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Sky looks odd, right? 

You’re not imagining it. Smoke from the Flat Fire, which our colleague Jessica Cejnar Andrews wrote about this morning on our sister site, Wild Rivers Outpost, is, somewhat strangely, blowing due south as of this writing, obscuring the sun over coastal Del Norte and Humboldt counties.

See below:

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There appears to be another layer of smoke coming from Canada, which is having its worst fire season in memory, covering much of the United States with nasty air quality. Thankfully, air quality here in Humboldt County remains in the “good” zone, despite the slight darkening of our precious, light-and-heat giving gas orb.

The Flat Fire began Saturday on U.S. Forest Service land near the southern Oregon community of Agness, where the Illinois River meets the Rogue River, and per the latest update, around 10:30 a.m., the blaze has grown to roughly 5,477 acres.

The National Weather Service has predicted a red flag warning starting at 11 p.m. this evening through 8 a.m. Tuesday for the Western Siskiyou National Forest, the Western Rogue Basin and the Illinois Valley.

Head on over to the Wild Rivers Outpost for more info on suppression efforts.

A major proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom to overhaul the state’s behavioral and mental health system is likely to take nearly $720 million away from services provided by county governments annually, according to a new analysis from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Although that money would be reallocated within the system, in part to house homeless individuals with severe mental illness and addiction disorders, the report authors note that Newsom and key legislators supporting the proposal have neither provided a complete justification for the changes nor have they published an analysis on how the changes may “negatively impact current services.”

“Consequently, as the Legislature considers the proposal, we recommend asking the administration certain questions to assess whether the proposal is warranted,” the report states.

Newsom wants the Legislature to put his proposal before voters next year in tandem with a $4.68 billion bond measure to add psychiatric treatment beds. It would change how the state allocates money under the Mental Health Services Act, which levies a 1% tax on income above $1 million to fund behavioral health services.

“What’s more upsetting is watching people continue to suffer on the streets with ineffective interventions and inability to access much needed treatment.”
— Brandon Richards, Gov. Newsom’s Deputy Communications Director

Homelessness has become one of the most high-profile challenges plaguing California, increasing 32% in the past four years. Newsom, who promised to reduce homelessness, announced his intent during his State of the State tour to divert nearly one-third of the state’s Mental Health Services Act money to help address homelessness.

Since that time, local behavioral health providers and county officials have criticized the proposal because of its potential to cut services and pit mental health programs against homeless services. The state has spent more than $20 billion on housing and homelessness since 2018.

Supporters, meanwhile, say reprioritizing how the money is spent is long overdue in light of the growing needs of the state’s homeless population as well as the addition of new funding sources for mental health programs.

In a statement, Newsom’s Deputy Communications Director Brandon Richards said “upsetting the status quo” was necessary in light of California’s changing health care needs.

Mental health needs among California homeless

A recent study from UC San Francisco found that two-thirds of homeless individuals experience mental health conditions, although income loss is the driving force behind the state’s homelessness crisis.

“What’s more upsetting is watching people continue to suffer on the streets with ineffective interventions and inability to access much needed treatment,” Richards said. “A California behavioral health system of care that is more focused, more transparent, and more accountable for results is what all Californians deserve and what this historic reform aims to achieve.”

Roughly one-third of the county mental health infrastructure in the state is supported by the Mental Health Services Act, which was approved by voters in 2004 as a ballot initiative. Substantial changes to the act, like the ones Newsom proposed, require voter approval. Last year the tax generated about $3.8 billion.

Critics of Newsom’s proposal say the new analysis bolsters their argument that the changes will result in significant cuts to current programs, particularly those that support children.

Newsom’s office has so far “danced around” how much money would be cut, said Adrienne Shilton, a lobbyist for the California Alliance of Children and Family Services, which represents behavioral health providers in every county. The report is the first to quantify how the proposal would impact programs statewide.

“We’re seeing in real dollars what the impact would be,” Shilton said.

The analysis estimates spending on current programs would be reduced from $1.34 billion to $621 million under the plan.

