I met Maybelline at the farmers’ market one Saturday in October, after the first torrential rains. She and her sister dog were with their human, who I’ll call Phillip. The dogs were wet and cold, shivering and moving slowly, then reclined in a doorway on cold concrete with Phillip. I went and got a beach towe...

A pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won. The pastor was so pleased that he entered it another race and it won again. The local paper’s headline: PASTOR’S ASS OUT FRONT. The bishop was so upset by this that he ordered the pastor not to race his donkey. The next day, the headline was: BISHOP SCRATCHES ...

A fancy winery’s sommelier passed away, and the winemaker began looking for a new taster. An unkempt old wino showed up to ask for the job.

To the Editor: This letter comes in response to the great stories and experiences your writers so wonderfully shared with all your readers in the March issue [“The Reading Habit”]. I grew up around books. Our mother read us a story most nights before bedtime until we got into reading ourselves and checking ou...

To the Editor: Thank you for the acknowledgement of Redwood Coast Village’s 10th anniversary [Tasha Romo, “Redwood Coast Village — 10 Years of Aging Well,” March Senior News, page 11].

I started working at Booklegger when I was 20. Almost 40 years later, I am now the bookstore’s sole proprietor and still love my work. It’s not just about the books. Of course bookstore people love to read, but the thing that makes my job so satisfying is the readers themselves. I have come to think of biblio...

As a recovering English major, I have an actual license to spend time with books — one of the tangible benefits of an English degree. My reading gene kicked in a lot earlier, of course. My parents were college-educated eggheads — Wellesley and Yale, no less — and they strewed books all over the place. A baby ...

On a Saturday evening last November, people streamed into the Requa Inn above the Klamath River for a talk by Amy Bowers Cordalis on her new book, “The Water Remembers,” the story of her “family’s fight to save a river and a way of life.” Attending this stop on Amy’s book tour were mostly members of Amy’s Yur...

No surprise, but since the devastating fire that destroyed half a block of downtown Arcata in January, Northtown Books owner Dante DiGenova has a little extra free time on his hands. The cause of the Jan. 2 blaze, which destroyed seven businesses including Dante’s beloved bookstore and several apartments, is ...

One of my earliest memories is of my father sitting in his old rocker reading the newspaper. The newsboy delivered the paper daily, and we had to place it unopened on the little table by his chair. He preferred to unwrap it himself. He read it slowly, digesting the contents. My first introduction to politics ...

A “silent book club”? What? The first Silent Book group was started in 2012 by two friends in San Franciso who loved to read and considered themselves introverts. Annoyed by assigned book club readings, they opted to meet in a bar. “I wished that I had a book club where basically there was no assigned reading...

There is no precise definition for being in good health. In allopathic health care, we think of good health as a lack of disease, or perhaps disease that is not significantly impacting someone’s well-being. We can measure blood tests or do imaging studies to search for treatable illness. Then we can offer tre...

Some might have preferred knowing me before I could talk, before I had strong opinions and started using banned vocabulary. Apparently, as we age, memories seep in from earlier flashbacks in our lives. I am increasingly aware of times when I was hearing, touching, seeing, exploring objects I could reach with ...

The title of my Ph.D. dissertation is “Transgressive Gender Performance — An Act of Personal and Cultural Transformation” (2013). The idea behind the research was that if I could get a group of heterosexual men to experience gender as something they do (perform) and not something they were, then they would be...

Women have always been central to human success, long before California started formally celebrating Women’s History Week in Santa Rosa in 1978; nine years later, Congress designated March as national Women’s History Month. The 10th annual Zero to Fierce (02F) Festival features two weeks of events in March to...

He came to the library every day, taking a seat at the heavy wooden table midway into the reading room. He wore khaki slacks, a neatly pressed cotton shirt and loafers, an East Coast look that had become familiar to me from my first year at college in Maine. Age? Older than me; younger than my father. It was ...

The subplot in Denzel Washington’s 2014 movie “The Equalizer” that helps define his character has him reading “the 100 books his deceased wife said everyone should read.” Space here doesn’t permit 100, but how about my top 12? When my family moved from Long Beach to the Orange County suburbs midway through my...

impersonating banks.” Boy, they’re on top of this, I thought. Or are they? The email said, “We will never ask you to move or send money to resolve a fraud issue.” But then the email invited me to click on a button to “Review Scams.” Um … I don’t think I will. Helpfully, the email said: “Scammers can make call...

The email from Chase looked legit and the message got my attention: “We’ve placed a stop payment on the check you sent.” Click here to read your Secure Message. Before I could think, I had clicked on the link, which took me to a Chase site with a completely genuine- looking URL. Fortunately, my brain had kick...

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Redwood Coast Village (RCV), celebrating a decade of community-driven effort to help older adults in Humboldt County age with independence, dignity and connection. What began as an exploration of how to better support aging in place has grown into a thriving Village bui...