Cover Story
Grand Jury: Eureka Schools Acted ‘Hastily,’ Without Due Diligence
After investigating Eureka City Schools’ decision to offload its former Jacobs Middle School site in a property exchange agreement with a mystery developer, the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury has issued a report criticizing the district for a lack of transparency and due diligence. “The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury concludes that the Eureka City…
Alton “Whit” Lewis: 1937-2024
Alton “Whit” Lewis, age 87, peacefully passed away on June 17, at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, California. He was born on April 28, 1937, in Merced, California, the son of Arthur Wright Lewis and Alice Sarah Savage. They lived in Fish Camp, Mariposa County, near Yosemite, with his sister Lyla and brother Dennis.…
Music Tonight: Wednesday, June 26
The Outer Space has a trio of unique talents tonight at 7:30 p.m. whose blending might have what it takes to make for an interesting midweek show. Oakland’s Weird Mood just tossed out the single “Jinx” last week and, after giving it a spin on Bandcamp, my response is a hearty thumbs up, if only…
Newsom: Dark Forces Are Threatening California
Months of speculation and complaints about when, or even if, Gov. Gavin Newsom would give his annual State of the State address ended this morning with more of a whimper than a bang. At a few minutes past 10 a.m., Newsom posted a pre-recorded speech to his social media channels. Flanked by American and California…
Music Tonight: Tuesday, June 25
It’s Taco Tuesday at Richards’ Goat, and if that gets you in the door, the attached cinema venue the Miniplex has an interesting couple of touring bands rolling through at 8:30 p.m. Clementine Was Right is a twangy indie outfit from Denver, Colorado, who share a diary-entry, poetic approach with punkier tourmates Farseek from the…
Music Tonight: Monday, June 24
Let’s hear it once more for Metal Mondays at Savage Henry Comedy Club. Tonight’s performers are a sludge band from Salem, Oregon, called Hell, as well as local bangers Death Doula and Echo Death. Music starts around 7 p.m., $5-$10 sliding scale cover, all-ages and an I.D. needed for adult beverages. To quote David Byrne,…
Music Tonight: Saturday, June 22
The Miniplex is hosting Goth Night XIII, and this installment is a celebration of the quaint mall goth aesthetic that has largely died out with big structure American retail spaces. I am old enough to prefer the earlier thrift store/Salvation Army version of the style but to each their own, and I certainly won’t pretend…
Black Hole Sun
Here’s an interesting notion: This Thursday’s summer solstice will be accompanied by a waxing full moon that will reach its peak two days later. This probably has a variety of implications; for my (mostly) nightlife beat, it means your weekend will start out with more skylight than we have had all year. To put it…
Best Oyster Goes Pop-up
By 9:45 a.m. on Saturday, June 15, chefs, staffers and volunteers were pushing through the doors of the former Mazzotti’s, carrying platters of oysters on drifts of white salt, cold stones and ice. Most of the restaurant, slated to open as another Italian spot under new owner Jack Wu, was dark, but there was plenty…
Packed with Color
It all started with two 4-by-4-by-4-foot boxes of wood wool — great piles of curly, hay-like wood shavings — marked “FREE” outside Miller Farms Garden Center. Artist Becky Evans saw the boxes and thought her friend and fellow artist Lori Goodman might want to use the material in her paper-making practice. Eventually, they transformed the…
A Shell of a Time
The Arcata Plaza was packed for the 34th Oyster Festival on Saturday, June 15. Locals and visitors alike stood chatting in long lines for beer and foraged festival foods amid the crowd of vendors and trucks. Meanwhile on the lawn, folks picnicked and danced to live music, and competed in oyster calling in the sun.…
Quiet Movies, Big Feelings
HIT MAN. In my inscrutable-to-some fervor to defend Bad Boys: Ride or Die and the deliciously trashy legacy of that franchise, I failed to reserve enough column-inches and enthusiasm for another, quieter but no-less satisfying contribution to the amorphous agglomeration of late-stage American mainstream movies. In the same weekend that saw Will Smith as Mike…
Pride is Alive and Well
It’s mid-June — the days are long and generally sunny, the summer solstice draws near, and Pride Month is well underway. As Humboldt County’s Fourth District supervisor representing most of the greater Eureka area, including the physical space where the courthouse sits in the heart of downtown Eureka, it was an honor to sponsor this…
Countering Myths
Editor: First, I want to thank Barry Evans for his periodic Field Notes, which serve to enlighten us on an eclectic variety of topics. In his last column on “The Myth of the Lone Genius” (June 6), he noted that the lone genius concept is in fact a myth, failing to take into account the…
‘This Downward Spiral’
Editor: In my Aug. 31 NCJ column (“Pension Debt is Devouring Local Services”), we looked at the big picture regarding pension debt. Now, let us look at this issue regarding a much more defined issue, the issue of funding $477,000 annually for the Arcata House Partnership safe parking program (“No Safe Parking,” June 6). Transparentcalifornia.com…
Solstice Puzzles
It’s summer solstice — and therefore puzzle — time again! Here are some of the best puzzles to have come my way in the last 12 months for your entertainment and frustration. So, deep breath and … Laterally Yours When this old chestnut was posted in Britain’s New Scientist, everyone got the obvious “aha” answer,…
Solstice Puzzles ANSWERS
Laterally Yours 1: Turn the 9 upside down (columns add up to 21). 2: Place the 1 on top of the 5 (20). 3: Place the 3 on the 9 (18). 4: Place the 5 on the 7 (19). 5: Place the 1 facedown on the 4 (20). 6: Place the 4 facedown on the…
Graduation
a sense of place etched on her face erosion from emotion frozen as though she’d been wrote on in that cardboard burrow where every neuro, every furrow petrified traumatized and cast aside shuddering through sleepless nights struggling to win needless fights with blurry eyes and worry lines at sixteen going on thirty-nine leaving all she’d…
