Cover Stories
‘I Remain Unbroken’
On every journey, there is a point of no return: a moment when you are committed to continue. For me, that moment happened just a few days after the presidential election. My daughter called me, completely stunned at the results. “How could a man who brags about sexually assaulting women be elected president?” she asked.…
The Darkness of Noon
Dozens of police officers stood in lines blocking off the corner at 12th Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., gripping their batons and big canisters of pepper spray, faces obscured behind shields, as nearly 100 activists who had already been arrested were cordoned off behind them, waiting to be processed. Protesters lined the other…
Alicia Garza at the Van Duzer
If your activist fire has been lit but you’re not sure where to start, hit the Van Duzer Theatre Thursday, Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. to hear Alicia Garza before you make your next sign ($15). Garza is one of the activists behind #BlackLivesMatter. And she’ll be sharing her perspective on organizing and mobilizing for…
Steel Pulse
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. And justice. Steel Pulse, the Grammy Award-winning reggae band whose message of love and justice is right in line with current resistance movements performs on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 9 p.m. at the Mateel Community Center ($40, $35 advance). All ages.
Tattoo You
Gunning for some new ink? Want to touch up or zap ink you already have? Maybe you just want to mingle with hundreds of tatted, pierced and otherwise body-modified folks. Clear your schedule. The Inked Hearts Tattoo Expo, Feb. 2-5 at Blue Lake Casino’s Sapphire Palace has got you covered ($15, $35 all-event pass), possibly…
Brave New World
In 2009, I read She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, the groundbreaking and critically acclaimed book by professor, novelist and civil rights activist Jennifer Finney Boylan. And, bearing the hallmark of all good and important books, it changed me. Not only did Boylan’s story about her transition from male to female, told with…
Three Candidates Look to Fill Empty Harbor Seat
A special meeting of the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District board is scheduled Thursday to select a replacement for former District 3 Commissioner Mike Wilson, who was elected to the Board of Supervisors in June. Three candidates have submitted their names for consideration: Wiyot Tribe Natural Resources Director Stephen Kullmann, Blue Lake Rancheria…
Arcata Introduces Online Crime Tracking
Information on everything from missing person cases and recent police responses to crime stats for the city of Arcata are now available with the click of a mouse using a new mapping system that tracks incidents. “Having an informed and involved community will help the Arcata Police Department be proactive in our attempt to reduce…
Splash and Dash
Even at low tide, runners in the 52nd Trinidad to Clam Beach Run Honoring Ford Hess found crossing the Little River at Moonstone Beach a little more challenging in this non-drought year on Saturday, Jan. 28. The mild, sunny weather brought out a crowd to Clam Beach to watch the soaking-wet runners approach the finish…
The Next Generation March on Wells Fargo: ‘Divest’ the DAPL
A group of seven young protesters gripped a long white banner reading, “Divest,” which stretched across G Street in Arcata. As the youth leaders marched north, they yelled, “Water is what?” “Water is life,” the fellow protesters responded. The protesters marched from the Arcata Plaza to Wells Fargo on Saturday, led by Indigenous youth from…
Serious Fun
See through the lens of community media maker Eileen McGee at Local Filmmakers Night, featuring This Work Is Serious Fun – a collection of McGee’s films showing on Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. in the Eureka High School Lecture Hall ($5). Following the screening, take part in a Q&A session, play movie trivia and…
HumBug: The Devil’s Coach Horse
It is a rare event that I go out looking for a particular species of insect and find it. Well, for once I succeeded. A week ago on one of those sunny-ish days I took a walk down the Van Duzen River and noted dozens of tiny flying insects. I chased a couple down and…
Huff on Fire: Congressman Facebook Vents About Trump’s ‘Hearsay and Hooey’
Though still in its infancy, the presidency of Donald J. Trump has turned North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman’s Facebook page into straight fire. The Huff, who is entering his third congressional term riding high after taking 76 percent of the vote in November, has unleashed a scathing post daily since Thursday. First, Huffman shared an…
What to Read on Holocaust Memorial Day
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, an opportunity for citizens of the world to stop and reflect on what the National Holocaust Museum describes as “the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.” It’s a time to remember the devastating consequences of allowing xenophobia, scapegoating, religious,…
Scenes from the D.C. Women’s March
Local photographer R. Arroyo was in Washington D.C. last Saturday, Jan. 21, when Women’s March protesters filled the streets with signs, songs and pink “pussy ear” hats to voice their opposition to newly inaugurated President Donald Trump. The crowd (because crowd size is evidently everything) has been estimated at 470,000 people, according to the New…
UPDATE: Shameless Paparazza Hounds Actors
UPDATE: Official confirmation has finally come from the Humboldt-Del Norte Film Commission regarding the famous folk we’ve been seeing around Eureka. In a press release this morning, Cassandra Hesseltine, who’s kept contractually mum up until now, stated that Jemaine Clement, Craig Robinson, Aubrey Plaza, Emile Hirsch, Matt Berry and Director Jim Hosking were all in…
County’s Attempt to Depublish Scathing Legal Rebuke Denied
The California Supreme Court has rejected without comment Humboldt County Counsel Jeffrey Blanck’s bid to have a scathing appellate opinion about his office’s conduct depublished. The case centers on the county’s legal fight against Carlotta couple Judy and Dick Magney, who successfully challenged attempts by Adult Protective Services and the Public Guardian’s Office to override…
No Day But Today
In the opening number of Jonathan Larson’s rock opera Rent, one of the main characters asks, “How do you document real life when real life’s getting more like fiction each day?” Well, you keep it real. You do like the character eventually does — make art in the face of it. You go see art…
Planned Parenthood Choices Breakfast
There’s no better time to support Planned Parenthood than right now. Join others in solidarity and learn how to take action to protect preventive and reproductive health care at the Planned Parenthood Choices Breakfast, Friday, Jan. 27 at 7:45 a.m. at the Elk’s Lodge ($40, $30 advance). Featured keynote speaker is J.J. Straight.
