Press release from the Humboldt Arts Council:

Morris, or lovingly known as Morrie, the ceramic banana slug created for the 2024 Eureka Street Art Festival by local artists Shannon Sullivan and Jessica Swan, was brazenly stolen from the Melvin Schuler Sculpture Garden at the Morris Graves Museum of Art the night of November 2nd following Arts Alive.

After welcoming over 800 community members to the monthly celebration of the arts and town art walk, Humboldt Arts Council staff locked up and said goodnight to Morris. Sometime between 9 p.m. and 11 a.m. Sunday morning, the thief(s) cut the lock and chain that secures the Sculpture Garden gate and pried Morris from his post where he greets passersby’s on the Seventh Street side of the MGMA.

“We are devastated by the theft of our beloved Morris the Slug. Art is meant to connect the community and bring us together. In such a divided time it is art that can unite us, and that is what Morris was intended to do.” Says Jemima Harr, Executive Director-Curator of the Humboldt Arts Council.

HAC Staff are working closely with the Eureka Police Department and ask the public’s assistance in keeping an eye out and an ear open to any known clues of where Morris the Slug might be or who might have taken off with him.

Just next week the MGMA was planning to welcome local students on a field trip to view Morris, and it will be very unfortunate to tell the young artists that Morris is missing. “Public art is meant to be freely accessible to all, and it is so disheartening that someone would intentionally take it away from the community,” says Harr.

Cal Poly Humboldt University Police Department release:

The University Police Department (UPD) is seeking the public’s assistance in an ongoing investigation into incidents of vandalism that occurred on campus Saturday, November 2, 2024 at approximately 2:15 am. The incidents involve significant property damage to Siemens Hall and the Forbes Gym. The police department is seeking information that could lead to the identification of those responsible.

The Police Department is actively reviewing surveillance footage and following up on leads. However, any additional information from the public could be critical in identifying suspects. Anyone with information is urged to contact the University Police Department at 707-826-5555 or submit a tip though the Rave Guardian (https://www.humboldt.edu/basic-needs/safety) mobile app.  Rave Guardian is available on the Apple Store and Google Play Store apps. 

Tips can remain anonymous. UPD would like to thank the community in advance for any assistance in this matter

Let’s assume you hate the results of the upcoming Presidential election. Yes, I know there’s a possibility we may not know the outcome Tuesday night. But go with me on this…

The winner of the Electoral College is not the one you voted for. Your blood pressure skyrockets. Your bags are packed to move to a remote island in the middle of the ocean. You’re ready to abandon every investment you’ve ever owned and sit in cash ‘til kingdom come.

Before you feel all those things, I want you to hear three key points from me today.

#1 Compound interest is magical, but it only holds its power if it’s allowed to compound.

Take a look at the chart above.¹ Some of those events are elected Presidents that you may have an allergic reaction to. Some of those crises were objectively bad and caused economic and human suffering.

Still, here’s the bottom line: investing $10,000 in 1970 in the S&P 500—the stock market index of the largest companies in America—grew to $2,645,998 by 2024.

If you tried to time the dips over that time frame, selling on the ugliness of each particular crisis or the elections you didn’t like, how would you have known when to get back in and buy?

#2 Timing the market is super hard.

If you miss out on the best days of the market, you’ll likely face much lower investment returns.²

Visual Capitalist shows that if you had invested $10,000 in 2003 and missed the best 60 days of the market in that 20-year time frame, you would only have $4,205 instead of $64,844. 

Bummer, right?

Lest you think you won’t miss the best days of the market because you’ll only be in when they’re at their best, you need to understand something—most of the market’s best days over the last few decades have been during bad bear markets. Here’s the chart:

This supports the wise words of Warren Buffett’s late right-hand man Charlie Munger, “The first rule of compounding is to never interrupt it unnecessarily.”³

#3 Be cautious about where you get your investment advice from and how you make investment decisions.

You probably shouldn’t take investment advice from people who don’t know your financial situation or people who say they know investing but may not face any consequences for what they say.

This means you may need to reconsider making investment decisions based on financial television, your social media feed, your favorite YouTube channel, or the political friend you’re texting on Election Night.

Here’s the kicker: Even the things I say here are general investment principles, not personal investment advice. There may be reasons why you should take various actions in your investment portfolio, but who is in the White House should not be the exclusive one. After all, investment portfolios and financial plans aren’t just about stocks anyway.

“This time is different,” you might say. Maybe. But that phrase is one of the most dangerous sentences that can come out of an investors mouth. It can be used to justify a decision that feels great in the present but looks foolish in hindsight. As one trader put it, “It can be very expensive to try to convince the markets you are right.” Or in the piercing words of comedian Rick Gervais on The View: “Just ‘cause you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right.”

