Service Call
Eureka’s ‘effervescent’ new council member and her Bible-smuggling part
Cover Story
Service Call
While Heidi Messner stepped away from pursuing an acting career to follow her family’s footsteps in the Christian ministry, her early childhood has all the makings of a Hollywood movie. Messner — who as a 4-year-old innocently distracted border guards from discovering the Bibles her family was smuggling behind the Iron Curtain — is now…
Flash Fiction: No, The Title Doesn’t Count
Dust off those plot twists … the North Coast Journal Flash Fiction Contest is back! Send your original story of 99 words or fewer to our judges for a chance at publication and a prize. Email your entries to fiction@northcoastjournal.com between now and 9 a.m. on Oct. 24. Be sure to include your name, address…
State Approves Closure of Three Skilled Nursing Facilities
The California Department of Public Health announced today that it has approved the closure of three skilled nursing facilities: Seaview, Pacific and Eureka Rehabilitation & Wellness Centers. According to Suzi Fregeau, long-term care ombudsman at the Area 1 Agency on Aging, this means as of tomorrow admittance of new patients to skilled nursing facilities will be…
UPDATE: Eureka Approves Containerville Move, $75k in Funding
UPDATE: The Eureka City Council voted unanimously yesterday to approve a new location and provide $75,000 in funding for the shipping container shelter project for the homeless. After hours of discussion and public comment, the council voted to relocate the project that currently shelters about 40 people in a vacant lot on the corner of…
Volunteer Fire Captain Killed in Fortuna Shooting
The Fortuna Police Department today identified the victim of yesterday’s fatal shooting as Timothy Thomas Smith, a Fortuna resident and captain with the city’s volunteer fire department. He was 42. According to a police department release, an autopsy has been scheduled for later this week. “He has set the example for the department’s motto ‘Always…
Local Veteran Rolls Through Humboldt to Raise Awareness for Suicide Prevention
Two veterans are riding 2,200 miles on specialized four-wheel drive mobility chairs, from the Canadian border to Mexico, then back to Fresno, to bring attention to the 22 veterans said t0 commit suicide in the United States every day. (The most recent analysis from the Dept. of Veteran’s Affairs actually puts the number at 20.)…
HumBug: False Scorpions
A little over 20 years ago, after moving to the country, I noticed a tiny, dark critter, no bigger than a newsprint letter “o” scurry across my counter. I scooped it up and checked it out with a hand lens. It was an animal I had only read about, a book scorpion or pseudoscorpion. After…
Klamath Dam Removal Takes a Step Forward
The newly formed nonprofit Klamath River Renewal Corporation and dam owner PacifiCorp filed applications Friday with federal regulators to decommission the four hydroelectric dams that clog the Klamath River. The filings were hailed by proponents of dam removal as a milestone in refurbished plans to see the lower Klamath River dams removed in 2020. The…
Red Menace
What is this power red pandas have over us? The Sequoia Park Zoo’s little family has us wrapped around their striped tails, running out in the middle of the night with flashlights and bamboo when one of them does a runner. Little runaway Masala is apparently doing well, by the way, in her newly renovated…
Redwood Borough
A tiny Humboldt County-inspired redwood forest is taking root in downtown Brooklyn as part of a public art project set to open on Oct. 1. Spencer Finch’s Lost Man Creek exhibit — which replicates a 790-acre section of the Redwood National Park on a 1:100 scale with some 4,000 dawn redwood seedlings being planted by volunteers. “Lost…
Call Me Big Oompah
So summer is over and you’re done with beer fests, right? That’s a hard nein. Because on Saturday, Sept. 24 from 11 a.m.to 3 p.m., the green expanse of Rohner Park may as well be the Black Forest for all the Teutonic partying that’ll be going on during the fourth annual Oktoberfest (free) benefiting the…
Internet Drug Sends Eureka High Students to Hospital
A number of Eureka High School students were hospitalized today after taking a natural hallucinogen. Eureka Police Chief Andrew Mills said it’s believed a student purchased Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds over the Internet and shared them with his friends, many of whom then suffered nausea, vomiting and generally “feeling terrible.” In addition to the students…
UPDATE: Judge Allows Budget Motel Evictions to Proceed
UPDATE: In a ruling filed this afternoon, a Humboldt County Superior Court judge has given the city of Eureka the green light to condemn the Budget Motel. The motel’s owner, David Kushwaha, had asked the court to intervene and stop the city’s forced eviction of his tenants, which was initially scheduled to happen this morning,…
If It Ain’t Broke
While I spend a few hours on Sundays putting together these very insightful, informative and professionally written columns, I take some time to listen to some of the artists who are playing during the upcoming week and familiarize myself with the ones I’m not, well, familiar with. In chatting with a former music writer for…
