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Maggie and Blake Samuels of Carlotta hold their newborn daughter.

Perhaps she was bashful, willing to let a more ambitious newcomer claim the prestige that attends a hospital’s first newborn of the New Year. But by the time 2024 had been around for nearly 11 hours, young Maple Samuels could wait no longer: She entered the world at 10:58 a.m. Monday, becoming St. Joseph Hospital’s first newborn baby of 2024.

Maggie and Blake Samuels of Carlotta welcomed their daughter, who weighed in at 7 lbs 4.8 oz and measured 20.5 inches.

Maple, pictured at right with her parents, is the Samuels’ fourth child, though her three siblings were all adopted, meaning she’s the couple’s first biological child, according to information provided by Providence Communications Manager Christian Hill.

Congratulations to the Samuels, and a hearty welcome to Humboldt County’s newest resident.

Exam rooms at Mountain Valley Health Center in Bieber on July 23, 2019. A new California law taking effect Jan. 1, 2024 will make contraception cheaper for millions of Californians by requiring insurers to cover more of the cost of vasectomies and birth control. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters

Family planning will be less expensive for millions of Californians under a new law taking effect Jan. 1.

Women will be able to go to their local pharmacy, pick up over-the-counter birth control and have insurance pay for it — no prescription needed. Meanwhile, more people will be able to access vasectomies with no out-of-pocket costs.

The Contraceptive Equity Act of 2022 authored by former Sen. Connie Leyva, a Democrat from Chino, requires private health insurance plans to cover birth control products, including condoms and spermicide, without a prescription and no co-pays. This portion of the law applies only to women and is allowed only in in-network pharmacies.

Men will have the option of cheaper vasectomies. A vasectomy is a low-risk sterilization procedure that usually takes about 20 minutes. Cost has long been a major determining factor for men seeking the procedure, which can cost up to several hundred dollars, including follow-up visits.

Billing data shows that vasectomies are becoming more popular following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, according to national studies.

California’s new law will apply to about 14 million people with commercial insurance regulated by the state. This new law does not apply to people whose health insurance plan is regulated by the federal government.

Californians covered by Medi-Cal, the joint state and federal health insurance program for low-income people, already have access to vasectomies at no cost to them. But under federal rules, they’ll still need a prescription to access over-the-counter birth control.

This fall, the Biden administration announced it is seeking public input regarding easing access for over-the-counter preventive care supplies, including contraceptives.

Reproductive health advocacy groups Essential Access Health, NARAL Pro-Choice California and the National Health Law Program pushed for the new California law. They have been working to expand access to reproductive care since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion. In 2022, California also passed a law that eliminated out-of-pocket costs for abortions.

Lobbying groups that represent health insurers, include the California Association of Health Plans, lobbied against the law. They argued state mandates increase the cost of coverage for all Californians, as well as to taxpayers.

The California Catholic Conference and the Right to Life League also opposed the law, with the Catholic group seeking clear exceptions for religious employers.

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

Threat of eviction is one of the biggest problems facing California’s nursing home residents. Residents often don’t even know why they’re being forcibly discharged.

A new state law taking effect today seeks to rectify this with a simple change: nursing homes are now required to offer residents copies of any information that explains why they’re being evicted.

That includes providing copies of the discharge plan and the date, place and names of witnesses to any incidents related to the discharge. In some places, it could also include information about why the facility can not meet the resident’s needs.

“It’s a very minor burden on the facilities to give residents copies of information that they’re already having to create or document,” said Tony Chicotel, a staff attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, the bill’s sponsor. “Now residents have information to see if this seems legitimate.”

The bill had no registered opposition.

Each year, California’s nursing homes serve about 450,000 residents, many of them medically fragile. Most of the time, Chicotel said, these residents are happy to receive a discharge notice; it could mean they get to go home.

But some don’t feel ready, or don’t have a safe place to land. According to data provided by Chicotel’s organization, evictions are one of the most common complaints reported to California’s Long Term Care Ombudsman programs. In the past five years, the state’s nursing homes have also been cited more than 1,800 times for problems with discharges.

Chicotel says the additional information residents will receive can help them understand the facility’s reasoning, and possibly file an appeal.

