What it's Really Like in the Pacific Northwest Town of Eureka

It can be tracked into a locale on muddy shoes or tires, but nothing seems to spread this blight better than an infected nursery selling plants to out-of-area customers. In either case, it's an unwelcome guest, so please leave it behind when you come. It's thought to originally be from China.

This guest attacks more than a hundred different different kinds of trees - including California's prized Redwoods - although the so-called Tan Oak seems to be most susceptible. Apparently, it doesn't kill Redwoods, but it does attack their twigs, which alters their appearance. Sadly, most of California's Redwood coast is already infested with it.

That means that if you want to see Redwoods that haven't been defaced by this invasive vandal, you'll have to come farther north than where most people are accustomed to thinking California. is. Of course that might be necessary to see any real forest. As I mentioned in May, there are no Redwood forests in Hellay. (How unCalifornish!) Frisco has some nice parks, but don't expect a serious Redwood forest there.

That's right, city people! Most of California is not inside your big, smoggy cities. In some other parts of the state, we actually have trees that no one planted, so they're not in nice, neat rows. Oh, I forgot. Maybe you don't have orchards any more, either. Say, did you know that California's Orange County wasn't named after the color of the air? That's right; Hellay didn't always truck all its orange juice from Florida!

Addendum: Eureka is scheduled to show this Tuesday. A tentative schedule of episodes is now available. Whether all of those episodes actually get broadcast depends upon whether enough people tune in to the pilot, and don't tune out before it's over.

The Eureka area has a very special kind of spammer, a Letter to the Editor spammer. I'll admit that I am rather certain what his name is, because he got caught a while back. I'm just not certain whether he, or some copycat, would now be spamming bloggers, since all the local newspaper editors check more carefully before printing letters to editors, to make sure that the letters are really from whom they claim to be. At any rate, this particular spammer either spoofed someone else's email address into his From lines, or may even have opened freebie email accounts in someone else's name.

The time during which he did this most actively was during Humboldt County's District Attorney Recall fiasco, which I mentioned in May, while prominently campaigning to keep the D.A. Perhaps in light of the obviously intrusive nature of the recall campaign, which was funded almost entirely by a corporation from outside Humboldt County against whom the D.A.had filed suit, this campaigner felt fully justified in using equally underhanded tactics. However, he continued the tactic while campaigning for other issues, and in so doing, got caught.

It turns out that at least some of the people whom he'd impersonated had given him permission to do so. While that doesn't make it legal to impersonate another for the purpose of writing a letter to the Editor - California has a law covering that - the state Attorney General's Office recommended against prosecuting, because that fact would probably cause a jury to sympathize with him, so he got off with nothing more than a blemish on his reputation.

This is the sort of blemish on his reputation that made the District Attorney make sure that this particular campaigner wasn't as prominent in his re-election campaign, as he'd been during the recall election. I know people who've told me that they specifically vote against certain issues and candidates, specifically because "a certain person" is campaigning for them, and I get the strong impression that he's one of them. When I was a kid one of the more popular insults was, "with friends like you, who needs enemies?" Still, the man continues to campaign.

This illustrates how reality can be stranger than science fiction. I'm sure that if this had been written into the script of a TV show, the email would have spelled out exactly what information I'd gotten incorrect.

It would also come as a shock to some people who have come to think of the railroad track as a public footpath, particularly to the Elk River Wildlife Area. The Times Standard's biggest feature story this week calls the wildlife area, "one of south Eureka's best-kept secrets". It goes on to supply instructions for accessing the wildlife area via the railroad tracks. So much for the secret.

Some people in Eureka have gotten so accustomed to thinking of the railroad as a foot path that a project to make the Elk River Wildlife Trail into an improved footpath has gotten as far as the Environmental Study stage, according to a July 2 Eureka Reporter article. That article doesn't mention that trail is to replace the railroad track. However, the previously mentioned Times-Standard article does mention it.

That information is also buried deep in the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District's Five Year Plan, Item #86: "Alternative use railroad grade· Expand Elk River Wildlife Trail".

Meanwhile, it's a sorely neglected train track, that the railroad intends to repair and use. Who knows whether anyone has told the North Coast Railroad Authority, (NCRA), that Eureka plans to replace the railroad with a footpath, or that people are already using it as such. It's not as if there has been any announcement of an intention to acquire the railroad grade from NCRA.

Railroad tracks are the property of the railroads, and encouraging and condoning trespass on them hardly seems responsible.

Let's give their article credit for taking note of the dissociation from reality seen in the trailers. With either Science Fiction or humor, that goes with the territory, and that's one of the reasons that Science Fiction lends itself well to humor; both deal with situations that would be absurd if they were to occur in reality. Every trailer I've seen for Eureka so far, no matter how short, featured at least one scene that would have done a Situation Comedy credit.

The last paragraph of the Times-Standard article is probably the most astute, and I'm not going to touch that topic with a ten-AU tractor beam.

However, there now seem to be actual plans to repair at least part of the railroad. Repairing at least a southern portion of it would allow the railroad to carry about 100 daily train cars of gravel from proposed quarries in the area of the Eel River Canyon. The proposed quarries are ecologically controversial, and have generated both editorials and letters to Editors of some local papers, both for and against the proposals.

In Eureka there is considerable excitement over the prospect of even partial rebuilding of the railroad. It would bring the railroad a little closer, and leave less of the repairs waiting. The second stage of repairing the railroad would be to bring it back to Eureka. The motive for doing so being to ship about 1,000 daily truck-sized container cargo boxes from the port of Eureka.

One of the arguments for reopening railroad access to the Port of Eureka is that cargo ships to and from Asia could shave a full day off each trip across the Pacific by using Eureka, rather than sailing through Puget Sound to Seattle, up the Columbia River to Portland, or further east along the California coast to Frisco or beyond.

An online friend, SevenSpock at *Eureka Fans* also provided a link to a page on SciFi.com with more info about the town of Eureka, as presented on the TV series. In addition to providing yet another trailer, this page asserts, for the first time I've seen that, "this town would never appear on any maps. At least, none that haven't been classified "eyes only" by the Pentagon."

Exploring more of that site yielded a page with several Eureka trailers. SciFi.com's Eureka home page is also a bit more interactive than it was the last time I looked. Can you spot the cow in this picture? How about the other half of a cow? Would you like to paint the half a cow's shoulder blue? It's definitely one of those pages that's designed specifically for those who are easily entertained.

I explained those particulars, especially about Susanville in the Persuasive Speech portion of my Speech requirement at College of the Redwoods, a few months after 9/11. To make a very long story very short: I am a political refugee from Lassen County, California, and my experiences there taught me that the government of the United States of America is a government of the people, by the attorneys, for the attorneys.

During the past year, I stumbled upon some research that seems to explain why the United States of America is governed by the attorneys and for the attorneys. According to the research, 13 states, including the state of Virginia, ratified a 13th Amendment to the Constitution, The Titles of Nobility and Honor Amendment, which prohibits any person who accepts or claims any title of nobility or honor from holding citizenship or public office.

The research also includes the detail that attorneys earn and accept the title of Esquire when they pass the bar and join a Bar Association. At the time the Amendment was written and ratified, the only Bar Association available to attorneys in the United States was the International Bar Association, which was located in London and chartered by the King of England. (I have confirmed that to this day, the American Bar Association, and by association, all the local and regional bar associations that are members of the American Bar Association, is a member of the International Bar Association.)

Thirteen states' ratification was the threshold to Ratify the Amendment. Twelve of them ratified it between 1810 and 1812. As Virginia was in the process of ratifying it in 1812, the war with England resumed. (As modern movie titles would have it, the Empire Struck Back.) Both the Capitol of the United States and the Library of Congress were destroyed, and no one knows for sure what became of the notification of Virginia's decision on ratification.

Just like the children here in the United States are taught in school that the U.S. won the war of 1812, children in the United Kingdom are taught in school that the U. K. won. The events of the war make it look like something of a stalemate. However, since it was the British who sued for peace, why shouldn't American children think their nation won? On the other hand, if the objective of the war - disrupting ratification of the Amendment - had already succeeded, why shouldn't British children think their nation won?

What if America is really governed by petty British nobles?

That would certainly explain why the United States of America seems to be governed by attorneys.

In 1815, Congress seemed to know that the 13th Amendment was ratified, because it then authorized publication of Laws of the United States of America, that included the Title of Nobility Amendment. Then, in 1819 that the Federal government suffered collective amnesia, and had to ask whether Virginia had ratified the 13th Amendment, stating that without Virginia's ratification, only 12 states had ratified it. Without explanation, Virginia's reply was once again lost. However, it was at this time that Virginia began distributing copies of the Constitution that included the 13th Amendment, and numerous other states followed suit.

About 1829, amnesia occurred again, and this time, instead of doing their research, those who were asked whether Virginia ratified the Amendment simply took the comment that only 12 states had ratified, in the 1819 inquiry about it out of the context of the question, and that answer is accepted by most "authorities" as a definitive answer to this day.

