Now that it’s a new year, I’m sure some of you have made resolutions. It’s a thing that we humans like to do. It’s the start of a new time increment, so we get a do-over, I guess. Perhaps you’re resolving to lose those 20 COVID pounds or start exercising more. Call your mother every […]
New Year
Posted inLife + Outdoors
North Coast Night Lights: Conjunction – Saturn Overtakes Jupiter
Racing around the sun like slot cars on an elliptical track, Earth was on an inside line and coming around fast. Jupiter and Saturn were in view ahead. Jupiter was taking a much wider line and Saturn was lazily rounding the bend still farther out. Earth would overtake them. Again. The race has been on […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Jinx Cake
We’re a superstitious newsroom at the Journal. We knock wood in unison at the mention of any good news. Because digital editor Kimberly Wear once went through a massive electrical blackout at the Times-Standard years ago after uttering the phrase, “Hold down the …” — you know what, we just don’t say it and I’m […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Start a New Year with an Enormous Challah
If you’re like me, you want two things right now: bread and for this year to just be over. Well, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year begins on Friday, Sept. 18 at sundown, when people all over the world will celebrate the end of the Hebrew year 5780 and the start of 5781. Among the […]
Posted inEat + Drink
The Simple Pleasure of Lentils
On New Year’s Eve, a steaming pot of lentils with whole sausages and slices of traditional cotechino, large pork sausage, was always on the dinner menu at home in Perugia, Italy. In preparing this festive comfort dish, my mother followed a tradition meant to bring prosperity, as lentils have come to symbolize coins. As a […]
Posted inNews
Burying Old Grudges
Matthew Caldwell (with the shovel) and his friends — (left-right) Miles Gonzaga, Jordan Brunnell and Logan Bailey — took turns late Sunday afternoon burying each other up to their chins at Trinidad State Beach. Seems as good a way as any to finish off the moldering old year.