Parting the Redwood Curtain
Will opening Richardson Grove spell catastrophe or salvation?
Cover Story
Parting The Redwood Curtain
Just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, on the west side of U.S. Route 101, is an old, wooden sign that says “Redwood Highway.” The sign blends into its surroundings, and is easy to miss; it marks the beginning of the 438-mile-long stretch of road — from San Francisco to Grants Pass — that weaves…
Scratching That Itch
The Baltimore City Paper has a great exit interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire and former all-pro reporter, on the occasion of the end of the series. David Simon: Some people have critiqued the lack of presence of the internet in the Season 5 story. For them, allow me to offer the deleted…
Klam Dam-Blam Angers Bucket Man
Meanwhile, in the dry uplands to our east, another supervisorial race has grumbled into low gear with one Leo Bergeron, a long-time Siskiyou County rancher, insurance salesman and genuine Bucket Brigadier, tossing his cap into the ring for the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors’ First District seat. It was the latest Klamath River restoration agreement…
‘The Phantom Hunters’
In a send-up of Aussie Steve Irwin’s The Crocodile Hunter, Humboldt State University students participating in the Green Campus Program troll Arcata in search of a not-too-rare species of energy waster. [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=KF4UKQVTRTg&feature=related] [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=linZb8aRVyM&feature=related]
Congratulations Sara Bareilles – Vanguard Artist
If you’re someone who follows the Billboard charts, you already know that Humboldt native Sara Bareilles is doing well. Her single ” Love Song ,” has been hovering near the top of the charts for weeks — it’s No. 4 this week. Her Little Voice album has gone platinum — it’s in the top 10…
Earthquake
Lehman out, Wilson out. Mike Wilson: “I believe that there’s a lot of work to do, and I don’t need to be supervisor to get a lot of things done that we need to get done in Humboldt County. I believe we have a great candidate in Mark Lovelace, who’s been a great community organizer…
Third District Shockers
There’s crazy stuff happening in the Third Supervisorial District right up against the 5 o’clock deadline for filing. 1). Lee Ulansey is now out. Repeat: out. Yes, he did pull papers and pay his $750 fee, but he decided not to run after all. 2). Financial planner Bryan Plumley, a member of the Board of…
Conner Out; Ulansey, Lehman In
There’s a bit about it in this week’s paper, which is hitting the streets around Eureka and Arcata right now, but we’ll put it up here for debate and discussion. Former Arcata City Councilmember Elizabeth Conner has taken herself out of the race for Third District Supervisor. Lee Ulansey of Kneeland is in, though. He’s…
Coloring Inside the Lines
OK, so here’s the corrected version of the Obama v. Clinton Google Earth overlay we trotted out a couple of days ago. Download it here . The old one wasn’t exactly wrong , per se — it was just off by about a tenth of a mile. Unless you zoom way down to street level…
Out-of-county experience
Now we know what happens to all those confiscated growlights — exported! In the ABC News story about the policeman’s preferred online auction site, Humboldt Sheriff’s property technician Bruce Slocum says, “We had some stuff here that is the result of dope-growing operations and we did not want to resell it locally.”
Humboldt in Texas
Another dopey movie. Looks fun, though. Also, considering the price of gas these days, watching this movie might suffice for people who in glory days gone by might’ve just fired up the family wagon for a trip to our fair coast, you know, to dream for a week about escaping the rat race like we…
The Wire creators on how to end the Drug War
The best show on TV — ever — ends its five-year run tonight. I’m not going to go into detail on why you should watch The Wire , let’s just say it’s offered us a glimpse of the dysfunctional state of the inner-city we haven’t seen elsewhere and are not likely to see again. In…
Geographic Analysis of Humboldt County’s Hillary Smackdown
IMPORTANT UPDATE! See here . Bill came , he saw, but he did not conquer. When election day rolled around, Barack Obama stomped Hillary Clinton in Humboldt County, 53-38. That’s just a piece of the story, though. The county’s final precinct results, released Thursday, showed that Hillary Clinton was strong in some areas. Where? We…
Will America Ever Say Sorry?
