The Top One Story of 2010

What a year it was. We said goodbye to the Samoa peninsula after the Great Oct. 18 tsunami; the only people that will ever again inhabit towns like Manila and Samoa and Fairhaven will be underwater archaeologists, perhaps of the extraterrestrial variety. Three days later, the great earthquake swallowed Petrolia and transported its citizenry to Middle-Earth. We bid them goodbye with the hopes that they would finally find the hobbits they had spent their lives seeking.

Newly elected Governor Woody Harrelson legalized marijuana by fiat, and was iconically photographed blowing smoke rings in Humboldt State President Rollin Richmond's face. In response, the city of Arcata changed its name to "Pot City U.S.A." and rolled out the green carpet for the governor's star-studded weed junkets (proceeds to charity). Later, for the sake of convenience, the state Capitol was moved to Redway's Mateel Community Center, and the legislature changed its schedule to accommodate regular Ziggy Marley shows.

The City of Fortuna packed up, brick by brick and board by board, and rebuilt itself exactly to scale on an empty ice floe bordering Wasilla, Alaska. In early telegrams home our former neighbors reported that the climate was remarkably invigorating, though we haven't heard from them in some time.

Looking back, though, none of these events -- momentous and even world-historical though they may have been -- had anything like the pure human drama of year's most gripping story, which, in retrospect, reads like something out of a fable from ancient Greece. This story -- the struggle, the triumph, the defeat -- will be told around campfires so long as there are humans to tell it. We devote our issue to it.

(Click to biggify)

For Rob.