Her quiet efforts to provide homes and medical care for orphaned children in rural South Africa have brought international recognition to a 75-year old nurse, as well as a visit to northern California.

 

Perhaps because she was 14 by the time she was able to start school, Sister Abigail knew that she wanted to be a nurse, a career path she says was based on two sorts of inspiration.

 Today, Sister Abigail is lauded and loved for her dual community based projects, Clouds of Hope, a home for orphaned children, and  The Khuphuka Project, which provides heath care services for adults, especially those who are HIV-positive.

It's a long, long way from the mountains of South Africa to Sonoma County and San Francisco, a journey that Sister Abigail recalls began with a whim, and took flight with a big surprise.

 

After living in Sonoma County for nearly 60 years, civil rights advocate Willie Garrett has seen--and instigated--some substantial changes here. But he'd still like to see more.

One of Willie Garrett's first moves toward expanding integration in Santa Rosa, focused on the city's swim center, sometime around 1956.

s

In the late 1960s, Mr. Garrett (seen more recently here)  was one of the co-founders of the Ethnic Studies Department at Sonoma State University, where he told the mostly white students not to expect an easy A, because community service would be an important part of his classes.

Typically, Mr. Garrett has not joined in recent public handwringing over the continuing absence of ethnic diversity among the Sonoma State student body. But he is planning to do something about it.

Willie Garrett has been named the 2009 recipient of the Jack Green Civil Rights Award from the Sonoma County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, an honor that will be bestowed at the group's annual Awards Dinner tonight (April 3). Last minute reservations can be made by calling (707) 765-5005.

 

 

A widely used electronic voting machine has been decertified in California, after tests confirmed it sometimes deleted groups of ballots without counting them.

 

 A co-founder and director of the Election Defense Alliance, Dan Ashby says this latest setback for electronic voting machines is further confirmation of their dubious reliability.

s

 

 

 

 

Mary Lightfine's first foreign nursing experience was in a decaying hospital in an African war zone. It inspired her to found her own international immersion agency, Volunteers without Boundaries.

Lightfine will talk about her personal history and her organization in the Cooperage at Sonoma State University, on Thursday, March 12 at 7:30 pm. 

Mary has also written this memoir about her experiences during that tumultuous first year in Somalia, which she says is intended in part as a cautionary tale for others heading abroad to do volunteer work.