HumBug: Worms, Ticks and Hand Sanitizer
During the damp months of the year, dozens of robins at a time visit my yard. They hop about, stopping, tilting their heads, then driving their beaks into the ground, sometimes pulling up an earthworm. This is an important component of their diet, sustaining them throughout the winter. Any comprehensive study of ecology must include…
HumBug: Three for a Rainy Day
With rainy cold days suppressing entomological activity it put my assertion that there’s always, ALWAYS something interesting to find outdoors to the test. So, camera in hand, I went looking. The weather forecast said it would snow down to 1,000 feet elevation, so it was indeed cold out and there was very little activity above…
Down at the Docks
Sometimes I walk from the Journal offices down F Street to the plaza, with its wind-whipped flags, and look across the water as the fishing boats come into the bay as they have for lifetimes, bringing their haul back from the unkowable depths and think, “Shouldn’t we have, like, a million places for fish and…
Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.: Photos
A large crowd of all ages gathered in the Adorni Center for a “Celebration of Service in our Community” at the Eureka NAACP’s Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The event was co-sponsored by the City of Eureka. Sharrone Blanck and Lorna Bryant emceed the event, with Paula Jones,…
Safety Corridor Sees First Fatal Collision in Years as Project Gears Up
Even on an already notorious section of road, the Indianola Cutoff on U.S. Highway 101 stands out as a dangerous crossing point, with a collision rate 200 percent higher the state averages. Anyone who has lived in Humboldt County long enough likely knows the story of the safety corridor, with the short version being that…
North Coast Journal Preview: Video
If you’ve tuned in to Access Humboldt’s channel 12 lately, you may have seen (or heard, if you listen to its radio station KZZH 96.7 FM at noon and 5 p.m.) the North Coast Journal Preview. In the weekly segment, members of the Journal’s editorial staff sit down with host David Frank for a few…
HumBug: The Current Mass Extinction
There have been five major mass extinction events in the fossil record. Some folks claim the human race is causing the sixth right now. Dumping massive amounts of greenhouse gasses, saturating the world with never before seen chemicals and introducing all manner of non-native species willy nilly are touted as the major causes. I have a…
UDPATE: Outage Due to Down Transmission Line, PG&E Says Restoration Likely by Late Morning
UPDATE: According to the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services, PG&E has confirmed that the cause of this morning’s widespread power outage is a transmission line impacted by winter weather. “PG&E has stated that restoration work has already begun and that most of Humboldt County should regain power by mid-late morning,” OES wrote in a…
North Coast Night Lights: Harry the Honorable Hound Dog
Growing up, I didn’t think of Eureka as beautiful. Never mind that I was a kid, and what would I know about that? Maybe I simply wasn’t tapped in to the art scene, I don’t know, but I don’t recall driving down the street and seeing so many interesting art pieces, or art being as…
Audit Reveals Failure to Test Millions of Babies for Lead
Millions of California toddlers who should have been tested for lead exposure have not received state and federally mandated blood tests, in part because the health hazard — a particular threat to poor children — has not been prioritized by public health agencies, a recent state audit shows. In a searing review of a problem…
a pome called sustenance
1 the actual world is not an imaginary friend. the moon in the sky is farther out than we can conceive but we can imagine what we imagine without end. we can walk to the foamy line where the surf runs up the sand and see the curve of our mother’s side – the old…
Subdivisions
The new year claimed its first rock star death last week and it was a doozy. Neil Peart was probably the most uniquely influential drummer for the last four decades and his work in the band Rush is timeless and inspirational. The extremely private star’s death from a brain tumor was jarring to his legion…
Looking Back, Moving Forward
As 2019 was drawing to a close, I saw reviews covering the last decade in terms of books, movies, music. I decided that, before writing something new, I would also look back and get a sense of the road traveled from March 1, 2007, when the first piece with my byline appeared on this space.…
Welcome to the Launch of MDVL
Hello and welcome! Thanks so much for joining me here in this muddy field for the launch of MDVL. I’m sure some of you rolled your eyes when you got our press release — another wellness site! And I’m the first to admit the industry is crowded to the point of collapse, with gurus and…
Joyful Moving
Every year, between the end of December and early January, I read a fair number of articles focused on health and wellness. My favorite this season was: “How to Be Healthy, in Just 48 Words” in The New York Times by Yoni Freedhoff, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa. The seven…
The Virtues of Just Mercy
Reviews JUST MERCY. While Just Mercy, the latest from director and co-writer Destin Daniel Crettin (Short Term 12, 2013; The Glass Castle, 2017), adapting Bryan Stevenson’s memoir with Andrew Lanham, belongs in the Important column, it arrives without self-generated fanfare or grandstanding. It builds a case for its own significance with quietly confident style, heartfelt…
The Need to Study Weed
The head of the federal government’s medical research agency told C-SPAN recently that cannabis’ status as a Schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act prevents scientists from researching its effects. “Frankly, we know far too little about the benefits and risks of smoked marijuana,” said Francis Collins, who was appointed director of the National…
A Reasonable Ask
I place another log in the wood stove, sit down at my dining table, mug of hot coffee at my fingertips. The fire puts out a steady warmth. Windows fill three of the four walls of this great room and I wonder if the light leaking out from my lamp bothers the neighbors. I always…
Terra-Gen Electrified the Conversation. What Now?
Terra-Gen’s Humboldt Wind Project was flawed but it would have offered this: a large and sudden pulse of low-carbon energy, enough to fill approximately 56 percent of Humboldt’s total electricity needs. With its demise, our odds at reaching our global climate goals become more distant while our challenge to achieve 100 percent clean, renewable energy…
Yes We Can … Drive 55
Editor: Once again, Mitch Trachtenberg has hit the nail on the head about Terra-Gen (Mailbox, Dec. 26, 2019). And Lynn Robbins added five important words to his argument, “curb our waste of energy.” We actually never needed a huge mega project. Felice Pace is correct — we need a scaled-to-population “safe and sustainable North Coast…
Evolving
Editor: My favorite Torgerson has been matched by that guy in the back (“Evolution Isn’t Progress,” Dec. 18, 2019). “Evolution is a random process!” Ha ha ha! Convergent evolution should convince Barry that the great vector of evolution is available energy. True, it’s not exactly linear. But it drives it all anyhow and it ain’t random.…
‘Love to All’
Editor: To you Peter Childs (Mailbox, Jan. 2), I wish a wonderful, enlightening and renewable Winter Solstice and a Happy Hanukkah; also, from an agnostic like me, a Happy New Year, and … why not just wish a happy holiday? That accounts for all I may have missed. Love to all. Pat Kanzler, Eureka Editor:…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Comedian John Cleese has an insight I hope you’ll consider. He says, “It’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent. It’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that…
The Whistleblower
Here’s a story that might help you understand Dr. Kim Ervin. Years before she would arrive in Humboldt County to start a decades-long career providing women with healthcare and delivering babies, she was working in a medical clinic at Frances E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She was nine months pregnant but still…
Correction
The story headlined “Artists Inside” in the Jan. 9, 2020, edition of the North Coast Journal included a caption that misspelled the name of former Humboldt County jail Programs Coordinator Stefan Logie. The article also incorrectly described Henry Frank’s role in a 1993 drive-by shooting at the Bayshore Mall. Frank was the driver. The Journal…
Vacancy at Fourth and E Streets, Eureka
For years, driving by, I would see her lonely figure sitting on the bench. I never stopped but in time I grew used to her presence there, looking to touch base visually when I passed. Huddled inward and completely covered, she had erected a shell between herself and the outside world, perhaps retreating to the…
