All posts by Paul Critz

EPIC Offshore Wind Panel Stirs Little Local Interest

Only about a dozen Del Norters showed up on a cold Friday evening to hear the latest science concerning offshore wind energy’s potential impact on marine wildlife. The event, held in the United Methodist Church in Crescent City and hosted by the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) of Arcata, was billed as an Offshore Wind Information Panel. Featured speakers addressed the possible interaction between marine mammals, birds and turtles and the giant floating wind turbines proposed for the waters off Del Norte and Humboldt counties.

Before the presentations began, Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC, explained the purpose of the event to Redwood Voice. “Under the Biden administration, Del Norte county was slated to have an offshore wind lease executed in the next four years. That’s obviously in question now with the Trump administration, but it’s still important for us to have these conversations and to understand the potential benefits and costs of offshore wind. And so we’re here tonight to help the community have that conversation.”

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What Does In Media Res Mean?

Redwood Voice’s Persephone Corvid Rose filed a piece last week, Student Activists Accuse CPH of Suppressing Dissent After Harassment & Arrests, and the comments it’s garnered online deserve a response. Those comments, at least on the Facebook pages it’s been shared to, have been mostly negative. Understandable, in our little red county. But one in particular needs to be addressed. In it, the commenter thought they were pointing something out by saying the piece isn’t “reporting,” and that no article should start with a press release. I agree, in a sense, this piece is not “reporting” in the inferred sense the commenter seems to have meant. It has a point of view, takes a stand, and ends with a “call to action” — all things that would have both purists and partisans up in arms if they occurred above the fold in the Times or Post. 

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Bertsch-Oceanview Faces Major Water Main Break, Boil Water Notice Issued

Thumbnail photo courtesy of KFUG Station Coordinator Amanda Dockter.

Crescent City residents in the Bertsch/Oceanview neighborhood awoke this morning to very low water pressure. According to a City Facebook post, this was due to a broken water main on Maiden Lane, off Elk Valley Road. City Manager Eric Wier told Redwood Voice Community News by phone this morning that the twelve inch main is deep, about seven feet below the ground, and will take time for City crews to access. The scope of the break won’t be known until that happens. Tidewater Contractors is assisting City crews at the scene.

The City has advised residents, some of whom may still have low-flow running water, to BOIL that water before drinking. Most of the residents in the Bertsch/Oceanview neighborhood are without water at all. Wier said the City will be setting up a potable water distribution point across the street from KidTown where those residents can fill containers with safe drinking water. He estimated it will be operational by noon and that residents should follow Crescent City’s facebook page for updates.

Once the main is accessed, repaired and recharged, Wier said — and there is currently no estimate available as to how long that will take — it will then be an additional 24 hours for the City to test water safety. During that time, resident will still need to boil water before drinking or cooking with it.

Local “Night To Shine” Shines Bright

The stretch Hummer maneuvers carefully between the buildings, getting as close as it can to the main entrance where a knot of people wait expectantly. The big building at the Del Norte County Fairgrounds is already teeming with guests and volunteers; light and music pour from the open double doors. An older woman in a long gown steps from the Humvee and pauses to hike her dress up and show a friend her satin bloomers and fancy shoes. 

It’s Del Norte’s Night To Shine — an annual faith-based celebration for the special needs community, a community that doesn’t ordinarily have events like this thrown for them. Part of a worldwide celebration, the Night To Shine was founded in 2014 by the Tim Tebow Foundation, and is celebrated the Friday before Valentine’s Day in 800 cities across the United States, and in other locales as far-flung as Burkina Faso and the Philippines. 

Each Night To Shine follows the same script, as the Tebow foundation’s website explains: “Each event is unique to its location, but some cornerstone activities included across all of them are a red carpet entrance complete with a warm welcome from a friendly crowd and paparazzi, hair and makeup stations, shoeshines, limousine rides, karaoke, gifts, a catered dinner, a Sensory Room, a Respite Room for parents and caregivers, dancing, and a crowning ceremony where every guest is honored as a King or a Queen — the way God sees them each and every day.”

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How a Community Dies…

Cherece Norris laughs into the phone, though there remains a hint of something else in her voice.

“Everybody keeps calling and saying they’re waiting for the ‘Ha-ha, I was only joking!’ I wish I was…”

Cherece, along with her husband Eric and their sons, Eric and Brent, run two businesses in Crescent City: Norris Family Kitchen and the Park City Superette. The restaurant began in the tiny building in front of the Superette at the corner of Howland Hill and Elk Valley but quickly became too popular — with their selection of “smash” burgers and Indian tacos — for the location. Two years ago, Cherece moved her restaurant into town, along the 101 corridor, to both better serve her expanding clientele and catch some of the tourist dollars that blow along the highway.

