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March 27, 2003
OUR
EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT:
Feeling
Belgian
by ARNO
HOLSCHUH
AS CHANCE WOULD HAVE IT, I WAS
IN BRUSSELS WHEN THE WAR started. As a first attempt was made
to "decapitate" Iraq with the aid of bunker-busting
bombs, I was eating cheese croquettes and talking national security
as part of a conference organized by the Fulbright commission.
It was surreal. We were in the
headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the most
powerful military alliance in the world. But little was said
about Iraq -- France, Belgium and Germany had resisted any attempts
to draw the alliance into the conflict.
Very noble, but also very boring.
Who wants to hear about Romania's future in NATO when Americans
are getting ready to cross the border into Iraq? In my distraction,
I perused a list of the conference's participants. To my surprise,
I saw a Humboldt connection: JeDon Emenhiser.
Emenhiser
[photo at right], a professor of political science at Humboldt
State, is teaching American Studies on a Fulbright to Belgium
for the next four months. The tall gentleman's dignified air
is softened by a habit of smiling and winking; he looks like
the perfect professor, a combination of rarified intellectualism
and silly fun. When I told him I had written for the North
Coast Journal for two years, he grabbed me under the arm
and grinned; it was the warmest reception I have ever received
for my work at the Journal. His wife, he added, is a faithful
reader and misses it now that she's on the Continent.
We sat next to each other on
the bus to SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe)
and had the conversation that has become obligatory for "expats"
these days: Have you had problems with anti-Americanism?
Emenhiser sat back in his seat
and thought before answering. "Well, I can't think of any
incident where there's been a personal confrontation," he
said carefully. He said that Ireland, where he spent last semester,
was more friendly, but beyond that he hadn't had any trouble.
It surprised me. Almost every
American living in Europe has some tale of hostility to tell
these days, and most Belgians are very much against the war.
My latest experience was having the man next to me in a bar shout
slurred expletives about "the Americans," which immediately
made me regret that I had bought a round of tequila for his table
10 minutes earlier. We were even warned by an American embassy
representative upon our arrival in Belgium to be "inconspicuous."
Most of us laughed at this warning, because we can't speak French.
It's hard to be inconspicuous ordering mussels in sign language.
Emenhiser's relaxed attitude
towards anti-Americanism has its roots in his personal past.
This is not the first time he's been abroad teaching; he has
gone overseas multiple times since he began his academic career
in the early `60s. His first overseas stint was in Vietnam, where
he learned what civil disorder and an unpopular war really meant.
"It was difficult to teach
because of the unrest," he said. "There was the troop
build-up, for one. When we arrived, there were 20,000 military
advisers. When we left, there were 200,000 fighters on the ground.
The prime minister of Vietnam changed four times that year, and
the National Assembly was dissolved."
His students -- his window to
public opinion in any country he teaches in -- were conscientious
and tried to remain concentrated on their work. "They were
serious," he said. But there were occasions when politics
did intrude.
"One time I had a woman
burst into the middle of class to ask if she could address the
students. I looked at the class to see what they wanted to do,
and they nodded. She started yelling that the students should
go on strike in protest of the arrest of a dissident.
"The students didn't want
to," Emenhiser went on, "but the woman became very
`convincing'" -- read threatening. It was a time when politically
motivated violence was widespread, and reprisals for failing
to show the sufficient amount of solidarity weren't unusual.
"The students were intimidated.
I suggested continuing the instruction at my home, but they thought
that would be too dangerous."
And what of his current students
-- what do they show him about how Belgians are responding to
the war?
"They are perplexed,"
he said. Looking at the situation from the outside, they cannot
understand why there was such a rush to war.
"Belgian students are rational,"
he said, and the facts didn't seem to add up in their accounting.
During a teleconference with American students he had organized,
the Belgians kept on responding to the impassioned pleas of the
Americans with cool European logic.
"I was proud of them,"
he said, "for being able to support their position without
thumping on the table, like the Americans do sometimes."
We got back to the hotel and
everyone went back to their rooms to watch the news. Listening
to the moderators on MSNBC talk with visible excitement about
our superweapons, I got the feeling that at least some of my
countrymen are irrationally gleeful about the prospect of exercising
our military supremacy.
And I suddenly felt very, very
Belgian.
HUMBOLDT PEOPLE:
The games real lumberjacks play
story & photos by ANDREW EDWARDS
Little Bill Miller, who is anything
but, stood, his feet braced in the mud, a double-bladed ax gripped
in both hands in front of him. He lined up the target, a large
circular segment of log painted with concentric rings. He lowered
the ax, swinging it back and forth, testing the balance. Then
he drew it back up over his right shoulder and let fly, the ax
whipping through the air to land with a solid "thunk"
in the center of the target. Bullseye.
