Looking Upriver
A group of anonymous do-gooders works to promote systemic change in Humboldt
Cover Story
Looking Upriver: Anonymous Do-gooders Work to Promote Systemic Change in Humboldt
There’s an old fable about a village near a great river, a river used for drinking water, fishing and washing. One day a fisherman noticed someone floating downstream, unable to swim to safety and yelling for help. The fisherman jumped into the river and swam toward him, eventually pulling him safely to the river bank,…
Trucking from Fortuna
Fortuna has been enjoying the fruits of the Humboldt Fresh truck for roughly five months at its 2059 Main St. parking spot in front of Fortuna Fabrics. But now it’s pulling up in Eureka Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in the lot by Les Schwab Tire Center (2440 Broadway). Fear not, Fortunans: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays…
Music Tonight: Wednesday, April 10
Portland electronic funk dance trio Yak Attack is playing Humbrews this near-first moon night at 9 p.m. Known for fun and danceable shows full of solid musicianship and improvisation, this is the sort of show that attracts the happy-go-lucky college crowd and beyond. As of press time, I haven’t located a price for the event…
Music Tonight: Tuesday, April 9
It’s a quiet Tuesday so why not go and give The Logger Bar some love? At 8 p.m. the regular old time music session will be crackin’ off. How’s about you bring your favorite wireless — unless that wire is of the piano variety — instrument to the sawblade embedded floors of Blue Lake’s other…
Bass, Wilson Seeking Coastal Commission Seat in Round 2
UPDATE: The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously April 9 to send forward the names of both Fourth District Supervisor Virginia Bass and Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson for possible appointment to the California Coastal Commission. PREVIOUSLY: The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors will consider Tuesday sending the names of at least one supervisor…
McCloskey Out of First District Supes Race
Allen McCloskey has withdrawn his candidacy to become Humboldt County’s next First District supervisor in the face of fraud and perjury allegations reported last week by the Lost Coast Outpost. “The last two months (and more notably the last two weeks) have been incredibly difficult for me as an individual, for my immediate and extended…
Harrowing Night: Boaters Safe After Hitting Rocks Near Shelter Cove
A trimaran called the Midnight Sun struck rocks near Shelter Cove last night and the crew had to escape on an inflatable boat and make their way into harbor through the storm, said Cheryl Antony of the Shelter Cove Fire Department. “Something happened to their boat. … They sent out a distress signal at 9:30…
Music Tonight: Monday, April 8
Anvil is a Canadian metal band that almost made it big but never quite did. The Canadian trio — whose sound nests somewhere between hard rock, power metal and early thrash — was the subject of an acclaimed documentary a decade ago about the barnacle-like resilience of the group and its multi-decade career. Though it…
HumBug: Looks Can be Deceiving
Last week I mentioned a large shiny black bee that visited my rosemary plants. In all my field guides the only large shiny black bees are carpenter bees, genus Xylocopa. Although there was a definite similarity, something wasn’t quite right so I investigated further. With the help of some online friends and resources, I learned…
So. Much. Drama.
The Classic Film Series at the Humboldt County Library presents the films of Elia Kazan in a swaggering set of flicks that feature crude, brooding dudes. Kazan, a Turkish-born Greek immigrant, directed films that depicted important social and political issues. Antithetically, in a decision that cost him his reputation and respect, Kazan “named names” before…
Music Tonight: Sunday, April 7
Santa Barbara Math Rock trio Pookie makes the trip north to rattle the decor off the walls of the Outer Space tonight at 7 p.m. ($5-$20 sliding scale). Arcata prog outfit Farmhouse Odyssey will play a set while local singer, songwriter and bookseller Gabe Lubowe squeezes onto the bill, as well. Speaking of squeezing and…
County Counsel Files Claim After Being Placed on Paid Leave
The county of Humboldt’s lead attorney Jeffrey Blanck filed a claim for damages this week alleging the board of supervisors placed him on paid administrative leave after he raised concerns about an outside law firm’s contract and then violated open meeting law by not reporting the board’s action out of closed session. Nearly three weeks…
Music Tonight: Saturday, April 6
Local hero Nicholas Dominic Talvola will be blowing his trumpet up at the Westhaven Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Nick’s traveling to Japan for a spell soon so consider this a temporary swan song to tide the public over before he returns from across the Pacific Ocean. Joining him for the evening…
Photos from SCRAP’s Rebel Craft Rumble
