The Iceman Cometh
With half its workforce gone, Sun Valley Floral Farms is stuck between a bad immigration policy and a hard place
Cover Story
The Iceman Cometh
Spanish translation by Larry and Ana Maria Mease Alejandro couldn’t have been all that surprised when on the afternoon of Monday, June 9, his employer, Sun Valley Floral Farms, told him not to come to work the next day. The flower growers had received a letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a week earlier…
Tawdry sordid quote of the day
from Thadeus Greenson’s story in today’s Times Standard about Chief Gunderson’s lawyer seeking a change of venue: “The bottom line is that Humboldt County has been saturated with innumerable articles, broadcasts and cyber chat relating to this case,” [lawyer Russ] Clanton wrote. “The opportunity for a fair trial has been compromised by the tawdry, sordid…
Grip and Grin
Why are these people smiling? This week the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors as well as the Eureka and Arcata City Councils adopted proclamations declaring July 1-7, 2008 to be “Independents Week” and calling for residents to support and celebrate the independent, local businesses of Humboldt County. The proclamations were brought forward by the Humboldt…
Such As…
When the Arcata City Council met tonight to consider putting a 3/4 cent sales tax on the November ballot, they shifted gears considerably from the tax they’d previously been discussing. A new plan, put forward by Mayor Mark Wheetley and Vice Mayor Alex Stillman (and news to some on the council) changed what had been…
Sweep: Land could be seized
Federal agents: They came, they searched, they left — but not before filing documents at the county courthouse that may allow them to seize about 2,000 acres in Humboldt and Mendocino counties. Federal and local law enforcement confirmed that the land was the target of the raids conducted last week in a massive show of…
Benbow fireworks and party off
Considering the fact that the hills of SoHum are still on fire, shooting off fireworks for the Fourth did not seem like a good idea. Fire officials didn’t think so anyway. This from Dee Way, executive director Garberville Redway Chamber of Commerce: The 6 th Annual 4 th of July Community Picnic and Fireworks Display…
Tsk, tsk DMV
Assemblywoman Patty Berg called Monday to say that she’d prodded the Department of Motor of Vehicles into reinstating Salyer Volunteer Fire Department’s Dave Murphy as the guy who gives fire fighters their driving tests so they can drive the fire engines and water tender trucks. We wrote about this in the June 19 Journal. To…
Ain’t it Grand part 2 (police, jails and Martin)
Some law enforcement factoids courtesy of the 2007-’08 Grand Jury Report: The Fortuna Police Dept. is housed in a “well maintained” city building. “It has a well-stocked first aid kit,” and “three fire exits are clearly marked and accessible.” The Hoopa Station “does not have adequate janitorial services,” and their garage is a mess. The…
Ain’t it Grand?
It’s here! Yes, the 2007-2008 Final Report from the Humboldt County Grand Jury is out. Not that you’ll find it on their website. And no, you can’t ask them for one until tomorrow morning when they present the 44 page document to the Supes. However, since it’s on the Board agenda, the county posted it…
“I’ll have the salmon, please.”
The juicy news today from kabazabagazillionaire-land is that a Chinese investor has made the winning bid — $2.1 million — in a charity auction for a lunch date with Warren Buffett, head honcho of Berkshire Hathaway Inc . which owns PacifiCorp which operates certain dams on the Klamath River that cause quite a few salmon to have a…
Lightning!
Destiny Young shot this photo last Friday night in Boonville.
Eureka declared one of the best
The folks over at the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau want you to know that Outside Magazine selected Eureka as one of the best towns in the America, ranking it No. 8 on a list of 20. The blurb incudes shout-outs to the Accident Gallery , the Boardwalk, the Arkley Center (identified as the…
Dear Mr. President, Help!
