From the pages of the Crescent City American, February 1927.

Walter Parish, old offender of the liquor laws, was taken into custody Saturday afternoon by Chief of Police O’Leary, when he was raising a disturbance in Spann’s barber shop on Second Street.

Arrested on a charge of drunk and disorderly, Parish was taken to the city jail, but when Mr. O’Leary stopped his car to take him into the jail, Parish took to his heels and caused a merry chase from four officers before he was finally captured near the Plazs, when he ran into Mr. Enright, who was coming through a path and Parish thought he was an officer and gave up.

At 8:30 a.m. Monday, 40 people trudge up the courthouse stairs into Courtroom No. 1, waiting in line to hand over their jury summonses like boarding passes.

I’m afraid to ask how many more summoned Del Norters didn’t show up to fulfill their legal obligation to the American justice system. In sparsely populated areas such as these, jury duty is a common distraction — I’ve been called four times in four years.

Still, in the end only 12 plus one alternate will be needed — if that. We take our seats in the audience portion of the courtroom and wait. And wait. Some last-minute plea bargaining is going on, in all likelihood. There’s nothing like a deadline for motivation.

Dental van making impressive difference in kids’ self-worth

I have been working with families and children in our community for almost 30 years and have witnessed some phenomenal transformations of self-worth, when our children receive services from the various agencies committed to improving children’s lives, but nothing like the transformations I have witnessed in the past two weeks.

These transformations are made possible by the mobile Dental Van (aka “Tooth Fairy”). My school has been the recipient of  Tooth Fairy services and the smiles are making a difference. I have students who are literally smiling for the first time in a long while.

“What a long, strange trip it’s been,” in the words of the Grateful Dead.

Twenty years ago the first Gopher Gulch column appeared. Sometimes it seems like only yesterday that I sat on the back steps and went into labor, eventually giving birth to a newspaper column that took on a life of its own. We’ve been meeting here on a “same time next week” basis through wars, tsunamis, five editors, three publishers and more social, political and economic crises than I can count.

Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to sit in on the meetings of a few of Del Norte County’s many boards. Mind you, many of them only came into existence recently in the nearly 40 years I have lived in this county.

During the course of my attendance, several interesting behaviors were on display as I witnessed the progress of each meeting. The first and perhaps the most disturbing, was that there was a complete lack of trust on the part of many of the respective board members in the abilities of the general public.

This lack of faith for the public to accomplish even the simplest of tasks, the disposal of trash, has exploded into a complex process, often aided by governments and boards at yet loftier levels, into an expensive monster all at the expense of the people that those representatives claim to be looking out for.

Jim Tunney, right, with Wild Rivers Community Foundation vice-chairman Kevin Hartwick and me at the WRCF Tailgate Party last Saturday night. Del Norte Triplicate/Rick Postal

The reply I got wasn’t what I expected: “I’d love to see you but I’m afraid you wouldn’t have much fun. The way I’m feeling right now I don’t want to be around people. My health isn’t very good, my car needs work, I’m retiring in April and don’t know how I’ll be able to live on Social Security. I’ve just lost my joie de vivre.

Fifteen years ago, Eve Ensler, then a moderately successful New York playwright, opened the play she had been writing for two years, “The Vagina Monologues.”

Drawing on interviews she had done with more than 200 women, the resulting monologues — delivered, over the years, by actors including Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon and Oprah Winfrey — told of women’s experiences: sexuality, abuse, love and birth. This became a worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls called V-Day. For more information about V-Day go to vday.org.

The “Vagina Monologues” have always been dear to me. I have had the opportunity to see the monologues performed in Humboldt County. Several years ago, while working with the North Coast Rape Crisis Team, I had the honor of meeting Eve Ensler.  Eve is a vagina warrior! 

Council’s choice for empty seat defies understanding

It is a commonplace that five observers of an intersection collision will report five different observations. Even with that in mind, it seems a near impossibility that an attendee of last Monday’s so-called interviews of candidates for appointment to replace Charles Slert could come away with any conviction other than that the cookie-cutter had already been used.

The fast-forwarding of candidates was little more than a charade with cameo snippets of a candidate’s view. How might it be possible to gain insight into a person’s potential for the position applied for with the use of a stop watch? Would America be better off using that criteria for a Republican presidential candidate, one wonders?

House Calls runs every other Saturday. Today’s column is written by Sharryn Jones, a physical therapist at Sutter Coast Hospital.

Sharryn Jones

Studies show that females have a higher tendency towards ACL injures for several reasons. First of all, females tend to have a narrower groove in the knee where the ACL passes through. This can equal more force on the ACL, increasing the risk of injury.