(AUDIO) Dave Holper on KHUM

Over 23 years as an English professor at College of the Redwoods, Dave Holper poured his passion for poetry, literature and language into his students. Since his retirement from that role a few years back, he’s enjoyed the freedom to pour himself into his writing and has managed to churn out four books.  

His latest output, The Church of the Very Last Chance, is a “satirical commentary on our materialistic global society and the collective madness we endure at its hands.” On Tuesday morning, Holper stopped by KHUM radio to chat with morning DJ Toby Tullis about his latest work and to promote his appearance as the featured writer at A Reason to Listen’s next event, taking place at the Septentrio Barrel Room on Feb. 6 at 7 p.m. Tune in above! 

Press release from the Arcata Police Department:

On February 3, 2025, around 11:15 P.M. units from the Arcata Fire District, Blue Lake Fire Department, Humboldt Bay Fire, Samoa Fire Department, and Cal Fire were dispatched to a reported structure fire at a multi-family residential complex in the 2500 Block of Chestnut Place in Arcata. The initial dispatch reported that there was a possibility of subjects trapped in a multi-unit apartment building.

Arcata Fire and Arcata Police units arrived on scene to find heavy fire throughout a two-story duplex townhouse type building.

Crews immediately secured a water supply began attacking the fire and searching for victims.

Fire personnel had the fire controlled in about 30 minutes. Upon achieving fire control, fire personnel searched the apartment involved where three deceased victims were located.

On scene Arcata Police officers were advised of the situation. Arcata Police assumed control of the scene and initiated investigation protocols.

Arcata Fire requested response from the Humboldt County Fire-Arson Investigation Unit. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, however, it does not appear suspicious at this time.

Arcata Fire would also like to thank the Fieldbrook Fire Department and Westhaven Fire Department for covering the Arcata Fire District during the incident.

Information related to the identity of the victims is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

This incident is a tragedy for the family involved. Arcata Fire and the Arcata Police Department encourages the community to keep the family in their thoughts.

###

The California Highway Patrol has issued a Feather Alert due to the disappearance of 22-year-old Marian Robinson. 

More info from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office below:

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office needs the public’s help to locate missing person Marian Robinson, 22, of Scotia. Marian is believed to be missing under unknown circumstances.

Marian was reported missing by a family member on Feb. 3 at about 6:20 p.m. after she failed to return from Loleta. She was last seen on Jan. 29 by an employee at the Humboldt Bay Inn, who contacted the Eureka Police Department for a welfare check on her, but Marian left the area northbound on foot before law enforcement arrived. 

A Feather Alert was requested by HCSO and approved by the California Highway Patrol. Marian is described as a native American female, 5’ 2”, weighing 110 lbs., with brown hair and brown eyes. She is known by family to often wear a hoodie and leggings. She is an affiliated tribal member with the Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria. 

Anyone with information for the Sheriff’s Office regarding Marian Robinson’s possible whereabouts should call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251.

As communities up and down California ban homeless encampments, one Bay Area city is trying to go a step further.

The East Bay city of Fremont is set to vote on a new ordinance that would make it illegal to camp on any street or sidewalk, in any park or on any other public property. But, in an apparent California first, it also would make anyone “causing, permitting, aiding, abetting or concealing” an illegal encampment guilty of a misdemeanor – and possibly subject to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

That unusual prohibition — the latest in a series of crackdowns by communities following a Supreme Court decision last summer — has alarmed activists who worry it could be used against aid workers who provide services to people living in encampments. While Fremont Mayor Raj Salwan told CalMatters that police won’t target outreach workers handing out food and clothing, the ordinance doesn’t specify what qualifies as “aiding, abetting or concealing.”

Experts say the city could enforce the same ordinance against ordinary citizens in contact with what the ordinance defines as an illegal homeless encampment.

The broad language has left Vivian Wan, CEO of Abode Services, “very fearful,” she said. As the city’s primary nonprofit homeless services provider, Abode regularly sends outreach workers into encampments to help people sign up for housing and shelter, pass out information about food pantries and other services, hand out coats during cold spells, and more.

“The job’s hard enough,” Wan said. “I can’t imagine doing the hard work that’s both physically and emotionally draining and then also have to be worried about your own legal liability. It’s incredibly frustrating.”