Housing money in Gavin Newsom’s plan

The report identified a number of key changes and unanswered questions for the Legislature to consider in Newsom’s plan:

• Reduced flexibility: Counties would have less flexibility to determine how money is spent. Based on current expenditures, counties would be required to increase spending on housing by $493 million and on “full-service partnerships” by $121 million. “Full-service partnerships” include intensive wraparound services like case management, housing and employment support as well as clinical care.
• Program cuts likely: In order to meet spending targets and caps, counties would likely need to reduce spending on current programs including “outpatient services, crisis response, prevention services, and outreach.”
• Less independent oversight: The proposed restructuring moves much of the program implementation and oversight authority to the Department of Health Care Services. The change “significantly limits” the independent oversight of the current Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who helped author the original law and who has been a key supporter of the changes, said the law was always meant to prioritize “the plight of people living with serious mental illness on our streets.”

“It’s appropriate, in fact, it’s necessary to set priority status,” Steinberg said.

Steinberg and Newsom’s office also contend that the state has invested heavily in the mental health safety net in other ways, including changes to the Medi-Cal system and a $4.4 billion one-time infusion into the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative.

“It’s no longer a funding source that stands alone,” Steinberg said. “(Now), the opportunity is to weave all these pieces together so that everyone has access to care, and nobody is left out or left behind.”

Still, advocates say it is premature to assume those investments have had a positive impact and that many have not yet been implemented. In an opposition letter, Lishaun Francis, senior director for behavioral health at Children Now said the state “has yet to demonstrate that it has delivered” on its promises and that the proposal deprioritizes children and youth.

“The opportunity is to weave all these pieces together so that everyone has access to care, and nobody is left out or left behind.”
— Darrell Steinberg, Mayor of Sacramento

Advocates also say those funding sources, particularly Medi-Cal, won’t reimburse for the non-clinical programs like classroom interventions and family resource centers that have historically been supported by the Mental Health Services Act. Medi-Cal is the state’s health insurance program for extremely low-income Californians.

“Families need flexibility,” said Christine Stoner-Mertz, chief executive officer of the California Alliance of Child and Family Services. “We need community-designed practices, and we haven’t been successful in doing that with just Medi-Cal.”

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Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

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

“O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, the insubstantial country of the mind! …And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel…”

— Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

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I don’t trust my brain for a moment. Why should I? It lies to me, falsifies memories, gives me the illusion of acting freely, of having a separate “self” apart from the rest of the world. On top of all that, it convinces me that I’m conscious.

Believing in my own consciousness, or awareness, is, to the best of my understanding, my brain’s attempt at staying sane. If I just said, “Oh, this is just my data-processing brain constructing its own awareness because this pseudo-consciousness works, having got me here through countless generations who all believed the same thing,” I’d go nuts. Easier to believe the lie than to accept the reality.

Thing is, the stuff that makes up brains — neuronal matter — is just like the rest of the body, functionally organized to serve survival and reproduction. Nothing magic about it, any more than my liver is magic.

Here’s how neurologist Michael Graziano explains the illusion of self and consciousness: “When an information processing device [the brain] introspects, and on that basis arrives at the conclusion that it has a magical, non-physically-explainable property, the most straightforward scientific question is not: How did it produce magic? But instead: How, and for what use, does it construct that description of itself.”

I think we’re pretty close to building computers that will construct their own awareness, just as the brain does, complete with the same illusions about “self” as we have

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“No one is truly free until they realize that free will is an illusion.”

— Baruch Spinoza

Free will is — of course! — a non-starter, despite my brain’s acting as if it were free. Samuel Johnson foreshadowed the science of neurology by a few hundred years, writing, “All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience is for it.” (The usual test offered for free will is to answer the question, “Could I have acted differently?” in the positive. The problem being, duh, there’s no way of knowing.)

From a physics POV, each of us is made up of some ten to the thirtieth elementary particles, all of which obey deterministic laws of physics (with the very odd random, and therefore unpredictable, quantum “jump”), meaning we’re essentially deterministic: given complete information about us at any one moment, an imaginary computer could calculate what we’re going to say and do the next moment … and the next…

Our brains are machines — complex machines, true — but machines nonetheless. Mostly they’re filters: every second, some 10 million bits of information enter it, yet the output can be estimated in just a few dozen bits per second, the rest of the input having been dumped as inessential or confusing. The rest of it is all about making a consistent view of the world, which is essential to survival. That’s why I think psychedelics can be so overwhelming, removing (some of) the filters — information then floods in — seemingly so much more real than William James’ “rational waking consciousness.” (That flood, as I and, probably you, know, can lead both to ecstasies and bad trips.)

I could go on. And on. Better to remind myself, as Stuart Sutherland wrote in The International Dictionary of Psychology, “Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon … Nothing worth reading has been written about it.”

