Cover Story
No Crap
Our culture thrives on stuff. Stuff to buy, stuff to eat, stuff to put in our windowsills to express our preference for one kind of stuff over a different kind of stuff. Most of that stuff comes wrapped in other stuff, and most of it — around 251 million tons of it, according to the…
‘Minimum Standards’: Federal Suit Seeking to Halt Marsh Evictions to be Heard Friday
On Monday afternoon, local attorney Peter Martin and Eureka City Attorney Cyndy Day-Wilson got together for lunch. The topic of the day was a lawsuit Martin was working on and looking to bring against the city stemming from its ordering about 150 homeless people in the Palco Marsh to vacate the area by May 2.…
Our Assemblyman Golfed Pebble Beach Last Year for Free
Politicians are just like us. Who hasn’t been given $460 tickets to a Warriors or Giants game from a powerful state union or private corporation? The LA Times just released an article detailing the sports-related gifts handed to California lawmakers and there was our very own 2nd District Assemblyman Jim Wood, leading the state in…
Humboldt Voters: Elect the Person Who Might Cast Your Vote For You in the Democratic Convention
Humboldt County voters: Here’s your chance to take part in the arcane and confusing tradition of presidential delegate selection. Hold on to your butts. On May 1, the Democratic Party will choose eight delegates each from the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders camps to potentially represent California’s 2nd Congressional District voters at the Democratic National…
UPDATED: Despite Uncertainty, Homeless Container Community Project Plows Forward
UPDATE: The city of Eureka received one response to its request for proposals to help the soon-to-be-displaced homeless people currently residing behind the Bayshore Mall, and it appears to dead on arrival. City Manager Greg Sparks said he’s currently reviewing the proposal submitted by the local nonprofit Affordable Homeless Housing Alternatives with an eye on…
HumBug: Unicorns, Fairies and Damsels
Some time ago I mentioned what I think of as my “Unicorn Species,” insects I know, have seen, are impressive in some way, but of which I have yet to get a good photo. Just a few days ago, with my brand new camera in hand, an anise swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon) landed on an old Cecil…
TL;DR: Five Themes to Up-cycle from the Green Issue
Did you throw away too much time this week? No worries, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a recycled version of this week’s Green Issue, and five reasons why Humboldt County is a great place to go Zero Waste. Reason #1: We’re Welcoming Zero Waste, one of the more recent philosophies to come out of the…
Party Animals
Looking for fresh air and a little Earth Day education? Celebrate with the kids at Party for the Planet on Sunday, April 24, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Sequoia Park Zoo (free). Do your usual zoo stroll — check in with the goats in the petting zoo, pour one out for the…
Droppin’ (Recreational) Pots for Dungeness
Dust off your kayak and stock up on butter. While commercial fishing for both rock and Dungeness crab is still on hold in our county due to unsafe levels of toxic domoic acid, which can prove harmful and even deadly to humans, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced recreational Dungeness crab fishing…
Fortuna Set to Adopt New Panhandling Ordinance
Citing a spike in aggressive panhandling within city limits, the Fortuna City Council is preparing to adopt an ordinance prohibiting “aggressive and intrusive solicitation.” City staff presented a version of the ordinance on Monday, and a second reading and adoption of the ordinance is scheduled for May 2. Under the ordinance “… approaching or following…
The Creeps
One cannot live on Kubrick alone. Now and then horror fans need a dose of glossy fake blood, a wiggling rubber mask and late show plotting. And for that we turn to director George Romero, he of the collective Night, Dawn, Day and Land of the Dead. These days you can’t swing a chainsaw arm…
Express Shipping
It’s shortly before noon on April 18 and, in a vacant lot at the corner of Third and Commercial streets in Eureka, a homeless man is splayed out between two shipping containers, fast asleep, his maroon jacket acting as a pillow to keep his head off the gravel. Five days earlier, one of Humboldt’s heaviest…
High Enough?
