The sun shines and the air fills our lungs with that peculiarly invigorating scent of dead fish and salt: lunchtime in Eureka. The Tyvek home wrap on Bayfront One (or, rather, Bayfront One Mk. II, a building crossing its metaphorical fingers that it will not be burned down before it has a chance to be […]
News
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Battle for Boomer Jack
IT ALL STARTED WITH A DOG. Lincoln Kilian says he originally unearthed the story of Boomer Jack sorting through clippings in his job as an HSU librarian, a job he’d had since 1966. In 1977, he was transferred to the Humboldt Room, which houses the library’s special historical collections. Part of his assignment in the […]
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Orick or bust
Been to Orick, lately? No, not through Orick, but to. Pulled over, parked the car, got out, stretched the legs and grazed on the sights? Certainly we’re not posing this question to Orick’s few hundred residents, nor to the handful of plucky merchants who daily tootle out of the hills to unlock storefronts, kick aside […]
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Trinity Terroir
At the Winnett family’s winery, east of the Trinity River, tiny green beads of fruit clustered on the young plants in the vineyard. Halfway down one of the grassy aisles between rows of tethered leafy vines, you could stand and stare out across the plunging landscape toward Friday Ridge and imagine the past. Timber country, […]
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Summer Activities for Kids
Humboldt County has a wealth of organized summer activities for children. This is just a survey of what’s available. For more information, contact your school, church or pick up a copy of the *Humboldt Kid’s Digest at a branch of the Humboldt County Library, the Eureka Chamber of Commerce or county agencies. Most of these […]
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Night vision
I crept along, trying to keep my skittish white pickup on the narrow road that climbs above Bear River Ridge while peering the few visible feet ahead into a white swirly fog. One missed turn at a rash 15 mph, it seemed, and I’d be floating free, descending through the foggy gray twilight to a […]
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Kinetic konfusion
Here she is, 2007’s Rutabaga Queen! All hail Emma Breacain, aka Emma the Emchantress, crowned queen of the Kinetic Sculpture Race at a ceremony Friday night! "I’m so excited," her majesty said afterwards. "It’s something I take very seriously. I put enough work into my campaign that most people would consider it insane." Indeed. For […]
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Tax-free beauty
Sunday was a beautiful spring day — the most beautiful day of the year in the Humboldt Bay Area, as likely as not. Inside Pierson’s, a gardener worked her way to the garden center’s cash register bearing her selection of annuals. She had picked out some petunias, some snapdragons, some violas, some nasturtiums. When he […]
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Two Cities
In January of this year, journalism students in a class in investigative reporting at HSU taught by Marcy Burstiner explored the concerns of people in two different Humboldt County towns: Fortuna and Arcata. What drew them was a troubling statistic from the 2000 US Census; despite the obvious differences of these two cities — one […]
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Too much power?
It is a situation that must send shivers of anticipatory (even smug?) delight down the spines of all the peak-oil prophets who’ve been warning us we’d better figure out how to hunker down and self-sustain. We’re talking about the boom in renewable energy exploration here in Humboldt County — the "new gold rush," as David […]