Know When To Kill Them
Dope, guns and Republican bloodlust in Mendocino County
Cover Story
Know When To Kill Them
The village of Westport is the last outpost before Mendocino County’s northern coast disappears into a roadless swath of rugged shoreline and redwood-carpeted hills. It is spread across roughly one mile by one-half mile of coast, and has one store, two gas pumps and 47 registered voters. Retirees are Westport’s dominant demographic, and 15 miles…
Best Brothel Name
Wait a minute, that’s not in Humboldt County. But Inez’s Dancing & Diddling Girls Girls Girls isn’t far from the Humboldt River — Nevada’s longest (river), which begins in this lovely town that is home to Inez’s and other such charm schools for girls. That is — nevermind. And the Humboldt National Forest is nearby.…
Media Alert
I’ll again be Keith Henty’s guest on tomorrow morning’s edition of The Jefferson Exchange, starting at 8:05 a.m. or thereabouts and blathering on for 10 or 15 minutes or so. Topic? Dunno! Keith was vague this time around. Humboldt County, I suppose. Tune in! That’s on the News & Information Service of Jefferson Public Radio…
Polipoli owie
Humboldt State University sophomore Martin Stubbs, from the Kula district of East Maui in Hawaii, is presumably glad to be back in good old Humboldt and chillin’ in the redwoods after having survived a gauntlet of drunken shithead ruffians in Polipoli State Park earlier this month, reports today’s The Maui News. He and a friend…
Cards, Hoopa-Style
The traditional card games drew the biggest crowds a couple of Fridays ago during this year’s Sovereign Day celebration on the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s reservation. The drumming and singing would befuddle a non-stalwart — how can a person make a good decision with all those tricky spirits messing with your head? That’s the idea, at…
Glass Drops Inspection Ordinance Proposal
At a sparsely attended public forum last night at Eureka’s City Hall, Eureka City Councilman Larry Glass announced that he and his fellow Ad Hoc Housing Task Force members have decided to abandon controversial proposed changes to the municipal code that would have created a complaint-driven rental housing inspection ordinance. In its place, Glass suggested…
[Update] Rep. Thompson Town Hall on Health Care
While Rep. Mike Thompson is not planning on attending the local Tea Party Patriots Town Hall, he is hosting his own. Sources at his office confirm he’ll be taking questions on health insurance reform on Wednesday, Sept. 2, at Redwood Acres. The official 4-W’s press release is finally in: ADVISORY: Congressman Thompson to Host Town…
The Ballot-Stuffers Arrive!
Finally! The North Coast Journal’s “Best Of Humboldt County” Poll has acquired enough critical mass to bring in the cheaters! We don’t mean to tamp down your enthusiam, but if we catch you at this — and we will, in all likelihood — then your secondary and tertiary and centenary votes will be deleted. That…
Swine Flu Death (Update)
Our Heidi Walters was at the press conference earlier this afternoon, and can confirm that Humboldt County has indeed seen its first death from the H1N1 virus. The decedent — a middle-aged woman — was admitted to Redwood Memorial at the end of July. She tested positive for the virus on Aug. 9, and died…
CHP Poetry
The HumboldtCHP twitterbot has been kind of hit-and-miss, because Twitter sucks. Tweets go mysteriously missing, hashtag searches fail, all without rhyme or reason. Things will be running smoothly for a day or so, then the service starts to hiccup. Everything’s working swell on our end, which is why I can bring you this sad little…
Swine Flu Death?
Capdiamont) Received from the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services a few moments ago: Dr. Ann Lindsay will meet with the media at 12:30 p.m. … A person with H1N1 has died … Dr. Lindsay will have details.
Wiggins Bows Out
Patrol.Wiggins Bows Out: The Press-Democrat reports that a “tearful” Sen. Pat Wiggins announced today that she will not seek reelection in 2010. Wiggins’ speech at a Santa Rosa fundraiser follows the P-D’s long report earlier this week about the senator’s erratic behavior and probable ill health. Assembleymember Noreen Evans will likely run instead, the P-D…
@HumboldtCHP is FOLLOWING you
@HumboldtCHP is FOLLOWING you: North Coast Journal Twitter Enterprises© is proud to bring you real-time incident reports from the Humboldt County office of the California Highway
Drumming for Pelicans
Who wouldn’t park his truck by the side of Samoa Road, unload the sticks and skins and serenade the bay? On a warm summer day? That’s what Zach Lewing — last seen playing with White Manna — has been doing all summer long. “I’m just working on my music,” he says.
