Fighting Demons
The Placebo Harm Reduction Collective and how it came to be
Cover Story
Fighting Demons
The guitar player is dressed head to toe in black. Flanked by a drummer and a key-board player at a Eureka coffee-house on a Saturday night, he rips into a set of music he describes as “zombie surf rock.” He starts with a number called “Zombie Songs” and works his way through “Haunt This World”…
Armistice Day
Hardly anyone seems to be paying much attention, but these are re-markable times in Humboldt County. For at least the last 17 years – maybe more like 40 years – there’s been one single overarching theme in our small, isolated, island-like society, and that’s been the fact that the hippies and the rednecks have always…
About a Worm
A mid last week’s news that the fed-eral government has mandated in-stallation of fish ladders as a condition of the government’s relicensing of PacifiCorp’s Klamath dams, some of the region’s top fisheries scientists gathered in Fortuna to talk about a worm. They met for two days to swap information about a tiny, translucent, squid-shaped class…
Moon on You
Well, shall we start with the moon? It hovered, just past full, at the far end of the long corridors between rows of Old Town buildings, lighting up alleys and casting blue tones onto the already lamp-lit streets. You’d walk alongside one old brick edifice – perhaps darting inside to check out an art exhibit,…
New Life for an Arcata Landmark?
In cities across the country big and small, new artistic energies have often found focus in abandoned industrial districts, where fine old buildings with lots of space offer opportunities for lofts, studios and performance venues, plus the people-oriented businesses that come to surround them. Now and again the old Creamery in Arcata, in the largely…
Humboldt Gardeners in Their Own Words, Part 1
This is the first in a series of Q&As with Humboldt County gardeners. Eureka’s Gisela Rohde of Eureka kicks it off. She’s lived in Humboldt County for 27 years and has been at her current garden for five and a half years. When I asked her how she’d like to characterize her occupation or avocation,…
Here’s Looking at You
Did you ever get the feeling someone was watching you? These days, most likely someone is. What with security cameras, web cams, airport screening devices and the like, you are probably being watched more often than you realize. With privacy such a beloved right in this country, that’s likely to get a few people hot…
GMO, cloning and other controversies
Within the past few years – starting in 2000 with printed notices at the Arcata Co-op registers, rallying the troops – there has been a potent local reaction against genetically-modified (GMO) foods. Well, the Co-op has a bad record for consumer-friendly action (as opposed to decisions that are motivated by its directors’ narrow concerns). Was…
The Wolves Return
Not long after Los Lobos’ Louie Perez called me last week, we got to talking about our kids. He has several, and spoke of his oldest son who, when he graduated from high school, announced that he was moving out of the house. His plan was to spend a couple of years "concentrating on the…