You and Me and the Keys
The first step is admitting we have a problem. But we can’t seem to get past the anger. Humboldt’s headlines last week were dominated by news of Marcia Kitchen, the 39-year-old Fortuna woman accused of hitting and killing two 14-year-old girls, one of them her own daughter, in an alleged July DUI crash. Kitchen has…
Salt of the Sea
I was first inspired to try making sea salt after watching the 1982 film Gandhi’s depiction of the 1930 Salt March, in which scores of people on a 24-day, 240-mile walk across India to the coast of Dandi to make salt as a protest against Britain’s salt taxes and ban on salt production. The peaceful…
Storming the Castile
California’s new Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation launched a series of stakeholder meetings Sept. 19, beginning a seven-stop tour to gather input that will skip the North Coast entirely. The bureau will be looking to get local perspectives on licensing and regulation requirements for dispensaries, distributors, manufacturers, testing laboratories and transporters, but it looks like…
Getting Real
Reviews BLAIR WITCH. Being of a certain age, I remember the media blitz surrounding The Blair Witch Project (1999): the ambiguous print ads and teasers, the early Internet presence, the promise of the scariest movie of all time, assembled from footage shot by young documentarians now lost. It was all bullshit, of course, but we…
Opposites Detract
Ahh, opposites. Not all of them exist in complete diametric opposition to one another, as many adhere closer to “one of these is not like the other” observation. Yin and yang, apples and oranges, Nirvana and Nickelback — human history has seen a very long litany of them at work. And well before the era…
If You Guild It, They Will Come
In a forest, the plants collaborate. They take turns blooming, share space, distribute different nutrients and succeed each other over generations. In our home gardens, we can create diverse, low-maintenance food forests by mimicking these patterns. In its most basic form, this is called companion planting, and gardeners have been doing it for millennia. You…
Black Light Party
Like Moths to a Black Light Last week I set up a light trap in my backyard with only limited success. Then I tried it with black compact fluorescent lights rather than Coleman lanterns. The old gas lanterns give off a great deal of heat and frequencies in the lower end of the spectrum but…
A Civil Forum
Editor: The federal judge’s decision to order a trial in the Thomas McClain police shooting civil case was an important victory not only for the plaintiffs but also for members of the community who, like me, have been following the case with deep interest (NCJ Daily, Sept. 8). The question of fault needs a public…
Thanks for the Coverage
Editor: Thank you for your article about the rabies outbreak in Orleans (“Battle of Orleans,” Sept. 8). It’s nice to see our town acknowledged for a non-sexually transmitted disease for a change. Mark Dondero, Orleans
A New Perspective
Editor: Similar to the Victorian building John Fullerton’s office is located in, John himself is bringing to the table an antiquated approach to Eureka’s issues. At John Fullerton’s launch party, Rex Bohn and Eureka Mayor Frank Jager were on hand to chide Austin Allison for his attempts: calling him a rookie and dissuading young advocates…
Yes on V
Editor: When I started this Measure V initiative, I was one. By February, we grew to a hundred. By July, to thousands. Now we are in the most difficult lap to the finish. We are a grassroots group struggling to raise funds to educate voters. For every dollar we raise, opponents raise thousands more —…
Vote Red
Editor: Vote smart and never leave either party (Democrats or Republicans) in power too long (“Vote Smart, and Humane,” Sept. 8). Power corrupts! The Democratic Party is now so corrupt it will take a decade to clean it up. Historical correction of: “freight train riders who were mostly older men unable to hold a job…
Missing the Bern
Editor: The slime, sleaze and lies of the Trump campaign and the Wall St. money interests of the Clinton machine make Bernie look all the better. And he is real, unlike the pathetic jokers we have now. Between the incompetency of the not-ready-for-prime-time Trump campaign and the baby steps of Hillary, the country is missing…
Profits over People?
State and local officials continue to fight the proposed closure of three local skilled nursing facilities, warning the closures would create a crisis with reverberating impacts throughout the region. Rockport Healthcare Company — which manages all five of Humboldt County’s major skilled nursing facilities on behalf of Brius Healthcare — recently announced its intent to…
Hit Man
When you shouted you were a hit man and lunged across the sidewalk at Sam’s forehead with your third finger stretched like a weapon under the battered green siding of the old Eureka Inn I thought please, world, let him be delusional. You were, I think. No deaths nor impact accrued. Your laughter a deflection…