“Very few residents know about their appeal rights or feel confident to exercise them,” Chicotel said. “This may give them a little more confidence.”

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

If California wants to build its way out of its long term housing shortage, plenty of things stand in its way in 2024: high interest rates, sluggish local approval processes and a persistent shortage of skilled construction workers, among others.

But a slew of housing bills from the 2023 legislative session going into effect on Jan. 1 promise to ease or eliminate some of the other burdens.

Among the batch of fresh housing laws are an especially high profile set by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener: Senate Bill 423 re-ups and expands a law that speeds up the approval of apartment buildings in which some units are set aside for lower income Californians, while SB 4 does something similar for affordable housing on property owned by religious institutions and non-profit colleges.

Wiener’s two new laws set the tone of housing legislation in 2023, where ripping out barriers and boosting incentives for housing construction emerged as the dominant theme.

“The era of saying no to housing is coming to an end,” Wiener said in a statement after the two bills were signed.

That was especially true for developers of purpose-built affordable housing, per policy analysts at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation in an end-of-year legislative summary. Lawmakers, the analysts wrote, in the continuation of a “remarkable run over the last several years,” gave “more flexibility to exceed or override local zoning, greater certainty on the timing and likelihood of planning approvals, and substantial relief from (environmental) review and litigation.”

“I’ve never seen this type of consensus in the Legislature before,” said Michael Lane, state policy director for the San Francisco-based urban planning think-tank SPUR.

Or as Politico put it succinctly in a headline from late summer: “YIMBYs” — short for so-called yes in my backyard activists who push for more building — “are winning.”

Other notable victories from that camp include AB 1287, a bill by San Diego Democratic Assemblymember David Alvarez, that will give developers permission to build denser, taller buildings if they set aside additional units for middle-income earners, and SB 684, which will make it easier to divide up large parcels of land for modest clusters of townhomes and cottages.

It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing for the pro-development caucus. That second bill, by Merced Democratic Sen. Anna Caballero, will only apply to parts of the state already zoned for multifamily housing. Historic single family home neighborhoods got a last minute carve out, leading one of the bill’s sponsors to take the unusual step of asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto their own bill (he didn’t). That eleventh hour switcheroo demonstrated that though the political coalition opposed to state pro-density policies are on the back foot, they are still a force to contend with.

That coalition of local governments, certain organized labor groups and environmental justice advocates also prevented housing supply boosters from entirely rewriting the state’s signature environmental law, as some advocates had hoped earlier this year.

But a host of new laws will make it more difficult for opponents of proposed housing projects to use the California Environmental Quality Act to delay certain types of housing projects. Oakland Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks wrote a bill that instructs judges not to consider the noise of future residents as a pollutant in need of environmental mitigation, a response to one of the most headline grabbing California court decisions of the year.

Wicks’ bill, which went into effect in September, may have gotten much of the media attention, but other, similarly intentioned bills that will become law in 2024 may prove more consequential. One, SB 439, by Berkeley Democratic Sen. Nancy Skinner will make it easier for courts to slap down “frivolous” environmental lawsuits, a second, AB 1449, by Alvarez will shield many affordable housing projects from environmental review and a third, AB 1633, by San Francisco Democratic Assemblymember Phil Ting will force cities to either approve or deny a project’s environmental review within a set time limit.

“This just points out the reason we need to continue to have this fight at the state level,” said Ting in a recent webinar touting the new policy. “We know we have these two million homes to get built and they’re not getting built fast enough…Local governments just aren’t getting the job done.”

Ting has also carved out a reputation as a champion of accessory dwelling units. Sometimes called in-law units or granny flats, these pint-sized add ons have become an increasingly popular way for local governments to meet their state-set housing production goals. They’ve also come to make up a significant share of California’s new housing stock in recent years.

That’s largely thanks to a suite of recent state laws that make it increasingly difficult for local governments to say no to these developments or to tack on costly requirements. Starting in 2024, a new bill by Ting may help to reshape the existing ADU market. AB 1033 will let homeowners spin off their ADUs as separate for-sale condos, so long as local governments opt in.

That’s a big “if,” but the condoization law has many backyard cottage builders optimistic about the future, even at a time when California’s residential construction industry appears to be slowing.

