PREVIOUSLY:

• BREAKING: Eureka Police Department Investigating Officer-Involved Shooting Near the Library

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Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

On November 26, 2023, around 9:36 a.m., the Eureka Police Department attempted a traffic stop on a vehicle in the vicinity of 2nd and M Streets in Eureka. During the traffic stop, a 31- year-old white male occupant of the vehicle fled from the scene. While officers were checking the area, the male was located to the rear of the library.

While officers attempted to detain the male, a physical altercation ensued. During the altercation the suspect produced a firearm, shots were subsequently fired by officers and the suspect was struck. Life-saving efforts were immediately performed by officers and Humboldt Bay Fire personnel. Due to the extent of injuries, the suspect succumbed to his injuries on scene. A loaded firearm was recovered from the suspect at the scene.

The Humboldt County Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT), led by the Eureka Police Department and the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office, was activated to investigate this incident.

The incident was captured on body worn camera and will be released upon completion of the investigation pursuant to SB 1421. Senate Bill 1421 requires the disclosure of records and information under the California Public Records Act (Government Code section 6250, et seq.) concerning records relating to the report, investigation or findings of an incident involving the discharge of a firearm at a person by a peace officer or a custodial officer.

There are no outstanding threats to the community. Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to contact Detective Bailey with the Eureka Police Department Criminal Investigations Unit at 707-441-4215.

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The Eureka Police Department has closed off a portion of P Street between 2nd and 3rd as they investigate an officer-involved shooting that took place this morning, according to a message posted to Facebook.

“Please remain clear of the area, there is no danger to the public,” the message says. “Anticipate the area being closed to the public for the remainder of the day. Updates will be posted as they become available.”

The Outpost’s Andrew Goff was on the scene early this afternoon and reported that investigators were questioning residents in the vicinity. 

According to Oliver Cory of Redheaded Blackbelt, scanner traffic indicated that the incident began with a traffic stop followed by a foot pursuit and ended with first responders giving chest compressions to a man with multiple chest wounds.

We will update this post as more information becomes available. 

Humboldt Bay Fire release:

Humboldt Bay Fire will be hosting live fire training for Humboldt County firefighters on November, 27, 2023 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. We will be performing a permitted demolition of the residence at 6117 Humboldt Hill Road by conducting live fire training. Humboldt Bay Fire has received the appropriate training burn permit for the North Coast Air Quality Management District, demonstrating no asbestos or lead contents were found in the structure.

Live fire training is an invaluable training opportunity for firefighters to observe fire behavior and practice fire suppression techniques in their working environment. The instruction provided to these Humboldt County firefighters will better prepare them to deal with fires in their home communities.

The live fire training will create smoke in the area, and Humboldt Hill Road will Smoke Alarms Save Lives. be open to through traffic during the training event.

Humboldt Bay Fire is committed to serving the entire Humboldt Bay Fire and Humboldt County region. 

Epicurus (341–270 BC), the Greek founder of Epicureanism, has often been given a bad rap through the ages, having been unfairly portrayed as a glutton, drunkard and womanizer by those who feared his hedonistic philosophy. He was indeed a hedonist — pleasure and absence of pain and fear are worthy goals in life, he said.* In particular, we shouldn’t fear a hellish afterlife — a common belief both in his time and place and in America today. (Pew reports 58% of Americans believe in hell.) He taught that there is no afterlife, just as there is no life before we are born: “We are not before birth, then we are, then we are not.” The soul (he believed in souls) dies with the body. For Epicurus, no “…dread of something after death/The undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveler returns.” (Hamlet)

* I wonder what he thought of delayed gratification. We endure pain to achieve something pleasurable in the future: Six years of struggling through college, working two jobs to pay the bills, to end up with a Masters, for example.

Marble portrait of Epicurus, Roman copy after a lost Hellenistic original, now in the British Museum (Marie-Lan Nguyen, public domain)

Epicurus’ morality was simple: we act ethically, not out of fear of punishment—either by fellow humans in this life or by the gods the next—but because amoral behavior inevitably leads to guilt and remorse. (“There’s no peace for the wicked.”) For many centuries—perhaps still—this approach was condemned by the Catholic Church, which taught that the only way to keep people on the straight and narrow was to stoke their fear of eternal punishment in hell.

So what does acting “ethically” look like in the real world? Epicurus’ disciple Philodemus put it this way (in a book preserved in the pumice of Herculaneum, buried in AD 79 by volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius): “It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently and honorably and justly, and also without living courageously and temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends and being philanthropic.”

Speaking of friends, Epicurus’ “Garden” in Athens, where he taught, was unusual for encouraging women and slaves to join.

