Sacred Groves
Humboldt’s first conservation cemetery clears major milestone
Cover Story
Sacred Groves
Humboldt’s first conservation cemetery clears major milestone Arcata resident Michael Furniss has spent a lot of time thinking about a subject many people try to avoid: What happens after one dies. For decades, the wildland soil scientist has carried a vision of how he wants to be buried — laid directly into the ground at…
Thrown Under the Bus
Humboldt schools inch closer to rescuing mental health funds slashed by Trump This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter. California school districts were bracing for their mental health grants to be cut at the end of the month, but a recent court ruling could force the Trump administration to temporarily release…
The Ghost of Christmas Past
The diminishing returns of nostalgia are nothing new, but their false glitter is one of the central lodestones guiding the artistic compass of my generation. Millennials didn’t invent sentimental cultural artifacts — they were first minted years ago — but we did kind of define the demand built around recycling their continued relevance. It’s one…
Ambitious Cuisine Along the Avenue of the Giants
Southern Humboldt’s food scene, notably homemade and crafty, doesn’t seem a likely location for high-end dining. Certainly, there are pseudo versions of high-end cuisine, and often restaurants that claim such experiences remain in the overpriced and staid tourist trap category. But that stigma saw a serious blow this past summer with the reopening of the…
Arcata Playhouse Rolls the Dice
With The Dungeon, the Dragon and the Wizard of Doom: A D&D Holiday Show Adventure Arcata Playhouse is bringing the British tradition of a Christmas pantomime to Humboldt once again. Pantomimes are often thought of as silent endeavors but this incarnation is the opposite. Christmas pantomimes, or “pantos,” are community centered, derived theater that combines…
Rejected Names for Pantone’s Color of the Year Cloud Dancer
As we do every year, we at Pantone spent the last months sorting through a storm of swatches — literally every color perceivable by the human eye — to name the color of the year, the hue that captures the aesthetic zeitgeist. The 2026 Color of the Year is Cloud Dancer, “A whisper of tranquility…
Alone at the Movies
Netflix, Jay Kelly and Train Dreams In the long-ago of my youth, I would often defend my pessimism as realism; I didn’t actually know much about the world. Ever a contrarian, though, as I have aged and hopefully wised up, I find my reactionary nature producing some strain of homunculine optimism, born perhaps of an…
The Ocean Is Coming: King Tides Offer Preview of Rising Seas
The highest King Tides of the year arrived in Humboldt County last week, offering both a spectacle and a warning. Unlike waves or swell, which are wind-driven, tides are the daily rise and fall of the ocean, created by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun. They become “King” tides when the sun, moon,…
Atlas and Pleione’s Kids: The Pleiades
I’ve written about the Pleiades star cluster before (“Orion and the Pleiades,” Jan. 12, 2023), in which I focused on the ancient Greek myth of the hunter Orion endlessly pursuing Mom, Dad and seven sisters across the night sky. Here, I’m going to focus on the stars themselves, and what makes them so interesting to…
