Species Rising
Return of the Salmon? Plus: Farmers Honked Off at Once-Cooked Goose
Cover Stories
Return of the Salmon
Fisheries biologists counted what may be a record run of Chinook salmon in the Eel River last year, but they aren’t ready to cheer or loosen up management policies because toxic algae and other ills continue to threaten this vital ecosystem. “This is the biggest run of salmon in the Eel since the 1985 to…
Farmers Honked Off at Once-Cooked Goose
A gaggle of Aleutian Cackling geese grazed outside of the visitor center at the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, 10 miles south of Eureka. The gray and black waterfowl promenaded slowly over the lawn, plucking beakfulls of grass. Behind the visitor center thousands more dotted the sun-lit fields and sloughs of the refuge, and their…
In the Paper Today
Today’s Journal cover story, “Probing Tools,” takes aim at a slice of a complex issue: How federal and state regulators are working to reduce the incidence of medical errors, especially those that could affect health or safety of patients or medical staff. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial} Here is the story…
Field Notes Takes the Plunge
Our intrepid Field Notes science writer Barry Evans took the “Perilous” Plunge on Saturday and survived to file this report: “Was it cold?” I’ve been asked, oh, about 20 times. Honestly, I’ve no idea — I was in and out, and what with all the music and general merriment at the F Street dock around…
Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!
Of all the figures that emerged in the ’60s, cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan perhaps looms largest over the mediascape we experience today. His insights on the nature of media still resonate, but his actual writings are often misinterpreted, if they’re actually even still read at all. It’s perfectly fitting then that novelist Douglas Coupland takes…
Eating It Up
Editor: Your Good Food issue (Feb. 24) was wonderful. Please continue coverage and support of our gardeners and farmers — and let’s hear it for our ranchers and dairy folk as well. In our family, people say grace, remembering to be thankful for people who work so hard to bring good food to our…
Watch Your Back, Shamu!
Question: What was the best part of your summers growing up? Answer: Of course, cannon balls in the pool, baby! That’s why uncontrollable jealousy always washed over me as I sat in the Sea World arena getting drenched. Shamu gets to make the big bucks performing hundreds of big splashes a day in front of…
Blazing Butthead?
Editor: Whoa, big changes at the Journal. A few short months ago, our daring and oh-so-sure-of-himself editor, Hank Sims, set the community alight with a cover story depicting an unusual act of adventure involving meat-hooks and a thrill-seeking young woman. The move sparked intense community outcry, making our typically liberal readership look like a bunch…
March 1-9
March 1. Australians prefer not to begin their seasons when the equinox or solstice approaches; they’d rather start them right off at the beginning of the month so as to avoid confusion. Autumn, therefore, begins today in Australia, ready or not. The darkness approaches, the waning of the light, the drawing near of cold. As…
Not Even Compostable
Editor: I am simply amazed that Ms. Hodgson has chosen this new direction for our Journal. Having supported, read, championed and advertised in this paper, the “our” is proprietary; however, not any longer. Hank (Sims), Jennifer (Savage), I desperately miss your presence. I regret I cannot in good conscience support Mr. Abate. Not even for compost.…
Xtra in Arcata
Under different circumstances, the four plays that HSU hosted during the mid-February Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival would be major theatrical events on the North Coast. This is especially true of Xtigone, a re-telling of the Antigone myth to address urban gun violence, by Chicago playwright and actor Nambi E. Kelley, presented here by…
Finding a Reason
It’s a family affair. Therese Keslin-FitzMaurice, the poet, a high school English teacher at Six Rivers Charter High School, is married to drummer Tommy FitzMaurice, who teaches kindergarten at Jacoby Creek Charter School. Leif Johnson, the bass player who teaches history at McKinleyville High, is the boyfriend of Vanessa Pike-Vrtiak — who has jammed at…
Arts Alive!
