John Ross Reading and Memorial April 29

Northtown Books will host a reading of poems and stories in memory of John Ross on Friday, April 29th from 7 to 8:30 p.m. The well-known journalist, who died this past winter in Mexico, has been celebrated in Mexico City and San Francisco’s Mission District, both for his writing and his devotion to be-bop and rebellion.

John Ross lived in Humboldt County for a decade beginning in the mid ‘70’s, mostly in the three or four blocks of downtown Arcata. His first poetry chapbooks were read and published on H Street, and while others were issued from San Francisco and Mexico City and his journalism brought him international renown, the poems and stories of those years appear throughout his work.

The event will be hosted by Jerry Martien and will feature old friends and fellow writers reading from John’s work, followed by a performance of some of his poems set to the music of SquarPeg.

A memorial ceremony will take place the following Sunday, May 1, in Trinidad. Meet in front of the elementary school at 2 PM, rain or shine. Bring a single red flower. Be prepared to walk to the cemetery (about a quarter mile). Arrangements will be made for anyone unable to walk this distance (email cemone@reninet.com in advance).

For much more about John and his life and work, go here.

Sharon Levy Friday, April 8

Sharon Levy brings her new popular science book from Oxford University Press, Once and Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us About the Fate of Earth’s Largest Animals, to Northtown Books on Friday, April 8 at 7 p.m.

Mammoths, camels and saber-toothed cats once walked the ground that has become Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, and foraged on the marsh land now buried beneath Chicago’s streets. Then, just as the first humans reached the Americas, these Ice Age giants vanished forever. Today great beasts like elephants, lions and grizzly bears are threatened worldwide. Sharon’s talk will explore relationships between people and big wild animals, past and present, and the vital lessons ancient extinctions can hold for modern conservation.

Sharon is a veteran science journalist and biologist who covers conservation and biology for OnEarth, New Scientist, BioScience, Audubon, Nature, and other magazines. She has lived in Arcata since 1994.

For more info on Sharon and her work, please go here.

John Ross 1938-2011

We're very sad to note the recent passing of poet and journalist John Ross, a longtime friend of Northtown Books.

John was a fixture on the poetry scene in Arcata in the 70s, and after he moved his home base to Mexico he'd still make regular stops in Humboldt on his various book tours. We'll miss him.

His friend Frank Bardacke gives a good account of John's life and work at Counterpunch.


Photo from the North Coast Journal Blogthing.

Jerry Martien: At the School of Doors September 17th

Jerry Martien will read and sign copies of his poetry chapbook, At the School of Doors, on Friday, September 17, at Northtown Books in Arcata at 7 pm.

The six-page poem draws on the author’s experience as a poet and teacher, a carpenter, and a doorman at Arcata’s Jambalaya Club. It is printed, folded and sewn (all by hand) so its cover and two sheets of paper open and close like doors. The edition of 150 copies is issued by Tangram, the small press imprint of Berkeley printer Jerry Reddan, who began his trade at Eureka Printing in the 1970’s.

Martien will read this and other poems of passage, followed by a discussion of art and craft, writing and earning a living, and the role of metaphor in making sense of our lives.

Martien is the author of several Tangram chapbooks and broadsides, and a collection of poetry, Pieces in Place. He has recorded two CDs, Jerry Martien and the Band of Angels, and recently The Road to Heaven with bass player Shao Way Wu. Besides his door jobs and brief stints as a nighwatchman and truck driver, he has edited small magazines, worked at Northtown Books, and taught in rural classrooms with California Poets in the Schools and in Humboldt State’s creative writing program.

The reading and discussion is free to the public.

Sanae, Senryu Poet: Her Life in 5-7-5

Friday August 27th at 7 pm, Northtown Books welcome Amy and Aiko Uyeki to Northtown Books to read and sign their new book 'Sanae, Senryu Poet: Her Life in 5-7-5'.

