The Deep Dark Woods hail from Saskatoon, where frozen nights can make a day feel like a year, and they’ve channeled that icy inspiration into a cozy roots-prairie-goth sound. On Nov. 28, the band helps Phil Lesh kick off a two-week extravaganza to celebrate the debut of the Grate Room at Terrapin Crossroads. Moreover, it’s free! (Tickets for the rest of the fortnight’s shows run up to $150.) The spankin’ new Grate Room boasts a world-class sound system and promises to be a diverse venue with trivia nights, big-band and salsa dance nights and, of course, tons of live music. Get there early, because Dead fans will be lining up at the door on Wednesday, Nov. 28, at Terrapin Crossroads. 100 Yacht Club Drive, San Rafael. 8:30pm. Free. 415.524.2773.
As a genre, hard rock means different things to different people. For your Midwestern Uncle Pete, Van Halen’s “Panama” might be the epitome of the genre. For your mom, it’s probably Whitesnake or Winger. Los Angeles—based Trapt, on the other hand, come from the Pantera school, all growling vocals and cranked up, sharp-edged Gibson guitar riffs with plenty of bombastic drumming. But there’s an accessibility around Trapt’s edges, and they scored a hit in 2002 with “Headstrong,” which was featured in multiple video games and used to promote the short-lived television show Redneck Island. See where they’re at now when Trapt play with Venrez, Shotgun Harlot and Our Vinyl Vows on Tuesday, Nov. 27, at the Last Day Saloon. 120 Fifth St., Santa Rosa. 7pm. $15—$18. 707.545.2343.
I’d like to cut you in, old man. There’s nobody in Marin County that I can really trust, and we’ve always done things together. When you make up your mind, I’ll send you a message, any place, any time. And when we do meet, old man, it’s you I want to see, not the police. Maybe we could meet up on a Ferris wheel in Vienna, old man, where’ll I’ll complain of indigestion, before opening up the door in a mildly threatening manner high above the dots—you know them as people—talking of Anna, false death and the futility of human existence. For I’m Harry Lime, old man, and one thing I know for sure is that the great Orson Welles film ‘The Third Man’ screens on Sunday, Nov. 25, at the Rafael Film Center. 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. $10.50. 7pm. 415.454.1222.
It was at a Nov. 18 news conference in Bangkok, that President Ogama told Egyptian and Turkish leaders, in regards to the blow up in Gaza, “Let’s understand what the precipitating event here was that’s causing the current crisis, and that was an ever-escalating number of missiles. They were landing not just in Israeli territory, but in areas that are populated. And there’s no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” The statement seems more than ironic in light of the fact that U.S. drones have been “raining” deadly missiles down on combatants and civilians alike in Pakistan, in an area that bordering Afghanistan. Between 2004-2012, between 474 and 881 Pakistani civilians (including 176 children) have been killed by the controversial drone attacks. This week, the Bohemian’s news story features Barbara Briggs-Letson, a Sebastopol resident recently returned from a Code Pink delegation to Pakistan. The trip was led by Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin, a long-time anti-war activist who’s been trying to get the word out about drone warfare in a country with which we are not at war. Here’s our complete interview with Medea Benjamin.
Are the actual numbers of innocent civilians killed by drones actually higher than what has been admitted by the Obama Administration?
Oh, totally. What we’ve been told by the Obama administration is that there are a handful of people that have been killed. Or, at the most, we were told by the ambassador in Pakistan that it’s in the low digits—and that is just not true. Even the most conservative estimates are in the hundreds. The one that’s considered to be the most reliable is the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the numbers are in the thousands. There’s a big question about what actually is an innocent person, given the definition of what is a militant by the administration being any male of military age that lives in the strike zone. For Pakistan, they say somewhere between 500-900 for civilians. For total people killed, 2500-3500, so the question really is, who’s a civilian and who’s a militant, but there’s no question that the numbers given out by the administration are just not true. They’re ridiculously low.
And military age in Pakistan is what exactly?
It doesn’t make any sense. It’s basically somebody who has facial hair on them. In that part of the world, it’s not like there’s a draft. People can sometimes barely even tell you their ages.
Now that Obama has been re-elected, what’s the next step when it comes to drone warfare?