This is not a forecast that the stock market will perform a certain way based on the election outcome. It’s simply a reminder to be careful letting America’s decision about the 2024 Presidential election be the decisive moment of your financial planning future.

# # #

Sources:

• 1 First Trust. First Quarter 2024 Research Kit. Accessed online: https://www.ftportfolios.com/Commentary/Insights/2024/4/1/markets-in-perspective-client-resource-kit–first-quarter-2024
• 2 “Timing the Market: Why It’s So Hard, in One Chart” by Dorothy Neufeld and Miranda Smith. Accessed online: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-timing-the-market/
• 3 Quoted by financial author Morgan Housel on October 8, 2018. Accessed online: https://x.com/morganhousel/status/1049392552175124481?lang=en

Brandon Stockman has been a Wealth Advisor licensed with the Series 7 and 66 since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. He has the privilege of helping manage accounts throughout the United States and works in the Fortuna office of Johnson Wealth Management. You can sign up for his weekly newsletter on investing and financial education or subscribe to his YouTube channel. Securities and advisory services offered through Prospera Financial Services, Inc. | Member FINRA, SIPC. This should not be considered tax, legal, or investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

###

Jonah looked at the Assyrians with disgust and hatred, believing Israel was the home of God’s chosen people and everyone else was secondary. Jonah’s rebellion to God’s ask wasn’t simply pride for one’s country. Nineveh represented the worst of the Assyrians and their army. They were viciously violent and oppressively unjust. They would starve their enemies, flay the surrounding nation’s leaders alive, behead their victims and force the families to parade their loved ones around the city. This nation did horrific things to Israel, and it’s extremely likely Jonah had loved ones who were massacred by this nation. For God to show mercy and compassion to Nineveh would make Jonah feel like there was a breach in God’s covenantal fidelity and promise with Israel. This “word of the Lord” would have felt like God was sleeping with the enemy and untrustworthy. For Jonah to preach this five-word sermon probably felt like he was party to God’s betrayal, abandonment, treason against Israel.

But God wouldn’t send mercy to these people, right? They had to be outside of God’s love because they weren’t part of the nation of Israel. There was deep nationalism and religious superiority in Jonah’s heart. The justified prejudice and racism swimming through Chapter Four reminds me a lot of our own American exceptionalism, and being blessed by God as a “Godly nation.” The America-first mentality has dictated and influenced the American Church and has seemed to cause many Christians to forget that our allegiance isn’t to a country, but to the way of Jesus Christ. This doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of your country or thankful to be an American, but God is global. He loves the whole world and we must live likewise.

The message God gave to Jonah was true. Jonah said it rightly, but didn’t understand it rightly. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

The word, “overthrown” is used in different ways and has several different meanings — just like we can use the word “hot” to mean different things: “the pan is hot” or “that person is hot.” (Both can burn you, but not in the same way.)

The word for “overthrown” is “hapak,” which has three different meanings seen in three different passages of Scripture.

The first is from the book of Hosea, where God talks about Israel being like baked bread that hasn’t been “hapak,” or turned over. One side is raw and the other is burnt.

The second is from Lamentations 4:6, where God says “The sin of my people is greater than Sodom, which was ‘hapak’ in a moment without a hand to help”. This means “overthrown” or “destroyed,” which is probably the sense of the term Jonah intended.

The third is from Psalm 30:11, where God has “hapak” my grief into dancing. This means to change or transform.

When the word of the Lord came to Jonah to bring to Nineveh, Jonah expected destruction when the Lord expected transformation.

So Jonah leaves Nineveh, travels east outside the city and sets up a shelter to camp in so he can watch with glee while the city gets destroyed, since that’s the word he got from the Lord. And I wonder if, while he was sitting there, he became more and more irritable as the days passed him by. As he’s waiting to watch the city burn, did he grow more frustrated and angry day by day, festering in the heat?

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. Jonah 4:1

In Hebrew, this is translated as: Jonah began to break apart from burning anger.

His heat grew as the heat of the day grew, and it was breaking him apart. He was obsessed and fully focused on his ideal for the city. His nationalism grew stronger while his theology weakened.

The sun blazed on his head. The text tells of a plant growing up and providing him with shade, but a worm came and killed the plant at the root, leaving Jonah in his discomfort and anger once again. Anger is often a facade for control and power. Holding onto anger makes us believe we have some control, and I wonder if Jonah believed he could sway God with his anger and rage – he was so angry he wanted to die. It was all he could see and it consumed him like the worm consumed the plant.