Fremont’s proposed ordinance, which passed an initial city council vote 4-2 and is set for a final vote on Feb. 11, is part of a recent statewide trend toward more punitive anti-homelessness measures. Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court in Grants Pass v. Johnson ruled cities can ban camping on all public property, even if they have no shelter beds available. Since then, more than two dozen California cities and counties have passed new measures banning camps or limiting where people can camp, brought back previously unenforced ordinances, or updated existing camping ordinances to make them more punitive.

In December, during the first meeting of Fremont’s newly elected City Council, more than a dozen people spoke out against the proposed camping ban during a lengthy public comment period, saying it would be immoral to criminalize people for having no home. Just three people spoke in favor of the ordinance, urging council members to take residents’ safety into consideration and respect the rights of taxpayers who expect to be able to use the public spaces they pay for.

Councilmember Raymond Liu expressed a similar opinion before voting in favor of the ordinance.

“I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and tell me that they don’t feel safe using our parks or our libraries because of the amount of encampments nearby,” he said.

In some parts of California, enforcement is going beyond the people who live within an encampment. In September, local journalist Yesica Prado was arrested in Oakland while documenting the city’s removal of a homeless encampment. The year before, Oakland made it a misdemeanor for someone to fail to leave a designated “safe work zone,” which can include the area around an encampment cleanup.

Civil rights watchdogs – and even the feds – have pushed back when they’ve felt cities have gone too far.

Los Angeles’ ordinance banning the storage of private property in a public area, which is often used to cite unhoused people, also makes it a misdemeanor to “willfully resist, delay or obstruct” a city employee from taking down a tent or removing other property. Last fall, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California sent a letter to the Los Angeles Police Department accusing their officers of wrongfully threatening L.A. Taco reporter Lexis-Olivier Ray with arrest under that ordinance as he documented encampment removals.

“The job’s hard enough. I can’t imagine doing the hard work that’s both physically and emotionally draining and then also have to be worried about your own legal liability. It’s incredibly frustrating.”
— Vivian Wan, CEO, Abode services

The religious organization Micah’s Way sued in 2023 after the city of Santa Ana banned it from serving food to unhoused people. The federal Justice Department weighed in on behalf of Micah’s Way, saying distributing food could be a protected religious exercise under federal civil rights laws. The case then settled, and the city agreed to allow Micah’s Way to continue serving food.

Would the aiding-and-abetting clause in Fremont’s ordinance stand up in court?

“It’s really going to depend on how it’s applied,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition. The First Amendment right to freedom of expression doesn’t guarantee someone a right to camp in a public place, nor does it guarantee a person a right to “aid and abet” an illegal camp. But it all comes down to how the police decide what qualifies as aiding and abetting, Loy said.

Mayor Salwan told CalMatters that the city would use the aiding-and-abetting clause against people who help build illegal structures at encampments.

“Some individuals come kind of like vigilanties,” he said. “They want to start building these structures for the unhoused that are unsafe. Then this provision would come in.”

Police wouldn’t arrest someone under the new ordinance merely for giving an unhoused person a tent, Salwan said.

But what if that activist helps that person pitch the tent?

“That’s a good question,” Salwan said. “I think we may have to seek clarification from the city attorney.”

CalMatters posed that question to the city attorney’s office. The office responded, via spokesperson Justin Berton, that a person who helps someone set up a tent could be subject to enforcement.

To Wan and other activists, Salwan’s words are hardly reassuring. They fear that no matter what the mayor says, the language in the ordinance is so broad that it will give police the ability to come down on activists and aid workers at their discretion.

The legal definition of aiding and abetting is far-reaching, and can apply to anyone who knowingly helps facilitate a crime. That means it will be up to Fremont police to decide whether an individual outreach worker at a camp should be cited or arrested, said Andrea Henson, an attorney who serves as executive director and legal counsel for Berkeley nonprofit Where do we Go?

Henson and other experts interviewed by CalMatters had never before come across an aiding-and-abetting clause in a California ordinance regulating or banning homeless encampments.

“I think a lot of attorneys who assist and defend the unhoused are watching this,” Henson said. “No one’s seen this.”

Salwan said he’s open to making the proposed aiding-and-abetting clause more specific.

“I’m willing to consider tweaks in our language to make sure we address the concerns,” he said.

Among Wan’s biggest concerns is that police will use the proposed ordinance to try to pressure her outreach workers into disclosing where encampments are located. The last thing her team wants to do is help police displace, cite or arrest their clients, Wan said. But if their clients believe that’s a possibility, they may stop trusting them and accepting their help, she said.

