Two Cities
Fear of future unites working-class Fortuna, Arcata
Cover Story
Two Cities
In January of this year, journalism students in a class in investigative reporting at HSU taught by Marcy Burstiner explored the concerns of people in two different Humboldt County towns: Fortuna and Arcata. What drew them was a troubling statistic from the 2000 US Census; despite the obvious differences of these two cities — one…
East Nashville
I’d never really heard of East Nashville before reading something on songwriter Amelia White’s webpage about one of her songs showing up on a double-disc compilation called The Other Side: Music from East Nashville . Amelia is not strictly from Nashville — she moved there from Boston a few years back to make her way…
Pomp and circumstance
Congratulations to Humboldt State University’s Class of 2007! Under soggy skies, about 2,500 of our best and brightest paraded the hell out of here on Saturday — perhaps not a moment too soon. Things are none too sunny for those who remain behind, as is well known. A couple of weeks ago, at a meeting…
Too much power?
It is a situation that must send shivers of anticipatory (even smug?) delight down the spines of all the peak-oil prophets who’ve been warning us we’d better figure out how to hunker down and self-sustain. We’re talking about the boom in renewable energy exploration here in Humboldt County — the "new gold rush," as David…
Tax-free beauty
Sunday was a beautiful spring day — the most beautiful day of the year in the Humboldt Bay Area, as likely as not. Inside Pierson’s, a gardener worked her way to the garden center’s cash register bearing her selection of annuals. She had picked out some petunias, some snapdragons, some violas, some nasturtiums. When he…
Chefs Go Wild
I’ve cooked a fair amount of salmon in my day. In the years when I worked as a chef at one place or another I became fairly proficient at filleting whole fish or cutting them into steaks. I learned various methods of preparation, but most of the time I’d chargrill the salmon and present it…
Grass au Naturel
A couple of weeks ago, a friend was complaining to me about the number of chemicals that an ordinary person can get exposed to in a typical day. "And then the weed and feed guys come by," she said, "and who knows what gets tracked into the house from the lawn?" It sounded as if…
Four Weavers
There is one thing that can be said about textile artists as opposed to painters: They are really in love with their medium. For painters, it’s usually more about the process of painting, the subject, color and light — the paint and brushes are just tools. But for textile artists, it’s all about the fiber:…
