May 06, 2009 07:21 am
“I understand you’re green.”
She said it approvingly, but I still responded with gentle sarcasm: “Flesh-tone, actually.”
It was near the end of our first-ever conversation. We’d been talking about news coverage of something. If it caught me a bit off-guard, it was only because it distilled into a single word, “green,” a point of view that seems to represent one side of the political spectrum in Del Norte County. More than Republican/Democrat or liberal/conservative, we break down along environmental lines of thought — especially when it comes to local growth.
The “greenest” of us seem to want no growth. On the other fringe are those of us who think almost any growth is good.
There are folks at the far edges of any public issue. Like the lady who told me any improvement to Pebble Beach Drive that led to higher usage would be a mistake if we want to preserve this area’s environmental integrity, even though in some stretches pedestrians are perilously squeezed between guardrails and oncoming traffic.
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April 29, 2009 09:06 am
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Beginning Friday, the daily price of The Triplicate at stores and vending machines rises from 35 cents to what it already has been on Saturdays: 50 cents.
Subscription prices will stay the same: $7.94 for one month or $19.31 for three months.
Our publication schedule will also stay the same, meaning Del Norte County remains one of the smallest population bases around that still has a five-days-a-week newspaper.
That’s not something to be taken for granted. We are not immune to the financial difficulties that were battering America’s newspaper industry even before last year’s economic meltdown. A couple of the papers owned by Western Communications have decreased their publication frequency, and the possibility was recently discussed here with officials who came down from corporate headquarters in Bend, Ore.
The decision to remain at five days a week was partly financial — we weren’t sure the savings would outweigh the potential lost revenue. It was also an expression of confidence in the future prospects for this intriguing place we live.
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April 28, 2009 10:30 am
Del Norte County and the Airport Board really have gotten short-changed by the “environmental” process for a new terminal design.
The project is located in a rich coastal wetland area, so the most important first step of design is to survey for coastal wetlands. These wetland areas are required to be avoided. But that did not happen. The consultants put the cart before the horse, and pushed ahead with a plan before knowing where the wetlands were.
As a result, we now have one of the worst imaginable designs, where the least integral feature — parking — is placed directly on top of what is considered a rare California forested wetland, with beautiful lush wax myrtles, rare beach pines, and spruces.
Instead of highlighting the beauty, and building around the forest on already cleared areas, they are paving the forest. They ignored public comment that warned of these wetlands, and suggested ways to avoid them.
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April 25, 2009 09:54 am
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Even in tough economic times, it’s hard to miss the signs that a
positive new era in local government may be beginning in Del Norte
County.
The latest example is the cooperation to jump-start short-term
improvements at Crescent City Harbor and moves by both the city and the
county to study long-term ways of helping the harbor fulfill its
potential as one of the economic and cultural linchpins of Del Norte.
Officials at various local jurisdictions have also worked well
together to make the quick decisions necessary to take full advantage
of federal stimulus money.
Into this, City Councilwoman Donna Westfall tosses a grenade.
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April 14, 2009 09:18 am
As a journalist, I like to have all my questions answered. As a hiker, I’m usually satisfied to finish a journey with some mysteries still unsolved, leaving the potential for future discoveries on a return trip.
Since I write about many of my hikes in the newspaper, these predilections sometimes clash. So it was when I emerged from a section of the Coastal Trail from Damnation Creek up to Enderts Beach. Much of the trail followed the original Redwood Highway, built in the ’20s and abandoned in the ’30s.
Last Saturday, I wrote about the trail’s haunting atmosphere, emanating from the knowledge that many decades ago, early automobiles cruised along the same route. It’s about a seven-mile stretch, and for at least a couple of those miles, the hiking trail leaves the old highway at a point where the road hugged the ocean bluffs so tightly that sections of it fell into the sea.
Therein lay the mystery. I was watching closely as I walked north on the Coastal Trail, and I never could discern exactly where the paths diverged a couple miles south of Nickel Creek. A quaint mystery to further investigate someday, my inner-hiker told me. A pesky hole in the story that demands filling, said my inner-journalist.
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April 07, 2009 11:09 am
It’s risky for a newspaper to produce a six-part series about anything. If the first couple of installments don’t catch the readers’ fancy, it can be a long haul and a lot of days of “this again.”
So far, the reviews of our coverage of the 45th anniversary of the 1964 tidal waves have been good. People who said they were left wanting more, not less, have outnumbered those who thought we were wallowing in the past.
We were originally thinking three parts, not six: the science of subduction zone earthquakes, whether the disaster really changed the fortunes of Crescent City as much as many people think, and a few first-hand accounts from tsunami survivors.
It was that last subject area that proved too compelling to squeeze into a single installment. Even though we generally steered clear of the most famous — and therefore familiar — stories about what happened here March 27-28, 1964, readers provided us with plenty of new material.
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March 31, 2009 08:49 am
A new season of a favorite local TV program has premiered at the Redwoods Parks visitors center on Second Street. It’s one of those reality shows, but without the human angst that pollutes most of those programs.
The star, at least on Saturday, was a beautiful blue cormorant that was hogging the camera at the expense of other cast members who were, after all, common murres.
Call it “The Seabirds of Castle Rock,” sponsored by the parks and researchers at Humboldt State University. Yes, that camera erected on Pebble Beach’s biggest rock is functional again, transmitting live video and audio that can be enjoyed on a big screen TV at the visitors center. The picture quality is sharp, and although the audio gets a bit redundant (is there a writers’ strike going on?), there are no reruns.
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March 24, 2009 08:45 am
When it begins a six-part series Saturday on the 45th anniversary of the 1964 tsunami, The Triplicate takes on a daunting task.
The challenge is to give our readers some information they don’t already have about the catastrophe that reshaped Crescent City.
Some of the stories about survival and death achieved legendary status long ago. Last year for the 44th anniversary, we reached former local resident Gary Clawson in Florence, Ore., and he graciously agreed to give us his account of losing his parents, two friends and his fiancee during an ill-fated attempt to escape in a boat.
But the fact is, his story and many others about that moonlit night when the Pacific Ocean stretched out almost to the county fairgrounds has been told and retold by national news organizations and magazines such as National Geographic, and are prominently featured in “The Raging Sea,” a book by Dennis Powers.
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Opinion 
