News

A while back, we suggested you try a bit of Absynth. Apparently some of you liked it: The Absynth Quintet reached their Feb. 1 goal of $2,000 ($2,056 to be precise), which means album#3 is officially fully funded!

What did the talented fivesome have to say about this monumental outpour of love and support?

"Thank You For Your Support! Especially readers of the North Coast Journal blog, who are clearly the best-looking, most smartest folks north of Ukiah! We are so happy to have made our goal – almost as happy as when we convinced all our wives and girlfriends to vote for us in High Times' Unsigned Band of the Month contest and emerged victorious as a result!

"We are going back into the studio this month after Tofu finishes on the cage fighting circuit (rah!) and Ryan returns from his "Roberts Released!" comedy tour to finish this album and should be done mastering very shortly after thanks to your help, several bottles of Mad Dog, our therapist and two professional mediators.

"And then we can send out your thank you gifts – kudos to the special gang who had the foresight to take us up on the leather chaps/thong set!

"From all of us here, thanks again – your help means more than just money to us! (It means we can all avoid real jobs for another three months!)

Love,

Absynth Quintet"*

* Some of this was left unspoken in the band's original email message. But we, being sharp-eyed journalists, can read between the lines.

Love Humboldt County's premier jazzy Gypsy jamgrass five-piece further here .

Listen to them here .

The Ferndale Enterprise has the scoop.

A press release from College of the Redwoods this morning suggests things may be improving at the turbulent institution (edited):

College of the Redwoods received notice on Feb. 1 that it has been removed from accreditation warning status by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC).

CR was placed on accreditation warning status by the commission in June 2009 when the ACCJC gave the college two recommendations to work on.  However, it should be noted that even while it was on warning status, CR remained fully accredited.

The first recommendation determined that CR should create a specific program review template for all academic and career technical programs. The commission was satisfied that CR had created that template.

The other recommendation directed CR to improve internal communications and operations. The commission received a follow-up written report from CR in October 2009 addressing both recommendations and a two-person ACCJC team made a follow-up visit to the college.

CR President Jeff Marsee and CR Academic Co-Presidents Allen Keppner and Dave Holper appeared in front of the commission in January 2010 to make the case that CR should be removed from warning sanction status.              

"The entire CR community is delighted that the accrediting commission recognized our collective efforts to get the college removed from warning status," Marsee said.

The ACCJC said CR must continue to show progress in meeting the recommendation of improving internal communication. A follow-up written report must be completed by CR and delivered to the ACCJC by Oct. 15, 2010.  The report will be followed by a visit of commission representatives. 

 

Holy moly, but does the black ops PR firm known as the Humboldt Mirror ever have a smoking hot story this morning. We would only add that the $10,000 donation from a SoCal developer to the Bonnie Neely for Supervisor campaign seems to have come not from the developer himself, but the developer's corporation -- a triple-touchy matter, obviously.

Of all the insane political races we're going to see this year, the race for Fourth District Supervisor will likely be the insanest. There's going be a strong get-Neely contingent both locally and statewide, owing to her position on the California Coastal Commission and opposition to the Marina Center project. For all intents and purposes, it's going to be a statewide election played out on our turf.

What today's tidbit shows is that Neely can play at that level too. God help us all.