Campbell’s Account
Are the Fortuna mayor’s undisclosed checks from Pacific Lumber a problem?
Cover Story
Campbell’s Account
If Fortuna ever builds a big box mega-mall, it’s likely that Clif Clendenen would be one of the prime beneficiaries. The lanky 54-year-old is the owner and operator of Clendenen’s Cider Works, a fruit stand and orchard that has been in his family for over 100 years. The Cider Works is located directly across 12th…
Fair in Square
The Autumnal Equinox is this Sunday, which means it’s time for the North Country Fair, an annual gathering on the Arcata Plaza with a history stretching back 34 years. Streets around the town square will be closed to traffic Saturday and Sunday to make way for musicians and dancers, booths manned by artisans selling their…
No Native Left Behind
Injustice. That’s what Geneva Wiki and her family have been fighting against for as long as she can remember. Wiki is the great-niece of Raymond Mattz, the Yurok man who refused to pay a fine for gill netting on the Klamath River and successfully appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court, eventually…
Advisory
All along this lost coastline where narrow afterthoughts…
ELFS Family Night at The Alibi
For me, getting ready for a queer dance party usually means donning a sleek black outfit and pounding a few beers to get in the zone. This past Sunday started a little differently, however, since I had to skip the pre-drink. (I had ‘partied-a-bit-too-hardily’ the night before. Walking, drunk, down Fickle Hill in the middle…
The Case for Literature
The Case For Literature is the title of Gao Xingjian’s address accepting the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature, and also of this slim but powerful collection of his essays. Gao achieved his first success in China in the early 1980s with plays, and continued to write for the theatre, as well as fiction and literary…
Stranger Than Paradise
These days, when much American independent film has devolved to formulaic low budget romantic comedies, adolescent Tarantino ripoffs and torture porn, it’s hard to believe the promise that a new wave of filmmakers heralded in the ’80s. More than 20 years after its original release, Criterion has just released a remastered version of director Jim…
How Did Our Agates Form?
Wave-polished translucent agates, as in the bottom photo, are found on Agate Beach and northward by eager collectors who brave the hazards of being swept out to sea by rogue waves. Agates consist of microscopically crystallized silica (silicon dioxide), called “chalcedony.” They often show growth bands. They originate in the hellish conditions of volcanic eruptions,…
Open Letter
To: Heather Gough Deputy County Counsel County of Humboldt 825 Fifth Street Eureka, Calif. 95501 Dear Ms. Gough: Thanks much for your response to our Public Records Act request for documents pertaining to the arrest and booking of Martin Frederick Cotton II on Aug. 9. Thank you, too, for providing some of the material we…
Gem of the Season
There’s a little more than a month left in the current Oregon Shakespeare Festival season, and a couple of the plays I liked and wrote about are still running ( As You Like It, Stoppard’s On the Razzle ), as well as a few I will write about later in the column (Lisa Loomer’s Distracted…
Wild Visions
High in the mountains, the air is clear and cool. A stream crashes over rocks and down into the valley and over the sound of the water comes the cry of a red-tailed hawk. It sails over the cliffs in search of lunch. This moment of wildlife comes to you from Linda Parkinson, a watercolorist…
All That for a Bee?
I’ll do just about anything to make a bee happy. I’ve filled my garden with asters and sedum and whatever else the bees seem interested in. I let leaf cutter bees carve tiny holes in my rosebushes and fly off unsteadily with a bit of green clutched between their legs. (I think they use the…
Buscemi’s Chatty Side
Previews David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence was one of my top films of 2005. Now he’s back with Eastern Promises, again starring Viggo Mortensen, who is here teamed with the excellent Naomi Watts. Crime and violence are now centered in London, as we follow the stories of crime family member Nikolai (Mortensen) and midwife…
Byrd on Barbecue
The beef brisket sandwich was as good as everyone promised. The glowing sauce — a bizarre, grainy concoction of paprika and vinegar — took some getting used to, but the whole combination of meat and sauce and pickle slices and icy beer pretty much couldn’t be beat. (Arthur Bryant’s, Kansas City, Miss.) At Cooper’s, you…
Breaking the Silence
The great jazz keyboardist Joe Zawinul died last week. News of his passing spurred me to dig out my copy of In a Silent Way , the sublime Miles Davis album that took its name from one of Zawinul’s tunes. I bought the record when it came out at the end of the ’60s –…
Magic Books
Magic Books Daddy, says Peter, I wish I could have another pretty little Picture-Book, for I have read Mrs. Lovechild’s Golden Present so often, that I can repeat it without book. I am very glad to hear it, Peter, says his father, and I wish I could afford to buy you books as fast as…
