Vidgen
Member since Jul 9, 2015
Latest Review
Recent Comments
Re: “TL;DR Five Things You Need to Know About This Week’s Cover Story”
Linda, it's nice to see some of your background research online and I would not debate the accuracy of most of it. I love the story about Slaughter Robinson and you really should have included Joshua Drinkwater. He was the last, "official," white man to be killed in the Pacific Northwest Indian Wars and he is buried in the Bridgeville cemetery. I always wanted to dig him up, resin him and get a quarter a view down at the store. It would have created at least one source of local revenue. Unfortunately, the flood of '06 totally shuffled the headstones and so no one is sure who is exactly where. (Please note, I am kidding! About the display, not the shuffling.)
I am glad that you corrected the one blatant error, which couldn't be blamed on a source, the closest that we ever lived to San Francisco was Bridgeville, however the innuendo and inferences in your article, which were obtained from very biased sources, should have been addressed. We both know that there are three sides to every story; their side, my side and the truth. About 650 words of your article refer to my family, either directly or tangentially. In your, "Retraction," misappropriately titled, "TL;DR Five Things You Need to Know About This Week’s Cover Story," which, being a bit of a dinosaur, I did not understand; my son explained that it meant, "Too long, didn't read."
First, since this information wasn't in your article, it couldn't be read, and secondly, I don't understand why you, as a writer, would bastardize the English language. You have a proficiency at using words to create a scene. The last paragraph in your article was beautiful and evocative. It conjured images, in my mind of this fascinating piece of the earth's life and a sadness for, what appears to be, the town's inexorable eventual demise.
However, that great ending paragraph belongs in a book or a feature, not a news story. It is manipulative to a high degree. So, call your piece a feature and it's cool but, if this is investigative journalism, then not so much so. But, that's just my view and I'm not your editor. Now, back to those 650 words, I counted 20 words about us in your new post. I don't really think that it is fair that you ascribed to my family:
1."We were the saddest thing that ever happened to Bridgeville."
2: "We tried to take over everything and just let it go downhill."
3. "Calls to Elizabeth Lapple... went unreturned."
4. ""Residents called the houses "seamy" and reported being "often without plumbing or sewage."" This information from a Connecticut newspaper called, "The Day," an obviously definitive source on all things "Humboldt."
5. "...the Lapples had burned their bridges with neighboring ranchers."
6. "The Lapples, it would appear, were the first of Bridgeville's owners who had enough money to purchase the town, but not nearly enough to maintain it."
7. "They don't know what it takes."
8. "...around this time drugs began washing through the town."
9. "...she suspected that controlled substances were being sent through the mail."
10. ""The article in The Day describes the tenants during the Lapple period as people who offended their conservative rancher neighbors because "they did not work..."" This is The Day again and I'm just sure that they flew someone across the country to verify this.
11. We'll skip this, the first 10 items should prove my point and I don't feel like writing a book about this.
Just those 10 items deserved far more than 20 words to discuss their intimations. You can hide behind a line such as, "I was just quoting my sources." You had a very limited number of sources and it is your responsibility to verify those sources. I'm guessing, after reading Facebook, that you are working on writing a book, the journal is your day gig, you are overworked and underpaid and you were probably up against a deadline. The true shame of this is that you had your teeth into a sensational investigative story. It's a story about corrupt officials, abuse of authority and collusion to commit fraud. Of course that is merely my opinion, but I did keep a journal during the hottest part of the contested times. It has names, dates and deeds. I'm sure many folks will disagree with my observations, recollections and conclusions, but that's two of those sides to the story and your quest is to provide the third side; The Truth. Again, you really crafted a nice kicker on the piece. You may contact me if you would like to talk.
Re: “Bridgeville”
The journal refused to print my answer to their article, (see my other message), they told me that I was allowed 300 words and they would, "consider," publishing it. Here's the 300 words.
