It’s no longer a secret that Humboldt County’s economy is contracting. Countywide, sales tax receipts in the 2017-2018 fiscal year plunged 15 percent from the year before and it’s obvious, especially in Old Town Eureka, that businesses are feeling the pinch. Vacant storefronts abound. Anecdotally, anyway, the economic decline seems directly attributable to changes in […]
Editorial
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Pay it Forward
Like most of Humboldt County and much of the nation, we witnessed with a growing sense of dread last weekend as the story of two young sisters missing from Benbow stretched on, hour by hour. We at the Journal witnessed as a hastily assembled press conference at 10:30 a.m. on March 2 was delayed due […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Facing the Cost of California’s Mental Health Crisis
Working in Old Town Eureka, we see California’s mental health crisis play out daily: the unshaven man draped in a wet blanket, standing on a street corner talking to himself; the woman with disheveled hair pulling a rolling suitcase and screaming a guttural cry so blood-curdling you’d swear she was being stabbed to death; the […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Atonement
While the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal has been widely known and reported on the North Coast going back 25 years, the Santa Rosa Diocese’s recent release of a list of 39 accused priests illuminates the systemic nature of the problem. These were not the isolated incidents of a few bad actors. As you’ll […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
The Grifter in Chief
History will remember 2018 as the year it became increasingly clear that a grifter — and likely a felonious one — is living in the White House. No matter what you think of tariffs, border walls and tax cuts, there should no longer be any illusions: What we’re seeing isn’t normal, or the product of […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Better Together
On this week’s cover, you’ll find an expansive story that spills more than 4,500 words trying to explain Humboldt County’s housing shortage and what it means. It’s the product of months of work by dozens of people and, frankly, nothing we could have taken on ourselves. The story was put together by students in Marcy […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Fight for Trans Rights
Trans rights are human rights, civil rights. It’s that simple. Consequently, the Trump administration’s recent move to narrowly define gender as an “immutable” condition determined by genitalia at birth can only be seen as an attempt to strip the transgender and non-binary citizens among us of civil rights protections. It’s an effort to craft a […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
New Fairgrounds Lease Leaves the Public in the Dark
In case you missed it, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors decided Oct. 16 that you don’t get to have input into how the county fairgrounds are operated or how public funds are spent to maintain them. The board voted 4-1, with Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson dissenting, to approve an eight-year lease with the […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
We All Need a Hero
When my 6-year-old daughter was afraid to put her head and face under water during swim class recently, I explained what it means to be brave. I said bravery isn’t about a lack of fear — acting without fear is easy. True bravery is when you’re terrified of something but you do it anyway. Some […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Localize Your Impact
Forty years ago, a young couple lobbed a rock of altruism and hope into the middle of the pond that is Humboldt County. Decades later, the ripples from Joe Abbott and Ann Morrissey’s actions in 1977 continue to reverberate, having grown into something beyond their wildest youthful imaginations. They started small. In this week’s cover […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
County of Humboldt, Please End the Madness in Ferndale
In a few weeks, the fairgrounds in Ferndale will be awash with the smell of fry oil and children’s gleeful screams as the 122nd annual Humboldt County Fair gets underway. Meanwhile, the Humboldt County Fair Association — the nonprofit that runs the fair — and the county of Humboldt have been meeting behind closed doors […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Know Your Enemies
In some ways, there’s little different about last week’s mass shooting in Annapolis, Maryland, that left five people dead and three injured. After all, it was the 154th such shooting of the year in the United States and it came just 177 days into 2018. Let that sink in for a minute. Then there’s the […]