Untitled, for my fi rst unrequited love

The place of my birth is reaching out to me like Janus, with its tentacles, sea-salty and inebriated.

We remember the ocean as children: watching the water flow in and out, the glistening anemones and the sand dollars, the sea urchins, the fresh air and our mothers in their dresses. I gave the first boy that I ever loved a plastic trowel and bucket on the dunes and he gave me a book called Thumbelina. We were both five.

I remember Thumbelina even now: how she knitted lace for her parents with her tiny fingers, her arranged marriage to the mole, the sparrow that set her free; and then, back to the long, seasonal exodus that queues while the lilies of the Valley turn and show themselves; the heat, the noise, the excess of the city, as the fickle surf creeps up again, to wash, to christen, to choke, and then to bathe its long fingers, like the poem.

— Katy Hartridge

other respiratory diseases are much more prevalent in the children of households that use wood stoves.

Finally, the biomass power plant produces electricity that can be multiplied by three or more in a heat pump to produce much more heat than can be produced in a wood stove burning the same amount of wood fuel.

The unwelcome news is that the highest-pollution energy source in our communities is the “green” wood stove in your home.

Michael Winkler, Arcata

A history column in the May 11, 2023, edition of the North Coast Journal headlined “Chinese Again in Humboldt, Part One,” incorrectly stated how many columns will be in the series. There will be four. The Journal regrets the error.

Please make your letter no more than 300 words and include your full name, place of residence and phone number (we won’t print your number). Send it to letters@northcoastjournal.com. The deadline to have a letter considered for the upcoming edition is 10 a.m. Monday. ●