So far, I've found one "authority" who replies in the form of a mock FAQ that places that author's favorite skunk words, ("extremist" and "ludicrous"), into the mouth of the reader, by including them in the wording of the questions, and continues the childish name-calling in his answers, (the skunk word "extremist" occurs 20 times on the page). Rather than answering the arguments of the "extremists", he frequently misstates the issues they raise, and therefore leaves them unanswered. Often, he simply belittles the issues and those who raise them, instead of answering anything. In other words, it's a propaganda piece.

However, I have not seen the research and evidence first hand, and I never even heard of any of the people who are arguing, either for or against it, before I found this online, so I don't know what's true. I only know that I've seen some seemingly reasonable arguments made, and a rather childish attempt to discredit them.

Regardless what's true, the officials of the nation that is celebrating its birthday today all swore or affirmed that they would uphold and protect the United States of America and its Constitution against all enemies, both domestic and foreign. Which ever is true, it is their duty to uphold the Constitution, and to uphold it in a way that is respectable enough that it doesn't look like Nazi or Fascist propaganda.

Until there is a respectable resolution of these issues, these officials are in contempt of their oaths and affirmations.

Friday, it powered up, and according to the imaginative Times-Standard article, "pounded the waves", which may have included 3-inch swells, to Eureka Harbor, which must be at least a quarter mile away from where it started. The print version of the article was correctly titled, Anchors Aweigh, rather than Anchors Away, as in the online version.

It's presently Docked at the Commercial Street Dock, (one of Eureka's Free Fishing docks), where restoration of the boat is to continue. Once the it's completely refurbished, it is to serve as the Humboldt Bay Naval Sea/Air Museum. Just where this museum is to be located doesn't seem clear, but the boat is now close enough to the museum I will mention next, to possibly cause confusion.

As the island was transformed into a peninsula, as the roads on the peninsula were improved, and finally, the bridge was built, ferries became less of a necessity until there weren't enough people using them to support their continued operation as ferries.

When all the other ferries went out of business, one ferry was transformed into a tour boat for Humboldt Bay, the Madaket. It is now not only the only the last of its kind, but at 96 years, Madaket is also the only continuously operating passenger vessel of its age left in the United States. In other words, it's the oldest.

Madaket Tours operated commercially until very recently, and is now part of the Humboldt Bay Maritime Museum, (a separate museum from the previously mentioned Humboldt Bay Naval Sea/Air Museum), which recently moved into the former gift shop next to the Samoa Cookhouse, so proceeds from the tours support the museum.

If only the Timber Heritage Association has its way, their museum may also be moved to a location near the Samoa Cookhouse, so that the combination of historical attractions can leverage one anothers' publicity, creating a national attraction. By the way, Samoa Cookhouse has a small timber collection of its own. I remember my Dad taking me there when I was little, to show me what kind of tools he and my Mom had used in the woods before WWII.

Right now, they're under pressure to move it from its current location, because their landlord is selling the property. They currently have no permanent location to which to move their collection and no means to move it.

However, the headline of the article I've linked above features a problem that's peculiar to this particular holiday; that of people using emergency flares as fireworks. The article may not say so in so many words, but good citizenship obligates anyone who witnesses an emergency flare from a boat report the emergency flare as such to what ever rescue authority cares for those waters. In turn, the rescue authorities are obligated to take every reported rescue flare seriously.

Just because it's a holiday that calls for fireworks doesn't mean that emergency flares don't mean a real emergency. Quite the contrary, considering how many more than usual inexperienced, out of practice, and inebriated boaters are on the water.

The article does make the point that if the Coastguard is busy chasing down a false alarm, response to a real emergency will be delayed. It goes on to mention felony charges and surprisingly large fines for such false alarms, and for drunken boating as well. Would you like a wrongful death suit to go with that sir?

However, there are a couple of poorly publicized exceptions to this rule:

1. There are two Free Fishing days each year in California. Generally, these are held on Saturdays, in June and September, but there doesn't seem to be a predetermined week of the months in which these occur.
2. Certain manmade structures, such as docks, piers, and jetties, that are designed to allow public access to the ocean are Free Fishing accesses. A number of these are located in and around Eureka.

This year's first Free Fishing Day was June 10. Unfortunately, not only was Red Tide in season, but I was out of town. The second Free Fishing Day is scheduled for September 23. We'll see about that one, but the tide will be rather poor for digging clams.

If you're extremely lucky, you may actually find mussels or oysters attached to a dock, pier, or jetty, but there's no way you can dig clams there.

Meanwhile, I've learned that both our clam and crab populations are dwindling in Humboldt Bay, thanks to an invasive species. A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that Humboldt Bay pioneered preventing the discharge of foreign bilge water in the bay, when no one else was taking invasive species seriously enough to do that in California. I also called the effort, "belated".

It seems that in 1995, a creature called the European Green Crab showed up in Humboldt Bay. At least that's when it was identified. By 2002, it had already decreased the Manila clam population in Humboldt Bay by 40%, and it is expected to out-compete the native crab species for food, because it has already wiped out the Dungeness crab population of San Francisco Bay, since it arrived there in 1989.

Addendum: I don't think I've mentioned that the Eureka TV Series is scheduled to air on July 18.

In California, gathering clams requires a fishing license, and I struggled since the first of the year, to get my fishing license. By the time I had money for it, Red Tide was here, so there was no point buying it.

Thanks to the bureaucracy of California, fishing is not recognized as a legitimate means of obtaining food. It is a "sport", and one who wishes to obtain naturally occurring food from a body of water must obtain a Sport Fishing License, the cost of which seems to increase every time I've bought one since the early 80s.

Only certain native american peoples can fish without a license, and only on their reservations, and only after they fought all the way to the Supreme Court in the early 1970s, to prove that they had that sovereign right. Subsistence food-gathering activities are part of their cultural heritage, and they are to conduct those activities according to their traditions, not according to busybody rules made up by upstart bureaucracies.

I have news for those same upstart bureaucracies.: Subsistence food gathering is a tradition of all cultures! I do not fish as a sport. I fish for food. I want a Subsistence Fishing License!

In other words, this author's descriptions of these places are quite retaliatory, and he likes living near Eureka much better than he liked living in any of those other places, which has more to do with certain people than it has to do with the actual places. For this, he apologizes to his readers and sympathizes with the ground that certain people stand upon, and other people whom they continue to abuse, but he does not apologize to the people who made his life miserable in those places. If they desire an apology, they may apologize to themselves.

Of course, the prerequisite for a piece of wood to be green in color is either that it is still alive, or someone has either painted it green, or painted its picture while it was green.

Leave it to people to get involved in politics or to call green trees redwoods.

Do you know what really prevents redwoods from getting involved in politics? A redwood is so busy being a tree that it doesn't have time to label itself as Green or Red or Blue. (Remember when Reds were Commies? Then they were uppers. Or were they downers? Anyway, now they're states.) The fact that a redwood doesn't get involved with politics because it's too busy being a tree suggests that an entire world full of political problems could be solved if people would simply make like a tree and get a life.

Further evidence that people need to get a life is that explorers who named these particular trees called them Redwoods, instead of calling them something like Incredibly Tall Green Trees, which is what they would have named the trees if they had named the trees while they were standing up, and still alive. But no! They had name the trees what color the wood is after you cut one down, from which I gather that said explorers weren't nearly busy enough being explorers to avoid finding time to cut down a tree to see the color of its wood and thereby know what to call it. Isn't it odd that explorers who were clever enough to find Redwoods couldn't find a life without cutting down?

Foggy Days and Dazes, June 27, 2006:
Yesterday, I took credit on behalf of Eureka for setting a good example for the rest of California, by making the best use possible of fog, by having fog in the summer, when it provides needed air conditioning, instead of wasting all our fog on winter. Now, just in case some meteorologically savvy person reads that, I'd best give credit to Sacramento Valley for making Eureka's good example possible.

If Sacramento Valley didn't get so stinking hot that the entire atmosphere over it acts like a hot air balloon, air from over the ocean wouldn't be pulled inland to replace it, and the fog banks that hover off the coast wouldn't come ashore.

While I'm at it, I'd best give credit also the the California Current, a cold ocean current that hugs the coastline as it flows southward from the Gulf of Alaska, cooling the air that flows across it from the west, so that the fog bank mentioned above forms off the northern California coast.

I realize that just about anyone from Frisco, Hellay, or anywhere within two hours drive of those places who reads this thinks that I'm some kind of lying maniac, because they think that being in Hellay or Frisco or some part of California that Frisco or Hellay has recreated in its own image means that they know what California is like. For a fact, they do know what the manmade microclimates of Hellay and Frisco are like.

Does it still get foggy in the winter in Hellay, Frisco, and in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys? It used to, before people paved over all the agricultural land with housing tracts and shopping malls. I'm not going back there in the winter just to find out whether it still does.

