On weekends, I front a punk band called the Dead Cousteaus. On weekdays, I’m a private investigator. So, on Monday morning, I was in my office nursing a bottle hoping to ease out of my weekend, but the shadow of a stacked broad crossed my desk. She smelled of mollusks and trouble. The “stacked” part […]
Life + Outdoors
Posted inField Notes
The Purloined Letter
“The fish is the last to see the water.” — Anthropologist Ruth Benedict Our lives are filled with obvious phenomena that sit right in front of our noses (sometimes literally), yet we often miss seeing them at all. I call it Purloined LetterSyndrome, after Edgar Allen Poe’s 1845 short story of that name. Synopsis: If […]
Posted inGet Out
A Wild and Wooly Night at the Rodeo
The Fortuna Rodeo’s Full Throttle Friday, as photographer Mark Larson discovered this week, is a very different vibe from old-fashioned riding and roping. Things start off low to the ground with Mutton Busting, in which youngsters take a traditional one-handed rodeo ride on a sheep. The introduction of motors and wheels amps things up significantly, […]
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Crabs on the Brink
Baseball can be fickle, exhilarating and heartbreaking. When we last left our beloved Crabs, they were on a roll and onto top of the conference, with a daunting and trying road trip in front of them. That road trip would be the worst-case scenario for the hometown heroes. Facing two of their toughest opponents in […]
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Tempers Flare, Benches Clear, Crabs Prevail
After a dominating week launched the Humboldt Crabs baseball team into first place, the crustaceans welcomed the Bay Area Force into town for two non-conference games before a pivotal series with the Solano Mudcats. In game one, the Crabs, who are down a few starters, got creative again attacking the Force with an array of […]
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Old Town’s Festivities for the 250th
Old Town was full of July 4 revelers during Eureka Main Street’s holiday street fair on Saturday. Folks wound through vendor booths, information tables and food stalls, and tapped toes and danced to the music on spread out stages. The gazebo served as a backdrop to dancers and bagpipers alike as performances peppered the afternoon. […]
Posted inField Notes
Saturnian Drone: Dragonfly at Titan
As we saw last week, Titan’s surface is a tapestry of abundant carbon-rich chemistry, a delicious target for curious Earthlings to explore. The challenges are immense, including temperatures that make Minnesotan winters look positively tropical, a 90-minute-long communication gap with Earth, sand-like dunes ready to bog down wheeled vehicles and surface sunlight one thousandth the […]
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Crabs Climb Back with Seven Wins
When we last left our beloved Crabbies, they were in last place, reeling from a huge series loss to the Potters to open their league schedule, and squeaking by an inferior Stockton Pearls team thanks to a walk-off grand slam from Colton Boardman to break even for the week. They had a daunting schedule with […]
Posted inField Notes
Saturnian Drone: Dragonfly at Titan (Part 1)
“[On early Earth] you need to have gone from simple to complex chemistry before jumping to biology, but we don’t know all the steps. Titan allows us to uncover some of them.”— Zibi Turtle, Dragonfly principal investigator “A bizarre Earth” is how one investigator describes icy Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and the target of NASA’s most […]
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Tough Losses and Shining Wins
After starting the season 12-0, the Humboldt Crabs took to the road last week to start off league play with a series against the Lincoln Potters. The Potters entered the series undefeated as well, and would prove to be the first real test of the summer for our Crabbies. In game one, after weeks of […]
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Crabs Stay the Course Against A’s, Potters
The Crabs rolled into week three of summer with their undefeated record intact. On Tuesday night, they welcomed the Fresno A’s to Arcata Ballpark for the first of a quick two-game midweek set and the hometown team would pick up right where they left off, with some help from the A’s. In the second, Kawana […]
Posted inField Notes
Midsummer Puzzle Time Q’s
TrianglesHow many triangles can you find in this figure? The Old ‘Rope around the Equator” PuzzleYou tie a rope tightly around the Earth’s equator then add three feet to its length and raise it evenly as high as possible. Can a cat now get under the rope? TimepiecesA sundial has no moving parts. What timepiece […]