Letters + Opinion

The big headlines from last week’s Bay District election focused on the McKinleyville area, and rightly so. Up there, port development skeptic and fisheries biologist Pat Higgins utterly crushed 16-year incumbent Charles Ollivier, perhaps the loudest voice in favor of the dubious proposal to bring mass industry back to Humboldt Bay (see “Views of the […]

I never claimed to be omniscient. The record will show that a speaker at the Oct. 9 Board of Supervisors’ meeting, at which the board voted to institute a moratorium on new homes in areas zoned for timber production, issued a warning. Don’t believe it, this person said. The county now says that they only […]

Vigorously waving the white flag high over my head last Thursday afternoon, I stepped slowly toward the Scotia headquarters of the Pacific Lumber Co., scanning nearby rooftops for snipers. Every nine paces I unholstered my can of Silly String and sprayed the sidewalk ahead of me, scanning for invisible trip wires. All clear. Only when […]

The board of directorsof the North Coast Railroad Authority held its monthly meeting in Eureka last Wednesday. Many insightful things were said during the public comment period of that meeting. For me, the most insightful comment of all belonged to local realtor and staunch railroad supporter Marc Matteoli. “We’ve had some very serious setbacks in […]

With the Internet and long-distance telephony down and the first big storm of the season brewing offshore, on Tuesday morning the Journal staff brewed up mugs of hot chocolate and huddled ’round our little television to watch the most contentious Board of Supervisors meeting in ages. What a treat! If you’ve got a head for […]

Two great big Earth-shattering pieces of news came down the pike last week, and for various reasons we’re not going to treat either one with any degree of completeness. One: Dateline, Corpus Christi, Texas. The Pacific Lumber Co., which filed bankruptcy in January, submitted its long-awaited reorganization plan on Monday. In brief, how does the […]

We had a good time meeting last week with Steven Glazer, the public relations man retained by Eureka kazillionaire Rob Arkley to put forth his case in the now-infamous Avalon incident (see "Town Dandy," Sept. 13). We’d heard from KSLG’s John Matthews — the first local to score an interview with Glazer, we believe — […]

To: Heather Gough Deputy County Counsel County of Humboldt 825 Fifth Street Eureka, Calif. 95501 Dear Ms. Gough: Thanks much for your response to our Public Records Act request for documents pertaining to the arrest and booking of Martin Frederick Cotton II on Aug. 9. Thank you, too, for providing some of the material we […]

It appears that there are lots of people who don’t want to believe it, but they’ve yet to settle on a preferred version of events. Some say it never happened, that it’s just a "publicity stunt." Others say it’s being blown all out of proportion — just an everyday pissing match, and a pox on […]