However, winter is such a waste of a good fog! Here you are, already cold, and what do you get? A blanket of fog blocking the sunlight, so you can't get warmed up. I remember those winters in Modesto; six weeks of fog and low overcast, and then one afternoon it breaks up and you actually see the sunshine. By nightfall, the fog is back with a vengeance, and it's another four weeks before it peeks through the fog again.

Douglas Adams wrote about New York that the temperatures there get illegally hot in the summer, or at least they would if only someone had the sense to legislate temperatures. I trust that he wrote that about New York, because he'd never been to California in the summer, or he certainly would have written it about one of California's valleys, such as the Sacramento, San Joaquin, or Death Valley, instead.

Temperatures of 126°F are fine and dandy in Death Valley. They're a good excuse to make the place into a National Monument, so that it's famous for getting ridiculously hot, and the fame serves as a warning so that people don't go there unprepared, and wind up fulfilling the valley's name. However, Oroville, near the location where Feather River drains from its Sierra Nevada canyon, into the Sacramento Valley, has within easy memory of most people still living there gotten to 119°F two days in a row. This leaves any thinking person who realizes that Oroville is a well-populated small city asking:

1. What on earth for?
2. Why isn't there a law against such high temperatures in populated areas?
3. Why doesn't the State of California balance its budget by levying fines against the weather when it's illegally hot?
4. Where the heck is all the fog that hung around all blasted winter, when you really need it?

Of course, these questions betray thinking that is more than slightly feverish, but at 119°F, that's fully justified.

Over here, on the northern coast of California, we get it right. We have for in the summer, when we need it. The rest of California would do well to note the example that we set for them.

I'd bet that the script writer for Eureka doesn't even know that the next town to the south is Fields Landing, much less to make the distance on the sign indicate a distance almost three times as far as it really is. The distance, along the freeway, between Eureka and Fields Landing, is about two miles. However, the sign indicating the distance to Fields Landing is about halfway between the two. I clocked it, and it's 1.2 miles from the sign to the Fields Landing off-ramp. To be practical, call it a mile. The sign says, "3 Miles". It's been that way since before I lived here.

Today, I went for the actual fair. I wasn't as surprised by the blatantly commercial nature of the concessions as I was by those at the Arcata Oyster Festival, because charging inflated prices for everyday products is what fairs are about for many concessionaires. On the other hand, there is much more to the Redwood Acres fair that isn't entirely commercial than there was to the Arcata Oyster Festival.

The only thing I can remember seeing at the Oyster Festival that wasn't commercial was the Oyster Calling Contest. It was goofy and frivolous, featuring my Journalism professor and Channel 6 Station Manager, Dave Silverbrand as the master of ceremonies, doing what he seems to enjoy most, being goofy and frivolous. At least it didn't seem to cost anyone anything except their dignity.

By comparison, the Redwood Acres Fair has judged exhibits of livestock, poultry, arts, crafts, and cooking, featuring the work of children, as well as adults. There were also games for children, unjudged exhibits featuring reptiles, model railroading, virtual reality, and so many other things, that I'm sure I missed some of it. There was no charge for any of these things, aside from the entrance fee to enter the fair.

Perhaps that entrance fee makes the difference. If it covers the cost of the exhibits, that allows those exhibits to seem much less commercial, and allows people to enjoy so much of the fair without hearing, "cha-ching", every time they're trying to enjoy something. The way that Arcata's Oyster Festival is held in the open Downtown Plaza, charging an entry fee would simply be unmanageable.

I suspect that when the naming took place, Samoa Island was still an island. It almost still is, since Mad River Slough reaches from the north end of Humboldt Bay, almost to Mad River. For now, it's a man-made peninsula.

Likewise, there are islands along the shore at Trinidad, and a peninsula that's almost an island, called Trinidad Head. However, the actual town of Trinidad is on the mainland.

Still, I suspect that these islands and wannabe islands had something to do with inspiring people to name the towns there after islands and cities on islands.

First, some background:

• PALCO is a logging company, owned by the Maxxam Corporation. Their sawmill is in Fortuna.
• Tree-Sitters are activists who climb into trees, particularly strategically locate old-growth redwoods that will be in the way of as many other trees as possible if a logging company cuts them down. There are probably more Tree-Sitters from Arcata than anywhere else in the world.
• Eric Shatz is the sort of person that logging companies hire to forcibly remove Tree-Sitters from trees. He is not a law enforcement official. Just what he is doesn't seem very clear.
• Attorneys are the sort of people that dishonest people hire to turn courtrooms into venues for legalized slander and libel. In other words, wannabe politicians. I rant much more thoroughly about attorneys and politicians in the outline for a speech I gave while fulfilling my college Speech requirement.
• PALCO hire Shatz to forcibly remove a Tree-Sitter named Jeny Card, aka "Remedy", among others. PALCO charge Card with trespassing, and she charge PALCO with assault, battery, forcible entry, and other charges. Both sides have now dropped all charges.

Unlike some other papers, the Northcoast Journal article describing this latest development quotes attorneys for both parties. First, Shatz' attorney:

Last week, in an e-mail noting the settlements, Schatz' attorney Andy Stunich said the treesitters "knew they would lose at trial," which had been set to begin June 19.

"It is too bad that the protesters wasted so much in the way of Sheriff Department resources and judicial resources," wrote Stunich. "However, at least they are not going to waste jurors' time with an unnecessary trial. That they dismissed their cases speaks volumes about the lack of merit of their cases."

Only a certain kind of attorney would be so illogically arrogant as to reason that a case had no merit simply because litigants dropped their case, when his own clients dismissed their cases too. That kind of attorney represents the interests of people from Fortuna.

It looks like a pot.

It cooks like a pot.

It disses on the kettle like a pot.

It must be a pot.

Then, Card's attorney, representing the interests of people from Arcata:

Did the treesitters' case lack merit? "Absolutely not," said Kosmal. The case just had too much gray area, he said, that involved the tricky realm of squatters' law. "Both the company and my clients decided that this agreement was a step forward."

I won't presume to know who is right and wrong. I only know which attorney seemed persuasive, and which attorney seemed to be bluffing from a busted straight.

Last month, I left a message with my acupuncturist's voice mail. It came to her garbled to the point that she couldn't understand it, but at least her cell phone told her who had called. A couple days ago, her voice mail delivered a duplicate of the same message. At least, we'll assume it was a duplicate of that one, since I hadn't left any more messages for her since then. She confided with me then that on U.S. Cellular, her voice mail is frequently delayed several days. Well, I get that too, with my cellular company - but a duplicate message a month later?!?

Then I got to thinking about who I get stuck Roaming with, if I can't get a signal from my own carrier. It's always U.S. Cellular. You know how I can tell? They're the ones who always give me a recording that says, "Message number (what ever). Welcome to U.S. Cellular!! The number you have dialed is no longer in service". You can read that as, "Any other phone company would be competent to connect you to this number, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it".

To work around this incompetence and get U.S. Cellular to connect me to any local phone number, I have to pretend that it's long distance, and add the area code in front of it. OK, so I can actually get a signal from U.S. Cellular, when I can't get one from anyone else. Do they have to rub it in, by making sure that I wish that the signal was from any other company?

Addendum: Maybe I finally got my newspaper subscription fixed. We'll see. At least I finally got this week's papers.

However, it has now been most of three weeks since I received a newspaper from them. Yesterday, I got on their web site and used their online Missing Paper forms to request delivery of this weeks newspapers, and a credit to my subscription for last weeks newspapers. In doing so, I found that their form for requesting credit suffers from DCS, (Disobedient Computer Syndrome).

The form for requesting delivery asks whether you want it deliver today or tomorrow. The form for requesting credit doesn't ask that. However, it thinks it does, so when you submit the form, instead of submitting your request, it produces an error message telling you to answer the question that it doesn't ask.

Along with using the requesting delivery form to request delivery, I also used it to submit comments to request that they fix the broken requesting credit form. So far, this weeks newspapers still have not been delivered. If they don't deliver it tomorrow, I'm going to have to phone them. I dislike using the phone, for reasons I will explain later. If they force me to use the telephone, I may make the point to them, while I'm at it, that the Eureka Reporter now offers subscription service too - for free - and that the level of service that I receive from the Times-Standard is what I would expect for a free subscription.

In a day and age of every governmental agency acting as a watchdog against every other governmental agency, it's hardly possible for any such agency to accomplish anything by legitimate means, much less to put one over on anyone.That has reduced Fortuna's good-old-boy network's strategies to blustering and name-calling, while Arcata, being a university town has learned how to be persuasive.

Learned persuasiveness is how Humboldt County has acquired and kept the kind of District Attorney that it now has, and how county referendums against GMOs, (Genetically Modified Organisms) and corporate personhood were voted in.