Curiously, he wasn’t an atheist. Like virtually everyone in his time, Epicurus believed in gods. But he thought they had better things to do than worry about mere humans, “…as if divine beings depended for their happiness on our mumbled words or good behavior.” (I’m quoting Stephen Greenblatt. His book The Swerve is the story of how a copy of De Natura Rerum, a poetic re-telling of the philosophy of Epicurus by his greatest fan, the Roman poet Lucretius, surfaced in a remote monastery 600 years ago.)

After a millennium of condemnation and/or obscurity, Epicurean thought returned during the Enlightenment, when its appeal to pleasure over pain, happiness over fear, and kindness over cruelty, resonated with freethinkers. Galileo, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Molière, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot—all found a kindred soul in Epicurus. And Thomas Jefferson. When asked by a correspondent about his philosophy, Jefferson replied, “I am an Epicurean.”

Richard Charles Taylor, 88, passed away Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka.  He passed away peacefully after a sudden illness earlier that day. 

Richard was born on May 3, 1935, to the late William Taylor Sr. and Marie (Mayer) in Wausau, Wisconsin.  He was a 1953 graduate of Kaukauna High School and attended UW-Madison.  He left school and became a partner and eventual sole proprietor of the Oakwood Inn supper club in Waupaca, WI.  It was there he met his future wife Joyce Schorr, and they were married on Sept. 10, 1966, at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

After selling the supper club, Richard finished his degree with the intention of working for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.  However, he eventually became an adjuster for State Farm Insurance Companies in 1970.  Originally working in Green Bay, Wisconsin he was subsequently transferred to San Jose and then Eureka.  He retired from State Farm in 1985 after the death of his wife Joyce. 

Richard married Marjorie (Marge) Hill (formally Hestle) on Feb. 14, 1987.  They were married for 36 years and remained in Eureka throughout their marriage.    

Survivors include his wife, Marge Hill-Taylor of Eureka; children John (Sandra) Taylor of Eau Claire, WI; Mark (Sydney) Taylor of Eureka, CA, Richard Hill of Eureka, CA; Denise Pickens of Sacramento, CA; and LeRoi Hill of Gilroy, CA.  He is further survived by his brother William (Nicki) Taylor of Denver, CO., and his two sisters Patricia Lappen of Kaukauna, WI, and Mary (Calvin) Engerson of Mobile, AL.  

Richard was part of a large extended family and leaves three grandchildren (Alex, Joseph, and Hailey), eight step grandchildren (Gabrielle, Roshan, Ashandé, Deric, Jasmine, Willie, De’Jon, and Joshua), fifteen great grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren who will all miss their “Grandpa Dick.”  He will also be missed by many nieces, nephews, and other family members.  

Richard was preceded in death by his parents, his first wife Joyce, infant brother Thomas, and daughter Deborah Gravenberg.  

John and Mark are deeply thankful to Marge for her unyielding love and support for their father all these years, through good times and bad.  It was because of her that Richard lived such a long life, and for that they are eternally thankful.  The family would also like to thank Sydney Taylor for the many hours she spent looking after her father-in-law in his final years. 

A celebration of life will be held on Saturday, December 9th at the Faith Center Foursquare Church in Eureka.  Visitation will be 10:30 AM to noon with a service and luncheon to follow.  Interment will be next to his first wife Joyce at Calvary Cemetery in Fond du Lac, WI.  A future service is planned in Fond du Lac next year.  

Memorial donations may be made to the American Cancer Society in remembrance of Joyce and Deborah who were both taken from us far too soon.   

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How will California’s coast deal with sea level rise? Journalist Rosanna Xia traveled across the state to talk with folks on the frontlines of sea level rise. Their stories are the focus of her new book, California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline. Rosanna joins Tom Wheeler of EPIC and Jennifer Savage of the Surfrider Foundation to discuss sea level rise and her work as an environmental journalist.

Bonus: Rosanna will be at CalPoly Humboldt on Thursday, November 30 from 5:30-7 p.m. in the Native American Forum (BSS 162) followed by book signing!

AUDIO:

“The Econews Report,” Nov. 25, 2023

Early settlers in Humboldt County had little entertainment. Life was grim and the work was never-ending. This was true for my Norwegian grandfather, Gustav Olsen; however, in 1898, as soon as the barns and the house were built on his Showers Pass homestead, the first thing he did was to add a large room to the house with a tongue and groove dance floor.