“I am deeply concerned about the market and how few young buyers can actually afford to get into the game anymore,” said Seth Phillips, founder of the Los Angeles-based development and consulting firm ADU Gold. “If they do it right, if they really get the processes right…young homebuyers could have a whole bunch of new stuff to pick from, which basically doesn’t exist right now.”

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

Local trivia #1: You know that Humboldt’s first church was the little wooden shed on Tuluwat Island, directly across from the F Street dock? At least, that’s what I was told when I started kayaking the bay 20-odd years ago. And when I was more gullible than I like to think of myself now. Truth is, it was a fisherman’s shack for years, and one of the occupants passed the time by carving lifelike outlines of deer, leading visitors to think they were seeing genuine wildlife. At some point a church sign was, um, borrowed from a real church in Eureka and nailed to the shed, hence the fake news that I bought into. (The shed shack has seen many occupants over the years, including “Mr. Kinetic Sculpture” Hobart Brown and the Madaket’s Leroy Zerlang.)

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Me: What is “Growing Old Ungracefully”?

ChatGPT: “Growing old ungracefully” is a humorous phrase often used to describe the process of aging without conforming to societal expectations of how older people should behave or look. It suggests that as we age, we may become more outspoken, eccentric, or rebellious, rather than conforming to the stereotypical image of the quiet, docile elderly person. The phrase is often used in a lighthearted and self-deprecating way to acknowledge the changes that come with aging while also celebrating the freedom to be oneself and live life to the fullest, regardless of age.

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Dame Judi: I’ve no idea if this story is true, but having watched many interviews with her, I believe it. The eminent British actress Judi Dench was walking down Oxford Street in London rehearsing lines for her next play in her mind. She stepped off the curb without checking for traffic and a taxi had to stop abruptly to avoid hitting her. “Look where you’re going, cunt!” yelled the driver. She walked up to his window: “That’s Dame Cunt to you.”

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New Age gone nuts: I was at a conference years ago when the keynote speaker mentioned that, as we all knew, “Men are from Venus, women are from Mars,” obviously trying to get a rise out of the audience. Sure enough, a woman at the back yelled, “You’re wrong! Men are from Mars and women are from Venus!!!” Best moment of the whole conference.

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Going to hell: This clip of Lady Gaga walking past a crowd of protesters, one of whom yells, “You’re going to hell!” Gaga turns back, plants a full-mouth kiss on the woman and says, “And you’re coming with me!”

(You probably know that Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta’s stage name derives from Queen’s Radio Ga Ga.)

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Local trivia #2: The City of Eureka’s first public library opened in 1859. It was housed in rented quarters until 1904, when it moved into what is now the Morris Graves Museum of Art, the Chamber of Commerce having obtained a $20,000 grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation three years earlier. The lovely octagonal structure was built by Ambrose Foster, who also constructed the Eagle House. Eureka’s was one of 2,509 public libraries funded by Carnegie.

Dollar bill: George Washington has graced the $1 bill “only” since 1869. The first version featured Civil War Secretary of the Treasury Salman P. Chase.

Have the best New Year ever!

Supermarkets were an unimagined dream far in the future when we were growing up in the late ’20s and early ’30s in Humboldt County, yet a family could be nearly self-sustaining with initiative and energy.

Each year, my father would bag at least two deer; usually Black Tails or Pacific Bucks in or around the local county, and sometimes he would go as far as Modoc County to obtain the Mule Tail Deer, which were much larger and meatier. From these prizes, we feasted first on the liver, which served with rashers of bacon and sauteed onions was considered a great delicacy. Then came the backstrap, which was similar to a very tender steak. Venison roasts made a festive Sunday dinner. Not to waste any part of the deer, mincemeat was made from the neck bones.

On very rare occasions, we would have a bear roast, usually given to us by some friend. This meat tasted remarkably like pork roast.

