In addition to growing grapes, Sonoma County’s microclimates are also well suited for cultivating some micro-crops:  medicinal herbs.

Cotati area herb grower Terri Toso says she and others are constantly trying to expand their repertoire of varieties that can be successfully cultivated locally.

Toso has also experimented with attempts to replicate the intermingled growing conditions in which the desired herbs are found in the wild, up to a point, that is.

One of the complexities involved in growing medicinal herbs, explains Leslie Gardner, is that some plants have more than one valuable part, so harvests may occur at differing times in the growing cycle.

Gardner is also the author of Life in the Medicine, a handbook for anyone interested in growing medicinal herbs.

The Sonoma County Herb Exchange will host their annual Harvest and Herb Festival on Saturday, Oct. 3rd, at Laguna Farm on the south side of Sebastopol. This link will take you to the Herb exchange website where their complete catalog is also posted.

Armed conflict throughout the world has been declining over the past decade, according to the Canadian research group, Project Ploughshares.

Many of the current wars still underway around the globe get little, if any, coverage in America’s mainstream media. And that may actually be a good thing, as Project Ploughshares Executive Director John Seibert explains.

The most recent report on global wars shows none continuing anywhere in the western hemisphere, but there’s a less obvious downside to what at first blush looks like good news.

The research of Project Ploughshares forms the basis of the recent documentary film, Soldiers of Peace  which will be shown Sunday afternoon at the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa as part of a local observation of the International Day of Peace . Click on nthe icon below to see a graph of the number of armed conflicts tallied by Project Ploughshares each year over the past decade.

You can also read the Project Ploughshares annual report here, and watch the trailer for Soldiers of Peace here:

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCPyyFeawe0 300x300]

Inspired by the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin, a former science teacher has turned her west county farmhouse into a learning laboratory for young students with a curiosity about the natural world.

After more than 19 years of teaching ion the Berkeley public school system, Magi Discoe (left)  and her husband retired to western Sonoma County, where she found an ideal place to put into action her long-held dream of a home-based science learning environment for kids in 4^th through 8^th grades.

In addition to the after school and summer sessions she hosts at the farmhouse, Discoe also makes field trips of her own, to share some of her collection and her physics projects with students during the academic year.

The students she works with have already been exposed to science in their regular school curriculum, Discoe says. But by using her own teaching methods, she is able to build on that necessarily superficial foundation.

       Visit Darwin's Workshop here!

Sixteen years after it was adopted, the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gay and lesbian service members is up for review, as public support for it is waning.

Paula Molnar's first command position was leading the Women's Army Band Corps at Fort McClelland Alabama. And it was there that she first had to confront the conflict between her duties as an officer and her own personal life.

She has posted an online photo album of her service career.

Molnar sees the fixation on sexual preference as a relic of the old guard within the military establishment, while the next generation of recruits simply doesn't care.

One of the groups leading the campaign to end the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy is the Service Members Legal Defense Network.