Recent field notes
May 17
Eclipse Lore
May 10
Early Animal-rights Artist?
May 3
Six Rivers (By Any Other Name)
Today
Lanphere Dunes Restoration
STAFF PICK / outdoors / 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Meet at Pacific Union School. Help remove non-native invasives at the Lanphere Dunes Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Tools and gloves provided, wear work clothes and bring water. Carpool to the protected site. 444-1397.
44th Annual Kinetic Grand Championship Race
STAFF PICK / events, art, outdoors, sports, for kids, free / 9 a.m.-6 p.m. A 3-day, 42-mile kinetic sculpture race over land, sand, mud and water! LeMans start at the Noon Whistle on the Arcata Plaza. Follow the race through Manila, Eureka and into Ferndale on Memorial Day for the Glorious Finish. kineticgrandchampionship.com. 889-3024.
Open Gardens
outdoors / 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Humboldt Botanical Gardens, College of the Redwoods, Eureka. Roam the 44-acre fully fenced property. $5. www.hbgf.org. 442-5139.
Organic Gardening Seminar
garden / 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Shafer's Ace Hardware and Garden Center, 2760 E St., Eureka. Free lecture by Duncan McNeill on how to create a healthy environment and healthy soils for your plant’s roots. E-mail shafers@sbcglobal.net. 442-5734.
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TWO Comments
Comment / By Nathaniel Page / March 15, 8:22 a.m.
Dear Barry,
By now, all of your loyal readers are aware that you live in Old Town Eureka. You mention it in the italic biography at the bottom of your column over 76 percent of the time. We know that your wife also lives in Old Town, that your genes live there, and that you frequent Old Town Coffee and “Steve and Dave’s bar in Old Town, where you live.”
After three weeks of not announcing your neighborhood of residence in the print media, you slipped back into that old mainstay this week. You must have been suffering writers’ block in January, when every column came with an “Old Town Eureka” caveat. Sometimes it was embedded in a witticism, as in “Barry Evans yadda yadda in Old Town Eureka, where he lives.” Usually it was just a concise conclusion: “He lives in Old Town Eureka.” That is, when it wasn’t “blah blah Old Town yadda yadda, in Old Town, where he lives.”
Why don’t you share more original and more substantive facts and opinions about yourself? I can learn more about you from a simple Google search than what you usually share, besides that you live in Old Town. Why not try something like: “Barry Evans sometimes thinks it’s all a paradox, especially in conversation with his Relatives: Phillip B Evans, Rogers Louisa Evans, and Philip Barry Evans.” Or “Barry Evans sometimes thinks it’s all a paradox, especially since he was abandoned as a baby and educated at the orphanage boarding schools run by the Shaftesbury Homes, first at Fortescue House School in Twickenham.” Or: “Barry Evans sometimes thinks it’s all a paradox. He became a minicab driver in Leicestershire, where in 1997 he was found dead in a dilapidated bungalow at the age of 53.”
I suspect you got in the habit of writing these biographies during your “four-year stint as a National Public Radio commentator.” That’s the kind of stuff I like. Devote more column inches to interesting anecdotes like that one, and fewer to mentioning that you still live in Old Town. If you must mention that you live in Old Town, consider making your column about Old Town, and then the fact that you live there will become a sort of credential.
Best regards,
Nathaniel Page
Comment / By barry evans / March 15, 9:49 a.m.
It’s true I was born an orphan, in Old Town Eureka (where I live) (did I mention that?). This rest is lies, all lies I tell you. Barry Evans