Shipping Jobs to China?
Whole-log exports are boosting timber values while a local mill lays off 60 workers
Cover Story
Shipping Jobs to China?
George Schmidbauer graduated from Willits High School in 1947 and worked his way through college like many other young men at the time, by pulling green chain — grabbing and stacking freshly milled lumber as it came off the line. After college he was drafted, served two years in the Army and was discharged in…
Security National Announces 49 Layoffs [Corrected]
The loan servicing branch of Security National, the flagship firm of Eureka businessman Rob Arkley, announced today that it will be laying off 49 employees, 31 of whom work at the company’s Eureka headquarters. The “reduction in force” is necessary, the company explained in a press release, because a contract with “a large national financial…
Grand Jury Gunnin’ for HWF Director
The latest Humboldt County Grand Jury report, released Tuesday night, recommends among other things that the role of the Humboldt County Community Development Department Director as overseer of the Headwaters Fund staff be nixed, and that the Headwaters Fund Coordinator take over the role under supervision of the County Treasurer. Such a move, indicates the…
CR Set to Cut 200 Classes, $2.5 Million from Budget
Anticipating major cuts to its state funding, College of the Redwoods has prepared a preliminary 2011-2012 budget that excises $2.5 million in expenses. Those savings would be achieved in part by cutting 200 class sections (an 11 percent reduction), suspending men’s soccer and basketball baseball for at least two years and leaving eight currently vacant…
Union Supporters Rally in Eureka
Guest post by Somes Bar resident Malcolm Terence: For Harriet Lawlor the connection was clear. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was standing up for striking sanitation workers in Memphis — workers whose union was AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. So yesterday afternoon, Lawlor was at the Humboldt County…
That’s a Shipload of Logs
Last week we reported on a major shipment of whole logs, mostly fir, bound for China aboard the Bright Life. A spokesperson for supplier Green Diamond said the ship came to our humble harbor by way of Canada in order to top off with a full shipload. (Harbor District President Mike Wilson tells us that…
Hwy. 101 Reopened
UPDATE, 11:55 p.m.: The freeway will be reopened in both directions by tomorrow morning, according to Caltrans: Currently, Route 101 [at the slide location] approximately 60 miles south of Eureka is open to one-way controlled traffic and motorists should expect 30-minute delays. Caltrans is pleased to announce that by Tuesday morning, April 5, the highway…
PRESS RELEASE: Douglas OUT At Journal
After one day on the job, North Coast Journal Editor and International Media Relations Chief Humboldt Bureau Investigative Senior Hybrid Editor Journalist in Chief Charles Douglas was terminated today, the latest victim of what one local media outlet referred to as “Judge Judy’s Journalist Meat Grinder.” The Chuck D regime got off to a rocky…
101 to be Reopened to One-Way Traffic Monday
The update: Caltrans has announced that Route 101 in Southern Humboldt County remains closed due to a large mudslide approximately one mile north of Dean Creek, approximately 60 miles south of Eureka. Crews are currently working 24 hours a day to clear the slide as soon as possible. On Monday, April 4, from 6 a.m.…
All’s Well in Iowa
REVIEWS CEDAR RAPIDS. Having attended graduate school at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, I was vaguely aware that Cedar Rapids was not far away. But back then, there was no ready reason for ever going to Cedar Rapids, a moderate-sized city with no apparent distinction, at least for this out-of-state Iowa-ignorant graduate theater…
Dock of the Bay
A white gull, heedless of the rain, slept atop the last in a row of gray concrete columns that jut from the water in front of Eureka’s Humboldt Bay Aquatic Center. The green algae rings where the columns meet the bay falsely suggest advanced age, bringing to mind the dilapidated wooden pilings scattered throughout Humboldt…
Oz Arkley
Editor: So let me see if I have this correctly: Ms. Hodgson was forced to leave the safety and comfort of the little wine cottage in the valley and venture out in the “pouring rain” to “report” on a speech to a group of people who didn’t look like her, didn’t think like her, and…
Screaming Atoms and Headlines
Editor’s note: Two weeks ago, in an editorial about media sensationalism in general and fears of nuclear fallout from Japan’s devastated Fukushima Daiichi power plant in particular, we quoted Humboldt State University Professor Richard Stepp, an expert in airborne pollutant dispersal. Stepp attempted to alleviate public anxiety with a dose of stone-cold science (“The FUD…
Out of the Bedroom
The beat might pulse like an erratic heart or be hardly present. Unidentifiable sounds emerge as if from a tunnel, blips and blops, snippets of found sounds and voices drift in and out, a guitar comes and goes. The dark soundscapes of Mount Kimbie seem handcrafted, made on a laptop in some quiet place, probably…
The Tribes of Burning Man
