For almost three years doctors had been assuring Bonnie Etz that the large lump she felt in her breast was probably just dense fiber, nothing to worry about. So when Etz found out in 2004 that she had a rare and advanced case of breast cancer she felt betrayed and distraught. But her husband was […]
Cover Story
Posted inNews
Water, Dirt and Time
Northcoast Journal Mailbox March 15, 2007 Editor: I represent the non-governmental defendants in the Mad River Bluff litigation featured in your last cover story and I would like to set the record straight ("Water, dirt and time," March 8). I feel sorry for all of the homeowners affected by the erosion of the Mad River […]
Posted inNews
Boom or Bluff?
Some time ago — about 10 million years, around about the time humanlike apes were transitioning to apelike humans and dogs were starting to look like dogs — the Eel River Delta was taking shape. Great quantities of land continuously washed into the ocean, forming layers of sand, rotting plants and other deposits atop another […]
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Roasted
On the stand last week, Pamela Olsen, co-owner with her husband of a small coffee roasting company called Bayside Roasters, cried when she recounted the feelings she had gone through in November and December of 2005. On the Sunday before Thanksgiving of that year, she got a call from one of her customers telling her […]
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Home for Good
In her one-story Trinidad home overlooking the Pacific, 61-year-old Pat Morales leaves her bedroom door open at night. That way she can hear when her elderly mother wakes up and starts her odd, late-night routines down the hall – rearranging the closet, shuffling tax forms from the 1970s, packing suitcases. When her mother’s acting like […]
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Fighting Demons
The guitar player is dressed head to toe in black. Flanked by a drummer and a key-board player at a Eureka coffee-house on a Saturday night, he rips into a set of music he describes as “zombie surf rock.” He starts with a number called “Zombie Songs” and works his way through “Haunt This World” […]
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Star Gazer
PLEASE NOTE. Algonquin Books, the publisher of Flower Confidential, graciously allowed us to put an exclusive excerpt online until March 1. Find out more about the book and where to buy it at http://www.algonquin.com/catalog/?isbn=1565124383, or visit Amy’s website at amystewart.com. – The Journal Journal columnist Amy Stewart will be appearing at Northtown Books (957 H […]
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Constructing Solutions
Making a building is a loud undertaking. Drills whine and hammers strike up an odd beat, quickening at the end of each sequence to drive the nails flush. Compressors kick, their motors changing pitch. The low light of a gray day is just enough to illuminate the dust. Finishing time at the emerging store – […]
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Back to the Land 2007
The Old Tomlinson Ranch, July 2006. The Wilsons had slept hard, exhausted by their two-day journey up from Ojai and the fiasco they’d had with the moving truck. The truck was too tall to pass under the bridge that crosses over the road at Lady Bird Johnson Grove, and they’d had to bring in a […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Men On Bikes
The light is fading at the Arcata Community Skate Park as Oliver Wallace begins another lap around the perimeter of the park, heading towards the big concrete bowl. He dips his bike over the edge of the bowl, rolls across the middle, and swoops up the other side, keeping one hand on the handlebars and […]
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Making Wood Sing (test)
They’re tucked away in workshops large and small, in converted garages and industrial parks all over the county. They’re Humboldt’s luthiers, skilled craftsmen turning slabs of wood into exquisite acoustic and electric guitars, banjos, mandolins and less familiar stringed instruments. Their market is international, ranging from world famous musicians to casual pickers. A few of […]
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Panic Attack
It was Halloween, and almost everyone was having a fine, silly time inside the big old house in Eureka. Never mind whose house. All that matters, really, is that despite the general merriment, the party had its scary moments. Take, for instance, the sudden conversation that sprang up in the kitchen among a number of […]