Giants of Nonprofit
A look at Humboldt’s biggest, brawniest — and wealthiest — nonprofit enterprises
Cover Story
Giants of Nonprofit
Chances are, you’ve spent time inside some of Humboldt’s biggest nonprofits while going about your daily business. Maybe you deposited a check at the local credit union office. Or saw the doc for your pesky sinus infection at an Open Door clinic. Or maybe — let’s hope not — you’ve whiled away tense hours inside…
Peace, Love, Guns, Heroin
Yeah, it’s a real love story, all right. Couple of kids with a stolen gun, selling tar heroin. Bags o’ booty, sweet little ready-made mugshot, mementos of the affair … oh, and handcuffs. See, Derick and Ashley got busted. (Read the release after the break.) Eureka Police Department 604 C Street Eureka, CA 95501…
Text Message Spam Scam
A little after 8 a.m. this morning, my cell phone rang with a distinctive chime indicating a text message. Offering advance warning, it told me I was about to receive a text from someone using Yahoo text. A couple of minutes later the text came. The message from someone I did not recognize, “scott.shawn22,” was…
Cloak and Brew
The 10th anniversary of 9/11 got the media’s full attention this past weekend. News outlets offered new information and new surmises concerning those terrible events. Also last weekend, a play that centers on 9/11 opened at Redwood Curtain in Eureka. Yankee Tavern by Steven Dietz is set in a New York City bar five…
Well, If You’re Travelin’…
The Autumnal Equinox is coming up. It’s not until next Friday, but this being the weekend before, it’s time for another North Country Fair, Saturday and Sunday on the Arcata Plaza. The roots of the very Arcatan harvest festival celebrating the changing of the seasons go back to 1974. As usual it’s put on by…
No, Sister!
Editor: Heidi Walters myopic feature article on the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (“Oh, Sister!” Sept. 8) is sadly one-sided. Her peppy gee-whiz-it’s-the-Sisters approach fails to disclose any of the group’s many negatives. She could have spoken to numerous gays who are embarrassed by the group’s mostly gay adult men parading around in clown makeup and…
9/11
We are all a spectrum. Light and color…
Grave Matters
In Tony Hillerman’s novel Talking God, a staff person at a government museum states that the reburial of 18,000 of the museum’s skeletons is not possible, “because of research needs.” She subsequently receives a large box. Inside she finds the bones of two of her grandparents, which have been removed from their graves. Now she…
Dollars for Docs
When she’s learning about new medications, Karen A. Moulton likes to order the salmon. That’s her favorite at the Sea Grill in Eureka, where candlelight and cream-colored tablecloths await doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants being hosted by drug companies. The drugs being described vary, but the hosts are consistent: Pharmaceutical companies pay for the…
Late Late Party 1965-67
Charles “Packy” Axton, son of Estelle Axton, co-founder of Memphis’ Stax Records, may have been a lost minor — yet key — figure in the city’s rich history of soul and R&B music. He was a sax player, hustler, producer and songwriter – always in search of the next hit single. And, he had the…
What’s That Buzz?
Lacking a loud dog and without any trace of feral felines, that last thing Roy Mathews ever expected at his door one morning was a visit from Eureka City animal control. But just after 10 a.m. on a blue-skied June day, an animal control officer paid a visit to Matthews’s home in Henderson Center. Matthews…
Baron Versus Mountain
When Baron Ernest de La Grange bought the Trinity Gold Mining Co. in 1892, the former owners had already begun to tap the waters of East Weaver and Little East Weaver creeks for hydraulic mining. La Grange knew the key to efficient hydraulic mining was one of scale, and to maximize the scale he…
Honest Compelling Music
While jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin currently lives in New York City, he’s a California boy originally, raised in the Santa Cruz area. He’s back on the West Coast this week on a tour that brings him to Arcata Thursday to open the new Redwood Jazz Alliance season with a show at HSU’s Kate Buchanan Room…
Subliminal Ecstatic Truth
It was some time in 2001 when filmmaker and renegade ethnographic culture warrior Hisham Mayet started gathering with like-minded friends in Seattle to share experiments in gathering sights and sounds of faraway cultures. The result was a record label and indie film distro called Sublime Frequencies. We spoke about the label’s origins on Monday, Sept.…
Spread It Around
CONTAGION. I have been an admirer of director Steven Soderbergh since his first feature film, 1989’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, which provided a somewhat different take on the cheating-husband theme. It wasn’t just that the husband cheats with his wife’s sister but also that the whole thing comes unraveled because the character played by James…
Disc Golf Pride
Editor: While it’s great to see Jeffrey Bird’s article about Humboldt disc golf (“Disc Golf,” Sept. 8), it paints a picture of drunken, sloppy disc golfers with wild dogs. This may be the case for some folks (“chunderhoads,” as they’re called), but we have a rich tradition of huge professional disc golf the author is clearly…
Our Victims
Editor: Thanks for the informative article about our military “excursions” in Iraq and Afghanistan (“9/11 Blind,” Sept. 8). Another difficult fact to find is the number of civilian casualties. They vary considerably according to source, from a low of 100,000 to a high of 1,550,000. The military is often blamed for these adventures, but it…
Wrong Target
Editor: A most disturbing article on the local owl dilemma by Zach St. George (“Shooting Owls,” Sept. 1)! As long as capitalism or even quasi-capitalism remains the paradigm, there is little hope for the natural world!! Greed and profit rule supreme and assure the eventual destruction of most prime habitat for all native species. Then…
The Wind Divide
Editor: It’s 3:30 in the morning, and I can’t sleep. I woke up thinking about Ferndale; how the residents there decided to reject a wind generator company’s proposal to install wind turbines on a ridge behind the town (“Monster Trucking,” Sept. 1) because it would “ruin the small-town atmosphere.” These feelings of frustration are so…
More Better Biking
They’re everywhere. Decked out with enough gear to traverse the state. Pedaling in skirts to Farmers’ Market. Powering past you in the forest. That guy you’re passing on the highway, the one covered in so much bicycle gear you almost fail to notice his bulging calf muscles. (But you do!) That woman bouncing down the trail…