“Absolutely not,” Salwan said when asked if that could happen. “We’ve had a great relationship with all of our nonprofits. We’re not trying to get into all that.”

If the ordinance passes, Wan hopes to form an agreement with the city that exempts her staff from the aiding-and-abetting clause.

“I think a lot of attorneys who assist and defend the unhoused are watching this. No one’s seen this.”
— Andrea Henson, executive director, Where do We Go?

If they can’t, she would consider cutting back on outreach. Wan also worries the ordinance would make it harder to recruit new outreach workers – something Abode and other nonprofits throughout the state already struggle with, thanks to the low pay and the grueling and often frustrating work.

Eve Garrow, a senior policy analyst and advocate for the ACLU of Southern California, worries the aiding-and-abetting clause will make it even harder for unhoused people to get help.

“I think it will, if it passes, put a chill on any type of humanitarian aid or help that local residents would otherwise be providing to people who are unhoused and unsheltered,” said Garrow, who was alarmed when she heard about the proposed ordinance from a Fremont resident.

Sister Elaine Sanchez of the Fremont-based Sisters of the Holy Family is adamant that the proposed ordinance won’t stop her from helping her homeless neighbors.

“I figure if I’m going to be arrested for something,” she said, “it’s going to be for doing something that I feel is helping people in need.”

###

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

MacKira Linn Faith Farris joined the Angels in heaven on October 15, 2024.

###

The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Mackira Farris’ loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

The kind and loving Mike Chamberlain passed away, unexpectedly, due to complications from a fall. His great spirit and kind smile will be missed by those who knew and loved him. He lived a free and adventurous, fiercely independent, life.

Born to Frank and Ruth Chamberlain, he and his brother, Larry, were raised in El Segundo. He attended UCLA, the University of Alaska and the University of Hawaii, earning a degree in marine biology and a teaching credential. Later he was drafted into the Army, where he worked as a tank technician in Texas. During his college years, Mike was an avid sportsman. In Alaska he joined the hockey team, having never ice skated in his life, so the coach had him practice with his skates unlaced. Mike spent a lot of time diving, spear fishing and beach-combing, and as a lifeguard, he spent time teaching children in Watts how to swim

While attending UH he met and married Katherine Piltz. Soon after having a son, they moved from Hawaii back to So. Cal. where their daughter was born. While teaching at Airport Jr. High, Mike camped with a group of students and his small children on a Catalina beach for the summer. In 1969 the family moved to Humboldt County, living around the Eureka area. He continued teaching at Jacobs Jr. High and occasionally at Zane and Winship. After his divorce, he raised his son Barry in Eureka.

In the late seventies Mike retired from teaching and did handyman work in the winters and during the summers he was dredging for gold in places like Denny, Salmon River, Hiouchi and Cecilville. He relished the simple lifestyle of camping. Extensively exploring every forest service road in Humboldt and Trinity County, where his shiny karma somehow kept him safe. Many of these adventures were shared with his husky Tok, along with intermittent stops to tune or work on his VW square-back.

Mike pursued many endeavors throughout his years after teaching. He started Aurora B Photography and had a darkroom in his bathroom where he printed pictures of the flora and particularly mushrooms of this area. We will be sorting through his slides for decades. He collected copious amounts of driftwood from the jetties, a place he visited frequently. Using these pieces to craft driftwood art, furniture and turned bowls. Much of the wood went to build a greenhouse, and additions on his garage. Early in the 1980s, Mike got a pilot’s license and plane to make the visits to his parents, in Paradise, an easier commute. He also flew up to Canada with his school friend, Gene, to help build a cabin.

Mike gave his children the love of the outdoors, teaching them how to backpack, ski, fish, camp and hunt. Some of his favorite places were out of the way. He loved swinging bridge, the jetties and Nordheimer Creek on the Salmon River, where he spent many summers camping there by the little lake. We would go to Swimmer’s Delight before it was a park. A day drive might be the Lost Coast, just to get out and enjoy the beauty of Humboldt. Long drives were a Chamberlain family tradition. In his later years he had a faithful loving orange tabby cat named Max. Those two did everything around the house together.

His mother, Ruth, moved closer in her later years and Mike was there for her.

