Cover Story
Choosing Death
In early September 2011, Dominic Dawson, a lean and soft-spoken delivery driver who lives in Manila, received an email from his ailing father in Wales. “I’m ready to go to Switzerland, October 2012,” Reg Dawson wrote his son. “What do you think?” Dominic was sitting at his desk in a second-story cupola peering over Humboldt…
Clowns All Around
Dell’Arte and the Humboldt Circus are finally getting around to answering the age-old question: “How many clowns can you fit into one weekend?!” So, put your coulrophobia by the wayside, and be prepared to be dazzled by not one, but two red-nosed, slapstick-filled tributes to the art of clowning. Dell’Arte’s Who Ya Callin’ Bozo? is…
Weather or Not
When journalism students tell me they want to go into TV News, I think of a friend of mine. When I got my first newspaper job, she got her first job as a TV reporter. From there she worked freelance for a station in Los Angeles, then went back to New York and struggled. Finally,…
Will the Arts Survive?
Editor: “Reimagining CR” (April 11) is a lighthearted way of describing the hatchet job going down at College of the Redwoods. What is really happening is a hostile takeover of the 112 Community Colleges of California. A unit is now $46, and student fees now pay more than half of the cost of a CCC education. Student debt nationwide is a ball-and-chain of over $1…
Say The Word: Community
The Arcata Playhouse and KHSU Radio join forces for The Word: A Community Storytelling Project, a collection of true stories “lived and told” by community members on the theme “Being in Community.” Among the yarn spinners is Maggie Gainer, who you might describe as a community activist. “You know how much I love to tell…
Tom Cruises
Reviews OBLIVION. The Tom Cruise conundrum: wherein the biggest movie star in the world gives winning performances in humdrum Hollywood hogwash. Over the past nine years (with the debatable exception of 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol) Cruise has gone out for big, relatively undemanding parts in distinctly middle-of-the-road movies. He’s done solid work.…
Paying Tribute
While a press release describes Petty Theft as “San Francisco’s Ultimate Tribute to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers,” I’m pretty sure it’s more a North Bay Area band. Ultimate? Maybe. Keyboardist Mike Emerson, a former local who now lives in the North Bay, was slightly more modest, saying merely that the band is “really…
Some Other Isom
Editor: Regarding the recent letter titled “Thanks NCJ, Sorry Isom,” (Mailbox, April 4) I would like to state for the record that I, John Isom, currently living in Eureka and previously in Petrolia, have nothing to do with this matter. At all. I have no dealings of any kind with anything called Isom Advisors in…
Uh, About that Majority
Editor: Re the majority/minority cartoon in your April 4 issue: I thought majorities/minorities were decided by elections, not by Joel Mielke. Susan Dodd, Eureka
OMG
Editor: I was enjoying B. Evans’ latest puzzle (Field Notes, April 11). Let me guess… LOL = “little old lady”; IMHO = “I must have onions” (presumably when you order your Whopper); FYI = “for your information” (that one’s been around awhile!); BFF = “big f*g f*t”. But then he went on to totally flummox…
Correction
Last week’s story “On The Waterfront Now” misidentified the source of a $250,000 grant given to local agencies to study sea level rise. It was awarded by the California Coastal Conservancy. The Journal regrets the error.
Transparent Motives
Transparent Motives
Five Things to Know Before You Despair of Goodness in the World
1. You’re probably watching too much news, listening to too much Democracy Now! — or both. While being informed is usually a good thing (digesting this North Coast Journal, for example, is an excellent choice), immersing yourself in sadness you can’t do anything about will just weigh you down with hopelessness. Take a break. If…
Make sure to wear purple
Make sure to wear purple somewhere on your person (it could be hidden) lilac budlets on little girl underpants or red-violet denim Keds with zippers Remember this advice a butterfly barrette, plastic snap, blue-violet wings or a striped plum beanie and knitted scarf in Massachusetts in January or play with an Indigo dyed jump rope…
The Most Expensive Lighthouse (Part 2)
Last week, we saw how a disastrous wreck in 1865 on St. George Reef, eight miles northwest of Crescent City, prompted the Lighthouse Board to contract with Scottish engineer Charles Alexander Ballantyne to build a lighthouse on Northwest Seal Rock. Work started in 1883, and by the end of the following year, the base structure…
The Man Who Planted Trees
Jim Robbins is a New York Times science writer. Ten years ago he began seeing the dense pine forest surrounding his Montana home die off, killed by the mountain pine beetle infestation. That attack, enabled by warmer winters, is still destroying northern forests. It’s evidence of how global warming is adding to centuries of deforestation.…
