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 […]
Section Feature
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Farm Bill Caps Historic Year for Cannabis
You may have missed it among headlines about the looming government shutdown and plunging stock markets, but when President Donald Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill on Dec. 21, he officially removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act. The legislation, pushed hard by Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), officially distinguishes hemp from marijuana, its […]
Posted inNews
Top 10
A new year should be seen as a time of hope, a chance to pause, reflect and to set our sights on becoming better people and a better community. When we look back on 2018, we recall times of intense division — we squabbled over land uses, political campaigns, recovery services and criminal justice. There […]
Posted inNews
Top 10 Dick Moves of 2018
Listen, it has been a year. You’d think the dick moves on the national stage would overshadow us but not so. Looking back on 2018, we saw a bevy of folks making classic dick moves — selfishly and flagrantly doing wrong because, well, they could — running the gamut from racism to bad manners with […]
Posted inNews
‘I’m the Monster’
Francine Schulman has forgiven the man who murdered her 14-year-old daughter and left her alone and bleeding on the South Jetty. In fact, it’s taken nearly 25 years but Schulman says she now feels it is time for Thomas Jerome Dunaway to be released from state prison, where he’s been held since June of 1997. […]
Posted inNews
Standing with Strawberry Rock
If you’ve ever hiked the 1.5 miles up to Strawberry Rock near Trinidad, scaled the onshore sea stack and felt the ocean wind on your cheeks as you surveyed the panoramic view, looking down from atop the forest canopy to the ocean below, you were probably trespassing. That’s long been the sticking point of one […]
Posted inNews
50K Acres and Counting
It’s been a banner year for the Northcoast Regional Land Trust. Just under two decades old, in 2018 the organization with headquarters tucked away in a small building off Samoa Boulevard has doubled the amount of land under conservation easements coordinated by the nonprofit. That means large swaths of acreage from the coast to the […]
Posted inNews
Protecting the Titans
Perhaps one of the few things looming larger than the ancient redwoods known as the Grove of Titans is the legend that sprung up around them following the trees’ “discovery” two decades ago. Catapulted into a eco-celebrity status after the finding was chronicled in the book The Wild Trees, visiting the grove nestled in Jedediah […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Cannabis Pageantry
It’s been dubbed the Academy Awards of Cannabis, only instead of a red carpet there was a leaf blower modified to blow pot smoke in attendees’ faces. Yes, with much fanfare, the first post-recreational legalization Emerald Cup took place last weekend at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds and Humboldt County represented. Hard. But to read reporting […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Homeless for Christmas
The daily trudging around town, trying to scrounge up the money to get what I need for the day, generally begins when I leave the Mission around 7 a.m., no matter the weather. Around here it can change in an instant and you’re suddenly and completely soaked to the skin, the wind whipping cruelly through […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Around the World, One Pot at a Time
Half the population of Humboldt has worked at Ramone’s Bakery and Cafe at some point in their life, myself included. I worked as line cook, caterer and the occasional cookie decorator during holiday seasons. The schedule was flexible and co-workers were family; they could be annoying and have issues but you loved them nonetheless. And […]
Posted inMusic
Christmases Merry, White and Blue
That juggernaut called the holidays has arrived and so, whether we like it or not, most of the bounty of our evening’s public pleasures have been displaced in its rampaging wake. Many of you are out of town and/or neck-deep in some family indulgence, which might seem somewhere between a chore and a court order. […]