Why is it that the world’s greatest democracy has yet to elect a female president? Why was it three decades behind Britain in abolishing slavery? And when, if ever, will it offer a formal apology to its Native American population? Australia’s recently elected prime minister Kevin Rudd — who also happens to speak Chinese (when…
Believers and knowers unite!
Well, we don’t really know, do we? Bigfoot? No Bigfoot? Bigfatliars? Bigmisunderstoods? And in the spirit of open, collegial debate — indeed, in the interest of unfettered investigation by believers, if not scientists — U.C. Berkeley’s Hearst Museum of Anthropology has put on display the plaster casts of tracks that some say were made by…
Petrolia’s Whale Tale
Standing five-foot-seven and wielding a two-foot whale-flensing blade, ecstatic marine mammologist Jeff Jacobsen couldn’t see over the towering head of the stranded sperm whale he was carving last Tuesday. Though difficult for a lay person to discern where the abdomen of a whale even begins, veteran flenser Jacobsen definitively leaned on the wooden handle, burying…
Juno Original Soundtrack
By various artists. Rhino Records. Kimya Dawson is kind of a deal-breaker. Whether she’s the personification of four-track, scruffy-round-the-edges authenticity or a mediocre singer plying a shoddy affectation is largely a matter of taste. But even though Ellen Page (who plays Juno) suggested to director Jason Reitman thatJuno’s title character would be into Dawson’s work…
Live 1974
CD by Harmonia. Water/Gronland. According to tales of rock lore, Brian Eno once proclaimed Harmonia to be the most important band in rock music. That’s an impressive endorsement, especially considering that Eno is widely recognized as part of the brain trust behind the careers of some of rock’s biggest names: David Bowie, Talking Heads and…
Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman
CD by Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra. Forthcoming from Noir Records. History is only as memorable as the current stories we tell about the world. The preference to remember past events in a charitable or patriotic light transforms ideas, events and people who are then filtered through the current discourse to explain their relevance. Marcus Shelby’s…
Groceries for a Small Planet
It was all part of someone’s insidious plan, and I fell for it. As I wheeled my cart through the door of the supermarket, I saw the display of carefully arranged peaches, looking, well, just peachy — and in February. Knowing full well that peaches are a summer fruit, which meant these came from halfway…
On the Job
A lot went down at the crucial Pacific Lumber bankruptcy hearing we previewed last week. Most importantly, each of the four plans on the table were sent forward, and now all the various interests in the case — the owners of the company and all the people the company owes money to — will be…
Designing with Natives
On Wednesday, March 12, 2008, native plant designer Alrie Middlebrook will give a talk on designing native gardens. She’s the co-author of Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens, just out from University of California Press. She runs a native plant design business in San Jose called Middlebrook Gardens, and…
Looking for Nothing
It’s not hard to imagine Iowan folksinger Greg Brown climbing out of a dusty, battered pick-up truck parked down some lonesome road, pulling an equally battered guitar and canvas bag full of fishing tackle from the back and ambling down an overgrown path looking for a hole where they’re biting. That’s the picture he paints…
On TV
Eureka’s KIEM-TV, Channel 3, isn’t in the smallest television market in the country, but it is near the bottom of a 200+ deck. Why should you care? The bigger the TV market size, the more money a station can command in advertising fees and the more it can spend on its evening and morning news.…
Pollution as Art
Walking into the Foyer Gallery on the HSU campus yesterday, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of oppression. The installation piece there consists of a net of plastic garbage, glued, stapled and tied together and suspended from the ceiling. The idea is to give the viewer a feel for what it might be like in…
Noble Savages
Previews We are not yet graced locally with The Other Boleyn Girl, so what we get instead on Friday, March 7, is 10,000 B.C. This may make some hearts go pitter-pat, but mine must be too worn out. The plot, involving a mammoth hunter (relatively unknown Steven Straight) who has to go on a quest…
Remembrance
Wedged in the landing craft, they gazed, awestruck,…
The Ins and Outs of Tides
The Moon’s gravity decreases with distance, so it pulls unequally at the Earth and its oceans (arrows in the diagram). This tends to produce two tidal bulges: The Moon pulls harder on the closer ocean than it pulls on the solid Earth. And it pulls harder on the solid Earth than it pulls on the…
