Local activism comes in many forms. Two contrasting public events tonight demonstrate that range.

  The campaign to curtail or ban taser use has gained considerably support across Canada, where the RCMP is being pressured to change its policies with marches, such as this one, and legislative inquiries.

Sonoma County 's  October 22nd Coalition Against Police Brutality has organized a march on Friday, February 13th at 5:30pm in Courthouse Square, Santa Rosa, calling on the Sheriff's Department to immediately end their use of the Taser. 

Friday, February 13, 5:30 PM 

California is second only to Florida in the number of taser-related fatalities charted by the Seattle Post-Intelligener.

Candlelight Vigil for Male Victims of Domestic Violence

Join in a candlelight vigil in memory of the men who recently lost their lives to domestic violence here in Sonoma County. We will honor and remember all male victims of domestic violence in a show of strength and peace.

Friday, February 13th , 6pm-7pm

As many as 25% of the homeless in Sonoma County are veterans, people who are entitled to services and assistance they often don't know about. But a new volunteer coalition is working to change that.

  One frequent obstacle that Vet Connect volunteers must often overcome, says Andy Pyburn, is a widespread reluctance to accept the services to which the veterans are entitled.

Vet Connect gatherings are held regularly at the following Sonoma County locations:
Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building
    Every Tuesday, 9 am to noon
Contact Dave: 694-7614
Guerneville Veterans Memorial Building
    Second Thursday of each month, 3-6 pm
Contact John: 869-9459
Sonoma Veterans Memorial Building
    Third Thursday of each month, Noon -3 pm
Contact Ted: 337-4518
Petaluma, next to the library (310 Payran St.)
    Fourth Thursday of each month, Noon -3 pm
Contact Andy: 763-9924
Participating agencies include: The Santa Rosa VA Clinic (left), Sonoma County Veterans Service Office, Sonoma County Department of Health Services, North Bay Veterans Resource Center, and the Vet Center of Rohnert Park.
All Veterans and family members are welcome! 

An early businessman named John Bagley may have been the most prominent citizen of the town that became Guerneville, but as Schubert relates,  Bagley chose to name it for one of his friends and business partners, rather than himself.

Before the train came out the Russian River from the Santa Rosa plain, some Guerneville area entrepreneurs tried using the river itself as a transportation corridor, but as John Schubert relates, that proved to be a short-lived experiment.

John Schubert,  is a Russian River historian and board member for the Sonoma County Historical Society as well as the Russian River Historical Society. His  Guerneville Early Days: A History of the Lower Russian River, covers the history of Guerneville up to 1910.

Schubert's self-published book received the 1999 Campbell Augustus Menefee Scholastic Award.

As logging cleared more and more land along the lower Russian River, some astute local businessmen came up with a plan to maximize their resources, by selling vacation homes in the area.

A common feature of these vacation homes was a wraparound porch, which John Schubert explains was far more practical when they were built than now.

To folks passing through today, Forestville appears to be a quiet residential hamlet in western Sonoma County. But it wasn’t all that long ago that the railroads still ran to the town, and Forestville was a bustling center of commerce. Those early days were well documented by that new-fangled technology called photography, which has provided a wealth of material for this newly published illustrated history, compiled and written by Penny Hutten and members of the Forestville Historical Society.

To visit the Forestville Historical Society website, click here . 

Virginia Hughes (front row, far right in the photo above) and Ron Davis (front row, at left)  were among the main contributors to the book.