Is now the time to get your act together, SSU? As you’ve likely read in these pages over the last few months, Sonoma State University’s “sudden” financial dilemmas have led to the elimination of critical education departments such as economics, geology and philosophy as well as the termination of all its NCAA Division II sports programs. These decisions, championed by its Interim President Emily Cutrer, still feel so heavy handed. They kick-in this fall, but I know firsthand how nearly every student athlete has already placed him and herself into the NCAA “portal” to be whisked away to another school where they can be challenged intellectually and physically.
The university Vice President for Strategic Employment Ed Mills projects next year’s enrollment will slide another 1,200 students (from fall of 2024). Twelve hundred students fewer to fill classrooms, occupy dormitories, spend money on campus and in the towns that have always supported them. As I’ve noted previously, and we all know in our hearts, when an organization guts itself of its vitality and dynamism as SSU seems to be doing, it begins a “death cycle” that will be difficult to slow. Yet my inside sources tell me that neither Cutrer nor the university chancellors will be changing their minds anytime soon.
I keep telling myself there is more to this story—more to these decisions—than the public is being told. Please, SSU, find the path you need to survive and once again, thrive.
And Now For Something Completely Different
Boy, this “empty nesting” life I share with my wife is even better than I’d heard! Yes, I was very nervous when our daughters flew the coop a few years ago… Who and what would fill our days while our kids were living it up at college? (C’mon, fellow husbands, you were nervous, too!) But as you will notice from the recent photo booth candids, my Susan and I want to enjoy our lives as a couple in ways less possible when our kids’ schedules overrode our own. So, when our dear friends Kathy and Miles invited us to dust off our formal wear and attend their son’s wedding, we jumped at the chance. Here are a few tips we’ve picked up along the way.
Swap out “Taco Tuesday” for Taqueria Tuesday. We choose a different Mexican restaurant each week in place of the at-home meals we’d once made for our kids. La Vera in Healdsburg, El Molino in Sonoma, Santa Rosa’s Los Molcajete Bar (Mendocino Avenue location), and Cocina Antiqua in Petaluma would be great places to begin your own traditions.
If you squint your eyes a bit, here in the North Bay there are some excellent tribute bands that will have you flash back to your high school days. I was a bit too awkward and immature in those days to have fully appreciated this time in my life, but it didn’t stop us from enjoying a recent Friday at Petaluma’s Mystic Theatre. My neighborhood hang, Matt and Stacy, Johnnie and Kellie—and the notorious Jimmy Forni and his ever-patient Mary Anne—joined us to see AZ/DZ sing like Bon Scott and jam like Angus Young. Incredible musicality and state energy brought me right back to my childhood. Highly recommended!
And finally, let me recommend you keep your dogs off your bed. I’d like to tell you I’ve been incredibly successful on this front. But alas, I have not. ‘Nuff said.
