Cover Story
Waste to Worms: A Local Business Keeps Trash out of the Landfill
Think about making a cake. You have all of the necessary ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, whole milk, eggs and oil. Those are the basic ingredients you need to make a cake, not a delicious one but, still, a cake. Hold on, you forgot to add vanilla and butter, just a couple of ingredients that…
Gun Violence Restraining Order Training Comes to the North Coast
Tomorrow morning the city of Arcata will host a gun violence restraining order training for law enforcement, attorneys and court personnel in Humboldt, Del Norte and Trinity Counties at the D Street Neighborhood Center. The statewide, three-hour training provided by San Diego’s City Attorney’s Office will outline additional resources for law enforcement, attorneys and court personnel…
Fire & Light is Closing Its Doors, Searching for a New Owner
Fire & Light, an iconic Humboldt County business story that mixed creativity with sustainability, is closing unless a buyer can be found. According to a Facebook page post today, the Arcata-based company known for its colorful glassware “is no longer financially feasible for the company to continue to operate without another significant investment of cash”…
This Crab is Metal
In case the giant silver crab raising its pincers above the chain link fence around Spaulding Construction’s parking lot off U.S. Highway 101 by Kristina’s in Eureka has you wondering, you aren’t hallucinating and you didn’t miss the Kinetic Grand Championship. The shining crustacean on wheels is the work of metal artist Dan McCauley of…
North Coast Night Lights: Smoky Coastal Skies and Milky Way
At the end of the summer of 2015, my brother and I were out around midnight on a great rock overlooking the Pacific Ocean, enjoying the view between ourselves and the rest of the Universe. Fires inland had been burning for weeks, their pall of smoke glowing orange in the sky to the south of…
Warming Trend Comes with River Warnings
For many, it seemed like winter was never going to release its grip on the North Coast. But according to the National Weather Service, it appears things are looking up in the mercury department for the next week. According to the Eureka office, inland temps should reach into the 70s and 80s this week, although…
CHP to the Rescue for this Feathered Family (Video)
Just because it’s cute. Here is some video the CHP posted of a local officer lending a helping hand to a wayward family of Canada geese that he found wandering along the side of U.S. Highway 101 while on patrol south of Eureka. Enjoy!
HumBug: New Neighbors
Late the other evening, my wife and I went out for a walk. Along the road we saw several large shiny brown millipedes. In the middle of the road, apparently investigating a smeared member of that species, was something that at first looked like a slightly smaller one. On closer inspection, it was something completely…
Pour One Out: No Humboldt Beer at Oyster Fest
Less than two months out from the Arcata Bay Oyster Festival, controversy is again bubbling up over beer at Arcata Main Street’s fundraiser. The previously local-brew-centric event drew fire last year for requiring donations rather than purchasing from local beverage companies and only pouring Redwood Curtain Brewing Co. beer alongside out-of-towners Lagunitas and SeaQuake at the…
Letter from Legislators: KHSU Gutting a ‘Slap in the Face’
Adding to a growing list, current and former North Coast legislators are calling on the California State University Chancellor’s Office to suspend any decision-making on the future of KHSU until new top administrators arrive at Humboldt State University. HSU President Lisa Rossbacher and Vice President of Advancement Craig Wruck, who oversees KHSU, are both slated…
Don’t Let it Burn
I planned on writing something about the environment in this intro to fit the theme of this week’s issue but, like many of you, I spent Monday watching the immolation of Notre Dame Cathedral. So I am listening to a recording of madrigals by the 16th century Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and thinking…
Little Devils
Reviews HELLBOY. Sometimes one wants simply to be entertained: to sit in a dark room and be distracted — transported, ideally, but that’s asking a lot — by a fantastical world of someone else’s imagining. I found myself in that mood this past weekend and thought Hellboy might do the job. Now I’ll roll out…
Hardy Vegetables and Fragrant Flowers
As springtime sunshine beckons us outdoors, here on the home farm we are rolling up our sleeves and heading out for some serious time in the garden. Daylight hours grow and the mercury is rising. It’s prime time to develop garden fever. Lush winter rains combined with fall and spring fertilizing and mulching created primo…
Changing of the Seasons
It has been a cold winter with what used to be normal amounts of rain. Floods have taken lives locally and we even had snow down to the sand dunes. Earth Day, like spring, is just around the corner, descending upon us on April 22. For many Native peoples, every day is Earth Day. We…
Youth Struck
I don’t consider myself an activist. I am way too hypocritical for that. I don’t often participate in direct actions. I don’t like the earnestness, the black-and-white rhetoric, the us-vs.-them polemics or the chest-pounding spectacle of moral superiority. I’m not convinced the effort results in much change, anyway. I’m an academic and my research on…
Green Your Weed
If you’ve found yourself in recent months puffing on some weed while arguing with a relative on Facebook about the merits of the Green New Deal, some self-reflection may be in order. As Earth Day approaches, urging us to think about our environmental impacts, carbon footprints and consumption habits, it’s incumbent upon us to bring…
‘Goodbye Dear Friend’
Editor: With the abrupt elimination of all local programming, all volunteers and nearly all paid staff of KHSU radio station by Humboldt State University Vice President of Advancement Craig Wruck and KHSU General Manager Peter Fretwell, supported by President Lisa Rossbacher, there is no KHSU. The reason given was “budget shortfall.” (“A ‘Dark Day’ at…
KHSU Gutted, Leaving Station’s Future Uncertain
The dismantling of Humboldt State University’s public radio station was sudden and swift. Less than 48 hours after the administration announced sweeping changes at KHSU — including the “indefinite suspension” of community-based shows and the elimination of most staff — those who were left behind to run the station had resigned in protest. With no…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): French writer Simone de Beauvoir sent a letter to her lover, Aries author Nelson Algren. She wrote, “I like so much the way you are so greedy about life and yet so quiet, your eager greediness and your patience, and your way of not asking much of life and yet taking…
Good Night and Good Luck
It’s no secret that KHSU had been in some state of turmoil since the seemingly abrupt firing of longtime operations and program director Katie Whiteside last May, and more changes have long been rumored and feared. But nobody expected what came April 11, when Humboldt State University administrators went with what can only be described…
Studying Sammy the Crab
I can tell from comments on my previous story that space aliens read this paper. So I’m providing them with my abduction instructions here. (Pro-tip for other Chosen Ones: Clip this and save it for your aliens.) I myself regularly abduct non-human Earthlings and care for them in a laboratory setting, so I know how…