First, we have to do massive education. That’s why it’s so important for people like Barbara Briggs-Letson, to be out there. She can reach into the faith-based community, to students and the 34 people who went on the trip are all doing that. The education and writing campaign that turns around the numbers. The fact that the majority of Americans think that drone strikes are okay means that we have a lot of work to do.
Another thing, is building up the protests, which are really blossoming now. A year ago, there was barely anything, except for a few up by Creech Air Force Base and in upstate New York, but now they’re happening all over. They’re happening on a weekly basis in San Diego, where General Atomics is located. They’re happening at the CIA headquarters in Virginia. They’re happening in Fort Benning, Georgia. In Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. In Whiteman Air Force Base outside of Saint Louis.
These are all places where drones are constructed, or where people are trained to fly them?
Or they’re actually being piloted from there. So the upstate New York group is a broad coalition of people from places like Buffalo and Albany. They’ve organized because Hancock Air Force Base is in their community and is flying drones in Afghanistan and, they think, Pakistan. So it’s not only the training, it’s the actual pressing of the kill button.
That seems so far away.
That’s what’s happening at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada where many of us have protested. Code Pink people. Veterans for Peace. Catholic Workers. People at that base are killing people thousands of miles away. They’re doing it from the comfort of an air-conditioned room, in a comfortable chair, and going home to their families at the end of the day.
It sounds like there is a huge disconnect in terms of the American consciousness about drones. It seems almost like science fiction, even though it’s very real and people are dying. We have such a set concept of what ‘warfare’ is, but this seems like a whole new form of ‘warfare’ that we almost can’t wrap our minds around.
That’s right. It’s really hard to imagine what would appear to be like a video game with consoles, PlayStations and joysticks. It’s a new form of warfare where one side doesn’t put their lives at risk at all. The question being asked by everyone from folks in the United Nations to faith-based communities, they’re saying, if we’re so removed from the human consequences of these actions how can this generation of fighters really value the right to life?
What about the idea that there is a ‘surgical precision’ to the drone strikes?
That’s false. These are much more precise weapons than those they’ve had in the past, but they’re not surgically precise. There all kinds of issues related to them including, what information are the pilots given as to whom is on the kill list? Who is being attacked? A lot of the time, it’s faulty information. They think they’re trying to get the person they’ve put on the kill-list because they’re a high value target related to Al Qaeda, and it turns out they’ve killed a bunch of poor Pakistanis that had nothing to do with the target.
So one instance is faulty information and the issues about the collateral damage. I hate to use that term. So many people who have been killed in are in the homes of the person that’s been targeted. So the wife, or the kids, and then they also have follow-up strikes, where they send in another drone, another missile after the first one, that kills rescuers and humanitarian aid workers who try to rescue the people. There have been drones that have hit funerals because they figure that if they killed someone from Al Qaeda or the Taliban, then the people at the funeral are going to be part of that as well. These are all things that can be considered, in the case of killing humanitarian aid workers, war crimes, and in the other cases, certainly violating basic rules of war. And there’s all kind of other issues that come up around how precise these actually are. There’s the shrapnel and debris that goes flying after these drones strikes. There’s all kinds of ways that you could say that we’re being sold a bill of goods about precision weapons which really leave a lot of death and destruction in their wake to innocent people.
I hope Barbara talked about the question of how this is terrorizing whole populations. There are 800,000 people that live in Wazharistan and with these drones, sometimes 24 hours a day non-stop over their heads, how they live in a constant state of fear. The people we met with talked to us about the tremendous state of depression that people are in, trying to self-medicate with anti-depressants, suicide happening and how it really has changed the life of the community. They said to us, “You’re waging a war on terror by terrorizing our population.”
In a country that we’re not actually at war with.
That’s right. And that’s really paying the price for the spillover of our war with Afghanistan.
Is there anything else that you want the American public to know regarding the use of drones?
I mainly wanted to say how amazed I was at this delegation. The 32 people who had signed up to go to a very dangerous part of the world, knowing that they were putting their own lives at risk. And then getting two warnings from the US embassy while we were there, saying you shouldn’t go, the Taliban is going to try to kill you, we have credible information saying you’re going to be attacked. All but one decided to go on the caravan anyway. It was pretty remarkable, and somebody like Barbara, who’s from a very comfortable family and lifestyle and has no reason to be putting herself in harm’s way like that, to choose to do that out of a sense of conviction, and a sense of purpose, and a sense of valuing all lives, is quite remarkable. I was just in awe looking around at these delegates; At their commitment to showing the positive face of the American people, to being the citizen ambassadors, to showing that we so disagree with our government’s policies that we’re going to put our lives at risk to come and tell you that. It was very profound.
