weird out there. Would like to be a fly on the wall when Hopkins learned that her campaign manager/consultant/handler Bob...

All Unincorporated County and City of Santa Rosa residential garbage customers (multifamily too, with some restrictions) are entitled to FREE bulky item collection FOUR times per year, up to THREE...

Thanks, Shepherd, for keeping us all informed regarding these developments. This is an optimistic article, having these groups gathering together across county lines. I am wondering if the issue of...

Rural Rebellion in Northern California

By Shepherd Bliss
WaccoBB.net
Photos: Greg Kestrel

30818One windy mid-April Saturday, rural folk from four Northern California counties began arriving...

Responding to ICCSoma's post above, the gist of which is his/her comment"

can we step back and stop the no hospital/hospital attack modes and talk about what this community needs and what is...

I just returned from that City Council meeting in which this survey was debated. I talked about the absence of meaningful questions and reviewed a letter I sent to them similar to what I posted...

Jonathan,

An email I received this morning is below.
I took out the names because it was sent to me privately.

It occurred to me that maybe the problem is that Rollie and friends just aren't...

Preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Unity


I will need a birch tree, a maple, a redwood, a white pine, a sequoia, a
cedar, a palm tree.

I want soil from Nigeria, Palestine, the Himalayas,...

Entrepreneurial, fast moving people with a passion can be scary - make really good things happen but appear dangerous. I've known many - Have you? They play hard. So many blessed people have...

Well at least Jonathan Greenberg, an excellent reporter himself, has the wherewithal to call the local West County paper on its shoddy reporting of a complex situation that should have been focused...

Jonathan,

This story is not about heroes or villains but whether we will accept failure as our only option.
It is not about Dan Smith, Nancy Dobbs, or Frank Mayhew, it is about all of us as an...

I too posted a letter to Sonoma West. I don't know the various people involved, and I don't know the merits of the charges, but for me this journalism was on the level of junior high kids talking...

Call Off the Dogs

I was sorry to see Sonoma West's attack piece on Dan Smith. It was largely the complaints of the losers of the Palm Drive Health Care District election.

The election is over...

As noted earlier, the latest issue of the Sonoma West contains an unusual lead article for a weekly local newspaper that ostensibly supports the interest of the community it serves. The front page...

Here's a copy of the letter I sent to the editor of Sonoma West Times & News, in protest of the yellow journalism (full of mistruths, nasty, provocative) of their front page article this week, Dec....

Happiness


There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.


And how can you...

It's taken me a while to type this and I am guessing that other posts have happened since I started, so please bear with me if this post seems out of place.

A point of clarification, to address...

I live directly across the drive from Luther Burbank's cottage at Burbank Heights; my windows overlook the drive and the R and S buildings on our property that this proposed "trail" would traverse....

Very interesting, Marilyn! My dad was a Vietnam Marine, forward observer (I've heard they had a life expectancy of 3 months!) and surviver of Khe Sahn and the Tet Offensive (Pretty much only vet's...

Hi Rustie,

You bring up great questions and ideas. I have been wanting to respond for weeks, but my toddler has a tendency to get into something new and dangerous every time I approach the...

Sorry to be so dense but I have spent some time viewing the proposed trials and I do not see where they actually provide access to our downtown without traversing some of our most heavily congested...

I am optimistic that we can make wonderful trails where every legitimate issue is satisfied.

In a conversation with me, supporters of the trails last week, and representatives of Gold Ridge and...

Sounds to me that you have already created the community that I hear everyone talking about wanting to build. Bravo & Thank You!

I second that!! Rustie's proposal is truly emblematic of Lynn's moto, "When good people come together, good things happen." Brava Rustie!

As I watch a family of 5 ride their bike to school every...

I've got one also

I need a new poem

not like the last one
something fresh
unpublished
something with a tinge of god
or trees
or mint crushed by a footstep

I find support groups for Veterans of PTSD, and there are probably not enough of them. War Vets need all the help they can get.

What I am not finding is support groups for families of Veterans who...

I LOVE Vladi Starkov of Flourish Integrative Health. She has a practice in Santa Rosa and does some beautiful work with Medical Qigong and Mayan Abdominal Massage in addition to acupuncture. She...

Portside Date: September 10, 2014
Date of Source: Monday, September 8, 2014
https://portside.org/2014-09-10/bureaucracy-consumes-one-quarter-us-hospitals-budgets-twice-much-other-nations

A...

well at least something beautiful has come out of this tragedy ...

Borrowing


What do we own after all in this life?

Shards of the moon, a shudder of pearl

through oak leaves wrestling with the wind,

its light borrowed, as our own hearth fires,

The Morning’s News

The morning’s news drives sleep out of the head
at night. Uselessness and horror hold the eyes
open to the dark. Weary, we lie awake
in the agony of the old giving birth...

Forgetfulness


The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never...

Your article implies that Smith may have a hidden business agenda for trying to keep hospital open. Maybe it’s the same agenda in which he shelled out a couple of million many years ago to keep the...

In addition to the unusually conciliatory posts here recently :waccosun:, there's another positive development in the Palm Drive Hospital saga... From the PD yesterday (May 30th):

Palm Drive...

Thanks, Dan. Working together is the ideal goal for sure. Has the District Board stated they will make sure an ER will be included in the plan?

Also, just an FYI, Kaiser Santa Rosa is a...

John,

Rather than refuting anything you have said, I offer the following:

Editor: On May 22, at a special Board of Directors meeting of the Palm Drive Health Care District, dealing with closure...

You have provided a great deal of information about Palm Drive Foundation and it's operations, current approach and differences, Dr. Gude and Dan Smith, fundraising abilities, etc.

What is your...

https://media.cagle.com/81/2014/05/28/149002_600.jpg

I do not trust the news media much these days and that is why I pointed out the headline about the judge "refusing" mediation, when in fact he recommended it.

The hidden agenda and conflict of...

It was five weeks ago, soon after I started investigating the Palm Drive closing, when I attended the April 23 hearing.

That's when I first started hearing the allegations of "conflict of...

[First let me say that I have learned not to respond to attacks like Jim Horn’s because it only gives them more credibility than they deserve. But since I have been asked, I would offer the...

A Great Need

Out

Of a great need

We are all holding hands

And climbing.

Jonathan,

Someone asked Joan why Wells Fargo would want to see Palm Drive Closed?

First the short answer:

Wells is protecting itself and the bond holders ability to keep collecting our tax...

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2014-05-25_11-55-19.pngSebastopol City Councilmember Michael Kyes has died. :tear:

I found the headline in this week's Sonoma West Times an interesting choice of perspective: "Judge Denies Mediation Request in Hospital Saga". Since many people read the headlines, and only the...

You are both right as far as the local newspaper goes, hospital utilization for INPATIENT services has dropped dramatically all over the US during the last 30 years and continues on the same trend....

Peacetown Jonathan,

I would suggest that the best thing to do when you are on a board that has failed at its mission or you are not able to be effective is to resign and let someone else try a...

Scamperwillow,

First, I want to agree with you that the Palm Drive District Board members are not "self-interested, vindictive people." I have found no evidence of any corruption on the part of...