A quarter-mile down a gravel driveway from the cluster of mailboxes on Washington state’s Vashon Island, past second-growth conifers and bare alders, James Clark’s homestead could just as easily be in Fieldbrook as on this Manhattan-sized moraine lumped in the middle of Puget Sound. Clark is at work on a project that, for the moment […]
Humboldt
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Fires in January
We’re not even 10 days into the New Year and, already, in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, at least 10 wildfires have sprouted in our tinder-dry January hills. January. Wildfires. “Yeah, crazy,” says Paul Duncan, battalion chief with CalFire’s Humboldt-Del Norte Unit emergency command center in Fortuna. This means, after an already smoke-filled summer and […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Sunshine and Calm = Sneaker Waves.
Here on the Humboldt edge of the world, Christmas Day and the day after promise to be filled with sunshiny sparkle and gentle breezes. To the beach, the wonderful beach! Yes, by all means, go, enjoy. But, before you go, you should do something that could save your life and that of others: Read the sneaker wave […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Sticky Stigma
How many of Humboldt County’s 134,623 residents are involved in the weed industry? Twenty percent? Thirty? Half? Last week, a pot cop working in the county to our south suggested that the figure is even higher than that. Rich Russell, commander of Mendocino County’s major crimes task force, raised eyebrows and a few hackles by […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
A Very Special Meth PSA
From a very compassionate forest-railing vandal, apparently:
Posted inArts + Scene
Unbound
Humboldt Unbound, a grand, fanciful, poetic, theatrical biography of the Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt, namesake of the county where we live, began a two weekend run last night at Humboldt State University. A gala champagne opening helped introduce the cast and crew. Dell’Arte Producing Artistic Director Michael Fields watched from the back […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Gun Owners Grousing
Were one to judge by the first moments of last night’s presentation on new firearm regulations, Humboldt County gun owners would appear to be an extraordinarily polite set of people. Dozens of them, many wearing mossy oak camo, jammed into Pacific Outfitters in Eureka, sitting in the folding chairs clustered around the stairwell or standing […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Ruins
Pictures of decay — abandoned structures slumping to ground, engulfed in flora or proudly, rustily erect — are a trope now, but that’s OK. They’re fascinating. They combine history, our reverence of engineering feats, our fears of death and erasure. We get to rubberneck at a slow moving train wreck — nature and time joining […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Disputed Principles
When it comes to the much-debated guiding principles in Humboldt County’s General Plan Update process, it looks like the spirit of compromise was just a one-evening anomaly. Two weeks ago on Sept. 23 the Board of Supervisors held a rare evening session to tinker yet again with the language of the guiding principles, a list […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Saturday Evening Stoke Recap, Monday Morning Wave Warning
Nipplepotamus, rocking Drivers cruising down Fourth Street into Eureka Saturday evening did a doubletake as they passed. On the right, the Red Lion Hotel, stalwart as usual. On the left, in a tiny parking lot outside a building the size of a single hotel room, a band cranked fuzzy-catchy-garage-y tunes into the street. Surfboard-laden trucks […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Free Music from Lila Nelson
Few people in the world own my fanship like singer-songwriter Lila Nelson. Her songs tear at my soul in all the best ways, awash in poetry, insight and sheer artistry. The former Humboldt star remains well-loved locally despite relocating to Oakland a few years back. You may remember her fabulous, humor-filled live shows. You may […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Local Girl Does Good: ‘The Wine of Summer’ Victorious in Portugal
Humboldt native and filmmaker Maria Matteoli was already celebrating the inclusion of The Wine of Summer in Portugal’s Douro Film Harvest – she and her crew had flown to Porto to attend the world premiere of the movie they crafted during 2011 in Spain and the streets of Eureka’s Old Town – when things got […]