I guess about the drones themselves, I’ve been studying the proliferation of these drones and it’s really shocking to see that know 76 countries have some kind of drones and not just countries, but non-state entities have drones, like Hezbollah, that just flew drones to Israel. We’re setting this horrible example of going anywhere we want, killing anyone we want on the basis of secret information, and somehow thinking that this is not going to blowback, and that other countries are not going to do the same thing is crazy. That’s why it’s so important to get people aware of this. I think it’s hard for people to think of President Obama, whom many of them like and think of as a constitutional lawyer and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, to think well, he wouldn’t be doing something like this. The more they learn about it, the more shocked and horrified they are. We have to really build up this heartfelt opposition that’s going to be able to be effective in getting more allies in Congress. Right now there have only been 26 Congress people that signed onto a letter calling for transparency and accountability regarding these drones, but we need a lot more than that.
The toddler has dark hair. Sitting on the ground, crying, her arm and leg are wrapped in thick bandages. The victim of a missile attack, the child has become a harrowing icon of U.S.-led drone strikes aimed at taking out combatants but which, according to new reports, have killed hundreds of innocent people in the process.
Barbara Briggs-Letson won’t forget the image anytime soon. This fall, the 78-year-old Sebastopol resident experienced the byproducts of drone warfare firsthand as part of a Code Pink delegation to Pakistan, a country that for the past eight years has been hit by U.S.-led drone strikes. The trip left Briggs-Letson with a numbness that’s transformed into anger, and she returned with a conviction that the use of drones is “wrong on so many levels, both internationally and legally.”
“I keep seeing the pictures of these children,” says the retired midwife on a recent afternoon at a Sebastopol coffee shop, wearing a bright pink scarf contrasting with her silvery white hair. “We had two meetings with survivors. These men had pictures of their loved ones, some of their children when they were alive, and some of them from when the children were dead. Each of these dignified men told us in their own words about how my country blew their child to bits.”
Cloaked in secrecy, the CIA-run drone program is currently active in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. An eye-opening study released in September 2012 by the Stanford Law School and NYU’s School of Law explains that the U.S. began using armed drones to conduct a “covert program” of targeted killings in Pakistan in 2004. Though President Obama has argued that the strikes are executed with a “targeted, focused effort,” the study found that the strikes have adversely affected civilians living in federally administered tribal lands on the border of Afghanistan. Touted as a tool for making the United States safer through the assassination of terrorists, with minimal threat to Americans, the method leaves a cloudy trail of confusion and questionable deaths.
Because the CIA refuses to release figures, the most cited source of data to date comes from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. According to the U.K.-based nonprofit organization, which calls the situation a “covert drone war,” drones killed between 474 and 881 Pakistani civilians from June 2004 to September 2012. Of those, 176 were children. The numbers are complicated by the fact that the Obama administration considers any male of military-age killed in a strike zone to be a combatant—a confusing definition in a country without a draft, and where some don’t even know their exact ages.
On Oct. 25, United Nations special rapporteur Ben Emmerson announced that the U.N. had set up a special investigation unit specifically to look into the legality of the drone program and to examine claims of civilian deaths.
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink and author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, says that entire populations live under terror of drones, which can hover over communities for 24 hours a day, striking without warning.
During the recent delegation to Pakistan, she, along with Briggs-Letson and 33 other delegates, heard testimony about the depression, suicide, self-medication and post-traumatic stress disorder that’s become common in the hardest hit communities.
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“They said to us, ‘You’re waging a war on terror by terrorizing our population,'” adds Benjamin, on the phone from San Francisco. According to “Living Under Drones,” the report released by Stanford and NYU, the number of “high-level” targets killed makes up only 2 percent of total casualties.
