Eureka physician Lee Leer about had a conniption recently when he heard through the grapevine that St. Joseph’s Health System was going to ban condoms. St. Joe’s, Leer heard, had phoned Six Rivers Planned Parenthood to tell it not to bring condoms and birth control educational materials to the hospital’s future community health fairs. (The […]
Life + Outdoors
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Disappointing Drills
Remember last year when those guys were driving and helicoptering all over the Eel River Valley with dynamite and cables to test the geologic underworld for its natural gas potential? And how they were telling people — Eel River Valley people whose property they wanted to do the seismic testing on, or whose mineral rights […]
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Garden 2.0
For months I’ve been ignoring the Facebook and LinkedIn invitations my friends have been sending me. I spend too much time on the computer anyway; the last thing I need is to get sucked into social networking. A cousin who is also a writer told me that Facebook was a wonderful way to procrastinate. While […]
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Cyclist’s Death Rallies Advocates
Greg Jennings was bicycling home to Blue Lake Monday evening after work, on Highway 299, when a pickup drifted onto the shoulder and struck and killed him. Jennings’ death has sent shock waves through the tight-knit community of bicycling commuters, and beyond, with many people saying it’s time the community at large gets serious about […]
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Brown Clamps Down
On Monday, yet another branch of government took yet another stab at imposing some order on California’s chaotic medical marijuana system. This time it was state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office published an 11-page set of guidelines meant to define some ground rules for the implementation of Prop. 215, the generous but vaguely worded […]
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Garden Party En Plein Air
It’s not easy being a plein air painter. You have to haul your materials to remote locations, struggle with changing weather and shifting light, and finish as much of the painting as possible in one go, since it may be hard to return to the same scene and the same conditions day after day. And […]
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The Poetry of Science
My efforts at the Journal are coming to an end after 50 issues. If you are interested in continuing this science column, please e-mail the editor, Hank Sims, at hanksims@northcoastjournal.com. Among many questions I am leaving for others are the nature of corals dredged off Shelter Cove (see photo) and the origin of balls of […]
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Growth and Decay
Begin with one bacterium capable of dividing each hour. After 10 hours there will be 1,024 bacteria (2^10). That’s an example of geometric, or exponential, growth. If the colony is confined to a small jar of food, and half that food is converted into those 1,024 bacteria in 10 hours, you can imagine their leader […]
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Here Come the Scalpers
KHUM deejay Mike Dronkers apologized to the caller he’d left on hold, warned her she was live on the air and asked her what was up. She said she’d called because she was confused. She wanted to know why tickets for the upcoming Lucinda Williams show at the Van Duzer Theatre were so expensive — […]
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Eureka’s Newest Stench
A block from home, the smell accosts you. You look around the dark street for the stray dog that’s rolled in dead skunk then topped off the treatment with a wallow in fresh excrement. There is no dog. You reach the stairs, ascend to the porch, and the putrid scent intensifies. Check your feet — […]
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Easiest. Arrangements. Ever.
For the last month, I have stood guiltily by and watched my flower garden fade. The daisies, feverfew, butterfly bush and catmint have bloomed so aggressively that I couldn’t possibly keep up with them. After hacking his way through the flowers to get to the chicken coop recently, my husband meekly suggested that I could […]
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Osmosis is Awesome
Sap drips from the leaves of my indoor banana plant. Osmosis is the process that raises that sap against gravity. Osmosis causes our kidneys to retain more water in our blood after a salty meal. Reverse Osmosis (RO) is the preferred method for producing fresh water from ocean water. The U.S. is second only to […]