Green verses green
A controversial wind energy project has self-proclaimed environmentalists turning on one another.
Sheriff’s Office Releases Stats on Marijuana Enforcement Team
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has released stats for its Marijuana Enforcement Team, or MET, which just wrapped up its 2019 grant season. According to a release, the team conducted 86 operations on unpermitted grows that eradicated more than 200,000 cannabis plants, seized nearly $100,000 in cash and resulted in the arrest of 16 people…
Briceland Road to Close Saturday for Repair Prep
Briceland Road will close Saturday beginning at 8 a.m. for the installation of a detour road that will allow traffic to continue to flow on one of the county’s busiest rural roads as crews work on a culvert repair. The closure at mile marker 11.20 is expected to last until 7 p.m. During that time,…
Crab Quality Delays Commercial Season Opening
The commercial crab season for Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties is being delayed due to “poor crab meat quality tests,” according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. But there’s still hope for crab by New Year’s, if not Christmas. In a Nov. 15 memo, CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham wrote that “quality…
Teen Rescuers Featured in Washington Post
This morning’s Washington Post feature’s a story about four local teenage surfers who rescued two brothers on Nov. 11 in the waters off Trinidad State Beach. The rescue, first reported in the North Coast Journal, took place around 1:30 p.m. after the 15 year old and 20 year old visiting from out of town were…
HumBug: Late Butterflies, Hornets and Moths
A quick walk along the Van Duzen River turned up one each variegated meadowhawk and shadow darner dragonflies neither of which allowed me to get close enough to get a photo. It’s OK, I have hundreds of shots of the meadowhawk and dozens of the shadow. We got glimpses of a California sister butterfly, a…
Overflow Crowd Again Turns Out for Public Hearing on Controversial Wind Farm Proposal
The debate over the proposed Terra-Gen wind energy project seemed no closer to resolution after a second heated five-and-a-half-hour public hearing at the County Planning Commission on Thursday. Once again, the Supervisors Chamber was packed with people standing in the aisles. About 40 people who could not fit into the crowded room stood outside in…
Charmaine Lawson Holds 31-month Vigil for Her Son, Hopes Documentary Will Bring Outside Attention to Unsolved Case
It has been 31 months since Humboldt State University sophomore David Josiah Lawson was killed. On Friday, the anniversary of her 19-year-old son’s death, a group of a few dozen students and community members surrounded Charmaine Lawson at a small vigil at the Arcata Methodist Church, during which the group watched Who Killed Josiah?, a…
Briceland Road Closure May Not Be Needed
Steve Finch, the county of Humboldt’ road division manager, hopes the Briceland road closure might not have to happen. The culprit, a failing culvert on Briceland Thorn Road just west of Redway, had State Parks and the county for ways to make the repairs, which originally included making upgrades on the only available detour —…
North Coast Night Lights: A Handful of Night Light
I was in a situation not long ago with a handful of nights with which I knew not what to do. How many nights are there in a handful? You might wonder, though I never had, but it turns out that it depends on how big they are. The nights, not the hands … well,…
CHP, Sheriff’s Office Upping the Enforcement Ante on Driving Around Livestock
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and CHP are jointly “beefing up” (their words, not ours) enforcement around and awareness of driving on county roads with livestock crossings. According to a release, both agencies “CHP have received numerous reports of livestock being struck by motorists” over the last year. “As a rural county, several Humboldt County…
One Plant, Two Names, Multiple Laws
Sitting in the lobby of his brand-new storefront on Arcata’s H Street, Humboldt CBD CEO Joshua Hanna opens a jar and rolls a golf ball-sized cannabis bud into his hand. The dense flower is a deep, vibrant green with a pungent smell. The strain, he explains, is AppleEase, a new cross of a HarleTsu, which…
Art and Politics
