Cindy Olsen-Bugenig doesn’t count on how many horses are coming to the races at the Humboldt County Fair until she “can see the whites of their eyes crossing Fernbridge.” Olsen-Bugenig, herself a racing horse owner and breeder since 1979, is the vice-president of the Humboldt County Fair Association and chair of its Racing Committee. The […]
Linda Stansberry
Linda Stansberry was a staff writer of the North Coast Journal from 2015 to 2018. She is a frequent contributor the the Journal and our other publications.
Posted inNews (NCJ)
UPDATED: Arson Suspected in Mattole Valley Logging Equipment Fire
CalFire has launched an arson investigation after an excavator caught fire on California State Park property near Honeydew yesterday afternoon. A witness allegedly saw two people near the John Deere excavator shortly before flames took off in the grease and oil of the machine’s undercarriage, allegedly the result of a road flare pitched underneath it. […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Burning the Buckeye
The scariest thing about prescribed burns — to me — is not the flames. It’s the people. This is what I explained to my friends when they asked about our plans for the 109-acre Buckeye Ridge Burn, a project funded by a CalFire Climate Change Investment grant awarded to the Save the Redwoods League. Save […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
How to Run Your Life Like a Public Meeting
Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us, well, me. We have a very full agenda tonight and I’d like to end by 9 p.m. so I can clear the chambers and watch a show about gentle British people baking elaborate desserts without a running commentary for once. In our report out of closed […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Clear Skies for Second Annual Ferndale Pride March
Editor’s Note: Portions of this story originally appeared in The Enterprise‘s June 16, 2022 edition. The Enterprise is owned by the North Coast Journal, Inc. Ferndale on a Sunday morning is quiet but not sleepy. Middle-aged couples put in their daily miles walking loops down Main Street, turning on Van Ness to pass the fairgrounds. […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Bad Women Like Me
When I was 24 years old, I worked the graveyard shift at a youth hostel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. It was fine, sometimes even fun. I rarely felt unsafe in that neighborhood, but I often felt unsafe while doing my job. There was the long-term resident, a student, who would call me at the front […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Dead Blonde
“You found me!” He did not look happy to have found me, which I thought was strange. He was looking for me, wasn’t he? Isn’t that why he was here, in the brushy highway median, with a shovel in one hand and a USB microphone in the other? Wasn’t searching for my body the point […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Pigs and Whiskey
It is, perhaps, a failure of our collective education that when we think of whiskey, we don’t immediately think of rippling fields of wheat, rye, corn or barley. Those basic grains are the building blocks of most whiskeys. Alchemy Distillery, a young whiskey company based in Arcata, uses local wheat grown at the Hindley Ranch […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Saturday Morning Shots
The vaccine clinic starts at 9 a.m. By 8:45 a.m. the lines stretch from the breezeway of Pacific Union School’s main building in Arcata all the way through the parking lot, then the adjacent parking lot, to Janes Road. A young woman with blonde hair stands just inside the school’s fence, her arms crossed against […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Third Street Refuge
It’s 42 degrees and a bitter, spitty rain is tapping the sidewalks. Trees bend in the wind next to the Humboldt County Library, where a couple sits under a blue tarp draped over two shopping carts. A storm front is moving in, bringing days of cold weather and winds up to 30 miles per hour. […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Point of Contention
Is the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction responsible for problem behavior near its headquarters at 1522 Third St. in Eureka? This was the central question the city of Eureka sought to answer and address when it initiated an undercover investigation into the nonprofit in January of 2020. Neighbors had complained of noise violations, needle […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Eureka Council Suspends Needle Exchange with Split Vote
A marathon Dec. 10 special meeting of the Eureka City Council, stretching from 7 until 11:30 p.m., resulted in the council voting 3-2 to pass a resolution temporarily prohibiting all syringe exchange services within city limits, with Councilmembers Natalie Arroyo and Leslie Castellano dissenting. The wording of the resolution is tangled, stating that the city […]