Dead at 45
As the economy stumbles, we eulogize the fallen Samoa Pulp Mill
Cover Story
Dead At 45
The shorelines of Humboldt Bay are littered with ghost towns … rusting remnants of the county’s once-rumbling economic engine. Halfway down Samoa Peninsula sits the idling structures comprising the 45-year-old Evergreen Pulp Mill. Since 2008, the factory, once employing over 200 people, has been managed by a skeleton crew charged with maintaining functions at a…
Want To Be On The Eureka City Council…
…but don’t want the hassle of a public election? Here’s your shot (that is, assuming you live in the Fourth Ward). The City of Eureka is now accepting applications to fill Frank Jager’s Fourth Ward seat, which he’s leaving to become mayor. Through the city’s rather unorthodox electoral process, that means Jager gets to name…
Redwood vs. Man (Broughty Ferry, UK)
Redwood wins (sort of): Fortunately, says The Courier’s news report, “the elderly resident of the room below the corner of the dwelling which bore the brunt of the impact was having breakfast in the lounge, and was unaware of the incident.”
Upcoming Repairs Partially Preclude Access At Houda Point
Given the time of year, chances you’re skipping down the cable “stairs” leading to the south side of Houda Point are about as good as scoring a solo session at Camel Rock on the rare days the wind turns north. But just in case, please note: the Humboldt North Coast Land Trust and the California Conservation…
Darryl Dawkins in Santa Rosa?
Fortunately, a 2.6 magnitude earthquake — like the one that just struck Santa Rosa — is no big deal and not at all newsworthy at this distance. It’s just that when the quake in question is epicentered directly beneath the hoop of the middle school’s basketball court … well, you just have to wonder. View…
Humbug This!
A beloved North Coast holiday tradition returneth! For the first time since 2003, the Eureka Inn is home to a heart-warming, humbug-defeating, green behemoth. As mentioned in this week’s Dandy, the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony is today at 4 p.m. and will feature music from the Arcata Interfaith Gospel Choir, the Humboldt Harmonaires, the College…
Final Election Results — Nothing Changes
Sundberg, Gallegos, Newman hold on with ease. Meserve makes a dash, but comes up short. Unoffical results here.
Job-Stealing Robots
Editor: Apart from some apparent butchery at the editing stage — who von Meier? — this energy geek enjoyed Jim Hight’s piece on smart meters. However, this article (and all the others I’ve seen to date on the topic) surprisingly failed to address the employment impact of replacing flesh-and-blood meter readers with electronic devices. Ever…
Platonic Solids
We think of a die (plural: dice) as a six-sided cube, but there’s no reason to limit the toss of a die to one of six possibilities. As any Dungeons and Dragons aficionado will tell you, dice can be made with five possible number of faces: four (tetrahedron); six (cube); eight (octahedron); 10 (dodecahedron) and…
Thoughts on Dope
Editor: Warm greetings from the cozy side of giving thanks! Ellen Taylor is so wrong in fantasizing the end of violence and crime by passing Prop. 19 that I must inject some sense in this fiasco called “progressive thinking” (“Mailbox,” Nov. 18). Not one person is in California or federal prison for possessing one ounce…
Winter Wonderland
Thanksgiving is upon us and with it comes the beginning of the holiday dance season. Living behind the Redwood Curtain does not preclude us from enjoying the classical arts with four seasonal ballets, three of them including renderings of that old chestnut, The Nutcracker. Thanksgiving weekend brings the first, a revival of the Nutcracker Ballet…
Uppity, Too
Editor: Did you actually think “Ignorant Little Snots,” the title you gave my letter last week, was clever? Your saucy, tongue-in-cheek style does not fly with children, and the Mattole School student body is deeply insulted. These students, who happen to be extremely intelligent and independent-minded, also pointed out to me that deliberately missing the…
Saturn Sings
Mary Halvorson’s guitar work can be partly described as someone attempting to walk on a smooth concrete floor slick with cooking oil. Halvorson is a NY-based musician, composer and arranger who explores beyond the length of her fret board as a guitarist and creates compositions with constant angular, unexpected turns, creating a feeling like everything…
The Last Blackberries
My trellises are mostly bare,with a withered stem,…
Charley Horse
Two Oxford students in 1892 are in love with two young women and invite them to lunch to tell them so, but they need a chaperone to maintain propriety. Charley Wykeham’s aunt (who he’s never met) is conveniently scheduled to be around — until she inconveniently cancels — so they enlist a classmate to impersonate…
Take Off Your Skin
Beginning in the dark, a voice out of the silence, “This strange ecstatic dream… .” Laura Muñoz, director of Take Off Your Skin, a modern dance piece integrating live music and spoken and sung words of poets Walt Whitman, Hafiz, Lalla and Rumi, fearlessly messes around with all these elements. The atmosphere created is alluring.…
Raising Food Awareness
Since last Saturday was the final Farmers’ Market of the season, a visit to the Arcata Plaza seemed mandatory. (Plus we needed spuds for the potatoes au gratin my wife was making to take to dinner at a friends’ that night.) While making the rounds I got to talking with Grady Walker of Green Fire…
That Dreadful Time of Year
The decorations loom over the aisles; the carols assault from above. Yes, it’s Christmastime. Even if you don’t buy into the whole Christmas thing, the winter holiday gift-giving extravaganza is harder to avoid than a student loan collector. The world screams, “Buy, buy, buy!” Whether you love Christmas or hate it, celebrate it or don’t,…
Un-cuddly Muppet Cousins
The Swiss theater troupe Mummenschanz first weirded its way into the American conscience in 1974 with, appropriately enough, an appearance on The Muppet Show. The easily YouTube-able moment begins with none other than Kermit the Frog himself introducing the group as “kind of distant cousins to the Muppets” and remarking that “they are as hard…
Thanks
Our family usually went to my uncle’s house for Thanksgiving. Bottles of Michelob (signifying a special occasion), soda in glasses and bowls of salty snacks lay on the coffee table. Family members played poker; they’d allow me to join in “to teach me a lesson.” And coming from a Japanese-American family, we had a long…
Potter-ific!
Opening TANGLED. Disney checks the Rapunzel box off its “fairy tales to animate” list with its latest kid-seducing 3D computer-generated release. Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) kidnaps a charming bandit but agrees to release him if he’ll help her escape her tower. Disneyesque adventure and intrigue ensues. Rated PG for brief, mild violence. 100m. At…
Disputed Territory
Ah, Thanksgiving, America’s annual revival of the feasting and merriment that accompanied the first potluck between Indians and Europeans in funny hats. If you’ll recall, shortly after this inaugural, largely fictitious chow-down, the two sides settled into the next phase of their relationship — 400 years of heated real estate disputes, often negotiated by way…
Smiles Screwed On
Thanksgiving week: According to time-tested newspaper tradition, this is the week to mope about the economy. Unlike our colleagues at every daily newspaper in the country, the Journal will not brave the 4 a.m. Black Friday rush at Target and the like to gather evidence that the world is still headed straight into the dumper.…
Good Joe
Editor: I get so tired of St. Joseph-bashing in this community. Sure, St. Joseph’s makes some mistakes, and employees facing changes will aways feel uncomfortable, but I think we need to balance that with how much the St. Joseph Health System does for our community. They support numerous Community Resource Centers and give many grants…
Don’t Microwave Me
Editor: After reading your article about PG&E smart meters I am motivated to write my first ever letter to an editor (“Smart Grid 101,” Nov. 18). I found the article lacking in important information. The following information was given to me several months ago by a PG&E representative. Each smart meter contains two microwave transmitters.…
