Reader, and frequent commenter, Bolithio, maintains a photo blog which showcases beautiful places he’s seen in his day job as a forester. Almost every photo post contains a mini lesson on the forest.

The tree in this week’s Featured Photo, found in the Middle Mad River area, occasioned this explanation, 

…there are “open grown” Douglas-fir trees, which are trees that grow with little to no neighboring trees. They get full sun and develop full crowns that produce large limbs from the top to bottom. There is also a genetic variation among Douglas-fir that causes the lower limbs of some trees to grow excessively large limbs, often forming mini trees themselves. These are called chandeliers.

For an explanation on why our oaks forests are disappearing and being replaced with Douglas fir go to this post.  

Bolithio’s Nooks and Crannies blog offers glimpses into the private backlands of Humboldt with succinct explanations of the phenomena found there.

If you would like to have a photo featured on  LoCO send a link or a photo to mskymkemp@gmail.com. Include the name of the photographer and a website if it exists. A short bio of the photographer, a description of when and where the photo was taken. (Remember, it needs to have been taken in Humboldt.)

“One of my favorite places to sit, read, and breath,” writes Monika Ballew of this week’s Featured Photo. “Trinidad is so beautiful you can’t take a bad picture. I like to spend time on Sundays on the little beach by the pier.  I can let my dog run around while I search for old bottles, beach glass, and driftwood.”

Ballew, who works in Eureka at Petco, enjoys the time on the beach but she also collects items that she uses to create baskets and wreaths.  She also creates jewelry with stones and glass.

To offer submissions for LoCO’s Featured Photo, send an email to mskymkemp@gmail.com.

Going to Arts Alive? Do not miss River As Home, opening this weekend at the Morris Graves Museum of Art. Curated by Bob Benson, dozens of multi-generational artists contributed to the museum’s first all-Native exhibit. 

Two years in the making and ten years in the dreaming, it marks an artistic milestone for the museum as well as a bucket-list moment for project coordinator Chag Lowry.

The exhibit spans environmental, traditional, and modern art themes. The first thing you see when you walk in is an enormous dugout canoe beneath a boarded roof, locking in the “River As Home” theme. 

“Everything we do is connected to art. The canoes, the spoons, the regalia… it’s all just made with beauty,” said contributor Amos Tripp. “There’s no ‘Let’s just do it and get it done’, it’s always ‘Let’s do it in a really beautiful way.”

River As Home runs February 2 through March 24.

After Earth was partially filmed this spring in Humboldt.

Previously: After Earth Filming Starts

Click here to learn more and back this project!

“In Humboldt County, everyone has sticky stuff on their fingers…Every business in this county relies on the marijuana business,” proclaims a subject in One Good Year, a new documentary nearing completion that is based on the cannabis growers of this area. To outsiders and, even to some who live here, the scope of the marijuana business in this community is unimaginable. Local documentary maker, Mikal Jakubal, examines that world by moving intimately through the lives of four local marijuana farmers (see the trailer above.)

Jakubal, who in addition to film-making owns a nursery, is a volunteer firefighter, and writes a blog in Humboldt County, began production on One Good Year in February of 2010—just in time for Prop. 19 which attempted to legalize marijuana in California.  He followed his subjects through their growing season and through the political upheavals that Prop. 19 brought.  In the process he tells the story of many in Humboldt County.

He explains,

Humboldt pot farmers maintain one of the last remaining small farming economies in the country, the last of a tradition where people working the land with their hands could still sustain themselves and their families. This is why we have to show the world the real face of pot farming. Otherwise, when the inevitable regulation or legalization happens, we’ll be excluded by laws based in the paranoid public perception of pot farming as a dangerous, gangster activity. As the marijuana economy moves mainstream, we need to keep it democratic and accessible to farmers at any scale. I think my film will go a long way toward that end by influencing public perception in a positive way.

According to Jakubal, the filming is long done. He is now working with an editor. However, he needs money for the next stage.  He’s put his project on the innovative Kickstarter funding platform which helps creative people gather support for their work.  The creators, in this case Jakubal, set a funding goal and a deadline.  Then people pledge to support at various levels and in return are promised rewards for different levels of funding.  (Here’s more details of how Kickstarter works.)

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