Like an advanced and very deadly video game, the drones are piloted from sites like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, thousands of miles away from targets. According to the Stanford / NYU report, funerals have been bombed, as was a community meeting in which over 40 people were killed. Rescuers have been killed in “double-strikes,” when a second missile is sent in soon after the first deadly attack. These actions amount to war crimes, says Benjamin. Supporters of drones claim that this tactic keeps U.S. soldiers safe from harm, while eliminating al-Qaida militants. But Briggs-Letson wonders about the moral implications of this new style of warfare.
“Is it OK to sit in a dark room, thousands of miles away, to push a button and then go home to eat supper with your children?” she asks.
In Pakistan, the deaths have left a deep desire for revenge, explains Briggs-Letson. She recounts the story of riding in a caravan to just outside of Waziristan, where the delegation was set to tour areas that had been hit by drone strikes. Briggs-Letson was prepared to speak and apologize to those who had lost family members, but after tribal leaders received credible threats from the Taliban that the Americans were going to be targeted with bombs, the trip was cancelled. Even within the safe confines of the compound, the group heard chants of “Go home! You’re a terrorist!” explains Briggs-Letson.
The latest reports question the legal and international ramifications of drone policy, say critics. Considering that the United States isn’t at war with Pakistan, what kind of precedent is being set when one country is allowed to kill citizens of another country without being held accountable for whether those citizens are innocents or combatants?
Benjamin says that it’s time to call on the U.S. government to end the secrecy and to function with transparency and accountability in the use of drones. This includes holding the Obama administration accountable for its support of the current cloak-and-dagger approach.
“We’re setting this horrible example of going anywhere we want, killing anyone we want on the basis of secret information,” says Benjamin. “Somehow thinking this is not going to blow back, and that other countries are not going to do the same thing, is crazy.”
Kudus to WALT for charging a tasting fee that, if not minimal, is more or less the industry’s modest midpoint. No doubt, this helps to retain the odd ducks who stray up First Street off of the Sonoma Plaza, past the sign that reads “Pinot Noir” under “WALT,” only to profess that they aren’t so hot on the varietal. After sampling the product, one recent visitor exclaimed, “Wow, this is Pinot Noir?”
Yes, toots, this is Pinot Noir. This is $40 to $60 Pinot, anyway, with upfront clarity of fruit (thanks to a state-of-the-art optical grape sorter which “learns” to spot bad grapes as the harvest rolls on, ejecting them with bursts of air) and culled from some of the finest grapes on offer from the Santa Rita Hills to the Willamette Valley, with the support of some serious bucks on the back end.
The story so far: In 2010, Chardonnay and Pinot specialists Roessler Cellars sold their brand to Kathyrn and Craig Hall, the same that brought you Napa’s Cab-centered HALL Wines. Former United States ambassador to Austria Kathyrn Walt Hall’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Walt, natch, are remembered in photographs inside this charming brick and half-timbered Sonoma cottage. The bar is compact, the atmosphere casual, the young fellows running the joint good-humoredly. Guys named Walt get special privileges—or so they tell one such vintage of felt-hatted gentleman, who proceeds to have an absolutely fine time with his party around a small table in the front room. Out back are picnic tables and a grill, which may be fired up whenever a friend of the tasting room saunters over with some tri-tip. Like I said, casual atmosphere.
Does the 2010 “La Brisa” Sonoma County Pinot Noir ($40) throw a hint of orange pekoe tea, as tasting notes suggest? Yes. Also strawberry-raspberry compote. The 2010 “Blue Jay” Anderson Valley Pinot Noir ($40) seems wrapped in smoky bacon fat, and the fruit is cool cranberry. Oregonesque.
From a sought-after vineyard on the lumpy western slopes of Sonoma Mountain, the 2010 Gap’s Crown Pinot Noir ($60) is brawnier and sweetly reminiscent of strawberry jam and olallieberry wine. Again with the cool-toned fruit, the changeable 2010 Hein Family Vineyard, Anderson Valley Pinot Noir ($60) deepens toward dried black cherry flavors with a splash of cola, spiced with white pepper, vanilla, cinnamon and spearmint.
For the white wine crew, WALT offers the 2010 “La Brisa” Sonoma County Chardonnay ($35). It’s nice, but who will be the first to exclaim, “Wow, this is Chardonnay?”
WALT Wines, 380 First St. W., Sonoma. Open daily, 11am–6pm. Tasting fee, $10. 707.933.4440.
