When Marissa Freeman showed up on the Ridgway High School campus her freshman year, she had five academic credits to her name and was emotionally depleted. She had dropped out of the ArtQuest program at Santa Rosa High and felt damaged by, as she described it, experiencing art as a source of competition and judgment.… Keep Reading
People who think they know local history through luminaries like Luther Burbank, Jack London and men whose names appear on buildings, monuments and big headstones in the cemetery, will now get a different and deeper story when they visit the Museum of Sonoma County. The museum, housed in the old 1911 Santa Rosa Post Office… Keep Reading
Sonoma County’s only exclusively plant-based bakery, Magdelena’s Savories and Sweets, is closing after 18 months in business. Greta Canton said a trifecta of issues forced her to shutter the north Petaluma shop, including the effect of ongoing roadwork in front of her site, a lack of foot traffic and financial pressures she couldn’t overcome. Continue… Keep Reading
Mike Chavez has fond memories of Santa Rosa Plaza. He would often meet up with friends at “Agraria,” the 12-foot-long marble statue of a hand installed in 1996 at the mall’s entrance on B Street in Santa Rosa. Now, he gets to help shape the mall’s new look — his company, Mike Chavez Painting, is… Keep Reading
Close to 200 people, including several local elected officials, spent Labor Day morning enjoying a free pancake breakfast and showing solidarity for union workers at a fundraiser for the North Bay Labor Council in Santa Rosa. An annual event, it was the first year it was a money raiser for the Santa Rosa-based labor council,… Keep Reading
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jackie Robinson. Florence Griffith-Joyner. Arthur Ashe. Troy Aikman. Lisa Fernandez. Jimmy Connors. Gail Devers. Jill Ellis. Rafer Johnson. Santa Rosa’s own Jerry Robinson. Jackie Joyner-Kersee. John Wooden. That is a small sliver of names of the people who have been inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame And now, add to that… Keep Reading
College isn’t for everyone—despite what today’s youth may hear from the adults in their lives. From the moment they arrive freshman year, today’s high school students are inundated with messages about the importance of receiving a college education. They hear it from their guidance counselors, teachers, parents, family members, neighbors, and coaches. While graduation from… Keep Reading
Three miles of Highway 12 in Santa Rosa will be closed beginning later this month. Caltrans will shut down all eastbound and westbound lanes of the highway stretching from Fulton Road to Dutton Avenue between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. starting Sept. 22. The closures are expected to last until Sept. 25. One eastbound and… Keep Reading
The woman in the water was barely conscious when Sonoma County Fire District Capt. Heath Lesik swam through the surf to her. It was in the early morning hours Wednesday. She was perhaps 100 feet off Duncan’s Landing and was bruised and “icy cold” from being in the chilly ocean water. She also had other… Keep Reading
Remember this time last year, when water stores depleted by several years of drought left water managers and consumers alike hoping desperately for a wet winter ahead? Well, Sonoma Water says the region’s main reservoirs — Lakes Sonoma and Mendocino — ended this August with the highest combined storage level since 1985, the first full… Keep Reading
