Sunday RoundUp: Paved with good intentions
Bodega Avenue paving project ends, stellar ceramics at SebArts, plus meet Sebastopol's homeless outreach worker at Taylor Lane Coffee in the Barlow tomorrow
Roadwork wraps up on Bodega Avenue
The widening and repaving of a section of Bodega Highway between Pleasant Hill Road and Burbank Heights at Nelson Way started in January with the addition of curbs alongside the road and was completed this month with the striping of lanes. This section runs the length of Sebastopol Memorial Lawn, and a bike lane now runs along the cemetery.
The Sebastopol City Council approved the Bodega Avenue Bike Lanes and Rehabilitation Phase 2 project as part of the city’s 2025-26 Capital Improvement Plan. The project was adopted with a budget of $2,576,000, and $2.24 million of that was paid for by a Go Sonoma grant from the Sonoma County Transportation Authority.
Sebastopol Memorial Lawn owner Steve Lang donated a long, thin strip of land bordering the road to make this project possible.
A ceramics master alights briefly in Sebastopol
Ping Zhong arrived in Sebastopol six weeks ago as the first-ever Ceramics Artist in Residence at Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Yesterday, there was a well-attended pop-up exhibition of the work she created during her residency.
Zhong, who is now in her early 50s, got an art degree in painting when she was college in China in her twenties, but she had never done ceramics before coming to the United States 10 years ago. She immigrated to help her then-15-year-old son who was already in school in the U.S. Needing to learn English, she enrolled in a community college in New Jersey and, in her second semester, took a ceramic class just for fun.
“From the moment when I cut the clay, everything is changed,” Zhong said. She said she felt she had found something she wanted to do for the rest of her life. The final project for that class was making a single tea pot. She made eight of them.
She ended up getting her Associates Degree in Art, specializing in ceramics. At the urging of her teachers, she got her BA in Fine Arts at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia and then a Masters in Fine Arts from Penn State.
“It’s been a very amazing journey,” she said.
In her six weeks in Sebastopol, she created dozens of beautiful pieces, many of which were for sale at the pop-up exhibit. Her tea cups ranged from $80 to $280 per cup and into the mid-$400s for a teapot—but people were snapping them up.
At the exhibit, SebArts Director Serafina Palandech said that they’d just received news that Zhong had been accepted into one of the most prestigious international ceramics fellowships in the world—back in her home country of China.
“I think it’s likely that she’s going to end up being one of the most famous ceramics artists we’ve seen in a very long time,” Palendech said.
Seb Times hits 1,500 paid subscribers, 6,000 overall
By Dale Dougherty
Sebastopol Times reached a milestone this week when James Stamp became our 1,500th subscriber. We also passed the 6,000 mark for total subscribers. We appreciate all of the support.
The Sebastopol Times began in April 2022, and last month, we quietly celebrated four years of publishing this online newspaper. We started with zero subscribers in 2022, and we’ve built up our audience over that time, with one subscriber at a time who believes in what we are doing.
I am on the East Coast this week, and I was talking to my brother-in-law who lives in Darien, Connecticut. He was bemoaning the fact that Darien had lost its newspaper a few years ago. “People are desperate to learn what’s going on in Darien without a local newspaper,” he said.
That’s really too bad because the same subscriber-based model that we’ve developed for Sebastopol Times could work in many cities and towns across America. Our subscriber numbers demonstrate that readers value what we do.
However, I told my brother-in-law that we have a secret ingredient that others would find difficult to replicate. That’s Laura Hagar Rush, whose dedication, expert reporting and tireless energy have made Sebastopol Times so successful. She does work that no one else can do.
In addition to Laura, you have no doubt noticed that we have expanded our coverage of West County with contributors like Dewey Watson, who covers Graton; Darcy Reiner, who covers Occidental; Megan Gatlin, who covers Monte Rio, and Tom Austin, who covers Camp Meeker. Then there’s teenage journalist wunderkind, Lawson Gaylord, a sophomore at Analy, who writes for us regularly. And, of course, we also depend on our regular freelance reporters, Rollie Atkinson and Mark Fernquest.
As our subscriber numbers have grown, so too have the comments from readers, who regularly add insights and new information to our stories. They are, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”
Your financial support as a paid subscriber makes all this possible in our small but special town. We thank you.
Correction
We got a message from Dan Blake, director of Human Resources with the West Sonoma County Union High School District, correcting an error in our story about staff reductions at Analy High School.
I saw your article regarding the reductions, and your breakdown of the reductions is incorrect. You listed the amount of the reductions as the amount that individuals will be working. Below are the correct FTE and number of classes being taught for the teachers referenced:
Ernesto Aubin: .60 FTE (teaching 3 classes)
Jolene Johnson: .60 FTE (teaching 3 classes)
Maren Powers: .80 FTE (teaching 4 classes)
Meet Sebastopol’s Homeless Outreach Worker on Monday at Taylor Lane
Earlier this year, Sonoma County Department of Health Services placed a dedicated homeless outreach worker in Sebastopol to work directly with unsheltered community members and help connect folks with services, housing resources and support.
Curious how the program is going so far? Want to ask questions directly to local leaders and staff?
Residents from Sebastopol and the surrounding area are invited to stop by a community meet-and-greet this coming Monday, May 18, from 9 am to 11 am at Taylor Lane Organic Coffee in The Barlow. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet Sebastopol’s outreach worker, Julian Sanchez, hear updates about the program, and learn more about the progress being made on the ground.
The education documentary ‘Multiple Choice’ is showing on Monday, May 27
MakerEd and The Academy of Innovative Arts on the El Molino Campus are hosting a screening of the 2025 documentary film, Multiple Choice, at 6:15 pm in the El Molino Performing Arts Center in Forestville. If you’d like to join in an important discussion of how students can be better prepared for the future, please join us.
The 75-minute film explores the need to overhaul the U.S. education system, advocating for career-based learning over traditional models that focus too heavily on rote memorization and standardized testing. Directed by Charles Haine and produced by education thought-leader Ted Dintersmith, author of “What School Can Be,” the film focuses on the Innovation Center at Winchester High School in Virginia, where every student takes career and technical education courses.
To learn more about the film and read an interview with the Superintendent of the Winchester school district featured in the film, see the post below.
If you have questions about the screening, please contact Dale Dougherty dale.dougherty@gmail.com.
In the interest of transparency: Dale Dougherty, the co-owner of the Sebastopol Times, is a donor and volunteer at the Academy of Innovative Arts at El Molino.
I totally agree that your (not so) secret ingredient is Laura Bush Hagar! She is so dedicated to covering the events in our community and she makes herself accessible to input! Love her coverage and her writing style.
I cannot overstate how grateful I am for this publication. It was so depressing seeing the print versions of our local newspapers wither and die. I echo Kent Jenkins call for more subscribers. This is democracy in action! Public schools, public libraries and a free press are the cornerstones of democracy and we need to keep these institutions healthy and accessible.
Deep gratitude to Dale and Laura for getting this wonderful endeavor started, and for all the excellent contributors (including we, the commenters!).