Shizue Harada came to the United States in the 1920s following her husband in arranged marriage. She didn’t become Sanae, a writer of a Japanese poetry form called senryu, un...til she had lived a full life, working factory jobs and raising two children.

Sanae’s daughter, Aiko Uyeki, has compiled her poetry in a collection that captures Sanae’s strong Buddhist faith, her wry humor and simple wisdom, her musings about growing old and her approaching death.

Complementing these poems is the artwork of Amy Uyeki, Sanae’s granddaughter. With word and image, a picture is painted of the life of Shizue Harada, a Meiji era wife whose story mirrors many first generation Japanese Americans who left familiar shores to seek the American dream.

Please join us for this special event.

Vanessa Pike-Vrtiak and Friends

Join us at this Friday at 7 pm as Vanessa Pike-Vrtiak reads from her new book of poetry, The Thunderbird Extinction: Acapella Remedies for the Heart. She'll be raising funds to represent Humboldt at the Individual World Slam Poetry competition.

There will also be performances from Travis Lockwood, Therese FitzMaurice, David Holper, Melanie Quillen, Megan Davis, the Johnson Brothers, Hula Hoop performers, and live music.

Poet Jacqueline Suskin reads Friday, July 9th for Arts Arcata

Jacqueline Suskin, proprietor of Poem Store, brings her first book of poetry, The Collected, to Northtown Books. The event on Friday July 9th, during Arts Arcata, will include a reading by Jacqueline at 7pm.

The book is a collection of snapshots found in Florida flea markets, roadside ditches, junk shops, and trash bins. 23 poems are printed opposite the original photographs that inspired their creation. Please come and join in the celebration.

For more info on Jacqueline, go here.

Jerry Martien and Shao Way Wu June 11 at 7 pm

Poet Jerry Martien will perform selections from his new CD release 'The Road To Heaven' Friday, June 11 at 7 pm at Northtown Books. He will be accompanied by Shao Way Wu on stand up bass.

Get a taste of what they'll do here at the archives of the Mad River Anthology. The photo below is from that session.



Jerry Martien has published several books of poetry, the most recent being Pieces in Place. He is also the author of Shell Game: A True Account of Beads and Money in North America.

"Lyrics, philosophy, regional politics, ecstatic understated invocations! Finding where we stand. All with a sardonic but compassionate eye. I am deeply pleased that the poetry of Jerry Martien - I have admired it for years - is now available." Gary Snyder

Katy Tahja here Friday, May 14

At Northtown Books on Friday, May 14 at 7 pm, Katy M. Tahja will sign and talk about her new book Humboldt State University, a photographic essay on the history of HSU from Arcadia Publishing.

Covering almost 100 years, the book shares the growth of the college through the years. Tahja hand-picked more than 200 vintage images, many from the HSU library's Humboldt Room archive, to depict a century of changes. The book is arranged with chapters featuring the six presidents who guided Humboldt over the decades, areas of study, professors, social life on campus, sports, and the physical beauty of the area.

Katy M. Tahja is also the author of Rails Across the Noyo: A Rider's Guide to the Skunk Train and All Roads Lead to Comptche, and she has been a librarian and local historian on the Mendocino Coast for 35 years. Katy, husband David, and daughter Fern all graduated from Humboldt State University of a 37-year span.

LOCALLY DELICIOUS

Friday December 4th at 7 pm, Northtown Books hosts an event celebrating a new book: Locally Delicious: Recipes and Resources for Eating on the North Coast.

The book describes where to find local food and gives ideas for eating locally on a budget and offers a regional agricultural history along with a discussion of issues that are restricting local agriculture.

For more info, go here.

JOHN ROSS

John Ross will read, sign and discuss his new book El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City Friday, November 13 at 7 pm, kicking off his book tour in his old stomping grounds here in Humboldt County.

