The Light on the Bluff
Their compound is razed, but memories of the Jesus people linger
Cover Story
The Light on the Bluff
The young man stands at the edge of Table Bluff, gazing west into one of the greatest of romances: Rumpled ocean kissing moody sky, wind-embraced, fog-enswirled, sun-glinted. His head, too, is aswirl, with passionate thought. Beside him is a giant cross. Behind, beyond the path he has just wandered, are decrepit white-washed buildings, a…
So, Jimmy Kimmel Doesn’t Think Humboldt State’s New Weed Institute Sounds All That Necessary
Our legacy has been secured. Again. As should have been expected, Humboldt State University’s announcement that it was firing up an Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research Institute was picked up by significant news organizations across the web — CBS News, the Huffington Post, Italian Rolling Stone. Sure, sure. But none of that coverage will be as remembered…
Floyd Squires Defends Himself
Eureka’s most notorious slumlord took the stand this morning to testify in his own defense while an attorney for the city of Eureka peppered him with questions about mold, cockroaches, faulty plumbing and overdue repairs at several of his properties. Alternately nervous, evasive and defiant, Squires claimed to have completed most of the repairs necessary to…
A Song for Bill
Every once in a while someone reads a story in the Journal and is inspired. We like it when that happens. An example is this song by former Humboldter Melody Walker, an “Americali” singer/songwriter who now lives in Richmond. (Walker was among those profiled in Herb Childress’ cover story from 2011, “Leaving.”) She explained, “My…
Grateful to Humboldt
Editor: As Thanksgiving again approaches, with rain and leaves falling, our minds dwell on gratitude for many things. For us, our thankfulness for living in Humboldt County has deepened evermore. About six weeks ago, our lives were forever changed by a tragic collision that occurred on Old Arcata Road (“Surviving,” Nov. 15). Within minutes, and continuing unending as…
An Abe for the Ages
Reviews LINCOLN. For Steven Spielberg, history is all about the details. Everyone knows the general textbook versions of the Holocaust, World War II and the American slave trade, but with films such as Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and Amistad, Spielberg conjures the humanity and emotion behind history through details. Here he’s done it again.…
Visionaries
He’s known as the “King of the Surf Guitar” and he certainly earned the title. Dick Dale is a surfer from Orange County who created a big reverb-drenched guitar sound to recreate the way he felt riding waves. After filling smaller venues, he started renting the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa for what he called surfer…
It’s the Top
In the Cole Porter musical comedy Anything Goes, now on stage at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, Billy Crocker (played by Erik Standifird) is in love with young socialite Hope Harcourt (Keili Simmons Marble). But he’s just the young assistant to a Wall Street patrician (Howard Lang), and she is engaged to a…
![[T]rail Update No. 5](https://i0.wp.com/www.northcoastjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/film_portland-bridge-with-wheelchair.webp?resize=600%2C450&ssl=1)
[T]rail Update No. 5
YYYYYEEEEESSSSS!!! That was my reaction as I left the North Coast Railroad Authority board meeting in Eureka last Wednesday. The board had just voted unanimously to receive a report from three of its directors, the ad hoc Humboldt Bay Rail Corridor Committee, and directed staff to bring back a resolution supporting “a broad-based Humboldt…
Lower Class Food
Editor: The wonderful headline “Schoolpocalypse Averted” (Nov. 8) reminded me of a culinary armageddon I witnessed in my days as a College of the Redwoods employee. I noticed that the students who lived in the dorms were only given the option of eating at the school cafeteria. Most of them had all of their financial…
A Home, Lost
The 2-year-old toddling in front of Nickelodeon, one pudgy first wrapped around the remote as her daddy packs boxes, took her first steps inside this small, plain duplex in McKinleyville. It’s where her parents celebrated her first birthday and first Christmas, where her older sister had friends so close they looked on it as…
Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists
Kay Larson makes a convincing case that, after gathering particular artistic and philosophical strands together from others, John Cage added his own insights and innovations to become a dominant influence in 20th century arts. Those insights were primarily from his understanding of Zen Buddhism, and it is Larson’s singular contribution that as a Zen practitioner,…
The Great Flood in History
…tear down thy house, build a ship; abandon wealth, seek after life; scorn possessions, save thy life. Bring up the seed of all kinds of living things into the ship which thou shalt build. Command from the gods to [the hero] Utnapishtim, Epic of Gilgamesh Similarities between the flood legend in the Babylonian Gilgamesh…
Cold Stars
the cold stars cannot witness they cannot speak…
Thankfully
If the thought of a day indoors filled with inflatable parades and awkward exchanges with once-a-year relatives has you dreading November’s fourth Thursday, we have some good news. Humboldt offers a few Thanksgiving Day distractions for you turkeys who refuse to be cooped. Get a head start burning inevitable calories by venturing out, bright…
