Cover Story
Race Day
At one o’clock on a bright blue Saturday afternoon, the howling hasn’t yet started. There is a lazy gold aspect to everything, a hint of harshness in the glare off the machinery rolling gradually out of trailers and into the pits. People make themselves quietly busy. Superficially they’re calm, but clearly anticipatory. Lawn chairs and…
On the XP: Local Families Take A Historic Ride Across the West
The Pony Express occupies a relatively small window in American history, but an outsized place in Wild West mythology. The mail service, in which riders carried messages via horseback for 1,800 miles from St. Jackson, Missouri to Sacramento was only in existence for 19 months — from April 3, 1860 to October 1861 — before being…
Feds Launch Klamath Investigation
As if enough hard feelings didn’t exist over Klamath River water rights, the Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency in charge of researching claims put forth by whistleblowers, has directed the Interior Department to determine if millions of dollars meant for environmental restoration were instead used to benefit farming and ranching interests. A press…
City of Eureka Cancels Contract with Chamber of Commerce
The Eureka Chamber of Commerce recently sent out letters to its members announcing that its contract with the city had been canceled. As of July 1, 2016 the chamber will no longer receive city funds. Neither City Manager Greg Sparks nor Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Don Smullen was available to speak on this story,…
Polar Extremes: How We View Ourselves Vs. How the World Views Us
Poverty. Sadness. A psychoactive tinge? Dudes, did you know we have a landscape that is “very psychedelic?” That’s according to photographer Curran Hatleberg, recipient of a 2015 grant from Magnum Foundation’s Emergency Fund and the 2014 Individual Photographer’s Fellowship from the Aaron Siskind Foundation. Hatleberg, who spent the 2013 fall semester teaching photography at College…
Mobile Home Owners Rally over Rent
On July 14, a group of local mobile home residents bearing white balloons descended on the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting. The balloons, bobbing above the heads of the crowd, bore a stark message written in red pen: Save Our Seniors. The residents, primarily local seniors and low-income renters, flooded the public comment period…
Plea Agreements Reached in Federal Murder Case
Two men accused of the 2008 robbery and murder of a San Francisco man in Southern Humboldt have reached plea agreements with federal prosecutors. Ryan Carroll and Robert Lee, both accused in the killing of 35-year-old Reetpaul Singh Rana in a marijuana deal gone bad on Dyerville Loop Road, north of Alderpoint, each reached agreements…
Meet Your Maker
Humboldt County’s artists and artisans take to the streets for the Humboldt Makers Street Fair in Old Town on Aug. 1 from noon to 9 p.m. (free). Make it a full day of art, music and fun as the event blends into Eureka’s Arts Alive! in the evening. Peruse the wares of woodworkers, jewelers, pottery…
Reggae on the River 2015
UPDATE: Well, apparently this staycation thing is a bit more difficult than we anticipated. Ordinary wifi signals are apparently no match for Reggae’s irie vibes, leaving our poor freelancer Alexander Woodard frustrated with no way of uploading his photos. We’ll keep trying but, in the meantime, at least there are the live audio and video…
Smoke on the Water
This time every year, the banks of the Eel River buzz to life with good vibes and skanking sounds as thousands of reggae-loving folk make their annual pilgrimage to French’s Camp in Piercy to get together and feel all right. Reggae on the River, running Thursday, July 30 through Sunday, Aug. 2, is the longest-…
Pity the Poor Farmer
Editor: Let’s look at Steve Dodge’s numbers (“Left with Nothing,” July 16). First off, income taxes are paid on net profits not gross sales. Assuming his hypothetical grow numbers are correct, his $230,000 in gross sales will be reduced annually by his cost of production ($115,000) and business and licensing fees (five items totaling $3,960).…
Cartooning Cannabis
Editor: In your July 2 issue, you ran a delightful cartoon by Terry Torgerson displaying the Cannabis Chorale. On July 16 (“Letters”), Hezekiah Allen criticized your cartoonist for lampooning California Cannabis Voice Humboldt. Hezekiah represents the Emerald Growers Association (EGA), which backs CCVH. I respond: 1. TRUST. CCVH Executive Director Richard Marks recently told The Independent…
Not So Nutty
Editor: Well, Barry, you’ve had your fun writing quasi-science columns over the last few years, but this time you’ve gone too far. Not only is your “Cool Contrails” (July 2) column not science, not even quasi-science, it’s pure trash talk! Contrails are a common phenomenon that most of us have observed and they generally dissipate…
Arcata Eyes Costly Divorce
If Arcata divorces PG&E for its own “personal space,” speaking electricity-wise, that independence may come at a cost rivaling alimony, according to a recently released feasibility study. Arcata and the county of Humboldt are currently in the process of researching community choice aggregation, which would allow them to start their own electric providers or contract…
Fountain of Youth
Young Alumni 2015 features works by 40 recent graduates from the Humboldt State University Art Department. While subject matter and execution can be bewilderingly diverse in a big group show like this, unifying themes surface once you spend time with the work. The show is essentially a core sample of young creativity — and as…
What Did We See?
