Cocina on the Green
The incongruity of a Mexican restaurant on the grounds of a golf course lessens as you sit in a snug window booth at Cocina Mariposa (4750 Fairway Drive, Eureka), which you enter via the pro shop, and watch the sunset. On a recent rainy evening, when a lone golfer was whacking balls into the lake…
To Fill the Happy Hours
If you’ve had the good sense to make your way to Five Eleven (511 Second St., Eureka) for its Tuesday through Saturday happy hour starting at 5 p.m., I sincerely hope you ate. The duck fat French fries — served in a steel cup with a triumvirate of ketchup, green goddess dressing and Sriracha aioli…
2019: The Year in Photos
As we enter 2020, it seems fitting to look back on 2019 on the North Coast. Together, we marched and protested, laughed and cried, fought and danced. We even zombied. And local photographer Mark Larson was there to capture much of it, camera in hand and a smile on his face. Below we share a…
High Surf Warning This Week
Starting today and building up in height through Thursday, the Eureka office of the National Weather Service is warning that “large, steep” waves will be washing up local beaches and over jetties this week. According to NWS, the waves will begin building 17 to 20 feet today and should reach up to 25 feet by Wednesday,…
HumBug: Things that Need Bugs
I didn’t expect to see a lot of insects but it was sunny today so I went for a walk along “my” stretch of the Van Duzen River. I saw exactly two flies, a lone wolf spider and some flying things too tiny and far away to identify. I did see a couple of creatures…
Buzzkill on Roadkill: New Law Doesn’t Allow for Collecting Killed Game, Yet
Remember all the buzz about Senate Bill 395 giving folks the chance to take home a side of roadkill and whip up a dinner? Well, that’s not quite how it works, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. In a recent release, the department notes that while the law was “enacted with the…
From the Journal Archives: When the Waters Rose in 1964
Editor’s Note: Five years ago, the North Coast Journal told the stories of heroism, hope, tragedy, strength and survival that took place during the Flood of 1964 to mark its 50th anniversary. Here’s a look back at those accounts as Humboldt County commemorates 55 years since the water rose, forever changing lives and the region’s…
Yurok Tribe Celebrates Solar Power System
The Yurok Tribe is celebrating the installation of a solar power system and has announced that another is being planned in an effort to bring electricity to the roughly 40 percent of families in the Weitchpec and Pecwan areas who do not have access to the grid. According to a press release, the 28 kW…
State Agency Recommends Cannabis Tax Overhaul
When it comes to California’s cannabis tax system, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office just sent a crystal clear message to the state Legislature: You’re doing it all wrong. In a long-awaited bombshell report released last week, the LAO recommended a major overhaul of the current system, which it described as overly complex and burdensome. But…
Terra-Gone
Editor: The rejected Terra-Gen Wind Farm was the only project capable of coming online quickly enough to help mitigate Humboldt County’s green house gas emissions as we do not have years to design and approve another project of that size quickly (“Supes Deny Controversial Wind Project,” Dec. 19). Wiyot sacred land is preserved but as…
Corrections
A letter in the Dec. 19, 2019 edition of the North Coast Journal included an editor’s note that was written in error due to a miscommunication between Journal editors and columnist David Wilson. The note explained that Wilson reported he’d been in touch with the letter writer, Jeni Sue Wilburn, to discuss Wilburn’s belief that…
Evolution Isn’t Progress!
Last week, I discussed the fallacy of thinking of evolution as a progressive process, that is, simple to complex, “lower” to “higher” animals, culminating, of course, in humans. The theory, “orthogenesis,” (from the Greek “straight origin”) is the opposite of randomness. Orthogenesis presumes that the variation from one generation to the next is directed toward…
Last Days of Fall
Sun dances along tree tops Encouraging the darkness, As I walk uphill Past endless Sword Ferns Forever defending hillsides Better left alone. Kirk Gothier
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Denmark during World War II. In 1943, Hitler ordered all Danish Jews to be arrested — a first step in his plan to send them to concentration camps. But the Danish resistance movement leapt into action and smuggled virtually all of them to safety via fishing…
Get well gifts for the unvaccinated.
Related Stories
Top 10 Stories of 2019
Does it feel like 2019 was about seven years of news cycles crammed into 365 short days? That can’t be just us. In Humboldt County, it was a year filled with conflict and hope, discord and solidarity, miracle and tragedy. As we collectively turn the page to a new year and a new decade, here’s…
‘The Weight of History’
It was a day North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman had long been pushing and waiting for, but when Dec. 18 came and the U.S. House of Representatives readied to vote on articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump, it was a bit strange. “It has been quite an odyssey,” said Huffman, who was one of…
To the Future
As Robert Burns wrote, “And there’s a hand, my trusty fere!/ And gie’s a hand o’thine!/ And we’ll tak a gude-willie waught/ For auld lang syne.” Cheers. Thursday (Boxing Day) It’s Boxing Day today in the former British Empire. When anglophiles commemorate the glorious day that Sir William Box successfully routed the advance guard of…
Cheers! It’s Coquito Time
It’s the holiday season and you can make it a little merrier and a little brighter with this holiday cocktail: coquito. Translated as “little coconut,” coquito is the Puerto Rican cousin of eggnog. It’s a deliciously creamy, rum and coconut concoction steeped with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and vanilla. Like its counterpart, coquito is decadent. It’s…
Top 10 Dick Moves of 2019
In the final weeks of the decade, instead of a plague of locusts, a beach full of floppy, pink innkeeper worms, aka “penis fish,” washed ashore at Bodega Bay. We get it, universe/God/all-powerful being/Baby Yoda: so many dicks. Here in Humboldt, we had our own tide of dick moves, with local actors making more than…
End of Empire
Reviews STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. A friend recently referred to me as the Star Wars Grinch — for the sake of full transparency, he said it in a text and called me both a “gronch” and a grinch — which is earned and fair, if not entirely accurate. This was in response, after…
The Time is Now
On this very page, we closed 2018 by noting it would be remembered as the year it became increasingly clear the president of the United States “repeatedly puts personal gain over all else, the rule of law be damned.” As 2019 comes to a close, we’ve seen more than enough to take that a step…
