I’m used to odd things. I especially love when they visit me during the holidays, those special times when people want to do good things, and odd things find a welcome home. These times bring out the magical things; one doesn’t usually find Santa or the elves or Easter bunnies running about outside of their […]
Frivolity
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Lone Swan Graces Benbow
A lone swan is swimming on the Eel River at Benbow. Though swans are not unknown in the area, it is somewhat rare to see one in Southern Humboldt. The swans breed and raise their young in Arctic areas at the tip of the North American continent. Then they migrate south to winter on estuaries […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Looking for a Monocerotid Unicorn
The other week I was finally made aware of the existence of an elusive annual celestial phenomenon nicknamed the Unicorn meteor shower, or Alpha Monocerotids. So dubbed in part no doubt for its mercurial habits, the name is also eponymous for the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn, from which the meteors appear to radiate. The constellation […]
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North Coast Night Lights: A Handful of Night Light
I was in a situation not long ago with a handful of nights with which I knew not what to do. How many nights are there in a handful? You might wonder, though I never had, but it turns out that it depends on how big they are. The nights, not the hands … well, […]
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North Coast Night Lights: A Trail to the Moonset
Scenic Drive in northern Humboldt County, California, offers beautiful western vistas over the Pacific Ocean. Extending from Moonstone Beach at the south end to Trinidad in the north, the drive itself is rough and in areas may require a car with good clearance, and sometimes four wheel drive. The road may not even go completely […]
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Trick or Treat: Photos from Arcata’s Halloween
Parking was a premium for Trick or Treat on the Plaza in Arcata in late afternoon as easily more than a thousand children and adults showed up for the Halloween fun. The event, sponsored by Arcata Main Street, started off with the HSU Marching Lumberjacks, giant puppets and a bubble machine circling the plaza, followed […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Lost in Space (Big Dipper over Trinidad)
The planet hung silently in space. A tiny jewel in the blackness, it was a half-lit marble of greens and browns and blues and whites. But it was more than a planet, it was a life-bearing droplet, a little oasis of life journeying in infinite patience in its timeless passage around the sun. Soft moonlight […]
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Geeking Out: Photos from Ohana Comic Con
The second annual Ohana Comic Con in the Sapphire Palace at the Blue Lake Casino Hotel welcomed hundreds of attendees on Saturday, despite the power outages elsewhere. Lights were on thanks to the micro-grid electricity generating system in place. The family-friendly, two-day event surged with the superpowers of costumed adults and children as they shopped […]
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Photos from Saturday’s Zombie Apocalypse
On Saturday ahead of Arts Alive, the annual Zombie Walk from Eureka’s courthouse through the streets of Old Town brought out the undead. The loose scrum of leg-dragging cannibals stopped to terrorize people in cars, wait for street lights to change and take selfies with the living. A few brave machete-wielding souls waded into the […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Avenue of the Imagination
Imagine, if you will, a journey down an avenue through corridors of towering redwoods. Between them the stars hang motionless in the sky, while streaking past beneath you fly the yellow dashes of the road. This is a road you think you know. But this night your journey will end in another destination, and what […]
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Photos from Sunday at the North Country Fair
Sunday at the 46th annual North Country Fair featured another splash of the popular rhythms and dances of Samba da Alegria’s Samba Parade, along with the usual mix of live music on multiple stages, vendors of all types and — atypically for the season — occasional rain. See highlights of the parade in the slideshow […]