Ross—poet, journalist, and globetrotting troublemaker—has lived in what the Aztec-Mexicas described as "the umbilicus of the universe" since the great Mexico City earthquake of 1985 crushed out as many as 30,000 lives. Over the years, he has watched the city—El Monstruo—pick itself up, bury its dead, and come battling back. But he is filled with a gnawing unease that Mexico City's days as the most gargantuan, chaotic, crime-ridden, toxically contaminated urban stain in the Western world is doomed, that the monster he has grown to know and love through a quarter of a century of reporting on its foibles and tragedies and festering blight will be globalized into one more McCity.

Covering 4,000,000,000 years of history from the primal broth that first spewed out the monster to the Aztec-Mexica oblivion through centuries of rapine and revolution all the way to the Great Swine Flu Panic of 2009, El Monstruois a phantasmagoric retelling of the story of Mexico City, with which Ross's own history has become hopelessly entwined.

In the tradition of Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and Joseph Mitchell's Up At The Old Hotel, Ross's El Monstruo is a unique exploration of the mother of all mega-cities. Never before has anyone told from ground level the gritty, vibrant histories of this left city of 23 million faceless, fearless souls, listened to the stories of those who have not been crushed by the Monster, deconstructed the Monstruo's very monstrousness and lived to tell its secrets.

John Ross is the author of the acclaimed memoir Murdered by Capitalism, which was praised by Thomas Pynchon and chosen as a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year. Based in Mexico City for the last two decades, Ross's reporting has appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Nation, Texas Observer, and Counterpunch, to name a few. He is the winner of an Upton Sinclair Award and an American Book Award. His books include Rebellion from the Roots, The Annexation of Mexico and the novel Tonatiuh's People.

To read an excerpt from the book, go here.

For John's most recent dispatch from Mexico in Counterpunch, go here.

John will also be presenting a book he co-edited and wrote the introduction for, IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq, the story of a teenager who was fifteen years old when she began blogging from her home city of Mosul, Iraq, in July 2004.

MEDICINE TRAILS

Karuk medicine woman Mavis McCovey and cultural anthropologist John F. Salter will make an appearance at Northtown Books in conjunction with their new book Medicine Trails, Monday, November 2nd at 6:30 pm.

Sometime in 1933 here in Humboldt County, a Karuk medicine woman named Daisy Jones had a vision identifying the tribe's next medicine woman. Later that year, Mavis Smither (McCovey) was born, and in the first twelve years of her life she was groomed by a designated group of medicine women to become a spiritual healer.

Medicine Trails is Mavis McCovey's honest and lively account of the many worlds in which she moves: the Indian and white cultural worlds, and the day-to-day and visionary reality of the medicine woman's world, as well as trips to what she calls "the other side": one of the responsibilities of a medicine woman is to bring back a medicine man's soul if he gets lost on the trails of the world beyond—a task McCovey has been called upon to do.

One of very few first-person accounts of Native American healers, Medicine Trails is invaluable for its insights into the experiences of a modern-day medicine woman. And McCovey is a warm and engaging guide not only to her life, but also her family's history and the history of the Karuk, Yurok, and Hupa peoples of the region.

Mavis McCovey has lived along the Klamath River in northwestern California all her life. Trained as a child to be a medicine woman, she assists with the traditional ceremonies of her tribe, the Karuk. The mother of five children, she has also worked as a community health representative and a nurse, and she has been an advocate on issues affecting the health and well-being of the native people of her region.

Dr. John Salter is a cultural anthropologist, teacher, and writer who has worked intermittently with the Karuk Tribe of California and Karuk people since 1968. Trained by Gregory Bateson, Salter received his Ph.D. for a study of the social ecology of the Salmon and Klamath River area. He currently lives in Sacramento, California.

Mavis McCovey makes no exotic claims about her powers, but describes those functions as seamlessly integrated in Karuk culture. More importantly, she describes a living contemporary culture, enriching the melancholy beauty of our shared world
—Freeman House, from the foreword

NATASHA WING

Natasha Wing presents her new children's book An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers Friday, September 11 at 7 pm at Northtown Books.

