News

Don't do this:

A driver weaving his pickup on Highway 101 in Petaluma was arrested early Monday, suspected of driving drunk and traveling with several pounds of marijuana for sale, the CHP said.

A CHP officer spotted the Toyota Tundra at about 2:45 a.m. as it moved unevenly south on the highway near East Washington Street.

The officer pulled over the pickup and gave driver David Lee Thomas, 39, sobriety tests. Thomas was arrested on suspicion of driving drunk.

While checking his truck, officers found a plastic tub holding about 5 pounds of dried marijuana, vacu-sealed and ready for sale, CHP Officer Jon Sloat said.

Thomas of Redway in Humboldt County was taken to the Sonoma County Jail and booked on the DUI charge and on suspicion of possessing and transporting marijuana for sale.

He was released from jail later Monday after posting bail.

From the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat.

I'm not really into MySpace, but I've had a MySpace page for a few years (writing about music, it's pretty much mandatory). Today I checked my Space for "friend requests," which typically come to me from local or far away bands or musicians. A request that came in yesterday was something different. I'm not sure who " Save Rural Humboldt " is -- the profile says they are from Eureka, male and 30 years old. Here are Save Rural Humboldt's Blurbs:

About me:

We just want people to know about the planning department's general plan update. They want to change most things about rural living that we sometimes take for granted. Plan alternatives A and B will limit most of the things we may want to do with our rural lands. A and B could limit building permits to one home every 600 acres in rural areas of our county, even for people that have owned or lived on their land for more than thirty years. The planning dept. tried to change rural living in the 70's, they tried in the 80's, and they are closer now than ever before. Anyone that loves Humboldt Co. the way it is, or would hate to see such a change to the rural areas, needs to call your supervisors and tell them how you feel! Too many of us take the way things are for granted. If you don't vote or watch the everyday changes to local government you may end up feeling tricked or thinking "what happened". The truth is that you didn't do your part for our home. Now that you know that, Please don't take what you have learned here for granted. Tell as many people as you can about the plan; tell them to call their supervisors; and if you don't live here, please do it anyway. There is power in numbers. We need all of you out there to help! Let's show all the planners that we are serious about our home.

Who I'd like to meet:

A whole lot of people that are against the Humboldt Co. planning department's update to the general plan. The video on here is the envision most planners in Eureka have for our county. Everything the same all neat and clean. Kirk's Dream!
SRH also has one blog entry, basically a re-post of an old Heraldo thing about the connection between Humboldt CPR and Rob Arkley, which leads me to believe that this is a homegrown thing, not connected with other organized groups. Of course that could be an illusion. Can anyone shed more light on this group/person?

p.s. Through following SRH's friends links, I found a MySpace for Rose in McKinleyville , in case you were wondering what she looks like. It's set to private, so you can't do much more.

We're still wondering about the deal between the Times Standard and the late Eureka Reporter that mandates the T-S running E.R. op ed pages twice a week. Does anyone read Peter Hannaford's submitted editorials before they go to print? Is the page sent as camera-ready copy? Now we make little copy-editing mistakes every week in the Journal, but nothing matching today's lead editorial on the E.R. opinion page. Since they don't post the page online (do they?) I'll try to reproduce it as closely as possible:

A break in the clouds

Humboldt County's economic weather looks gloomy, what two chains with local stores shutting down, disappoint Christmas sales, two sawmills cutting back and a below-average crab season. There is a bit of blue sky among the clouds, however, The Humboldt Creamery, now in its

80th set a sakes-record in 2008 of $130 million. That represents an 18 percent increase over 2007 sales.

A cooperative owned by 50 Humboldt dairy farm families, the Humboldt Creamery turns out a prodigious amount of products: 22 million pounds of milk powder, 11 million gallons of ice cream and 4 million gallons of milk. The co-op's president, Rich Ghilarducci, attributes this volume to to "strong demand in world markets." As evidence, the creamery last year became the largest exporter of ice cream to Mexico.