Editor: The idea, as espoused in your issue of Nov. 7 (“Love the Alien”), that the fine arts do nothing to inspire lofty seeking, realization and action but only “comment” upon these after the fact is too ludicrous to be borne with equanimity. Ana Daksina, Eureka Editor: Collin Yeo’s Nov. 7 column was particularly pathetic…
‘Part of the Problem’
Editor: In her letter (Mailbox, Nov. 7) Mary Sanger identifies the Terra-Gen wind farm as “part of the solution.” Indeed, as demonstrated in the Humboldt County Planning Commission hearing Thursday night, the opposing opinions are framing themselves as a “Sophie’s Choice” dilemma: Protect our precious local habitat and culture vs. make a sacrifice and be…
We’re Going to Need a Bigger Room
Editor: Last Thursday, when the Humboldt County Planning Commission held its meeting to receive public input on the Terra-Gen wind farm proposal, the room proved to be too small for all the adults who made the effort to arrive at the courthouse. Many folks ended up standing outside the meeting room. Since this proposal had…
My Friend is Wrong
Editor: Barry Evans and I are friends. We both know that scientific truth is derived at by experimentation and lively debate. You recently published a response of his (Mailbox, Nov. 7) to a letter I had written in response to “Mirror Universes”( Oct. 24). What I wrote was, “When it comes to living systems, the…
Green Versus Green
Two public forums held earlier this month on the proposed Terra-Gen Wind Generation Project covered the same topics but the moods were radically different. The first meeting, a Nov. 6 panel discussion sponsored by the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University, was calm and rational in tone, attracting nearly a thousand people to…
Rough Road Ahead
After workers discovered a failing culvert on Briceland Thorn Road just west of Redway, State Parks and Humboldt County Public Works decided to upgrade the only detour: Old Briceland Road. When those improvements — currently underway — are completed later this month, Briceland Thorn Road — one of the most traveled rural roads in Humboldt…
Not What it Looks Like
A harmless imposter Being the local “bug guy,” I was recently asked about a spider that looked “almost exactly like a black widow” but lacked the distinctive red hourglass on the underside of its abdomen. This is a spider with which I am very familiar. They were nearly everywhere where I grew up in Pacifica,…
How Can Such A Beautiful Day Bode So Ill?
Sun comes up bright in a spotless sky again. Where is the November that was, that old month of rain and fog? Amaryllis’ poke out strong green leaves one week after I cut October’s wasted stalks. Did they forget about winter to come, how they used to bide their time or is this their spring…
To Autumn
It’s definitely been what John Keats called a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom friend of the maturing sun” recently. We have been lucky in that sense because even though I have been swerving in the low fog a lot lately to avoid the odd raccoon, dog, cat or dark-hoodied skateboarder, I have…
What’s Good: Irish Pizza and Seaside Mexican
On a Grecian pizza The pizza restaurant that once was Eureka’s Big Louie’s, then Marcelli’s, has been repainted an eye-popping green and reopened as Shenanigans (1604 Fourth St.). Given its name and pedigree (owner Kelly Erben runs Gallagher’s Irish Pub), you wouldn’t be crazy for thinking this is an Irish bar, but it’s a pizza…
Christian Rock
Before Evita, before Cats, before becoming a household name from the West End to Broadway, Andrew Lloyd Webber made a mark a half-century back in the nascent genre of rock opera. Along with his career collaborator lyricist Tim Rice, he wrote Jesus Christ Superstar, now a long way from its point of origin but lively…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If there are any potential Aries heroes or leaders or saviors out there, the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to fully bloom and assert your practical magnificence. The lessons you have learned while improvising workable solutions for yourself are ripe to be applied to the riddles that…
Doctor Sleep’s Diminishing Returns
Reviews DOCTOR SLEEP. Stephen King famously hates Stanley Kubrick’s version of his novel The Shining (book 1977, movie 1980). It’s not my place to say he’s wrong but … he is. While Kubrick’s is a liberal adaptation, therein lies the whole damn point. Books are not movies, nor the reverse, and this business of simply…