With rain predicted this weekend, perhaps you need some indoor project inspiration. Peruse Mark McKenna’s slideshow of last weekend’s sixth annual SCRAP Humboldt Rebel Craft Rumble below and you’re bound to have a creative breakthrough. The Iron-Chef-meets-Martha-Stewart cage match pits teams of glue gunslingers against one another for the title of Ultimate Supreme Craft Masters…
Tats for Cats
Companion Animal Foundation and Sangha Tattoo Studio are partnering up with Paws for A Cause: Give ’til it Hurts on Saturday, April 6 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Sangha Tattoo Studio ($60 and up per tattoo). Stop by for great food and drink, check out the furry adoptables on site and get fresh…
Music Tonight: Friday, April 5
Avant jazz violinist and Petrolia native Jenny Scheinman brings a unique show to the Arkley Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Produced with help from the folks at the Arcata Playhouse and the Minor Theatre, Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait is a live performance soundtrack to a film by Finn Taylor featuring the mid-century…
Fisticuffs in First District Supes Race
It’s been a bare-knuckle week in the upstart campaign to become Humboldt County’s next First District supervisor. First, Tuesday afternoon, the Lost Coast Outpost’s Ryan Burns published an impressive piece of investigative journalism detailing allegations of fraud and perjury in challenger Allen McCloskey’s past and the candidate’s seeming inability to offer a clear explanation for…
Cooperation Humboldt Plants 20 Community Trees
Cooperation Humboldt planted 20 community fruit trees in public locations throughout Eureka and Arcata as part of the organization’s food program. “We believe that nutritious food is a fundamental human right and our food projects aim to put that belief into practice in very tangible ways,” Tamara McFarland, who coordinates the organization’s food program, said…
Samba Enchanted Evenings
The Humboldt Latin Dance Collective is bringing all the sexy back with its second annual, three-day dance/culture celebration, the Humboldt Latin Dance Festival, shaking things up April 5-7 at the Arcata Playhouse and Redwood Raks World Dance Studio. Award-winning instructors from the Bay Area and Los Angeles share their moves, teaching more than 30 beginning…
Math Counts!
“But when am I ever gonna use this?” Every day, kids. See how and why at The Humboldt Math Festival. Saturday, April 6, noon to 4 p.m. Adorni Recreation Center, (free). The twelfth annual festival includes hands-on fun with puzzles, games, contests, demonstrations, make-and-take activities and an art show.
Music Tonight: Thursday, April 4
Kalispell, Montana’s Wizzerd is a doom metal quintet specializing in down-tuned and stoned heaviness. Tonight its tour swings through Eureka and the band will grace the diminutive stage at the Little Red Lion with a very fine local pairing in the form of Ultramafic and FHOG aka Finger Hash of the Gods at 8 p.m.…
Clarification
In the story “The $1 Million Settlement” in the March 28, 2019, edition of the North Coast Journal, County Counsel Jeffrey Blanck told the Journal the $1 million payment to end a civil rights lawsuit was covered by the county’s insurance risk pool. It has since come to the Journal’s attention that the county paid…
Should You Blame the Media?
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A Military Parade of Shock and Awe or a Circus Cavalcade of Compunctious Consumption
In all his self-aggrandizing bluster, the great orange father has proposed, at various times, a military parade to brashly venerate his presidency with marshalled aplomb. He has glommed onto this idea from viewing similar machinations of muscular might by our European allies and in the history reels of yore. I would dare hope his vision…
April is the Coolest Month
This week has a lot of jazz, a decent smattering of heavy metal and some festie-friendly electronic acts in the pipeline. Some big names are in the mix, as well as some promising young upstarts. Local musicians who have done well for themselves in the world play some home sets, while bigger names from the…
Our Worst Mistake, Part 1
The downturn in human nutrition began long before Ray Kroc brought Big Macs to the masses, Coca Cola conned developing countries into buying their addictive sugary concoctions and Nestlé weaseled its way into babies’ bellies with formula milk. Long, long before. Archeologists call it the Neolithic Revolution, the series of events that started in the…
Lemony Soup for the Soul
Greek lemon chicken soup is luscious, bright with citrus and soothing. It’s perfect for a cold or a cold night, which are still plentiful in Humboldt in April. If you’ve had soupa avgolemono, you know what I’m talking about. It is one soup that lives up to the adage that chicken soup is food for…
Mountain Spring
Music of a liquid world Full of ebb and flow River made foundation Constant, deep and low Staccato drips of melting Hit roof and deck below Murmur of light rain Until slide and crash of snow From high up upon the roof At long last now let go
In Stitches