In general, Fortuna was against all of those ideas. That's not to say that there are no liberals in Fortuna or conservatives in Arcata, just that the preponderances are overwhelming in each area. To show just how liberal and persuasive Arcata's politics can be, during the last United States presidential election, the Green Party's candidate was from Arcata. On the other hand, Fortuna's populace is extremely pro-logging, pro-mining, and in favor of most resource usage.

Invisible Children started out as a an amateurish attempt by some American teenagers to film their own documentary about Africa. The kids started out the video rambling on about themselves, and if you fast-forward through that part like I did, the most you would miss is the self-betrayal of the amateurish skills they started out with. However, when it came to snooping out a story, the kids hit the jackpot, and with practice, they seem to become more skillful.

The real story is about the Night-Commute: homeless children of Uganda who continuously flea to escape being abducted by rebel military forces and forced into military service, prostitution, slavery, or simply death. They should be in school, right? Going to school is the quickest way to get abducted by rebels in northern Uganda!

In other words, I never did find anyone to ask why aquaculture calls the raising of aquatic livestock, farming, rather than ranching. The aquacultural companies were there, but they were far too busy cooking oysters and raking in dough to answer questions.

To even see Humboldt Bay, one would have to leave the festival and hike at least half a dozen blocks to the vicinity of Wildberries Market, at the top of the hill. It so happened that was the neighborhood where I had to park, or I wouldn't even know this. It's not like the Bay was prominently mentioned anywhere at the festival.

Even the weather was so remarkably uncoastlike that if there was any common theme to the conversations I overheard at the Oyster festival, it was more about how nice the weather was than anything about oysters. I suppose the locals were probably a bit shocked to have that goofy, bright orb hanging around in the sky again, turning unprotected patches of pale skin red. Even a westerly breeze seemed to carry an obnoxiously uncoastlike load of allergens to compound my cold symptoms.

Anyway, I learned more about Humboldt Bay quite accidentally this morning, by sorting through some old newspapers, than I did by attending the Oyster Festival. I stumbled upon a six-month-old Eureka Reporter article about the spread of invasive species in bilge water, and belated efforts to curb the invasion along the coast of California. Bilge water is water that all ocean-going vessels carry to help balance their loads. For thousands of years, such vessels have picked up bilge water in which ever harbor they needed it, and released it in which ever harbor they no longer needed it, spreading non-native live plants and creatures, as well as non-living pollutants around the world.

According to that article, efforts to curb these invasions along California's coast are belated because 99% of the organisms in San Francisco Bay are already non-native, and San Francisco Bay and the Sac-Jouquin Delta average a new invasive species every 14 weeks. The proposed efforts involved either irradiating bilge water or adding chemicals to it, as if the coast of California needed more chemical additives.

Meanwhile, according to the article, Humboldt Bay already exercises a much safer method of curbing these invasions - requiring ships to exchange their bilge water at sea, before approaching the bay. Now that's the sort of thinking I expect from Arcata, and I would be very surprised if Arcata had nothing to do with Humboldt Bay's Harbor District adopting that requirement.

I'm just not sure what Arcata was thinking when they designed their Oyster Festival.

Gathering of oysters on Humboldt Bay goes back thousands of years, as shown by shell mounds built by the Wiyot on Indian Island over thousands of years. These days, aquaculture of oysters is done using methods that don't disturb the floor of the bay. The cities of Eureka and Arcata, along with other organizations, work hard to keep the bay clean, and the water in it the highest quality possible, to maintain the conditions needed for aquaculture.

Five different companies cultivate oysters in Humboldt Bay, and recently they've made progress to improve their capacity to grow, process, and ship oysters from Humboldt Bay. California is a pretty big market, but it looks like they want to expand.

Since I've noticed that the aquaculture industries use the term, farming, rather than, ranching, I intend to ask the growers whether they think of oysters as a crop or livestock.

We're not sure what to make of it.

However, while working on that photo, I finally found a picture of my Bear Can, which I described back on June 5. It's a former beer can that the local bruin decided was good to chew on after my wife made Beer Chicken on the barbecue one day:

If there was a celebration, it escaped my notice. It's just as well. Celebrating that project would have been in poor taste. It drained the two largest lakes, Lower Klamath Lake and Tule Lake, leaving only token marshlands as wildlife habitat, drained most of Upper Klamath Lake, leaving only enough of a lake so that Klamath Falls still had a shore, and placed the entire headwater burden on Clear Lake, the smallest of the group.

The result is:

• Klamath Basin and Tule Lake Basin people trying to farm potatoes, beets, garlic, and horseradish in dry lake beds and wondering why there isn't enough water to irrigate them.
• Fish populations isolated from their natural habitats and other populations, and facing extinction.
• Water officials wondering why the climate around the former lakes dried up until it no longer sustains the remaining lakes and streams.
• Timber and tourist industries downwind wondering why their climates dried up until forests became desserts and major lakes became landlocked, turned alkaline, and are ringed by stinky mud flats.
• The remaining lakes are too small to contain a decent influx of water when they do get it, resulting in flooding that makes the lake larger. It never occurs to anyone involved that this is nature trying to restore itself, so they treat it as if it were the problem, rather than themselves.
• Native Americans who historically depended upon Klamath River fish wonder why there aren't any fish for them any more.
• Commercial fishermen along the coast who rely on fish that spawn in Klamath River wonder why there aren't any fish for them any more.
• The U.S. government, which waited until 1970 to recognize the responsibility to consider consequences before beginning such projects, wonders how to make Klamath River healthy again.

Fat chance that it will ever occur to anyone involved that to make the river healthy again, they'll have to give the lake beds back to the lakes to restore the river's headwaters and the downwind microclimates!

Besides serving as bait, such a mat can be quite a busybody all by its self, because unless such mats are located on top of another carpet, they rarely stay where they are put, and eventually creep into the doorway and prevent the occupant from completely shutting the door.

If by chance, the occupant is busy trying to leave, and doesn't notice the little busybody doing its thing, the occupant can easily pull the door tight against the mat, instead of pulling it tight against the doorjamb, and leave the door ajar, and not discover this error until returning.

This is precisely what I was disappointed to discover when returning from my trip out of town Monday night, after leaving early on Thursday morning. The reason why this was disappointing is that the last time my family intentionally left a door unlocked while leaving for any number of days, the result of that was disappointing. Living in Modesto at the time, that was 1969. That was back when Modesto was still a small agricultural center, smaller than Eureka is today.

We could trust anyone living there to respect our home. If they were to come inside during our absence, we could trust that they were in dire need of doing so, and if they took anything, they would replace it. If relatives arrived while we were away, they already had instructions to make themselves at home.

All it took was a couple of strangers from the Bay Area ransacking our home and kidnapping one of our elderly neighbors and forcing him to drive them to San Jose to ruin the experience for us, and manipulate us into locking our home ever after, leaving our neighbors to fend for themselves if they were in need. Relatives were instructed how to find our spare key. However, having a court find the jerks Not Guilty didn't help any.

Can you picture my surprise, after discovering that I'd left my front door ajar for five days, and then discovering that nothing is missing? I'm still learning what it's really like in the Pacific Northwest Town of Eureka. Well, for all practical purposes anyway, since Eureka seems to think it extends a mile beyond the town where I live.

However, the real rabble-rousers are now coming out of the woodwork and going on about how unreliable this or that aspect of counting votes is, and how we can't trust the tally. The main point of contention is the Diebold computers used to count the votes, and the group contending about it is calling itself, Voter Confidence Committee. I never heard of the appointment of such a committee, so I suspect that this committee is self-appointed.

The Eureka Reporter article about this states:

When a voter feeds a ballot into one of the Diebold machines, critics assert, the information on that ballot is translated into programming language – language that the company claims is a trade secret, and therefore not subject to public scrutiny.

I'm not sure whether it's this self-appointed committee that's gotten their facts wrong, or the journalist who wrote the article who garbled what the committee said, but it's clear to me that someone is unfamiliar enough with computers to not understand the difference between programming and data. To clarify, information fed into a computer becomes binary data, not programming. Programming is a set of instructions that the computer uses to work with the data, such as compiling votes to produce a tally.

The programming language is a trade secret. Is the data a trade secret? More likely, the data - the votes counted - is public domain.

Addendum: This blog will be inactive while I'm at a convention. That's right, I'm going to Frisco again. I'll probably have any number of differences between Eureka and bigger cities brought to mind, to help me recognize things about Eureka that I could write about, but take for granted. See you next week!

What is that light?!? June 6, 2006:
It started getting a little cooler yesterday, and today, a breeze came up. Then, late this afternoon, there was a break in the clouds and some weird, bright light shown down out of the sky, between the clouds. Then it went away.

It reminds me of a George Carlin weather forecast I once heard: "Dark tonight, with a chance of light in the morning." Who knows what the morrow may bring?

Oh, and today was election day here. I hope some of those maniacs got it all out of their system. I would also like to hope that some of them will take down their signs, but life can be disappointing enough without hoping for such things.