Her book is about a neighbor of hers when she was growing up in Connecticut, the artist of the "Homage to the Square" series who studied color for 25 years and changed how teachers taught color. The book features art by Julia Breckenreid.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about the book:

This creative biography explores how Albers, perhaps best known for his paintings of squares in different color combinations, “saw art in the simplest things.” Albers is pictured rummaging for scrap materials in a dump, which he turns into “collages that shined like jewels.” As a teacher, Albers told his students, “Watch what’s going on... and capture the accident.” After visiting Mexico—Albers is shown climbing an abstract temple-like structure of colorful rectangles—he reflects on the effects of combining different colors: “Colors came to life like actors on a stage!” An accessible and lively introduction to this artist and to color theory.

Natasha Wing is best known for her paperback series based on the popular story, The Night Before Christmas. The stories are about families celebrating holidays and other big events in kids’ lives such as the first day of school and losing a tooth. Her titles include The Night Before Easter, the original book in the series which was published in 1999, and The Night Before Kindergarten, the highest-selling title which has regularly been on bestseller lists since its publication in 2001.

Wing’s multicultural book, Jalapeño Bagels, is a favorite among second grade teachers and students since it is included in several textbook series. The story is based on Los Bagels in Arcata.

Wing is a graduate of Arizona State University and has been writing children’s books and articles since 1991.

For more info on Natasha and her books, visit her website.

URSULA OSBOURNE

On Friday, July 10 at 7 pm, Northtown Books welcomes Ursula Osbourne, who will talk about her translation of Heinrich F. Liebrecht's memoir, Not To Hate But To Love, That Is What I Am Here For: My Path Through The Hell Of The Third Reich.

She recently talked to the Times-Standard about the book:

Liebrecht became a friend of Osborne's parents in Hamburg, after she and her two younger siblings had been sent to safety in England. Her parents were fortunate: In 1941 they obtained a U.S. visa and left Germany, among the very last Jews to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. For Liebrecht and his family, the border was sealed.

A long search for legal and illegal escape proved futile for Liebrecht, his wife, Lies, and their infant daughter, Eva-Maria. Liebrecht was arrested. Lies placed Eva-Maria with a trusted friend, then committed suicide.

During interrogations, Liebrecht endured brutal beatings and near starvation until he was sent to the concentration camp Theresienstadt. There, as was to prove true throughout his entire ordeal, he found inspiration. Even though many -- Germans and prisoners alike -- sank to subhuman levels, others displayed courage and humanity amid the deprivation and disorder.

”Despite these miserable circumstances,” Liebrecht wrote, “the accomplishments
by camp inmates are as worthy of remembrance as any other honorable acts of this war.”

Physicians stemmed the tide of epidemics, youth leaders schooled children, and workers of all descriptions strove to improve physical conditions. Musicians, writers and other artists, along with philosophers and clergy, nurtured spiritual and artistic enlightenment.

Among them was the kind-hearted chief rabbi of Germany, Dr. Leo Baeck, to whom Liebrecht, a Jew who converted to Catholicism, was most grateful. It was Baeck's philosophical lectures that were known for their depth and clarity that helped him stay connected to faith and reason -- reason to stay alive.

”That is where the wellsprings of our strength lay, that is where the conviction grew that we still had some kind of calling,” he wrote. “From here came the impulse to really endure, and the belief that we were able to do so.”

Liebrecht's mother arrived in the camp, unwell but content to spend her last days near her son. Later, his toddler daughter and her caretaker also arrived at Theresienstadt, affording a brief family reunion before Liebrecht's mother died in the infirmary.

Eva-Maria -- whom most at the camp endearingly called “little fawn” -- became sickly when the caretaker was sent to Auschwitz. Again, the determined effort of a fellow camp inmate, a nurse named Böszi, helped the child recover and thrive.

