Pistol Packing People
Hundreds of Humboldt County residents have a permit to carry a concealed firearm. Who are they, and what are they thinking?
Cover Story
Pistol Packing People
We recently asked the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office for the names of all of the people holding a permit to carry a concealed weapon (CCW) in this county. Why did we ask for this list? Call it curiosity sparked by the recent Supreme Court ruling overriding Washington, D.C.’s ban on private ownership of handguns, in…
correction Amy/Lila – start time 6:30 p.m.
Amy Stewart / Lila Nelson Due to a data input error, today’s Journal has an incorrect start time for Friday’s Amy Stewart reading at College of the Redwoods. Songstresss Lila Nelson will sing starting at 6:30 p.m. before Stewart reads. Here’s the full press release: CR’s Visiting Writers Series presents New York Times best-selling local…
Fire at Spear and Alliance
Citizen journalist Anna Bernard sent us this brief story with photos this afternoon. The normally quiet Vassaides neighborhood at the north end of Alliance Road in Arcata was the staging area for a fire at the corner of Alliance and Spear. Arcata fire fighters and Arcata police began arriving at the scene shortly before 2…
SPJ on the Hans Peters Story
The Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists, this month took notice of a story that appeared in the Journal earlier in the year. In “News Gems,” a regular Quill feature, the magazine commended “Nobody’s Fault,” the story of the short, tragic life of Hoopa youth James Lee “Hans” Peters. The story was…
Sked for the Hoedown
We’re going to be streaming audio and video from the Humboldt Hoedown over at the mothership — http://www.northcoastjournal.com — all day tomorrow. This is going to be a truly awesome show, made more awesome still by the fact that the broadband connection is supposed to be superfat and ultrareliable. If you’re going to be home…
Artist of the Year
Linda Wise with sculpture titled "Caribou" Artist of the Year — in Eureka anyway — and that’s the judgment of the city’s Art and Culture Commission . Did you know Eureka had such a thing? Not sure what else they do, but they’ve chosen artist/trash picker Linda Wise for recognition. “My art points out that…
The Straw Bale Affair
As the Summer That Never Quite Was draws to a close, I submit to you my final report on the state of my straw bale garden. Thanks to all of you who keep inquiring about it — actually, I’m surprised that the idea has sparked so much interest. In the last few weeks several people…
Alt Prez
What good can ever come from a bunch of third-party idealists running for President? A lot, actually. Because while you may forget about these alternative candidates even before the election, their best ideas live on and just might change society. Democrats and Republicans generally like change only as a slogan and avoid the actuality whenever…
Twilight of the Machines
The value of John Zerzan’s book Twilight of the Machines is not its fresh interpretations of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, nor its editing (which deserved better), but rather its utter commitment as a polemic. Released by Feral House, the book seems nothing less than an attempt to initiate a paradigmatic break in ideology with Western…
The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative
Thomas King is a Native writer who teaches in Canada and published most of his fiction while living there, including his novels, Medicine River (made into an obscure but amusing movie starring — who else — Graham Greene), Green Grass, Running Water and Truth and Bright Water, all of which are, among other things, pretty…
Rough Life on a Rocky Shore
Have you ever spent an afternoon exploring the rocky intertidal zone of the Humboldt coast at low tide? If so, you may have wondered to yourself how a thriving ecosystem can exist in such a seemingly unfavorable habitat. Inhabitants of the rocky intertidal include marine invertebrates, which spend their entire lifetime exposed to an extreme…
Carried To Dust
From their early stages as Giant Sand and Friends of Dean Martinez, Calexico was a band that strove to hone their own sound — a mix of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti Western soundtrack music, mariachi horns, experimental treatment flourishes and subtle percussion — while providing backup to various artists such as Michael Hurley, Victoria Williams, Richard…
Elizabethan Sitcom
First the good news: The Merry Wives of Windsor at North Coast Repertory Theatre is skillfully comic. With David Hamilton’s fluid direction, an accomplished cast excels at comic invention, and the evening features at least a few moments of comic brilliance. Old Falstaff, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters from the “Henry” plays, writes love…
Farmers’ Market Turns 30
It doesn’t look like there will be much to mark the occasion, just some giveaway raffles and some special activities for kids, but this Saturday the North Coast Growers Association celebrates the 30th anniversary of Humboldt County’s Farmers’ Market. A couple of weekends ago, as I made my way from stall to stall on the…
Return to Allentown
Previews Following a screening at the Wild Rivers Film Fest, the locally shot Humboldt County opens commercially on Friday, Sept. 26. The story involves a medical student who finds himself in the midst of marijuana farmers. In Humboldt? No way. Rated R for drug content and language throughout. 97m. At the Broadway and Minor. Eagle…
Natural
Natch’l bluesman Taj Mahal released his first album in 1968, which means that he’s now been in the blues business for 40 years. “I’ve outlived the former music business,” he told me when I asked what had changed for him over that time. “I started out playing music that I liked, music I thought needed…
Hoppin’ Pipe Organ
Saturday night, while you were at the hip hop hoedown or whatever at the Mateel — or did you decide to go to that punk masquerade thingy in Manila? — an overflow crowd was enjoying the real-big musical event that night, at Christ Church, Episcopal, in Eureka. I know, you didn’t know about it, or…
The T Bill
Boom! Early Tuesday morning there was a blast heard ’round the Humboldt County Courthouse, that drab epicenter of local political life. The shock waves reverberated along the invisible tendrils that extend from the belly of the octopus, reaching into the homes and headquarters of various players and factions about the county. Measure T had been…
