Happiest of Fridays, everybody. If you don’t know me yet, I’m Simone Electra Wilson — a Healdsburg native and career journalist who returned home a few years ago to try out the role of “town crier” on our local roster of village people. So far, so good, I think! (And I always appreciate when you tell me what YOU think.) For my independent local rag, The Healdsburg Newsletter, I send out two types of emails on a regular basis — one for news, and the other for events. Together, they contain everything you need to know about what’s happening in Healdsburg. Or that’s the goal at least! And today’s newsletter is the event kind, so get out your preferred planner/scheduler of choice and let’s gooooo. Here’s a taste of what’s on the community calendar this week:

But first, some quick inbox housekeeping items for you. A customer service rep for “beehiiv,” the platform I use to send my newsletters, tells me that a few hundred of my subscribers didn’t receive the last event log I sent, due to “a temporary, industry-wide issue affecting Yahoo-controlled domains (including Yahoo, AOL, AT&T and SBCGlobal)” on Friday, Jan. 9. So if you didn’t see your usual event roundup come in from me last week, that might be why. Apologies for the glitch!

And just in general, I’ve been bummed to hear from a growing number of you that you’re often not able to find my newsletters in your inbox. (See photo below of how I feel when I hear this.) Unfortunately, the way most major email hosts like Gmail and Apple Mail work these days, they’re burying more emails than ever in hidden folders like “Promotions” and “Spam” and “Updates.” So if you’re not seeing my missives on a regular basis, try searching your inbox for “[email protected]” — aka, the email address I use to send out newsletters. You could also add it to your contacts; that sometimes helps. Or just reply to my newsletters every once in a while. Basically anything you can do to let your inbox know you like me! (And if all else fails, you can always find past issues of the newsletter on my website.) Together we can bust through these crummy AI algorithms, I trust. 🙏

Oh and one more thing, before we begin. If you’re loving The Healdsburg Newsletter and want to make sure it never goes away, here are some good ways to lend your support. A) Upgrade to a premium subscription for $4-$5 a month, if you haven’t already! B) Keep telling everyone you know about the newsletter; you can send them this link to subscribe, or just forward them this email. C) Become a sponsor and I’ll do a special writeup about your business or org in the newsletter, where thousands of locals will read it. Reach out for more info. 🤝

What a dazzling winter sunshine moment we’re having! I’ve even managed to get a little overheated in the sun a few times in recent days… which feels like a real novelty, after all that stormy weather over the holidays. Looking ahead, local forecasters say these current conditions are part of a larger January “warming trend” and dry spell that might even last through the end of the month. There’s also very little wind in the near-term forecast, which can cause fog, smoke and haze to stagnate — especially with all the prescribed burns and burn piles being staged around here, during this ideal warm/dry stretch between rains. (In some of the more populated towns to our south, the haze situation is even prompting alerts about bad air quality and general atmospheric yuck.) Anyway, here’s the full forecast for the week to come in Healdsburg, courtesy of the National Weather Service: