Fixing the World
If the condor comes back to Yurok country, maybe the country will come back for everyone
Cover Story
Fixing the World
A couple of hours past noon the turkey vulture rode a current from the northwest into the blue space above the Bald Hills, east of Orick. It soared, black-and-gray wings fixed in a teetery V, up over a grass-yellow pointy hill topped with trees and out over a broad ridgetop prairie dense with tall grass,…
Life Can Hurt When …
topic. … Thad Greenson goes all-in against you twice — once when you’re holding A-K, once when you’re holding A-Q suited — and both times the impish little fucker turns out to be sitting on pocket aces. And that was my Charity Poker Shootout. You can learn your own life lessons tomorrow (4 p.m.-midnight) and…
CNN Marijuana Fail
CNN Marijuana Fail: “Oakland’s bid to become the first U.S. city to tax proceeds on medical marijuana passed Tuesday by a landslide vote.” O RLY? Arcata has taxed its medical marijuana clinics for many years — see this old Journal story on the
The MLPA Ventures North
site.” Selling the Marine Life Protection Act to North Coast fishermen — and official-types — might turn out to be as tricky as crossing the bar at Humboldt Bay’s entrance. Mind ye don’t capsize, MLPA Initiative staffers, and become one with the fishes. OK, nobody was really acting that scary at the workshop last night…
Copter Crashed at Backbone Fire
Copter Crashed at Backbone Fire: “A Sikorsky helicopter working on the Backbone Fire was involved in an accident at 3:16 pm today while working at a heliwell which is located north of the fires edge on the Klamath National Forest. There were two pilots on board. One pilot is being transported by medivac to a…
Bay District Races Take Shape
Humboldt County is an insanely political place, but off-year elections are not usually very exciting. You’ve got your school boards and your community services districts — important stuff, but not usually interesting anyone who isn’t immediately affected by the work of such boards. With rare exception, they generally don’t inspire the countywide heat that your…
T.E.A.’d off
The Humboldt T.E.A. Party Patriots — the acronym standing for “taxed enough already” — took to the streets of Eureka again today ( as they did on tax day ), this time protesting President Obama’s proposed health care bill outside Congressman Mike Thompson’s office. (Though Thompson is reportedly in D.C.) The local group is part…
July in Eureka
About a dozen people on folding chairs in…
Homespun Wisdom
The latest numbers on county-wide housing affordability reveal something of an upward trend — in prices, that is, not affordability. According to the Humboldt Association of Realtors, the median price of Humboldt County homes sold in May rose for a third straight month to settle at $285,000. That’s up from $274,900 in April and $264,950…
Hating Beth Cooper
Previews Opening Wednesday, July 15, is the sixth and next-to-last Harry Potter adventure: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. When we last saw Harry, the evil Voldemort unsuccessfully attempted to possess him but was foiled by Dumbledore and Harry himself. Now, with Dumbledore reinstated as headmaster at Hogwarts, the students find they are facing a…
Hail to the Chief
Sue Brandenburg — Eureka’s grande dame of activism, the domestic demagogue of the West Side — figured the police chief could use a cookie. And some punch. Maybe a piece of homemade carrot cake with a little sculpted-frosting carrot on top. Above all, she surmised, he needed the city’s public safety budget to remain fully…
Afro-electronica
It was 1993 when I first interviewed Chris "Toosa" Berry in an Arcata garage where he was building the traditional Zimbabwean thumb pianos known as mbiras. He’d actually discovered the instrument while attending Humboldt State in the late ’80s. "The first time I heard the mbira was in the HSU Library," he told me in…
Varieties of Bankruptcy
Recommended reading: Yes, Matt Taibbi’s post-gonzo style can sometimes grate, but his report in the current issue of Rolling Stone qualifies as a must-read here in Humboldt County. The article is entitled "The Great American Bubble Machine." It’s a short history of the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, as told through the great American financial…
Buy Local’s Limits
Editor: On Tuesday, July 7, I did a short, basic piece on some of the buy-local hype on my local blog. The next day a friend called, having read my piece, and said I should check out the Journal. There are two things that weren’t really addressed in the otherwise fine article (“Here, There and…
Cruse: O.K.
Editor: When I read your article about the Film Commission’s YouTube videos I was plenty sore that I hadn’t been notified there were jobs going around (“Rebranding Humboldt,” June 25). I’m a local videographer and have known Mary Cruse for years. I can tell you she is on the level. Even though they didn’t see…
summer
tall the grass green tickles velvet the…
CORRECTIONS:
Last week’s story on Lake County medical marijuana martyr Eddy Lepp contained an error concerning Lepp’s federal prison sentence (“Pot Hero,” June 9). The story stated that Lepp’s received the “maximum sentence under the law”; in fact, Judge Marilyn Patel gave Lepp the minimum sentence possible under federal sentencing guidelines. Because of an editing error,…
Turtles All the Way Down
Quite possibly the greatest book ever written on the subject of turtle stacking. — Lisa Simpson on Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss A well-known scientist — Bertrand Russell, in one version of the story — was giving a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun, which, in…
Third Friday McKinleyville Arts Night
1. The Front Gallery and Gifts 1181 Central Ave. Celestial acoustic guitar by Orion. 2. Curves Miller Business Park. Jeannelle Gallagher, oil and watercolor paintings and pen and ink drawings. 3. Mirador Glass Miller Business Park. Matt Cooper, The Sacred Geometry Series, cutout paper art. 4. Eternal Source Glass Art Studio and…
Simple Cooking
Last summer I submitted some articles to Gourmet and Saveur magazines. They weren’t accepted, but as a kind of consolation prize, it would seem, I got free subscriptions. Every month, a thick issue arrived, full of glorious food photography, accompanied by rich prose and richer recipes. I have nothing against slick food magazines — I…
Fashion Week
Thanks to a confluence of weird and wonderful scheduling issues — an already-planned vacation with some friends combined with a couple things my publisher wanted me to do — I have ended up in Manhattan for three glorious weeks. I’m here by myself for the first week, and with my publisher-related duties out of the…
*Northern California Jesus Movement *
The pop music machine thrives on timeliness, which is a shame. With the glut of new records that comes out every week, by the time the wheat has been separated from the chaff it’s far too late in blog-years to start a conversation. Still, some older albums demand ink, and the series of albums released…
Wilco (The Album)
Jeff Tweedy, bandleader and voice of Wilco, is a man for all seasons. Literally. After the split with Uncle Tupelo — in which the other songwriter, Jay Farrar, formed Son Volt — Tweedy has amassed an interesting catalog that spans from 1995, with the Wilco debut, AM. Wilco’s seventh studio release, Wilco (The Album), falls…