The family's next destination was Auschwitz, where father and daughter were separated. Liebrecht was among the men who avoided the gas ovens and was sent to hard labor at yet another camp -- but only after a dehumanizing physical inspection by the infamous SS physician Josef Mengele.

Life for the survivors was one of unending burden.

”We were no longer human individuals,” Liebrecht wrote. “We were merely numbers ... sad humans, sights of misery.”

In time, rumors of the war's end mounted as refugees flooded past the camp and gunfire grew ever closer. Meager food and medical supplies dwindled even further, weakening the disheartened prisoners. Liebrecht found himself in a sick room with a severely infected foot.

”I saw black in front of my eyes. I lost consciousness,” he wrote. “Then I caught myself: This is not how the end is supposed to be! See it through! Don't give up! Not now -- perhaps it's only a few more weeks before our liberation!”

He was right. The Holocaust ended with the Russians liberating the camp. The grief, however, was not over for Liebrecht: He learned of the death of his “little fawn.” She had been gassed at Auschwitz, along with her beloved Böszi, who despite the opportunity, refused to leave the child's side.

It was a chance reunion with Dr. Leo Baeck, and an in-depth, thought-provoking discussion on vengeance and forgiveness, that lead Liebrecht to find renewed faith to continue on. Yes, Hitler's influence was like an infectious disease that made “the real Germany into an unworthy nation,” Baeck told Liebrecht. But, he added, “injustice cannot be healed by injustice.”

Liebrecht took these words to heart. There was something extraordinary about the man, remembers Osborne, who met him in person in 1969 in Freiburg, Germany, while she and her family lived in Germany for a year.

”He was such a pleasant man,” she said. “Not only my husband and I, but our two sons, aged 14 and 16 at the time, became friends with him. Each of them went back to visit him again.”

Twenty-five years later, a few years after Liebrecht's death, Osborne received a copy of his memoir, which had been published posthumously. Widowed by then, Osborne was temporarily away from her Arcata home, serving in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea. There, the book gained popularity with her German-speaking colleagues.

In 2003, Osborne formed a California public benefit nonprofit corporation in order to save documentation concerning her family's dispersal all over the globe after Hitler came to power. One of the volunteers helping with this archive expressed interest in writing a book about the family's history. Osborne thought the volunteer would benefit from reading Liebrecht's book.

”So, in January 2008, I started translating it for her, and while working on the translation, I began to realize the book's wider importance and decided I'd like to publish it,” she said.

Osborne believes this memoir will be especially helpful as supplementary reading for college students in a variety of courses. She believes its lessons are as timeless as the advice Baeck gave Liebrecht more than 60 years ago:

”Your task, the purpose of your life,” he said, “is to participate, to the best of your ability, so that brute force, force of any type, is not ever the victor.”

RAY RAPHAEL AND JAIMAL YOGIS

This weekend brings two author events to Northtown Books.

Ray Raphael will present his new book, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, at Northtown Books on Friday, June 12 at 7 pm.

Founders is Raphael’s largest and most ambitious book, a daring attempt to recreate an “honest history” of our nation’s founding by skipping over nineteenth century distortions and returning to primary sources from Revolutionary times. It’s a sweeping narrative, starting with the beginnings of unrest in 1761 and ending with the ratification of the Bill of Rights thirty years later. To keep his rendition intimate, Raphael focuses of seven lead characters — not the usual cast, but a far more diverse lot. For the first time, Raphael interweaves the new bottom-up approach, the favorite of social historians in recent years, with traditional top-down history, moving back and forth between leading figures inside chambers and the people “out-of-doors.”

Ray Raphael has written many books, several of which are about local Humboldt history. His first book, An Everyday History of Somewhere, won the Commonwealth Club award for the best book of the year about California. He recently collaborated with Freeman House on the first part of a projected multi-volume history of Humboldt County, Two Peoples, One Place.

For more info on Ray Raphael, go here.

