Free and Afraid
A flawed system, a prosecutor’s error and a man who fears he will harm children again
Cover Story
Free and Afraid
It was a Thursday afternoon in Courtroom Four of the Humboldt County Superior Courthouse and Deputy District Attorney Andrew Isaac was frustrated. Isaac told Judge Timothy Cissna that a month earlier he had begun the process of trying to designate Drew Stonebarger, a 26-year-old Humboldt County man, as a sexually violent predator — a designation…
Let it Flow: Judge Denies Bid to Halt Water Release
UPDATE: North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman released a statement decrying the “preposterous” and repeated attempts of Southern California water districts to prevent water releases into the Trinity River. He also had some choice words for the “drumbeats of distortions from the districts’ PR machine.” See the full press release and statement below. PREVIOUSLY: The Yurok…
The Mystery of the Modest Endorsement
If you like Eureka, but don’t exactly love it, you’re in good company. In 2014 a few hundred stickers bearing the phrase “I Like Eureka” in stark white letters against a black background were mailed to local businesses and public officials. They still broadcast their message everywhere from Old Town coffee shops to the office…
Dig Clams, Die Slow
The California Department of Public Health is warning not to eat recreationally-harvested clams, mussels or other bivalves in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, saying that high levels of domoic acid have been detected in samples of these species. Consumption can cause illness and death. However, it is still safe to eat commercially harvested shellfish, which…
St. Joseph Nurses Allege Understaffing, Departure from Values
Representatives from the local chapter of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United convened in front of St. Joseph Hospital last week to discuss concerns over the health system’s proposed merger with Providence Health & Services, as well as what they call a “shift in values” from its founding principles. The union rolled out…
Uri Driscoll Announces a bid for the 3rd
A second rider has emerged in the race for Mark Lovelace’s 3rd District supervisor seat, which he will vacate at the end of 2016. Uri Driscoll, a horseman, farrier and longtime Journal letter writer, announced via press release this afternoon that he will challenge Harbor Commissioner Mike Wilson, who announced his candidacy for the seat…
Connecting Freshmen to the Klamath
A small group of Humboldt State University’s largest-ever freshman class got a VIP-worthy introduction to the county last week through one of the North Coast’s most important resources: the Klamath River. More than 60 students cut their summer breaks short to head up to Arcata early this year as part of an experimental new program…
Photography On the Fireline: Professionals and Amateurs
As a record number of wildfires roar through the American West, at least one nationally famous photographer paid a visit to our corner of the world to document this unique moment in national history, and the men and women who work to put out the flames. Mark Thiessen, a photographer with National Geographic, embedded with…
Up River, Down River
As the morning fog burned off, revealing light smoke drifting overhead from inland fires, a diverse crowd gathered at the Yurok Tribe’s 53rd annual Klamath Salmon Festival on Saturday, Aug. 22. The morning started with a veterans’ breakfast and parade, followed by the announcement of the winners of the Noo-rey-o-won-ee (beautiful girl inside and out)…
HSU’s Incoming Students by the Numbers
With a record influx of 1,429 new students, Humboldt State University has broken down the class of 2019 (hang on to your optimism, future super-seniors) by gender, ethnicity and from whence they come. A quick glance tells you women outnumber men by 28 percent. Students who identify as Hispanic/Latino form the largest ethnic group at…
Creamery Rises to the Big Top
A sold-out crowd headed for a big-top circus tent that sprouted on an open lot on the south edge of the Arcata Creamery district on the evening of Friday, Aug. 21. The “human only” Flynn Creek Circus from Mendocino led off the evening’s Creamery Festival lineup with a strong mix of entertaining, original and skilled…
HumBug: The Most Unlovely Insects
Butterflies and dragonflies can entrance us with their beauty. Praying mantises carry themselves with a slender, lethal elegance. At the other end of the insect spectrum, you can find the order of flies. Unlike all other winged insects, members of the order Diptera have only two wings not four. Di meaning two and ptera meaning…
Sea Fairing
The Humboldt County Fair has been thrilling kids, feeding folks and awarding Best in Show ribbons for 119 years. 119 years, people. That’s a lot of cotton candy. The fair flings open its gates Aug. 20 through Aug. 30 and welcomes you to enjoy 10 jam-packed days of all the fair food fun you can…
More on that Humboldt Made Re-organization
Humboldt Made’s new leadership recently weighed in on the recent shakeup — the firing of Executive Director T. Aaron Carter and board president Clint Victorine’s decision to step down — and announced a new for-profit affiliation intended to help local businesses find out-of-county distribution. Alanna Powell, Humboldt Made’s newly named interim executive director, said “it…
Fair Factor
You can smell the fryers from the parking lot as you stumble through the lumpy pasture toward the whirring rides and tinny pop music playing on the other side of the turnstiles. Once inside the Humboldt County Fair, the maze of traveling food stands and the barrage of signs for jumbo and beer battered everything…
Humboldt Arts Council Gets a Little Walkin’ Around Money
The Humboldt Arts Council is working with a little less red these days. On June 11 the council, which operates the Morris Graves Museum of Art and maintains Morris Graves’ collection, sold six ink on paper drawings by V.S. Gaitonde to an anonymous bidder through Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers in London. The drawings, purchased by…
Cream of the Crop
