The statue of William McKinley that stood sentry at the center of the Arcata Plaza for more than a century has officially begun the 2,500 mile trip to his new home. Arcata City Manager Karen Diemer confirmed that a transporter picked the 9-foot bronze up from the Arcata corporation yard, where it has laid in […]
McKinley
Posted inNews
McKinley is Off the Plaza
With little fanfare and under a cloak of darkness before dawn this morning, the statue of President William McKinley was removed from the center of the Arcata Plaza, where it had stood for more than a century. Arcata City Manager Karen Diemer said city staff, having received direction from the city council Feb. 20 to […]
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Arcata Poised to OK Relocating McKinley. The Question is, Where?
The Arcata City Council is poised Wednesday to take a big step toward ridding the the city’s center of the statue of President William McKinley, where it has stood for more than a century. Earlier this week, the city’s planning commission voted unanimously to recommend that the council certify an environmental impact report on the […]
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Top 10
A new year should be seen as a time of hope, a chance to pause, reflect and to set our sights on becoming better people and a better community. When we look back on 2018, we recall times of intense division — we squabbled over land uses, political campaigns, recovery services and criminal justice. There […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Our Town
The plein-air paintings in the All Things Arcata exhibition hold up a mirror to the city of Arcata, and the city looks good in this light. There can’t have been many occasions on which the streetscapes of a town of 18,000 have been so lovingly, meticulously documented. In plein-air (“open-air”) painting, popularized by the Impressionists’ […]
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Measure Madness
While it’s always the candidates that generate the most buzz, there’s a lot at stake in Humboldt County on Nov. 6 beyond who ultimately ends up taking seats on city councils and the harbor district. A total of eight local ballot measures will decide tens of millions of dollars of local funding decades into the […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
We Are Humboldt — All of Us
We see it overtly in online comments sections, the sentiment that “if they don’t like it here, they should leave.” And we see it subtly in things like the recently minted Facebook page pushing for a public vote on the fate of President McKinley’s statue in the Arcata Plaza, which the city council voted to […]
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Eureka NAACP Calls for Censure of Arcata Councilmember After ‘Lynch Mob’ Comment
The Eureka branch of the NAACP has sent a letter to the Arcata City Council urging it to consider passing a resolution of censure against Councilman Michael Winkler for an open letter he sent to Mayor Sofia Pereira — and published in two local newspapers — that likened the crowd at a recent city council […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Past the Dog Whistles, What’s Really at Stake in the McKinley Statue Debate
Last week, an Arcata business leader worried aloud about Humboldt State University’s budget crunch as we sat in his office. He knew that if HSU’s annual payroll and student spending disappeared from Arcata’s economy, it would be a $100-million dollar hit. The good news is that if the future of Arcata’s economy depends solely on […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Long Goodbye
Now that the Arcata City Council has voted 4-1 to remove the statue of William McKinley from the Arcata Plaza, sculptor Haig Patigian’s larger than life bronze portrait will be coming down from the massive pedestal where it has held court since 1906 — eventually. The process of removal is slated to take many months. […]