My wife and I took my step-son to Avenue of the Giants last year. For a guy who seems to be addicted to thumping stereos, he did a great job of quieting down and listening once we got him out into the woods. He may be as big as a bear, but that doesn't mean that he wanted to meet up with one, and we just couldn't convince him that the growling noises he and I kept hearing were the sound of great trees bending in the wind.

Then we took him back home and I showed him that we're more likely to encounter a bear here at the house than out in the woods, because out in the woods, bears have enough sense to avoid people, whereas here at home, they have no qualms about chewing up our garbage cans and the contents thereof.

I have a particular trophy of that phenomenon that I call the "bear can". No, it's not a beer can, but a bear can. A beer can is what it was when it contained MGD. A bear can is what it is after the bear showed its taste in beer by choosing that particular can to chew up.

At least that's what I like to claim. In reality, that was the can of beer that my wife used to make her Beer Chicken. The taste the bear was showing was for my wife's cooking.

Now, what the heck did I do with that picture of my bear can? It's not anywhere that it should be, and I'm starting to run out of places to look, where it shouldn't be.

Pssst... Don't tell anyone, but... I kind of like the people around here too.

Having said that, I'm going to supply some information about the people who now live where I no longer live: The people of Modesto and it's surrounding area have just learned that they have the distinction of being the Car Theft Capital of the U.S. for the third straight year, despite some extraordinary law enforcement efforts that caused a decrease during the last five months of 2005. Here's a letter to the editor of the Modesto Bee that I just sent off a while ago:

Modesto's ongoing reign as Car Theft Capital of the U.S. is national news, so those of us who no longer live around Modesto know to continue staying away in order to continue staying in possession of our cars. The fact that Modesto still holds this title despite several months of decreased car thefts in 2005 only emphasizes how much worse Modesto was, than the runner-up.

Some of us who had the sense to leave Modesto before it achieved this notoriety know how Modesto could solve this, and several other problems. It's guaranteed to work, but you're not going to like it.

At least those of you who want Modesto to be a quiet bedroom community won't like it. That's because the last time Modesto was quiet was before it became a bedroom community.

To quiet down and get rid of all that Meth, car theft, and other citified crimes, you'll have to get rid of the city people, and go back to being an agricultural center.

That means sending all those people back where they came from, who commute two to four hours each day to and from jobs in the bay area, so you can tear out all those houses that those people only pretend to live in for a few hours each night, and put back all the fields, orchards, and pastures. If anyone complains about the smell of manure, walnut hulling sludge, or other agricultural residue, send them back to where they came from too.

As all those people are leaving, make sure they take with them all the children that they've been leaving unattended all day, and advise them to find places to live and work that will allow them to spend enough time with those children so that the children will get the idea that their parents don't particularly want them to grow up to be Meth addicts and car thieves, where ever they grow up.

Then find someone to fill Haig Berberian's shoes, and go back to being the Walnut Capital of the World. (If you're new enough to Modesto that you don't know who Haig Berberian was, then you need to go back to where you came from.)

Then, perhaps Modesto will be worth coming back to for those of us who had the sense to leave before it became like it is now.

Yes, I know darn well that Modesto isn't going to do any of what I suggest. I doubt that the editor of the Bee will even print my letter. I'm not even making a serious suggestion about what Modesto should do. What I'm really doing is telling Modesto why it is the way that it is, and that because of choices that Modesto has made, it is stuck with the way it is.

I am so glad that Eureka isn't Modesto! Eureka may some day become stupid enough to make the same decisions Modesto has made, but for now, Eureka is still Eureka, just like Modesto was once Modesto.

Come to think of it, if I were to make suggestions as radical as what I suggested in that letter to the editor, and the city I wrote it to actually took my advice and did what I suggested, I would probably have to write something of the kind to the City of Arcata. Arcata is just radical enough to do something like what I suggested. It's too bad they're not the ones who need that particular advice.

I hadn't realized just how noisy and wiggly other people are until I realized that they don't feel all the jiggling that goes on around here. For a while, I thought I was the one who felt it, because I live near a fault that crosses Humboldt Bay, but I was baffled that neighbors next door, closer to the fault never felt it. At first, I even thought that their door-slamming, stair-step-thumping, and off-center washing machine loads had something to do with it.

Well, those neighbors moved out, others moved in, and the only apparent difference is that the off-center washing machine was replaced by the shrill piping of tiny little girls' voices.

Am I nuts? For a while, my wife seemed to think so. However, I eventually talked to a college classmate who lives on Table Bluff, who experiences the same thing.

At about the same time, I had the opportunity to take a class in Seismology at College of the Redwoods taught by Bob McPherson, and learned how to find and interpret online seismograms. After doing so for a while, I came to realize that most of the little jiggles that I felt were connected less with seismic events than with the background static that looks like tiny sawteeth on seismograms.

Bob is about as noisy and wiggly as most people, so he doesn't experience everything that I experience. However, he was quite familiar with the background static on the seismograms, since he's the person who installed most of the seismographs in this corner of the state, as well as teaching Geology at C.R. and H.S.U. When I asked why the static increased as a major storm arrived, he explained that the sawtooth pattern was caused by ocean swells, rather than by wind gusts, as I had guessed. (I was delighted to at least have been on the right track.)

I remarked that I found this surprising, because I had noticed the increased static on seismograms from as far inland as the Modoc Plateau, although not nearly as strong as on our local seismograph, here at Jacoby Creek. He replied that the effect is observed as far inland as Colorado.

Instead of that, the fog is now hovering about 500 feet over our heads, and although there's no hint of sunshine here, for the past couple days, the air has stayed about as warm as it ever gets here, both day and night, and the occasional hint of mist brings no cooling, whatsoever, so it only adds to the mugginess.

My gas gauge was only down to the Quarter-Full mark, but at $2.39.9 per gallon, it cost me $65 to fill it - at Costco, the least expensive gas station in the Eureka area. The drive to Garberville briefly got me into some sunshine, and it seemed downright hot there, but at least it got me out of the mugginess we currently have in Eureka.

This is also the kind of weather that mushroom gatherers and mycologists love, because just about all varieties of edible - and "magical" - fungi thrive in it. Yes, some of them are toxic, and some people delight in dabbling in some of the more entertaining toxins. Worst of all, if you're from some large city, you could easily catch a bad case of mycophobia the first time you even see an edible mushroom in the wild!

However, there are enough edible varieties to make mushroom gathering a legitimate activity. Good flavor is always in good taste.

Unfortunately, most mushrooms don't take kindly to salt, so they don't grow as well right on the coast, where every breath of air counts toward your Recommended Daily Allowance of Sodium, as they do in most of the pacific northwest. Mushrooms do grow in the forests overlooking our beaches, but the tend to be fewer and smaller. However, we don't have to go very far inland to find healthy places for them to grow. For example, Fortuna Boulevard has been known to sprout crops of giant puffballs in the center divider - if you can get to them before the lawnmowers start treating them like soccer balls.

An annual Mushroom Fair is held at the Redwood Acres Fairground each autumn to try to help people avoid both poisoning and mycophobia.

There was once some talk of only making the prohibition apply to non-local corporations, because the whole point of this backlash was originally to tell out-of-town money to mind its own business. However, the justice of that particular thinking seems to have gotten lost when Humboldt County's political activists saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

You see, quite a few of them have been upset for quite a while over corporations seeming to have more rights than people. According to the U.S. Constitution and all the messy little rules and regulations that presume to tell us just what the heck the authors of the Constitution really meant by the words that they wrote, all "entities" have equal rights. Meanwhile, they define both corporations and people as entities.

Unfortunately, the rights of corporations are some times perceived, (especially by a lot of activists from Arcata), to be a little more equal than those of people. For example, one of the more popular and concise daffynitions of "corporation" found at UrbanDictionary defines "corporation" as: "An entity that remains free to continue to do as it damn well pleases after being convicted of criminal activity that would have been a capital offense if an individual had committed it."

The people of Arcata had already passed a resolution declaring that corporate personhood is illegitimate and undemocratic. One can only imagine that they were looking for an opportunity to pass an actual ordinance that would restrict corporate rights.

He survived. 6,000 others who could have walked free if they'd denounced their consciences died.

And the people of Arcata thought they were pacifists!

Addendum on the Actual Day:
In 2006, the United States of America are about as prepared for an earthquake as the nations rimming the Indian Ocean were for tsunami in 2004. They had no network to detect approaching tsunami, did not subscribe to the networks that would have alerted them that a tsunami either was likely, or had been detected, and if they'd known of the tsunami, they had no way of alerting the public that it was coming, or what they should do to prepare for it. When it comes to earthquakes, neither does the United States of America.

That's a rather alarming state of affairs for towns that lie on as shaky ground as Eureka does. I can see Japan and Taiwan being ahead of us, but even Turkey and Mexico have alert systems that detect the beginning of a major earthquake and sends an alarm before the quake's destructive force can build and arrive.

