An occasional new poem will find its way here. This one is from Friday.
Old Familiar
Screaming,
she pants bellows
on the old rage
familiar in
this family where
armor is everything
Fortress
of raised voices
keeps fear at bay
makes love
shout from the distance
hoarse and forlorn.
So apart from you
I hear no words
but screaming
I want to
I love presidential politics. What can I say? The polished and positioned, pounding one another personally and otherwise as they battle for the ultimate privilege of aging rapidly before the American public. Look at GW — the man gained 20 years on his old man in the space of eight. Who needs 1.21 jiggowatts to mess with the space-time continuum?
For me, presidential politics has been a lifelong obsession. It started with Election 1988, when the formidable and knee-high Michael Dukakis went up against the elder Bush. Living in a major metropolis at the time — alright Modesto, but it's major when compared to the Redwood Empire — we got a visit from the Massachusetts governor at an inner city park.
Being the only one in my family with an interest in politics that rose above "all Democrats are commies, all Republicans are money-mongers," I walked the three miles from my house to the park to sit in a drizzle and wait an hour and a half for the tardy politician. I was 12.
He gave a decent speech, as much as I can recall. The highlight for me — and sadly, the closest I've come to presidential power — was a brief and wet handshake from Dukakis.
Maybe it was the Willie Horton ads, maybe it was the fear that riding in a tank is at least philosophically close to war and therefore dangerous — whatever the reason, the glad-hander left my palm moist with sweat. It was raining, I was already wet, and here I had to deal with wannabe presidential perspiration.
Something about that damp intimacy gave me insight into the outcome of that race ... surely no man with clammy hands could be president. What would the Russians think? His finger thus coated might slip on the Big Red Button. It seemed like a nail in the coffin to a young political neophyte.
My foretelling held true and the upstart was flogged at the polls.
Fast forward — courtesy the flex capacitor — to the present, and there's a humdinger lined up for the next few weeks. We have the two major parties struggling to find a clear nominee in a field that's actually, to my mind, offering choices for once. And it's anyone's guess how it will all turn out in these approaching primaries, much less the real contest coming up in November 2008.
And the stakes? Maybe it's a cliché to say this may be the most important presidential election in a generation, but it sure seems like that is the case.
Secretly, I guess I wish I was an Iowan, or a New Hampshirite — they get the good closeup look. And they get to shake the hands, and do the sweat test. Which of these candidates has clammy hands, and which has calluses?
Seriously. Who needs debates on the issues when you have the sweat test?
The gifts have been given, the toys unwrapped, the childish exclamations of joy or disappointment sounded in the room full of relatives that you barely ever see, with good reason. All in all, it was a good Christmas around my house — all three kids got things they wanted, and the wife wasn't too angry with her small, but tasteful, gift of jewelry.
Thinking of Christmas reminds that we still have the mess to clean up — eegads to commercialism and all its associated packaging. Where DID I put that bottle of Peppermint Schnapps?
And now we get to anticipate the next major holiday — my birthday! As of Jan. 7, I will be 31 — two years away from the Jesus year when I hopefully find God, or spirituality, or something. Either that, or I build some mound out of potatoes, ala Close Encounters, and call it good.
My wife and I were so pleased with each other, having spent the grueling hours in debate only to emerge with a name for our new baby girl that we both, well, liked: Sophia Elizabeth Stem-Faulk.
Sophia was exotic, it seemed, while not being unusual enough to make future third grade teachers stumble over the syllables during roll call. It's classy, somehow, and reminds you of spending days on a yacht in the Mediterranean, sipping Seltzer and ruminating on Picasso.
After we made the decision, we heard that somehow a few others in our small world had settled on — or at least considered — the same name, but not enough to bother us.
Since Sophia's birth, we know we've made the right decision. She is a Sophia, in the way that kids in a short time come to assume their names as an actual identity, rather than just a label. She could be nothing but Sophia Elizabeth.
But I was still disappointed to learn recently that Sophia was the most popular girl's name for 2007.
