Cup Runneth Over
Humboldt County’s unique problem: way more water than we know what to do with
Cover Story
Cup Runneth Over
The blue heron, legs spraddled for balance, tipped its long body forward into a horizontal crouch and stretched its neck and head out. Statue-still as the Mad River twirled past. The water moved gently, at autumn speed, and pooled in an eddied quiet around the twig-addled nub of rock where the heron waited. The pool…
Another Swine Flu Death
From the Humboldt County Public Health Office: A Humboldt County woman who tested positive for H1N1 Influenza died this morning in a local hospital. The resident, in her mid-50s, was reported to have no underlying medical conditions that would have exacerbated her illness. To protect her privacy, no additional information about her case will be…
Sun Valley Searches High and Low
The heck with the local yobs. Sun Valley Group’s gone south to fill jobs. To Colusa and Sutter and Glenn counties, specifically. Says the story in the Colusa County Sun Herald: An Arcata flower company’s unusual search for workers has plucked about 15 new employees from the Mid-Valley area, and about 15 more have agreed…
Big Sneaky Burl Elephant
Oh, burl! The L.A. Times has managed to feature Poor Orick in an economic-fallout story and deftly dodge The Answer To Why Has Poor Orick Gone Doggone Belly Up? No, it isn’t the writer’s thesis: The slow housing market, which led to the closure of the town’s last mill on Oct. 15. The slowdown is…
Oh, Snap, Arnold!
Too awesome not to blog. Did Gov. Schwarzenegger hide a crude coup de grace in his veto of a bill by Assm. Tom Ammiano? Sure looks like it, says Capitol Weekly! Here’s a direct link to the document in question.
MLPA Science Advisory Team Picked
Forest. The scientists who will advise development of marine life protection areas on the North Coast of California have been appointed — by outgoing Department of Fish and Game Director Donald Koch, who resigned last week and whose last day in office will be Nov. 1. The science team includes several notables — but not…
On the hunt for illicit marijuana
Minnesota.On the hunt for illicit marijuana: Humboldt’s national rep for pot continues with the Washington Post doing a little compare and contrast today, first covering a Mexican raid in the hills of Acapulco, then following Sgt. Wayne Hanson bundling up bales of pot in Six Rivers National
Bong Water Ruled Illegal
works.Bong Water Ruled Illegal: In
Fortuna biz’ hummingbird feeder in Boing Boing
birth.Fortuna biz’ hummingbird feeder in Boing Boing: A wearable hummingbird feeder sold by Fortuna-based Heatstick.com is featured on the hipster blog. Wondering how you might wear a bird feeder? There’s a YouTube vid that shows how it
MLPA Effort Kills Blue Whale
MLPA Effort Kills Blue Whale: Fish reporter Dan Bacher writes that the blue whale that washed ashore in Fort Bragg earlier this week was in fact killed by private contractors mapping the sea for the controversial North Coast implementation of the Marine Life Protection Act. The contractors’ boat apparently struck the 72-foot whale — a…
Obama Not Unlike Fine Wine
In its exploration of President Barack Obama’s ill-deserved Nobel, this week’s The New Republic cites the academic work of Fieldbrook winemaker (and husband o’ Journal) Bob Hodgson. The Nobel Peace Prize is just as fraudulent as the blue ribbon wines defrocked by Hodgson, argues Jonathan Chait.
red berries
red berries red berries picked in the forest…
Wild Things
Previews Opening Friday, Oct. 23 is this year’s Blair Witch Project-style success story, Paranormal Activity. (The film was made for a reported $15,000.) A young middle-class couple moves into a suburban home where something is not quite right. Rated R for language. 99m. At Broadway, the Minor and Fortuna. Roman numerals can once again count…
Hot Water
As an unincorporated town, McKinleyville has no mayor, city manager or city council, but it does have a community services district board, which manages the burgeoning burg’s water and wastewater infrastructure as well as its parks and library. And in recent years, that municipal body has provided enough controversy and political heat to rival any…
Liquid Guitar
Master of the liquid guitar lick Steve Kimock was an integral part of the post-’60s San Francisco Bay Area psychedelic rock scene. When he was playing with his ’80s-era psychedelic rock band Zero, none other than Jerry Garcia mentioned him as one of his favorite guitar players. Kimock would go on to tour and/or record…
Last Week’s News
hortly after we went to press last week it came to our attention — and to the public’s attention, generally — that the City of Eureka had recently signed an indemnification agreement with the Security National subsidiary that is proposing to build the Marina Center project next to Eureka’s Old Town. In the agreement, the…
Papered Over
Editor: If “Pass me a Tissue” (Oct. 15) was meant to be reporting it was seriously lacking. It quoted no other source but Simpson and Didion. It asked no hard questions. Simpson has yet to provide a detailed plan as to how the new plant will be environmentally friendly. Yet people are willing to believe…
Misunderstood
Editor: Greetings to everyone at the Journal. I wanted to comment on the prickly gay issue and the “Boom Bye Bye” song. First of all, “Boom Bye Bye” was and still is the most misunderstood song in dancehall history. Buju Banton is not a homophobe. He has never killed nor been convicted of assaulting any…
Unsettled
Editor: The Journal article on pending Klamath River Basin dam and water deals by Hank Sims is among the best that has yet been written on the complex web of political and biological considerations currently in play on the Klamath. That web is so dense that few if any can unravel all the strings. That…
Out, out brief candle
Anthropologists have yet to find a society that didn’t hold a belief in an afterlife: most of us humans think that something awaits us after death. Often the choice is binary: you’ll either end up in purgatory ("Where can I get a cold beer?") or paradise ("Enough with the harps, already!"). If not heaven or…
Heaven and Hell
Editor: The first page I turn to is the second from the last, or thereabouts. Andrew and Will (“Seven-o-Heaven”) are awesome! I can’t wait to see where they will turn up next, and what they are up to. In fact, I am thinking of posting four-by-eight foot blow-ups of their most recent comic strip on…
Album
The San Francisco-based band Girls has been riding a wave of attention recently, making high marks with critics, getting coverage in Pitchfork and a cover story for Fader. This may also cause skeptics (like myself) to raise an eyebrow. The much-publicized early biography of the band’s songwriter/vocalist, Christopher Owens (escaped from a religious cult, kicked…
Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia
The word "village" tastes like sausage, and Cincinnati like cinnamon rolls. The letter "A" is bright yellow, and female. The key of C sounds green, and irritating. The smell of peaches is spherical. The days of the week are each a different color, arrayed in a twisting shape with a smooth surface, superimposed on the…
Acclaiming Kay
When Kay Escarda heard that her colleagues on Arcata’s Community Land Trust (a division of the nonprofit Humboldt Bay Housing and Development Corporation) wanted to name a street after her, she was honored, to be sure. But she didn’t think much more about it. As a veteran volunteer and community activist, she’s received numerous honors…
Damn Santa
Hating Christmas began in 1976, when my mom broke the news that Santa Claus wasn’t real. An imaginative child, immersed in Pippi Longstocking and Narnia, doubting the existence of magic had never occurred to me. Having that belief shattered embittered me toward myths throughout my adolescence. Make-believe is for suckers, Virgina, miracles on 34th Street…
Twisted Sisters
Playwrights Beth Henley and Marsha Norman made waves with their Pulitzer Prize-winning plays in the early 1980s. They were something new on the American theatre scene: Southern women playwrights, who both got their start at the Actor’s Theatre in Louisville, and not in the Northeast. Their big plays (Norman’s ’night, Mother, Henley’s Crimes of the…
