Cooking While Traveling, Summer Edition
My favorite place to be in the summer is Humboldt County, both for the amazing produce our farmers bring to the markets and farm stands, and the fog that keeps us comfortable. This year, however, partly to celebrate my retirement, at the end of June we put our bicycles in the car and headed north…
You Might Go Home Again
GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS. Wet Hot American Summer (2001) is as much a tenet of my marriage as any of the shared values upon which it is founded. For a quarter century, it has been a source of solace, celebration and common ground unlike any other for my wife and I. It…
Reports from the Grand Jury
Every year a group of 19 volunteers comes together to form the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury in a civilian oversight tradition that dates back to the Magna Carta. Wielding the power of the subpoena and carrying a mandate enshrined in the state Constitution to serve as overseers of local government, the panel spends months…
Outlaw Rodeo at the Fair Marred by Two Horse Deaths
Without horse racing for its second year in a row, the 130th annual Humboldt County Fair replaced the thunder of hooves on the track with Saturday’s Outlaw Rodeo College Invitational. While it attracted a strong crowd as the largest single-day event, the injury and subsequent deaths of two horses cast a pall over the festivities…
You Want It Darker
I’m writing this around the 90th anniversary of the murder of the Spanish poet Federico Lorca during the Spanish Civil War by the brutal Nationalist forces under the command of eventual dictator Francisco Franco. I say “around” because the actual timeline of his abduction and assassination is still uncertain, as are the whereabouts of his…
Coming Together for Obon
A large crowd showed up under lightly smokey skies from wildfires on Sunday afternoon at Arcata’s Creamery District to celebrate Obon. The Japanese Buddhist festival honoring the spirits of one’s ancestors is a recent tradition in Humboldt, having begun locally in 2022. After opening shakuhachi (Japanese flute) music by Rick Kruse, emcee Marylyn Paik-Nicely welcomed…
Changing Course
It has long been observed, “Life teaches us how it should have been lived” and two seemingly unrelated stories in the NCJ are illustrative. Longtime resident, fisherman and boat builder Ken Bates’ life experiences provide a seminal warning against building the Samoa Heavy Lift Terminal serving future industrial development, (“Oysters, Wildlife and Reindustrialization of Humboldt…
My Very Own Sit Spot
I’m lying on a bench underneath an arbor, looking up at the wisteria on the trellis. Sun peeks through the cracks of the bench. I sit up and look at the tree to my left, my eyes following the fractal beauty of the branches, watching how they replicate themselves in ever-smaller degrees of scale. I’m…
Where you sat.
How the skies finally moved…We can only hope right now.Shifting through these longing daysWhere grace is faint.Found in the work of sand and water.Where wind once came,And still visits,A story remains.Tell me now,Fingers tracing this light,Long across time soon flowingOnce again.Smooth, Still,Under a ceaseless blue morning.Tell me now. — Sam A. Flanagan
