Fear in the Hills
When code enforcement goes a-roaming, with guns and backup, what’s it really after?
Cover Story
Fear in the Hills
"There’s more people that are not in this room, who are out in the hall and spilled out into the street — I’m not saying they’ve got pitchforks, but there’s people out there who are really, really concerned about this and they’re not going to go away. … This code enforcement program is completely out…
Harvard wants Humboldt redwoods (update)
from the AP wire service via Forbes online: Harvard endowment wants to take over bankrupt Pacific Lumber Harvard University’s endowment said Thursday it’s interested in buying more than 200,000 acres of timberlands in California as part of a plan to take over logging company Pacific Lumber Co. and bring it out of bankruptcy. An attorney…
Oops: Local Power Plant Belches Black Smoke
A Loleta resident called the Journal today to tell us she had seen black smoke “belching” from the stacks of the PG&E power plant early yesterday afternoon. About an hour later she called the North Coast Unified Air Quality Management District to file a complaint — the NCUAQMD told her they weren’t aware of a…
Earthquake!
Damn! That was a pretty good one. Update : What? Centered in Willow Creek ?
What Happens Next
We’re going to fill this week’s paper with tributes and memories of a unique, historical figure in Humboldt County. But we can’t ignore the fact that this tragedy takes place at a time when Roger Rodoni was running for re-election. People are confused about what happens next, and we believe that we finally have the…
Roger Rodoni
I think the last time Roger and I talked was almost a year ago. We bumped into each other at the Courthouse Market, where he was a regular. The Tamara Falor matter was the big thing in the news at the time. Everyone was trying to figure out why the county had signed a confidentiality…
The Political Stage
The theatre of politics is pretty obvious in this presidential campaign year, but politics in theatre — that is, political and social issues of current concern as subject matter — is also especially evident on North Coast stages in 2008. Several plays written in another time encouraged reflection on pertinent issues of today — and…
Livestock and Tract Homes
What’s the first thing you think of when you think of Humboldt County’s First Supervisorial District, that one-fifth of the county’s population that fisherman Jimmy Smith has represented since 2000? Even if you’re someone who pays attention, it’s likely as not that you first think of cattle, creameries, quaint Victorian villages. And so it looks…
Pathetic Fallacy
Admit it: who hasn’t once wept on a…
Four and Twenty Stoners, Baked
"Four-twenty is like a holiday around here," said the 20-something reveler wearing a Humboldt hoodie as he walked with friends up the winding road leading to Arcata’s Redwood Park. While the precise origins of the connection between 420 and marijuana are indefinite, lost in smoky memory, a popular theory traces it back to the early…
Field Trip
Two charter buses carried 81 Humboldt State University students to Sacramento early on Monday morning to join with nearly 2,000 concerned California State University, University of California and community college students and other personnel in a rare, if not unprecedented show of solidarity against proposed state budget cuts. The protesters marched from West Sacramento’s Raley…
‘Sarah Marshall’: Forgotten
Opening BABY MAMA.Infertile business woman hires working-class woman as unlikely surrogate. Rated PG-13. 99 m. At the Broadway and Mill Creek. CJ7.Poor father goes to junkyard for kids’ clothes and brings home CJ7, a "pet" orb with mysterious powers. In Cantonese w/English subtitles. Rated PG. 86 m. At the Minor. DECEPTION.Business man meets womanizing lawyer…
Where You Go With The Notes
In a certain sense, Patty Larkin is your basic singer/songwriter, a woman with a guitar who plays chords and melody, works on them to fit her intelligent lyrics. She’s been doing it for 20-some-odd years, starting out busking on the streets of Cambridge then learning jazz licks at Berklee. Then about 10 years ago her…
Rogue Waves
Waves are intimately connected to everything, even electrons and such, but let us begin with those that can catch you unawares on the beach or boat. Such rogue waves can be lethal. Waves originate when wind blows across water. Two processes build larger waves from initial ripples: Frictional dragging and Bernoulli lifting. I have not…
Pure Abstractions
Spring dance concert April 17 at HSU’s Van Duzer Theater Thursday evening’s opening performance of HSU’s spring dance concert, Pure Abstractions, was a total blast. Being a modern dancer from New York, I could barely contain myself when I heard the opening strains of a live quartet playing John Coltrane’s Impressionsas groupings of modern dancers…
The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America
Book by David Hajdu. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. As the medium of comics has gained mainstream respect in recent years, several books have looked back on the unruly, disreputable origins of the art form. The most recent of these is David Hajdu’s chronicle of the early days of the comic book, its rise to mass…
A Virtual Landslide
CD by Pete Molinari. Damaged Goods. With the release of his second full-length album, A Virtual Landslide, singer-songwriter Pete Molinari has created a beautiful, warm and sincere record of classic heartbreak songs. A Virtual Landslide is a series of perfect marriages, artistically speaking, making it one of the finest albums to be released so far…
Slow Boat
Does going "off the pavement" always mean banshee-screaming down Class V whitewater, or clinging to cliffs 200 feet above the pounding Pacific surf? I think not. That stuff doesn’t work for those of us too old or young, or who don’t have the temperament or survival skills to enjoy defying death in the outdoors. But…
Why Does Food Cost More?
If you’ve been grocery shopping lately, and paying attention at the check-out stand, you know the food we eat has gone up in price. Basic things like bread, milk and eggs are all more expensive than they were last spring — a lot more. And if you’ve been watching the news, you know food prices…
