Inside Out
Unraveling Reuben Sorensen’s strange vision of the world
Cover Story
Inside Out
Figuring out what Reuben Sorensen’s paintings mean is almost as hard as figuring out how to get to his house. I’m counting the number of bridges I’ve driven over since I turned off the asphalt road that leads west from Redway through Briceland. My compact Japanese car is way out of its element. It’s raining…
In The News
The EPA has denied California the right to enact its own greenhouse gas emissions regulations for automobiles. EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson said: “The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution — not a confusing patchwork of state rules — to reduce America’s climate footprint from vehicles.” But calling it a “patchwork”…
The Union Comes For Dean
SF Weekly reporter John Geluardi, who once toiled alongside yours truly at a newspaper too unspeakable to name, has an awesome story this week about a big push to unionize several major Bay Area newspapers that were recently acquired by Sith Lord Dean Singleton (right). The national Newspaper Guild is funding a $500,000 organizing campaign,…
Back to a Life of Grindin’?
Peter Daniel Collins’ (aka “Manifest”) music video, “Life of Grindin'” Peter Daniel Collins, 35, the local rapper known as “Manifest,” was sentenced on Tuesday to the 11 months he already served in prison for stealing $198,000 in cash from the Cher-Ae-Heights Casino in Trinidad on Nov. 1, 2006, according to the SF Chronicle . Collins’…
‘Sound, Credible Science’
Some letters to the editor are too long to print. And some people include long URLs in the text of their letters. Those long URLs are pretty much impossible to reproduce on paper, and useless besides. Even if we could print them, no one’s going to type a 40-character string of more or less random…
Trouble at the Vista
The local all-ages music scene just can’t catch a break, or if they do, it’s the wrong kind. Earlier this year you had The Placebo shut down amid permitting hassles at the West 3rd St. warehouse. Then Out of the Sun in Fortuna suffered a similar fate. The reopening of The Vista as an all-ages…
Carver Uncut
The New Yorker ‘s “Winter Fiction” issue was just published; it contains a couple of eye-opening pieces by and about one of Humboldt County’s most notable writers of fiction: Raymond Carver. In an unsigned essay , the magazine reveals that what we have come to think of as Carver’s ultra-sparse style was actually the work…
The Christmas Vibe
Our food writer Joseph Byrd, who moonlights as a music instructor at College of the Redwoods, sends along notice of the following seasonal recording made by a friend, Seattle-based vibraphonist Tom Collier. Notes Joseph: Ed Macan, himself an excellent vibes player, says it was done with four mallets in one pass, no overdub. So now…
KMUD Is Frickin’ Awesome
Usually it so happens that my Sunday Mendo-Humboldt runs are timed absolutely perfectly, radio-wise. From Willits to about Bell Springs, I catch the tail end of “La Hora Mixteca” , the coolest program on the coolest public radio network in the USA. The program is jam-packed with boppin’ chilenitas , heartfelt cross-border shout-outs and hosts…
More Millions For The Railroad
The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reports that on Thursday the California Transportation Commission released an additional $13.6 million to the North Coast Railroad Authority. The money will be used to fund repairs in Sonoma and Marin counties. According to the P-D, the NCRA says the money is enough to open a 60-mile stretch of the south…
Railroad Wackers Army Assembles
It began with an outdoors column by Journal publisher Judy Hodgson detailing a day of “civil disobedience” spent cutting blackberries and brush along the railroad right-of-way between Arcata and Eureka. She followed with a publisher’s column saying in part, The response to the story was immediate and overwhelming. How can we help? Where can I…
Times-Standard Blogland
Our semi-esteemed colleagues at the Times-Standard have dived back into the Internet, launching or relaunching a whole slew of blogs. Check out T-S Online Editor James Faulk’s convocation here. A convenient time to rain down fire on the enemy Eureka Reporter. Kick ’em while they’re down, James! Unfo, each of the 10 T-S blogs has…
Burly, But Not Yet Burly Enough
