Roundup: Like a heat wave
Roundup: Like a heat wave
Rural mailboxes raids; Red Bird Bakery exits Barlow; Boomers need a party; the other Oppenheimer
Welcome to the Roundup, an assortment of this and that for a warm Sunday.
Mailboxes, etc.
Roman Luna posted to Nextdoor a photo of all the mailboxes that were opened on Ozone Drive, off Highway 12. He believes that mail he was expecting from his bank had been stolen from his mailbox. He asked: “What's to be done?”
In April, Marisa Endicott in the Press Democrat wrote that mail theft is a growing problem in Sonoma County (paywalled article). The article quoted a postal inspector:
“We’ve been seeing these last couple years an uptick in mail theft. It’s affecting North Bay, affecting Mendocino, Sonoma counties. We're seeing it Bay Area-wide and statewide,” said Jeff Fitch, a postal inspector with the Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service.
Many of those who commented on Luna’s post recommended getting locking mailboxes. Karin L wrote: “It's not 100% secure, but it slows the thieves down enough so they can't steal your mail.”
The PD article provided information for people to report mail theft; call 877-876-2455 or file a complaint with the agency online at www.uspis.gov/report. The article said that despite criminal penalties for stealing mail, “many (victims) see no recourse when mail goes missing.”
Red Bird Bakery Says Goodbye to the Barlow
The Red Bird Bakery in the Barlow is moving out of the Barlow to a new store in Santa Rosa. A sign on the door thanked customers and added: “Our time at the Barlow has been fun.”
The Red Bird Bakery’s new location is 463 Sebastopol Road in Santa Rosa near the Dutton Avenue intersection. They will be open from Wednesdays through Sundays from 8am to 3pm. They also have a location in Cotati in the Oliver’s shopping center.
Sarmentine, a popular Santa Rosa French bakery, is already saying “hello” to the Barlow with a sign indicating they will take over the space in the fall.
Boomers Should Save The World
Former editor and publisher of the SonomaWest Times and News, Rollie Atkinson, has his own Substack featuring his own writing. He calls it “Moral Dilemmas: First Drafts and Commentaries.” His most recent article implores senior “boomers” to form the Boomerang Party and get engaged in making the world better. Again.
The Other Oppenheimer
The movie, Oppenheimer, which played to a nearly full house on Saturday afternoon at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol, is a gripping movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. It feels like the first important movie to come out of Hollywood in quite a while.
Frank Oppenheimer, Robert’s younger brother, was also a physicist who appears briefly in the film. His role was to set up devices to measure the explosion of the first test of the atomic bomb at Trinity site in New Mexico.
After the war, Frank Oppenheimer was blacklisted and had difficulty getting a faculty position at any university. He eventually got a job as a high school science teacher in Colorado. He would eventually become the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1969.
Considering the richness of his own life experiences, Frank was no typical science teacher. He set aside the textbook and filled his classroom with the hands-on tools and materials that eventually became his trademark and ultimately led him to create the Exploratorium. In 1969, Frank’s dream of transforming science education brought him to San Francisco and to the cavernous—and very empty—Palace of Fine Arts, which was once part of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco’s Marina District. He poured his heart and soul into his “San Francisco Project,” working alongside the artists, educators, and makers whose job it was to build and maintain Exploratorium exhibits and help visitors use them. He served as the museum’s Director until just before his death in 1985.
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In case you missed it this week…
Here are some of stories we published this week.
