Judy Hodgson

Twenty-ten is a very big year for us. It’s the Journal’s 20th anniversary. How humble are our beginnings? Two SE 30 Macs in one room in Old Town, Eureka. There were three of us then: I was in charge of editorial, Carolyn Fernandez and Rose Welsh were the production team. We didn’t have a copier. […]

Two weeks ago a veteran member of our editorial staff made an error in judgment. He had offered to cover a controversial meeting in Fortuna — to take photos and report on the gathering he and his wife planned to attend anyway. It turned out his wife spoke at the meeting, the crowd reacted strongly […]

Two weeks ago, President Obama sent me an e-mail asking me to tell my personal story about the importance of health care reform in my life. He reminded me of his own personal story, about his mother dying from ovarian cancer 10 years ago and how she spent her last weeks worrying about medical bills. […]

I was sitting in a room with 50 other volunteers in Chico two weeks ago. I had driven six hours and given up a beautiful fall weekend to be there. The question before us was, why were we there? What was our personal story? Why is this election more important than others? In smaller groups, […]

hwarzenegger signed an emergency bill early last month that got little notice here on the far North Coast. It fixed – in a hurry – the state law governing home winemaking. Someone discovered that the law as written actually was ridiculous: It prohibited competitions like many county fairs have held for decades because legally homemade […]

Earlier this month I traveled to Philadelphia for the annual convention of our trade group, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN). It was my first visit to that city. As a lifelong political junkie, I was drawn like a magnet to Independence Hall. I stood in absolute awe of the room that served as the […]

Call me a flip-flopper, although I don’t really think changing one’s mind based on a shifting landscape over a period a many years constitutes a real flip-flop. In the beginning, 1990, we made the decision not to endorse anyone for anything. We were a monthly publication covering "politics, people and art" staffed by three part-timers, […]

Wow. I received dozens of e-mails and letters to the editor following a story I wrote a few weeks ago for the Journal’s outdoor column ("Off the Pavement," Nov. 8). My friends and I love to walk, hike and mountain bike on weekends. And, quoting my friend Pat, we are beginning to wonder if we […]