After a lifetime of strangers scurrying from my path, coworkers asking if I’m angry with them and people looking back at me with a panicked “What?” I accepted my diagnosis. I have what medical professionals call severe chronic resting bitchface. My features naturally relax into a scowl somewhere between judgy stone statue and pre-strike hooded […]
Section Feature
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Canna-count the Votes
Lost amid all the talk of a looming red or blue wave coming on Election Day, depending on who you ask on what particular day, is the likelihood that a green wave will continue to sweep over the country. A total of 30 states across the country have already legalized or decriminalized cannabis for medical […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Facing the Wind
Local fishermen are on the verge of forever losing local fishing grounds to wind power as California trades one renewable resource (seafood) for another (electricity). The state of California and its citizens are on the front line of the efforts to convert our energy use from the burning of fossil fuels (oil and gas) to […]
Posted inEat + Drink
A Cook’s Book Club
My cooking is variously inspired by seasonal produce, memories of people or places, cravings for specific ingredients or dishes, and reading. Yes, you read that last one right. For the past 11 years on my blog Briciole, I have been hosting a literary/culinary event called Novel Food. And for the past 10 years I have […]
Posted inMusic
Anniversaries, Dreams and Hauntings
I am not a nostalgic fella and I tend to have a private needle that clicks between “ignorant indifference” and “seething distrust” when it comes to all of the hallmarks and anniversaries that we are collectively reminded to celebrate. However, in deference to my readers, of whom I am genuinely fond, and for the sake […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Connections Quiz
Short attention span? Perfect, we understand each other. Each of these “connections” will take no more than 18 seconds to read. That’s supposed to be the average duration of our short-term memories — good for copying down a phone number, hopeless (in my case) for remembering the name of someone I’ve just been introduced to. […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
10 Rules for Living in a Yurt
When my husband and I arrived in Humboldt a year ago, like many newcomers, we struggled to find a place. We spent weeks in $100-a-night slum-o motels while looking for housing. If the motels didn’t bankrupt us, the rental companies with per-person applications fees would have. Eventually we, like the holy family, finally found that […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
You’re No Mola
Evolutionary history” is probably a terrible phrase to begin a lighthearted natural history story with. But maybe if I throw in live fish disc golf, that will keep your attention for another 500 words. Anyway, in your evolutionary history you have a fish. There’s plenty of genetic and anatomical evidence to support this. For example, […]
Posted inMusic
Band Together
I have been struggling to translate my horror at current political events through a popular culture lens because that’s what, for better or worse, Americans do. The best I’ve landed on is, oddly enough, John Carpenter’s 2001 underrated flop Ghosts of Mars, a film in which mining colonists unleash a well of ancient and violent […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Space Force
In news that could bring a whole new meaning to the term “high AF,” Forbes reported Oct. 8 that cannabis is headed into space. Seriously. Scientists with the bioengineering company Space Tango, which specializes in researching microgravity environments, plans to bring cannabis to NASA’s International Space Station some 250 miles above Earth to study how […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Sweet Reward
Kenneth Buntin smiles down at the row of new chocolates in the case, domes of milk and dark chocolate filled with ganache-like old fashioned creams — orange, hazelnut, vanilla, ginger and blackberry. While he’s tweaked and refined the recipes over 25 years in the same kitchen in Old Town’s Snug Alley, these are the first […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Beach Bonfire, Meteors and the Milky Way
In early to mid-August each year, the remnants of comet Swift-Tuttle’s passage rain down through our atmosphere in a spectacular show called the Perseid meteor shower. During its peak this year, my brother and I set out to Tepona Point, along Scenic Drive south of Trinidad, hopeful of capturing some of the terrestrial beauty of […]