Cover Story
Fiction in a Flash
Murderous spouses. Murderous strangers. Vignettes of love and friendship. Hauntings, literal and metaphorical. … and even Arts Alive! All in 99 words or less. The winning submissions to the North Coast Journal’s Flash Fiction contest tell stories with grace and precision, or sometimes with a rough-edged creativity that judges couldn’t resist. We invited three bookstores…
Larry Glass Bids Farewell to The Works
After more than four decades behind the counter, Larry Glass has left The Works. The former Eureka city councilman and longtime environmental activist said Wednesday that it was simply “time to move on” from the record store, which has become a North Coast institution. The good news? It will remain one. Glass left the store in…
The Huffman Sponge
Need to solidify your campaign as “squeaky clean” in the minds of voters? Put your name on a sponge! Whatever the symbolism, this past week registered second district Democrats received such a gift in the mail from congressional candidate Jared Huffman. If you’d like to speculate a deeper meaning behind cleaning products with politician’s names…
Lawson Explains Deletion of Blog Posts on Spirituality
Second District Congressional candidate Stacey Lawson has been taking heat recently for her lousy voting record and for deleting a series of posts about her Eastern-influenced spirituality, which she’d written for the Huffington Post. (We addressed that deletion in our March 15 story here.) In the video below — posted today on the San Francisco…
The Beeb Covers Kinetics
Cheerio! The blokes and birds at the British Broadcasting Company have taken note of Humboldt County’s annual Kinetic Grand Championship (nee “Scupture Race”) along with its assorted kopykats. It’s a (mostly accurate) boilerplate synopsis. Maybe it will convince some Brits to come across the pond via people power.
A Personal Remembrance of Heather Bonser-Bishop
The following was submitted by Journal contributor Stephanie Silvia: Heather Bonser-Bishop, a 39-year-old mother, nonprofit consultant and active community member in Trinidad, drowned Saturday while paddle boarding with her husband and two daughters on the Chetco River. She and her 11-year-old daughter were behind the rest of the family when her board and line became tangled…
Uh, Who Keeps Bringing Us Flowers?
Prettys! Brightly colored, construction paper-wrapped wildflowers adorned the North Coast Journal doorway when the earliest-rising employees arrived this morning. Keeping up a tradition that our more seasoned colleagues estimate dates back at least a decade, the flowers were delivered in a fashion predominantly employed only by our most favorite blog commenters: anonymously. We’re assuming our…
At the Courthouse: What’s Wrong/Right with This Picture?
Keep on the grass! About five and a half months after it went up, the fence surrounding the Humboldt County Courthouse lawn is gone. A frequent target of Occupy Eureka signage and disdain, the barrier was removed this morning by county officials and the vendor from whom the fence was rented. As you’d expect, occupiers…
More On Andy Caffrey’s Dubious Polling
After … I took to the Facebooks The next few messages were about why Caffrey hadn’t received my follow-up email. First he said he
Trees Keep Us Healthy
Editor: Judge Alsup’s ruling on April 4 shows the determination of the citizens in Humboldt (“Tall Order,” April 19). As a student at Humboldt State, I have seen petitions circulate around the campus about Richardson Grove. The power of non-violent protest is a powerful tool to fight for social and environmental justice. One of the…
Voices fo’ Choices
This Friday, April 27, Six Rivers Planned Parenthood’s Advocates for Choice boldly open up the microphones at Jambalaya in Arcata for their first ever Sexytime Karaoke Contest — a judged, three round, 15 contestant, American Idol-ish sing-off to the death (for a good cause). Now, usually we use this section in the Journal to objectively…
Dem Schism
Anyone who’s lived in Humboldt County for long knows that our political divide doesn’t align very neatly into the standard camps of Republican/Democrat, conservative/liberal, O’Reilly/Maddow. We might identify with one tribe or another when we’re voting for state and national representatives, but local government tends to revolve around land use: Can I build a house…
Buddha Stops By
“I have seen thousands of people transformed by the presence of these relics. I have felt them transform my own mind. … They emit some sort of transmission that can make a person open to their hearts and to the hearts of others. I don’t know how, but the relics seem to connect people to…
Making a Difference
Canadian folk icon Bruce Cockburn is back in town, playing a solo show Sunday at the Van Duzer. It’s not that long since his last visit, just two years, but a few things have happened in the interim. Probably most important, he has a new baby at home. He also finished the album he…
Blockin’ Out the Scenery
Will make-uh da sign!
Jah, Whatever
Reviews MARLEY. Once, in college, a professor took our class outside on a particularly sunny day and broke us up into small groups. We were loosely assembled on the central grassy expanse of the campus. In a telling, embarrassingly typical snapshot: Frisbees flew around us, and someone had tipped speakers out of a dorm-room window,…
“Tusen Tankar (A Thousand Thoughts)”
Last night’s concert by Kronos Quartet was truly amazing, a collection of tunes with an arch that started with “Aheym,” a song with Yiddish allusions by Bryce Dessner, guitarist for The National, written for Kronos to mark minimalist composer Steve Reich’s 75th birthday. The quartet then moved into Arabic music, including “Tashweesh,” by the Palestinian…
Voting Fail
Editor: I read with interest your revealing profile (“Congress: The Dating Game,” March 15) of multimillionaire congressional candidate Stacey Lawson, but I wasn’t planning to comment publicly until I read about her offensive voting record on the NCJ blog. Apparently she only voted four times during a five-year period in which there were 12 elections.…
Her mountain
Hers was east High with hawks Shock of…
Gender Bias at St. Joe’s
Editor: The divisions between church and state are ever more cloudy … and now, our medical care has its own church versus medical ethics? (“Every Sperm is Sacred,” April 5.) We did allow St. Joseph’s to take over our General Hospital … and have been reaping the “benefits” ever since. Jobs have been lost, and…
Flower Power
For most of the year, I seem to be oblivious to the power of flowers to brighten up a room or a relationship. Just ask my wife, Amy. But for a couple of months, about the time winter limps on toward the southern hemisphere and spring begins to assert herself (yes, I do think…
Not So Fresh Air
Not So Fresh Air
Meet the Flowers
From May 4-6, the Spring Wildflower Show will be sponsored by the California Native Plant Society. Held at the Manila Community Center, 1611 Peninsula Drive, it is a free event with exhibits and displays of hundreds of species of flowers, demonstrations on gardening, edible and medicinal plants, rare plants, invasive plants, Native American traditions, native…
Locked Down
Bad shit happens — just ask Mac Rebennack. The New Orleans session guitarist was forced to switch over to piano/keyboards after he was shot in the finger in the early ’60s. At that time, he had also entered a bitter cycle of heroin addiction and jail, his “lock down” period, which would haunt him for…
My Parasites Made Me Do It (Part 2 of 2)
Last week, I discussed the increasing evidence that the common parasite Toxoplasma gondii appears to cause behavioral changes in rats, such as making them less fearful of cats. It also may affect human behavior, making men more likely to be involved in traffic accidents, while women appear to have less susceptibility to guilt. While this…
Music From Some Place
Nick Waterhouse is the latest sensation in the world of retro-soul/funk/whatever — he has his first album coming out any day — but he started out as what you might call a record store nerd. Growing up in Costa Mesa he spent his early years hanging around the Distillery, a classic recording studio not far…
