One year ago, our article for Senior News examined the problems with lack of availability of many medical services in Humboldt County. What has changed in the past year? Getting a primary care physician (PCP) in our area can be a challenge, although there are some signs of improvement. Medical groups in our a...

In 1979, after 30 years serving the rural communities of Southern Humboldt, the Garberville Hospital, one of the last privately owned hospitals in California, was about to shut its doors. A courageous band of community members — business leaders, timber people, ranchers, professionals, back-to-the-landers and...

What does a successful effort to improve access to health care in an isolated rural region like ours look like? The good news is that examples exist of best practices that worked elsewhere to create a better healthcare future.

At the end of December, I fell and fractured my left ankle, rendering me “non-weight bearing” on that leg. Suddenly, handicapped parking, accessible bathrooms and wheelchair ramps all took on new significance in my life. While my new disability is temporary, I began to consider what the world and our physical...

A visit to the doctor or diagnostic clinic may take a few hours of preparation, travel and execution, but the home care one provides for a partner with any kind of permanent disability is 24/7. My wife is among the first group of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) sufferers lucky enough to age with this debilitating dis...

Okay, we’re in our 80s. We’ve outlived the average lifespan, but we don’t know how much time remains. Maybe the question to ask ourselves is not, “How long do I have left?” but “How do I want to live the years I still have?” For example, I’m 83 and feel pretty good. My blood tests look good, I exercise every ...

After 46 years in the profession, I retired from my last nursing job in June 2025. Though retired, I will keep my license, both to keep future nursing options open but also because becoming an RN requires much blood, sweat and many tears. I’m not ready to let it go just yet. Did I LOVE it? Yes! It was a great...

In March, I had spinal fusion surgery to align and stabilize misaligned vertebrae and reduce pain from stenosis. And so begins another “organ recital” — a sharing of my aches and pains that come with the territory of aging body parts that don’t function the way they used to. It’s not my intent to bitch and mo...

If you live on the North Coast, you’ve likely experienced how challenging it can be to access healthcare services. The state designates our region as a “health professional shortage area,” meaning there simply aren’t enough providers to meet the needs of our population. Across the Redwood Region — Del Norte, ...

Have I got an exercise plan for you! No health club, no barbells, no cute leotards. No fancy equipment. And just 10 minutes. No sweat. It started with office workers who ran from one meeting to the next, or at-home telecommuters with days full of Zoom sessions. For people with neither the time nor the inclina...

Join the Redwood Interfaith Gospel Choir with special guests, the 50-member Oakland Interfaith Community Choir, on Saturday, May 30, for a night of high-energy gospel and spiritual music.

We usually have a hard time finding good things to say about a person we find humorless. Beyond acknowledging that he or she is, perhaps, “hardworking” or “dependable as the day is long,” we end up at a descriptive loss for these folks pretty quickly. Since we know, as Thumper the rabbit used to say, if you d...

Just saying “April Fools’ Day” makes me smile. In my life, every day is already pretty darn foolish. But it’s nice to have a special day to laugh — an especially rare commodity over the past year or so, given that the world feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket. I never did understand that saying, but...

The announcement arrived quietly, the way fog rolls into Humboldt Bay — soft at first, then everywhere. At exactly 9:00 a.m., every screen lit up with a cheerful message from TechGov, the benevolent administrative intelligence that now managed the nation’s well-being.

It’s 1961. Lewy, Larry, Gene and I are leaving Illinois for Florida. Maybe we’ll get to Fort Lauderdale where we imagine the beaches are lined with bikini-clad coeds. We will travel in Lewy’s well-primered ’52 Plymouth, which runs fine but needs regular refills of oil. We have virtually no money. We’ll be sle...

One of my prize sweatshirts, from an 1985 anti-war dance festival, says, “Give Peace a Dance.” A slogan for today’s decidedly dire days might read, “Give Laughter a Chance!” For years, Kathleen Krauss, Joy Hardin and I led regular Laughter Yoga groups. The groups have ceased, but we still talk regularly and a...

If you’ve enjoyed KEET’s local programming like “What’s on Your Bucket List?” and “Studio Space,” as well as the national PBS programming as much as I have over the years, you’ve likely been aware of how very challenging 2025 was for our small but mighty PBS station. At times it seemed like everything that co...

Dear Mother Earth, Thank you for planting me on Elm Street in Massachusetts, back in 1948. Too bad your elm children died from Dutch elm disease. However, the maple brothers moved in and did well. I tried to capture the beauty of their autumn leaves but didn’t have enough Sears catalogs or phone books.

About 51 years ago, my wife and I decided to take a West Coast vacation from our home in Minnesota. We had been married for about one year. Two days before we were scheduled to leave, my wife said she had a bit of a stomachache and was feeling nauseous. We made a quick trip to the doctor’s office. Imagine our...

“It ain’t in books,” Jack Hitt used to say. The longtime owner of Northtown Books considered bookselling a public service, a tradition still in practice the day the store burned down in January. Jack had once been Arcata’s police dispatcher. During a time on the East Coast, he was an ambulance driver. Upon hi...