When the 19^th amendment was adopted 88 years ago, giving American women the right to vote, rural Californians played a pivotal role in the outcome.

  Visit the National Women's History Project website here .

This year, the National Women's History Project and the YWCA of Sonoma County host an event for on this important day.  Details are  here.

Palm Oil

First the ethanol boom created a surge in corn prices; now bio-diesel made from palm oil is threatening tropical rain forests.

To view a continually growing list of products that use palm oil, click here.

To see the website for the Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign, click here.

Plastic shopping bags have been banned in cities as big as San Francisco and as small as Healdsburg, but Marin county attorney Stephen Joseph says they’re getting a bum rap.

Tiburon Attorney Stephen Joseph has created the SaveThePlasticBag.org website.

His campaign was also recently profiled in TIME magazine.

Below, Joseph talks about the few photos that purport to show wildlife being harmed by plastic bags in their natural environment.

Plastic bags should be reused whenever possible, and those not being used can be recycled.

How do you improve the health of a whole county? That’s the challenge that Sonoma Health Action is tackling.

The number of uninsured in Sonoma County is estimated at over 42,000 and growing. Physicians continue to leave the community and specialists are in short supply. District hospitals are struggling financially as the competitive pressures of a rapidly changing health care marketplace continue to threaten and destabilize an already broken health care system.

Sonoma County is not alone in experiencing the impacts of the health care situation. Communities throughout the state have come together seeking solutions at the local level.  On August 14, 2007, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors authorized the Department of Health Services to convene a health action council to work on improving health and health care for all Sonoma County residents.

Visit their website here .

To take the Health Action Survey, click here .

There's  a schedule of upcoming public meetings hosted by Health Action here (pdf).