On the Inside
A snapshot of the Humboldt County Jail
Cover Story
On the Inside
The first thing you notice when you walk inside the Humboldt County Correctional Facility is the smell. It’s overpoweringly sterile. “Pine-Sol,” says Sgt. Dean Flint, walking briskly across the gleaming tile of the booking station. “This place gets mopped three times a day.” As one might imagine, people are not at their best when the…
Trees and flowers
Like most junior high and high school students in Humboldt County, the teenagers I work with as a tutor are scrambling to finish their homework during this, their final week of school — there are essays on American authors due, presentations about U.S. History to be made, tests to be taken. Unlike most junior high…
Dumper duty
The Kneeland Post Office rests on a tiny scraped-out patch of territory high up the Freshwater-Kneeland Road. It’s tucked next to a solidly fenced compound from behind which the skid and squeal of kids playing issued one recent holiday Monday afternoon. The post office itself is a speck of languid past: wood door propped open…
Hot and cold glass
Of all the art mediums, perhaps the most mysterious is glass. It’s not hard to understand putting paint on a canvas, weaving, even welding or casting molten metal. But just how does one carve glass? How do they put those little flowers inside a glass paperweight? How do you shape the intricate details of a…
Golden fish — Trinidad Fish Festival turns 50
The town may be stretching things just a little bit by calling its big event Sunday "Trinidad’s 50th Annual Fish Festival," but we’ll forgive it. It was 1957, 50 years ago, when the little port town began celebrating its ties with the fishing and seafood business with an annual event, but it was not called…
A Rash Reminder
I remember reading somewhere that high adventure, like high treason, often comes with a hefty price tag. If you manage to finagle your way past the king’s men relatively unscathed, then you are not doing too badly. My battle scars from the adventure last weekend are mostly psychological. I can expect the night terrors to…
Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against the Chinese
Late on the night of February 6, 1885, a gallows was built on Fourth Street between E and F Streets on the edge of Chinatown, in Eureka, a foggy lumber town on California’s North Coast." When Jean Pfaelzer’s new book arrived in the mail, it opened to that page and I almost dropped it. A…
Not from here
It may be obvious if you follow this music column, I’m a sucker for Gypsy-ish violins, accordions, café music, retro-Euro stuff and for mixers and mergers who leapfrog genres.That said, I love Portland’s who touch all of the above to craft a sound that defies categorization. From the title of the band’s most recent album,…
Prime Cole Porter
Arnold Saint Subber — his name even sounds like a musical comedy character — wasn’t the first to notice that backstage goings-on sometimes mirror the scenes onstage, and even exceed them in dramatic pretense and flamboyant comedy. Nor would he be the last. But while serving as stage manager for a production of Shakespeare’s The…
‘Pirates’ stands up to ‘Knocked Up’
Previews Knocked Up failed to dislodge Pirates from atop the box office, but perhaps Ocean’s Thirteen will accomplish that feat. Happily set back in Las Vegas after the European setting of the disastrous Twelve, Steven Soderbergh returns as director and Pitt, Clooney and Damon now face a new enemy and scamee in Al Pacino, one…
Legalize it?
The longhairs are at it again, trying to ruin the economic base of Humboldt County. As local anti-environmentalist gadfly Stephen Lewis of Rio Dell put it recently in the Eureka Reporter, the goal of the enviros "has been consistent if never acknowledged: the destruction of corporate-based industries in Humboldt County." Take that argument to its…
Youth scoop
If you want to read some of the most interesting and relevant journalism in Humboldt County you’ll have only till the end of the month. That’s because this year it’s been coming out of our local high schools and when the school year ends, so do the publications; many of the reporters and editors will…
