Nov/Dec 2021
-
Letter from the Editor
I’m watching the potted plants out on my deck get soaked with rainwater. There’s the spindly China Doll I’ve had for nearly two decades, the sprawling sword fern that needs to be re-potted, a showy begonia dropping its last campfire-colored blossoms. Plants, like books and smells, are memory keepers, steady measurers of growth, conjuring long-lost…
-
Locavortex
Meet a local Artist: Jessica Yoshiko Rasmussen Jessica Yoshiko Rasmussen is a visual artist and arts program coordinator. She used to keep these identities separate, but as the pandemic wore on and her personalities spent more time together under one roof, they started to share ideas and eventually became one. Rasmussen’s assemblage and installation work…
-
Hot Tamales
When I arrive at the Tamales Oaxaqueños (wa-ha-cain-yose) booth in Roseland’s Mitote Food Park at 10am on a chilly Friday morning, Neil Pacheco is just about sold out. Marta Sanchez, who works at General Hydroponics up the road, has been buying her lunch here twice a week for the last three months, since a friend…
-
Drink Local Gift Guide
Hinterland Empire by Ursa Born Hinterland Empire and its sibling art gallery Neon Raspberry have long been a hub for their distinctively unapologetic progressive, feminist, queer-centric, radical economic and social justice-based ethos and aesthetic. The original shop, a local treasure in Occidental, is home to sassy custom designed screen-printed apparel and accessories, as well as…
-
Counter Comic
Tara Caplan once pissed off a bunch of Aussies over a didgeridoo. Or actually, her alter-ego Eaglesaunce, a faux-spiritual white hippie dude, did. In response to a fake flier on Facebook advertising “Lower Chakra Didgeridoo Healings for Women”—Eaglesaunce is nothing if not smarmy—scores of Aussies decried the debasement of sacred culture by a clueless white…
-
Follow the Wood
My best friend’s husband, a home cook with professional culinary skills, has impeccable taste and exacting standards. Every holiday season I effortlessly shop for his wife and son, and toy with the idea of getting something for him too, but usually chicken out. I figure he already has everything he needs, or I would get…
-
Plants Matter
I can usually tell how well I’m doing, physically, socially, and emotionally, by how well my plants are doing. Countless studies confirm what we already know in our hearts to be true: having plants in our home, even just one, is a sure-fire way to promote health and wellness. We yearn to nourish. When the…
-
Meet a Farmer: Margarita Garcia
MEET A FARMER Margarita Garcia My name is Margarita Garcia. I am from Oaxaca, Mexico. My mother tongue is Mixteco, but I speak Spanish, and am studying English and American Sign Languages. I was born into a nucleus of farmers and I have always been a farmer. Today I work picking grapes in different areas…
-
Make Local Gift Guide
Brick and Mortars Worth Leaving Your Couch For Treehorn Books With its towering, floor-to-ceiling shelves of books and intoxicating bibliosmia, this sanctuary is any book-lover’s dream. A downtown Santa Rosa fixture since 1979, manager of this general-use bookstore Grant Hotaling tells me, “My dad was one of the original owners, and my mom was a…
-
Locavore
Cozy Winter Recipes with Kim Bourdet of The Pharmacy and The Branch Line Kim Bourdet, creative director of The Pharmacy, gives a taste of what to expect at her new plant-based cafe, The Branch Line, opening in Railroad Square this holiday season. According to Kim, “The mission of the cafe is to create plant-based food…