Vote, McKinleyville!
Editor: It is my pleasure to endorse Mary Burke for the open board seat on the McKinleyville Community Service District (MCSD). As the MCSD board representative to the Recreation Advisory Committee (RAC), I have been attending committee meetings for several years now, where Mary is a voting member. Mary’s consistent preparation and presentation skills are…
Profoundly Disturbed
Editor: I am writing this on behalf of myself and five close friends who have spent over two years discussing and working through various issues concerning end-of-life issues. We read with interest the article in North Coast Journal “Profoundly Disturbing” (Jan. 12). Having worked on our own Advance Directives, it was therefore “profoundly disturbing” to…
Rained Out and Lit Up
No Bugs Today Last week, for the first time in several hundred excursions along the Van Duzen River spanning over 20 years, I saw no bugs. Only the sad remnants of a few abandoned spider webs and a bit of residual leaf damage testified to their existence. Despite a lifetime of experience at picking out…
O-o-oklahoma!
The play Oklahoma! and I go back a ways. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s famed play was, at the age of 8, the very first live theater I ever saw. My family was on a summer camping trip near Santa Cruz, and my parents took my sisters and I into town one night to see…
The Largest March in Eureka History
Eureka’s Old Town was a sea of pink on Saturday afternoon, as thousands of people filled the streets, many wearing the signature pink “pussy ear” knit caps that have become a symbol of protest against President Donald Trump, who admitted to grabbing women’s genitals without their consent in a now infamous 2005 video recorded by…
Women, Boys and Girls – Indie Hope and Action Despair
Reviews 20TH CENTURY WOMEN. The most heartening thing about this, the latest from writer-director Mike Mills (Beginners, 2010), is that it shores up the notion that independent cinema in America may not be dead, or as close to death as we had suspected. We are currently emerging from a period wherein it was difficult not…
Wasted Weed
Editor: Your Jan. 12 cover story, “Profoundly Disturbing,” was an exemplary piece of journalism. An important story given life without sacrificing the truth. Thank you, Kim Wear, for your handling of that piece. It then drew me to read the rest of the North Coast Journal, and I was unfortunately disappointed by your lackluster coverage…
‘My Hope’
The 2016 presidential race was remarkable for many reasons, but what stood out to me was the level of flat-out lies thrown back and forth and how the media failed miserably at fact checking. Between social, print and electronic media, voters found it hard to determine which statements were true and which were false. Republicans…
Unfactoids
I’d be powerless against the force of Kellyann Conway, the Trump spokesperson who turns provable falsehoods into “alternative facts.” I’ll believe anything someone tells me, as long as it is said with enough audacity. I think it is where my effectiveness as a journalist came from. I would go to one person and accept what…
The Gateway Nug
There’s a reason people find the phrase “gateway drug” so polarizing. It was popularized in the Reagan era, a time notorious for both misinformation and backward attitudes toward drug treatment and harm reduction. The narrative of cannabis as a gateway drug in anti-drug messaging relied largely on a reducto ad absurdum slippery slope of logical…
Pussy Mansion
Related Stories
Into the Woods
The frequent rain and heavy fog of autumn and winter on the North Coast brings an astounding abundance of edible fungi. From chanterelles to oysters, hedgehogs to boletes, there are more goodies in the woods than we know what to do with. Like many Americans, I grew up with a fungi-phobic mindset. Unlike many cultures,…
Come Together
Somewhere and some time ago, I remember hearing the idea posited that music had the power, if we’d only let it, to stop war and aggression. It was phrased a bit more eloquently than that and perhaps not as naively, but the thinking went something like this: Imagine that soldiers on two different sides of…
zen master outhouse
tuck shirt in pants buckle back up mittens on no delay this day. trek uphill not far to the warm cabin and tea. done this a million times in snow even deeper. along the narrow trail brush up against fresh white powder …
Abominable Omission
Editor: Homeless people have a life expectancy 25 years less than the rest of us. Those shortened lives are necessarily consumed with survival: finding or maintaining a place to sleep (or even sit!) which is not discovered by the police, shuffling through free meal lines, scavenging surreptitiously for food. No time to contemplate the miracle of…
A Collaborative Model
Editor: Regarding the article, “Nurses, Stat” (Jan. 19) and the shortage of nurses and education in Humboldt County, back in the late ’60s and early ’70s when I lived in the Bay Area, nursing education was what we called “climbing the ladder,” similar to what you refer to as a “bridge” program. The local unified…
Left Hanging
Editor: As a regular consumer of your publication one of my greatest frustrations are those instances when an element of an article or a statement of one of the parties referenced raises significant issues that go unaddressed in the balance of the article. Such was the case in your Jan. 19 article “Nurses, Stat”. In…
Laughing Matters
If your resolutions for 2017 are to reduce stress and be healthy, few things can get you there faster than a good laugh with good friends. There are two events this weekend sure to do the trick, so grab your pals and make a night of it. Come on, get happy. After taking a hiatus…
Roller Derby Season Opener
The tracks at Redwood Acres are getting loud again. Make some noise at the Humboldt Roller Derby Season Opener on Saturday, Jan. 28, from 5-9 p.m. at Redwood Acres Fairgrounds ($15, $12 advance, free for kids under 10). The first action of the 10-year anniversary season starts with a shortened expo game at 5 p.m.,…