Nicole Havekost’s new exhibition at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Massed, explores bodily experience through stitched three-dimensional forms and embroidered wall reliefs. Minnesota-based Havekost writes of one series of artworks on view, the “Sewing and Cooking Dolls,” that she “began this body of work when her son was small and she was finding her…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): A mushroom shaped like a horse’s hoof grows on birch trees in parts of Europe and the U.S. If you strip off its outer layer, you get amadou, spongy stuff that’s great for igniting fires. It’s not used much anymore but it was a crucial resource for some of our ancestors.…
Fairs Cancel Poultry Shows Amid Newcastle Disease Fears
Up until last month, the northern reaches of California seemed to have evaded the clutches of a devastating Virulent Newcastle disease outbreak in poultry that has resulted in state-imposed quarantine zones and the euthanization of more than 1 million birds in just under a year. Then came confirmation March 15 that a “backyard chicken” taken…
Supes Pass Hemp Moratorium
The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously April 2 to approve a temporary moratorium on the cultivation of industrial hemp. “The cannabis industry feels very strongly about it,” Humboldt County Agricultural Commission Jeff Dolf told the Journal back in late February, as the county and state were mulling their options. “They are very, very…
‘Incorrect Information’
Editor: There is so much incorrect information in this letter (“Hard Left,” Mailbox, March 28) that I’m surprised NCJ did not post an editor’s note after the letter. The Democratic party is very definitely not socialist. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib consider themselves socialists or democratic socialists. Otherwise, the vast majority of Democrats…
Advanced Directives
Editor: Thank you for this article (“The $1 Million Settlement,” March 28). It will have served to educate the people in Humboldt County of the problems facing those seeking to enforce the provisions of their Advance Directives. There was a serious omission in the article, however, the name of the medical facility at which Mr.…
The Local Arts Scene
Editor: A letter from Roman Sanchez (“Good for the Soul, Good for the Economy”) made it in last week’s NCJ Mailbox (March 28) enthusiastically supporting local nonprofit arts organizations. I appreciate his positive appraisal of the arts scene. I come from a long line of artists and musicians and compose orchestral and chamber music, so…
‘Truly Unconscionable’
Editor: With the denial of surgery to Oliver Knight by St. Joseph Hospital, we have yet another demonstration of how this hospital does not serve the needs of its community (NCJ Daily, March 28). What Mr. Knight underwent there is truly unconscionable — humiliation, then denial of the scheduled surgery and, finally, being given the drug benzodiazepine and…
‘A Resource Colony’
Editor: Thanks for your fine coverage of the local weed economy (The Cannabis Issue, March 21). It suggests that some of weed’s original spirit may survive legalization. The spirit of collaboration and cooperation, innovation for the love of it — and most important, a desire to keep it responsible to its roots in the local…
Life On the Road
Reviews THE DIRT. Mötley Crüe has never been my thing; never been a “thing” at all for me, really. There’s a bit of a generational discrepancy and by the time I was selecting my own records to play, I was already well down a path that didn’t lead to hair-metal. (I’ll admit to a brief…
Medicare for All Discussion
Editor: The solution is hiding in plain sight (“Newsom’s Move,” Feb. 4). As more and more Americans across the political aisle demand Medicare for All, its opponents are sowing more and more fear, uncertainty and doubt among us. The very language of “Medicare for All” is being co-opted into confusing and contradictory smokescreens of ineffective…
My Conversation with Richard Ehle
As a reporter, there are moments you remember with incredible clarity. Sometimes it’s because the moments are monumental, like when a source called in 2007 to tell me a criminal grand jury had just indicted two Eureka police commanders on manslaughter charges. Other times, it’s because they pull at your heart strings, like when I…
But, But … I Gotta Have It
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Arts Alive!
Presented by Eureka Main Street. Opening receptions for artists, exhibits and performances are held the first Saturday of each month. For more information, call 442-9054 or go to www.eurekamainstreet.org 707 BAR (formerly Steve and Dave’s) First and C Streets. Barry Evans photography. Music by Dr. Squid. A TASTE OF BIM 613 Third St. Maggie Draper,…
Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait
Presented by the Arcata Playhouse and the Minor Theatre, a special music/film collaboration comes to the Arkley Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m. Jenny Scheinman’s Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait, brings together live fiddle, banjo and guitar music and singing by Scheinman, Robbie Fulks and Robbie Gjersoe with historical footage…
