Stone Lagoon breached!
It doesn’t happen often — maybe every few years — but when the spit at Stone Lagoon is breached the site is spectacular: ocean rushing in, McDonald Creek-fed lagoon waters flowing out, white riffles fluttering in the mouth temporarily opened to facilitate the exchange. Perhaps, if the timing is right, some lagoon-trapped creatures venture oceanforth…
Who Will Pay the Piper?
The stewards of Arcata’s now-defunct redevelopment agency were scolded by a former member Thursday morning, as two contractors worried aloud about when or whether they’ll get paid. The fretting came as the panel debated what to do about roughly $2 million that the state says was improperly spent and now needs to be returned. The…
Arkley: Security National Louisiana Bound
Security National is “re-domicile-ing” its headquarters to Louisiana, Rob Arkley said in a radio interview aired on New Year’s Day, and the Lost Coast Outpost says the firm has been laying off workers. “Tax wise it’s kind of a no brainer,” Arkley told KINS Radio’s Brian Papstein on Tuesday’s prerecorded edition of Talk Shop. “We’re…
Another Sleepy Plaza New Year’s
The following is an incomplete list of things that were in abundance on the Arcata Plaza five minutes after midnight on New Year’s Eve (when the above picture was taken): Flood lightage Officers Parking spaces Quiet (‘cept for the generators running the aforementioned lighting.) What was missing from previous years?: People. Just two years ago,…
Eureka! (It’s TEDx Eureka)
The Journal’s Field Notes columnist Barry Evans was among the deep thinkers dropping knowledge at TEDx Eureka, which, as Evans pointed out somewhat ironically, took place in Arcata in December. Humboldt’s first such event featured talks on a wide range of topics, everything from recycling and roller derby to the American Revolution and the environmental…
More Time for Klamath Deal
As expected, the 40-plus government agencies, counties, tribes and environmental and farming groups that hashed out a pact to divvy up water supplies and remove four dams along the Klamath River have re-upped for another two years, extending the deadline of their accord to the end of 2014. That gives Congress two more years to…
Gas Profits? Oh Yeah
Here’s a nice piece of gasoline trivia. In a year when the Natural Resources Defense Council reports that gasoline retailers make an average of around 4 cents a gallon, a broker trying to sell two Arcata gas stations says that they routinely rake in 35 cents a gallon. “Due to high margins in this area…
Early Letters Deadline
Because of the holiday, we’re asking you to please email us your letters no later than 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 28, for our Jan. 3 edition. As usual, please write no more than 300 words about something we’ve recently published, and include an address and a phone number where we can reach you that…
Eureka Joe & Marvin
Eureka Joe & Marvin
Top 10: East West Rail Line
It’s not a new idea. Preliminary plans for a rail line connecting Humboldt to points east were discussed in the late 19th century, but a north-south line was built instead. Landslides put that one out of commission, and there has been no rail service to Humboldt since 1999. In its absence, the dream of an…
Top 10: Wal-Mart Arrives
Ahh, 2012. The year Eureka finally got its smiley face. But so what? Why include the opening of a Wal-Mart among this year’s top stories? With nearly 9,000 locations worldwide, the world’s largest retailer opening yet another fluorescent-lit shop is certainly not a rare occurrence. Sure. However, no other single issue garnered quite the sustained,…
Top 10: Swapping Supervisors
The grumbled buzz about who’s in whose pockets got some new names to speculate about in 2012. Rex Bohn, who won a three-way race in June to succeed retiring Humboldt County Supervisor Jimmy Smith, was sworn in early, in August, so that Smith could step down and focus on his health. Estelle Fennell, who…
Shikuma’s Flavor Fave 10
1. Tramp, Sharon Van Etten (Jagjaguwar) 2. Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen (Sony) 3. Researching The Blues, Redd Kross (Merge) 4. Boy & Girls, Alabama Shakes (ATO) 5. O’Be Joyful, Shovels and Rope (Shrimp) 6. Locked Down, Dr. John (Nonesuch) 7. Long Slow Dance, The Fresh & Onlys (Mexican Summer) 8. White Manna, White Manna (Holy…
Top 10: Public Safety Realignment
After decades of ham-fisted tough-on-crime legislation — most notably 1994’s three-strikes law, which voters last month resoundingly chose to reform — California’s overcrowded prisons had reached the breaking point. With 173,000 inmates crammed into the system, more than doubling the design capacity and creating nightmarish conditions, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and ordered…
What You Clicked
Yes, it’s obligatory end o’ the year list time. No media outlet can resist. In this week’s Journal print edition, once again we’ve imposed on you, our reader, what we think are the Top 10 most important local events and issues of the year — ‘cuz we think we’re really smart, and stuff. But in…
Top 10: Dangerous Seas
Most of the time that immense, shifting mass of life-teeming saltwater that collides with our shore brings us joy and sustenance. Other times it makes our hearts beat wildly with fear — or break. On Oct. 30, Manila resident Scott Stephens, 25, was surfing off the North Jetty when a great white shark clamped its…
Best Books: 2012
1. Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru Lisa and Jaz Marathu are devastated when their young autistic son Raj goes missing in the Mojave Desert. Their quest to find what happened to him is the central thread of the book, but the novel intersperses their story with characters ranging from a Franciscan priest in the 18th…
Top 10: The Year in Pot
