Cover Story
Flash Fiction 2016
Then you’ve got time for a story. Our readers cranked out 113 trim tales of 99 words or fewer for our annual Flash Fiction Contest, proving once again that Humboldt contains multitudes. There were brief romances, lonely wanderings, presidentially foul language (consider yourself warned) and bloody murders. Lots of murders, actually. Maybe look into that,…
Caroline Titus Wins Free Speech Award
Caroline Titus is one of two reporters being honored by the First Amendment Coalition this evening during the California Press Foundation’s annual meeting in San Francisco. Titus will receive the Coalition’s Free Speech and Open Government Award as an acknowledgement of her 18-month battle with the Humboldt County Fair Association over disclosure of its financial…
UPDATED: Sheriff’s Office: Father Sought in Eureka Child Abduction Case
Update: Anthony Lux returned his 4-year daughter, Alison Shirey, to her legal guardian last night. Lux and his daughter were the subject of a three day search after he took her from her guardian’s home Sunday night. According to a press release from the Sheriff’s Office, Lux stated he had received advice that he had…
Huffman Demands Accountability for Treatment of Pipeline Protesters
North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman penned a letter to President Barack Obama today requesting an immediate meeting to “demand accountability for (the) alarming treatment of Water Protectors and peaceful demonstrators at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.” Huffman, who penned the letter with Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Arizona), also took the opportunity to denounce the…
HumBug: I Gotta Get Out More
Confined to my house for some weeks by illness, I missed my usual walks along the Van Duzen River. Fortunately for me there is seldom a shortage of insects wherever I go. While I was more or less bedridden an inordinate number of tiny flying bugs had invaded my home. Although I had no fruit rotting in…
Murder Arrest in Hoopa
In the early hours the day after Thanksgiving, Humboldt County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to a call at a home in Hoopa Valley and found wounded woman who died at the scene. Deputies have arrested Lorence Emmanuel Bailey for her murder and his bail is set at $1,000,000. This is Humboldt County’s 20th homicide of the…
Crab Countdown
If you haven’t got your own pots to drop or if picking and dipping crab is as much work as you want to do, you’re likely counting the days until commercial Dungeness crab fishing begins. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has given the green light to fishing north of the Humboldt Bay jetty…
The Turkey Playlist
Smack dab in the middle of Halloween and Christmahanakwanzaa, Thanksgiving always seems more of an autumn holiday than a winter one for me. Yes, I know winter doesn’t actually start for another month but we’d be forgiven for forgetting that given our recent weather. So with this seeming transition between the seasons, I began to…
Hum Plate
Coming Out of Your Shell The French have certainly, as they say, foutent dans la merde, or screwed up hard, over the years (colonization, Polanski, etc.). But when it comes to making the best of tough times, the home of La Résistance is a solid role model. And so French is a fine choice for dinner with a heartbroken…
Stop It
Stop. I am begging you, just stop. Stop posting pictures of yourself where you’ve held the camera so you look like a cubist painting instead of your true chubby self. We want to see your real face. Stop it. Stop calling my pets “furbabies” and extending me an unwanted “Happy Mother’s Day” because you think…
Encore
This weekend the story about Vice President-elect Mike Pence getting booed by the audience and lectured by the cast at Hamilton, as well as President-elect Trump’s tweet-fit over it, dominated the news. Many warned that those tweets were calculated to distract from Trump’s $25 million fraud settlement over his so-called university, a first for an…
Life: The Long Game
Last time, I made the case that life on Earth started on Mars. Now, 4 billion years later, that life has evolved to the point where we can start thinking about spreading it farther afield, that is, into the galaxy. Because of the near-miraculous sequence of steps required to get from inanimate to animate —…
Simple Magic
Reviews FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM. I suppose if I felt any sort of connection to, or even interest in, the universe of Harry Potter, I might have approached this with more enthusiasm. But even having neutral feelings about the whole affair, I was distracted and bored throughout, and left disappointed. I took…
A Country Murder
The mystery novel, that great niche of fiction, has no greater name to represent it than the late Agatha Christie. North Coast Repertory Theatre’s The Hollow is a staging of a Christie-penned play that made its London debut in 1951 and is based on her book of the same name from five years earlier. One…
Bring us a Shrubbery!
No garden is complete without a yummy patch of edible, perennial shrubbery! Even a small garden can squeeze in a few brambles, berries or ‘chokes. To create a low-maintenance food forest with a year-round harvest and multiple layers of plants, a mid-sized perennial understory is an essential piece of the design. Shrubs connect the canopy…
Good Things Coming
Editor: Judy Hodgson shows considerably less grace in her column (“Didn’t See That Coming,” Nov. 10) than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton post election. In so doing, she amply demonstrates the media bias often discussed during the presidential race. Here’s one good thing that can possibly come out of this election: new policies and…
The Blight Fight
After the Journal ran a story about Highland Park last month (“Appropriate Use,” Oct. 6), Eureka Parks and Recreation Director Miles Slattery reached out. The article was good, he said, but some of the numbers cited — while accurate — were a bit misleading. The story compared total parks and recreation department budgets for Arcata,…
G Street Squat
The Eureka Police Department has visited the old Victorian at 1635 G St., and the neighboring property, at 1625 G St., 60 times in the last six months. The types of calls range from complaints about noise and suspicious people to welfare checks on suicidal residents. The front door of 1635 G St. has been…
HERE
Where the green grass sinks into Earth Amongst the worms and epic battles written small Seeking a thing I could call my own Instead of knowing God I settled for knowing Life The only one I have been gifted The only one I can raise up Or lay down The only one that can create…
Ruth Reservoir Back up to the Brim
Ruth Reservoir is full again thanks to an abundance of wet weather over the last two months, with the North Coast area seeing nearly 16 inches, or 258 percent of the region’s normal rainfall amount, since Oct. 1. With a stormy Thanksgiving weekend in the forecast, the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District is predicting the…
#Blessed
On Thanksgiving, before you gather to bow your head with your family and give thanks, slip down to the seaside to send blessings to those who work on the sea. Every year, community members gather in Trinidad to offer prayers and well wishes for a bountiful and safe fishing season. Put on by a group…
Holiday Gift Guide 2016
Click here for Humboldt’s best Holiday Gift Guide 2016
Haul out the Holly
They’re here. Faster than they came last year, it seems, the holidays are back. Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas, those seasonal siblings, are at our door with casseroles and kids in tow, ready or not. Thankfully, Old Town’s got its tinsel together. The picturesque assemblage of shops and restaurants ushers in the most wonderful time of…