Burning Man, an arts festival in the desert that favors fire art, is also a temporary city for the week before Labor Day. As a cultural experiment, the event explores alternative ideologies regarding power, transportation, trade, volunteerism, infrastructure, interdependence and art. It has also been called the biggest party on the planet, with a recent…
The Envelope, Please
We have our own version of March Madness. Once a year we gather up what we think are examples our best journalism and send them off to be judged by our peers – writers and editors of other newspapers throughout California. The California Newspaper Publishers Association, which runs the annual Better Newspapers Contest, delivers the…
April 1-6
April 1. For mink breeders, the month of April provides a welcome respite from the state of high agitation brought on by mating season. Although it is not strictly necessary to segregate the males from the females at the conclusion of their couplings, the females greatly prefer to see the males removed to as far…
The Last Man Out
Fishing Vessel Amanda B gleamed, white and pretty, amid the sunshine and wind-whipped rain enveloping the dock at Woodley Island last Thursday. Aboard the 45-foot fiberglass commercial fishing boat, crab fisherman Alan Mello kicked back in his pilot seat and laughed with his old childhood buddy Ted Scott, sitting at the bolted-down table, who’d come…
Labour of Lust (reissue)
When my old friend (and fellow music aficionado) was dating his then-girlfriend (now wife and mother of their two children), he sat her down to listen to both sides of Nick Lowe’s 1979 sophomore release, Labour of Lust, stating that the record was an example of perfected contemporary pop. More than 30 years later, his…
The Vicious Circle of Malaria
The last case of malaria in Humboldt County was reported in 2007, so it’s practically a non-issue here — an average of one case every couple of years. Nationwide, physicians report about a thousand cases per year, almost all treatable. It wasn’t always so; malaria was once common in this country, especially in the warmer…
Do you wish for true love?
A hand (always) to hold? the night…
City Pot, Country Pot
Editor: I tender my sincere apologies to last week’s letter writer Robin Hashem for irritating what seems to be a sore spot (“Shades of Sunshine,” March 24). I mean no insult either to ordinances or uprisings by suggesting that they don’t always bring out the best in each other. In my view, holding public hearings…
Dynamic Duos
Seventy new paintings. Seventy! That’s what you’ll find at First Street Gallery in this April show packed with watercolors, oils and acrylics by two of Humboldt’s most accomplished painters, Jim McVicker and Steve Porter. The two artists’ work is interspersed in the front galleries, creating a challenging but fun sport of guessing whose is whose.…
A ‘Scream’
Editor: While Tom Abate didn’t actually quote Dr. Richard Stepp about the risks of radiation from the Japanese nuke plant disaster, the comparison of radiation from a nuclear power plant to a medical X-ray, in any dose, is highly misleading (“The FUD Factor,” March 17). No one ever needs to be decontaminated after an X-ray.…
Dancing the Bard
“Seems like there’s a buzz about dance right now in Humboldt County,” says Heather Sorter, director of this weekend’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Ballet. With local talent abounding, Sorter, who danced in both Pacific Northwest Ballet’s staging of Balanchine’s opus and Nadine Coles’ version for New World Ballet, felt it was time to helm her…
Positively Grrrr
Editor: How amusing it was to read the “history lesson in unreliable journalism” provided by a professional in the public relations field! (Mailbox, “Perils Of We,” March 24). PR has become the primary media source of misinformation, reckless optimism, fake sincerity and irrational exuberance, funded and disseminated far beyond the imaginations of 16th and 18th…
Green Future: Next Gen
As Criswell said in Plan 9, “We are all interested in the future because that’s where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” All kidding aside, that future could be dark or it could be bright, depending on the plans we make. If we want it to be sustainable and…
Arts Alive!
1. WORLD CUP 1626 F St. Georgia Long; DJ Kissyface. 2. TREASURE TROVE 609 E St. Casey Smith, decorative trinket boxes. 3. EUREKA INN 518 Seventh St. The Ellen Bryant Vintage Hats are some of the hats in the Now Playing Mildred Peirce on HBO! HollyVogue Vintage and Ellen Bryant supplied Vintage hats for the HBO series staring…
Listen. Feel.
Remember “listening to music?” You know that experience where someone creates something that goes in your ears, is processed by your brain and, in some cases, ends up in your heart never to be released? Yeah, neither do we. We’re old and busy now. Sucks, don’t it? Mike Dronkers would like to help you feel…
Stoppard’s Start
Celebrated for his erudition and wit, British playwright Tom Stoppard never went to college. Although he was admired for his stagecraft, his only experience in theatre was as a newspaper drama critic. His “overnight success,” Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, took years before an Oxford student group did it in 1966. It nearly failed, until…
