After You’re Dead
Home funerals, burial at sea, natural cemeteries and the Funeral Consumers Alliance
Cover Story
After You’re Dead
What happens after you’re dead? The exact nature of the afterlife (if there is one) is debatable and far from certain. What is certain is that we leave behind a body, a mass of flesh and bone that someone has to deal with. Have you made plans for the disposition of your remains? Chances are…
Edible Braille
Tired of being thwarted in your quest for a dignified meal in a restaurant because you can’t read the damned menu? Well, the LightHouse of the North Coast wants you to know that it has teamed up with the Humboldt Council of the Blind and other groups to provide free Braille and large-print menus to three…
He’s big in Bishopville
You know you’ve been waiting for this update: Remember at the end of March when we reported that Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi had gone to South Carolina to investigate strange happenings in the land of the Lizard Man? Yes, well, he’s telling folks there that his hi-sci monitoring leads him to believe that they’ve “got the…
David Simpson blogs from Corpus Christi
Petrolia resident David Simpson has been down in Texas attending the Palco bankruptcy hearings. This week he started a Community Forest Team blog titled, Dispatches from David . As someone involved in the legal morass , he has an axe to grind — that said, his first hand accounts are insightful and well worth reading.…
Sway: A Novel
By Zachary Lazar. Little, Brown. Zachary Lazar’s Sway: A Novel is a guide to self-involved characters slopping around in the sexual mud and quicksand of the ’60s. All of the characters are members of The Rolling Stones or were associated with them as the 1960s counterculture went the wrong way. Many had to scream "Gimme…
Sixty Days and Counting
Book by Kim Stanley Robinson. Bantam Dell. This is the third and concluding volume of Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy about an alternate present or near future when the world is forced to face a catastrophic climate crisis. But this isn’t another apocalyptic dread-feast. Extraordinary events shape and bend the everyday, but they don’t break it.…
The Chinese Press
Ah, propaganda. There’s something almost endearing about it. Its self-righteous sincerity, its intrepid flouting of facts. You really have to admire the loyalty of those reporters who willingly regurgitate a one-note version of the truth, but are otherwise honest journalists. I had never really witnessed such a steady diet of disinformation until I came to…
Update: CR’s accreditation
College of the Redwoods has had its share of mortifying news of late, including a leaky pool that’s been contributing unwelcome chlorine to the watershed, the subsequent closure of the pool (which left a swim team and many students high and dry) and a major scrap over the administration’s decision to replace some redwood-clad buildings…
Freaks Are Really Greeks?
Theatre can be most alive when it is rough and unfinished. Some of the most exciting performances I’ve witnessed have been staged readings, script-in-hand or living room cold readings. But what I saw and heard last week at the Arcata Playhouse is more than the raw and even intuitive attempt to explore dramatic material —…
Clooney Plays the Field
Opening COUNTERFEITERS.Biggest counterfeit money scam of all time goes down during the last years of WWII in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Rated R. 98 m. At the Minor. DON GIOVANNI.San Francisco Opera performs Mozart classic in pure Digital Cinema. Second of four SF Opera Cinemacasts, runs April 12-13 at Fortuna. MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A…
Here Come the Grains
A different kind of crop is currently growing on approximately 12 acres of farmland in the Arcata Bottoms. After experimenting with wheat and other grains in test plots, Kevin Cunningham decided to expand his production and established the Shakefork Community Farm and its Grain Share Program, based on the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. When…
Revolutions Won and Lost
Even allowing for the fact that this is an election year, the speed and fury with which the coalition that has recently formed to oppose the standard tactics and practices of the Humboldt County Code Enforcement Unit was a wonder to behold. They filled up Garberville’s Vets’ Hall on Friday of last week, and they…
Puzzle Pieces
There’s a certain fusion of ancient and modern in the music of Toubab Krewe that grabbed me instantly. At first listen you might think it’s an African band, perhaps brothers to the electric Saharan desert blues of Tinariwen — and they are — but Toubab Krewe is from Asheville, N.C., and their musical merger comes…
House Poor
The Redwood Curtain wasn’t thick enough to insulate Raul Merezko from the country’s subprime mortgage crisis. According to public documents obtained from the Humboldt County Recorder’s Office, Merezko — chosen at random from a list of over 80 individuals who have lost their homes for nonpayment sinceJan. 1, 2007 — bought his home in a…
Whispers
I was too young to know him well…
Sailing
The physics of sailing is outlined in the first diagram, showing the equilibrium between forces. The vector-sum of forces on sail and keel is balanced by the resistance of moving the boat through water. The speed of a typical 10-meter yacht in winds of 10 and 20 knots, as a function of its angle to…
Massive Conspiracy Against All Life
CD by Leviathan. Moribund Records. Leviathan, aka Wrest, is a one-man black metal project from the Bay Area that has played a crucial role in the development of American black metal, bringing a sense of legitimacy to a scene that for years was perceived to be inferior to its Scandinavian counterpart. Massive Conspiracy Against All…
