On Nov. 9, 2016, like many Americans — a majority, in fact — I woke up with a throbbing headache and the realization that Donald Trump had hijacked the Republican party and been elected president. After briefly considering a move to Canada, I was forced to accept the results of our flawed electoral-college system. I […]
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Posted inLetters + Opinion
What a Year
On Nov. 26 President Trump tweeted that he had turned down the “offer” to be Time magazine’s Person of the Year for the second year in a row. Long-term readers of this publication may recall that Time was one of its prototypes. What this community needed in 1990, we thought, was a regional newspaper that […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
The envelope. Please.
Count this publisher’s column Bay Trail Update No. 10. The last one, No. 9, was April 24, 2014 and I just discovered an error in it. I wrote that my advocacy in print for a trail along the corridor from Arcata to Eureka began in 2007 when I hiked the rail line clipping blackberries with […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
My Selfish Lens
On Monday the New York Times published an article on the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. “[T]he report said, premiums for older people would be much higher under the Senate bill than under current law. As an example, it said, for a typical […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Reawakening, Part II
“You weren’t really a fan of Lyndon Johnson, were you?” a friend asked me suspiciously after the Jan. 19 column I wrote on my least favorite, post World War II presidents. When Johnson took over a traumatized country after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and when he ran against Barry Goldwater the next year, in […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Reawakening
Excuse me. I’ve been hibernating. I remember the day I fell into a slumber. It was Nov. 8, the night I wrote my last column. No, it wasn’t just Trump but the sort of family medical issues that compel a person to say, “Eff the whole world outside my house. I don’t care anymore.” Gone […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Didn’t See That Coming
I finished what I thought would be the final draft of this column early Tuesday since we go to press overnight and hit the streets Wednesday. Then I sat back to watch the election results roll in. I had wanted to write something about our new president and the challenges she would face after a […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Maybe Next Year
I think we can all agree that last week was a particularly bad week for news. I wasn’t in Dallas, but I was in Texas — in Austin at the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, eating chicken-fried steak, black-eyed peas and … well, there’s always a side of gummy mac and cheese. […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
A Summit for the Future
What are you doing Saturday, June 4? There’s an event that morning in Eureka and I hope you’ll stop by. Yes, I know you’re busy. Just to see how busy, I checked the Journal‘s online calendar and there are at least 58 other ways to spend that particular day. It’s the first Saturday in June […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Tipping Point?
Here’s my take on guns: I get hunters. The hunter-gatherer gene in our DNA may have faded a bit with so many city dwellers who believe chickens come into this world plucked, washed and wrapped in plastic. But that gene has not disappeared. And living in a rural county like Humboldt for 45 years — […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Counting Rings
We’re celebrating a rather significant anniversary here at the Journal — our 25th. Where were you and what were you doing in 1990, the year the Journal was born? I was often in a one-room office on the third floor of the Carson Block Building in Old Town Eureka with my two business partners — […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
The Voice
I usually don’t notice Journal bylines at first. Once I’m a sentence or two in, I can often tell who wrote it — especially if it was Heidi Walters. We encourage all our staff writers, and columnists and freelancers, to write with voice. For the last 10 years, no one has had a voice quite […]