If there was ever a good time to eat out, it’s Nov. 29. On that day, filling your belly will have the rare distinction of helping thousands of other people fill their own.
This year, over 80 Sonoma County restaurants are participating in Dining Out for Life, an annual dine-and-donate style fundraiser to raise money for HIV and AIDS service organizations in North America. It really is as simple as it sounds: go out to eat, and the restaurant will donate a percentage of your bill to Food for Thought, the Sonoma County AIDS Food Bank. Last year, the event raised over $125,000 in Sonoma County alone.
This year, Santa Rosa’s California Thai leads the charge by donating a whopping 75 percent of its food sales for the day. A handful are giving 50 percent of sales, including Forchetta Bastoni, JoJo Sushi, K&L Bistro, Sunshine Coffee Roasters, Trio and Corks at Russian River Vineyards. All others have committed to 25 percent contributions. Find a full list of the 84 restaurants participating at www.diningoutforlife.com/sonomacounty.
For years, underground art shows like Kaleidoscope, Gallery and the Well-Fed Artists League have thrived in Santa Rosa at nightclubs, abandoned storefronts and private houses, and though all have merited mention in these pages, official recognition proved elusive—until now.
“Altered” is a group exhibit at the Finley Center sponsored by the city of Santa Rosa, and its lineup is a who’s who of artists who usually show in under-the-radar get-togethers replete with loud DJs, cheap beer and, sometimes, skateboard ramps. Its aesthetic is determinedly outside the usual Sonoma County confines, but as the city’s Elaine Gutsch says, “We’re definitely excited about more experimental stuff.”
“Altered” features work by Ricky Watts, whose spraypaint art and cityscapes have earned longtime acclaim; Adam Springer, who paints large-scale Lichtenstein-like situational imagery; Saif Azzuz, owner of Pleasant Skateboards, who has a contagious cartoon-like artistic approach; Roman D’Argenzio, host of the monthly Kaleidoscope series; and Sean Nichols, a reliable presence at Gallery whose dark themes contrast with fine lines. “This is, I feel, kind of extreme for the city,” says curator Rafa Fujii. “But I feel like it’s gonna be something exciting and new.”
Fujii says despite their history of showing underground, the artists in the show are excited for the exposure, adding, “A lot of people that wouldn’t go to these underground shows are going to be able to see what we’ve been doing for years now.”
“Altered” runs Nov. 20–Dec. 20 with an opening reception Nov. 29, 5–7pm, at the Finley Community Center. 2060 W. College Ave., Santa Rosa. 707.543.3737.
I know how it is. You’re drawn magnetically, like Ron Swanson to a box of black market Twinkies, to the new Rihanna album. Unapologetic, out this week, is the Hostess with the mostest, promising pretty piano ballads (“Stay”), lurking love duets (“Loveeeeeee Song”), and a phenomenal re-up of Ginuwine’s “Pony” with dripping choruses and Skrillex-style brostep drops (“Jump”).
But there’s that nagging discomfort. There’s no other way to say it: in public, Rihanna has basically forgiven Chris Brown for beating the hell out of her. I’m all for guilty pleasures, but the “guilty” part takes on a whole new meaning when buying Rihanna’s new album; you’re sorta co-signing on forgetting about that whole slamming-her-head-against-the-window, punching-her-in-the-left-eye, beating-her-mouth-until-it-filled-with-blood thing.
I love this new Rihanna album, which ranks among the most engaging pop music being made currently, but in the same way that I love Elia Kazan films: I flip the switch in my brain that connects an artist’s personal decisions with his or her output. Why deprive yourself of On the Waterfront or A Streetcar Named Desire simply because 60 years ago, Kazan named names in the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings?
Flipping that switch is a very easy and grownup thing to do; almost as grown-up as making a personal decision to forgive someone who did terrible things to you and hoping, in vain, it turns out, that this decision can be a private one.
And really, Rihanna’s only transgression is setting a questionable example for your 13-year-old daughter and forcing you to have an uncomfortable but serious talk about the dangers of domestic violence. Kazan, well, he destroyed entire careers and livelihoods. One could make a case that Elia Kazan is worse than Chris Brown (but with better hair).
Luckily, Brown’s music is so phenomenally awful that there’s no temptation to flip the brain-switch the way one can do with On the Waterfront. Unapologetic, on the other hand, all but dares you to shut it off; four or five bona fide, inarguable hits fly by before Chris Brown charges in with a middle-finger-to-the-haters duet, “Nobody’s Business.”