Didn’t we see the shallow, mud-bottomed bay simmering, tendrils of fog lifting like egret feathers, the wide flat water shimmering under a silver sun? Did I just miss the lordly egret skimming the marsh trees, pacing his double swimming below the dark water? What else have we missed, driving the freeway yards from the still…
First Saturday Night 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, phone Eureka Main Street at 442-9054 or go to www.eurekamainstreet.org. EUREKA INN 518 Seventh St. Music by La Patinas. HUMBOLDT ARTS COUNCIL at the Morris Graves Museum of Art 636 F St.…
The Heartbeat Hypothesis
Like Achilles, who was given the choice of living a short, glorious life or a long and dull one, animals with high-metabolisms/fast heartbeats (such as shrews and mice) have a brief but furious time in the sun, while comparatively plodding horses and elephants enjoy long lives. Take the American pygmy shrew, North America’s smallest mammal.…
On the Ropes
Reviews SOUTHPAW. Just so we’re all clear, that Jake Gyllenhaal did not win an Academy Award for his performance in Nightcrawler (2014) seems like the result of some grievous actuarial error. The fact that he was not even nominated feels more like a miscarriage of justice, although the mention of justice and a Hollywood trophy…
Trapped in Taffeta
Few plays boast six well-rounded roles for female actors. Fewer still could wrest the largest laughs of the night out of a well-heeled wedding planner waving an axe. Always a Bridesmaid, by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten, playing at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, manages to deliver on both counts. Unfortunately, despite the…
Miles Away
A short hike in Ferndale’s Russ Park with a walking group aroused my curiosity about the paths we didn’t take, so I returned to explore. At the parking area along Bluff Street, less than a mile from town, an unseen congregation of birds sings in the trees and the trail immediately welcomes the hiker into…
Growing a Greener Bud
Holly Carter doesn’t have a good estimate on how many plastic soil bags wind up in landfills, but judging from the “hundreds of thousands” she sees enter the Garberville-Redway area on flatbed trucks every grow season, it’s many. In addition to the high carbon footprint associated with trucking dirt into our rural and rugged region,…
Hum Plate Roundup
Steak Your Claim Nothing hurts like taking that deep breath to splurge on a steak only to end up gnawing a flavorless knot of overcooked muscle, wondering if it’s worth making dinner all weird by sending it back or if you should keep chewing and just imagine a wonderful cut of meat from the past.…
Names
Places in California confuse me. When I first moved here I went with friends to the Colorado River south of Lake Havasu and, instead of raging whitewater, I found what seemed like a canal with barren desert and RV parking lots on each side. Death Valley turned out to be beautiful. I expected a lake…
Who’s Accountable?
Editor: This year I volunteered for the Point in Time Count (“The Numbers Are Out and the Jury is In,” July 16). I attended the training session and was told I would be phoned to tell me my assigned station to report to the day of the count. Two days before the count, I had…
More Richer than My Tongue
Hiya, readers. I’m sorry to tell you I have come down with a silly summer cold — this, after a friend exclaimed last week, “You never get sick!” — and am writing to you through a raspy, snotty filter of no fun. But fun remains to be had, and I encourage you, as always, to…
