Occupy Broadband
When it comes to high-speed reliable internet, we’re not as far along as we think
Cover Stories
Occupy Broadband
For nearly eight months after a $14 million new fiber optic line was completed to happy sighs of “whew, redundancy,” thousands of Humboldt residents and many local businesses didn’t have broadband redundancy. And they may not have known it. AT&T, considered one of the larger service providers here, didn’t sign onto the new line…
Life in the Glass Lane
Passing by the Shasta County town of Platina at almost 450 million miles per hour, there’s no time to stop and visit its gas-and-groceries store, its solid-waste transfer station (capable of handling 25 tons a day), or its couple hundred residents, including the brothers at the nearby St. Herman of Alaska Monastery. This trip…
Scat Dogs Spot Owls
No, they’re not canine masters of jazzy nonsense, crooning in the moonlight. They’re the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology detection dogs Shrek and Max, who’ve been trained to sniff out northern spotted owl pellets (the undigested stuff they hack up after a meal) at the bases of trees (and thusly find the owls).…
Reelection Made Easy
Journal intern Scottie Lee Meyers submits this report: Arcata residents Jolian Kangas, Valerie Rose-Campbell and Mark Sailors all attempted to run for city council, but according to the city clerk’s office (and as first reported by Kevin Hoover of The Arcata Eye), none of the three challengers managed to collect 20 signatures from Arcata voters and…
Crab Trap Limits A-Comin’
On your mark, get set, scuttle! It’s time to ponder the state’s new Dungeness crab trap limit program and — by Sept. 10 — submit your comments on the Department of Fish and Game’s initial study and proposed Negative Declaration. The program, the result of passage of Senate Bill 369 in 2011, goes into effect…
L.A. Times Says Arcata’s Panhandling Ordinance “Goes Too Far”
In an editorial that’s bound to make the Arcata Chamber of Commerce wince, the Los Angeles Times today came out against the city’s 2010 panhandling ordinance, saying: The city’s frustration is understandable, but its remedy is too broad and too punitive, emblematic of the excesses that many municipalities succumb to in confronting the unsightly but…
It’s Official: This Weather Ain’t Normal
If coastal Humboldtians have been wondering just where the heck our summer is, you have good reason: Last month was tied for the cloudiest ever recorded in Eureka, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose database stretches from 1887 through 2005. According to Shawn Palmquist, a meteorologist at the group’s Woodly Island station, 22 of July’s…
Eeeeuuu, Meat
Editor: The article on $20 dining for two (“Cheap Eats,” July 26) was a big disappointment. Meat, meat and more meat throughout the reviews; even, “you can see and smell the long skewers of meat being turned on the grill.” I barely recognize the Journal anymore. Instead of taking leadership, you heartily embrace stupid, retro-evolutionary, ecologically unsustainable…
Fido’s Turn
Get over yourself, human! Every week you turn here to the NCJ’s trusty calendar section thinking, “Which dubstup show do I want to go to this weekend?” or “There’s got to be some guided Arcata Marsh walk that will serve my needs.” It’s always about you in these pages, isn’t it? Well, doggone it,…
Rail Not Wrecked
Editor: There persists the idea the railroad would have to be torn up in order to rebuild it (“Rail Wreck,” Mailbox, Aug 2). Some say this is due to the gauge, rust of the rails, or the ties all need to be replaced. Not all the ties need to be replaced. They have a 25…
Make Reggae Safe
Editor: I grew up going to Reggae (“Sex Assault Rumor Worries Reggae Organizers,” July 31 blog item). As a Mendo local, Reggae was what we looked forward to every summer, and as I and the festival grew, I would hear of an increasing number of sexual assaults occurring. I began to feel frustrated that I…
Talk It Out
Reviews YOUR SISTER’S SISTER. I was introduced to the work of writer/director Lynn Shelton via Humpday (2009). In that film, Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard play heterosexual old friends with a mildly antagonistic relationship. Over the course of a drunken evening, they goad each other into making an ultra-indie gay porno for the local amateur…
Back to School
I’ve received a few emails and a bunch of Facebook invites in the last week or so asking for help getting the word out about the Humboldt Folklife Society’s much anticipated Folk School Music Camp, which runs next week, Monday through Friday, morning to night in Blue Lake. The school is a dream fulfillment for…
Humboldt Mountain Music
The Compost Mountain Boys are marking their 20th anniversary playing what they call “Humboldt County bluegrass” with the release of the band’s first full-fledged CD, High on a Mountain. It all began in 1992 with the late Sean Bohannon and current Compost banjo player Tim Wilson playing as a duo at an Arcata Mexican…
Bird by Bird
Fish-oil-soaked pelicans are being cleaned, fundraisers are being held and a rehab aviary is planned — but no one really knows how much good any of it is going to do. It’s been almost 20 years since anyone looked rigorously at how well California brown pelicans survive after oil spill cleanups, and those results were…
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
Seen last year on pay cable, this Scorsese film on the life of George Harrison is now widely available on DVD. A fair amount of the footage here has been otherwise available, but there’s a lot that comes from Harrison’s “home movies” and photos. There are archival soundbites with Harrison, and new interviews with…
Thanks, But …
Editor: Thank you, Bernard J. Bass for your moving article “Women in Black” (Aug. 2). There are many apprehensions to spoil our day, and few inspirations to light our way. And perhaps demonstrations may be too futile to be worth the effort as there are probably more effective (?) ways to get the message across. I…
Does the Shoe Fit?
Cinderella is one of the world’s most popular stories, and among the oldest. It’s probably also the only one in which the climactic moment is somebody trying on a shoe. There are hundreds of versions from all over Asia as well as Europe (the idea that Cinderella’s beauty is proven by her small feet…
Onward and Upward
Local artist Deborah Burke’s current show of silkscreened prints and fabric wall hangings at the Upstairs Art Gallery in Arcata, aptly titled “Progression,” exemplifies the movement and change in her work over the last 25 years. The progression is marked not just by stylistic changes, but by a dramatic shift in medium in her most…
Get Your Port On: Part 3
Get Your Port On: Part 3
Drinkable Flowers
For the last year, the Journal has indulged my interest in drink and given me space once a month to rant about distillery tours, the dearth of good cider in these parts, excessively intricate cocktails, and so on. This has all been fueled by the research — if you can call it that — that…
Every. Four. Years.
USA! Will suspends his post-Betsy NBC boycott in the interest of national pride.
Night Sky Rendezvous
The best planetary conjunction of the year is coming up soon, with the added attraction that the bright star Spica is part of the action. Mars and Saturn will be at their closest next week, but any time between now and the next couple of weeks will make for a pretty cluster of the three…
Correction
The number of women who stand with Eureka’s Women in Black was underestimated in an article in last week’s Journal, and name of one of the Trinidad Women in Black was misspelled. Her name is Mary Wilbur. In the same article, the Journal also mistakenly passed along incorrect information from Trinidad’s website about its relative…
So many things can wait
So many things can wait. The dust can…