How's that for bringing dollars INTO our county?

How many mistakes can you spot? a) in the first sentence b) overall

Mr. Hannaford, is this really what you submitted? Did you inadvertantly send the wrong draft? Or did some mischievous T-S typesetter alter your copy?

And while we're asking questions, didn't anyone tell you that co-ops are the first step down the slippery slope to socialism?

Update - Jan. 27: We emailed Mr. Hannaford asking about the typos and just heard back:

Thank you for your note. We winced when we say the typos. It wasn't the Times-Standard's fault. Our regular copy editor was away and Yours Truly was left to do it on the run. Mea culpa. (PS--The regular copy editor is back this week). -- Peter Hannaford

guilty.KHUM Fan Feed: Every song and commercial played on KHUM, updated in real time with

adorability.BLACK CAB SESSIONS: "one song. one take. one cab." - in London - some great musicians (including Richard

Every Beatles Song, Ranked: JAMSBIO ranks every single Beatles song, from worst ("Revolution 9") to best ("A Day in the Life"). The gimmick is the least of it, though -- writer JBev provides an incisive couple of paragraphs on each number. Excellent

Beloved Journal garden correspondent Amy Stewart dwells on the dark and deadly side of the plant kingdom in Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities , forthcoming from Algonquin Press in May.

Above: Please find the book's chilling, creee-eeee-eepy trailer!

The Humboldt Pro-Choice Coalition held its 27th annual Choices Breakfast this morning at the Baywood Country Club in celebration of the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade. Local dignitaries like HSU President Rollin Richmond and newly elected First District Assemblyman Wes Chesbro joined members of Clergy for Choice, employees of Six Rivers Planned Parenthood and various other choice champs for bacon and eggs (aborted chickens), fruit and pastries, awards and speeches.

The mood could be described as post-inaugurally hopeful, with several speakers name-dropping the big O (no, not Oprah), heralding the arrival of an administration friendly to women's reproductive rights. (President Obama plans to sign an executive order today ending Bush's federal funding ban -- aka "gag rule" -- for international family planning groups.) Of course, that very same presidential stance led to "March for Life" protests nationwide, with protesters co-opting Obama's campaign slogan. With a twist: "Yes we can -- terminate abortion."

The keynote speaker at Friday's shindig was Jennet Arcara. Here's the press release blurb:

[Arcara is] an international health policy specialist with Venture Strategies, a non-profit agency working to improve public heath in developing nations.

Specifically, she spoke about her work in Ethiopia, where a whopping 94 percent of births take place at home, often many miles from a medical center. Not surprisingly, Ethiopians have a high rate of postpartum mortality -- more than 2,000 deaths per year. They also suffer more than 7,000 deaths per year from unsafe abortions. Venture Strategies is working to make available the generic drug Misoprostol, which was designed to prevent ulcers but can also be used to induce labor and medical abortions.

Attendees signed a giant "thank-you" note to former Assemblymember Patty Berg for her work on women's health issues.

The United States Navy is coming to town!

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- a newspaper that's about to fold , incidentally -- reports that the United States Department of the Navy will hold a public hearing in Eureka on Feb. 2 .

Concerning what, you ask? Concerning the proposed Northwest Training Range Complex , the department's plan to designate most of the Pacific Northwest coast as training grounds for naval operations. ( UPDATE: The NWTRC already exists -- news to me, anyway. The current proposal is to increase training operations in its bounds.)

What sorts of training? According to this brochure :

Training Activities

Training activities involve activities in the range complex where Navy personnel learn skills they need to operate machinery or weapons. These activities provide realistic experience and include:

Operating vehicles, aircraft, submarines, and surface ships;
Conducting live fire training against surface and air targets at sea;
Conducting airborne surveillance activities;
Detecting, locating, and countering threat electronic signals;
Finding and removing underwater mines;
Training Navy divers in a cold water environment;
There's a mass of material, including the full Enivronmental Impact Statement for the project, on the "documents" section of the project's site .

Map below. More to come, obviously.