Mike was preceded in death by his father Frank, mother Ruth and brother Larry Chamberlain. He is survived by his son Barry and daughter Kim Chamberlain. His granddaughter Nicole (Todd) Brown and great granddaughter Amara Brown. Thank you to all his friends — Raedelle, Barbara, Howie, Steve and Vicki — who helped him through his later years and Ayres Funeral home for after-life particulars.

For anyone interested in sending Mike on his way, there will be a memorial located at a private residence. The date is March 15, Saturday at 1 p.m. Please contact Kim at idowatsu@sbcglobal.net for details on how to attend.

He lived a full life and as a biologist was distraught at the plight of how fast global warming had advanced in his later years. In lieu of any donation please consider how you could help do your part in decreasing the progression of global warming. It is as simple as bringing your coffee cup along to fill, bring grocery bags into the store, send gently used items to a thrift store for someone to use; so many simple ways…

Good skaters make it look easy. 

Saying that about supremely talented athletes is a cliche, but people say it because it’s true. The best move like liquid, devoid of any obvious effort. They jump over obstacles or through them or — why not? — hit them intentionally. The board is a partner, co-equal in a ballet that can be slow or fast or FAST and could be here, there, anywhere there is ground to ride on or air to soar through. A good skater is a dancer with total freedom. Even a complete novice or onlooker can see how they value that, so it’s striking when any of them decide to sacrifice even a small part of it.

This summer, a Bigfoot-themed skatepark opens in Willow Creek. To one of those novices or onlookers it will appear out of nowhere, but that’s only happening after some of those good skaters have voluntarily spent years and countless hours of toil embedding themselves in government, working from the ground up to make it happen. 

Riley Morrison, a Willow Creek-based cannabis grower and lifelong skater, has spent huge chunks of the last 10 years attempting to build it. He moved there in 2010 from Marin, though he’s originally from Atlanta. 

Morrison is a serious skater. He’s got a halfpipe on his farm and co-owns Rampart, an indoor skatepark in Arcata. On road trips, he likes to stop in towns that have skateparks and get some exercise in with his kids, who also skate, snowboard and surf with him.

“I’ve always tried to stay relevant as a rad dad and provide a good outlet for these kids to enjoy themselves,” Morrison said.

Skateboarding is a simple sport to start doing. All it takes is “your brother’s old, beat-up board and his shoes,” as Morrison put it. He saw a need for a skatepark in Willow Creek when he saw how Willow Creek’s soccer team for kids nine years old and younger would get demolished when they played; all the more urban teams were actually made up of nine-year-olds, and their team would have athletes as young as five playing because they barely had enough players to flesh out a team. It wasn’t fair to pit a rural town against fully-manned teams with modern training facilities. 

“[Some of those five-year-olds], we just make them get in the car and go to the game,” Morrison said. “So the kids grow up with this attitude that sports and recreation isn’t for them.”

According to Morrison, Willow Creek and the surrounding area also has a dire need for more recreational activities that young people enjoy. 

“It’s a safe space where kids can go,” Morrison said, nodding while he sipped a coffee, warm in a Dead and Company hoodie the exact shade of green as his eyes. “Skateboarding saves lives! It’s the truth, you know. And to create a space like that in Willow Creek, that has accessibility for the upriver community — for the tribe, that’s a huge need. We just don’t have a space where kids can be kids. Otherwise, they get into trouble. And there’s plenty of that.”

In 2015, Morrison decided it was time to do something about it, but building a skatepark alone is impossible. None of the local nonprofits wanted to attach their names to the project, due to the funding it would take and the difficulty involved. Fortunately for him, Charlie Caldwell, director of the Humboldt Skatepark Collective, was willing to help. 

Caldwell, 63, is a retired PG&E project manager. He started skating when he was 7 years old.

“It’s freedom,” Caldwell said. “Even at 60, almost 64, when I get on a board, I start going into 12-year-old mode.”

Caldwell was instrumental in getting the first phase of the 5,000 square foot McKinleyville skatepark finished, though he won’t be completely satisfied until the last 15,000 square feet are done once they fundraise another $250,000. 

Building a skatepark is a monumental task. It took 20 years to build even the first part of the McKinleyville skatepark; the Great Pyramid of Giza took 26. Securing the funding, getting the permits, finding a contractor and keeping the community engaged all throw up enough hurdles for a dozen horse races.

Caldwell said the most important thing he did was share a roadmap for Morrison to follow. By the time he started working on the McKinleyville skatepark, no one remembered how the parks in Arcata or Eureka were built. 