Word from Rep. Mike Thompson’s office that the California Congressional Delegation has worked with Senators Feinstein and Boxer to craft a letter to President Bush requesting a disaster declaration for the California wildfires, which will help release federal resources to areas in need of assistance. (See attached.) letter-to-the-president-re-2008-fires.pdf
Truckin’ Kissin’ Cuzins
Every once in a while a press release falls through the cracks. This event should have been in this week’s calendar, but it wasn’t. How about something completely off the wall this weekend? Music, entertainment, food and drink on the theme of truckers and kissing. Not your obvious combination but surely a recipe for good…
Walking With Brother
There once lived an elderly woman known as “Peace Pilgrim.” When she was in her 40s, she started walking across the United States to promote peace. The year was 1953. She continued walking for the next 28 years and traveled over 25,000 miles on foot. Her sole purpose was simply to promote peace by walking…
Alien Plants
Pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana).Photo by Don Garlick. Which are the worst invasive plants in our region? My ranking is presented below: #1: The Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) is so familiar that no photo is required. This bramble is so aggressive that we have all encountered its tenacious thorns. Don’t defend it by invoking its sweet…
String Theory and Toasted Spices
Taarka mandolinist David Tiller was not quite sure where he was when I called him Monday — someplace in California where there was thick smoke from a forest fire, which, thanks to the Solstice lightning storm, could be any number of mountainous woodsy places. David and his violinist wife Enion Pelta-Tiller are the core of…
Bay Bather
Editor: Nowhere in your otherwise excellent article on the dearth of swimming pools in Eureka (“Can’t Swim,” June 19) did you mention the one no-cost, larger-than-Olympic-size, local “pool”: Humboldt Bay. Instead of wasting gas and guilt driving to the Arcata pool, I stroll over from my home in Old Town to the C Street dock…
"Of Course We Do"
There was a misstatement in the story “Of Course We Do” from last week’s issue. It stated that if The California Marriage Protection Act, a constitutional amendment on the November ballot, passes, the same-sex marriages that happen in the weeks and months to come will become void. In fact, there is no clause written in…
A Welcome Visitor
Previews Opening Friday, June 27, is the action/thriller Wanted, from director Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch; Day Watch). Based on a comic book series by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, Wanted features James McAvoy as an executive who discovers that his father used to belong to a group of assassins called the Fraternity, who got a…
Recursos Inmigrantes
Banco de Comida de Eureka 307 West 14th Street (707) 445-3166 Cajas de comida gratuitas los días miercoles y viernes. Llame después de las 9 a.m. los días miércoles y viernes para una cita este mismo día entre las 12:30 y las 4 p.m.. Traiga una identificación para cada miembro de la familia con la…
Vista Point
1. Vista Point The bluff leans out to…
Tow Happy
One Friday morning in mid-May, Bill Hartin was sitting inside his house in central Eureka when he saw a woman get out of a little white car with a City of Eureka logo and walk over to the polished blue ’85 T-bird he and his wife, Arlene, own. “It was 9:58 in the morning,” says…
Viaje a la Noche
Edición bilingüe! Traducido por Larry y Ana Maria Mease. Alejandro no podría haber estado muy sorprendido cuando Sun Valley Floral Farmsle informó que no regresara a trabajar al día siguiente. La compañía había recibido una carta de la oficina de “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)” (Inmigración y Aduanas) la semana anterior identificando en su nómina…
Cabbagey Delights
So what I want to know is, in terms of food writing at large, what’s this burning obsession with restaurants? I mean, obviously we all like food — have you been to Florida? Those people are huge! My problem with most food writing I’m finding online is it seems so heavily weighted on the side…
Get Awkward
Be Your Own Pet. Universal/Ecstatic Peace. This just in: Record labels are stupid. In the case of Be Your Own Pet, Universal Records was doubly stupid in removing the three best songs tracks from BYOP’s sophomore album Get Awkward for dubious reasons, thereby encouraging people to download the original version of the album instead…
Out of Africa
Triclops! Alternative Tentacles Alien-baby vocal phaser, check. Underwater flanger, check. Four SF Bay Area musicians melting down their collective experiences from a flurry of substantive groups such as Bottles and Skulls, Fleshies, Lower Forty-Eight and Victim’s Family into a single, righteous offering to the lords of punk; check. Commence rock. With a battalion of…
The Prize of Hope Ceremony
June 21, Dell’Arte Some people hear the name Tim Robbins and immediately think, Hollywood star. Actually, as Robbins himself explained it, this star’s mission is to work against everything Hollywood and corporate media stand for. Along with being famous in the movies and married to the lovely Susan Sarandon, Robbins is a successful theatre actor,…
The Big Bust
FBI agents remove and inventory contraband from a growhouse in Sunnybrae. The agents were participating in ‘Operation Southern Sweep,’ a coordinated series of raids on commercial marijuana growing operations throughout Humboldt County. See Town Dandy for further details.
My Lai, Abu Ghraib
Earlier this month I traveled to Philadelphia for the annual convention of our trade group, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN). It was my first visit to that city. As a lifelong political junkie, I was drawn like a magnet to Independence Hall. I stood in absolute awe of the room that served as the…
Mammals of Mass Destruction
I could have put a layer of chicken wire under my straw bales before I set up my clever new straw bale vegetable garden. How easy it would have been. Clear the weeds, lay down the chicken wire, arrange the bales on top. Had I done that, I would have had a no-dig, weed-free, compostable…
A Federal Case
By the time you read this, it’ll probably be either the second or third day of the big Federal Bureau of Investigation dope raids that were launched Tuesday morning. What a Tuesday we had! If you didn’t follow the action blow-by-blow on that day, go back and check the North Coast Journal Blogthing – ncjournal.wordpress.com.…