On the very next night, author Jaimal Yogis presents his new book, Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea, Saturday, June 13th at 7:30 at Northtown Books.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about it:

A journalist, photographer, surfer and Zen Master, Yogis began the life of a roving seeker his junior year of high school, when he ran away from his Sacramento, Calif. home to learn how to surf in Hawaii. His subsequent travels include a handful of prime surfing spots, but Yogis’s more arresting journey is spiritual, taking him to monasteries in France and Berkley, Calif., and deep into the living tradition of Zen Buddhism. Captured here in short chapters and wonderful, visual prose, Yogis’s coming-of-age odyssey also takes readers into the culture of indigenous Hawaiians, who believe the gods were surfers. Yogis’s long-time surfing mentor Rom provides insight into the science of surfing, ocean swells, the bathymetry of the continental shelf, deep water canyons and sea mounts. Even land lovers will find Yogis’s lessons resonant and entertaining, but surfers will find this a quick, surprisingly deep tribute to the quest for surf and serenity.

Here's a short film on Jaimal and the book:

WICKED PLANTS

Local author Amy Stewart will discuss and sign her new book Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities at Northtown Books May 17th at 3 pm.

A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature's most appalling creations in an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend.

Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.

Here's a video preview of the book:

Please help us welcome Amy back to Northtown Books.

For much more information on this and Amy's other books and articles, go to her own website.

UPDATE: The New York Times comes to visit Amy in Eureka. (link via NCJ Blogthing)

BARBARA KERLEY

Friday, May 8th at 6 pm, Northtown Books welcomes local author Barbara Kerley.

A former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, and a one-time resident of Guam, she brings a unique life experience to her work.

She's written a wide variety of books for young people, on subjects as various as Walt Whitman, the artist who introduced dinosaurs to the world, and the importance of water in the world.

Her new book from National Geographic Books, One World, One Day, follows children around the world as they get up, wash up, and start a new day. It's an elegant picture book with contributions from top international photographers.

Her book What to Do About Alice? was recently reviewed in the New York Times, and you can read an interview with her here.

ANNE IGOU

On Friday March 13th AT 7 PM , local artist Anne Igou presents her new book I Can't Believe I'm Creating Millefiore, and shares her techniques for creating polymer clay jewelry.

Millefiore means "a thousand flowers" and imitates the look of intricate Italian glass art.

Anne has taught workshops all over the country, and has made appearances on several national television shows. At Northtown, she'll do a demonstration of how she creates her pieces.

Please join us this Friday.

THREE POETS READ

Friday, October 24th at 7:30 pm, Northtown Books hosts a poetry reading featuring three locally based poets: Therese Keslin, Vanessa Pike and Tim'm West.

Therese Keslin and Vanessa Pike are founders of the Humboldt poetry collective A Reason to Listen, which has hosted poetry slams at the Accident Gallery. They've also collaborated on a chapbook called Excavating the History of Love in addition to their own solo work.

Tim'm West is an educator, essayist, poet, and rapper educated at at Duke and Stanford Universities. He is the author of the poetic memoir Red Dirt Revival and recorded a CD to accompany it, Songs From Red Dirt. He's also recently released a new CD, Blakkboy Blue(s) and its literary complement Flirting.

A Strange Breed of Folks

This Friday former Humboldt Times journalist Mel Lavine comes to Northtown to share stories from his recently published memoir, A Strange Breed of Folks: Tales from the World's Second Oldest Profession.

Lavine met and inteviewed many notables who passed through the area during his time in Humboldt in the fifties and early sixties - a down and out Billie Holliday, playing a week of shows in Eureka near the end of her life, Joe Louis (refereeing a wrestling match at the Eureka Muni), and Richard Nixon on a 1962 campaign stop here (seen on the cover of the book). He also was a pioneer in local network news here. The second part of Lavine's book deals with his later decades in network news in New York where he worked with Barbara Walters, Charles Kuralt and Walter Cronkite.

Help us welcome Mr. Lavine back to Humboldt this Friday, September 5th, from 7 to 9 pm.