It’s that time again, folks! Organizers of the sixth annual Eureka Street Art Festival are gearing up to bring a much-needed dose of color to the drab walls of Broadway.

There are 20 murals planned for this year’s festival. Where is all the art happening, you ask? Keep scrolling for a map of the mural locations along the southern Highway 101 corridor and more information about the painters who will be spreading art and color throughout our fair city.

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Press release from the Eureka Street Art Festival:

This July 31st - August 5th, the Eureka Street Art Festival will be bringing 20 new murals to South Broadway and the 101!

2023 Mural Artists

This year we are welcoming artists from around the corner and around the world. The 2023 Artists include: 

• Laci Dane - Weott, CA
• Blake Reagan - Loleta, CA
• CALANGOSS (Eder Muniz) - Rochester, NY
• Ripe Mind (Tony Diaz) - Arcata, CA
• ORLUarts - Oakland, CA
• Fasm - Modesto, CA
• REBOUND - Arcata, CA
• Caitlin McDonagh - Victoria, BC, Canada
• Ekosaurio - Santurce, Puerto Rico
• Josh Overington - Arcata, CA
• Edin + Ben Goulart - Bayside, CA
• Ladi Ladines - Humboldt County, CA
• Tamzen Fox - Humboldt County, CA
• Aerosol Kingdom - Rochester, NY
• Miles Toland - Nevada City, CA
• LEHO - Tainan City, Taiwan
• Kay Lopez - Eureka, CA
• Mark Worst - Los Angeles, CA
• Zoë Gelfant - Montreal, QC, Canada

For the week of the Festival, these artists will be painting murals along the 101 and South Broadway, from D Street all the way to the Herrick Overpass. As always, we are featuring a strong group of local artists, including a number of painters who participated in the ESAF Mural Apprentice Program in past years. And this year we are excited to be welcoming international artists again, with muralists coming from as far as Canada, Puerto Rico, and Taiwan to spread some color in Eureka.
You can find examples of all of the artists work on our social media (@EurekaStreetArtFestival) and our website (www.EurekaStreetArtFestival.com).

How to Enjoy the Festival

• Drive + walk around the Festival area during the week – Grab a map from our website, the Eureka Visitor Center, Humboldt Cider Company or Festival HQ (located at Papa + Barkley).
• Daily Art Talks – at 5:30pm This year we will be organizing more in-depth Art Talks each day. Check our website and social media for the schedule and locations.
• Support the Broadway businesses while you’re out! – Let’s show some love to our local businesses throughout the week.
• Attend the Block Party on Saturday, August 5th from 12-6, under the Samoa Bridge – Enjoy the huge beer garden, listen to live music, eat tons of good food, watch artists work, shop from local vendors, and meet the mural artists!

The Eureka Street Art Festival’s mission is to create intentional, accessible art that enlivens public spaces, stimulates community revitalization, and attracts visitors to Eureka. ESAF is a Dreammaker Project of the Ink People Center for the Arts. 

Offshore wind energy can be thought of as three distinct projects: the construction of offshore wind turbines, the actual operation and generation of electricity, and the transmission of that electricity across California. The Humboldt Harbor District is poised to play a major role in offshore wind turbine construction and is planning improvements to create a port designed specifically to build these large floating turbines.

The Harbor District has released a “Notice of Preparation”—the initial step in the CEQA process for analyzing environmental impacts from the port redevelopment. Luis Neuner of EPIC, Jen Kalt of Humboldt Baykeeper, and Caroline Griffith of the Northcoast Environmental Center join the show to discuss their thoughts on the initial designs.

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Previously: Man Suffers Major Burns After Another Man Set Him on Fire in Downtown Eureka Yesterday Afternoon, Police Say; Suspect Still at Large

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Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

Jones

On July 12, 2023, a 43-year-old man was lit on fire near the 400 block of A Street in Eureka. The man received critical burns and was transported out of the area for treatment.

Through extensive investigation, Eureka Police Detectives identified 60-year-old Vaughn Pernell Jones as the suspect. On July 14, 2023, a Ramey Warrant was obtained and Jones was taken into custody near the 100 block of 2nd Street. Jones was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for attempted murder and mayhem.