Roast duck was one of our favorite entrees. There were many and varied species of ducks flying Humboldt Bay, but the special ones to us were the Mallard Ducks, Canvas Backs and Teal. For Thanksgiving Dinner we either had ducks or a plump Canadian Goose. In the fall of the year, when the days began to get shorter, you could look up in the sky and see a gigantic “V” of Canadian Honkers flying south for the winter. If the wind were right and there was no fog, you could hear their honking and discern the leader heading the hegira to the south. It was with little effort and a great deal of enjoyment for the men of the family to provide the family with fat Canadian Geese, Brant or as many ducks as you cared to take. The meat of the geese was a dark, sweet meat, tender and tasty. Ducks, stuffed with a bread stuffing, roasted to a crackling brown on the outside and running with juices inside, was one of our special meals.

Our home soon became a haven of hospitality for visiting relatives and friends from as far away as Arizona, Oregon and Southern California, all enjoying the bounties of Humboldt County.

Salmon was one of the outstanding delights to all of us. When the salmon were running, you could stand on the banks of any of our local rivers — Klamath River, Trinity River, Eel River or even Humboldt Bay — and watch the salmon running up the river. It was similar to watching people going up escalators. Average salmon could be caught weighing 18 to 20 pounds. Men who worked on jobs near the bay would set their lines in the morning and when the work day was over, there would be a salmon hooked for their dinner. A large baked whole salmon was a feast fit for a king. The delicately pink salmon slices broiled or simmered in butter had a freshness and deliciousness long remembered.

There was another type of fish, which, when running, caused a stir of preparation. This was the surf fish, which, when spawning, came into the shallow surf and up onto the beaches of the ocean in squirming masses. They were easily scooped up in tri-cornered nets and soon sacks could be filled with these delicious small fish. The way we cooked them at home was to gut them, wash carefully, flour them and lay in large baking pans in single layers and bake until crispy brown with a delicate white meat. When the surf fish were running it was a signal for all the family and as many friends that could be recruited to head for the mouth of Redwood Creek, which is on the beach near Orick. To get to the beach, then, one had to take a toll road which led down the side of the mountain to the beach below. This was a straight up and down, narrow and winding road. A charge of twenty five cents a car was made. The road was so steep, we children would close our eyes and hang on for dear life to the inside of the car until the descent was made … and then what joys awaited us at the bottom! We would frolic in the sand, wade along the edge of the surf and find long kelp ropes to pull over the sand. After the men had completed their catch, we produced a bountiful picnic supper brought from home and everyone enjoyed good food and conversation around a campfire on the beach.

Crab was so abundant that it was no task to get as many as was needed. When we knew a group of relatives were coming, my mother would say to my brother, “I will need about twelve large crabs today.” He would ride out to the mouth of the Elk River, which was just north of Fields Landing and in the tidal pools there, which is just about where U.S. 101 runs now, it would be a simple task to use a rake, dipping into the pools and scoop out huge crabs, as many as you wanted. Then they were taken home, boiled outdoors in salt water, cooled and the meat was mouthwatering.

Also, in South Bay, in the channel just north of Fields Landing, when the tide was low, we would wade out in the black mud, with it oozing between our toes, and gather clams as large as a man’s fist known as Martha Washington Clams. These made delicious chowder with the white meat and delicate flavor. Then, this portion of Humboldt Bay was not polluted as it is today.

Another outing we enjoyed was to row across the channel of the Bay to the South Spit, where we would gather cockles, a small type of clam, wash them well in seawater and roast them in a bonfire when they were done. The shells would burst open and we would enjoy a succulent feast.

Meanwhile, the women of the household, including me, were busy picking berries. We went to the area which is now known as Valley West, just north of Arcata. It was one of our best wild blackberry patches. There is a large mill there now. We would find large, luscious, true wild blackberries. From these berries we made jam, jelly, cobblers and out-of-this-world blackberry pies. In those days, we did not have the hydrogenated, whipped cream-type shortening so popular today, but used plain lard from which my mother concocted tantalizing, tender pie crust. Chicken fat was used to make cookies.

Huckleberry season meant a jaunt over to Samoa Peninsula, near what is now known as Manila. On the ocean side, we would work our way through a labyrinth of vegetation, with bushes so high that underneath the vegetation were pathways with an arbor of growth over head. Through this maze, we would wend our way and find the most delicious and the largest, pea-sized huckleberries you could ever imagine. With their sweet, winy juiciness, they made excellent pies.

