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December 15, 2005
TICKERTAPE: The Eureka Police Department
and the California Highway Patrol announced a new
mutual service agreement, in which the CHP will help out in patrolling
much of downtown Eureka for the next six months ... Kat Zimmerman,
the Critical Mass organizer arrested in last month's Eureka-Arcata
bicycle ride, was charged last week on six counts relating to
the incident, including felony assault on a CHP officer. After
the hearing, Zimmerman and her supporters walked up to the fourth
floor of the courthouse and met with DA Paul Gallegos
and attempted to make the case that it was the police who assaulted
the Critical Mass riders, not the other way around.
A state appeals court reversed a 2003 Humboldt
County Superior Court decision in the case of EPIC v. California
Department of Forestry. The earlier ruling invalidated the
Pacific Lumber Co.'s Sustained Yield Plan, a document
that set out the company's logging rights over the next 100 years,
on the grounds that it did not conform to state forest practice
regulations. The appellate judge disagreed. ... Meanwhile, protests
continued around a Pacific Lumber timber harvesting operation
near Nanning Creek in the south county.
Two environmental organizations, Californians
for Alternatives to Toxics and Humboldt Baykeeper,
threatened to file a lawsuit against the current and former owners
of a plywood mill near the foot of Del Norte St. in Eureka unless
more was done to prevent alleged dioxin runoff from the site
into Humboldt Bay.
McKinleyville resident Pat Higgins, a fisheries
biologist and a member of the local Democratic Central Committee's
board of directors, announced that he would run against first-term
Fifth District Supervisor Jill Geist in next year's elections.
THE HOSTEL AND THE HOTEL: It looks like
Eureka may get both, after all. At last Tuesday's surprisingly
civil meeting of the Eureka City Council, both the backers of
the "eco-hostel," a proposed youth hostel and technology
demonstration center, and the Hampton Inn, an upscale hotel,
got to make their pitches for a vacant piece of land on the Eureka
waterfront. (See the Journal's Dec. 1 cover story, "Eco-hostel
or eco-hostile," for more background on the issue.) While
it initially seemed like an either/or kind of proposition, everyone
concerned seemed to bend over backward to find a place for both
projects. After hours of testimony from residents, the city council
declined to make a decision right away. Instead, city representatives
undertook to meet with both sides to see if either of them might
instead be interested in another vacant, city-owned spot on the
waterfront, this one near the Adorni Center.
YUMMY HOLIDAY TRASH: Fortuna residents in
the Home Avenue and Carson Woods Road area have been complaining
of late of a bear ravaging their trash receptacles, reports the
Fortuna Police Department. The bear reportedly is "damaging
property" in its beary haste to get to the tasty leftovers
that humans have scorned as unfit for consumption.
The FPD rightly points the finger at the humans,
and admonishes them to bear-proof their homes and property and
to not enact violence upon the bear. "It would be against
the law for any citizen to harm or otherwise dispose of the bear
because it was only damaging their property," says the FPD
in a news release.
Instead, citizens should contact the state Department
of Fish Game (445-6493). But even more important, do that bear-proofing:
Deodorize trash cans with bleach or ammonia; double-bag garbage;
put wet garbage in an odor-tight container; freeze meat bones
and other smelly items until pick-up day; clean those BBQ grills;
pick up fallen tree fruit; put away pet food and bird feeders
at night; close windows at night to keep the beasts from blundering
in for a midnight snack; don't leave that pie (or any other food)
to cool on the window sill; close off crawl spaces; and install
bear-proof garbage and compost containers.
Sure, it's a chore -- but you're in the bear's
neighborhood and it's just trying to survive, says DFG wildlife
biologist Jeff Dayton. He offers perhaps the best suggestion
of all: Put your trash cans out the day of pick up, not the night
before. "A bear may figure out that trash day is Monday
and may make the rounds there Sunday night," Dayton says.
"Bears are smart. And, we're habituating bears to trash.
The bears typically come through under the cover of night. Raccoons
do this sort of stuff, too." But the DFG actually hasn't
had too many bear reports, says Dayton, and he figures the FPD
is merely "being proactive" with its news release.
"This time of year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas,
there tends to be a lot of food trimmings in the trash cans,"
Dayton says. "So there tends to be turkey and ham smells
in the trash cans ... and the garbage is a little more ripe than
usual."
