Page 2 - Sonoma County Gazette 12-2019

Dear Readers,
We’re coming to the end of one year and the beginning of another. I set goals for myself this year and put action behind my aspirations for 2020. Accomplishing goals are not entirely up to us no matter how much effort we put into meeting them. World politics, local disasters, and personal mountains to climb all play their part in getting where we set our path to go. But setting the goal to begin with starts forward motion.
Our January issue will be a reflection of my goals. Some of the people who joined me this year in producting the Gazette are part of how this news magazine has shaped itself throughout 2019.
I am thrilled to have Elisabeth Pedrosa’s dogged determination to make
our CALENDAR as comprehensive as humanly possible. She not only takes what readers post to our website and send us in emails, she researches Sonoma County events to make sure people have plenty to do all month. She has become the Calendar Queen, not only because of her research, but also because she’s a designer, so her calendars are beautiful as well as functional.
In the last few months Bonnie Hill of Insight Signs & Graphics joined our team and took on more and more article layout design. I’m so crunched for time I haven’t been able to make articles as beautiful as I want them to be. Bonnie has dressed up our pages to make our paper feel more like a magazine than a newspaper.
Ceylan Crow of Ceylan Design came onto the team through a chance encounter with a friend at an ATM machine. Keeping up with our website was almost impossible until she came along. Now I can feed her articles all month and they get posted right away. Because she’s a graphic designer, she makes them attractive. I believe we comprehend more of what we read when it’s pleasing to our eyes. Ceylan is a perfect blending of art and technology.
Our long-time layout partner, John DeSalvio retired this month and he deserves a rest. He’s been in pubishing for decades and used to be the editor and graphic designer for the Russian River Monthly. He lives in southern California so he can rest his weary bones where it’s warm. We’ll miss his sense of humor and choice of clever words for deadline warnings.
I hope, with the help of Holiday shoppers supporting locally-owned business, Sonoma County’s year will end on an economic high note. Between fires and power shutoffs we have taken hit after hit. Everyone has suffered in some way. PTSD was felt more than most expected when flames and smoke rose from our forests during the Kincade fire. Not being able to work, open business doors, send kids to school, you name it, people had to find ways to take the hit and carry on.
When rain reduces our risk of fire, we will collectively sigh profound relief. We’ve learned more than we ever wanted to know but that’s all part of living in our paradise. For those who would live nowhere else, this home needs our energy, our compassion, our skills, and our sense of community.
Focusing on what we CAN do helps us meet goals, solve problems, and change what we find wrong to make it as right as possible.
Young people are our future and we need to support them in every way we can. When we raise our children and send them out into the world, we let go knowing we did the best we could. We also slip our safety net under them so they have someone to catch them when they trip so they don’t fall.
It’s an analogy we can use for every part of life where we let go in order to move on.
Happy NEW Year! We’re on the next great adventure.
2 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 12/19