He felled the trees, sawed them into boards, planed them, and cut the tongue and groove with hand tools. Then he and my Swedish grandmother, Johanna Lovisa Anderson Olsen, hosted a dance, the first of many, inviting people for miles around to attend. Women wore “waists” and skirts with drawstrings that expanded with the many pregnancies of the time. Some young ladies came to the dances on horseback in split riding skirts, packing their dress skirts in their saddle bags. They would change once they arrived.

The earliest dance I remember was at the Johnson Ranch, also called the Lone Star Ranch, at Showers Pass. I was five. My little sister Betty was three. 1 don’t remember my other sister Pat, who was nine, coming to this dance. Mother sometimes dressed Betty and me alike. That day we wore blue cotton dirndl skirts with straps over the shoulders embroidered with tiny white flowers, white puffed-sleeve blouses, and white anklets with black patent-leather Mary Jane shoes. Our mother probably wore a mid-calf-length dress cut on the bias, as many dresses were in the thirties, with silk stockings and medium-heeled dress shoes.

Our car toiled up the mountain road in second gear, complaining all the way from Freshwater and through the hairpin switchbacks. Two cars could not pass on this narrow trace. Drivers sounded their horns as they entered a turn, and if they met another car, the car traveling downhill had to back up to a wide spot and let the uphill car pass. On steep inclines, my father grinned and shifted into low, whistling a little tune, happy to be back in the mountains where be was born and raised. I held on tight to the back-seat passenger strap and shut my eyes.

The car labored up the dirt road past John Hurley’s gate and the Kneeland School, past Rousseau’s, Fulton’s, Sibley’s, the laqua Cemetery, past the road to the Gift Ranch, and Tom Shaw’s place, then Fredrickson’s where the road ran between the ranch house and barn.

We continued past Hunter’s and the laqua School, and finally turned off on the road to Johnsons’ Lone Star Ranch. We arrived in late afternoon. An outdoor dance pavilion stood near the house. My father, Mike Olsen, took his piano-tuning tools directly to the upright piano standing in one corner of the dance floor. While he tuned the piano, Mrs. Johnson took Betty and me to the chicken house where she had just received a shipment of hundreds of little yellow chicks. We went inside and she handed us each a baby chick. The floor was covered with a carpet of chirping, feathery chicks; they were so dense around our feet that I stumbled and stepped on one. I froze, near tears. Mrs. Johnson told me not to worry, lifted us over the undulating sea of feathers, set us down outside the chicken house door, and removed the dead chick: the one I had accidentally stepped on.

More people arrived as the sun set. Lanterns were lit and hung on poles around the dance pavilion. Everybody danced — grown-ups and children alike — to “When the Moon Comes over the Mountain,” “K-K-K- Katie,” and “Its Three O’clock in the Morning.” Our father played his violin. Someone played the piano and someone else a banjo. At midnight the hat was passed to pay the musicians, while the ladies served a potluck supper. When Betty and I grew tired, mother fixed a bed in the back seat of the car and tucked us in for the night, but the adults danced until it was time to go home and milk the cows, at four o’clock in the morning.

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The author’s father, Mike Olsen, with his violin, and Ed Brown, with his accordion. The Olsens were a musical family. Mike Olsen’s father, Gustav, played for dances held at their Showers Pass homestead throughout Mike’s childhood. Mike taught himself violin and mandolin, and played the dance circuit from the time he returned home from the Army after World War I, until his untimely death from cancer in 1944. Photo courtesy of Naida Gipson.

Betty and I soon progressed to Saturday night dances at the Freshwater Grange Hall where my father’s small group played tunes from the twenties and thirties, like “Sweet Lorraine,” “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover,” and “It Had to Be You.” Whole families came to these dances. Babies and small children fell asleep on the built-in benches along each side of the hall. Men usually chose partners, but once in a while “Ladies’ Choice” was announced. At midnight the ladies of the Grange served coffee and sandwiches in the kitchen downstairs. The last tune, just before 2:00 a.m., was always “Good Night Ladies.”

Betty and I learned a French minuet and a dance called the Varsouvienne (put your little foot, put your little foot, put your little foot right here…) I especially liked the mixer dances when a “caller” announced the moves and new partners would appear accordingly. The Paul Jones mixer was “allemande left.” Everyone gave his right hand to his partner and turned around to give his left hand to his neighbor in a “grand right and left” all the way around the circle, where we all met a new partner when the music stopped. In another mixer, one man started the dance with a broom for his partner. When the caller yelled “change partners,” the man chose a partner and gave the broom to another man. This continued until everyone was dancing. At other times, the men stood on one side of the hall and the women on the other, everyone facing the walls. When the music started, everyone walked backward and bumped into their next partner. Many times, two concentric circles were formed, one of men, one of women, each walking round in a different direction. When the music stopped, new partners met.

