Saga of an ape
The surprising true story of the late Bill the Chimp
Cover Story
Saga of an Ape — The surprising true story of the late Bill the Chimp
When the Sequoia Park Zoo’s oldest and most popular animal rejected food and water and struggled to breathe for a second day, his caretakers made an announcement that riveted the Eureka community: Bill the Chimp was dying. The press release declaring that the 61-year-old chimpanzee was “gravely ill” got instant responses from reporters, and when…
Homer & Hairspray
Previews Fans of Homer Simpson, and they are legion, need no introduction to his big-screen debut in The Simpsons Movie after 18 seasons on TV. The story is not a surprise: Homer must save the world from a disaster of his own making. With a new pet pig and the familiar cast of voices that…
Peaches and sunshine — Willow Creek summer, in fruit form
Jacques Neukom doesn’t sleep well when there’s thunder and lightning over the mountains. Not in the summer, anyway, when the peach trees in his orchard are laden with sweet, juicy, luscious gems so ripe they would drop from the trees on their own if no one picked them. And he wasn’t exactly having the relaxed,…
Jazzy Matazzy — Guru foresees the future of hip hop
He was half of the duo Gang Starr, but the smooth rapper known as Guru was never a gangsta type, not in his style and definitely not in the socially conscious content of his lyrics. At the end of the ’80s, Gang Starr — Guru and producer/partner DJ Premier — pioneered the use of jazz…
Last bet
In just two months, the Big Lagoon Rancheria may finally throw in its cards on a big hotel-casino project it has proposed to build in Barstow, in tandem with the Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians of San Diego County. The tribes’ gaming compacts, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, would allow…
Desert machinations
In keeping with a long-standing ethic — eschewing corporate branding and rank commercialism — espoused by promoters of a gigantically weird art and communal living experiment/festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, this report will be rather vague. We can tell you who: Shaye Harty and her cohort of like-minded non-profiteers who this spring took over…
The high Alps — Notes from a climb up to Big Caribou Lake
A long, difficult hike in — but well worth the effort. Photo by Bret Bosma. A few hours drive away from the fog and traffic noise of Eureka, hikers and backpackers huff their way up hundreds of feet to escape the trappings of everyday life. They come to explore untouched wilderness with a guarantee to…
When the people lead
How many North Coast Journal readers received an e-mail link to the transcript of the July 13 edition of Bill Moyers Journal, a weekly PBS show that appears on KEET? I received several, from different directions, so I thought I’d better read it. The topic was impeachment. When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi took…
Air waves
When public radio stations explode, they do so with great force. Generally speaking, public radio stations have among the nastiest, most poisonous political atmospheres of any type of organization imaginable. Think of when Pacifica Radio blew up a few years ago. The recriminations went on for months. At Berkeley Pacifica flagship station KPFA, one programmer…
