Where there's fire there's smoke, and on Spare The Air days that's not a good thing.

 

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has adopted new rules that prohibit district residents from using wood burning stoves or fireplaces on specified Spare the Air Days during the winter months.

 

You can subscribe to an automated email notification system for "no burn: days here. There is also an automated telephone notification system. The Spare the Air Winter alerts are also available by calling 1-877-4-NOBURN (1-877-466-2876).

Most of Sonoma County is part of the Bay Area Air Quality District, and subject to the new rules.The coastal and northern parts of the county which lie outside the  District are not covered by its regulations, and compliance in these areas is voluntary..To see a list of cities and counties covered by the Spare The Air no-burn rules, click here .

 

 

Filipino-Americans are a growing presence in Sonoma County, with an interesting local history they are eager to share.

 The first Filipinos to travel to North America came aboard the Manila Galleons such as this, Spanish trading ships that traversed the Pacific ocean during the 1700s and 1800s. 

Most of the young Filipino men who came to California in the first half of the 20^th century intended to eventually return home, but many of them never did.

 

 

 

 Remembering Our Manongs- Sonoma County's Filipino History   is a historical documentary film covering the first Filipino immigrants who traveled to the US and settled in Sonoma County during the First half of the 20^th Century. 

 

Partial funding for the film came from  California Council for the Humanities through their California Stories grant with additional support from the Filipino American National Historical Society.  The Society's Sonoma County chapter is one of 30 across the country. Chapter president Delia  Lanosa Rapolla explains the organization's purpos in 5the audio clip below.

 

Two public screenings of  Remembering Our Manongs- Sonoma County's Filipino History  are currently scheduled. The first, from 1-4 pm on  Saturday, November 8th at the Sonoma County Office of Education (5430 Skylane Blvd., Santa Rosa), will be followed by a panel discussion on "Sharing the Filipino American Experience in K-12 Curriculum."  And on  Saturday, November 15th, also 1-4 pm, the film will be shown at the Finley Center (2060 W.College Ave.) in Santa Rosa,  followed by a panel discussion on "Preserving the Filipino American Experience--Storytelling and Intergenerational Dialog."

For more information about these events call (707) 294-3784.

 

While the presidential election yesterday was a sweeping victory for Democrats from the top of the ticket on down, many local races in the north bay were much more narrowly decided.

 

 

 

To view the complete list of Sonoma County's unofficial election results, click here.

 For the statewide California election results, click here.

 

 

 

 

Budget cuts and increased enrollment are driving Sonoma State University to impose a limit on how many courses students can take next semester.

 

For many on the SSU campus, the first word of the new cap on academic units for the Spring Semester came in the form of a front page article on the Star, the weekly campus newspaper, on Tuesday. That angered many faculty members, who saw it as another instance of the university administration imposing its will and decisions, without appropriate consultation or notice, as Professor Andy Merrifield explains.

However,  the University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Eduaro Ochoa (right), says this was an emergency action, and there simply wasn't time to include those collaborative steps.

 

 

Now that scientists have figured out what causes "Sudden Oak Death," they're trying to get the word out on how to curtail the spread of the tree disease.

This magnified image shows the P. ramorum spores on the underside of a California bay laurel leaf.

In addition to prevention efforts, the California Oak Mortality Task Forces is also developing some best practices for dealing with those forests where large numbers of oaks are already dead or dying.

 

 

This photo shows diseased and  tanoaks on Mount Tamalpias, one of the first areas where Sudden Oak Death appeared.

There's a map (pdf)  showing areas of oak death in Northern California here.

Or link to the Sonoma County Sudden Oak Death Strategic Reponse Plan (83 pages, pdf) here .

 Dr. David Rizzo, a leading Sudden Oak Death researcher at UC Davis, offers a summation of what is currently known about the disease, the pathogen that causes it, and how it is transmitted in a 30 minute video that can be seen here.