Oh, drear, more gloom and bad cheer — that’s what you’re thinking if you’re a SAD Brit hunkered down in your centuries-old stone house staring out the fortress slit at yet another gray day. What is this mist before your eyes, tears or rain? So you punch on the computer and randomly search for sunny […]
Heidi Walters
Heidi Walters worked as a staff writer at the North Coast Journal from 2005 to 2015.
Posted inMusic
Free Stuff: Bargains, Discounts And Other Things of Value in Northern Humboldt County, Calif.
Hell, everybody wants free stuff. And, damn, you see a book called Free Stuff and you’re just absolutely, hyperventilatingly certain that you’re gonna flip that thing open and behold a step-by-step guide to skating by without dropping a penny. Jackpot! With the quarter found on the floor! But sensitive-man-about-town Fhyre Phoenix has got more depth […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Three Rides
After two months off the bike to give my suddenly-dislocating thumbs a little rest from the brakes, I got back in the saddle this past weekend. With a mild vengeance. And it got me to thinking, once again, how deliriously grateful I am for the assortment of cycling jaunts within minutes of my front door. […]
Posted inMusic
Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby concert review
Ricky Skaggs andBruce Hornsby**Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007*HSU Van Duzer*Theater The last time I saw Ricky Skaggs was inside one of those megachurches in Southern Nevada. And he was a very different Skaggs from the man on stage Sunday night in the Van Duzer, where he and his band, Kentucky Thunder, played with Bruce Hornsby. Back […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Trees Foundation Wins
The jury in the civil case Kathryn Miller v. the Trees Foundation decided in favor of Trees, after deliberating all day Tuesday. (See “Money on Trees,” Oct. 4). Miller is the long-time forest activist who inherited a bundle from her mother and then signed $185,000 over to the Trees Foundation. In her lawsuit, she claimed […]
Posted inNews
Money On Trees
As the jury trial for the civil suit Kathryn Miller v. the Trees Foundation puttered to a start last week inside Courtroom 3 at the Humboldt County Courthouse, Shunka Wakan — a key witness for the plaintiff — spent mornings sitting on the hard wooden benches in the long hallway outside the courtroom. During breaks, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Nine Ways to Die
Brace yourselves. Ready? OK: The draft Humboldt Operational Area Hazard Mitigation Plan is ready for your perusal! The multi-jurisdictional plan considers nine possible disaster scenarios in the county that could seriously disrupts lives — dam failure, drought, earthquake, fishing losses, flood, landslides and other mass movements, severe weather, tsunami and wild fire — and suggests […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Magic Books
Magic Books Daddy, says Peter, I wish I could have another pretty little Picture-Book, for I have read Mrs. Lovechild’s Golden Present so often, that I can repeat it without book. I am very glad to hear it, Peter, says his father, and I wish I could afford to buy you books as fast as […]
Posted inNews
Tower glower
It started with the cement trucks, trundling day and night up Fickle Hill Road and, five or so miles in, turning onto a dirt road. Or maybe it actually started earlier than the cement trucks — maybe the first real indication, if anyone could have guessed it, that a new cellular communications tower was going […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Bye Bye Barstow?
Prospects were bleak for the Big Lagoon Rancheria on Tuesday afternoon, over there in Sacramento, where the state legislature was wading through 200-some bills on presumably the last day of its 2007 regular session and nary a one of the bills contained anything whatsoever to do with a Barstow casino. Who knows, maybe some last-ditch […]
Posted inNews
Rock and a Hard Place — Independent gold miners fear extinction as a new wave hits the hills
Salmon River (Mining) District. This district, the largest in Siskiyou County, comprises its entire southwestern corner, and includes the drainage area of the Salmon River and its tributaries. Topographically, it is a tangle of mountain ridges separated by precipitous canyons and river gorges. … The main gold-bearing rock belt of the county crosses through the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Big in Redway
Who knew that a back-to-the-lander gentleman hunkered down in hippy little Redway for the past 30 years would end up as a feature profile in a major business magazine headquartered at 7 World Trade Center, New York, N.Y.? For being among the top 5,000 U.S.-based entrepreneurs raking in the dough the fastest? The September 2007 […]