Oh, Arcata. With your love of re-purposing and art, of course you took an old defunct creamery and refashioned it into a thriving collection of buildings that house artists, tinkerers, dancers, welders, merrymakers, actors and musicians. And of course, since you are a college town, you love to party! This weekend, The Creamery Arts Festival…
Fire Update: Health Emergency, Nat. Geo Photos and Kings Range Closed
The Humboldt County health department announced today that it declared a smoke-related emergency for the county based on recent air quality conditions and forecasts. In a press conference this morning, Health Officer Donald Baird said smoke is particularly bad in the eastern county, but that countywide air quality could be bad for residents. He and…
Oh, Beer
It’s late August, your tan is starting to fade, students are arriving by the busload, Starbucks is already boasting the arrival of Every. Thing. Pumpkin. Dear God — not the end of summer! If this is you, fear not, fair weather friends, there’s a festival to cure what ales you. This Saturday, Aug. 22 from…
The Great Teacher Dropout
A national teacher shortage, as reported Aug. 19 on National Public Radio, is hitting close to home. Humboldt County is among many regions struggling to attract qualified candidates to its schools and, as students head back to the classroom, some administrators are wondering who will be there to greet them. “The districts locally are going…
Wolves Incoming
Wolves are recolonizing California at a much quicker rate than anticipated, say officials from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. A game camera recently captured pictures of a pack of gray wolves in southeastern Siskiyou County. Karen Kovacs, the wildlife program manager who has been monitoring the movement of wolves along the Oregon border…
Humboldt Bay Radioactivists
Tucked near King Salmon, the Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant’s been shut down since 1976. It is part way to burial but, like rust, it will never sleep. In a PG&E-sponsored Aug. 19 “open house” in Eureka, utility staffers were supposed to update the community on the nuke plant’s progress toward decommissioning. The event left…
Game Over
Elle Snow sits with a straight back and squared shoulders. Her long blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Her muscular arms are framed with matching black tattoos: an angel and a devil. At some point soon she hopes to get the name of her new nonprofit Game Over, Inc. inked on her knuckles.…
Once More around the Track
Red Smith, the famous New York sports columnist, described the directions to the historic Saratoga Race Course in upper state New York this way: “Take the 87 north from New York City, drive past Albany, turn right on Union Avenue, and go back 100 years.” The Humboldt County Fairgrounds in Ferndale may not have the…
Evict ’em
Editor: Hilary Mosher explained in her views piece “Disquiet on the Mobile Home Front” (Aug. 13) that the board of supervisors won’t even put the issue of rent stabilization at mobile home parks on the agenda and expressed that Ryan Sundberg, Virginia Bass and Rex Bohn are subverting the public process. I hope that neither…
The Forest for the Trees
Editor: Amy Gustin’s opinion piece in the NCJ (“Cannabis Crossroads,” Aug. 6) suggests that the upcoming marijuana ordinance for Humboldt County parcels five acres and larger should be designed to reduce the amount grown. “We have much to gain by scaling back marijuana production” she says, citing the small amount of “native habitat” remaining here,…
Not So Cute
Editor: I commend Genevieve Schmidt for encouraging cat-owning gardeners to be conscious of their pets’ potential impact on birds (“Fluffy and Fido in the Garden,” Aug. 6), but she understates the problem and her remedies are inadequate. Cats kill literally billions of birds (and uncounted other animals) in the U.S. annually. The problem is especially…
False Beliefs
Editor: As a society our nation has come to rely too much on law enforcement to deal with the social problems of homelessness and mental health (“Eviction Notices Served to Marsh Homeless. What Now?” July 30). We place the demand on law enforcement officers who can only deal with these problems on a superficial level.…
Power Play
Editor: At an Arcata City Council meeting the California Clean Power principals told us they’d learned how to set up CCA systems by setting up Sonoma County’s (“Arcata Eyes Costly Divorce,” July 30). They did that as county officials. But the model they’re urging on us is not that model: It adds a new layer…
OMG! at FRT
If you’re much over the age of 13, you’ve likely been there at least once — that place where we are so madly in love and so wildly convinced that it is both true and enduring that we are willing to undertake absolutely any action in its pursuit. It isn’t the most logical of places,…
Buckaroos and Buckeyes
Giddy-up! It rained the day before and the sky hung low and menacing over the warm, muggy, quiet clearing. Strangely, at that moment there were very few insects in a place I expected to see many. I was reminded of an old jungle movie. The words “It’s quiet — too quiet!” ran through my mind.…
Retro Active
If you’re not familiar with the self-coined “Beach Goth” of the Growlers, imagine a “distinctive melding of reverb-heavy surf guitar and Bakersfield-style honky tonk with ’80s post-punk” — which is maybe not the easiest thing to create in your mind, so maybe think the Clash meets Gogol Bordello. At the beach. Look — the band…
Humboldt on Tap
Almost every weekend for more than a year, Scott Misener’s aging pickup truck has bumped and clanged along a twisting dirt road to a metal shed high on a ridge in Fruitland. There, Misener has milled and mashed, hopped and hoped. Now he’s about to find out whether Humboldt’s beer drinkers approve. Misener is making…
Registration Day
First-of-their-kind regulations for marijuana grows were approved last week by the northern section of California’s water board. At a somewhat tumultuous Santa Rosa meeting on Aug. 13, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted a registration program that it originally released in draft form in May. The program requires anyone with a cannabis…