Her son Eric and his wife run the Superette, and have made it a hub in the marginal mixed-use neighborhood on the edge of town, providing the usual selection of small-store fare, as well as some fresh produce and prepared food. Outside the front door is a cabinet in which donated food stuffs are left for the local homeless population to take, free of charge.

If you drive down Elk Valley, past the Superette, the first street you come to on the right is Norris. The short, tree-lined street runs past the Elk Valley Rancheria’s education building and disappears in a knot of houses belonging to tribal members. The street’s name isn’t a coincidence. The Norris family has been part of the Rancheria for decades.

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What the Heck Happened to KFUG??

As many in the community have noticed, the FM band at 101.1 megahertz is all static, and not the usual mix of static and music that would signal the low-power presence of KFUG Community Radio. What happened? Where did KFUG go? 

There is a certain amount of sorcery involved in the complicated process behind shoving an antenna into the sky and subsequently hearing a voice come out of a paper cone several miles removed. Maybe it’s the panoply of compounding variables that gives broadcasting this numinous quality, but after twenty years of radio-living, I can confidently assert what I have learned: Radio is NOT science. Sure, it incorporates wires and circuit boards and math, but really it’s witchcraft. And just as with Elphaba, this witch’s bane is water.  

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Alissia Northrup Has Concerns – In Media Res

Alissia Northrup and I pass through a room with multiple computers at parade rest and I recognize it at once, though it looks different from down here. It’s the room where the County Clerk and Registrar of Voters, Alissia, and her staff tally the votes each election night. I’m used to the perspective of the web stream, somewhere up near the margin of wall and ceiling; passing through the room at this angle feels funny, like being backstage, a kind of liminal sense that isn’t dispelled by the familiar anonymity of the conference room we enter. 

Alissia settles in a seat at the large table and I join her with my digital recorder. She has a message for Del Norte County voters. It’s written on the small piece of paper she’s holding. “I just want to tell the voters of Del Norte…” she begins. “You want me to do it now?”

Before I can answer, one of Alissia’s staff ducks a head in from behind the door. She presents a mangled mail-in ballot. “This person would like a replacement ballot,” the woman chuckles and holds the ballot up for Alissia’s official inspection. The end has been punctured repeatedly and perhaps slobbered on. “Her dog ate it.” 

“No fibbin’ on this one, huh?” Alissia laughs and leaves me to go replace the ballot. I look around the blank laminate room. The last time I was in this room I was with Jessica Cejnar-Andrews. We were interviewing Dr. Rehwaldt about why we all had to start shaking hands with our elbows. Funny how time works. 

“Sorry about that.” Alissia reappears, having successfully dealt with the canine ballot tampering, and picks up the thread of a thought she’d begun expressing on the phone earlier. “I have this…” she tells me, allowing her pause and matter-of-fact shrug to speak for her. “…for young people voting. I like to get young people volunteering at the polls. It’s good for them, but it’s good for us, it’s good for the community, seeing young people at the polls. I’ve had people say it gives them hope.” 

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Barbara Burke Loved You, Darling – In Media Res

There’s a handwritten sign on the door of the Gallery of Arts and Culture across H Street from the Post Office. Though the message it conveys is simple — a straight-forward designation of a future event’s time and place — if you peer through the glass, as I did, at the Gallery’s blank walls and empty shelves, the wastes of open cardboard boxes and bare track lighting, then the piece of yellow lined paper taped to the inside of the door tells an entire story. The note informs any interested passerby that the family of Barbara Burke will be holding an estate sale this weekend. 

Barbara passed away this past spring after a brief illness. “A brief illness” is obituary-speak for that final series of events that brings a person’s time on Earth to a close, and, as phrases go, it’s about as loaded as they come. For Barbara, it meant a growing sense of confusion, followed by a car accident serious enough to require hospitalization and rehab. While in the hospital, doctors found a pancreatic mass, which she decided — at age 84 — not to treat.

The last time I saw Barbara, she was sitting in a chair in the hallway outside her room in the assisted nursing facility. I’d been visiting someone else, and was in no way prepared to see Barbara’s swoop of preternaturally jet black hair in the institutionally gray hall. I stopped, wide-eyed. “Barbara?” At the sound of her name, Barbara looked up at me, and my heart broke a little.  

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In Media Res

It’s still dark out. The sun isn’t due up for an hour yet, but I’m already sitting in my front window watching Elk Valley Road slowly awaken. The occasional logging truck screams by in the growing light, bypassing Crescent City on the way down the hill from last year’s fire scars. In the trees all around the house – it’s called The Swamp – there are dozens, maybe hundreds of people stirring. Soon, the long slog to the recycling center or the showers at Open Door or whatever will begin. Across the street, a lone bachelor elk pauses beside the nursery, eyeing the fulgid, fertilized bounty just beyond the chain link. It looks like any other day just about to begin in the Heart of the Meth District. But I know the truth: Today, everything changes.

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