The double buck, single buck,
hot saw, stock saw, choker race, log roll and the ax throw --
what Miller was doing -- were all on display last week at Redwood
Acres Fairgrounds. It was the first professional lumberjack competition
that Humboldt County had seen in four years.
"I
thought it went great," said Len Nielson, Pacific Lumber
Co. forester by day and coach of the Humboldt State University
logging sports team by night. [photo
at left] Nielson, who put the whole
thing together, wasn't completely satisfied, however. "We
could have had a better crowd," he said.
Small groups of spectators lined
the fence across from the competition all day last Friday, but
few ventured any closer to the action.
The field of competition was
a muddy, log-strewn field in the center of the Redwood Acres
racetrack. In one corner was a tarp-lined tank with rolling logs.
Four massive fir trunks doubled as an obstacle course and a base
for the chainsaw logging competitions.
Men, and a few women, scurried
from event to event, doubling as timers and judges, tossing out
criticism and advice.
This was a professional show,
where each individual event promised prizes ranging from $80
for first down to $10 for fifth, and the pros were out. Former
world champions Mike Forrester, Jim Taylor, Rolin Eslinger, and
Miller (who's ostensibly retired) were on hand, driving in from
the heart of logging country, the Pacific Northwest.
These men spend all summer going
from logging show to logging show, and even travel the world
displaying their finesse with a chainsaw or ax.
Miller's wife, Bonni, was once
co-world champion with him in the Jack-and-Jill (a competition
where a man and woman, often husband and wife, use a hand saw
to rip through a log).
Bonni told of a trip to Indonesia
(a big logging area) to compete in the Highland Games, a competition
in traditional Scottish sports that features some lumberjack
elements. The competition there, apparently, is the largest anywhere
outside of Scotland. She said people were shocked when they saw
the 6'5" Miller on the street, treating him like a circus
attraction.
"They just couldn't believe
the size of him," Miller said, describing the Indonesian
reaction. "It was rather funny."
Other competitors told of trips
to Spain, Australia, New Zealand and all over the United States
for competitions.
"You can travel all over
the world doing this," Miller said.
The
Millers' son Robin, in his early twenties, is continuing the
family tradition. Which isn't unusual; many lumberjacks today
are competing in sports that their fathers and grandfathers competed
in. As Nielson pointed out, lumberjack families are just like
that.
"My daughter got her first
metal ax when she turned 3. She chops," he said. His daughter
is now 4 years old. "In lumberjack families it's not `lets
go get the football,' it's `grab the ax and let's go play.'"
Nielson, like many of the other
young competitors, got his start on a college team. The HSU team
he coaches has 23 members of both genders. They're looked at
a little differently than the ones who come up out of logging
families, "the college kids" they're called, but are
soon assimilated in the family atmosphere of the lumberjack circuit.
Some of the competitions, such
as ax throwing and log rolling, are no longer considered useful
in the modern world of mechanized logging, but many of them still
are. Chokers, long steel cables used in the choker race competitions,
are still set to drag logs out of the forest. Hand saws, like
the ones used in double buck and single buck competitions, are
still used in federal forests where chainsaws are prohibited.
And the chainsaw, of course, never fell out of fashion.
At the end of more than two
hours of competition the show closed up with prize envelopes
handed out to the winners. The pros walked away with most of
the money, though for many it didn't even come close to their
expenses for coming to the show. But, with the lumberjack show
season not really kicking off till June, this was just a warm
up, and a chance to see old friends from the tour.
"The pros came and they've
said they're gonna come back next year," Nielson said, looking
tired after a day of judging the events and shouting out start
times. "We're all real energetic people; we always have
a good time."
The next chance to see a (nonprofessional)
logging competition is on April 26, 2003 at Fort Humboldt Days
in Eureka.
Scare
tactics
by KEITH
EASTHOUSE
At least three times now, the
Pacific Lumber Co. has threatened to sue Humboldt County for
legal fees and damages if District Attorney Paul Gallegos goes
ahead with a lawsuit charging the timber concern with fraud.
The first time was at the March
11 Board of Supervisors meeting, when Ukiah-based PL lawyer Jared
Carter talked ominously of the consequences of a "malicious
prosecution." In a letter last week, Edgar Washburn, a San
Francisco-based attorney who does work for PL, bluntly warned
Gallegos the company would sue if the suit isn't withdrawn. Finally,
in this week's Arcata Eye, PL communications director
Jim Branham was quoted as saying, "We will consider all
our legal options, and they could well include recovering our
costs."
The warnings have all been accompanied
by claims that Gallegos' suit has no legal merit and that it
contains significant factual errors. And they have had an impact.
