Holding On

Aug 17-23, 2017 / Vol. 28 / No. 33
A day at the Hoopa Rodeo

Cover Story

Holding On

8:30 a.m. It’s already hot. Despite a 3,200 acre fire in nearby Orleans, the sky is mostly clear. The Hoopa rodeo grounds are littered with red Solo cups and half-empty water bottles from last night’s dance. In the cookhouse, a fan is going. The Ladies Auxiliary, Hoopa Unit 415 is serving up breakfast: pinto beans,…

Music Tonight: Friday, Aug. 25

Classic country is on the bill tonight at the Mad River Brewery Tap Room at 6 p.m., thanks to the Redwood Ramblers who are playing for free. The Trinidad Bay Art and Music Festival kicks off tonight in Trinidad’s Town Hall at 8 p.m. with a concert of modern classics featuring Nonoka Mizukami on the…

DHHS, Sheriff, Respond to Grand Jury Reports on Child Welfare

In June, the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury released two reports related to the outcomes of at-risk youth in our county child welfare system. The reports, “Child Welfare In Humboldt: Getting the Door Open” and “Responding in Time to Help Our ‘At Risk’ Children,'” allege that the three agencies most responsible for protecting local children,…

First Day Fashion

What to wear on the first day of class? At Humboldt State University, may we suggest layers to get you from a foggy morning to a potentially sunny afternoon, not to mention some mountaineer-worthy shoes for all the hill climbing. Photographer León Villagómez (on Instagram @leonvillagomez) returned to campus on Monday, Aug. 21 to see…

Music Tonight: Thursday, Aug. 24

With some of the high schools already back in session, you parents deserve to get out and celebrate that you survived the summer. For those of you with younger kids who haven’t started school yet, well, you deserve a beer or three just to keep the internal machinery nice and lubed up. Stop by the…

The Solar Eclipse from Oregon

The day started early in Culver, Oregon, smack in the path of totality for the solar eclipse. As if he knew what was coming, a nearby coyote greeted the dawn with a yip-yip-yip-howl serenade. The rosy sky silhouetted the junipers that dot the rocky high desert landscape. I set up my Canon 70d with a…

Welcome to the Neighborhood

Let us pause to appreciate the neighborhood taco truck. True, the trucks parked beside your favorite watering holes are doing the Lord’s work, putting tasty, blessedly absorbent food in our bellies when most we need it. But get caught up in yard work past lunch or come home from work to a crisper full of…

Century Celebration

It took four days to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Creamery Building in Arcata this past week. Building owners Lisa and Brian Finigan, of Arcata, have spent the last 40 years rejuvenating the building and hosting an eclectic mix of tenants in the center of the emerging Creamery District — so they and friends…

UPDATED: Another Assault on Jail Staff

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office reports that at around 8:35 p.m. on Saturday an inmate housed in a maximum security unit of the county jail assaulted a correctional deputy and two nurses during a routine medical visit. Taume DeMarco, 42, was initially booked into the facility Aug. 9 by the Fortuna Police Department on charges…

Countdown to Partial Totality: Eclipse 2017

The countdown is on for Monday’s eclipse. While the moon will begin moving in front of the sun at 9:01 a.m. here on the North Coast, the event’s peak hits at 10:14 a.m. with 87 percent coverage, which will leave just a glowing crescent visible before the moon begins its slow retreat. Read previous Journal coverage…

HumBug: Easy Pickings

My light trap isn’t very sophisticated — just a white bed sheet stretched tentlike over a rope with three black light CFLs and an LED white light. It’s powered by an extension cord or a small lawnmower battery and an inverter it can be set up anywhere. During the warmer months of the year, it…

Making Time: More Moments from the Hoopa Rodeo

We hope you enjoyed this week’s cover story “Holding On: A Day at the Hoopa Rodeo.” Below you’ll find a chunk of missing time from our hour-by-hour account of Saturday, Aug. 5, an interview that was cut for length from the cover, and a slideshow of photos taken during the day. 12:30 p.m. Jerry Parrish,…

The Painting on the Wall

The lift parked in the alley behind the DePaul Building is down low enough for Duncan Jago to chat. The Bristol artist’s black pants are spattered with the same pink, lavender and aqua paints he and assistant Joe Murdter have been putting up on the building’s south wall, just across the street from the mural…

Suburban Summer Nights

Evening falling and cicadas So loud you could still hear them Above the air conditioners First fireflies signal night To kids on bikes racing sundown home With spokes snapping playing cards Attached via clothespins The occasional smack at a mosquito And dogs barking Screen doors slamming on their springs With the rare late arrival The…

Humboldt on Tap

Humans have no monopoly on loving beer. From its warm, grain-rich beginnings to the last bit of water syphoned away during brewing, beer is a feast for species great and small. Cattle munch on the grain left over after brewing. New crops of barley thrive under a mulch of spent grain. Microbes multiply in the…

Dating Advice for the Cursed

Nobody ever said finding a mate was easy. In some places, the absence of suitable suitors or a dating pool up to snuff is more prevalent than elsewhere. Heck, I’ve even heard some whispers that Humboldt County isn’t ideal. In Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore, ladies and lads gone lacking for love serves as a jumping-off…

Moth Madness

A Moth of Another Color When I think the word “moth” I think of something gray. There are brightly colored day fliers but the nocturnal majority are gray or brown, patterned to blend in with tree bark where they rest during the day. One of the things that makes moth identification challenging is that there are…

Hashtag, Bumper Crop

For the first five or so years that I was a gardener, I never planted anything in August. It just seems so crazy! It’s too hot, how would anything grow? And I don’t even really want to be out there right now. But it doesn’t take so long to plant some seeds, and if you…

In Defense of Silence

You, like me, are probably someone that truly appreciates time spent listening to music. It’s good for our souls. But as much beauty as we can find in the rhythm and melody of music, we can find just as much insight and care in silence. The two are of course not mutually exclusive — music,…

Gold Bars and Budget Amendments

Things were looking pretty bleak for Anthony Pisarski. A 2012 multi-agency raid on his SoHum property found more than 300 marijuana plants in a pair of greenhouses, loaded guns and hundreds of thousands of dollars in vacuum-sealed cash, along with almost $30,000 worth of gold and silver bars. After the case went federal, leaving Pisarski…

#ThisIsAbsolutelyUs

It was with a deepening sense of horror that we watched the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, unfold last weekend, giving generations-old images of hate and violence new 21st century life. The torches. The robes. The Confederate and Nazi flags. The eyes filled with hate and the tongues spitting bigotry. Billy clubs, helmets and shields. Premeditated…

‘Illusion?’

Editor: As I sit here pondering the theses of Misters Evans, George, and Mann (Mailbox, Aug. 10) that free will is an illusion and irrelevant in human affairs, a questions arises. For the victim, what is the difference between consensual sex and rape, if not free will? Alex Ricca, Blue Lake Editor: In his letter…

Get Out of the Murder House

Editor: The savage efficiency with which European invaders destroyed the indigenous cultures of America was the original sin of the United States and other nation-states. Their ruthless and exploitative spirit is now bringing an equally savage retribution of climate catastrophe, desertification of the lands and seas of Mother Earth, and mass extinction of the animals…

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Reviews ANNABELLE: CREATION. Promotional materials reference this as “The next chapter in The Conjuring universe,” which comes across as aspirational and grandiose. That known universe now includes: The Conjuring (2013), wherein the new film’s malevolent, titular doll was introduced; The Conjuring 2 (2016); Annabelle (2014). And of course our current subject, which presents said doll’s…


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