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As my sister and I grew older. Mother let us go with our father to the Grange dances without her, but we had to promise never to go outside the dance hall. We really had no wish to go outside, and happily stayed inside under our father’s watchful eye. We agonized over what to wear to these dances. Wardrobes were limited during the Depression and World War II, but we coordinated skirts and sweaters with matching hair ribbons, bobby socks, and saddle shoes. My mother’s sister, Sadie Phillips Azevedo, a sixth-grade schoolteacher in San Mateo, sent Betty and me matching dresses every Christmas when we were still small children; she may have sent the peasant jumpers and blouses I remember wearing to the Lone Star dance. Then, as we grew up. Aunt Sadie began sending boxes of clothing she no longer used. She shopped in stores like I. Magnin’s and The City of Paris in San Francisco. We could nearly always find something to wear among her nice cast-offs. I remember one two-piece outfit in particular — a pale pink pleated skirt with a matching short-sleeved jacket. I had no use for the jacket, but the skirt, which happened to be just my size, became one of my favorites. I paired it with an oversized white sweater, white bobby socks, and brown and white saddle oxfords. The skirt held knife-sharp pleats. Even after being washed, it emanated remnants of Aunt Sadie’s perfume — Chanel No. 5.

My oldest sister, Pat Olsen Roberts, remembers a dance held at the laqua School one New Year’s Eve. Immersed in their celebrations, everyone emerged from the school house at the end of the dance to find the ground covered in deep snow. Our cousin Anita and her husband Stanley had just returned from Montana. Their pickup, equipped with balloon tires, got stuck in the snow at the gate to the Gift Ranch. Our father’s car was full of kids—Pat and our cousins, Thelma, Ray, and Galen Olsen. Stanley asked all the kids to ride in the back of the pickup, giving the tires weight and traction and enabling them to drive out of the deep snow. The kids rode in the back of the pickup all the way home.

Pat and two of her friends, Marjorie Nellist and Mary Ivancich, formed a trio and sang at some of the Grange dances. They called themselves The Three Coquettes and took “Little Coquette” as their theme song. The Coquettes wore matching outfits they made themselves, and stood up on stage in front of the microphone, blending their voices in three-part harmony like the popular Andrews Sisters.

Saturday was cleaning day at our house, but there was usually a dance somewhere on Saturday night. To look our best, we would shampoo our hair in the laundry tray before beginning our chores, then set it in rows of pin curls, or roll it on metal curlers or around rags. Our hair dried while we vacuumed and dusted. After dinner, we had our baths, put on our dancing outfits, brushed out our hair, smoothed on a little orange Tangee or bright red Revlon lipstick, and went to a dance that started at nine o’clock.

As teenagers, we were allowed to advance from the Freshwater Grange Hall, where everybody knew us, to the dance halls where my father’s group, Olsen’s Orchestra, played. Admission was one dollar. Sometimes Ed Brown would play his accordion. Elaine McNaughton was their terrific piano player. When she stopped playing for dances, a young, pretty blonde girl, whose name I can’t remember, took her place. I do remember that one Saturday night during World War II at the I.O.O.F Hall in Blue Lake, her boyfriend came home on unexpected leave from the Army Air Corps, and showed up at the dance. She wanted to dance with her handsome airman, so Dad asked me to fill in at the piano. I was not sure I knew all the songs, but I knew chords; the saxophone player, sitting nearby, signaled me at the chord changes.

The money Dad earned playing for dances went into a “kitty,” which he used for special things, like presents for my mother. One day he asked Betty and me to buy our mother a gift with money from the kitty. We picked out a gorgeous pale green satin comforter — my favorite shade of green — filled with wool batting, at Daly’s Department Store. She used this blanket until the cover wore out, and then re-covered the good wool batting with a cotton print fabric. I helped her tie the restored comforter with embroidery floss, putting a tie every eight inches.

Once or twice a month, the band rehearsed at our house, and the band members’ wives and children often tagged along. While the musicians practiced we made taffy. Mother tested the boiling candy by dropping a bit into a cup of cold water to see how soft the drop was. When it tested just right, she poured the candy onto buttered platters. We washed our hands thoroughly and coated them with butter, ready for a taffy pull. As the candy cooled enough to touch. Mother worked it away from the edge of the platters into big globs. Two people pulled a wad of taffy between them, back and forth, until it turned white. Then we pulled out a long single strand and cut it into bite-sized pieces with scissors that had been scrubbed and sterilized.

