Coming from a long line of people who leave the towns and countries where we were born, I’ve always been comfortable with separation (the exception being my husband, without whom, across an ocean for months, I was a goddamn wreck). I don’t mean estrangement, though my family has those chops, too, but distant affection. Mostly […]
It’s Personal
Posted inLife + Outdoors
David’s Out
The first time I walked inside Pelican Bay State Prison I met David Nguyen. He was one of the first two graduates (along with Larry Vickers) to earn their Associate Degrees for Transfer from College of the Redwoods’ Pelican Bay Scholars Program. A monumental achievement. At the time, I was in my second semester at Humboldt […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Playing On
In the old days, when the band was four people strong and the coronavirus was a distant nightmare waiting to happen, any Wednesday evening would find Good Company at rehearsal, working on new arrangements, practicing harmonies and enjoying one another’s company with a plethora of instruments scattered around the living room. Truly, we were good […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Saving the Discovery Museum
Wednesday afternoon was their scheduled weekly supervised visit with their mom; every week they’d come into the same room with the same books and toys, while I sat on an office chair at the door jotting down notes. Before I became a staff writer at the Journal, I worked with Humboldt County youth at an […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Living Tiny in Turbulent Times
Our life is frittered away by detail … Simplify, simplify. — Henry David Thoreau I lived in my first tiny house — so to speak — in the mid-1980s when I was 27. It was in San Francisco, where I was working as a graphic artist, and I was getting tired of rising rents. So […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Please Don’t Cry in the Big Girl’s Store
When I was around 10 years old, my mother decided we should have swimming lessons. It was a good decision; in 1992, the Mattole River was still deep and swift in many places, and that’s where we spent most of our summers, dogpaddling and diving for submerged soda cans with our cousins. I wasn’t scared […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
For Gerrianne Schulze, Died Aug. 22, 2020
I met Gerrianne through a picture taken on a camera loaned to someone for a birthday party in the summer of 2015. That fall I looked over a pot of pasta at the Bayshore Mall parking lot Services Faire and asked her if she knew my friend. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Missing Harold
“Are you prepared to kill a man tonight?” “No.” “Are you prepared to die tonight?” “No.” “Then put the gun away and we will decide whether we call the police or go outside and try to help out.” I was age 15. The questions to me were from my father. I knew shotguns. I’d been […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Heart of the Beast
It’s midnight and I’m still an hour away for a 12:30 a.m. flight booked just hours before from my home, also hours and worlds away. Another panicked decision, another chance to act with little thought. Like being down at the blackjack table and pulling out the last Franklin in an attempt to see it all […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Fires and Masks
I used to love to visit the Fire Museum in Tokyo. There you could see the traditional irezumi tattoos of firefighters along with models of the tight rows of wooden houses that made up towns in Edo Japan. Woodblock prints and dioramas showed how the firefighters, roving bands of tough guys, would, instead of throwing […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Inheriting an Obsession from My Mother
I came running into the house, my cheeks flushed from swinging. My mother was sitting at her favorite perch, the embroidered rocking chair. “Honey, I want to talk to you about something,” Mother said. “I think you should be like the big girls and go on a diet like them. Would you like that?” A […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Searching for Town Charming
One afternoon while visiting Ashland, Oregon, my husband, Barry, and I strolled through Lithia Park, admiring its dappled trees and winding paths. As we stood on a fairy-tale bridge arching over the creek, I turned to him and said, “Let’s move to Ashland.” I imagined jogging on the gentle trails and bicycling the leafy streets, turned […]