In which we drag a perfectly nice season into a basement of dictionaries and refuse to let it leave Spring is the season everyone loves and no one can describe without sounding like a greeting card. “Renewal.” “Awakening.” “Rebirth.” Sure. Also: mud, allergies, and the unsettling realization that you have not, in fact, gone to…
Year: 2026
Death cap mushroom. CDPH photo.
Three hospitalized near Deer Park as California’s wild-mushroom poisoning toll climbs to 47
Three adults are in the hospital after eating wild mushrooms picked in the hills above Deer Park, and Napa County’s top public health officer is asking everyone in the region to put down the basket until further notice. Dr. Christine Wu, Napa County’s Public Health Officer and a deputy director at the county’s Health and…
Medtronic’s Santa Rosa exit closes a 27-year chapter in Sonoma County medtech
The slow goodbye finally has a date. Medtronic told its 370 Santa Rosa workers on Wednesday that the company will shut its Fountaingrove campus by spring 2028, ending a presence in Sonoma County that began in 1998 with what was then one of the largest medical-device deals in California history.The work — pacemakers, coronary stents,…
City of Santa Rosa photo
Santa Rosa City Attorney Teresa Stricker resigns; council names interim June 2
Santa Rosa City Attorney Teresa L. Stricker told the city Saturday she is stepping down on Tuesday, June 2, citing “new professional opportunities.” The City Council, which holds the appointment, plans to name an interim replacement at the same June 2 meeting. The departure had not been picked up anywhere outside the city’s own Civic…
Tailless Petaluma rehab cub turned loose in remote North State
A young female mountain lion who spent the last five months at Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue in Petaluma is back in the wild, after state biologists walked her into a stretch of remote Northern California habitat earlier this month. She is eleven months old, weighs enough to make her own way, and is missing most…
Grand jury gives Sonoma’s open-space agency a clean review — and flags a 2031 cliff
A Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury report released Sunday May 10 says the agency that has spent 35 years buying up farmland and open space across the county is, by and large, doing the job voters paid it to do. The report’s title — “It’s On Their Website!” — is the jury’s broad answer to…
Hall Winery in Napa Valley. Roger Coryell/Wine Country Daily
Napa’s wine and farm workers can’t afford to live in Napa anymore. A new study puts a number on it.
Napa Valley runs on immigrants. Its wineries, restaurants, hotels and farms all do. What a new report makes plain is that more and more of those workers can no longer afford to live in the county where they work — and a growing share have left altogether. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group,…
Where the misfits went: Sausalito’s last anchor-outs and the long retreat of bohemian North Bay
On October 15, Richardson Bay closes for keeps. After that date, no boat may stay anchored in the bay more than 72 hours. The Richardson Bay Regional Agency calls it a milestone, and on the agency’s own terms, it is one. From more than 200 illegally anchored vessels in 2018, the count is down to…
GM sold drivers’ location data for four years. Two North Bay DAs helped shut it down.
If you bought a GM truck anytime in the past decade — a Silverado in the vineyard rows, a Tahoe at the trailhead, a Sierra hauling firewood off the coast — your name, your home address, and a four-year record of where and how you drove most likely passed through a pipeline that ended at…
Courtesy Bodega Bay Fire
Bodega residents to get update Thursday on fire station lease talks
The nonprofit that owns Bodega’s fire station has called a special meeting Thursday night to brief local residents on lease talks with Gold Ridge Fire Protection District, the agency that staffs the station and runs calls in this rural coastal corner of Sonoma County. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. at McCaughey Hall in downtown Bodega….