Corporate–driven sameness is swallowing up the localized sense of place that has long characterized the American landscape, writes preservationist author James Conaway, even in the verdant vineyards of the Napa Valley.

The disappearance of distinctive towns and places across the American landscape has not happened in a cultural vacuum, Conaway observes, but concurrent with a marked—and perhaps deliberate—decline in our national educational standards.

 James Conaway (left)  will talk about his book, Vanishing America, at Copperfield’s Books in Napa on Friday evening at 7 pm. His next book is slated to be a novel set here in the northern California Wine Country. It's due out next fall from St. Martin's Press.

 A new high school emphasizing the Waldorf approach to education is poised to open its doors, at a former grade school campus not far from Sonoma State University.

 Although the new Credo High School will begin its existence at a former grade school campus in Rohnert Park (left), Director Chip Romer's vision foresees a new home nearby within six years, at Sonoma Mountain Village.

Most, but by no means all, of the incoming students at Credo High will have arrived from other Waldorf schools, but Romer says those from traditional public schools should have little trouble adapting.

The Inaugual Opening ceremonies at Credo High are set for Monday morning, August 22 at 9:15 am.

What might have become compost is instead feeding school children, through Marin Organic's weekly volunteer gleaning program at local organic farms.

There's much more about the Marin Organic gleaning and school lunch program ontheir website. Information about the Healdsburg-based Farm to Pantry program can be found here.

Inspired by the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin, a former science teacher has turned her west county farmhouse into a learning laboratory for young students with a curiosity about the natural world.

After more than 19 years of teaching ion the Berkeley public school system, Magi Discoe (left)  and her husband retired to western Sonoma County, where she found an ideal place to put into action her long-held dream of a home-based science learning environment for kids in 4^th through 8^th grades.

In addition to the after school and summer sessions she hosts at the farmhouse, Discoe also makes field trips of her own, to share some of her collection and her physics projects with students during the academic year.

The students she works with have already been exposed to science in their regular school curriculum, Discoe says. But by using her own teaching methods, she is able to build on that necessarily superficial foundation.

Visit Darwin's Workshop here!