"I believe that this is the worst," said Humboldt State University Provost Rick Vrem, addressing a standing-room-only crowd in the university’s Green and Gold Room last Tuesday. "I believe that the future looks brighter for us, potentially, than it has for some time." The occasion was an emergency meeting of the Academic Senate, the corpus […]
News
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Nuke Trail
We were at the end of our walk on King Salmon Beach. My dog led the way along the worn path through the dunes toward the seawall, where our car was parked. It was chilly out, gray-skied and getting dark – similar to my state of mind. April was a piece of crap month and […]
Posted inNews
Mission to Omaha
Dressed in traditional regalia, with woven baskets on their heads and earthy symbols of renewal in hand, about 20 Native Americans chanted, danced and prayed in a circle. They surrounded Karuk tribe member Kathy McCovey, a medicine woman, sitting next to a fire burning angelica root, her eyes closed, meditating. Their shell-encased skirts made the […]
Posted inNews
On the home front
For the past two years, up to 28 stakeholders have been meeting behind closed doors to negotiate a settlement that will provide a framework for a host of Klamath River projects aimed at fixing water quality and quantity problems throughout the entire river basin. The meetings have been secretive – the better to allow the […]
Posted inNews
Born again
On a sunny, nearly hot spring afternoon in early April, Susan Penn was setting up easels inside the Northcoast Environmental Center’s headquarters and placing paintings on them. The office was chaotic – boxes everywhere, some with giant stuffed salmon swimming atop them. How much of this stuff would make it to the new headquarters, up […]
Posted inNews
People Project protest ends
Two Sunday mornings ago, my mother returned from walking to church in town. "There’s a Hooverville down the street," she told me. My mom is just old enough to remember the shanty towns that popped up in urban areas during the Great Depression, where homeless families lived in makeshift shelters made from packing crates and […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
420 at the Clam
Regional celebrants of 4/20 last Friday may have felt torn between two settings: forest, or beach? Several thousand chose forest, converging upon Arcata Community Forest’s Redwood Park – one obvious reason, we’d think, being that apparently the greatest height to which a redwood tree can, in theory, grow before the water poops out is 420 […]
Posted inNews
Prescription for trouble
While visiting Sacramento a few weeks ago, Patient X, a Humboldt County resident who asked that her name not be published, went to a medical marijuana dispensary to fill her prescription, which she uses for migraine headaches. In her two years as a card-carrying medical cannabis user, the college-aged woman purchased the drug in dispensaries […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Tall Ships
Had Captain Jack Aubrey had the occasion to board the Lady Washington, docked in Humboldt Bay since last weekend, and take it for a spin around the bay, his face might have darkened with dismay at the brig’s unhealthy complement of civilians bumping about, getting in the sailors’ way, holding soda pop cans, answering cell […]
Posted inNews
The guardian angel
Most homeless parents interviewed for this story requested anonymity to protect their children’s confidentiality. It was just before noon on a cool Monday morning when Maureen Chase spotted a boy about 10 years old walking alone through the parking lot of a low-cost motel in Eureka. She caught up with him just as he entered […]