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I’m not sure when my father bought the LaSalle, maybe in 1938. He needed an automobile large enough to transport all his musicians to dances. The 1929 La Salle was a huge dark rectangular automobile with folding jump seats between the front and back bench seats. He built a plywood box large enough to hold the drum set and other instruments, and bolted the box to the back of the car. Inside, there was plenty of room for the entire band and any teens who wanted to go along. If there were not enough seats, we sat on the floor or on a saxophone case.

One weekend when the band was playing for a Saturday night dance at the Carlotta Grange Hall, my family camped at Grizzly Creek on the Van Duzen River. My father helped us set up camp, then went back to get the La Salle and the band. When the dance was over at two in the morning, he drove us back to camp in our family car and let one of the band members drive the La Salle back to Eureka.

In the early morning light, someone woke him up to tell him the La Salle had missed a curve in the road and now lay on its side against a giant old-growth redwood, it seems the driver had fallen asleep. Fortunately no one was hurt, but my father had to take the band members home and then figure out how to turn the car back up on its wheels again. He probably used a block and tackle. He could always figure out how to get things done.

Another time, when the band played for a dance at the Mattole Grange, we camped on the river near Honeydew, and all the band members and their families camped with us. A huge white tent was set up for a kitchen. Betty and I went fishing with our father and learned to catch and clean trout, and to thread them on a willow twig for carrying them back to camp.

One of the best dances was the Harvest Ball held at Camp Bauer, part of the Northern Redwood Lumber Company at Korbel, where an outdoor pavilion sat in a small clearing among old-growth redwoods. To me, dancing out-of- doors under a full moon in August seemed just like something out of a fairytale. Ken Stayton recently told me that people at one time had taken the train from Eureka to Korbel for the outdoor dances, danced until two in the morning, and then boarded the train back to Eureka.

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The author’s cousin, Ted Phillips, a vocalist for one of the big bands in Eureka in the early forties. Photo courtesy of Naida Gipson.

During our high school years, we discovered dances at the Municipal Auditoriums in Eureka, Loleta and Fortuna, with orchestras and bands like Sal Nygard’s, Ray Bullock’s, and Al Pollard’s, who played the big band sound of the forties. These orchestras were much larger than my father’ little band. The musicians sat on the stage behind matching music stands emblazoned with the leaders initials, emulating the orchestras of Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman. My cousin, Ted Phillips, who sang like Frank Sinatra, would sit by the saxophones, dressed in his best, his blond curls combed just so, and walk to the microphone at center stage when it was time for him to sing. The orchestras played such songs as “Shoo-Shoo, Baby,” “Tuxedo Junction,” and “String of Pearls.” People would stop dancing and stand in a circle to watch Jan and Joe Oppenheimer, or Chuck Steele and Mae Pauline Walch, jitterbug.

We high-school girls no longer dressed in skirts and sweaters with bobby socks and saddle oxfords, but wore dresses and high heels. Nylons or silk stockings were not always available during the war, as all silk was conscripted for making parachutes, so we shaved our legs and used leg make-up; it rubbed off on the insides of our slips and dress hems, and probably on the chairs we sat upon. The longed-for silk stockings had seams up the backs, and some girls tried to draw the seams on their legs with eyebrow pencils. I had a dance-dress of royal blue rayon with big square shoulder pads, in the military style favored by designers of the time. The skirt was straight and short, to my knees. White braid scrolled down the front, accenting the white buttons. My shoes, from Gallenkamp’s Shoe Store, were high- heeled, ankle-strap wedgies of white fabric, a popular style that did not need a ration stamp. Only leather shoes required ration stamps.

In high school, girls and boys still went to dances in separate groups. We nearly always left the dance with our group, too, unless a special boy should ask to escort us home. Dances were a safe place for young people to meet and have a good time. I met my husband. Ken Gipson, at the Fortuna Rodeo Dance — another big-band dance — on July 4, 1951. I can still remember the dress I wore that night — in my favorite shade of green. The soft crepe dress, with white collar and cuffs and white trim on the pockets at the hips, had a pegged skirt that tapered down to mid-calf with a short slit up the back.

Ken and I married in 1953 and we joined a dancing club in Arcata. There, my dance-dress was a sleeveless blue and white striped chambray, with a full skirt over a full crinoline petticoat; my shoes were white backless, high-heeled “Springalators,” the style of the day.

In 2003, Ken and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. It’s funny how I can remember exactly what I wore to dances over the years. In 2003, I wore a red crepe dress cut straight with no waistline, to hide the extra thirty pounds I’ve accumulated around my waist. We rented a hall, had food catered, hired a musician with a keyboard, and …

… danced.

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The story above was originally printed in the Winter 2006 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.