Let's just recall that my name is James, and my wife is an Amy. Together, they are about as common as can be for American kids out of the 1970s generations. Along with the Jennifers and Mikes, our names are near the top of every list of names.
Sophia, we'd hoped, would be a bit more original. Alas for that.
But truthfully, it's no real loss. Watching the little three-month-old girl watch me, weighing the facts of a sudden existence and greeting it all with a smile that might just be passing gas, I have no doubt my little girl will make a unique enough mark to emerge from the vast herd of Sophias born in 2007.
You know you're going to see them, sprouting like Eureka Reporters in the yards of Humboldt County media outlets over the next two weeks — the obligatory year-end lists. Every print media organization on the North Coast will be concocting its lists for the top stories of 2007.
But what do you think? What were the top stories of 2007? Give me your list and I'll try to get a few printed in the paper.
Some seem obvious, but others less so.
Neely eking out a victory against über-challenger Nancy Flemming? Maybe, maybe not. Bill the Chimp succumbs to old age ... probably. I mean, if it had been Bill matched up against Neely, we'd have had a new 4th District supervisor. (Where's the law stand on non-human candidates, anyway?)
Update: Alright, alright — as Hank Sims so unceremoniously points out, the Flemming/Neely race was 2006 ... but I couldn't waste the Chimp for Supervisor comparison, now could I? And everyone, bow down before the North Coast Journal for being the FIRST NEWSPAPER IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY HISTORY to do the year's top stories edition.
Wasn't that the point alluded to at top, Hank? Obligatory, get it? That's spelled U-N-O-R-I-G-I-N-A-L, not S-C-O-O-P.
Update No. 2: And notice, if you will, how the NC Journal barely mentions the indictments of Zanotti and Douglas in their list (cough: What were you smoking, Hank?) They actually give the "trail uprising" precedence over the only indictment of commanding officers EVER.
Occasionally, even the jaded journalist veteran of Humboldt County can be shocked by the level to which this community is divided.
On two separate recent occasions, once in a liquor store — yes, buying liquor — and once outside the Humboldt County Courthouse chronicling on video the Men-in-Blue arraignment, I happened to overhear comments made by passers-by that exposed some ugly, but unfortunately widespread, ill will.
At the unnamed liquor well, a woman who looked like she'd slobbered on the smoking end of a meth pipe for going on a decade took great pleasure in the recent breakout of "Baywood Disease."
The Aristocracy, she said, finally taking it where they deserved.
She used other words, most of them consisting of one syllable and four letters, but the point was the same.
Dealing day in and day out with the dregs like myself who wander in to accommodate various addictions, she still took delicious and frightening pleasure in the irony of country clubbers losing their stomachs on their wingtips. For days. In excruciating agony.
The woman is apparently unaware that Baywood is hardly a five-star kind of paradise. It lacks little in the way of amenities, sure, but it also plays host to a number of functions whose participants can hardly be called the social elite ... the Northern California Association of Non-Profits, for example, is not exactly made up of Skull-and-Bones graduates.
The other comment was actually made to me, as throngs of cops made their supportive pilgrimage to the courtroom, for once in defense of suspects.
A man, dressed in blue collar jeans and flannel and looking as if he was tired of everything governmental, uttered a coarse line to me as he passed in the wake of the police train.
"Careful around those guys — they'll shoot you soon as look at you," he said, gesturing toward the officers.
Now there's a vote of confidence from John Q. Public.
I doubt the guy is representative of the greater Eureka area's collective opinion, but just to know that such opinions exist, sucks.
Police agencies are made of the same stuff the make up newspapers, namely people. Which, in translation, means there are some good and bad people filling the four walls of the Eureka Police Department. That's just reality. And whether it was a mistake of criminal proportions to send in cops when they did with Cheri Lyn Moore is now something a jury will decide.
But I have little doubt that the intentions of Douglas and Zanotti were to protect the public, and not riddle an addled woman full of holes.
Platitudes, generalities, smokescreens, half-truths — the state of the public's mood and education in Humboldt County? Hell, if that's the case, it just means we in the media need to do a better job of clearing the air. And, even more importantly, get people to read the newspaper (or Web site) when we already do.
