In case you haven’t been to a feed store lately, I’ve got news for you: It’s chicken season. Every feed store in town has a little wire cage rigged up with heat lamps, and under those heat lamps are — nothing. Nothing. We are in an oversold situation with regard to baby chicks this spring. […]
Life + Outdoors
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Gravity 101
I happened to walk into the middle of a conversation in my local coffee hangout the other day. Two of the regulars were engaged in an animated discussion about alien abductions, psychic surgery and the end of the Earth (we’ve got three more years). As I got up for a refill, one of the participants […]
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New Community Clinic in FTA?
The Redwood Memorial Hospital Foundation may undertake the construction of a federally qualified health center and physician offices on a 10-acre site opposite the hospital in Fortuna. The "federally qualified" designation is given to safety net providers such as community health centers, public housing centers, outpatient health programs and Indian Health Services. Qualified centers provide […]
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Offshore Booty
Begin at the line where land meets ocean and swim or boat three geographical miles out: There, the Outer Continental Shelf begins, extending roughly 200 nautical miles to comprise a 1.7 billion-acre chunk of Atlantic and Pacific ocean-submerged lands governed by the United States Department of the Interior. Out there where the mighty winds blow, […]
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Lactose-tolerance: Evolution in Action
Next time you’re standing in front of the dairy section at the Co-op deciding whether to buy two percent or whole milk, you might think about how adult milk-drinkers are in the minority. Most of the world’s non-infant population is lactose-intolerant, while a minority of us have a mutant gene that allows us to ingest […]
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The Science of Seedlings
Last month I offered up some ideas for getting seed started indoors. It’s not too late; summer vegetables like tomatoes and squash really shouldn’t go in the ground until mid-May at the earliest. If you live near the coast like I do, it is entirely likely that temperatures won’t reach tomato-friendly levels until June. So […]
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Hummie, Monster of the Bay
I was about to send off this week’s column (an erudite look at the curious genetic connection between Garberville gophers and Arcata aardvarks) when my visiting Russian cousin Evan S’bov rushed in. He’d been taking a last walk on the boardwalk before I was to drive him to the airport for his long flight back […]
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Specifics about the Pacific
Walking on Samoa Beach during a nor’wester a few stormy days ago, waves crashing towards the shore, I wondered if the Pacific Ocean had been named in irony — ‘pacific’ was the last thing that came to mind. Turns out, though, that the man who named our western sea was dead serious — and grateful. […]
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All God’s Creatures
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) activists who staged a noontime protest Friday in the F Street Plaza in Eureka arrived with friendly optimism plus a pile of fake green ivy, a curvy near-naked woman painted like a snake and a quiet leaflet-and-sign plea (no megaphone antics here) to stamp out the […]
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Circus With a Purpose
A whole rainbow of human emotion — anticipation, fear, love and hate — could be seen and heard outside the California Supreme Court’s San Francisco chambers during the March 5 hearing to overturn Proposition 8, the ballot measure that changed the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Signs ranged from the almost clichéd Christian slogans […]
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Spectacles and Telescopes: A Small Mystery
Next month’s Godwit Days will bring birdwatchers to Humboldt Bay from all over, complete with their binoculars, telescopes and cameras with telephoto lenses. All these devices employ essentially the same system of optics to make distant objects seem closer, a system that dates back about 400 years. Most reference books give the date for the […]