The frozen food industry was, as yet, unknown. As a consequence, everything was canned or smoked to preserve it. My mother canned venison, salmon, surf fish, mincemeat, jams, jellies, fruits, fruit sauces, vegetables and vegetable sauces. There was always a sourdough starter going, which many times boiled over just as surely as Mt. St. Helens boils her top today. From this starter came delicious high, fluffy sourdough pancakes and rolls. There was usually a pan simmering on the back of the stove into which odds and ends of milk were added. Soon it separated into curds and whey. We would pour off the whey, season the curds and have a nutritious cottage cheese.

Occasionally, we would be gifted with a quart of thick, white, sweet cream from which fat cream puffs, oozing with rich whipped cream, would result.

Acquaintances who raised bees would bring us a large square of natural beeswax honeycomb bulging witbh local clover honey. Nectar from the Gods!

On rare occasions, my Father would surprise me with the best delicacy of all — quail on toast! To see the beautiful little speckled birds with their proud top knot always reminded me of little Prussian soldiers and I could not be a party to the preparation, but with the round, white, plump breast ensconced on a piece of buttered toast, I could not resist the tempting dish.

As I stroll down the plastic aisles of today’s supermarkets and gaze upon the antiseptically packaged fast foods and products offered to us today, loaded with various and sundry additives, I marvel that we have not exploded or erupted like an atomic bomb!

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The story above was originally printed in the March-April 1981 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.

Jerry Nusbaum
Oct. 25, 1941 - Dec. 24, 2023

Jerry Wayne Nusbaum was born on October 25, 1941 in Elkhart, Indiana, a milling town which by the time the war started had become a Midwestern rail hub within hitchhiking distance to South Bend.

He grew up with his mom, Frances, a telephone operator, and his elder brother, Richard, in his grandfather’s house on Potawatomi Street with plenty of extended family nearby. A solid beginning.

After a stellar career in Catholic high school and some short but interesting retail jobs, he joined the Marine Corps as had Wayne, his father, who served in WWI. The Marines brought him to San Diego in 1959 to fix radios, and after his stateside tour ended in ’61, he visited his mom in Elkhart and then migrated back to California, first to San Francisco, where Richard was working, and eventually to Humboldt, to go to school where he could read as much as he liked.

At Humboldt he again excelled, earning a degree in English, a Green and Gold Key, some Who’s Hooey, and friends to last a lifetime. While there he dabbled in the theater, and was much appreciated for his steadfastness and willingness to take on any job.

Jerry had skills, habits of neatness and order, and plenty of nervous energy, so he always found work — interesting work where he could learn something or go some unusual place he’d never been. Baking, building, planting trees, restoring streams, checking IDs … work was work. And when he didn’t want to work, he didn’t. A job was a means to some other end probably found along a hiking trail or near a river or discovered while paddling the bay or taking a hard role in a challenging play.

Most consistently over the years were working as a carpenter for Bob Schultze, acting in dozens of local theater productions and stage managing a dozen more, and over two decades spending his winter months on the Farallon Islands off San Francisco, where he baked bread and counted birds and painted numbers on the backs of elephant seals. The Farallons are a special place, sitting as they do on the Continental shelf, and Jerry quickly picked up the way of the work there and gradually took on more responsibility. At one point he’d spent nearly 1,700 nights on the island, the third-highest of all time. He was tasked to hire and supervise the younger researchers who would come to work on the Island. Many talented young men and women got their start in field research when Jerry was hiring. They adored him.

Back at home in Arcata he danced at the Jambalaya, walked the marsh and the hill trails, went out in his boat, rehearsed a play, made some nice woman feel special and loved.

Every election when he was in town, he worked precinct 300110 (3A -7), where he stayed the course of democracy and visited with the folks who lived in his neighborhood.

Jerry said: “Never do for free what you do for money” and “There are only two important books, the one I’m reading now and the one I’ll read next.” He would talk with anyone about everything.

Jerry was a solitary soul who paid his own way, pulled his own weight, and was loved well and often — equal to the love he gave. His friendships are legendary, his correspondence voluminous, his five decades of journals an eloquent companion to his adventuresome travel thru the compelling landscapes of his life.

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