For reasons of space, as well as a general exhaustion from my personal life that has set in with the coming seasonal shift, I am going to keep this intro brief. Sometimes it's good for a writer to shut up and let the facts speak for themselves. This a busy week full of exciting happenings, with diverse talent galore. You will find some gold in this flow, I promise you. Beyond that, I'll leave you with a snippet from the poet W.H. Auden, who was writing about a September date long ago, one with more weight and consequence.

"There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die."

You heard the man, skedaddle and get to it.

Thursday

I'm happy to suggest another unique show at the always interesting venue known as the Sanctuary. This time it's a nice bit of chamber music titled Cozy Classicals and put on by a talented quartet of locals Julie Fulkerson, Jesse Alms, Katie Swisher and Holly MacDonell. There's a pre-show dinner option at 6 p.m., which requires reservations and tickets from sanctuaryarcata.org. This will run you between $20-$50. If you'd like to skip the meal and just catch the show, the doors open at 6:45 p.m., where you can grab a ticket for $10-$20 and settle in by the 7 p.m. program starting time. Works for me.

Friday

The Brothers Comatose are a lively string band whose repertoire spans the roots range of Americana, from bluegrass to country and beyond. This quintet has a fairly large following, no doubt due in large part to its exciting stage presence and high degree of musicianship. You can find out for yourself at Humbrews at 9 p.m., where local pickers Fickle Hill will provide the opening salvo ($25, $20 advance).

Saturday

Brazil is a massive nation whose considerable size and diversity is met and matched by its cultural exports, particularly its musicians. We were blessed recently with a visit by the groundbreaking psychedelic Tropicalia band Os Mutantes, and tonight we are once again treated to the presence of another, albeit more contemporary, innovative artist from the largest nation in South America. Rogê is a singer, songwriter and (mainly classical) guitarist whose work pushes the samba of his homeland into new mutations with pop and world music. He has a great many collaborations on his CV, including with the breakthrough Brazilian songsmith Seu Jorge and the massively popular soft surf rocker Jack Johnson, with whom he released two tunes last year. He's a hard cat to pin down genre-wise, to be honest, but talented in a way few musicians can translate so effortlessly across cultures. This is going to be a great show, I can just feel it. And it's going down in the intimate space of the Miniplex, with a ticket price ($18, $15 advance) that seems like a steal. Do yourself a favor and check out this one at 9 p.m. It's my certified pick of the week.

Sunday

Let's assume I don't have to sway anyone regarding their desire to attend or avoid the last day of the North Country Fair, and instead focus on a fun Sunday workshop a few miles north at the Trinidad Town Hall. Musician and Westhaven Center for the Arts affiliate Rob Diggins is putting on a "play-in" for youngsters, aspiring teenage musicians, their parents and legal guardians, and any of the young at heart who have an interest in learning some of the basics of the stringed family of acoustic musical instruments, from the bowed to the plucked and strummed. This free workshop runs from 3 to 4:30 p.m., and ought to be a blast for those of you out there looking for a more productive and less crowded, group collaboration than the aforementioned fair.

Monday

It's a quiet night on the Redwood Range, so instead of live events, I'm going to suggest a little history exploration. The 1960s have always been something of a mythical enigma to those of us — particularly Americans — born in the decades after. This decade of tumult and change happens to be bookended by two unrelated events, both occurring on Sept. 18, that were parts of a larger political and cultural gestalt that shifted the world at large, and probably not for the better. First up, in 1961, was the death of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, over modern Zambia (then called Rhodesia), in a plane crash while en route to negotiate a ceasefire in the Congo. The crash was then, as it is now, considered suspicious, the first of a series of strange deaths of populist figures like Patrice Lumumba and JFK, that it could be argued are smeared with the fingerprints of a certain American intelligence agency that has (again, arguably) served as the muscle for the U.S. power elite since its inception. Hammarskjöld remains the youngest elected U.N. Secretary General, the only person posthumously given a Nobel Peace Prize and a diplomat held in the highest regard by the aforementioned youngest elected U.S. President, who would go to his early grave two years later. That's enough political intrigue; let's talk culture for a second. Because on this date at the other side of the '60s (in 1970, to be exact), one of the greatest musical innovators of the electric age also met his tragically early end, a victim of the drug culture excesses that helped define the era's youth movement. I have always considered Jimi Hendrix to be one of the few genuine "what ifs" of the forever 27 club, as I think the breadth of his genius is so vast that he would likely have created masterpieces for the full span of a longer life. This is about the closest that I come to entertaining counterfactuals. We are stuck in this timeline for now and all we can do is study, reflect and guess. Better thinkers than me will tell you something similar.

Tuesday

Popular Samoan American reggae artist J. Boog is back in town, setting up shop at the Arcata Theatre Lounge tonight at 7 p.m. for an evening of So-Cal/Jamaican vibrations. Openers THRIVE! are cut from a similar style, and the tickets range from $39.50 for general admission, to a pre-show meet and greet with the headliner for an extra hundred bucks. Choose wisely.

Wednesday

Midweek seems as good a time as ever for a jam band gig and this group is still fresh enough to catch them on the exciting upswing part of the career. As with many bands in this genre, Eggy has a funny, slightly annoying and memorable name. I am told the group does the noodling, building and delivering act very well. Only one way for you to really find out though: Head over to Humbrews at 8 p.m. where you can snag a $19 door ticket if you didn't grab a $16 advance stub. Party on.

Collin Yeo (he/him) is hanging on like a grandfather barnacle to the ship of Better Times Ahead. He lives in Arcata.