Burgess’ mother arrested
Margorie Burgess, whose son Christopher was shot and killed during a confrontation with Eureka police officers in 2006, was arrested by Humboldt County Sheriff’s officers at her Fields Landing home Wednesday for allegedly striking another son, a juvenile, in the face with an iron, in the head with a shot glass and biting him, according…
The Wiggins Story
The Wiggins Story: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat publishes a massive 2,700 word article on Sen. Pat Wiggins’ odd behavior and apparently serious health problems. To its credit, the P-D goes into some detail on the mechanics of the cover-up undertaken by friends and associates, including the incredible allegation that Senate President Darrell Steinberg has…
Whatever That Is
Editor: I find it somewhat ironic that revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the system and establish a new world order end up working for the same system they sought to overthrow ("Notes from Underground," Aug. 13). Usually at some university, where they’re regarded as some sort of hero. Another one drinking out of the public trough…
2012 and All That
Dec. 21, 2012, marks a happy coincidence of the winter solstice with a notable turning of the Mayan calendar. The "long count" calendar, used from approximately 200 to 900 A.D., can be found represented on literally hundreds of Mayan stelae in Mexico and Central America. It’s a remarkable system for designating the exact date by…
Snow-Flamer’s Side
Editor: College of the Redwoods is experiencing a time of significant change in its commitment to re-connecting with the communities it serves. CR has revised its Education Master Plan with a focus on increasing access to classes and programs and helping students attain their educational goals. Opening new instructional sites in Arcata and McKinleyville, offering…
Inherent Vice
A new book by the mysterious novelist and former Humboldt resident is always a special occasion, but this time Thomas Pynchon has offered up something different. Instead of the densely allusive historical novels that made his reputation, he here tries his hand at a detective noir. Pynchon’s fiction has always been informed by genre fiction,…
Third Friday McKinleyville Arts Night
1. The Front Gallery & Gifts, 1181 Central Ave. Tim Pace: various media, including wire sculpture and acrylics Musical guest: Guano – surf/alt rock 2. Curves, Miller Business Park North Coast Learning Academy student art show: various media Show curated by art director Lorraine Lindley 3. Mirador Glass, Miller Business Park Matt Cooper: cutout paper…
Call From Restricted
The music community from the Midwest have a deep affection for classic pop: a combination of influences that range from the initial British Invasion of the ’60s, to bubblegum pop (like Edison Lighthouse and 1910 Fruitgum Company), to Memphis’ Big Star. The Midwest cultivated a wide community of pop bands, including The Raspberries, Dwight Twilley,…
Programmed for Poverty
Many factors play into how we behave with money. Do we come from wealth or poverty? Has our job grown unexpectedly obsolete? Have health expenses drained our savings? Our society claims to value family, but provides so little support for parental leave, childcare, health coverage, well-funded schooling that parents prioritizing childraising risk poverty. America’s financial…
Monsters and Lovers
Tapping into his own youthful indiscretions and the distresses of his chronic ill health, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a novel based on a nightmare about the good Dr. Jekyll, who invented a drug that transformed him into the evil Mr. Hyde. Stevenson joined Mary Shelley and other 19th century authors in focusing on the ambiguous…
Fee-For-All
Why did College of the Redwoods charge students for tests the state had already paid for? Say you’re an incoming CR student who just took the mandatory math and English assessment exams and — dammit — barely missed the cutoff for those college-level courses you’d been aiming for. Bummer. But no biggie, you tell yourself…
Loving Zooey
Previews Opening Friday, Aug. 21, Quentin Tarantino strikes again with Inglourious Basterds, an alternate history "spaghetti western" World War II epic. In France, a young Jewish woman seeks revenge for the death of her parents by the Nazis while an American lieutenant (Brad Pitt) leads raids on the Germans. With Diane Kruger, Mike Myers and…
Fostering Change
OK, so Humboldt Creamery has been rescued from total collapse by Foster Farms Dairy, thanks to the privately held company’s $19.25 million winning (and only) bid last week in a Santa Rosa federal bankruptcy court. Good news, by most accounts. But what does it actually mean? How will life change for the 40 local dairy…
Cuts and Confusion
Eight protesters spread out along the sidewalk outside of state Sen. Pat Wiggins’ and state Assembleymember Wes Chesbro’s shared Eureka digs on E Street last week, holding signs that stated pretty clear displeasure with the legislators’ recent budget cut votes and the Governor’s subsequent line-item vetoes. Among other things, the lawmakers’ actions cut millions from…
Museum at the Crossroads
When Humboldt State University announced on Aug. 9 that it would soon shutter its Natural History Museum in Northtown Arcata, supporters of the museum quickly mobilized to save the popular institution for science education. They’ve been meeting often, and are currently scrambling to raise funds in advance of the university’s shut-off date. Ironically, though, the…
Death of a Hippie
My wife later reported that he had cut the line at the gas station counter to demand his coupon for a free car wash, and that he further endeared himself to those who respected the queue by asking the harried cashier a series of questions about the size of his vehicle and the dimensions of…
Red Hot Country
Humboldt County is a rural sort of place and as such, there’s a fair amount of country music hereabouts … whatever that means. For some — fans of Big Red Country KRED for example — that might mean the latest from some mainstream Nashville artist like Taylor Swift or Brad Paisley. Then you have musicians…
Plan A Defeats Algae
Editor: Your article on toxic blue-green algae in our rivers touched only briefly on the causes of this growing problem ("A Deadly Scum," Aug. 13). Failing septic systems and fertilizer runoff are noted as two of those causes, and they point to the fatal flaw in the pro-growth vision for unincorporated areas of Humboldt County…