There had been casual discussions over the past few years about the possibility of a visit to the Mattole valley, but the talk never seemed to evolve into a plan of action. At a recent dinner party, though, that barrier was broken and my friends rather unexpectedly said, “Let’s go!” As we climbed the “Wildcat” out of Ferndale on our way to my family’s camp on Conklin Creek Road, the suggestion was repeatedly made that my information about that part of the county ought to be recorded before it fades into the unrecoverable past.

And so I am charging forth on the wings of family history, on the stories of earlier times told by my mother and father until their passing in 1963, and on my own personal visits to the Mattole commencing around 1939.

My mother, Cora Farnsworth, was born in Ettersburg on the Upper Mattole in 1901. She had nine siblings. She graduated from the Petrolia School around 1912, and I have a photo from that time. It shows her standing on the school porch with the other students and the teacher.

She often spoke fondly of a little black mare that she and her sisters rode to school. There must have been a one-room school in Ettersburg at that time. Her father had apparently come into the Upper Mattole with one of the earliest wagon trains to reach that area. He is buried in tbe old Mattole cemetery on the knob just south of tbe Petrolia Store. His name, Farnswortb, persists among some of the old-timers who use it to identify a ridge to the north of the table that one crosses traveling the Mattole Road to and from Petrolia.

Learning responsibilities in homemaking very early, my mother occasionally traveled to nearby Briceland, where she worked as a domestic servant. It wasn’t long before she had made the two-day journey by horse and wagon to Eureka, where she had gained employment as a clerk at Hink’s department store, which later became Daly’s.

It was, however, the Mattole Valley that always remained in her heart, and when the opportunity occurred to purchase a few acres with a cabin on the lower river near Petrolia around 1956, my dad threw economic caution to the winds and purchased the property as a family retreat. To my mother it was like coming home. My parents were acquainted with many of the original ranch families of the area: Roscoe, Clark, Hindley, Lindley, Oeschger, Etter, Lloyd Roberts, Ear] Schortgen, etc. (Ken Roscoe’s Heydays in Humboldt is a fascinating collection of humorous anecdotes, mostly from the Mattole). Both my mom and dad loved going there, often inviting friends to share in what they considered their good fortune. In 1958 my dad paid $25 for a unit of “farmer’s lumber” from the mill in Carlotta to build an additional shelter. He pieced the components of the structure together in our horse barn at Hydesville, loaded them on the old 1947 International, hauled them down to the valley, and assembled what has survived to this day as “the sleeping cabin.” Their vision for the future of the property was that it serve as a special meeting place for the extended families of my two sisters and myself, a purpose it has served well for over fifty years.

Some of my earliest experiences on the Mattole took place in the forties at another beautiful cabin on the little flat, up a gulch and just slightly downstream from the mouth of Conklin Creek. Tbe cabin belonged to two older ladies named Williams and Graham, one a widow, the other a “spinster.” At that time these women owned the ranch in Hydesville that was later purchased by the Fearrien family when Les first came there. My dad had entered a business arrangement with Williams and Graham involving their ranch property: he would seed the large front fields on the Hydesville table to subterranean clover in return for the use of the entire ranch for livestock pasture. The older ladies insisted that our family make use of the cabin on Conklin Creek Road anytime we might choose during those years. There were at least three other cabins on this little flat. One belonged to Adrian and Sue Chapin, who ran a dairy farm in Ferndale, and Marge and Rae Wright utilized another. The Wright family bistory is associated with the earliest valley settlements. It was at this cabin tbat I first slept on Mattole ground, went trout fishing and first encountered water snakes and pinch bugs in my swimming trunks at the close-by pools.

My dad spoke of his experiences as a young man driving livestock from the Mattole to markets in Eel River Valley. During our family’s trips to Petrolia he always identified the various ranches that the road passed through from Bunker Hill to Bear River, over Cape Mendocino and down the coast to Davis Creek. Many of these properties were initially developed by the Russ family and acquired names from legends and myths like Mazeppa and What Cheer, to comments on the prevailing weather such as Spicy Breezes and Windy Nip. These titles always called forth my father’s memories of trailing cattle over the ridges in wind that made it difficult to sit a saddle. The perpetual ocean wind along the coastal ridges was often a distinct actor in these stories.

