Aftermath
A killer’s confession, a congregation’s faith and more inmates released into the dead of night
Cover Stories
Eric’s Law
By now the story is familiar, though no less ghastly. Shortly after midnight on Jan. 1, 2014, Gary Lee Bullock walked out of the Humboldt County jail. By dawn, St. Bernard pastor Eric Freed was dead. While a parish reeled with the loss of its leader and a community tried to make sense of the…
Voices and Violence
In the two-and-a-half years since the New Year’s Day murder of St. Bernard Catholic Church pastor Eric Freed, one voice has been notably absent amid the court proceedings and the media coverage: that of Freed’s killer, Gary Lee Bullock. While jurors heard snippets of a few phone conversations Bullock made from jail, the public has…
‘What Sustains Us’
Sitting in a coffee shop not far from St. Bernard Catholic parish after Friday mass, Cathy Dellabalma stared down at the kale salad sitting untouched on the table in front of her and paused to consider the question. What has the murder of beloved pastor Eric Freed done to the St. Bernard congregation? “Made us…
Back When Celebrities Judged How Hot Your Teenager Was
As we trawled through some old Eureka High School yearbooks for vintage photos of Jimmy Smith for this week’s issue, we stumbled on this bygone custom: writing to the hottest celebrity of the day and asking him or her to determine the most pulchritudinous of Eureka’s young students. In honor of the Sequoia Spring Dance,…
Cottage Marijuana Farm Bill and Other Provisions Pass Assembly
A newly drafted protection for “micro” weed farmers is making its way through state lawmakers’ chambers. The Assembly just passed North Coast Assemblyman Jim Wood’s “Cottage Cannabis Farmers Bill” that would add a new medical marijuana cultivator license to the state regulatory framework passed last year. The new license type will be available to outdoor…
Hop a Flight
Unfortunate fact of physics: A standard ice cream cone can only hold two flavors before things get sloppy and end in tears. If you’re not already married to a flavor, the wait at Living the Dream Ice Cream (1 F St., Eureka) culminates with a scramble to pick from more than a dozen rotating flavors.…
Keepin’ it Kinetic: Last Legs
In the end, Team Tempus Fugitorium crossed the Ferndale finish line first for a thrilling third consecutive win. Time flies and so do they. We tip our oversize steampunk hats to all who made it through the sand, sea, rough road and hellish hills. Today the sore and the sunburned rest — their battered contraptions…
Mack in the Saddle
It’s the first weekend in June. And ’round these parts, that means the town yonder north off 101 has itself a little celebration. Pony Express Days in McKinleyville makes its run June 1 to 5 with a cook-off, parade, gymkhana and all-day festival. The town “where horses have the right of way” ain’t horsing around.…
Keepin’ it Kinetic: Ahoy, Day 2!
The Kinetic Grand Championship is the art race that floats. (Fingers crossed.) After the pageantry of the Arcata Plaza kick-off and the sandy adrenaline rush of Dead Man’s Drop yesterday, racers hit Humboldt Bay with amphibious ambition today. Mark McKenna’s slideshow below captures the wild and watery action. Stay tuned for news from the Ferndale…
HumBug: Little Blue Butterflies
While most everyone is delighted by the recent rains, I await warmer weather. Since insects are ectothermic (cold blooded) they maintain a low profile when it’s cold. In the brief sunny interludes we’ve had recently, I’ve seen California hairstreaks, Acmon blues, and several other small, blue to gray butterflies that didn’t hang around long enough…
TL;DR: Five Things You Need to Know from This Week’s Cover Story
Busy week? We get it. Here are some highlights from the cover to get you caught up. It’s been two and a half years since St. Bernard pastor Eric Freed was killed in his church rectory home. With his killer now convicted and sentenced, the Journal wanted to find out how the congregation has recovered,…
Keepin’ it Kinetic: Day 1
The great rolling circus that is the Kinetic Grand Championship took off from the Arcata Plaza today for the first leg of a three-day marathon of creativity, humor, stamina and daredevilry on wheels. Now in its 47th year, the Hobartian hullabaloo shows no signs of slowing down (maybe we need another brake check) or running…
The Devil’s Playground No More
The PalCo Marsh is looking a lot different these days. Not only was the marsh cleared of the city’s largest and most entrenched homeless encampment on May 2, but crews from Figas Construction have now started demolishing the old concrete lumber kilns that have long been dubbed the Devil’s Playground. For decades, the kilns have…
Friends of Jimmy Smith Gather to Mourn
There were more jeans than heels, and half the parking lot was filled with pickup trucks. The line of cars stretched down the small main street of Fields Landing, and the parking lot in front of the boat launch named in honor of the man everyone knew as Jimmy filled with mourners. A strong, persistent…
Garberville Court Closed Due to Mold
The Garberville branch of the Humboldt County Superior Court has been closed due to mold issues, reports Humboldt 2nd District Supervisor Estelle Fennell. A recent inspection confirmed that there was enough mold in the walls to constitute a health threat. The Garberville court is an arraignment, pretrial court on criminal misdemeanor matters and other low-level…
All Guts, All Glory