Two days ago, at least 5,427 people died in the latest killer earthquake, in Indonesia. For all we know, the next 5,000+ people to die in an earthquake could be right here in Eureka. We wouldn't have any more warning than they did.

Are Mexico's geoscience and alarm systems more advanced than American technology? Is America simply unaware of the technology available?

No. Building such an alarm system was discussed while upgrading southern California's seismographic network after the 1994 Northridge Quake. Unfortunately, any money that could have been spent on building an alarm system was spent on discussing it, instead. According to Professor Tom Heaton, of the California Institute of Technology, "If the capital of the United States were Los Angeles, we would have had an early warning system a long time ago."

Here's an idea! To make the federal government more responsive to its responsibility to prevent disasters and make repairs when they fail to do so, automatically move the nation's capital to the location of the latest and biggest disaster. Of course, that would have recently put the capital in New Orleans, but just about every town near California's north coast would have had at least one turn every decade or two.

Of course, some times disasters happen so frequently that the seat of federal government would spend so much time moving the capital that it would hardly have time to do anything else. Considering some of the things politicians do once they actually achieve power, that might not be bad thing.

• Arcata Eye, May 2
• Humboldt Beacon, ?
• Eureka Reporter, May 25
• Times-Standard, May 28

At right: My favorite photo from past Kinetic Sculpture Races.

Gallegos' response is one that the impatient populace can also relate to: He's waiting for information. In particular, he's waiting for reports from the Coroner and the California Department of Justice.

There's a lot more that I could write about this particular political race, but the topic is really getting me down. I hope I can find something to write about concerning Eureka that has absolutely nothing to do with the compound four-letter word, politics. (From "poly", an prefix meaning multiple, and "tick", a parasitic insect, the compound meaning is "many parasites", with probably a few fleas thrown into the circus.)

The last time around, Humboldt County voters voted in a completely inexperienced, new District Attorney, Paul Gallegos, who promised change. Delivering on that promise included charging and prosecuting the Pacific Lumber, which is owned by the Maxxam Corporation, and is the largest logging company remaining in the area, for falsifying information on applications for logging permits, that lead to permits that allowed the company to log lands that were then devastated by erosion the very next winter.

However, before that case could ever go to court, the District Attorney suddenly faced a recall election that was forced onto Humboldt by a signature-gathering campaign funded entirely by the Maxxam Corporation, and carried out by a commercial signature-gathering company that paid its employees up to $8 per signature. In turn, those employees lead some signers to believe that the petition they were signing was about anti-rape legislation. There were enough signatures, so the recall election had to be held, but the people of Humboldt County took the recall campaign personally, and voted accordingly. As tax-payers, they also took the recall election in the county pocket book, which didn't help Maxxam's cause any.

What helped Maxxam Corporation's cause was a Constitutional technicality. The court found that, "even if it, (Pacific Lumber), had made misrepresentations to get logging plan approvals, the firm was protected from civil liability", and found, "the company's lobbying of state regulators to be free speech protected by the 1st Amendment." The District Attorney is appealing that decision.

Meanwhile, simply because there are more people in the Bay Area, there are more homeless people there, so all the problems that come with homeless people are bigger there. The problems there are big enough that every county there had to come up with a method for "remediating" homeless people. Of course, having larger populations, perhaps such counties even have more money with which to fund methods for remediating homeless people.

While "remediating homeless people" could mean finding them homes, what it really turned out to mean is, "getting rid of homeless people". One or another of those counties came up with a program called "Homeward Bound", and all the other Bay Area counties copied it.

Homeward Bound programs ask homeless people where they are from, or where their families are, buy them bus tickets, and put them onto buses headed for where ever that turns out to be. It turned out that after hearing rumors that there are more and better services for homeless people in places like Eureka and Arcata, many homeless people suddenly decided that they had family here.

Local authorities began diagnosing case after case of Sudden Family Syndrome quite rapidly once homeless people suffering that malady discovered that Humboldt County is even colder and wetter in the winter - particularly last winter - than Frisco is, and that the homeless person's paradise they were looking for here was just about as real as the families they came to stay with, and tried to find Humboldt County's non-existent Homeward Bound service.

Somehow, the homeless people got bused back to where they came from. Apparently, the local authorities also got it through the thick, bureaucratic skulls of the Bay Area that Homeward Bound programs that they have a responsibility to follow up on claims that homeless people have family to stay with before busing them here, because I haven't seen nearly as many homeless people around this year.

The actual issue seems to be about identifying a creature I described on May 16th, the Dumb Driver, (also known as a moronotorist). However, insurance companies very diplomatically refer to the Dumb Driver, lumped together with a few other demographic identities, as high-risk drivers. Unfortunately, identifying these creatures simply isn't very simple. Identifying a driver who owns an oversized pickup with tires that are entirely too large for it is one thing, but some Dumb Drivers aren't quite that obvious. Some times you need to examine a vehicle and see how many assorted dents the fenders have.

Well, the insurance companies simply don't take the time to look for all the tell-tale signs of a Dumb Driver. Instead, they like to think of them as Dumb Drivers per capita represented by geographical groupings defined by Zip Code. If your politics detector just waved a red flag - mine sure did - that's because of the similarity to republican, or representative government, in which constituents in each geographical grouping elect a representative.

Large cities may not actually have more Dumb Drivers per capita. Then again, perhaps they do. So far, no one has been undiplomatic enough to publish figures. However, in larger cities, there are many, many more other motorists, and is much, much more property around for moronotorists to interact with, (read "obstruct", "distract", and "crash into" here). That puts every motorist at higher risk. It's just the sort of thing you get for living so close together. If that's where you are, you'll just have to deal with it, until you put yourself somewhere else.

Of course, urban drivers don't like the fact that being at higher risk makes their insurance premiums higher. Thus, the bi-decatennial argument, such as the one in 1988, in which the urbanites won the argument for the first time, because for the first time they outnumbered the ruralites. They voted in a law that dictated that insurance companies identify Dumb Drivers and their ilk as individuals. If your politics detector just waved another red flag, that's because this would be Democratic method, in which each individual represents himself.

If your politics detector didn't alert you, you really need to get it checked.

My family brought me here enough times as a small child that you'd think that they would have gotten fed up with being tourists. The mistake in this reasoning would be that my Dad had absolutely no intention of ever becoming a tourist, in the first place. Therefore, every time the family went up or down the highway past places like Ship Ashore and Trees of Mystery with little Sammy whining that he wanted to stop there, (especially after they put in the new Paul Bunyan statue when he was 3), his Daddy would continue driving, asking how a kid who spent the rest of the trip through the redwood forests with his nose glued to a comic would know to look up in time to see every tourist trap we passed.

His purpose in taking a trip would be "camp out some place where there's no "city-dudified" development", (read "tourist traps" here), "to get away from it all", to "not have to answer to someone else's clock all the time", perhaps do some hunting, and definitely do some fishing. We'd definitely bring enough vegetables from our garden to keep us supplied for the trip, and usually enough to barter for something else if we happened to meet other self-sufficient campers inclined to trade, but only as much meat as we could eat before it spoiled, with the plan to forage or barter for the rest.

To him, a tourist trap was an insult to his intelligence, and the intelligence that he wanted his family to have, so he reasoned with little Sammy:

"I've already shown you taller and older redwood trees than they have at Trees of Mystery. I showed you a tree that we drove through. Did I show you the tree that your uncles cut all the way through, but the tree wouldn't fall over, so it grew back together again, and you can see all the way through the saw cut in places? I'll show you that too some day. None of those things cost us any money, so why should we pay money to see trees that aren't as tall or as old as trees we already saw for free?

"Trees of Mystery is a tourist trap. They take money from tourists there, because tourists don't know how to find things to look at on their own, and need someone to tell them what they're looking at when they see things. We don't need that.

"We'll stop at Trees of Mystery the next time we go through, so you can look at the Paul Bunyan and Babe, but we aren't going to get anything, or look at anything, or do anything that costs any money."

He stood by that decision too. Little Sammy was 8 years old by the time he got to stop at Trees of Mystery, and just a little bit too old to enjoy it as much as he would have at a younger age. For example, being greeted by a waving and talking 50-foot statue was embarrassingly below his dignity. However, he did get to stop and look around, but true to Daddy's words, no matter how Sammy whined to hike the trail, he didn't get to go because it cost money, and whined to get bumper signed that bragged that he'd been to Trees of Mystery, he didn't get one because it cost money.

No way was Daddy going to pay for the privilege of advertising someone else's business for them. That too, was a matter of principle. If a business wants someone else to advertise for them, it's the business that should pay for the advertising. Dad is gone now, but principles like this are still with me.

