In a quiet corner of the College of the Redwoods campus, veterans gather twice weekly to shape and mold clay in a ceramics program customized for them. As rhythmic thuds of hands pressing and slapping clay at workstations fill the room, the warmth radiating from the class transforms a standard ceramics studio into a safe […]
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Quake Confusion
In many ways, the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck about 60 miles west of Petrolia and rattled Humboldt at 10:44 a.m. on Dec. 5 was entirely typical. It occurred on the Mendocino Fault, a submarine fracture zone that runs more than 2,500 miles west from Cape Mendocino, separating the Pacific and Gorda plates. “That fault, […]
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Flash Fiction 2024
Not a lot of wiggle room in a 99-word story. This year’s crop of flash fiction contest entries kept it short, but not always sweet or simple. Chosen once again by yours truly, poet and novelist David Holper, retired children’s librarian JoAnn Bauer, Booklegger owner Jennifer McFadden and retired Booklegger co-owner Nancy Short, the winning […]
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Top Dems Say They Won’t Just ‘Trump-proof’ CA, They’ll Make it Affordable Again
The leaders of the state Legislature have a message for voters: We know you’re frustrated with how expensive California is — and we’re going to fix it. After a painful election that sparked recriminations and soul-searching among Democrats across the country, state Sen. President Pro Tem Mike McGuire and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas are returning […]
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The Fearless Force
As those who knew Patty Berg best take time to reflect on her life and legacy in the wake of her Nov. 19 death at the age of 82, they call her many things. The term “trailblazer” comes up repeatedly, as they note Berg’s role as Humboldt County’s first sex-ed instructor, the founding executive director […]
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Bitten
When the fangs sank in through my pistachio-colored Pink Floyd T-shirt and sports bra, piercing my flesh somewhere outside my right peripheral view, I had been petting my elderly cat, seated on the ground in the center of the garden I grew up in amid the Klamath Mountains near the Humboldt-Siskiyou county line. It was […]
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Another Close Condor Call
A9 — one of the North Coast’s 18 California condors — is once again flying free following weeks of intensive medical treatment at the Sequoia Park Zoo due to a potentially lethal case of lead poisoning. The Northern California Condor Restoration Program — a Yurok Tribe-led effort to reestablish a self-sustaining population of the bird […]
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Wiyot Tribe Celebrates the Return of Digawututklh
Since time immemorial, the Wiyot people have lived in the Humboldt Bay region, with their traditions and ways of life intricately linked to the land and waterways surrounding them. Now 350 acres of those ancestral lands on the Samoa Peninsula, a place the tribe knows as Digawututklh, are once again under their care — “an […]
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Community Connection
When trying to describe what’s happening at the Jefferson Community Center and Park in Eureka, the simplest way might just be to say, well, a lot. Walking around the B Street site, it’s almost hard to imagine this was once an empty, dilapidated building on a weed-covered lot enclosed by a chain-link fence hung with […]
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‘The Gift of Community’
Organizing for the upcoming Trans Week of Resistance was already nearly complete come Election Day, when Donald Trump won the presidency after campaign’s final days featured a blitz of anti-trans advertisements aired in swing states. Sister Gaia T of the Eureka Chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who spearheaded planning the event, said the […]
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‘Powerful’
As the chair of the Humboldt County Republican Central Committee, Susan Moxon may not be above partisan rhetoric. A day before voters nationwide headed to the polls for Election Day, she shared to the local chapter’s social media account a prayerful post: “Dear Lord, Please make it TOO BIG TO RIG. Amen.” Forty minutes later, […]
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Eureka Man Sentenced to Life for Brutal, Random Stabbing Spree
A Eureka man who pleaded guilty to stabbing four strangers — two of them fatally — was sentenced Nov. 1 to serve four life sentences in prison by Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Killoran. According to a press release from the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office, Wesley Lee Starritt, 26, had pleaded guilty to […]