Hella shredding news for the long-dreamed-of Eureka Skate Park. The Havasu News-Herald (don’t ask) reports that the Tony Hawk Foundation has kicked down with a $25,000 grant. Now for the buzzkill. Check this Nov. 21 Eureka Reporter article : But roughly $250,000 is still needed for to project to be a go, to reach the…
Happy Merry
There are 12 shopping days until Xmas, but don’t start counting those partridges yet, not unless you’re part of the Christmas bird count. The "Twelve Days of Christmas" you hear about in song start on Christmas Day and run until Epiphany (the day the wise guys came to call). What with the proximity to the…
August Wilson Century Cycle
Plays by August WilsonTheatre Communications Group ‘Tis the season of the boxed set, but this one has more significance than the usual holiday gift repackaging. This is the first physical embodiment of a singular achievement — 10 plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, which together tell a long story of…
Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Directed by Jeff Krulik and John HeynFilm Baby On May 31, 1986, amateur filmmakers John Heyn and Jeff Krulik pulled into an arena parking lot outside of Washington D.C., unpacked their equipment, and proceeded to shoot footage and conduct interviews with the scores of fans who had gathered to prepare for that evening’s Judas Priest/Dokken…
Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series on DVD
BBC/Warner Home Video In terms of cultural impact, Dr. Who is the British Star Trek and Star Wars put together. The BBC-TV series about a dapper two-hearted alien traveling through time and space in what looks from the outside like a blue police box, first went on the air in 1963 and ran continuously until…
Go Outside and Eat
I realized recently that I don’t write nearly enough about vegetable gardening. The reason for this is simple: I don’t have one. I understand very little about what’s happening in my own garden, so how could I be expected to have anything at all to say about what’s not happening in my garden? But in…
Barf Bag
Everything we know we learned from the norovirus: The present writer considers himself fortunate not to be numbered among those who suffered from the dreaded viral outbreak that swept across the county last week. From what we can gather, norovirus plays out like a scene from 28 Days Later — disease-crazed infectees running around the…
Night Heron
Old moon rubs cue dust blue on…
Is Mycology Mushrooming?
Yes, interest in fungi is expanding. However, few of us are aware of their strange life cycles and the valuable contributions they make to the health of our forests and fields. Begin with one spore produced by a typical mushroom. It is haploid, meaning it has only one set of chromosomes (like a sperm). The…
Suspended Bridge
You might think anyone living deep in the Klamath River boonies would be content with a certain degree of disconnect, proud of or at least resigned to the hardship imposed by deep wooded canyons, summer-bake and winter-freeze, rock-riddled roads, simple living and familial rootedness. For the most part, this may be true. You’d have to…
Mine, All Mine
Last week, I called my brother in LA and told him that my husband Scott and I were buying an antiquarian bookstore. He considered our occupations — magazine editor, author, and now bookstore owner — and said, "Wow. Books, magazines — you guys are really getting into a growth industry up there." "Yes, we believe…
Inside Byrd Labs: Part II
When Brad Bird’s Pixar/Disney animated film Ratatouille was released last summer, we were overwhelmed with buzz. Seldom has any movie gotten so unanimous a lovefest: The online movie review site Rotten Tomatoes gave it a critical 97 percent, with an audience rating of 100 percent. Even in the food world, there was a passionate response.…
A Summer Garden
The Winter Solstice is a week away and the storms have already begun, but there are summer flowers in our midst. Hollyhocks, gladiolas, sunflowers and roses in a blaze of sunshine and color. "How can this be?" you ask. Well, it’s an art show, of course, with work painted at the height of the flowering…
Epically Bland
Previews Opening Friday, Dec. 14, is I Am Legend, yet another version of the apocalyptic 1954 novel by Richard Matheson. Will Smith is the military’s virus guy, taking over the role previously played by Charlton Heston (The Omega Man, 1971) and Vincent Price (The Last Man on Earth, 1964). It seems some really nasty virus…