There are types of anger that tell us something is wrong, moving us to help stand against injustice. We even see God angry at sin because of the pain it brings people and this world. The Psalmist wrote that “When you are angry, do not sin,” meaning, don’t let your anger rule over you or cause you to harm others. Don’t make an idol out of your anger.

Anger and self-pity are closely related companions, feeding off each other, justifying behavior and perpetuating blame. When everything is someone else’s fault, I never have to take responsibility. And when God is to blame, for the hot sun and the worm in the plant and whatever else, then I’m off the hook. When Jonah yelled about his anger at God’s compassion, he spoke about himself egocentrically by saying “I” or “my” nine times, because he knew what his enemies deserved and God, obviously, had it wrong.

So he sets up a shelter outside the city to prove God wrong.

There’s a real temptation to set up a shelter outside our enemy’s metaphorical house, to watch what they have coming – your ex’s house, or the house those who purposefully ignored you throughout high school. You’re just waiting with glee for that hard season — a failing career, a loss in resources. Or we set up shelters on social media, waiting for news to come out about someone’s tax returns or some scandal, that’s just enough cause to justify your anger or hatred?

I am so angry I wish I were dead, Jonah said.

Jonah preached destruction over Nineveh when God desired transformation. Hapak. God always desires mercy and love when we often desire retaliation and resentment.

The book of Jonah ends with a question and without an answer. And as annoying as this is, it feels invitational and open-ended. Within this ancient wisdom, I’m invited to see my own propensity for self-pity, idolatrous belief in America First, and misguided hope in a political party.

I’m invited to combat any deep disappointment or justified anger with gratitude, and joy where my hope isn’t in a president or my enemies getting what I believe they deserve. My hope is in a God who is present even when I’m being a selfish turd, and who gently asks me the same question asked to Jonah: “Shouldn’t I have compassion on those you seem to hate?”

###

It’s that time of year again, folks! Sunday marks the end of daylight saving time and the return to standard time, which means you should set your clocks and other time-telling devices back one hour before you go to bed tonight. The time change will take place at 2 a.m.

The good news: “Falling back” means you’ll get an extra hour of sleep. The bad news: Shorter days and, for some, the onset of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of depression that occurs during the fall and winter from a lack of natural light.

The twice-annual practice of changing clocks has caused controversy in the United States since it was adopted in 1918. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 established start and end dates for daylight saving time in the U.S. All states but two – Hawaii and Arizona (excluding the Navajo Nation) – observe daylight saving time. Last year, at least 29 states considered legislation related to daylight saving time. 

Many of our readers will recall in November 2018 when California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 7, which authorized the state legislature to change daylight saving time, either by abolishing it or establishing it year-round. However, doing so would require a two-thirds majority of the state Assembly and Senate, as well as the Governor’s signature, and that has yet to happen. 

At least we can all look forward to a nice sleep tonight, right? 

###

UPDATE, TUESDAY MORNING:

“Yes on F” spokesperson Gail Rymer shared the following statement in response to the recent mailers:

All statements printed in a recent YES ON MEASURE F direct mail piece and press release were from recorded testimony given at public Eureka City Council hearings over the past few years. The testimony is the essence of public record. These quotes were selected to illustrate the long-term, ongoing pleas to the council over the need to address housing and parking together, particularly in the context of helping Old Town and Downtown Eureka businesses survive. 

The specific excerpts of testimony quoted – which are publicly available on the city’s website of council meeting recordings – showed members of the public and the business community appealing to the council over agenda items directly related to the city’s ill-advised plans to remove public parking lots and erect new housing structures. 

The Measure F campaign sought to stress the goals of Measure F: to provide housing and to preserve the parking our businesses need to survive.

###

UPDATE, SUNDAY MORNING: The final phase of the Yes on F campaign continues to go full troll-mode, as Measure F supporters go into the archive to pull out-of-context quotes from non-supporters of the initiative to hint that they actually are supporters of the initiative … or should be!

This time Roy Gomez, whose candidacy for Third District Supervisor flamed out in spectacular fashion in the spring, wields Facebook to attempt a gotcha! on Eureka Mayor Kim Bergel:

Of course, not all people who live in a place live in that place with a family. Not to be a buzzkill. 

— Hank Sims

###

###

With just three days until Election Day, the “Yes on F - Housing for All” campaign is pulling out all the stops to secure a win at the ballot box. 

In its latest round of glossy mailers, the “Yes on F” campaign used half a dozen out-of-context quotes from disgruntled Old Town and Downtown business owners as apparent endorsements for the ballot measure. However, most of the quotes printed in the mailer are sourced from public comment at a Eureka City Council meeting that took place more than two years ago, long before any version of Measure F had been made public.