Last week's journal cover story about Bridgeville is a pile of lies where it mentions the Lapple family. Stansberry tries to shield her fantasy by saying, "We attempted to contact Mrs. Lapple..." Really? We advertise in the journal; they've no problem contacting us to buy ads or for paying invoices. But, when they are publishing an article slandering us; we just couldn't be found. This is the same level of journalistic fact checking that Rolling Stone did in their, "UVA Rape," article.
With almost 3,000 words they smeared my family. I wrote a 1,200 word response. It was rejected, they allow 300. Imagine a debate; you spew any lies you like for a minute and a half and your "victim," gets 9 seconds to respond. That's the journal's idea of fairness.
To quote, "They tried to take over everything and just let it go downhill." They're implying we made a major investment so that we could lose money. Yeah, right! We put a fortune into restoring houses, water and sewage, which were all built before there was a building code.
The Journal also added, "...drugs began washing through the town." What does that mean? Continuing, "the postmaster, called Federal agents when she suspected controlled substances were being sent through the US Mail." Wow; she was also the person we purchased the town from, could there be a conflict of interest there? Also, I don't recall any of our welfare tenants driving BMWs or Jags. Bridgeville was not Garberville. Nobody grew pot in downtown Bridgeville. Can anybody buy into the fantasy that we brought the drug problem from LA and it festered into today's Emerald Triangle?
There was no, "Breaking News," imperative that required this "hot" hatchet job to get out without checking the facts. Shame on Stansberry and the journal.
Re: “Bridgeville”
I love good fiction, but I don't expect to find it in a news journal. Ms. Linda Stansberry's article on Bridgeville certainly is not fact, it is mostly fiction and very poor fiction at that. However, I couldn't put it down while reading it. Material that erroneously defames your entire family, without even the appearance of any legitimate research tends to do that to you. Naturally, Ms. Stansberry tries to shield her fantasy with the journalistic, "We attempted to contact Mrs. Lapple..." Really? Mrs. Lapple is an advertiser in the North Coast journal and they seem to have no problem contacting us to solicit our purchasing ads or paying their invoices. It just seems that when they are publishing an article filled with outright lies we just couldn't be found. Isn't this about the same level of journalistic fact checking that Rolling Stone did in their, "UVA Rape," article?
If I might offer a suggestion, there is a a fact-checking service available. It's called Google. Perhaps that would have clarified the fact that the Lapple's were from Long Beach, CA and not San Francisco. She also offers up, "They tried to take over everything and just let it go downhill." Shall we look at the logic of that quote? Of course we tried to take over everything. We had purchased, "Everything," that included $125,000, (in today's dollars,) worth of equipment, which went missing during escrow and was finally returned by Laura Pawlus, Jessie Wheeler's mother, after a year and a half of legal wrangling. Also, it just makes so much sense that we made a major real estate investment so that we could watch it go downhill. Yeah, right!
She also quotes a Connecticut paper, always a good source of information about Humboldt county, which reads, "...called the houses, "seamy" and reported being, "often without plumbing and sewage." There's no question that there were some seamy houses in the town, when we took possession of our purchase we discovered that maintenance for the property had been ignored for years. We put a fortune into restoring houses. Houses, which had all been built long before Humboldt County had a building code and I'm sure that you can imagine just how easy it was to bring them up to the county's requirements. We didn't, "break," the town water or sewer system. Sewage was handled with cesspools and septic tanks in land that, Jessie Wheeler said, "would never pass a percolation test." The water supply system was actually three different systems, built and hopelessly interconnected, with no documentation, over nearly a century. We had no problem maintaining our gravity feed water sources from the local ranchers. We never had any house with, "no plumbing," but we did expend both hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars maintaining the water system for families use and fire protection.
Some people were upset by long hair and beards, that seems kind of silly nowadays, doesn't it? They complain that we had welfare recipients living in the houses. I admit that our attempts to lease houses, in Bridgeville, to rich software entrepreneurs, failed, and, as there were no jobs in the area you can guess what kind of tenants we got. I seem to recall that the houses weren't filled with working, middle class families, when we received it, we inherited them.
