Mailbox

Editor: I am devastated by the recent logging next to Murray Road between McKinleyville and Fieldbrook. This stretch of road was once the most beautiful in McKinleyville, a lush tunnel of forest unspoiled by development — unlike the roadway approach from Central Avenue, where commercial timber harvesting and the clearing for the Beau Pre development […]

Editor: Fortuna has a critical road choice to make. It can go forward, or it can look backward and end up at a dead end. Fortuna’s Measure D, Fortuna Essential Services Funding, is a long overdue sales tax adjustment asking voter approval for a ¾ of a cent increase. This would bring the city in […]

Editor: I am voting for Mary Burke for 5th District Supervisor. I have seen her in action as chair of the McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee. She listens and responds thoughtfully. Her career has been dedicated to improving our community. That is the type of leader we want to represent us.   Ann Lindsay, McKinleyville

Editor: Fortuna has a great dog park. The county provides bags to dispose of the dogs’ feces; people don’t pick it up; and they don’t train their dogs. Very sad to see untrained dogs and inconsiderate people in a wonderful space the county provides. I love dogs. I clean up after mine. If you take […]

Editor: Interesting stuff (“Why Isn’t ‘Eleven’ ‘One-teen?,” April 23) but with all due respect to Barry Evans, it’s evident he didn’t grow up where I did. In NE New Jersey, buying a dozen bagels netted you 13, known as a baker’s dozen. From my perspective, a tradition worth preserving. Dave Kahan, Redway

Editor: California pays over $100,000 per kid to keep Orick School open (“One School, Nine Students,” April 23). Well … as of the 2025-26 budget, California’s average annual cost to incarcerate a person was $127,800. So, I’d say, money well spent. Also, most prison sentences are longer than the nine-year investment in one student for […]

Throughout various professional and civic roles, Mary Burke has shown that she knows how to bring people together to improve our environment and our communities. One of her recent accomplishments in McKinleyville is the Baduwa’t Project at the end of School Road, which improved salmon habitat along the river while adding a new public trail […]

Editor: OK, JFC’s take on AI (“AI for the Planet,” April 16) is not only her usual creative version using cultural markers like no one else can. She even avoids the expected gendering of a person who’s seduced by a Latino interloper — automatic inclusivity! And yes, however much energy it would take, the transformation […]

Editor: Kudos to Zia Gabriel Coburn, the sixth grader whose poem, “Beginning,” is in this week’s North Coast Journal (Mailbox, April 16). I shared it in the Friday Poets group, and it was especially pertinent, as our prompt was “colors.” We all were amazed at the images she uses in her poem, and feel she […]