The creativity, ingenuity and stamina involved in pulling off the world-famous “Triathlon of the Art World,” the Kinetic Grand Championship, May 28 to 30 (free), is a thing to behold. The event started 47 years ago with a playful challenge from one artist to another and featured founder Hobart Brown’s Pentacycle and a mere three…
Huffman Thumps Trump
North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman blasted presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s planned visit with the leaders of the Westlands Water District in an absolutely scathing press release sent out this afternoon. “Donald Trump, who continues to refuse to release his tax returns and show the public his personal accounting, will be sitting down with…
Waiting for Tuesday
Tuesdays are press days at the Journal, a cruel constant that has thus far kept us from following a lead on the Tuesday night Southern fried chicken special ($20) at Six Rivers Brewery (1300 Central Ave., McKinleyville). But this week, we put the issue to bed and called ahead to secure one of four remaining…
McGuire Helps Nab $1 Million for PalCo Marsh Trail
North Coast State Sen. Mike McGuire announced this morning that he’s helped secure $1 million in state funding for the Eureka Waterfront Trail, which will transform the PalCo Marsh from its current blighted state into a waterfront nature trail. The funding will help fund the construction of 3.75 miles of new trail, which will consist…
Buzzkill: That’s Not the World’s Tallest Tree
If you’ve logged on to Facebook in the last couple days, you’ve probably seen that photo to the right. It’s real, it’s beautiful and it’s in Humboldt County. It’s not, however, the tallest tree in the world. For whatever reason, the picture has been circulating like crazy lately, and it seems to always be accompanied…
Notes on “Field Notes”
Editor: Regarding Barry Evans’ column on “The Good Old Days?” (May 19), I would add a third “great evil” on which our country was built: unrestrained resource consumption, damage and waste. In just a few hundred years, the non-indigenous peoples who settled the U.S. wreaked unfathomable devastation on our landscape and its inhabitants. Immense forests…
Poetry & Suds
Editor: I really enjoyed Michael Kraft’s poem “Brew Pub Window” in the May 19 edition. He did a great job weaving his own poetry with that of one of my favorite poets. If only he had managed to somehow work in the two most famous lines from Housman’s poem: “And malt does more than Milton…
They Like Mike
Editor: Few are prepared to confront Humboldt’s looming challenges. Mike Wilson is up to the job as 3rd District Supervisor. Working with Mike on the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission, I observe his accomplishments as we address diverse economic development from business loans to improved air services. He is a hands-on Humboldt harbor commissioner, cleaning…
SLAPP Back
Earlier this year, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that a macaque monkey in Indonesia did not have the right to control use of the world’s greatest selfie. He snapped the photo after he grabbed a camera belonging to photographer David Slater. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which had filed the suit…
In Remembrance
I grew up around many veterans among my mother’s Yurok people and my father’s Maidu and Achumawi people from northeastern California. I’ve had the privilege to speak with several veterans who served with my grandfather and great-uncle in World War II. I wanted to honor all local veterans during Memorial Day by sharing part of…
Greeting the Pot Czarina
A line of more than 100 eager attendees snaked out of the entrance to Arcata’s D Street Neighborhood Center to meet the chief of California’s newly formed Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation. The czarina, Lori Ajax, started the meeting, explaining to a mostly jovial crowd that the bureau was in its infancy. “I started with…
Sic Transit Gloria Humboldt
The Kinetic Grand Championship is upon us this weekend, and it’s hard to think of an event that more completely captures the strange, silly and fabulous spirit of life here in Humboldt County. I arrived in Humboldt 16 years ago now, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t exactly remember my first sculpture race,…
Peas Time
Where do black-eyed peas go after being at the center of the New Year’s table? Are they put away in the back of the pantry for a year, like Halloween costumes in the back of the closet? In Italy, lentils are the legume that brings good fortune and money in the New Year. My mother…
Menu of Menus 2016
The North Coast’s complete dining directory.
Bad Girls
Reviews NEIGHBORS 2: SORORITY RISING. Maybe it’s the inevitable softening of my brain or the fact that I’ve spent enough time around 20-somethings (Millenials!) in recent years to feel roughly twice my actual age (I don’t even use Snapchat, you guys), but I thought Neighbors (2014) was not only funny but somehow wiser and sharper…
This Joint is Jumpin’
The motion picture Reefer Madness has spent so much time as a camp classic that it’s sometimes easy to forget it was once presented with a straight face in 1936 as an educational film financed outside of the studio system, before being recut into different versions and re-released all across the land by notorious exploitation…
On Demands
Editor: The obstructionism of Eureka City Attorney Cyndy Day-Wilson (“Eureka Gets Squirrely about Handing over Public Records,” May 19) and the city’s deceitful press release in support of her dilatory tactics prove again two hallowed truths: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass. “The secrets of…