And if you can’t reconcile this kissing-and-making-up between Rihanna and Brown with the brutal police report from Feb. 8, 2009—you want to point your daughter in the direction of other artists, or you yourself want some non–Katy Perry dance jams—a new crop of singers like Elle Varner, Sky Ferreira, MNDR, Solange Knowles and Jessie Ware are more than happy to rush into your self-inflicted vacuum.
But before that, give “Loveeeeeee Song” a shot. Don’t ask Rihanna what the extra six e‘s are for—some personal things are better left unexplained.
I love trees. So naturally, I’m a fan of the 1953 fable The Man WhoPlanted Trees by Jean Giono. In the story, a shepherd transforms a barren landscape by planting a gazillion acorns; years later, there are forests of lush paradise where humans thrive.
Now science writer Jim Robbins has just released a 2012 nonfiction book with the same name, The ManWho Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet. I am right now buried in a second reading, amazed at how little I really know, how little anyone knows, about trees.
Simply put, you must read this book. I suspect it took courage for Robbins to self-consciously cross the boundaries of science to get to the truth: what we don’t know about trees can hurt us. It already has.
Science is only part of this amazing story, but it’s a start. Global forest die-off, attributed to everything from sudden oak death to beetles, may be due to human-induced climate change, supporting proliferation of pathogens. From climate science to mysticism, Robbins’s quest is to find out everything there is to know about trees. Trouble is, very little is known about trees, but what is now being discovered is astounding.
Robbins considers trees a form of eco-technology more effective than anything that humans can engineer. For removing toxins from water, for example, there is evidence that a stand of quick-growing black willows is more effective than a multimillion-dollar treatment plant. These trees take up even the nastiest heavy metals and purify water. The clumps of willows look nicer, too, and house wildlife while preventing erosion and turning carbon dioxide into oxygen as sidelines—all free services.
Studies suggest that epidemic diseases, from AIDS to swine flu, are effects of deforestation; had the forest ecosystems been left intact, the infectious agents would not have escaped into human populations. Medicinal uses of plants have been around for thousands of years and are still being discovered. This makes the global deforestation going on right now even more tragic.
The Champion Tree Project investigated in Robbins’s amazing book chronicles the efforts of layman David Milarch, compelled to preserve the genetics of the world’s largest and therefore most robust specimens of trees. So many old, massive individual trees have been lost that most of the trees with which we are familiar are genetic scrappers, possessing only some of the stout attributes found in the champs—including disease resistance and, well, majesty.
The clarion call from the forests is hopeful, and we all can make a difference. Read the story, then plant trees.
The Deep Dark Woods hail from Saskatoon, where frozen nights can make a day feel like a year, and they’ve channeled that icy inspiration into a cozy roots-prairie-goth sound. On Nov. 28, the band helps Phil Lesh kick off a two-week extravaganza to celebrate the debut of the Grate Room at Terrapin Crossroads. Moreover, it’s free! (Tickets for the...
As a genre, hard rock means different things to different people. For your Midwestern Uncle Pete, Van Halen’s “Panama” might be the epitome of the genre. For your mom, it’s probably Whitesnake or Winger. Los Angeles—based Trapt, on the other hand, come from the Pantera school, all growling vocals and cranked up, sharp-edged Gibson guitar riffs with plenty of...
I’d like to cut you in, old man. There’s nobody in Marin County that I can really trust, and we’ve always done things together. When you make up your mind, I’ll send you a message, any place, any time. And when we do meet, old man, it’s you I want to see, not the police. Maybe we could meet...
It was at a Nov. 18 news conference in Bangkok, that President Ogama told Egyptian and Turkish leaders, in regards to the blow up in Gaza, "Let’s understand what the precipitating event here was that’s causing the current crisis, and that was an ever-escalating number of missiles. They were landing not just in Israeli territory, but in areas that...
If there was ever a good time to eat out, it's Nov. 29. On that day, filling your belly will have the rare distinction of helping thousands of other people fill their own.
This year, over 80 Sonoma County restaurants are participating in Dining Out for Life, an annual dine-and-donate style fundraiser to raise money for HIV and AIDS service...