The article also reads, "The Lapple's... had enough money to purchase the town, but not nearly enough to maintain it." My contention is that the exact opposite was true; they were extremely disappointed that we did have the money to maintain it. I believe that they wanted to drive us into foreclosure, pocket the down payment plus the equity and then play that routine again with some more suckers. I opine that was the reason that we disappointed them.
The Journal knows that from "Miami Vice", through, "NCIS", to today's, "Chicago PD", television shows feature drug cartels to attract viewers, so our intrepid author, most assuredly not a reporter, has added that, "drugs began washing through the town." What does that mean? Continuing she states, "the postmaster, called Federal agents when she suspected controlled substances were being sent through the US Mail." Wow, the postmistress; she was also the person we had purchased the town from, could there be a conflict of interest there? In addition, I don't recall any of our welfare tenants driving BMWs or Jags. Bridgeville was not Garberville. They were more likely recycling bottles and picking blackberries to get food. People didn't grow pot in Bridgeville, it was too small an area and too public to hide plants. The people who did grow lived well out of town and shipped in quantities much larger than would be handled through the U. S. Mail.
Can anybody buy into the fantasy that we brought the drug problem to Humboldt from LA and that it festered from Bridgeville to morph into today's Emerald Triangle? After the nearly half a century that my family has resided in Humboldt county we have paid over a million dollars in taxes and county fees. I don't mean to go off on a rant here but when I read a malicious, undocumented and certainly poorly researched fantasy which defames my family, I get irritated. I firmly believe that with a store that is open six days a week and with seven Lapple's living in Humboldt county that there was no, "Breaking News," imperative that required the journal to get this hot story out without checking its facts.
Just for background, my mother was one of the very few American citizens' ever to be bombed by a foreign power. She was a mile from Hickam field when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, she founded the first sole-proprietor thrift store in Long Beach, my sister's store, in Eureka still bears the name, "Stuff N' Things." My sister, Elizabeth, is the most successful entrepreneur in the family and ran Bridgeville for over a quarter of a century. Her store has been voted #1 in Humboldt County, oddly enough, by the journal's readers. My father served in WWII, was a newspaper columnist and owned a world-class cabinet shop. My brother was a national magazine writer who championed the freeing of Americans being held in Mexican jails for ransom, as well as writing and producing television shows and movies. He died from injuries sustained in an accident on Highway 36. I worked at KEET-TV, directed news at KVIQ-TV, announced at KINS and served as Chief Engineer at KATA, as well as opening Humboldt's first recording studio and making over two dozen local records. I moved to Hollywood and won six Emmys before retiring back to Humboldt. My wife is a newspaper writer, an award winning storyboard artist and yesterday she organized a group of children to prepare lunches for the homeless. My son spent over half a year fighting in Afghanistan and then a year and a half in a hospital recovering from the IED that shattered his body. He must have really hurt his head because now he wants to go into politics. But, when you Google his name, this stupid, inaccurate fantasy about his family is going to show up. This is an ill-conceived fabrication that the journal has irresponsibly distributed 21,000 copies of, plus online views. Perhaps the above will give those who read this a different impression of my family than the journal's article portrayed. I feel that a retraction and apology are due, from both the North Coast journal and Ms. Stansberry.
Re: “Amy Goodman”
Very disappointed, while it is all well and good that, no one turned away for lack of funds, was offered, the fact is that we were turned away for, SOLD OUT. We arrived 40 minutes early, for the event, coming from Crescent City. The web site does not list advance sale tickets and I find it hard to grasp that Eureka doesnt possess a venue large enough to contain an, Amy Goodman, audience. It would seem that the promoters did not do their, Due Diligence, in considering the required audience capacity for the event. It is heartening to know that in the current, Days of Trump, that a voice of sanity and reason may still be heard. It is just a shame that we couldnt find a place big enough for everyone to be able to hear the message.