Cover Story

Lobo woke about noon, or maybe a bit later, feeling as if he had spent the night inhaling poisonous gases. He checked his tobacco pouch. Nearly empty, just a dry pinch or two left to roll. He realized at some point he had vomited, but he couldn’t see it, so he didn’t worry about it. […]

Goodbye, sugarpie About five or six years ago — he can’t quite remember when — Dr. Leo Leer and his colleagues at Eureka Family Practice turned a cold shoulder to the hordes of pharmaceutical company salespeople — drug reps — who hitherto had had free rein in their office. No longer could a well-heeled, uberfriendly, […]

When President Bill Clinton first decided to come to town early last week, the news spread instantaneously throughout the county and left a good percentage of the population buzzing with excitement. For a very large segment of Humboldt County — the politically active, left-leaning segment — the news was like the call of a spring […]

In December of last year, residents of the Aiy-yu-kwee Mobile Home Park — located on the territory of the Blue Lake Rancheria — were expecting to receive the usual season’s greetings: good tidings and Christmas cheer. Instead, they got eviction notices. When 76-year-old Sid Madjarac received his letter, the first thing he thought about was […]

“How happy it would make us to see Bush and Cheney behind bars!” So said Mitch Clogg, Democratic candidate for Congress, on KMUD radio on Sunday. And if anyone within distance of the radio signal objected to the notion, they did not bother to make their objection heard. Clogg was one of three candidates who […]

The large, black, beaked creature that carefully made its way among the risers of the Arcata Playhouse was kind of scary. But young Alexandra was not afraid. She turned in her front row seat and peered at him as he approached. She had a secret. She had met the man who now wore stilts and […]

Weathervane Almost 6 p.m., dark. Two of the resident boats at Woodley Island Marina have strung Christmas lights from their masts, Vs of cheer hanging upside down in the blue-black night. Other boats lie dark, or with one white spotlight ablaze to aid a last repair. Except on Dock B, where a broad yellow glow […]

Rails, trails, bankruptcy and dope. It was a topsy-turvy year in Humboldt County — a wierd, shook-up year now spilling its contents into the next. The politically active portion of the community is still divided along lines that were drawn almost 40 years ago, when the first hippies started showing up in Arcata and Eureka […]

Figuring out what Reuben Sorensen’s paintings mean is almost as hard as figuring out how to get to his house. I’m counting the number of bridges I’ve driven over since I turned off the asphalt road that leads west from Redway through Briceland. My compact Japanese car is way out of its element. It’s raining […]

There is something radical in making beautiful art in the abandoned parts of our public space, vulnerable not only to the elements but to any art critic or competitive painter. Imagine spending hours on a painting only to find it scrawled on, or painted over by the next muralist, or your medium simply demolished. The […]