Shooting Owls
Small experiment studies whether spotted owls thrive when barred owls are removed
Cover Story
Shooting Owls
The little white mouse in Lowell Diller’s hand could have jumped. It could have beaten a path up his arm and found refuge in the folds of red flannel. Instead it just stood there on his gloved hand, too tame or too nervous to make a move. Diller’s dogs sat perfectly still, eyes on the…
If we’re going to be redundant…
…shouldn’t that be, “Masked bank robber ROBS West Valley bank”?
“Best Of” Deadline Day!
This is it, Hum. Best Of deadline day. You have until the end of the day for you and your friends’ opinions to be mega-important. If you haven’t already voted in our annual Best Of poll you can do it here. But it’s not all about you. We should also mention that if you’re affiliated…
“This Is the Future”
It’s finally complete. After years of operating a state-of-the-art alternative energy lab in a collection of dilapidated buildings in the back of Humboldt State’s now-empty University Annex, the Schatz Energy Research Center moved into its new digs on Friday, celebrating with the grand opening with the requisite speeches and an open house. The brand new…
Logged On
Now you youngsters won’t remember this, but right here in Humboldt County people used to to do this weird thing called “logging.” Say it with me now: law-ging. If you need help remembering that, keep in mind that it rhymes with blogging. You’ll be fine. Why did people — they were called lumberjacks, like the…
Picture Puzzlers
The moral of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Purloined Letter (a future column in its own right) is that the best place to hide something is in plain view – the obvious is often hidden from our awareness. Here’s your Purloined Letter puzzle: I took these photos in Arcata, Eureka and in-between. Too easy for you?…
Willie Etc.
CenterArts dominates Humboldt’s September concert scene with a trio of high profile shows starting with the biggie: Willie Nelson and Family playing Friday, Sept. 9, on the racetrack at Humboldt County Fairgrounds in Ferndale. Don’t need to say much about Willie — he’s an outlaw country icon with a songbook as deep as the ocean.…
September Songs, Dramas, Stories and Clowns
Redwood Curtain takes a break from comedy to stage Yankee Tavern, a contemporary thriller by American playwright Steven Dietz with political overtones and a spectacular conspiracy theory. “Every one of us who read it, just could not put it down until the end,” said Redwood Curtain Artistic Director Clint Rebik. “With its subject matter, it…
Face the Reggae
Dear, new HSU students, If the ever-present ganja, dreadlocks and Bob Marley imagery around Arcata hasn’t already clued you in, we’ll help you out. Prepare yourself for what’s likely to be the reggae-est year of your life. Welcome to Humboldt: If only peripherally, you listen to reggae now. That can be a good thing. So,…
The Book as Art
Look around you, wherever you are now, and chances are, you will see some books, or maybe only one book — that’s enough. What is a book? In his The Manifesto of a Book Artist, Peter Thomas answers thus: “It is everything, the physical materials, the structure and the ideas it contains.” When we say…
Seventy Senses
Does Humboldt move to a reggae beat? My esteemed colleague A. Goff suggests as much discussing the Kiwi reggae band Katchafire, which plays an AS Presents show at the Depot Tuesday (see our Calendar section). Reggae trivia side note: The band took its name from the title of the first American release by The Wailers. …
Blues Time Again
Eureka has been hosting a blues festival on the shore of Humboldt Bay for 15 years now. It’s not an easy thing to do, but the hard work of the Redwood Coast Music Festivals organization and the participation of local music lovers makes it happen, time after time. Sets my toe to tappin’, just to…
A World of Paint
The much-anticipated show by local artist Rachel Schlueter at the Morris Graves Museum this month is an impressive celebration of the art and artists that have most influenced her meteoric career. The show, A World of Paint, pays homage to over two dozen artists in that most flattering and yet most difficult genre, portraiture. Rachel…
EPIC Thoughts
Editor: EPIC deserves credit (“EPIC Changes,” Aug. 18) for prodding government agencies and timber companies into improving forestry practices over the last four decades. However, we should all avoid reflexively opposing thinning projects. I believe that the most serious threat to many watersheds is excessive fuel loading on millions of acres of timberland. This has…
Humboldt Samba
The relentlessly bright drumming, the staccato hip shaking, the exciting and colorful costumes — it must the Samba Parade at the North Country Fair, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Since 2007 leadership of the annual processional has rested in the passionate and competent hands of Jesse Jonathon and Andelain Roy, who represent the…
Cheap? So What
Editor: I’m old. I don’t make/have much money. My fiscal future looks kinda spooky. All this, you could call a challenge. Walmart coming to Eureka is sneaky and very spooky! (Where’s WalMart,” Aug. 11) This you could call a disaster … downright bone-chillin’. I hope the guy lookin’ for really cheap underwear (some of you will know…
On the Beat September
First Street Gallery kicks off its fall season with the annual HSU Art Department Faculty and Staff Exhibition. The show is all around good and affords an opportunity for students returning to classes this month, as well as the general public, to get an overview of the quality and diversity of instruction offered at Humboldt…
No poems of late
Been busy chasing the sun That moves across…
Let It Beard
In the case of dizzyingly prolific songwriter and vocalist Robert Pollard, lo-fi icon and leader of the late Guided By Voices, you often get the entire kitchen sink. His enormous solo output, including a number of projects under a myriad of names, has forced fans to dive into Pollard’s musical dumpster to pull out the…
Senex and Puer
“James Hillman is an artist of psychology,” wrote Thomas Moore, introducing his selection of Hillman’s writings, A Blue Fire. As director of studies at the Jung Institute and in his articles and books from the 1960s through the ’80s, Hillman became the most prominent American interpreter of Carl G. Jung, as well as an original…
Not THAT Arcata
Editor: I was glad to learn, at the very end of Mr. Burns’ autopsy report on poor dead Arcata (“Whose Arcata?” Aug. 25), that it’s not quite over yet, though something essential to the place has been irrevocably lost. My heart soared when I read that: “The city will keep changing.” (Not to quibble, but…
September Humboldt Happenings
BAT N’ ROUGE – Baseball has been played professionally under modern rules in the United States since the founding of the New York Knickerbockers back in 1845. Since then, infinite boring strikes have been called, countless ho-hum home runs have been batted in. Yawn. But those interested in seeing a revolution in the way the…
Monster Trucking
Shell WindEnergy, the corporate giant looking at building a 50-megawatt wind farm on a coastal ridge south of Ferndale, has a message it would like everyone in Humboldt County to understand. When it comes to the Bear River Wind Power Project, tearing down homes and Victorian-era inns so that turbine-toting trucks will have room to…
Yes for 2 Earths and Idiots
Reviews ANOTHER EARTH. If there were such a label, I would call the independent feature Another Earth “alt-science fiction.” The scifi element of the film consists of the discovery that a second earth is approaching our own, labeled by us, of course, as “Earth 2.” Gradually, it appears that this other Earth may be a…
