Scare Crow
Freaked-out opposition and stern eyebrow-raising amongst the citizenry has caused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to drop its plan to poison crows and ravens on Clam Beach as a means to protect the threatened Western snowy plover. The plan — called an experiment by the Fish and Wildlife Service — was to plant avicide-laced…
Jason Warren Murdered Dorothy Ulrich, Sheriff’s Office Says
After an investigation that lasted nearly eight weeks, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has concluded that 28-year-old transient Jason Anthony Warren murdered 47-year-old Hoopa woman Dorothy Evelyn Ulrich on the morning of Sep. 27. The Sheriff’s Office has submitted its findings to the District Attorney and is requesting that charges of homicide and auto theft…
Halloween Follies
Editor: I read with amusement Ms. Marcy Burstiner’s Nov. 8 column in the North Caast Journal entitled “Funny Business,” wherein, among other things, Ms. Burstiner laments about the Arcata Police Department’s assault on Mr. Freelove. A question for you Ms. Burstiner; Did you as a concerned citizen contact the Arcata Police Department to try…
Staging the Holidays
Over the past several seasons we’ve had our Charles Dickens’ yuletide, our Lewis Carroll holidays and last year’s recession-conscious Christmas. This year’s holiday stage shows have more variety and less of a coincidental theme. A bit of the recession still lingers in two musicals with roots in the 1930s, but there are also holiday fantasies…
On the Waterfront
Mentioning Lazio’s around locals of a certain age is a bit like bringing up an old flame –there is sighing and smiling and remembrance of meals past. There are tales of tourists lined up in the summertime and locals streaming in on rainy evenings, shaking out their coats and warming up over bowls of chowder…
Star Struck
For the grand finale of a Sierra hiking trip this past August, we got up at 2:30 a.m. and left from Guitar Lake to summit Mt. Whitney for sunrise. There was a new moon that night, and the neon and incandescent civilization was far away. With no competing light in this rarified air more…
Eat, Drink and Go See Dance
Catch that whiff of chestnuts roasting? Recurring visions of sugar plums? Feel a tug toward childhood? As the early darkness descends, the world tilts toward the stars and we begin planning festivities to mark the year’s end. Humboldt County — home to a classical Nutcracker Ballet in its Victorian era splendor, along with original…
Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War
1940s movies and domestic propaganda put an understandably noble face on Allied efforts in World War II. It was only in the decades afterwards that some of the morally questionable and transparently brutal counterevidence emerged: not just the Holocaust and Japanese Army atrocities, but the British firebombing of undefended Dresden, the American terror bombing…
Grimm’s Law: the Phoenician Connection
Grimm’s Law was a breakthrough in the young science of linguistics when Jacob Grimm and his fellow Dane, Rasmus Rask, first formulated it in 1822. (We know Jacob and his brother Wilhelm for their collections of European folk stories that — in their cleaned-up versions — have kept Disney in business for decades.) The…
Rain in the Redwoods
These moments are like rain — I…
Top 10 Movember Music Makers
Alert: Whether you’ve been hip to it or not, for over a decade the 11th month of the year has been rechristened Movember and been dedicated to the growth of male upper lip facial pubes. Now you know. Known as “mustaches,” these unfortunate fashion statements are cultivated in an effort to raise awareness for men’s…
Pumpkin Spider
Pumpkin Spider
A Better Drum Circle
You’ve spent time in the Humboldt nation. You know that percussion, when allowed in public spaces, is a magnet for even more percussion. Surely, you’ve seen these gatherings of spontaneous musicians produce harmonious, uplifting community and, at other times, be a cacophonous earsore. It depends on who’s feeling most confident that day. Choose your drum…
Early Letter Deadlines
Happy almost Thanksgiving! Send us your letters early, and we’ll be grateful. For our Nov. 22 edition, letters are due by 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 16.
Banishment Isn’t Forever
Editor: Your Nov. 1 cover story, “Banished,” reported that Arthur Jones was “ordered to leave the reservation and never come back,” which was indeed the position taken by the tribe’s lawyer who argued that Mr. Jones’ banishment should be “permanent.” As Mr. Jones’ lawyer, however, I argued that any exclusion should be indefinite, allowing for…
A Complex Bond
Reviews SKYFALL. The makers of the Bond franchise don’t have to reinvent the wheel. As long as they give us some ripping action scenes, sexy ladies, a few clever one-liners and a memorable villain we’ll all dutifully stream into the theater. (I suspect that allegiance to the series, rather than the depth and quality of…
Gifts All Around
Each year I write an introduction to the Journal Gift Guide, which runs every week between now and the week before … well, the start of Kwanzaa. I try to infuse it with holiday cheerfulness. Last year was especially tough. Three years into a recession like we’ve never seen before, not in my lifetime.…
Surviving
When Hank Seemann walks into his backyard each morning to let the chickens out of their coop, he feels his wife’s presence and her absence simultaneously. It’s a paradox he can’t explain — she’s gone but not gone. He feels it in the evenings, too, when he closes the chickens in for the night,…
Beauty
It’s a 20 year tradition: Each fall, eco-conscious hippie rockers Clan Dyken head out from their homes in the Sierras on something they call the “Revive the Beauty Way Tour.” The family band journeys through California and Oregon in a biodiesel bus gathering donations of cash and food along the way, then heads over to…