After Carter spoke at the March
11 meeting, more than one supervisor voiced concern that the
DA's suit was exposing the county to a potentially dangerous
liability. Concern about liability, along with doubts about the
merits of the suit, were two major reasons the board rejected
Gallegos' request to bring in a San Francisco Bay Area law firm
with expertise in corporate fraud to help him litigate the case.
Additionally, the liability
issue has been brandished as proof that Gallegos' suit is reckless
by leaders of a fledgling movement to recall Gallegos. The movement
is being headed up by Robin Arkley, father of businessman Rob
Arkley and the former owner of Blue Lake Forest Products.
As worrisome as it may sound
to some, it turns out that all this sword-rattling probably doesn't
signify much.
According to David LaBahn, interim
executive director of the California District Attorneys Association,
it is common for a defendant to file a motion for dismissal on
the grounds that the case against it has no merit. It is also
common for a defendant to claim that it is the victim of a malicious
prosecution.
What is not common -- indeed,
what is almost unheard of -- is for a defendant to successfully
countersue a district attorney for malicious prosecution and
obtain monetary damages.
"It's often threatened
but very rarely if ever" is a malicious prosecution motion
granted, LaBahn said in a telephone interview last week from
his Sacramento office.
The reason, he explained, is
that district attorneys are shielded from damages liability;
if they weren't, it would seriously weaken their ability to prosecute
cases on behalf of the public.
"As long as we are acting
within the course and scope of our duties we have absolute immunity,"
La Bahn said. Absent clear proof that a district attorney is
intent on, as LaBahn put it, "screwing up someone's life,"
a DA does not need to worry about getting financially penalized
for doing his or her job.
Which explains why Gallegos
seems completely unfazed by PL's threats. "We're solid on
what we have. Our decisions are driven by evidence and law,"
Gallegos said this week.
In an interview with the Journal
10 days ago, Gallegos suggested he might launch a counter-attack
of his own. He said that PL may have made a mistake in making
public a March 10 letter from Washburn to Carter, the PL lawyer.
The letter, a "preliminary
assessment" of Gallegos' case, was made available to the
supervisors apparently to persuade them to reject Gallegos' bid
to bring in an outside law firm. But Gallegos said that in making
the letter public, Pacific Lumber's lawyers may have inadvertently
waived attorney-client privilege.
If a judge were to see it that
way, it could be a boon to Gallegos' case. "There might
be all sorts of interesting materials that we normally wouldn't
have access to," Gallegos said.
"It would be kind of a
shame for them," Gallegos went on, "but our job if
they've opened the door is to walk in."
SPI
settles suit
Sierra Pacific Industries has
agreed to a $1.2 million settlement that requires it to clean
up contaminated soils and groundwater at its Arcata Mill, located
near Manila.
The agreement also requires
the company to study the levels of pollution in sediment and
aquatic life in the Mad River Slough, a popular fishing and crabbing
spot immediately adjacent to the plant.
If those studies show that pollution
from the mill poses a risk to human health, wildlife and the
environment, then the company must undertake a more extensive
cleanup -- one that could mean digging up and hauling away tons
of contaminated sediment in the slough and even out in Humboldt
Bay.
"Hopefully, this will ultimately
help put people at ease about eating fish and shellfish from
Humboldt Bay," said Jim Lamport of the Ecological Rights
Foundation, a Garberville group.
David Dun, a Eureka lawyer representing
SPI, said that even before the settlement agreement it was "a
foregone conclusion" that some level of cleanup would need
to be conducted at the mill site.
The settlement is the result
of a lawsuit filed three years ago by the Ecological Rights group.
The suit spurred the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control
Board to more vigorously regulate the mill, site of a groundwater
plume contaminated with high levels of a now banned wood treatment
chemical called pentachlorophenol.
Penta, as its called, is usually
associated with dioxin, one of the deadliest of all man-made
chemicals.
Last spring the Ecological Rights
group found low but still potentially hazardous levels of dioxin
in shellfish near the plant. Later tests conducted by an SPI
consultant found dioxin in commercial oysters out in the bay,
but there is disagreement about whether those levels pose a health
hazard.
In October federal magistrate
Judge Maria Elena James of San Francisco ruled that the Arcata
Mill had been in chronic violation of the Clean Water Act for
several years.
Almost half of the settlement
-- $500,000 -- will go toward the California Fish and Game Department
for wetlands restoration and acquisition in Humboldt Bay. The
remainder will go to the Ecological Rights group.
Fred Evenson, a lawyer for the
group, said the money would be used in part to conduct "confirmation
sampling" to ensure the accuracy of SPI's environmental
and health study.
-- reported by Keith Easthouse
$9
million and counting
The news was grim at the Board
of Supervisors meeting Tuesday: At least an $8.6 million, or
14 percent, hit straight to the gut of the county's general fund.
