Flash Fiction Contest
Murder, vengance, romance and a naked lady — in 99 words or less
Cover Story
Flash Fiction Winners
Grim. Grim, grim, grim. That about sums up the overall tenor of the entries in the North Coast Journal’s first-ever flash fiction contest. We asked you, our readers, to send us your stories, encapsulated in 99 words or fewer. And you — you murderous, unhappy lot — took that as an imperative to make us…
Wingo
Tran. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office must have figured that a guy who’s into meth, weed, sawed-off shotguns and semi-automatics ain’t the type of dude who gets up bright and early. A multi-agency SWAT team rolled in to the Hoopa home of Alvin Lee Wingo, Jr., 49, (pictured) at 6:45 yesterday morning with a “high…
Offshore drilling in Humboldt?
Renewable energy may be the top priority for the Department of the Interior — and so says Department Secretary Ken Salazar — but that doesn’t mean offshore drilling is off the table. The DOI’s Minerals Managment Service will hold a public meeting April 16 at the UC San Francisco Mission Bay campus to talk about…
Lost At Sea
him. An unbearably sad and horrifying press release just came in from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office. There’s obviously some questions to ask, as you’ll see, but here’s the news as it stands: The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a missing person early this morning after two men said a shipmate had…
Time to buy a house?
A cursory glance at the latest stats from the Humboldt Association of Realtors suggests that it may be time for locals, at least those who still have jobs, to take that domestic plunge into homeownership. The average mortgage rate in January hit its lowest mark in many moons, maybe forever — 5.21 percent. Plus, the…
An ironic post about the future
[ Enlarge ] The irony being that I’m posting this on our blog. Hug me, cold, bleak future.
The Tolstoy Bailout
drugs.”The Tolstoy Bailout: Another knockout punch from Leon Wieseltier, the best essayist of his kind working in America today. He writes every other week; you must read
The Economist: End the Drug War
Sunday.The Economist: End the Drug War: “Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in…
Condor Dreamin’
The Yurok Tribe met yesterday and meets again today to talk about reintroducing the California condor to the lower Klamath River Basin, says the Medford Mail Tribune. Oregon hunters are wary: Studies show the chief limiting factor to condor recovery is lead poisoning, and the most common source of that lead is the ingestion of bullet…
Missing Plane Parts Found?
Missing Plane Parts Found?: The Orlando Sentinel reports that the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office may have found parts of the airplane that went missing off the Humboldt County coast on
Fight Some More Forever
thought.) A newspaper in Washington state Oregon with “chieftain” in its name and a picture of Chief Joseph (booted from the newspaper’s locale), on its nameplate says “Removing [Klamath] dams costly, unwarranted.”
Double-Digit Unemployment
. The latest figures from the state Employment Development Department show that the Humboldt County unemployment rate has shattered a psychological ceiling. Dennis Mullins, the EDD stats man for the North Coast, writes: Humboldt’s preliminary January 2009 jobless rate was 11.1 percent, up 2.1 percent from the revised December 2008 rate of 9.0 percent and…
Miners and Indians
blown!Miners and Indians: Karuk Vice-Chair Leaf Hillman takes the legal battle between the tribe and recreational dredge miners up a notch with the strongly worded op-ed in the Sacto Bee
For the Week-hearted
Every seven days, a new edition of the North Coast Journal appears in Humboldt County, regular as clockwork. What’s so special about seven that it forms the backbone of our calendar? After all, the week follows no natural cycle, as is obvious when you realize that other cultures have gotten along quite happily with three…
First Saturday Night Arts Alive!