Little Sammy even got to stop at Ship Ashore, but by then knew better than to even ask to buy a bumper sign. However, when no one was looking, a high school-aged employee went through the parking lot, putting bumper signs on all the cars, much to Daddy's disgust and Sammy's relief. You see, hearing other children on the beaches brag of stopping at the tourist traps and seeing a sign on every other car they'd passed, and knowing that his car didn't have one, made him feel more than a little inferior. That's right! It was all about peer pressure.

In case anyone didn't notice that I said "bumper sign", instead of "bumper sticker", "bumper sign" is what I said. Later on, someone would come up with a glue that would stick a sign so permanently to a bumper that although the paper the sign was made of faded or sloughed off, no Daddy in the world could remove the glue with soap, razor, or curses. Signs shaped and sized just right to fit on a bumper had holes near the corners, through which wire or string was threaded, to tie the signs onto bumpers.

When Sammy was 11, his Daddy did take him for a ride on the Skunk, because in the early 70s, there was no other passenger train to ride. However, to this day, I've never hiked the trail at Trees of Mystery.

After reading the latest Traveling Locally article Eureka Reporter, which features Trees of Mystery, I'm glad I didn't take their trail as a kid, because it is indeed the sort of tourist trap where tourists go who need someone to tell them what they're looking at, when they see something. A tourist is quoted as complaining, “Along the trails every time two or three trees were stuck together they called it an elephant or a cathedral or something". It wasn't until 2001 that Trees of Mystery added the Sky Trail, and the tourist adds, "the unlimited gondola rides made it all worth while.”

Maybe it's time I went.

Unfortunately, the Association acts as a form of committee. Just in case anyone missed my earlier rants about committees, they form when the stupidity of one person won't suffice. The result, in this case, is that every time HCAOG votes about whether to accept Hoopa as a member, the voted is split so evenly that one cannot say that the Association either accepts or rejects Hoopa as a member.

However, this means that HCAOG has failed to accept the Hoopa Council as a member, so Hoopa is not a member. The reasons why HCAOG both should and should not accept Hoopa as a member are so persnickety and pedantic, that I will simply leave it to the Times-Standard to describe the arguments. As with any unresolved debate within a committee, it is quite clear that both sides are right. Or are they both wrong? Which ever it is, both sides are equally so.

At any rate, it's also quite clear that the reason that the Hoopa Council is not a member of HCAOG is that it's quite different from all the other members.

The top headline on today's Times-Standard reads, "Town without Pity". The subheading, (you won't see this on the online version), reads "Eureka and its environs are a rough territory, with 2006 homicides already more than all of last year - and it's only May". The count of five homicides includes the "justified homicide" of Cheri Moore. The article also tells of a similarly sharp rise in non-fatal violence.

Some may say that the Police set a bad example for the populace the day they killed Cheri Moore. However, most of the homicides this year occurred before that, so no one can say that those manslayers were following that example. For sure, we'll be watching the homicide rate following that incident. It's too soon to tell.

However, we can assume that public behavior will be affected by it in one way or another:

• Some may hesitate to call the Police for help with someone they don't want killed.
• Some may be encouraged to call the Police for help with someone they do want killed.
• Some people, approached by Police may run, rather than fight.
• Others might more readily give up without fighting.
• Some people may indeed follow the example of homicide

One way or another, that incident will manipulate behavior. That behavior in turn, is very likely to manipulate the performance of the Police. However, that incident does not supply the motive - only the childish excuse - they did it; why can't I? People have been making excuses ever since the first documented case of someone wanting and taking something that didn't belong to him:

• She did it; why can't I?
• The snake said it was good; why shouldn't I have some?
• You have people made in your image; why can't I?

It wasn't in so many words, of course, but it was implied.

If you think that homicide is any different, then consider one of the phrases used to describe killing: Taking a life. If you kill someone, was that life yours to take? Or did it belong to someone else? When you take that life, can you live it?

Interestingly enough, the traditional punishment for homicide in some cultures includes losing your own identity, and having to shoulder the identity and all the responsibilities of the your victim. I know a Native Americans family in Modoc County that has a European surname, because their ancestor killed a white man. Their culture wisely respected each individual's life as not belonging to any other man, even if one individual raised within that culture didn't.

We now seem to live in a culture that doesn't think twice before killing, and thinks homicide can be "justifiable". No, that's not just Eureka. No, that not just the U.S.A. No, that's not just some militant religious sect or regime or other in Africa, Asia, the Americas, or Europe. All of them seem to be no more than sub-cultures of a worldwide cult of Taking What's Not Yours.

If there were any possibility that Surf City USA could have been in Northern California, perhaps some city in Northern California should have claimed the distinction! People do surf on the ocean side of the beaches that define Humboldt Bay.

In truth, Santa Cruz is so firmly located along the middle of the length of the state that saying that it's in either Southern or Northern California would be absurd. Call it Central California.

My viewpoint of their viewpoint of Hellay in relationship to California is much like the viewpoint of the script of The King and I of the viewpoint of Thai school children. Some school children in Thailand are very keen to let the rest of the world know that the movies' depiction of them and their king is fictional. I'm sure they didn't really have a map of the world that makes Siam look bigger than all the other countries, and become offended by an accurate map of the world. Thanks to their web site, I am now aware that every version of that movie ever made is banned in Thailand, because of the offense it causes there.

However, ever since I learned that some people in Hellay think that Northern California is somewhere in Santa Barbara, I have suspected for some time that school children in Hellay use maps that show Hellay that way. Since the script writers' viewpoint of Siam is fictional, my viewpoint of Hellay may also be fictional. However, in general people from Hellay really do have a distorted view of California.

I set out to find some actual facts about the geography of California. I made the mistake of starting out to find the length of the California coastline. Perhaps it wasn't a mistake, because I think I now understand why people from Hellay have such a distorted view of California - because they can't get anyone to give them a straight answer about how long it is. I know I couldn't. Here are some figures I found for the length of the California coastline:

• AllInfoAboutCalifornia.com: "California's coastline is only 1,019 miles long."
• California State web site: "Catch a wave or just relax along the 900 miles of California coastline."
• California State Assemblyman Pedro Nava: "For example, the California coastline is 1,100 miles long, and it's not making any more of it,"
• California-Travels.com: "California's coastline is 840 miles long."

Does anyone know how long California's coastline really is? How are people supposed to know where they are in the state, if no one will give them an answer they can trust about how big it is?

It describes much of the behavior that I've described so far throughout this blog, whether it's that of:

• Dumb drivers, aka moronotorists taking someone else' Right of Way
• A government agency that wants to be on the moon, when it's not
• Eureka annexing agriculture land and forests up to the edge of the College of the Redwoods campus to pretend that it's the college town, rather than a town closer to the college
• A script writer who wants the identity of a town named Eureka located in the Pacific Northwest for his own fictional town
• Communities that want infrastructures provided to them in locations where they're not viable
• A phone company that wants prospective customers to think that they provide clear signals everywhere they go, when in fact they don't provide any service in Eureka
• A television crew that uses a school cafeteria as their TV set when it was scheduled to feed students
• People who want laws repealed for their convenience
• People who think any public structure is their personal sign post
• People who take wildlife without license
• Politicians who invent their own definition of democracy and expect others to lump it or leave it
• People who think parks are fair game for dumping pets or killing wildlife
• People who take the identity of northern California and put it west of Hellay
• People who want to drive from Fields Landing to Humboldt Hill via my driveway and back yard
• People who want to say that they've renovated a college building after leaving it less safe than it originally was
• A city that hogs to itself the identity as the location of the 1906 earthquake
• A bus line that tells people to go to a bus station that they don't have
• People arguing over what to do with a piece of land that doesn't belong to even one of them
• People who claimed and maintain ownership of land that belonged to Chinese or Native Americans after the Chinese were chased out or the Native Americans were slaughtered
• People who decided to hassle Cheri Moore and deprive her of her privacy and peace until she became belligerent
• People who lived on publicly and privately owned land along Humboldt Bay's beaches
• A newspaper that billed subscribers for a daily subscription after they'd paid for a weekend subscription
• People who want to identify one hospital as another... or is it the other hospital as the one... I'm still not sure
• Illegal aliens who want it to suddenly be legal for them to inhabit lands that aren't theirs

Not one person of any of these groups of people has any place pointing at any other person in blame. Every one of them wants something that belongs to someone else, and has tried to take it, successfully or not - and I haven't even begun to talk here about modern issues of violence and bigotry. (Don't worry, I'll get there.)

Eureka is just as full of examples of people who want something that is not theirs, as any other community in the world, and vice versa. It's universal to humankind.

Exact figures are debated, but the the first documented instance of someone wanting something that belonged to someone else was about six thousand years ago. Regardless whether you believe in it or not, the documentation has it that the wise, loving, powerful, and just Creator created man in his own image, so that man was wise, loving, powerful, and just; and gave the man everything that came to hand, except for the fruit of one tree, which did not belong to him. Meanwhile, the Creator had already created angelic beings, and one angelic being, upon observing that man was created in the Creator's image, desired to have man created in his own image, rather than the Creator's, which did not belong to him.

