I’ve been working on enjoying the rare moments of escape from the horror of the news while still balancing my observations on those horrors so as not to slip into a state of willful ignorance. April 15 — the last day of this column’s cycle — isn’t just Tax Day, it’s the anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln, as I discuss further in an entry below. Regardless, the bill is due once again, and the people paying it are pretty detached from the goods and services being rendered in return, if not outright frothing with hostility from the humiliation of being captive patrons to the disgusting projects of our criminally insane ruling class. It’s one thing to see “how the sausage is made,” it’s quite another to be forced to pay the power bill for the serial killer’s basement that is the boardroom of our domestic and foreign policy.
That we could be using our resources for more efficient mass transit and energy grids, universal healthcare and a fully literate socialized society free from the artificial scarcity of the market, but are instead putting everything into mass death, economic devastation, slavery and water-poisoning petro-economy that seems to prove the existence of a real Hell from which black poison emerges like concentrated sin is mind-killingly perverse. Every day, the technocratic monsters who metastasized in the diseased body of our corrupt political system deliver fresh visions of Hell that expand on the Epstein Universe of exploitation like blockbuster snuff films and we have to just … absorb it indefinitely? Maybe we are what we eat and so are simply speed-running the nightmares of a billion tortured factory-farmed animals, exterminated in an endless sequence of cramped death cells like a silent film stretching back to the origin of violent sin.
But anyway, yeah, I’ve been tempering things by enjoying parts of our better nature, like watching Ken Burns’ excellent Civil War documentary for the first time in two decades with a fresh-eyed companion. We have also been listening to good music when the time is right, like Patti Smith songs on Easter, which was perfect. I took the title of this column from the end of the lilac-titled poem Walt Whitman wrote as an elegy for Lincoln after his murder during Eastertime. It’s good to remember beautiful things can still grow in terrible places, and that our national character does not need to be defined by our most depraved criminals. I am not under any illusion about the monstrosity of the Greater American Project or the moral righteousness of its various administrators. I do, however, believe in the general goodness of most people everywhere, and that our only path to the future involves global cooperation with that goodness.
And it all starts here at home.
Have fun, do good.
Thursday
The weather’s going to be a bit corybantic like a good and proper April, so why not celebrate the unpredictable wildness with some dancing on a Thursday? The Latin Peppers are jamming at the Basement tonight at 8 p.m. and it’s only $5 at the door. If you play your cards right, this could kick off a four-day weekend.
Friday
The ball keeps rolling around the sun and, despite the best efforts of the lunatics running this side of the hemisphere, spring has sprung. Life is absolutely exploding everywhere. Our beloved Eureka Symphony is back in bloom with “Humor, Passion &Power — the Human Spirit.” The penultimate program for the season, the highlight of which is likely Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A Minor featuring soloist Garrick Woods. It’s always a good time at the Arkley Center for the Performing Arts when the symphony is doing its thing, which you can indulge in tonight or tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. Tickets run from $21-$56, but you will find cash-only rush tickets at the box office after 6 p.m. that are $15 for general admission, $10 for students. And two kiddos under 12 get free admission for every regular adult ticket purchased, which is a more progressive family-friendly economic policy than anything D.C. or Sacramento have cooked up in ages.
Saturday
Veteran Folklife Festival organizer and local musician at-large Patrick Cleary has finally done it. Done what you ask? Why, recorded his first album after a quarter century of notebooking, developing and backlogging both material and multi-instrumental skills. The result, soft-released in January and appropriately titled Finally is a lovely little rustic and bluesy homespun heater, filled with talented friends and fun, creaky tunes that ramble around the horny brambles of observation and recollection. I liked the delightful, busted honky tonk of “Fickle Heart,” and the closing track “I Can’t Sing the Blues,” but the whole thing is quite fun, an honest home project that expands into the kind of group jams that make our local folk scene so special. You can come get in on the action at the official album release show at the Carlo Theatre tonight at 7:30 p.m. Advance tickets are going for $20, while the door price is $25, and the whole shebang is a fundraiser for Dell’Arte International, so it’s good fun for a good cause. Congrats, Pat. Let’s hope the next one don’t take half as long to hatch.
Sunday
Rudi Galindo has been a clown in orbit around Humboldt since I was a little pup, and there must be some wholesome elixir to that art, because the man stays fresh and youthful while I have watched myself graduate to the archway of middle age. He’s bridged the European tradition of physical theater with his long association with Teatro Pachuco and its creative base in Belgium. From Blue Lake to Mexico and the world beyond, Galindo has rolled a colorful ball of influences up the Sisyphean landscape of human expression with a deft beauty associated with masters of the form. He has teamed up with the Arcata Playhouse’s David Ferney, an old friend and conspirator, for Quixote, a new telling of Miguel de Cervantes’ foundational proto-novel from the dawn of the modern western canon, hosted at Ferney’s homebase venue. Today’s the last chance to catch a gander, but you’re in luck, there are two shows, at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., to satisfy the matinee and evening crowd. ($20).
Monday
Another radio-silent Monday. I put the feelers out, but got only squelch and silence. Over and out.
Tuesday
It’s the 161st anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the last Republican president for whom I have any glimmer of admiration. (Although I am obsessed with Richard Nixon in a way that is almost impossible to qualify in its comic tragedy. He is my King Lear and Pogo the Clown rolled into one.) So it’s appropriate that Savage Henry Comedy Club is putting on a free show at 8 p.m. called Sick Ken Burns, a mock-up of the public television documentarian’s Civil War-style of forlorn love letters narrated over sepia images of the doomed authors and recipients. It seems like fun, but only if you avoid pre-gaming by reading or listening to a recitation of Sullivan Ballou’s heartbreaking letter to his wife Sarah written on the eve of the Battle of Bull Run, where he was left to die by his retreating Union comrades and his body likely defiled by the victorious Confederate traitors. Anyway, the Republicans killed the PBS of Ken Burns and are committing mass war crimes and turning us into a permanent pariah state — correctly hated by the civilized world — all likely because we didn’t stick the landing on Reconstruction way back when.
Wednesday
It’s the return of synth pop artist Madeline Goldstein, who has been developing her unique take on darkwave from her hometown days in Portland, Oregon, to her more expansive creative center in Los Angeles. She’s back at the Miniplex for an early show tonight at 7 p.m., along with Red Room DJs KreePeeO,Zero One,Datura Prime and RatGirl. Lots of great dark sounds in one fine space. ($15).
Collin Yeo (he/him) is like the noise a mechanic diagnosed in his car: annoying but basically harmless.
This article appears in Taco Week 2026.