Cover Story
Burlesque!
Holding what appears to be spider web over her green-streaked bouffant, Jackie Silva gazes around the room of women in various states of undress. “These belong to anyone?” she says loudly. “Mine!” calls Eva Hintermyer, stepping daintily in her 4-inch heels over piles of photographic cables and sequined brassieres. Right now, the small photo studio…
Former CR President On Verge of Dismissal
UPDATE 7:52 p.m.: Marsee has been placed on administrative leave. It must feel like déjà vu for controversial former College of the Redwoods President/Superintendent Jeff Marsee. Just eight months into his new job as president of San Joaquin Delta College, Marsee on Monday received overwhelming votes of “no confidence” from staff and faculty unions (whose…
Tristan and Zoltar
“Psst,” said Marty L’Herault, waving a hand from inside the velvety dark curve of his horse-drawn buggy parked on the side of F Street. The setting sun had shellacked the fronts of the old-timey buildings around the plaza in gaudy gilded pinks, and the pigeons had all tucked in behind their spiny rain-gutter fortresses for…
Danny Ray’s Last Days
Back on Jan. 5, when I wandered into the marsh near the Bayshore Mall to interview some homeless campers, most everyone was still talking about the big flood that blew out some of their camps one early Saturday morning a couple months before. A water pipe had bust somewhere nearby — crash and roar and…
Airport Manager Goes Back to Work Monday
After nearly four months on unexplained — and fully paid — administrative leave, Humboldt County Airport Manager Jacquelyn Hulsey will resume her job duties Monday morning. As the Journal reported last month, no one with the county has been willing to address the reasons for Hulsey’s extended leave. Public Works Director Tom Mattson and Humboldt…
Dissent Remembered
In 1942, when the United States government ordered the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans, Fred Korematsu refused to go. The 23-year-old California native, whose parents had immigrated from Japan, tried instead to disappear. “With his Caucasian girlfriend, Mr. Korematsu planned to move inland to Nevada,” write Eric Yamamoto and May Lee in A…
Time for a Trail
Editor: Bravo to Rees Hughes (“Walk on the Wild Side of 101,” Jan 19), for returning to the stalled issue, for walking it and writing it, and to NCJ for printing it. So, there’s a safer route that exists for the public not driving gas-powered vehicles along “The Corridor.” So, the Railroad Authority and parties…
Surviving the Blues
Last Thursday, one day before the start of Mark Hummel’s 22nd Blues Harmonica Blow-Out Tour, the harp player was on the phone calling from his Oakland home. Things didn’t look good. He’d just talked with a couple of band members who were stuck in Chicago — the airport was snowed in. Winter storms were in full…
On the Waterfront
On a strangely warm, cloudless January morning, a handful of people stroll along the boardwalk, stopping to point across the water at the crowd of boats docked at the Woodley Island Marina. Behind them, where the boardwalk ends at the foot of C Street, stands the newly opened Fisherman’s Terminal with its sea-green roof. The…
A Crab’s Life
On the north coast of California, humans have been spearing, grabbing or enticing Cancer magister into traps since time immemorial. In those early days, people boiled their crab in hot sand or roasted it in fire and gobbled it up; the table wasn’t far from the crab’s home. These days, however, some of our locally…
Sweet, Serious, Smart and Silent
Reviews The Artist. Director Michel Hazanavicius is a peerless visual stylist. His leading man Jean DuJardin is a gifted comic actor and an unnatural showman. Together they reinvented the character Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath/OSS 117 and made two deliriously funny spy spoofs bearing his moniker: OSS 117 Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006) and OSS…
The Core
In physics, the protons and neutrons at the core of an atom form the nucleus. In cellular biology, the nucleus is where you find DNA, the cell’s genetic material. In Humboldt, The Nucleus is a long-lived rock/funk/psychedelic jamband with guitarist Piet Dalmolen, bassist Steve Webb and drummer Pete Ciotti at the core. As noted on…
Divided on Debt
Editor: The story written regarding the differences between large company debt and individual debt treatment (“The Debt Divide,” Jan. 19) was educational and very saddening. I was particularly stunned by Mr. Brian Mitchell’s statement regarding the people who reside at Security National’s trailer park … that it’s housing for “the working class.” What the hell…
Corporations Are People
Corporations Are People
Parsnips in Winter
Parsnips are hardly a secret. Unlike celeriac or rutabagas, most have at least heard of parsnips, even if they can’t remember what they look like. The fragrant taproot that resembles an ivory-white carrot was once a big deal in the old country. Medieval folks survived northern European winters on parsnips, which were used to make…
North Rules
Civilization, I was taught, arose on four great rivers of the world: the Nile, the Huang He (Yellow), the Indus and the Tigris-Euphrates (which become one, 50 miles upstream of the Persian Gulf). Notice anything? They’re all in the northern hemisphere. As a result, our global culture is hemicentric: North rules. Suppose, instead, that five…
Eagles: Taking It To The Limit
Jackson Browne’s recent appearance in Arcata reminds us that the California stars of the 1970s are still around and remembered. I may have witnessed their collective apex when Browne, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles played at the Capitol Center in Washington, DC, in a benefit for the presidential campaign of Linda’s boyfriend, Jerry Brown, in…
To the Death of Fun
Having stumbled upon a cleverly crafted, hook-filled pop single, “42 West Avenue,” by Northern Ireland singer-songwriter Danny Todd (under the moniker of Cashier No. 9), I looked forward to more. After three years of writing new songs and putting together a band (of mainly Belfast friends/musicians), Cashier No. 9, is now a bona fide band.…
The Time of Matching Gloves
I see a sock alone, the match; it’s…
Thank God, it’s the Fourth Friday!
TGIF. I’m particularly thankful this Friday since it happens to be the fourth one of the month. That’s because of Fourth Friday Flicks, the monthly movie event at the Westhaven Center for the Arts (WCA). John Webb organizes the series, which runs for most of the year. (It took a break in November and December,…