The documentation doesn't specify that the angelic being was created in the image of anyone or anything in particular. However, it is clear that at the point when that being desired what was not his, what he came to be like was envious and greedy, wanting what was not his. Therefore, all he had to do to have man created in his own image, rather than in the Creator's image, was to persuade the man to try to take was not his.

The true ingenuity of the angelic being's plan was that the moment the man took what did not belong to him, the man gave the angelic being what did not belong to him, by behaving in his image, rather than in the image of the Creator.

However, the man had only been told of one thing in all of creation that did not belong to him - the fruit of one tree. Was that worth the betrayal of the one person who had given him everything? Was it worth facing what he'd been warned of - that he would die if he ate it?

Hardly! The angelic being knew it, too, so he had to contrive some other incentive for the man to take what did not belong to him, and eliminate the danger. First, he told the humans that they would not die from eating the fruit that did not belong them. Then he told them that if they ate it, they would become like gods.

To this day, most people who believe in this documentation still take things that don't belong to them, and believe that instead of dying at the end of their lives, they go to heaven to be like gods. These days, more and more people don't believe in the documentation, but they seem powerless to stop behaving as if they were created in the image of one who wants what doesn't belong to him.

There is a small minority of us who believe in the documentation, and believe that we really do die at the end of our lives. The others tend to think that we're a little odd, except when they think that we're extremely odd.

Heinrichs sort of complains about the lack of tourist-oriented amenities along the route, but then asserts that he wouldn't have it any other way. He specifically mentions a lack of cellular towers, but reading between the lines, and having traveled the same route numerous times, I read this as a euphemism for restrooms.

The Eureka Reporter also recently featured an article about touring some of the very same route. The article starts out by reminding us that most of us who live here by choice, first arrived here as tourists, fell so in love with the northcoast that we moved here, and promptly got so busy living our lives that we've forgotten to enjoy living here.

It's true. This is the second place that I've fallen so in love with that I moved here, and promptly gotten so busy living that I've forgotten to enjoy living here. Therefore, if you really want to enjoy the California northcoast, I suggest that you don't move here. Just visit.

Of course, that's not the point the article was trying to make. The article is apparently the first of a series that has the point of reminding those of us who live here, to enjoy living here.

The Eureka Reporter also featured an article about National Tourism Week, (May 13-21), quoting Tony Smithers, of the Humboldt County Convention & Visitors Bureau, “People may take tourism for granted, but it’s one of the leading industries in the United States and in Humboldt County”. Also: “For one thing, we may be seen as a more convenient destination for many Californians who had planned to drive farther this summer. Secondly, we are a low-cost destination with significantly lower prices for lodging and dining."

A Times-Standard article would have seemed like a rebuttal to that, if only it hadn't been printed two days earlier: Dean Runyan Associates's web site "says that tourism-related jobs totaling 4,820 made up around 6.8 percent of Humboldt's job market. Travel generated earnings represented 3.7 percent of total income generated in Humboldt County."

The article also quotes local business mentor Bob Judevine saying that while "businesses should prepare for an influx of visitors during the summer", “If you don't have a local base, you are going to starve in the winter.”

Is it any wonder that the Eureka Reporter is urging us to remember why we live here? Reading not only between the lines, but also between entire newspapers, we are the local, year-round customer base that the local tourism industry depends upon. They're just not quite putting it that way, and neither is the Times-Standard.

Another thing the Times Standard missed was the point of Ms. Thornton's letter. You can tell by the headline, "Keep dumb drivers in Los Angeles", that who ever wrote it only read the first few sentences. Her next-to-last sentence sums up her complaint: "We don't want the big city mentality here." Yes, the big-city amentality does exhibit itself by racing to the next stop light to make sure that you get there before it turns green and have to stop. However, Ms. Thornton has other concerns.

Her other concerns are about controversial matters about which I don't care to opine. As a matter of fact, the headline that the Times-Standard wrote for her letter might fit better over one of my rants. No, not really. I don't necessarily want dumb drivers to stay in Hellay. I don't even believe that Hellay has a monopoly on dumb drivers. (I previously ranted about moronotorists in late April.) I meet far too many dumb drivers on the streets of Eureka to even consider the possibility that they are all from Hellay.

In fact, I find so many of the dumb drivers that I meet in Eureka in neighborhoods that people from Hellay - or most any other non-local source - would never guess exist, such as Henderson Center. OK, I'll be blunt about it: I meet more dumb drivers in Henderson Center than anywhere else near Eureka.

I'm not the sort of person who yells at other people, but just last week I found myself yelling at some ijit in an over-sized pickup with tires that were too large for it on F St., whose gunning motor and screeching and squealing tires betrayed that he couldn't cope with stop-and-go traffic, to go drive on 101! That's an extreme case, of course. Most of the dumb drivers in Henderson Center just can't figure out how to get out of one anothers' way.

Henderson Center specializes in the sort of traffic jam in which motorists are backed up for blocks in both directions, behind two motorists who each want to turn left, but cannot, because motorists backed up behind the other motorist who wants to turn left are blocking his path and cannot move.

Most of the other stupid drivers in Eureka are the sort who want to drive the wrong way in one-way alleys, and are so insistent upon doing so that they will get out of their over-sized pickups with tires that are too large for them to argue the issue with an oncoming motorist, only to finally realize that the oncoming motorist couldn't possibly get out of his way, because there are several other motorists backed up behind him. By the time our backward motorist figures out how to get out of everyone else's way, they are generally backed up into a busy street and blocking traffic for several blocks.

Yes, there really is that much traffic in the alleyways of downtown Eureka. That's because the driveways of most businesses are one-way, from the street to the alley, and any sane motorist attempting to exit a business' driveway will exit via the alley. Unfortunately, not all motorists are sane, and occasionally someone will attempt to back out of say, Washington Mutual's driveway, into the southbound lanes of U.S. 101.

Believe me, the traffic jam north of Washington Mutual's driveway is bad enough when someone tries to simply pull into the driveway only to find it blocked by someone already waiting there because some dumb driver has backed out of a diagonal space in front of them and cannot move because some dumb driver has backed out of a diagonal space in front of them and cannot move because some dumb driver has backed out of a diagonal space in front of them, and can't move, because some amazingly stupid driver in an over-sized pickup with tires that are too large for it, is trying to enter the driveway the wrong way, from the alley. When the motorist trying to enter the driveway gives up and tries to back out into the southbound lanes of U.S. 101, the traffic jam truly becomes horrific.

I really wish that certain dumb drivers in over-sized pickups with tires that are too big for them would go drive on the freeway, instead of places like Henderson Center or downtown alleys.

Still, some people seem to think that dumb drivers are from Hellay, so I guess it shouldn't come as too much of a shock that the pilot for Eureka starts out with some guy from Hellay wrecking his car here, or that he comes on with his big-city attitude that because he's from Hellay, (which he pronounces with a silent H), nothing shocks him. (Well, nothing shocks him except a dairy cow standing in the edge of a grain field to the side of which something gory-looking has happened.)

Woodley Island is the smaller of the two islands at the north end of the narrow channel, just as the channel opens into the wider north end of the bay, and is part of the city of Eureka. The larger island is Indian Island, about which you can read in a couple of my earlier posts from April. The city did "own" some land on Indian Island, but finally gave it back to the Wiyot people a couple years ago.

The waterway joining the northwest corner of the bay is Liscomb slough, part of the Mad River Delta. Mad River's course is barely visible, running from east to west, north of a forested ridge beyond the bay.

The bulk of Eureka is located in the pale greenish areas extending to the pale tan agricultural areas along Jacoby Creek to the northeast and Elk River to the south, although the city has annexed the woodlands and subdivisions on Humboldt Hill, south of Elk River, and as far south as to include the College of the Redwoods campus, two parking lots of which are barely visible as dark, elongated smudges, and appearing in this picture as if they were extensions of the small waterway that crosses U.S. 101.

The unincorporated towns of Samoa, Fairhaven, and Manila are located on the bay side of the sandy peninsula that separates the bay from the ocean. This peninsula is known by its historic name, Samoa Island. California Route 255 connects them to Arcata, which is located at the northeast corner of the bay, and to Eureka via a series of bridges across Woodley and Indian Islands.

Further unincorporated harbor towns of King Salmon, located on the peninsula facing the mouth of the bay, and Fields Landing, located along the shore below Humboldt Hill, are located largely on the west side of U.S. 101.

The brownish land south of the bay is Table Bluff. A waterway that joins the bay just to the north of Table Bluff is Salmon River. A pond and sloughs visible south of Table Bluff are part of the Eel River Delta.

Addendum: I've been meaning to write about Fern Canyon. The Eureka Reporter beat me to it. However, the hard copy of this article boasted a lot more pictures than you'll see online. It's silly, if you ask me - all that extra colored ink to publish the photos in a newspaper that