Cover Story
Civic Duty
I blame Serial. Or the holidays. Or 2014’s spotlight on our flawed justice system. Whatever the reasons, I was inspired to report for jury duty. I’d never shown up before — too busy and ugh and a million other weak reasons. The process began with 80 of us in the jury assembly room, watching videos…
Eat America First
The standard sub at Z & J Asian Subs (2336 Third St., Eureka) isn’t so much a Vietnamese bánh mì as an American barbecue sandwich that spent a semester abroad and came back with pickled carrots, cucumbers, cilantro and sriracha sauce. Call it inauthentic, make fun of its souvenir beaded necklace, but you can’t fight…
Gray Matters Spring 2015
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Spotted Owl to Get Endangered Listing?
Well, U.S. Fish and Wildlife may have told the Humboldt marten to suck it up this week, but it looks like the service has the northern spotted owl’s back. The agency issued an initial finding — based on a three-year-old Environmental Protection Information Center petition — to reclassify the bird from a “threatened” to an…
Developers Withdraw Marina Center Permit Application
It easily could have been taken as an April Fool’s joke. On April 1, Security National Vice President Mike Casey filed papers with the California Coastal Commission, withdrawing the company’s application for a coastal development permit that would have paved the way for the first phase of the long-debated Marina Center development on Eureka’s blighted…
The Marten’s Fine, Says the Feds
A years-long tussle to get U.S. Fish and Wildlife to recognize the plight of the Pacific marten (which includes the Humboldt marten) just ended, with the national service announcing that the furry creatures’s problems “do not rise to the level of a threat either individually or cumulatively.” The marten’s “stressors,” which Fish and Wildlife says…
HumBug: Mimics
Yesterday, when I went out to my backyard to admire a flowering cherry tree I felt like the big ape on the top of the Empire State building. Like an old biplane, something buzzed around and around me at a dizzying pace. A glimpse of the insect world’s most popular warning colors of black and…
Pick a Peck
Maybe you’re having trouble letting go of Mad Men and shifting back into a world of dudes in sagging jeans and flat-billed hats. Totally understandable. Time to pull up an Eames chair and revel in the chiseled integrity of Gregory Peck as he does the right thing and wears the hell out of a suit.…
Humboldt Remembers: A Photo Essay by Mark Larson
A half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial appeared on a hillside near Loleta’s Tish Non Communication Center above the Eel River valley this week. The Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria and the AMVETS Post 96 in Eureka are sponsoring the wall’s visit, which comes 30 years after its 1985 stop in Arcata,…
Seeing Tomorrow’s Eclipse an “Iffy” Proposition
If you’re planning on prying yourself from your covers before dawn tomorrow to catch a glimpse of the lunar eclipse, you might be heading back to be disappointed. The eclipse will begin at 4:57 a.m., when the earth, moon and sun align in the sky, with the earth blocking the sun’s rays and casting the…
Hop to It
Put down that Creme Egg, lick the chocolate off your fingers and get ready for the thrill of the hunt! This weekend, eager youngsters will scamper across grassy fields swinging brightly colored baskets and searching for prized Easter eggs. Nothing encapsulates the joy of spring and renewal quite like squeals of delight and the joyful…
HSU Fails in Tenure and Salary Trends
A new report released from the California Faculty Association indicates Humboldt State is among the worst schools in the California State University system when it comes to a growing salary disparity between professors and administrators. The CSU faculty’s labor union report notes several alarming trends between 2004 and 2014: Humboldt State lost 25 percent of…
Fill Your Ears
Hello, Humboldt! I’m writing to you from San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district, the final leg of a coastal trip that included seeing SF’s very fine Western swing band The Vivants at Smiley’s Saloon in Bolinas — Smiley’s is the oldest tavern west of the Mississippi, how about that?! — and shooting pool for hours in…
Easter Egg Bread
I used to go egg hunting as a child. When visiting friends with chickens, I would go into the henhouse to look for an egg for myself. I was wary of hens and the rooster, but the lure of a fresh egg steeled me. Sometimes the egg would be guarded, sat upon by its owner.…
Save the Date
Arcata has backed down from its 4/20 crackdown, granting a picnic permit to the Humboldt Center for Constitutional Rights, which had raised a stink over the police department’s shutdown of Redwood Park on the lofty counterculture holiday. In the late 2000s, pipe-bearing revelers converged at the grassy entrance to Arcata’s Community Forest, forming an unofficial…
Word Oddballs
1. What word rhymes with “orange”? 2. What’s a common 11-letter word starting and ending with “und”? 3. And a common word containing “uu”? 4. How about words containing the same letter three times in a row? 5. Whence “OK”? 6. Where does the $ dollar sign come from? 7. How do you pronounce “Ye”…
Moving Stills
Billowing clouds promise something powerful as a storm seems to erupt from the sky. The darkness opens through a quiet grey day like an inverted mountaintop. An eye of light recedes from the center as you watch, and evergreen treetops in the foreground relate the scene to earth. The photograph, “Vortex above the Forest,” is…
First Saturday Night Arts Alive!
Presented by Eureka Main Street. Opening receptions for artists, exhibits and performances are held the first Saturday of each month. For more information, phone Eureka Main Street at 442-9054 or go to www.eurekamainstreet.org 1. EUREKA INN 518 Seventh St. Dance showcase in lobby. Music by the Hip Joints in the Palm Lounge. 2. HUMBOLDT ARTS…
Nerfing the World
If you subscribe to the notion that Eureka is too gosh darn dangerous these days, you may now don your helmet, elbow pads and SPF 55 sunscreen and rejoice. The city of Eureka is here to ensure that you do not walk too quickly, nor too slowly, while crossing the street. Crossing the street, after…
I’m with Stupid
Reviews HOME. Animation should be a safe harbor for unfettered imagination, where literally nothing is impossible. But I guess the risk of alienating some segment of the audience outweighs the potential rewards of challenging art, at least for the moneyed interests controlling the movie business. So, instead of breaking new ground, the studios continue to…
Open Houses
North Coast Repertory Theatre presents Rob Urbinati’s Death by Design: A Comedy with Murder, directed by Scott Malcolm. The play is set within a week in an English country Manor in the 1930s. It’s a wonderful comedy, peopled with fascinating characters who are all capable of murder. Edward Bennet, a playwright, and his wife and…
Plane Questions
Editor: So many thoughts flying around after reading the Airport article (“Wing and a Prayer,” March 26). First, I wonder why, with global warming being so prominent, no consideration is being given to the emissions from the estimated 6,000 jet flights dumping their massive, unfiltered emissions into our fragile planet’s atmosphere every day. A place…
April’s March across the Sky
A child’s echo across the field, Wafting on sun and warmth, Hovering for a moment, lingering. Like a long time ago, That one laugh, Wild, excited discovery, Stirs an afternoon nap, however brief. When new light finds the old window again, And traces the hard line of rain across the sky, Marking the place where…
The Giver
Need your faith in humanity recharged? Sure you do. Even the steeliest of cynics needs to step away from the online comment threads now and then and focus on the good in the world. The award-wining documentary Perfect Strangers follows Ellie, a healthy massage therapist who decides to make an altruistic kidney donation — not…
