EPIC Changes
Former climbing instructor takes the lead at environmental group
Cover Stories
EPIC Changes
The trees slated for cutting, mostly Douglas fir and marked with slashes of blue paint, were on the small side-about 18 inches in diameter. More striking, both for their size and number, were the stumps. Four to five feet in diameter, they stood as reminders that there was once an old-growth forest here. “People expect…
Legal Weapon
In a move characteristic of its legal tenacity, the Environmental Protection Information Center found a key witness who helped persuade a federal judge to temporarily halt Caltrans’ plan to widen Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park. The decision by U.S. District Judge William Alsup to issue a preliminary injunction against the project last month…
Special District Board Candidates Finalized
Sure, most pundits consider 2011 an “off year” elections-wise. But don’t tell that to the aspiring community servants listed below, each of whom has nobly stepped forward to run for their respective community service district or school district boards. Humboldt Community Services District Frank Scolari Dave Saunderson George Davis Kevin H. McKenny McKinleyville Community Services…
Whale, CSI
It probably will be at least two months before marine mammal specialists get enough lab results to make an educated guess about what killed the whale that circled for so many weeks in the Klamath River. One set of tests will look for toxins produced by freshwater algae. Another batch will assess blubber for contaminants…
Beats, Bodies and Love: Sibling Dispatches From Outside Lands
Kaylee and Nick Savage-Wright are the Journal’s teenaged sister-brother correspondeds covering last weekend’s Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco. (All photos by Kaylee Savage-Wright.) First up, Kaylee: After hours of anticipation and dozing off in the car, we finally arrived in San Francisco and headed straight for Golden Gate Park. Getting into the festival was luckily quick…
A Grand Time
Gena was having trouble posting an event on our website so she sent a note. It seems her band The Bret Harte Breakers has a gig on Friday at Blondie’s. “We are a folk/rock/bluegrass outfit with some smokin’ original tunes as well as some tricked out covers,” she wrote. I’ve always loved the band’s name,…
The Great Disruption
Our first truly human evolutionary test was whether we could anticipate the future catastrophe we were blindly causing, and act effectively in time to prevent it. Well, we flunked that one. Like other recent books on the climate crisis, this one asserts that the global catastrophe is unstoppable. Gilding, a Australian former human rights and…
Help!
Reviews THE HELP. Unquestionably, I bring a lot of baggage to The Help. For one thing, it is based on Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 debut novel of the same name that was mostly well-reviewed, became a best-seller, and is much beloved by many readers. In the latter category is a local friend who was very enthusiastic about…
Wicked Will
Recent Nashville transplants The Ettes have never veered far from the course of straight-up garage music. Even though they possess a more tuneful pop delivery than their garage predecessors, notably the industrial clamor of The Gories and the growling soul of Greg Cartwright and his outfit Reigning Sound, this trio consistently draws influence from Detroit…
Not W@!#mart!
Editor: Good grief! How blind is this area? (“Where’s Walmart?” Aug. 11) The mall tore the businesses in Old Town apart! Target and K-Marts are barely filling their parking lots, and now you bring in Walmart? Walmart doesn’t pay the business taxes other big-box stores pay to the cities who welcome them. Walmart discriminates against…
The Problem with Intelligence
Can humans become more intelligent? Probably not, according to an article in July’s Scientific American that considered several approaches to upping our IQ, each coming with its own set of problems. You could increase brain size, for instance, but the greater average distance between neurons would slow the brain down. Also, more neurons require more…
Word
Editor: Kudos to Judy Hodgson for “Our Word” (Aug. 4). One of many reasons I keep renewing my subscription to the Journal. Several months ago Bill Israel was mentioned in an article (“Rove’s Brain,” May 5). I was fortunate to meet him and his then wife Claudia in the late 1970s and didn’t know where he…
Eat It Green
A few Saturdays ago, as my husband and I were roaming the Arcata Farmers’ Market, we met a neighbor. She asked whether I was buying zucchini from the stall in front of us. I had in fact written in a recent Table Talk (“Zucchini Season,” July 7) that I buy zucchini by default every time…
Machine Minds
Machine Minds Editor: I regularly enjoy Barry Evans’ Field Notes. His column in the August 4th Journal entitled “The Turing Test,” however, only describes the initial step. I recently published my second novel, Project Divine Wind, which features the Turing Test in several perspectives, including from the machine’s point of view. In the novel the main character, Attorney…
Bummer in the Summer
It’s back — again. The not-quite-moribund Placebo Collective marks the 10th anniversary of Bummerfest this weekend, expanding the all-ages, all-local alt. music event into a two-day marathon. For those who don’t remember Placebo, we offer a brief history. Founded by a group of teens in 1999 in an Arcata warehouse, the youth organization’s worthy goal…
Family Stickers
Family Stickers
Brave Shave
The stage is crowded and full of shadows as the current and very impressive Ferndale Repertory Theatre production of Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street begins. A thin haze that extends over the seats greets the audience returning for the second act: It symbolizes not the romantic London fog, but the mid-19th century…
Dog Day by the Bay
Yes, Eureka is going to the dogs, at least on Sunday. And for a good cause. The 16th annual Woofstock helps support the Sequoia Humane Society, a no-kill shelter saving lost and abandoned critters and promoting spay/neuter programs so we don’t have so many lost and abandoned critters. As you might guess from the “woof”…
Open Water Swimming
Why would anyone choose to swim in an indoor pool with nothing to look at but painted stripes and concrete ceilings? Especially when right outside are the big, wide, inviting waters of Humboldt Bay and Stone Lagoon. Mention “bay swimming” at a party, though, and you’ll hear, “Yuk,” “It’s way too cold,” “Are you kidding?…
Phobophilia
Fear of death is but one of many…
North Coast Journal Best Of 2011
Fifty-one weeks a year, we at the North Coast Journal give you the lowdown on the Humboldtcentric things we think you might want/need to know about. Sometimes you like us. Sometimes you hate us. It’s all part of a time-honored, poorly choreographed dance. We get it. But one week a year, y’all have an opportunity…
Caregivers Do Care
Editor: It is so disheartening to read this two-part article called “Vulnerable” (Aug. 4 and 11) in the North Coast Journal. As the reporter assumes that the residents are not cared for by just a glance, I wonder if she even understands what happens in reality at the nursing homes here in Humboldt. The…
Happy, Fun, Upbeat Aliens!
Last year we reported on an extraterrestrial infestation in the small Southeast Humboldt town of Bridgeville — a yearly phenomenon, we would later discover. At the time, the prospect of aliens in our midst — and the fact that their ranks had grown audacious enough to schedule an annual UFO-themed event known as Bridgefest –…
Food Fight
The weekly luncheon meeting of the Eureka contingent of Business Network International was winding down in the spartan, low-ceilinged upstairs floor of Gabriel’s Restaurant in Old Town. A couple of the 20-odd members in attendance had grown fidgety. One, according to member Jeanne O’Neale — the only person we’ve found so far to talk…
