Trial by Fire 2023
After a series of disasters, Humboldt’s response infrastructure mobilizes to help its neighbors by Thadeus Greenson
Cover Story
Trial by Fire
To say it’s been a trial by fire undersells it. After all, there have also been earthquakes, bomb cyclones, near-hurricane force winds and that Snowmageddon event in February. Before all those, there were the public safety power shutoffs of 2019 and then the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s been nonstop,” says Andrew Bogar, the disaster program manager…
Celebrate the Fall Equinox and the Un-Damming of the Klamath at this Year’s North Country Fair
Arcata’s lively fall equinox festival the North Country Fair takes place this weekend filling the plaza with happy revelers on Saturday, Sept. 16, and Sunday, Sept. 17, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (free). Celebrate the diversity of the community and season over two days with 170 art and craft vendors, local food and information…
Music Tonight: Friday, Sept. 15
The Brothers Comatose are a lively string band whose repertoire spans the roots range of Americana, from bluegrass to country and beyond. This quintet has a fairly large following, no doubt due in large part to its exciting stage presence and high degree of musicianship. You can find out for yourself at Humbrews at 9…
WCA Jazz Series this Friday at Trinidad Town Hall
Westhaven Center for the Arts presents its monthly Jazz Series on Friday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m. at Trinidad Town Hall featuring music by RLA Jazz Trio with Matt McClimon on vibes and Doug Marcum on guitar ($10-$20 sliding). McClimon is director of the concert and jazz bands at Fortuna Middle School and Toddy Thomas…
Music Tonight: Thursday, Sept. 14
I’m happy to suggest another unique show at the always interesting venue known as the Sanctuary. This time it’s a nice bit of chamber music titled Cozy Classicals and put on by a talented quartet of locals Julie Fulkerson, Jesse Alms, Katie Swisher and Holly MacDonell. There’s a pre-show dinner option at 6 p.m., which…
Photos: Cannifest Manifests
People from all over the U.S. showed up for the Cannifest Humboldt 2023 held last Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 9-10, and there were lots of legal smiles on the 21-or-older attendees at the fenced-in Cannabis Festival and Trade Gathering at Eureka’s Halvorsen Park. A long line-up of live and DJ music on two stages provided…
Movie Tonight: Wednesday, Sept. 13
Two movie nights in a week? Sure, but I have a very compelling case for this one. La Planete Sauvage or, to English-speaking audiences, The Fantastic Planet is a 1973 dystopic animated science fiction flick that uses its alien subjects to underscore some of the less pleasant aspects of our own species’ behaviors. But ignoring…
Cal Poly Humboldt Admin Optimistic Despite Not Meeting Enrollment Projections
To some, Cal Poly Humboldt’s enrollment glass might seem half empty. After all, the university’s current enrollment numbers — which won’t be finalized until Sept. 18 — show an uptick from last fall of just 2 percent, an increase of 123 students where the campus had projected a spike of 2,000 just six months ago.…
Remembering Richard Guadagno, Passenger 19A on Flight 93
Editor’s note: Twenty-two years ago today, at 10:03 a.m., Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers and crew members fought back against 9/11 hijackers, sacrificing their lives to prevent the plane from reaching its intended target, thought to have been the U.S. Capitol. One of those passengers was Richard Guadagno, the former manager…
Music Tonight: Monday, Sept. 11
Metal Monday at Savage Henry Comedy Club rolls on! This week’s offering features Bay Area “brutal slam” band Lost to the Void, along with local warlords Malicious Algorithm and Sarcophilius Satanicus. Come get some, because this line-up is no joke and this will be a sick one. As usual, music starts at 7 p.m. in…
Movies Tonight: Sunday, Sept. 10
If you aren’t out among the merry crowds and THC clouds on the Eureka waterfront today, I’m going to recommend a little mirthful brilliance from my childhood that’s playing at the Arcata Theatre Lounge today at 6 p.m. I am, of course, talking about one of Tim Burton’s best films and the only one starring…
CA Lawmakers Want to Tax Guns and Ammo