MONKEYWRENCH ARRESTS: In what appears to
be a walloping message delivered to all would-be idealists turned
scary destructionists, six people across the nation were arrested
Dec. 7 and indicted by federal grand juries on charges that they
participated in one or more attacks on businesses and infrastructure
(a lumber mill, a tree farm, an animal plant inspection facility,
a power tower) in Oregon and Washington state between 1998 and
2001, according to a Dec. 8 news release from the United States
Attorney's Office. The release notes that the Earth Liberation
Front and Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for
some of the attacks, but does not link any of those arrested.
Sarah Kendall Harvey, also known as Kendall Tankersley,
was one of those arrested. Associated Press writer Jeff Barnard,
who wrote about the arrests on Dec. 9, reveals that Harvey noted
in a job application with Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff
(where she began work this fall) that she graduated from Humboldt
State University with a B.A. in cellular and molecular biology.
Barnard also notes that she previously worked for a nonprofit
in Eureka.
Harvey, arrested in Flagstaff, was charged with
taking part in a 1998 fire at U.S. Forest Industries in Medford,
Ore. (She was not, however, indicated in the downing of a high-tension
power tower owned by the Bonneville Power Administration near
Bend in 1999.) "That fire caused an estimated $500,000 in
damage," writes the U.S. Attorney's Office. If found guilty,
Harvey "faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison."
1091 411: Some may remember our very first
Reader's Request column back in October, when we answered bluesman
Don Haupt's burning question -- what's the deal with that funky
warship docked on the east side of the Samoa Bridge? Well, for
those of you interested in the current activities of the Ten
Ninety One -- a land craft infantry ship that served in World
War II and the Korean War -- it was officially donated to the
Humboldt Bay Naval Sea/Air Museum last weekend.
Ralph Davis, of McKinleyville, the 72-year-old
former owner of the ship, which he used mainly for albacore fishing,
happily bid the Ten Ninety One bon voyage but said that
he'd "still be attached to it and that kind of stuff."
The ship will remain where it's been moored for years until a
new home is found for it, possibly in Fields Landing.
The Journal welcomes Humboldtcentric questions
like Haupt's. Send your query to newsroom@northcoastjournal.com
and write "Reader's Request" in the subject line.
CONGRATS! She's into books, worms, dirt,
chickens and blogging. Her hair's kind of wild and she's been
known to whack herself in the face with a thorn bush now and
then, but we promise she's not mental. In fact, we're so keen
on Amy Stewart we asked her write to about her favorite things
in a column for the Journal every week. Our gardener/bookworm/writer
friend from Eureka is so very talented, in fact, she just won
a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship, one
of 50 people to do so in the prose category -- among them Pulitzer
Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri. (We should also mention that other
local stars, Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater
in Blue Lake, also won an NEA grant for their Peer Gynt
project, which will wrap up this week and tour again next summer
and fall.)
Stewart's fellowship will go toward her work on
an upcoming book, Gilding the Lily: The Quest for the Perfect
Flower, which is due out next year. She is the author of
From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden and The
Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms,
which was named the winner of the 2005 California Horticultural
Society's Writer's Award and a "Best Book" of the year
by the San Jose Mercury News. She was also picked for the Discovery
Channel's Book Club Selection, Barnes & Noble's Discover
Great New Authors program and has been praised up and down in
major newspapers and magazines like The New York Times,
Washington Post, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly
and many others. Guess that dirt fetish paid off. You go, Amy.
CORRECTION: While we have no doubts that
Siskiyou Land Conservancy director Greg King's daughter is a
genius, we incorrectly said in last week's issue ("Putting
the civilization back in wilderness") that she would be
"attending HSU soon." Egads, the child's just entering
grade school -- we regret having wished upon the lass a curtailed
childhood as well as the premature advent of credit card offers
flooding her family's mailbox. Sorry.
Mad scientists abound in Eureka
But show creator says any resemblance to reality
purely coincidental
by HANK SIMS
Is Eureka nothing more than a secret government
conspiracy?
There are no doubt plenty of Humboldt County residents
who would be intrigued by the idea, and soon they will have an
opportunity to mull it over at length. For such is the premise
of Eureka, a new television show that will begin airing
on the SciFi Channel -- a cable network -- in the summer of next
year.
The show was created by 36-year-old writer Andrew
Cosby, who works both in television production and in comic books
-- his previous show, Haunted, ran on the UPN television
network.
Reached at his Los Angeles office Tuesday, Cosby
said that he as never been to Humboldt County, and that the town
in his series is not meant to be Eureka, Calif., exactly. He
said that he got the name of his fictional town by looking at
maps.