“What I mostly do is encourage and give,” Caldwell said. “Because I’m a project manager, I keep everything organized and laid out, so when someone says ‘Hey, I need to do this,’ I go, ‘Here’s everything!’ It’s hugely complicated, and I’ve already walked through it.”

Morrison spent hours working with the Willow Creek Community Services District attempting to come up with something. He and Caldwell went to every meeting the CSD held for years. Eventually, they decided to work the park into a larger improvement planned for Veteran’s Park, though the Willow Creek CSD still wasn’t committed to signing a memorandum of understanding.

A poster for the first Holiday in Humboldt event in 2018.

In 2019, four years after Morrison first started trying to build a skatepark, he and Caldwell decided to go after $4.2 million of California’s Proposition 68 funding. They had money from two skating events they hosted, and spent $20,000 on a grant writer, saving a few grand by doing all of the community outreach themselves. Over 700 people responded to their survey; only 1,500 live in Willow Creek. The proposal would include dozens of upgrades to Veteran’s Park besides just a skatepark — street lights, a better baseball diamond and a concession stand, to name a few. 

They didn’t get the grant, and by this point Morrison was over dealing with the CSD, who were proving hard to work with. He ran for election in 2020 and beat the incumbent after seven mail-in votes were counted, a month and a half after Morrison had already conceded. 

“This is an institutional board that is very comfortable with living in their retirement community of Willow Creek,” Morrison said, “And trust me, they want the best for the kids, but there was nothing going on with the CSD. They aren’t developing recreation. They’re not developing their assets.”

The cannabis association didn’t help Morrison either. He said he often felt stigmatized for being a grower, and said it could be hard overcoming entrenched community bias.

“There were times in the last 15 years where you kept your head low,” Morrison said. “You would go to the gas station, and then you go back. We were not accepted as a community out there. [But] since the industry has collapsed, I think everybody can appreciate what the struggle was and release their critical biases.”

Morrison and the Humboldt Skatepark Collective tried to secure another $4.2 million in Prop 68 funds in 2020, but again they failed. 

They decided to try again in 2021, this time for only $1.9 million. They cut the add-ons down to nine things instead of 14. But the biggest change was to the skatepark, which they decided to make Bigfoot-themed. Morrison credits former Arcata mayor and grant writer Susan Ornelas with the idea, although Ornelas told the Outpost that it was all Morrison. 

“We needed a catch,” Ornelas said. “We needed something. And I was like, ‘Everyone loves Bigfoot! I don’t know anybody who doesn’t love Bigfoot, whether you believe in Bigfoot or not…I really let my inner Bigfoot out. I suppose I kind of went for it, did a painting of [Bigfoot on a skateboard], and included that in the grant proposal.”

That time, it worked.

Everyone involved in the process said that getting the funding is, by far, the hardest part of the process. The process wasn’t done yet, though — next came bidding for a contractor and a designer, which ended up going to Primary Concrete, the same company that built the McKinleyville skatepark. 

Founder Rich Conklin said his design was inspired by the nearby Trinity River, with lots of blue-colored concrete and river textures. The final design should be around 8-10,000 square feet and, of course, is very Bigfoot-centric. Skaters will be able to glide over his toes. There will be a Bigfoot interpretive center and a Bigfoot water feature and a Bigfoot sculpture elsewhere in the park.

Conklin enjoys working on this project.

“The parks that are really special are the ones that have this grassroots undercurrent and that real sense of a community project,” Conklin said. “You’re like, ‘Man, these guys have been working so hard for years and years, and fundraising and red tape and meetings — all that stuff, and I just get to show up.”

Morrison is very excited for this project to be over. His goal was to see his kids skate in the park before they graduated high school. When he started trying to get it done, they were in elementary school. Now, they’re 14 and 16 years old. 

Ten years to build a skatepark, from inception to delivery, is not a long time. Morrison attributes the success to timing and persistence, likening the process to building an airplane while you’re flying it. 

Willow Creek’s electorate voted him in for another term on the CSD, but he’s eager to finish out his career in politics in a few years, stop growing weed someday and focus on his kids and skating. 

“I don’t want to be in politics anymore,” Morrison said. “It’s like a Chinese finger trap…I look forward to the day I can stop growing weed and grow more vegetables. That’s how you’ll know I’m retired…The weed can come and go, but we got a skatepark. That concrete isn’t going anywhere.”