Home for Good
Trinidad’s grassroots plan to care for its own
Cover Story
Home for Good
In her one-story Trinidad home overlooking the Pacific, 61-year-old Pat Morales leaves her bedroom door open at night. That way she can hear when her elderly mother wakes up and starts her odd, late-night routines down the hall – rearranging the closet, shuffling tax forms from the 1970s, packing suitcases. When her mother’s acting like…
Celia Homesley’s Crimson Leaves
Celia Homesley’s first book of poetry, Body of Crimson Leaves, is an absolutely lovely collection of quietly beautiful poems. Most of us don’t buy many books of poetry in a year, but I suggest that you start off 2007 by adding this one to your library. You can also meet Celia at Booklegger this Saturday…
Horse Mountain Snow Sense
You have got chains, right, Ben?" We had skipped town again, this time with cross-country skis, to take advantage of the recent cold snap — finally a benefit to the omnipresent Humboldt County winter precipitation. The joy of writing an outdoor column is that you always have a handy excuse to escape, nearly guilt-free, and…
The Future of GMO, Cloning and Other Controversies: Part II
In last week’s column, I bemoaned the "religious" zeal in opposition to GMO, which seeks to end any discussion by withdrawing funds for research. I said that such efforts reminded me of the Bush administration’s refusal to fund stem-cell research. In that context, here are two inventions nearing production: 1) Introduction into the rice plant…
The Never Ending Stack
The CDs arrive in an unending stream. The mailman sticks them in the slot in my front door; FedEx and UPS drivers block the street in front of my house to drop them off; promoters leave them on my porch or mail them to the Journal office; bandmembers slip them to me at shows. I…
The Wooden Stake
Enron. Halliburton. Kellogg, Brown & Root. These hallowed, historical names occupy the very highest rank in the annals of Texas industry and commerce. Whether helping to throw elections for Lyndon Johnson, putting their CEO (Dick Cheney) in the White House or simply ripping off investors and out-of-state electricity buyers on a magnificent scale, these are…
Got contract?
If negotiations between Humboldt Creamery and the union that represents most of its employees were not acidic enough, a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board threatens to sour the process further. Last Friday, a day after the Fernbridge dairy cooperative’s union employees voted 94-1 to authorize a strike, Redding-based Teamsters Local 137 fired…