The reason for the budget shortfall
is that money left over from last year that helped balance the
budget has all but dried up. In addition, the county is paying
more for insurance and retirement funds and just basic operating
materials than ever before.
"Costs are just going up,"
said County Administrative Officer Loretta Nickolaus.
And that might not be the half
of it. Due to the uncertainty inherent in the legislative process,
cuts resulting from the California's massive budget crunch have
yet to be factored in.
"I can't overestimate the
magnitude of the budget uncertainty we're facing," Assistant
County Administrative Officer Karen Suiker told the board.
CR
budget update
Gov. Gray Davis signed a mid-year
budget cut bill last week that was not quite as draconian as
has been expected, at least for some.
The cuts, which total $161 million,
include $711,000 from this year's College of the Redwoods budget.
CR officials had feared the reduction would be $900,000.
"We are pleased that we
now know exactly what reduction we are dealing with," said
CR President Casey Crabill. "However, the message delivered
to community colleges is that next year's budget problem will
be even more severe than this year's."
CR will be forced to offer fewer
class sections next year and fewer summer offerings. Students
are encouraged to register early.
Still undecided is the matter
of tuition, which almost certainly will rise from the current
$11 per unit.
Spokesman Paul DeMark said it
may go up in stages, possibly to $15 or $17 a unit by spring
of next year.
Caltrans: no distractions
Caltrans' practice of allowing
the American flag to be draped from freeway overpasses means
that anti-war and even anti-timber banners must be allowed too.
It's all or nothing, ruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit last week in the case of Brown v. California Department
of Transportation.
The result of the decision is
nothing: all signs and banners and even roadside memorials to
car accident victims will be promptly removed, said Rick Knapp,
Caltrans district director in Eureka.
There was a period of time following
the Sept. 11 attacks that local Caltrans' officials and others
throughout the state left flags flying on freeway overpasses.
Anti-timber signs and other spontaneous expressions were promptly
removed.
"That's when the controversy
arose," Knapp said.
On Nov. 27, 2001, two women
in Santa Cruz, concerned over the public's apparent failure to
question the prospect of going to war, hung an anti-war message
adjacent to a flag on Highway 17. When it was removed, they sued
and last week their claim was upheld.
"It's a safety issue, a
distraction for motorists," Knapp said.
Open
meeting violations?
Was the principal of Ferndale
Elementary School terminated for performance or financial reasons?
If the answer is financial,
the school board on March 7 may have violated the state's open
meeting laws, known as the Brown Act, when it voted not to renew
Principal Kathleen Tyzzer's four-year contract.
The Brown Act allows personnel
matters to be debated behind closed doors but strictly limits
discussion to performance reviews, discipline or dismissal. Budgetary
issues must be discussed in open session.
At a contentious public meeting
five days later, Tyzzer resigned rather than accept the termination.
The board voted 4-1 to accept her resignation, with board member
Don Becker dissenting.
Becker, who had missed the March
7 closed session, reminded his fellow board members about the
outcome of a previous Brown Act encounter. The board was sued
by former District Superintendent Carl Del Grande after it terminated
his contract. The board paid Del Grande $60,000 to settle the
case before trial.
It turns out the board also
voted to reduce the teaching staff by 2.6 in the closed session,
another action that Becker said should have taken place in an
open meeting.
Becker resigned from the board
following the meeting and later told the Ferndale Enterprise
he believes the reason for not renewing Tyzzer's contract was
the financial distress of the district. Tyzzer's contract with
benefits is costing the district $91,000 per year.
Billboards
decry use of Indian images
A
state education campaign aimed at American Indians has funded
two local billboards urging consumers to "Stop the sale
of our image: Don't buy the lie" about the use of Indian
imagery on cigarettes.
The identical billboards, located
in Arcata on southbound Highway 101 and in Eureka on the east
side of 101 south of Hawthorne Street, were placed early this
month by the state American Indian Tobacco Education Network
with funds from Prop. 99, the tobacco tax initiative.
The billboards take aim at brands
of cigarettes that use pictures of American Indians on their
packaging.
"The objective is to reduce
the types of public displays that use American Indian imagery
to market and sell products," said Claradina Toya, health
education specialist with the education network, which is based
in Sacramento. "The tobacco industry is profiting by exploiting
our symbols and our practices. The misconception is that American
Indian people are profiting from these (products).
"It's also giving the misconception
that it's OK to smoke if Indians use (tobacco) in ceremonies,"
Toya said.
Two out of five American Indian
people die of tobacco abuse, she added.
Humboldt is one of three targeted
counties for the billboard campaign, Toya said. It and the others,
San Diego and Alameda (in the San Francisco Bay area), were chosen
based in part on the size of their American Indian populations.
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