She said I was a natural, but I believe she was just pitying me. It didn’t feel natural. The maneuvers Jennifer "Grrl Haggard" Jenkins was asking of me felt all wrong. First lesson, get low — knees bent, butt out. Next lesson, fall to the floor. Third, get up without using your hands. Repeat. We […]
Helen Sanderson
Posted inArts + Scene
A sunbeam in the studio
Janie Walsh’s life work on sale this weekend Janie Walsh didn’t want me to wait for her. She said to head on back to the studio; she’d get there eventually. "Getting old’s not for sissies," she called out with a laugh from the hallway, plodding slowly outside with a walker she painted in bright colors. […]
Posted inNews
On the Inside
The first thing you notice when you walk inside the Humboldt County Correctional Facility is the smell. It’s overpoweringly sterile. “Pine-Sol,” says Sgt. Dean Flint, walking briskly across the gleaming tile of the booking station. “This place gets mopped three times a day.” As one might imagine, people are not at their best when the […]
Posted inNews
Trinity Terroir
At the Winnett family’s winery, east of the Trinity River, tiny green beads of fruit clustered on the young plants in the vineyard. Halfway down one of the grassy aisles between rows of tethered leafy vines, you could stand and stare out across the plunging landscape toward Friday Ridge and imagine the past. Timber country, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Nuke Trail
We were at the end of our walk on King Salmon Beach. My dog led the way along the worn path through the dunes toward the seawall, where our car was parked. It was chilly out, gray-skied and getting dark – similar to my state of mind. April was a piece of crap month and […]
Posted inNews
Prescription for trouble
While visiting Sacramento a few weeks ago, Patient X, a Humboldt County resident who asked that her name not be published, went to a medical marijuana dispensary to fill her prescription, which she uses for migraine headaches. In her two years as a card-carrying medical cannabis user, the college-aged woman purchased the drug in dispensaries […]
Posted inNews
Sometimes Jerry wins
On the corner of 8th and B streets, Jerry Droz cranes his neck back, squints the midday sun out of his eyes and studies a blue, shingled house that’s seen better days. The high-complexioned, blue-eyed 56-year-old aims the lollipop stick he’s been chewing toward the second floor of the four-unit rental. "You can see there’s […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Fa Show
It was chilly last Thursday night at 9 o’clock. Too cold, in my opinion, to be outside wearing a tank top. But there they were, maybe a dozen girls and women, high schoolers and twentysomethings, shivering on the 5th Street sidewalk in spaghetti strap tops. Just looking at their neon-lit arms gave me goosebumps. All […]
Posted inNews
Which vets vend free?
Usually Henry Robertson is busy jar-ring organic olives, but lately he’s been sidetracked by a can of worms. In recent weeks Robertson, a Vietnam veteran and owner of Henry’s Olives in Cutten, has been wrangling with various local government agencies over their non-compliance with state law. The snafu surfaced last month when Robertson, 58, stopped […]
Posted inNews
Wounded Healers
For almost three years doctors had been assuring Bonnie Etz that the large lump she felt in her breast was probably just dense fiber, nothing to worry about. So when Etz found out in 2004 that she had a rare and advanced case of breast cancer she felt betrayed and distraught. But her husband was […]
Posted inNews
Stormy Weather at HSU
The rain was coming down in relentless sheets Monday, hard and steady upon the dozens of Humboldt State students who gathered midday on the quad, cardboard signs sagging, shoulders raised up to jaws for warmth, to rally about, um … Why were they rallying, exactly? For an observer, it was hard to understand the exact […]
Posted inNews
Home for Good
In her one-story Trinidad home overlooking the Pacific, 61-year-old Pat Morales leaves her bedroom door open at night. That way she can hear when her elderly mother wakes up and starts her odd, late-night routines down the hall – rearranging the closet, shuffling tax forms from the 1970s, packing suitcases. When her mother’s acting like […]