Between Prejudice and Profit
The post-expulsion saga of the Chinese workers at the Eel River Cannery
Cover Story
Between Prejudice and Profit
Editor’s note: In memory of this month’s anniversary of the expulsion of Chinese residents from Eureka, the Journal is looking back at a controversy from that unfortunate chapter of Humboldt County history. Be advised that this story contains offensive and racist language in historical quotations. Early in the year 1886, Ferndale and many other Humboldt…
Music Tonight: Friday, Feb. 24
Given the widespread coverage and ad campaign for Jay Leno’s double set at the Arkley Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, I probably don’t need to carry any water for those gigs, but may I suggest a double headlining appearance of a less famous but certainly no less funny comic? Tonight and tomorrow night…
Music Tonight: Thursday, Feb. 23
Oryan Peterson-Jones continues his recent tradition of playing a solo set of flamenco and folk music gathered from his various world travels at the evening dune-land beautyscape of the Humboldt Bay Social Club. It starts at 6 p.m. and it’s free. Back in Arcata at the Jam, it’s Reggae night again. Join live bands Wisedem…
Show Us Your Snow
The storm is delivering the steady snow that was forecast, with coastal areas near sea level getting some flurries this morning, and more to come today into Friday. “A winter storm is underway in Northwest California. Around and above 1,000 feet elevation, snow will continue today and into Friday,” the Eureka office of the National…
UPDATED: Wild Weather: Wind, Rain, Snow, Hail and Huge Surf
The storm is beginning to arrive, a portent of what to expect in the next few days as temperatures plummet, bringing heavy snow down to low levels, with even coastal areas looking at the possibility of some flutters. For a list of warming centers and shelters in different areas of Humboldt, as well as information…
Yurok Tribe, Marshals Service Form MMIP Partnership
The Yurok Tribe has been selected to serve as the first pilot location of the U.S. Marshals Service’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Initiative, according to a news release from the tribe, which aims to “develop tribally-led collaborative partnerships to proactively examine public safety issues – particularly those involving missing endangered children.” “The Yurok Tribe…
Is California Breaking Its Promise to Cut Health Care Costs?
Brian Iv works in a factory in Orange County, earning around $26 per hour. He suffers chronic pain from a lifetime of manual labor jobs and previous workplace injuries, but often treats the pain with home remedies or traditional Cambodian practices. Going to the doctor is too expensive, he said. Iv recently got a raise…
David Lee Fouché: 1945-2023
On Monday, Feb. 6, David Lee Fouché passed away, with his loving wife and children by his side, after an unexpected and aggressive cancer diagnosis. Born in Sacramento on July 6, 1945, to parents Daniel and Lorraine Fouche, David attended grammar school, junior high and McClatchy High School in Sacramento. David moved to Eureka in…
Call for Submissions: Coloring Book Art
CALLING ALL ARTISTS: Ink up your pens or charge up your tablets, it’s time for another NCJ Coloring Book! As with previous editions, proceeds from coloring book sales will be shared between the contributing artists and NCJ to support local artists and local journalism, both of which are vital to Humboldt County. Submit your black…
NCJ Preview: Post-Chinese Expulsion History, Student Housing and Pizza
This week, we’re looking back on how anti-Chinese racism kept a cannery from making money for the Eel River Valley in the 1880s. And as the housing drama at Cal Poly Humboldt grows, we’ve got an update on how the university plans to house incoming and continuing students. We’re also sinking our teeth into the…
Winter Storm Watch: Snow Slated to Start Tuesday, Chance for a Coastal Dusting
Once again, Humboldt County is in the calm before the storm. While Monday’s holiday is expected to be sunny with a high in the mid-50s on the coast and in the mid-to-high 60s inland, the rest of the week’s temperatures are forecast to plummet with each passing day, getting down into the 40s during the…
California Homelessness: Where are the State’s Billions Going? Here’s the New, Best Answer
In Sacramento, there’s a word that keeps popping up during discussions about the state’s homelessness crisis: “accountability.” Gov. Gavin Newsom has scolded cities and counties for failing to get more people off the street, hundreds of millions in state spending notwithstanding. “Californians demand accountability and results, not settling for the status quo,” the governor said…
Re: Rex
Editor: Thank you, NCJ, for making sure the recent behavior at the Eureka Chamber of Commerce awards gala is no longer considered acceptable (“Uncomfortable,” Feb. 9). Decades ago, I entered what was then a male-dominated field as a young woman professional. I was repeatedly insulted, ignored, propositioned and groped by some of my “professional” colleagues. I grew…
‘Invasive Pests’