It’s an undeniable fact: Cannabis is big business in Humboldt. Marijuana was on our top 10 story list in 2011, and the year before, and the year before that and farther back into distant news archives. This year some of the biggest news was national, with voters in Colorado and Washington State legalizing recreational…
No News is Bad News
A few weeks ago, emails flew between school board members throughout Humboldt County in response to a story on the Lost Coast Outpost about how much various school bonds in Humboldt County would end up costing future taxpayers. Outpost Editor Hank Sims had plugged our county into a searchable database compiled by the Los…
Top 10: The Million-dollar Embezzlement
You could practically hear the county’s collective reaction to the February headlines: “Whoa, seriously?” A former Yurok Tribal employee named Roland Raymond stood accused of conducting a scam of jaw-dropping proportions — a long and elaborate embezzlement scheme using fake invoices and fishy bank transactions to collect federal funds to the tune of nearly $1…
Oyster Ouster
It sounds just a little egotistical, but to hear some of the local guys tell it, Humboldt Bay oysters are the best on the West Coast, maybe in the world. Now Humboldt Bay — which already produces about 60 percent of California oysters — may have gotten an unexpected boost as the state’s oyster capital,…
Top 10: A Tangle of Crimes and Punishment
Twin tragedies on Sept. 27 shook our community to the core. Dorothy Ulrich was murdered in her home in Hoopa, and later that same morning a hit-and-run driver killed Bayside resident and HSU lecturer Suzie Seemann and severely injured two of her friends as they were jogging. The deaths and injuries raised serious questions about…
No to ‘You Know …’
Editor: I would expect an educator like Sallie Hadden (“Taking Charge in Loleta,” Dec. 13) to be able to express herself clearly. Her remark concerning the committee members being of a specific nationality are problematic. “‘Oh, they, a lot of, several of them are Hispanic parents,’ Hadden said. ‘You know, good people, but, you know.'”…
Top 10: Free Expression
Government efforts to tidy up the messiness of life can run smack into free expression, and at least once this year, free expression won. That came in September, when Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Dale Reinholtsen ruled that big chunks of Arcata’s anti-panhandling law violate the state and federal constitutions. Courts do need to balance…
The New
Well, we all survived the end of the world, and Xmas, and whatever other holiday you might have celebrated. (Is Kwanza over?) All right, on to the next round of themed parties. It’s not quite as cataclysmic as the Mayan end times, but Monday marks the end of another year and the beginning of…
Top 10: Klamath Dam Removal Plan Stalls Out
The early news this year looked good for advocates of dam removal on the Klamath River. In January the state released its draft “Secretarial Determination Overview Report,” which made it look likely that the federal government would green-light the landmark Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. Just a month later, however, U.S. Secretary of the Interior…
Cruisin’ and Bruisin’
Reviews JACK REACHER. The Internet has been abuzz for months with chatter about Tom Cruise taking on this role. I don’t have any previous experience with the character (drawn from a series of novels by Lee Child), but he’s apparently supposed to be some kind of hulking drifter with savant tendencies when it comes…
The Year That Was
“Drama is a mansion with an almost infinite number of rooms,” wrote Michael Billington, the great drama critic for the Guardian. “I see no point in shutting off any of them.” As I’ve noted on other occasions, there are gaps in the North Coast theatrical ecology. But it’s worth noticing the variety that does…
Sonnet for the Successfully Ended World
The world is new but just the same so far. The all, the school, the nothing, every word works as it always has, or does not — I promise love forever, watch leaves fall, see dead mother look out the bathroom mirror and think, I need a haircut again so soon? I look inside…
Lord, is it me? (Or is it I?)
When I was a kid growing up in the UK, world maps in our schoolrooms still showed huge swaths of pink, glorifying the extent of the British Empire on which, we were assured, the sun never set. We were fed the myth that Britain ruled the waves along with much of the land (until our…
Making Your Kids’ New Year’s Resolutions for Them
Ah, another arbitrary point on the human-made calendar is upon us. Time to capitalize on the built-in narrative and start making better decisions, citizen. Time to cut the gut! Pull the trigger on that gym membership! Eat fewer McNuggets! Make 2013 your year! What’s that? You were really banking on that other calendar’s end of…
Top 10 Jazz Albums 2012
1. An Attitude for Gratitude Matt Wilson’s Arts & Crafts (Palmetto). What do an 80-year old Tin Pan Alley tune, a 1970s fusion classic, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and a Carl Sandburg poem about bubbles have in common? They’re all (along with some choice originals) vehicles for Wilson and his compassionate quartet to make music…
Hells on Earth
Editor: In reference to Barry’s gem on the “place downstairs” (“A Brief History of Hell,” Dec. 13): There seem to be more art masterpieces depicting Satan’s world than the holy place above. Maybe art curators or critics can set me straight on that trivia. A good glimpse of the universe below might be viewed from the…
Top 10 2012 LPs Beneath the Surface
1. Sebenza LV (Hyperdub) A collaboration between east-London production squad LV and South African MCs Spoek Mathambo, Okmalumkoolkat and Ruffest, Sebenza (Zulu for “work”) is a jumbled feedback loop of cultural exchange and languages, all duel-continental slang splattered with hyper-colored synths and kwaito rhythms. “Sebenza — only rest in December.” 2. Classical Curves Jam City (Night…