"It just seemed like the perfect name,"
he said. Apart from the scientific connotations of the word "Eureka"
-- the Greek philosopher Archimedes is said to have shouted it
when he happened upon a novel method for calculating the volume
of an object -- for Cosby, the name had a sort of Everytown quality.
"If the government was hiding a small town,
they'd want to give it a John Smith kind of name," he said.
"The Simpsons has its Springfield; we'll have Eureka."
(Originally, the show was to be called Eurekaville).
Small-town life is the subject of the series, albeit
small-town life of a very peculiar sort. According to a press
release from the SciFi Channel, the show concerns a "picturesque
hamlet" located in the Pacific Northwest that is "shrouded
in secrecy." In fact, the entire town is a secret government
project, one designed to tuck all America's brightest scientific
minds into an obscure corner of the country in order to conduct
clandestine research.
The scientists are none too careful with their
experimentation, however. Things blow up; neighbors get mad at
one another; hijinks ensue.
For Cosby -- who describes his show as "Twin
Peaks meets Northern Exposure" -- placing his
fictional Eureka in the Pacific Northwest was an important element
in setting the story, even if it could lead to viewers confusing
his town with the actual Eureka.
"Definitely, the Pacific Northwest setting
felt right, with the trees and the mountains," he said.
"For me, I love the towering feel -- the redwood wall. If
the government has tucked away a town, they'd want it among the
giants."
Anecdotally, it seems that the Pacific Northwest
has become an increasingly popular setting for novels, movies
and television shows. Last year, Eureka native Josh Emmons published
his debut novel, The Loss of Leon Meed. Emmons' novel,
which was widely reviewed, took place in Eureka and, like the
upcoming TV show, painted the small town in a somewhat paranormal
or supernatural light.
Jim Dodge, one of Humboldt County's most successful
authors of fiction and poetry, said he believes that writers
find the Pacific Northwest an attractive fictional setting for
a number of reasons. There are the region's declining natural
resource industries, its environmental awareness, its orientation
toward Asia rather than Europe -- all issues facing America as
a whole in the 21st century.
In Humboldt County specifically, Dodge said, the
county's renown as a center of marijuana production can serve
as a ready-made plot device sure to draw readers in.
"This is outlaw country, and American has
always had a romance with outlaws," he said.
But while the specific setting of Eureka,
the show -- a strange, exotic small town isolated from the rest
of America, with many secrets hidden beneath its surface -- may
in many ways feel like Humboldt County, Dodge said that he didn't
believe there was anything unique about the city of Eureka in
that regard.
"It's strange underneath the surface everywhere,"
he said. "In America, especially, there's always this appearance
of daily quotidian life, and underneath that are all these seething
passions. I don't think that is particular to Eureka, except
the isolation."
The series will be filmed in Vancouver, Canada.
That causes Humboldt County Film Commissioner Barbara Bryant
some consternation. Bryant hadn't heard about the series before
last week, and never had the opportunity to pitch executives
from the SciFi Channel on the benefits of filming in Humboldt
County.
She said the county could still profit from the
show, though.
"The more we brand Eureka or Humboldt County,
the more interest you raise," she said. "It gives us
the opportunity to expand the production industry's image of
what Eureka has to offer, and we plan to take advantage of that."
Bryant added that many productions are filmed in
Vancouver because the Canadian government offers companies tax
breaks to film there, and that she and others are lobbying the
California legislature to offer similar breaks in order to keep
production at home.
Even though the TV Eureka will not be our
Eureka, exactly, there are still plenty of creative scientific
researchers who call the Victorian Seaport home. Among them is
David Kornreich, a physics professor at Humboldt State University.
Kornreich -- whose recent scholarly paper, "N-Body
Galaxy Dynamics Simulations on a Homogeneous Beowulf Cluster,"
presented to the American Astronomical Society last year, discusses
the potential of using a particular mathematical model and a
clustered supercomputer to help determine the distribution of
dark matter in our galaxy -- said Monday that the show sounded
appealing.
"I like the idea of a super-secret government
conspiracy of top minds," he said.
Uh oh. However, Kornreich said he was not aware
of any such program funding the innovative work being done by
Humboldt County researchers.
"I don't think there's any conspiracies involved,"
he said. "If there were, I wouldn't tell you, though."
The last major television series to take place
in Humboldt County was "Just the Ten Of Us," a short-lived
sitcom from the late 1980s in which a man relocates his family
of 10 to Eureka in order to take a coaching job at a Catholic
high school.
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