Editor: As always, I was delighted by Talia Rose’s photos (“Wild 2.0,” Feb. 9). As a wildlife photographer myself, I appreciate the patience, focus (no pun intended) and equipment required to get such shots. However, I can’t share her appreciation of the burgeoning Canada goose population in the Eel River valley. Canada geese, just like…
Donations Large and Small
Editor: We have been hearing through emails, Facebook and Neighbor Next Door about the need for an extreme weather shelter (Mailbox, Feb. 2). We recently took a tour of all of Arcata House Partnership facilities. AHP has a perfect place for the extreme weather shelter at The Grove. AHP used it this past year during…
‘The Whole System is Broken’
Kristi Wrigley can remember back decades when her family’s apple orchard, located in the Elk River watershed, was fruitful and productive, helping supplement the family’s income. The trees are mostly dead now, killed by deposits of river sediment around their roots. Many of her neighbors’ homes have flooded, while others have stories of being blocked…
Growing Pains
Cal Poly Humboldt has backpedaled a bit on plans to restrict continuing students from living on campus after an announcement earlier this month — right before the housing application period was set to open — caught many by surprise, prompting an outcry from parents and students. But even with around 600 of the 2,100 beds…
One World
I’m pretty horrified at the lack of comprehensive coverage of the ongoing vinyl chloride train derailment catastrophe. If you don’t like my bummer intros, skip ahead to a rather dynamic week of live music. For the rest of you, hear me out: At this point, it seems like the original run of HBO’s Chernobyl got…
Cam’s Pizza’s Pedigree
Lecsi Prince, co-owner of the mobile Cam’s Pizza stand, jokes that pizza was her partner Cameron Calder’s first solid food. “My parents put pizza in a blender,” Calder responds, laughing. They’re joking, right? He did grow up in and around pizza parlors, though, with his father David the namesake founder of David’s Pizza in the…
Mastodons in Greenland
At first blush, the headlines sound like something out of science fiction: “Scientists recreate ancient ecosystem by studying dirt!” But it’s real. The dirt in question, 41 sediment cores taken by Danish paleontologists in 2-million-year-old northern Greenland permafrost in 2005, turned out to be a treasure chest of DNA. They didn’t know that back then…
Some Assembly Required
This month’s Arts Alive at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka showcased three very different exhibitions that, each in its own way, explore the interconnected resilience and breakdown of complex systems. In addressing the conceptual and the material, the group show Powerful Fragility, Clea Felien’s Ever Giving, and Annakatrin Burnham’s T/HERE, incorporate modularity,…
Grandparents
Most Blessings Don’t come into Our lives Kicking & Screaming, Then cuddling beyond Wildest dreams… Still, we wonder If everything is ok When his eyes close, Dreaming beyond First notions of All we love. Kirk Gothier
Bare Root Time
If you’ve been to a local nursery lately, you’ve probably noticed a bunch of boxed stick-like things in sand or soil. Bare root tree/berry season is finally here. Why buy bare root instead of trees or items in pots? First, it’s usually cheaper. Second, they tend to have a wider variety of bare root than…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries director Francis Ford Coppola was asked to name the year’s worst movie. The question didn’t interest him, he said. He listed his favorite films, then declared, “Movies are hard to make, so I’d say, all the other ones were fine!” Coppola’s comments remind me of author Dave Eggers’: “Do not…
Coastal Steelhead Season on the Brink
With the majority of our coastal rivers in prime fishing shape, it’s starting to feel like it’s now or never for the 2023 winter steelhead season. In what has been one of the most dismal seasons anyone can remember, if the next couple of weeks don’t produce some quality fishing, it’s likely the season will…
Almost Sweet/Scary Enough
SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW. Yeah, I’ll watch a romantic comedy. As much as I may long for the unobtainable approval of the critical studies elite — simultaneously reveling in violent cinematic catharsis, celebrating genre trash and semi-privately thinking I really should watch more Akerman and Bergman — I’m a product of my environment. And…
For the People
The California Public Records Act is a vital piece of legislation, enshrining the rights of access and the principles of sunshine into the state’s constitution, asserting that “access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state.” Unfortunately, as history has taught us,…
Cal Poly Housing: A Student’s Perspective
My family was evicted from our Oakland apartment in November of 2018. Since then, I’ve stayed in motels, on church floors, in homeless shelters and dorm rooms. And yet, I consider myself lucky. I’ve never had to sleep on a sidewalk or in a park. On my worst days, I was able to get breakfast…
