We’re all in on Halloween with a spooky-sweet comic by local artist Liz Valasco, haunted house reviews and scary book recs. Real world fears loom, starting Nov. 1, as SNAP benefits halt. We’re looking at how Humboldt is preparing and the cuts that are making it tougher. Hit subscribe for weekly updates on Humboldt stories.
Food insecurity
Posted inOn the Table
Two Bags of Apples
Doing what you can with what you have I am a perfectionist. A lot of the things I want to do don’t get done because I am afraid I won’t do them perfectly. This is why I don’t have a few dozen of my own novels on the bookshelf: I instead put my prodigious imagination […]
Posted inNews
‘A Big Heart’
In the video, you can only see Mark Campbell’s hands, blunt-fingered and already pale with clay slip, wedding band still visible as he cups a tilted little volcano of clay turning drunkenly on the wheel. He presses it to a symmetrical cake before scraping the bottom edge to clear the excess. Then digging in at […]
Posted inNews
NCJ Preview: Rodeo, a Teacher Pays it Forward and a Food Truck Heads North
We’re talking about local photographer Mark Larson’s rodeo pictures, hunger in Humboldt, a teacher’s quest to give back and the Pineapple Express food truck’s improbable and delicious journey. Hit subscribe for weekly updates on Humboldt stories.
Posted inNews
NCJ Preview: Skilled Nursing and Feeding Those in Need
This week we’re looking into issues in our local skilled nursing facilities — understaffing, lack of care — and how their owner’s business practices play into the problems while making big profits. We’re also talking about the St. Vincent de Paul Dining Facility in Eureka, and how the small staff and volunteers are feeding folks […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Parents Nutrition Center’s Shame-free WIC Shopping
It began with some old-fashioned check-out line rudeness. Jessica Rebholtz says she was using her WIC card to buy groceries, including infant formula she needed due to some lactation issues, when the woman behind her in line made a comment about how long her transaction was going to take and having to wait behind “these […]
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Will California Public Schools Continue Free Lunches for All?
Early in the pandemic, the only source of milk for some struggling families was from school lunches, recalls Stacy Johnson, director of nutrition services at Glendora Unified School District. Even for families who weren’t as strained financially — or for families of picky eaters — getting meals during lockdown was something to get excited about: […]
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Huffman Votes to Pass ‘Historic’ $1.9 Stimulus Bill
North Coast Rep. Jared Huffman joined a majority of his colleagues today in passing the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package, sending the landmark legislation on to President Joe Biden’s desk. According to a press release from Huffman’s office, the package — if signed into law, as is expected — will […]
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Food Sovereignty in a Food Desert
There has been a lot of talk about Native reservations being food deserts. With no corporate supermarket and little access to the necessary amounts of salmon, a traditional staple, the Yurok Tribe has started the Yurok Agricultural Corporation (YAC) to overcome this imbalance and move ahead with hope for a brighter future planted in the soil […]
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How COVID is Deepening California’s Income Inequality in 5 Charts
The decade dawned on a California that was both “the richest and poorest” state in the nation, in the words of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Wages for the top 10% of California’s earners had grown three times as fast as those of the bottom 10% of earners since 1980 — all as the cost of buying or […]
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Food for People Launches Series of Free Drive-Through Produce Distributions
Food for People will launch a series of free produce distributions that will continue through October in an effort to help expand access to healthy foods during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has cost scores of jobs and had reverberating economic impacts. The drive-through produce distributions will start this week and are available in Eureka, Fortuna, […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Rice Sacks and Blessings
Every April the Humboldt Grange fills with music, prayer, the chanting of Buddhist monks and Lao food — tables laden with aluminum trays of fried fish, spring rolls, rice cakes and pungent salads — some of which families bring up in silver chalices as New Year’s offerings to their ancestors. But this year, under the […]