With adjournment edging ever closer next Thursday, legislators are continuing to push through bills to beat the deadline. On Thursday: Gun tax: After years of failed efforts, the Legislature sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a measure to tax firearms and ammunition to fund gun violence prevention in California, CalMatters’ Alexei Koseff reports. Assembly Bill 28 by…
Disaster Response, Crowley, Art in Piles and Salsas
This week we’ve got a look at how disaster response on the North Coast has evolved from blackouts to wildfires. Then we’ll talk about some concerns regarding Crowley Maritime’s human rights track record and how they might impact the potential wind farm the company could be working on. We’re also checking out a big pile…
Humboldt Wildlife Center Puts Out ‘Code Red’ Call for Help
The Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/Bird Ally X is putting out an emergency call for help after what the nonprofit describes as one of the business wild baby seasons in its more than four decade existence, all while trying to rebuild after moving to a new location. In an update this week, Monte Merrick, HWCC and…
‘Always Admired’
Editor: I congratulate the author on the brilliant piece of sociopolitical commentary in this week’s issue of the North Coast Journal (“FAQs About Your Changing Body,” Aug. 31). I’ve always admired her writing for both style and content, and typically read everything the NCJ publishes from her, even the articles on topics about which I have…
Pension Problems
Editor: Patrick Cloney’s guest column (“Pension Debt is Devouring Local Services,” Aug. 31) effectively addresses the threat to our safety (police, roads) quality of life (health care, social services) and even our county’s fundamental economic viability. I served on the 2016-2017 civil grand jury, where we dealt with unfunded pension liability and how it could “Un-Fund…
Late Summer
Yellow leaves litter our camp in under the pepperwoods. Dust rests atop the meadow’s tinder-dry grasses. Fine silt rises with each flip-flop-clad footstep down to the river. Dwindling flow lengthens cobblestone’s mossy beards. By late afternoon, sunlight is half-hearted. Wind moves upriver. Kids, playing in the deep pool, quiet. Preschoolers shiver, towels wrapped around shoulders.…
California’s Wildfire Smoke and the Climate Crisis: Four Things to Know
Wildfires and climate change are locked in a vicious circle: Fires worsen climate change, and climate change worsens fires. Scientists, including those at the World Resources Institute, have been increasingly sounding the alarm about this feedback loop, warning that fires don’t burn in isolation — they produce greenhouse gases that, in turn, create warmer and drier…
Warm Shadows
Well, I made it through the long weekend without calamity, as I hope many, if not all, of you did as well. I took some of the time to throw a surprise birthday party for my youngest brother, whose birthday in August was overshadowed by a death in the family. I had never thrown a…
What’s Good
Belly Up to the Salsa Bar The revolving-door that is the spot on Eureka’s Fifth Street that formerly housed Los Sinaloenses and its marvelous white menudo occupied has flipped again. Alfa Torres and her husband Bosacio Villagrana have opened their first restaurant, Paco’s Tacos Taqueria (1134 Fifth St., Eureka) there, bringing big flavor in the…
Truth Units
Working for the past 15 years on the site of the former Synanon cult compound in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Bachrun LoMele has built his art practice into a self-perpetuating exploration of the vexed notion of personal truth. The artist solicits anonymous volunteers to record what they believe to be true statements in privacy. He…
Back in the Fight
MOTHER’S DAY. In my zeal for streaming action movies out of Asia, I may have slept on Poland. The first five minutes of Mateusz Rakowicz’s Dzien Matki, as it’s called pre-translation, set the tone, with the exhausted, rained-upon Nina Nowak (Agnieszka Grochowska) taking on a seven-pack of right-wing corner thugs with a six-pack of beer.…
Hope
Each day, it seems, we are made aware of startling new crises in our environment — Mesopotamia’s Fertile Crescent, the “Cradle of Civilization,” has turned, ironically, to dust; the oceans’ depths are garbage dumps; the discovery that nano plastics are truly everywhere, found even in meconium — a newborn baby’s first bowel movement. Each new…