If you spent your 4/20 crumbling up buds, rolling them up in papers and puffing away, you’re going the way of dinosaurs, according to industry insiders. “Nobody smokes flowers anymore,” Emerald Cup founder and Mendocino marijuana entrepreneur Tim Blake dismissively told Bloomberg BusinessWeek in a recent interview, during which he estimated that concentrates — things…
Hydro Power: Clean, Green — and Mean?
Electricity generated by hydroelectric plants is frequently said to be the cleanest, greenest form of power. By far the largest source of renewable energy, hydro accounts for 16 percent of global electricity generation. What’s not to love? Hydro is: totally renewable, relying as it does on Earth’s natural evaporation-rainfall cycle (thanks, sun!); non-polluting — no…
Welcome to the Jungle
Reviews THE JUNGLE BOOK. The last few years have made me almost as wary of children’s movies as I am of remakes. Both seem increasingly crass: uninspired excuses to cash in on younger moviegoers’ short memories and shorter-lived sense of joy and wonder. I can still recall the feeling I got from a great movie…
Creature Feature
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to retain affection for a character after he uses the word “indubitably,” as a punchline. But if the writers and directors of Batboy: The Musical can cram pointy-eared creatures of the night, inter-species orgies, papier-mâché cow heads, questions of moral relativity and sentience versus soul into a play inspired by…
Not Your Grandma’s Marigolds
What do you think of when you hear the word marigold? Maybe you imagine those 6-inch-high borders of orange and yellow flowers that your grandmother planted around her rose beds. Did she buy them by the flat, already blooming? Maybe she knew they helped repel insects from the roses. Or maybe she just liked the…
Wild Wood
Even with our landscape’s dense redwood groves, inland oak woodlands and riparian forests, we often forget that each bough we find fallen across our paths and every water-worn burl lodged in beach sand has potential just waiting to be released with chisel, rasp, gouge and plane. By spending a little time searching trails and roadsides…
Team Oxen
Since 2009, Kevin and Melanie Cunningham of Shakefork Community Farm have been farming on 85 acres in the Van Duzen River floodplain in sunny Carlotta. They cultivate 8 acres of mixed vegetables (from salad greens to brassicas to root vegetables), storage crops and small grains, and manage another 40 acres of grazing land for pastured…
Let Supes Pay for the Parks
Editor: The Journal’s April 14 article, “Access Humboldt,” reports that insurance for county parks will increase by $250,000 over the next five years. The county has considered charging the public to use our parks. Imagine having to pay to walk on the beach. While the Department of Public Works has found some ways of saving…
Channel Consciousness, Define Sanity
Editor: In an interesting riff on the insanity defense, my friend Douglas George (“Mailbox,” April 14) comes down on one side of a presently unanswerable question. I am here to present the other side. Douglas argues that what we call “consciousness” is the accidental byproduct of a meaningless evolutionary process. And since evidence now shows…
Introvert
It’s fun to find a corner in a crowded room and watch the conversation rise through the air listening silently on the drifted words while studying the inside of me.
Unsquashable
With Humboldt County’s weather confused about if it is spring or summer, I, like many others this past weekend, found myself down on the banks of the Mad River taking in the 80-degree heat and working on my sunstroke. As the kids splashed around in the still-chilled waters, I reached into our “river bag” and…
Ten Steps to a Smaller Footprint
Small changes in your daily habits can significantly reduce your carbon footprint. In fact, our purchasing habits can yield a greater benefit for the environment than our recycling and composting habits. Not creating waste in the first place means less energy wasted and fewer resources consumed. When you purchase products with less packaging, you bypass…
Here’s What You Can Do with Your Paper
We’ve gotten plenty of suggestions from readers as to just what we can do with our newspaper — printed locally with soy-based ink on recycled paper, incidentally — from birdcage lining and fish wrapping to less practical and, shall we say, more symbolic gestures. We threw the challenge to the master up-cyclers at SCRAP Humboldt…
