Volunteering is popular among people looking for ways to stay busy and give back to their community. Helping others activates reward centers in the brain and can create a sense of meaning and purpose. Volunteering has also been found to reduce stress and anxiety, boost self-esteem and confidence and create ne...

Everyone probably has a different reason for attending Silver Quills at the McKinleyville Senior Center. I like that we start off with a fun icebreaker question to start discussion. There’s no pressure to write — you can just come and enjoy listening to others. And there’s no critique of the writing, just gen...

As an avid reader and regular bike rider, I’ve admired Little Free Libraries everywhere. Ten years ago, I moved onto a good corner in Arcata and got my son to fix up a used, narrow kitchen cupboard for me, outfitting it with three shelves and changing the front glass to plexi. He hung it on my side fence, whe...

Don’t be discouraged, but writing is hard. You can spend hours in front of your computer searching for just the right words to make your story come alive. You’re an artiste creating a masterpiece. The descriptive energy is flowing, but then …. Sometimes, word selection can be tricky.

As William Faulkner wrote, “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” That’s what playwright Meighan O’Brien realizes in her new one-woman play, “Finding Home.” Meighan mines her past, the rich ores of belonging and abandonment, and discovers the gold, the gleaming present of a joyous and evolving s...

Writer’s block is a locked room where you wake up with no memory of how you got there. The walls are made of sentences you have never finished. The ceiling hums with rules. The floor is littered with drafts that apologize too much. Somewhere nearby, an editor clears his throat and sharpens a pencil. Freewriti...

To the Editor: Editor’s Note: Columnist John Heckel received this as an email. With the sender’s permission, we include it as a letter to the editor.

You can learn so much about a country and its people through their food stories. For me, cookbooks are like travel guides seen through a lens of taste and smell. Many of the books on my kitchen bookshelves have come home with me from my globe-trotting days, and I love to recreate memories of those trips throu...

An Arcata ecology and environmental consulting company is looking for alert beach walkers to help document the amount and kind of specific kinds of marine debris washing ashore on Humboldt County beaches. The project, funded through the California Energy Commission, seeks to track marine debris like rope, net...

In his new book of pandemic-era poems, whether he’s describing dolomite stones bedded together or pouring bits of bone and ash upon the waters, releasing his father, David Holper reaches deep within to give us rich and harshly beautiful poetry. The Eureka poet and teacher reflects that while politicians denie...

Join Dr. Bill Carlson and others as they help those with memory loss — and their loved ones — “connect, share and enjoy together” at the McKinleyville Senior Center’s monthly Memory Café.

It felt scary at first, the idea of me, an old guy, writing about sex and intimacy. To discuss such private things in public seemed like trouble, like being caught outside bare-assed in broad daylight. In other words, exposed. Vulnerable. An interesting problem, since I believe that to be intimate, in sex or ...

Several years ago, I was delivering stacks of Senior News in Arcata and as I approached the doors of a senior apartment building, a man on a bench waved at me. “Hi!” I said. “Want a copy of the paper?” “Is there any sex in it?” he asked. None in that issue, but he might find some in this month’s edition, whic...

Over 2,000 years ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero said, “For old age is respected only if it defends itself, maintains its rights, submits to no one, and rules over its domain until its last breath.” My wife, Janet, took that last breath with the help of meds offered under California’s End-of-Life-Option Act in our...

I’ve had the good fortune to have loved deeply — and to have lost — and still be open to possibilities. Some say, “Oh, I would never be in another relationship … too much compromise required.” Some say, “Older men are just looking for a nurse with a purse.” And some simply say, “I’m too old.”...

Intimacy is often misunderstood as simply physical closeness, but its true essence lies in the willingness to be known and the desire to deeply know another. According to relationship experts, intimacy is one of the three pillars of a healthy, lasting partnership, alongside passion and commitment. Yet, as the...

All five of us kids are Boomers. Our parents were products of the Depression, World War II and the Post-War boom — exciting, if not romantic, times of rapid change. Struggling young workers in the midst of fast-moving history, Wes and Mary couldn’t see it swirling all around them, while I, their confused elde...

If you are a woman of a certain age, you have probably wondered if doctors skipped the lecture on menopause during their schooling. More accurate would be that doctors of a certain age were never given a lecture on menopause. Who knew that half the population might have menopausal issues in their middle and l...

I was surprised, perhaps shocked, to open a local newsletter recently with a photo of me with my violin. I don’t think of myself as a violinist. Happily, it was taken by a very fine photographer, so I relaxed and enjoyed the moment. I do play the violin. A lot! I play nearly every day in duets, trios, quartet...

I don’t know who I am! For the first two weeks or so after Janet died, I felt like I was floating. Something in my mid-section kept me afloat — off the ground. I mean, I knew that in one reality I was walking, but in this new after-her-death reality, it was like my feet never touched the ground. I wasn’t walk...