FOOD & DRINK

Every spring, wildlife rehabilitation groups across Northern California are inundated with calls from people who have come across a baby deer and worry that they’re orphaned. Most of the time, they’re not. Dave Cook fields many of these calls in our area. He’s a facilitator and fawn rehabber...

While you may be familiar with Napa Wine Road, Sonoma County’s seemingly endless string of wineries, the path has a lesser-known, spiritual sibling. Founded in 2015, Oakland’s Cannabis Trail takes travelers on an immersive exploration of the plant through Northern California’s sprawling, redwood-filled landscapes and bustling city streets. Today, the trail announced its collaboration with Visit Oakland, Visit Mendocino County, and the Humboldt County Visitors Bureau. The lush, nine-county trail will add eight new historic landmarks, including Huckleberry Hill Farms in Redway and the Humboldt Cannabis Tours, as well as dispensaries and lounges like Plantshop and The Bohemian Chemist.

SAN FRANCISCO — Continuing a decades-long tradition, the 2023 Nisei Week Court took part in the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival in San Francisco last weekend. After attending the Friendship Reception on Friday evening, they toured San Francisco on Saturday with the 2024 Hawaii Cherry Blossom Festival Court and 2024 Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival Court. They visited the Japanese Tea Garden, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Painted Ladies that are featured in the TV show “Full House.”

Imagine tasting in one place the finest wine and food from four eminent wine regions in the world. No stressful travel plans, no airport delays, no lost luggage — just a fabulous time. Get a ticket to the seventh annual Four Fires Food & Wine Festival presented by the Amador Vintner's Association and have fun sampling delights from France, Italy, Spain and California. This premier wine and food event runs noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 4, at the Amador County Fair and Events Center in Plymouth.

Seanan McGuire (Subterranean ISBN 978-1-64524-192-8, 508pp. $50.00, hc) April 2024. Cover by Carla McNeil. Probably best-known for her Wayward Children series, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winner Seanan McGuire is also a prolific writer of short fiction. McGuire’s second collection (she has two others writing as Mira Grant) is both massive and enchanting. The two dozen stories tend toward darkness but, more often than not, offer a spark of hope as well. The author’s notes preceding each entry provide context and clarity, especially regarding her childhood as a bright but poverty-stricken kid in Northern California to whom libraries – as in the moving “Now Rest, My Dear” and “Good Night, Sleep Tight” – are important locales, scholarships (“Foundational Education”) a necessity, and even the United States Postal Service (“Belief”) is a lifesaver. In some ways, McGuire is a twenty-first century Ray Bradbury – if Bradbury were a queer woman attuned to the dangers of childhood (even fantasy portals cannot provide escape as in the horrifying “In the Land of Rainbows and Ash” and Halloween, naturally, can be perilous: “Heart of Straw”) as well as pandemics (“Ratting”; “So Sharp, So Bright, So Final”; “Vegetables and Vaccines”), dystopian futures dominated by mega-corporations (“File and Forget”), and apocalypse in general (“Coafield’s Catalog of Available Apocalypse Events”). McGuire is nothing if not thematically versatile. She touches on superheroes (“Pedestal” and “Love in the Last Days of a Doomed World”), kaiju (in the poignant “What Everyone Knows”), artificial intelligence (“Mother, Mother, Will You Play With Me?”), discrimination against the mentally ill (“Come Marching In”), racism (“On the Side”), and the need for music (“The Levee Was Dry”). McGuire even offers a Victorian adventure narrative with “Under the Sea of Stars”. There are several reimagined fairy tales. Snow maiden Snegurochka from Russian folklore turns up as babysitter for a privileged and dysfunctional family in the (literally) chilling “Fresh as the New-Fallen Snow”. The story of Snow White is the take-off point for “Rise Up, Rise Up You Children of the Moon”; the clever “Sweet as Sugar Candy” references Hansel and Gretel. One of the strongest entries, novelette “Phantoms of the Midway”, set in a traveling carnival, is loosely based on the Greek myth of Persephone. The magic of cheese, metaphysical retail outlets, and animals transforming into humans are found in the title novella, the delicious “The Proper Thing”. Like several other stories, this final entry in the collection was previously published only on McGuire’s Patreon. So, despite, the lack of original fare (all were published from 2017 through 2020) readers are likely to find fresh tidbits to taste. Highly digestible, often memorable, every delectable – if dark – story in The Proper Thing and Other Stories is worthy of devouring.