It took the death of a friend for Lindsay Lacewell Kessner, whose show Humboldt County Lost and Found is at the Morris Graves Museum of Art through Aug. 6, to realize “life is too short for mediocrity.” Kessner was 26 at the time, living in Chicago and coasting along working as a nanny, when a […]
Louisa Rogers
Posted inLife + Outdoors
It Took a While, But I Learned to Paddle
On a recent cloudy morning, I carried my inflatable stand-up paddleboard a block and a half from our Old Town apartment to the C Street dock. Setting it gently on the water, I started on my knees, stood up and took off. Suddenly I was gliding through the silvery water as though I’d paddled yesterday. […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Lynn M. Jones Carves Out Her Niche
Looking through the window at Just My Type Letterpress Paperie’s new location on Second Street, you see a humming scene: a miniature letterpress, with delicate fair-trade Himalayan paper rosettes hanging above. Behind are displays of cards, prints and stickers. In keeping with the shop’s theme, it has an old-timey feel. Shops all over the country […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Along the Historic Yurok Loop
No matter how many times I walk along the Yurok Loop, I never tire of it. Whether sunlight dapples the forest path or the leaves glisten from mist, it makes no difference; just seeing the little wooden bridge at the start of the trail makes my heart leap. The Yurok Loop is a 1 ¼-mile […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Wet and Wild on Woodley
Oh, how I love paddling on Humboldt Bay. When the tide is right, I might visit Indian Slough, where the narrow wandering passageways remind me of tiny lanes I’ve cycled in Wales, my husband Barry’s homeland. In spring, I spot nesting egrets clustered high in the cypresses and schools of sandpipers resting on the mud […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Exploring the Lanphere Dunes
I would never have guessed that back in the 1930s, the entire Cal Poly Humboldt faculty (then Humboldt State College) could fit into one house for dinner. This was one of many bits of trivia I learned on a Friends of the Dune guided tour of Lanphere Dunes earlier this spring. Thirteen of us assembled […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
One Couple’s Abortion Story, 45 Years Later
Last week’s leak of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion on Roe v Wade took me back more than four decades, when, in the space of six months, I had two abortions. I hope my story will help people understand the right to an abortion isn’t only a political or moral issue, but also one of […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Down the Hikshari’ Trail
Robbie and I lock our bikes a couple of minutes before the Herrick Avenue Park and Ride off U.S. Highway 101, where the Hikshari’ Trail veers left. Then we walk ¼ mile over a wooden bridge and along the railroad track, turn right and stroll through grass to the closest thing to a beach this […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Six Strategies for Breaking A Bad Habit
When I decided to give up smoking in my 20s, I resolved to enjoy my last cigarette the night before my birthday and turned my final smoke into a sacrament. I put The Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin“ on my tinny record player, turned off the lights and sat in the dark, gazing at […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Our Affordable Housing Neighbors are the Best
As my husband and I walked over to the boardwalk, a man standing on the balcony of a building opposite our Old Town apartment called over to us. “Who’s that?” I asked. “His name is Jim,” Barry said. “I think he runs the building.” Since 2000, Jim Wolters, 63, has been the manager of the […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Adventures on the Sesame Train
In the winter of 1974, newly arrived in Vancouver, B.C., I worked as a temp, barely covering my expenses. And with no sense of my professional future, I never worked long enough in any one location to bond with my coworkers. The short, gray winter days didn’t help, either. After work, walking in the dark […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Lentils: The Great Leveler
The worst lentils I ever ate were the ones I appreciated the most. In the early ’80s, my husband, Barry, and I joined hundreds of other North Americans and Europeans and went trekking in the Himalayas. We chose to walk the three-week Muktinath Pilgrimage trail, a windy, mountainous route along the Kali Gandaki gorge, the […]