1. WORLD CUP 1626 F St. Paul Krakow and Robert Daugherty, photographs. 2. TREASURE TROVE 609 E St. Denise Merrill, fabric artist specializing in quilted wall hangings. 3. EUREKA INN 518 Seventh St. 4. HUMBOLDT ARTS COUNCIL at the Morris Graves Museum of Art 636 F St. Tuesday- Sunday 11am-5pm Performance Rotunda: Celtic…
Ice Cream Alley
Editor: Regarding “Very Last Asset” (Letters, Feb. 24), I cannot believe that Abbey and her neighbors pay $250 a week to stay in that dive! I saw one of the rooms 16 years ago when I first moved to the area and mistook it as a place I might stay for the night. The clerk…
Classic Remotion
On Dec. 4, I was one of many people who attended the North Coast Journal’s Christmas Party at its new offices in Old Town. Everyone had a great time. Judy Hodgson, the publisher, had crab piled high in one office. In other offices you could find pizza pies and sushi plates and much beer and…
Carnival Time
Let’s talk holidays, specifically, semi-religious holidays. Carnival and the related Mardi Gras, aka “Fat Tuesday,” are age-old celebrations marking the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when some folks start fasting. Big parties use up all the meat, drink and other stuff they’re about to give up. As with many Christian holidays, elements…
Cervantine
Albuquerque-based duo A Hawk And A Hacksaw (also referred to as AHAAH), featuring former Neutral Milk Hotel drummer Jeremy Barnes and violinist Heather Trost, has carved out an impressive progression of Eastern European folk-influenced recordings. For Barnes, it seems that he, as opposed to his other Elephant 6 collective brethren, sought out a reverse musical…
The Winter Hexagon
Any clear evening this season is a fine time to learn to navigate your way around the winter night sky, using the constellations of Orion, Cassiopeia, Leo and Ursa Major (“the Big Dipper”) as your references. First off, though, we’ll be checking out the “winter hexagon” shown in pink in the chart. This isn’t one…
Eel River Trails Association
About 50 civic and government leaders met in Scotia last Tuesday night to support a new plan to convert a long stretch of the Northwest Pacific Railroad, from Willits north nearly to Eureka, into a non-motorized trail way that would preserve the option to restore a motorized transit system should one ever prove feasible. The…
Heliotropism
It is so easy to forget that light…
Trailblazer
On a snow-covered hillside above Phillipsville, rancher and community activist Chris Weston shares one of his hobbies: creating a walkway of petrified stones on a slope so steep a strong hiker would probably have to scramble up on all fours. “I call it my stairway to heaven,” said Weston, 53, principal organizer of the Eel…
A Thousand Words
The acceptance of photography as a legitimate medium for fine art was a highly controversial issue in the early part of the 20th century. The ease of taking a photo, the commonplace subject matter and the attempts to “copy” paintings were all off-putting detractions for artists of more traditional disciplines, and for audiences of that…
Farrelly Well
By John J. Bennett Previews: HALL PASS. This one came in completely under my radar. I hadn’t seen a trailer or cast list, and didn’t find out it was a Farrelly brothers (Dumb and Dumber) picture until the opening credits. I had heard vague rumblings it was a sex comedy about a husband’s reprieve from…
Here Come Ol’ Flattop…
Tribute bands are a longstanding tradition in rock music. Groups like House of Floyd, Dark Star Orchestra and Zepparella have become hot tickets on the concert tour scene of late. Locally we have Full Moon Fever and The Solitary Men providing tributes to Tom Petty and Neil Diamond respectively. And what rock band deserves a…
Golden Rules
The California Department of Fish and Game has released draft amended regulations for the use of suction dredges in the state’s rivers and creeks. While this means the ban on suction dredge gold mining, enacted a year and a half ago, eventually will be lifted, it does not look as if the new rules will…
They Gave Me Enough Rope
Two peanuts walk into The Shanty… uh … we’ll get back to that. Often when I feel as though I’m lacking perspective in my seemingly hectic life, I like to take a long weekend and escape to Southern Humboldt to hang out with my many opinionated grower buddies — “opinionated” might be redundant, fair enough.…
Tribal Seas
It’s been almost a dozen years since the California legislature approved the Marine Life Protection Act, a momentous piece of legislation designed to help coastal ecosystems rebound from decades of overfishing and ecological abuse. The Act was based on a model that’s proved effective elsewhere, including the oceans off New Zealand and the Great Barrier…
Nursing Suspicions
Editor: As a professor in the HSU Department of nursing for almost 30 years, I think your editorial of Feb. 17 (“Nursing Our Wounds”) expressed a hope for the continuation of a bachelor of nursing option in our area that I cannot share. During the last few years I have had a sense that support…