Humboldt Bay Coffee Company owner Luci Ramirez took to Instagram and Facebook on Friday to call out the “Yes on F” campaign for using something she said “about a very specific topic … that impacted [her] employees” at a February 2022 Eureka Council meeting for “political gain.”

The “specific topic” Ramirez was referring to did have to do with parking limitations in Old Town, but she said the issue was resolved when the city started offering parking permits for people. “[It’s] been a game changer,” she said. “Employees no longer have to play musical cars every 2 hours.”

Ramirez also said she was “never contacted about the measure” by the “Yes on F” campaign, adding that she would have “never endorsed it.”

The “Yes on F” campaign also used an out-of-context quote from Greg Gehr, executive director of the Northern California Indian Development Council and managing partner for the Carson Block Building Property, in a recent press release. His quote, from another February 2022 city council meeting, states: “[This] will have a devastating effect on the economy, the business services, retail businesses, residents and general public in using the old town and downtown area that we worked so hard to restore,” though it doesn’t specify what “this” is. 

Reached for comment via text message, Gehr told the Outpost that he was on the board of Eureka Main Street at the time and that the group was speaking out against the city’s plans to turn the two parking lots behind Lost Coast Brewery into the EaRTH Center, a mass transit hub and housing development.

Asked whether he supported Measure F, Gehr said, “I can only speak as myself, not as an official representative of the corporation, but I think the tagline that I’ve seen around town really says it all – ‘it’s confusing for a reason.’”

The Outpost emailed “Yes on F” spokesperson Gail Rymer for additional comment on the matter. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

###

We’ve got links to our previous Measure F coverage in this post. To read the official arguments for and against the measure, as well as the Eureka city attorney’s impartial analysis, click here. Election Day is Nov. 5.

###

PREVIOUSLY:

• Ballot Battles, Lawsuits and a Ticked-Off Millionaire: CalMatters on Eureka’s Parking Lot Wars
• Security National Has Spent $710,645 and Counting on Measure F, the ‘Housing for All’ Initiative
• Eureka City Schools’ Deal With a Mystery Developer for the Jacobs Campus is Dead
• Anonymous AMG Communities Confirms Death of Jacobs Campus Deal, Vows to Try Again After Election Results
• Security National Just Dropped Another $286K Into Measure F, Bringing Its Total Spending to Nearly $1M
• How Will the Collapse of the Jacobs Campus Deal Impact Measure F? It Won’t, Backers Insist.
• What’s Next for the Jacobs Campus? The Eureka City Schools Board of Trustees Will Consider Five Options at Thursday’s Meeting
• Humboldt Progressive Democrats Endorse Candidates in Arcata, Eureka City Council Races, Urge ‘No’ Vote on Measure F
• Measure F Could Wreak Legal and Financial Havoc on Eureka, California Housing Defense Fund Warns
• With $1.15M From Security National, Measure F is Now the Most Expensive Ballot Initiative in Eureka History
• THE ECONEWS REPORT: What If Measure F Passes?
• The Measure F Campaign Called Him a Criminal and a Cheat. He Has a Different Story to Tell.
• GUEST OPINION: It’s Unfair That Media Coverage Doesn’t Note That Measure F Would Easily Solve All of Eureka’s Most Pressing Problems, Including Housing and Parking and the Economy
• How the Measure F Campaign is Going
• Several Dozen ‘Housing for All’ Signs Illegally Places on Telephone Poles Around Town Over the Weekend
• Would Measure F Actually Preserve Eureka’s Downtown Parking? Nope, State Law Would Override It, Staff Says

Should we turn California trees into wood pellets to be burned in foreign power plants? That’s the proposal being brought forward by Golden State Natural Resources (GSNR), a nonprofit organization formed by Rural County Representatives of California and Golden State Finance Authority. GSNR has just released their draft environmental impact report for the project, which proposed two wood pellet factories (one in Lassen County and another in Tuolumne) that will draw biomass from roughly a 100 mile radius around the plant. Those factories will turn woody biomass into pellets, which will be shipped by rail to Stockton where the pellets will be loaded onto ocean-going ships to be delivered, likely to foreign power plants where they will be burned for energy.

What’s Humboldt’s connection? Humboldt County’s own Supervisor Rex Bohn sits on the Board of Directors for GSNR and biomass from Humboldt may end up be turned into wood pellets.

This proposal has drawn concern from environmental groups worried about the greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and impacts to forest health from the project. Nick Joslin of the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center and Rita Vaughn Frost of the Natural Resources Defense Council join the show to discuss their concerns with the project.