Presented by USBank, with Eureka Main Street and the Humboldt Arts Council. Opening receptions for artists, exhibits and/or performances are held the first Saturday of each month. Phone 707-442-9054, for more information or to have an exhibit/performance included. aweurekatoday.blogspot.com AA. LINDA MITCHELL OPEN STUDIO 909 E St. Open Studio and Sale from noon-9 p.m. 1.…
Kool Keith — Dr. Octagon vs. Dr. Dooom
Perhaps Kool Keith is krazy, but that’s part of his appeal. The New York native Doctor of Dooom and eight-sided polygons has been rapping explicit non-sequiturs since 1988, and experienced a brief institutionalization stint after the release of his first album with the Ultramagnetic MCs titled Critical Beatdown. Some 21 years later the man is…
Estranged Meadow
If you were a kid in the late 1970s/early ’80s and your parents loved you, then you must have gone to Disneyland, which means you must remember when Space Mountain glistened with newness and high tech. You also remember waiting … and waiting … and waiting … in the outside line expecting that once you…
Subscribe ‘Til It Hurts
When you live in the only place in the country where three faults meet, you should keep a larder stocked with gallons of water and food that will last until the Big One hits: Sardines, Spaghetti O’s, Spam, Melba Toast. You’ll need to know the state of affairs — road closures, estimates of when the…
The Care Continuum
When asking people to fill out a survey, it’s polite to offer an incentive. So when a group of volunteers set out in late January to compile an accurate head count of Humboldt County’s homeless population, they brought socks. Why socks? "’Cuz," said Fox Olsen, co-chair of the Humboldt Housing and Homeless Coalition (HHHC), "if…
Airborne With the Guardies
Perilous Plunge fans lined the docks, waving as the helicopter descended. Our flight mechanic, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Rick Vige, and rescue swimmer, Petty Officer James Moore, waved back. We hovered at about 10 feet, rotor wash radiating outward. Vige tossed the dummy, then Moore took his own plunge into Humboldt Bay. Pilots Lt.…
The Massacre Remembered
Preview Opening Friday, March 6, is the long anticipated Watchmen, the latest superhero film based on the comic book series written by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Directed by Zack Snyder (300), the story is set in an alternate history 1985 (Nixon is president) against the backdrop of rising tensions between the U.S. and the…
The Hustle Gets Harder
Music maverick Adam Drucker, aka Doseone, or simply Dose, is an artist who straddles traditional boundaries and wears many hats. He started out in Cincinnati as a literate, high-speed, rhythmic rapper, a Scribble Jam champion MC who teamed up with DJ Jeff "Jel" Logan and headed west to Oakland. There he joined forces with like-minded…
Creamery in Curdle
It looks as though the questions that have been roiling the Humboldt County business community — particularly in dairy country — should start to be answered later this week. First question: What did ex-Humboldt Creamery CEO Rich Ghilarducci mean when he suddenly went MIA, sending a letter through his high-powered San Francisco attorneys to the…
The Millipede Massacre
Editor: Heidi Walters did a good job summarizing the complex history of Headwaters Forest ("Headwaters Forest at 10", Feb. 26). However, a notable inaccuracy occurred when she wrote, "In March 1987, [Greg] King and a fellow activist walked into the Headwaters Grove for the first time." Actually, I was alone during that first foray into…
Adopting Reform
Editor: In reading the Feb. 19 letter to the editor titled “Not a Pretty Picture,” I was saddened to hear that Ms. Rigge has experienced so many difficulties in her journey as an adopted adult. While adoption in this country has seen countless forms and is still, in many ways, evolving as an issue that…
Hospital With Heart
Editor: How appropriate that the Journal depicted a heart on its cover for its lead story on St. Joseph’s Hospital in your Feb. 12 issue ("Mending Broken Hearts."). Although you meant the heart literally, it is a profound metaphor as well. Your writer indicated that St. Joe’s used to have three quality of care problems:…
Dirt-y Stories
I did not enter the Journal’s "99 Words or Less" short fiction contest. Not only do I write for the Journal, but I’m married to one of the judges, which surely disqualifies me. But in the spirit of the thing, I submit to you my own short works of horticultural fiction. This year’s deadline has…
Aw, Shucks
Editor, Your Feb. 19 issue was a real treat for me. I read it from cover to cover, a kind of newspaper detective case investigated during a windy, rainy night, cozily propped up in my warm and comfortable bed. I have been suffering from the thinning of so many products — same brand, less weight…
Learning To Eat
Even in sleepy Tucson of the 1950s, I knew there was more to food than I had experienced. Tantalizing smells and tastes were embedded in my reptile brain: White Castle hamburgers, for instance — the scent of onions steaming in beef suet. Chess pie, from a Tennessee roadhouse. Asparagus plucked from the ground, thin and…
Due credit
The photo of Rick St. Charles dressed up like a burglar and acting goofy on page 7 of last week’s Journal should have been credited to Matt St. Charles. The Journal regrets the error.
Pause
Eleven swans following geese northward white on gray…