It's clear the libertarian maverick and 2nd District Supervisor Roger Rodoni has made some waves during his tenure, so much so that he's now facing two challengers: One from Southern Humboldt, which in some ways feels neglected by Rodoni; and another from Fortuna, which is obviously Rodoni's strongest base of support.
A question has to be asked, however. Since both challengers appear to come from the left of Rodoni — Estelle Fennell and Clendenen are hardly right-wingers — will the Rodoni opposition effectively silence itself? If the left-of-center vote is divided among two candidates, shouldn't that bode well for the Rancher?
A similar effect seems to have gone a long way recently in preserving the job of Harbor Commissioner Roy Curless. And, as we already know, both Curless and Rodoni look damn spanky in cowboy hats. Maybe that's the real secret behind Humboldt County electoral success, at least south of what some might consider Humboldt County's cultural Mason-Dixon Line.
Where would you put that line? I'm thinking somewhere south of Fields Landing, and north of Loleta. College of the Redwoods, maybe?
The feud between law enforcement agencies, the blue collar blue suits, and District Attorney Paul Gallegos has taken many twists and turns over the years — from cops backing the recall and putting up a cop-friendly candidate in Worth Dikeman to Galleos allegedly skipping out on inter-departmental meetings because, rumor had it, the surf was up.
I doubt much of what has been rumored is true, but it makes for interesting watercooler discussions. And it also makes for an even more complicated situation, now that charges have been brought against former Chief Dave Douglas and Lt. Zanotti of the Eureka Police Department. Gallegos, it now appears, will even try the case himself.
My questions are as follows: Do any of you believe the charges are fueled by the supposed feud, even though the Grand Jury technically made the decision? And, do you think Gallegos' taking the reins of the prosecution makes the defendants nervous, or gleeful at the chance to take on the surfer DA in court?
It's been many moons since the Bully Pulpit published what was at one time a weekly rant. Many are the reasons for this — a new job (bed weditor, if you haven't heard), a new baby, and a realization that an opinion column can greatly complicate one's ability to cover a beat, etc.
But now, under cover of the World Wide Web, I'm back. As an editor, it's OK for me to have an opinion, and it's OK for me to make fun of public officials, and it's OK to think I'm better that everyone else.
I'm OK, you're OK, so let's blog.
My first topic — the newspaper war. A few of us a the old T-S have weathered virtually all of the Arkley storm. John Driscoll, Chris Durant and myself were here when the A-Team first launched their assault on the large if unsightly ramparts of the Times-Standard building. Others, like Kim Wear, arrived soon after, and have made themselves invaluable in the fight.
Rumor has it that the war was started because the T-S didn't endorse Cherie Arkley for mayor. While that may have been a factor, I had heard long before the endorsement was announced that there was a well-to-do man around who was out to start his own newspaper and put the T-S out of business.
Some five years later, that newspaper started, run a well-funded assault that at this point seems to have failed utterly. We are stronger for it. I'll make a bold claim here — we are the best newsroom this newspaper has had in 20 years, due to the competition, and the bloodthirst that goes along with it. Don't get me wrong — we have our detractors, and we have our mistakes. But we work hard, pursue the truth, pursue innovation, and we get along in the process. No, maybe we don't write the long-winded and sometimes pretty sentences of the local alternative weekly, and we don't have color photographs on every page; but we do have truth-seekers on our staff, and we ask the right questions, and we keep asking them. Besides all of that, we have personality, and we have fun.
FYI, folks — there's not much more you can ask for in a small local paper.
Now while it can be said that we've effectively won the war, with that Other Paper being ratcheted down to five days a week, the truth is we like the feeling of competition. So the urge to compete and win engenders in us a generosity of spirit that tells us they're not dead. They may be breathing heavy, they may be limping along under the full weight of the sub-prime mortgage market, and they may be listing even farther to the right in a community located smack dab in the middle of what is effectively the Left Coast, but in our eyes they're still the over-funded and overly self-righteous rag that threatens to take away all of our jobs. Such thinking keeps our minds in the game.