News (NCJ)
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 (NCJ)
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 […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Beachcombing
It seemed like a good place to look for the dead. The tide was ebbing, leaving behind orange crab casings, their goathead patterns staring blankly up at the gray-milk sky; huge clam shells jutting from the sand like small white tombstones; and sand dollar skeletons slowly fading from purple to bleach-bone white. A bitter north […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Nielsen Rated
Friday afternoon at the Adorni Center, a brilliant spring day. Seals swam up and down the harbor, clearly visible from the great glass wall on the north side of the big multipurpose room. It was a momentous day. Inside, 37 sworn officers of the Eureka Police Department – just about the entire force, except for […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Mean Streets
On a Saturday night in Arcata, I walked in front of the bars on the Plaza with Officer Heidi Groszmann. Thankfully, I was not under arrest – just going with her on her rounds as a part of my four-hour ride-along. Whether it was a traffic stop or making rounds on the Plaza, Groszmann was […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Bugs and Buster
Like many parents with young children, we spend an inordinate number of Saturday nights at home doing home things: watching movies, playing games, taking baths, making popcorn, listening to the radio, reading, noodling on the guitar, etc. Mundane, maybe, but still satisfying in a homey way. Sometimes we think about all those shows in nightclubs, […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Sometimes Jerry wins
On the corner of 8th and B streets, Jerry Droz cranes his neck back, squints the midday sun out of his eyes and studies a blue, shingled house that’s seen better days. The high-complexioned, blue-eyed 56-year-old aims the lollipop stick he’s been chewing toward the second floor of the four-unit rental. "You can see there’s […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Choosing the end
A mid the clangor of bus trays and the murmur of lunchtime conversations at the Humboldt Senior Resource Center, Eunice Noack and Gloria McGillvray were talking about how they wanted to die. "I certainly don’t want to lie in bed in a coma or in huge pain that can’t be treated for months," said Noack, […]