Curtis and Olive Walker were close friends of my parents. They lived on the Walker Ranch, which was situated on an exposed ridge above the Zanoni Ranch. For many years, access into the Mattole was directly up Domingo Creek from the ocean, tbrough Zanoni’s and past the Walker gate over into McNutt Creek. The transition from the coastal environment, where all the trees branched to the southeast from the perpetual ocean winds, over the ridge into the more protected valley climate, always seemed like pure magic to me, symbolic of suddenly arriving instantaneously in a true “heaven on earth” for a boy. Mixed with that magic is a story my dad told repeatedly about Grandma Walker, arriving at the gate from a daylong stage journey. According to accounts, it bad been so windy that the elderly lady bad been thrown off her feet and had crawled hand over hand clinging to the fence about a quarter of a mile to make it home.

Thoughts of the Walker ranch bring forth my lifelong friendship with Curtis and Olive’s son Lowell. Redheaded Lowell was a couple of years older and a seasoned mountain ranch boy. One of my earliest encounters with Lowell was during a family visit to the ranch when he introduced me to archery. I think it must have been around 1939. Using Lowell’s bow and arrows out behind the barn, we took turns shooting straight up until the arrows disappeared into the wind and we ran for the barn to avoid being brained by the returning missiles. I was hooked and began begging my parents for a bow and arrows. Lowell had gotten his bow from the Cape Mendocino lighthouse keeper, who had fashioned yew wood bows for several years as a hobby to pass the solitary time. Finally, tired of listening to the begging, my parents took me out to the lighthouse to get me a yew wood bow.

The Cape Mendocino Lighthouse as it appeared in 1915. Photo: Humboldt County Historical Society.

What I recall about that day may be one of those little episodes that has expanded with time but it frightened me enough to stick with me for seventy years. The lighthouse keeper had suspended a ship’s hawser the short distance from his living quarters to the light so that he might go back and forth hand over hand to perform maintenance in all weathers. It was fair with a rather regular northwest wind over the cape that day as we got out of the car to walk down to the keeper’s quarters, but it kept me clutching the door handle of our little Ford. My father took one of my hands and my mother the other as they leaned into the wind to get down the trail. What I distinctly recall is a sensation of flying between and behind my parents because the wind kept me airborne behind them, my weight inadequate to allow my feet to touch the ground. I still the treasured bow acquired out on the cape that day, a reminder of a world of experiences.

The Walkers eventually moved to town where Curtis became a dairyman. He passed away as the result of a heart condition aggravated by a night spent attempting to save his milk cows from the rising waters of the Eel River during the 1964 flood. Lowell became a veterinarian and returned to purchase a ranch in the Mattole valley upon his retirement. The manned light house on Cape Mendocino was eventually replaced by an automated navigation light coded for identification by navigators. Over the years Blunt’s Reef was marked by an audible bell buoy and also by a manned light ship anchored on the reef, both now passed into history.

The author’s father, Everett Beck, with his horse and dog.

During our journeys to and from the cabin on the Mattole, my dad always had a string of tales concerning various points of interest along the way. Some came from have his personal experiences as a young cowboy in the twenties. Others related to the location and naming of stop on the early journeys from the various ranches and places. I learned of the early history of Bear River Valley and the original ranch families that first settled this tiny isolated community. It was interesting to realize that the old hotel at Capetown on Bear River was the primary stage stop on the journeys from Mattole country. It was a necessary facility because the trip took two days, at first by horse-drawn wagon that involved some segments of travel along the ocean beaches at low tides and required fording the Eel River. When the Mattole Road was developed, the stage always stopped overnight at Capetown. There were stories of waiting for low tides to herd cattle up the coast past the promontory that old timers refer to as Devil’s Gate, in order to avoid driving the stock up over the ridges at that point.

The changing perspective of Steamboat Rock was always fascinating to watch as we traveled past the cape. It was the stuff of seafaring fantasies for a ten-year-old, as were stories of a mounted cavalry detachment that was maintained on the beach between Devil’s Gate and Davis Creek during the years of the Second World War. Dad always pointed out the location of the corrals and barracks that had housed a small team of horsemen who patrolled the coast from the mouth of the Mattole to the cape. Their mission was to look out for Japanese submarines and foreign ships.

To remember the Mattole is to remember the joys of swimming and fishing. Early visits to the valley, before the acquisition of our cabin property, always meant daily swimming adventures in the nearby pools and a regular opportunity for trout fishing in virtually untouched streams. To a ten-year-old it was the best of all worlds. What could surpass sleeping out under the stars, awakening with a blacktail doe peering down at you, promenading to the river to swim, lunching on all your mother’s favorite dishes, and going fishing in the afternoon with trout for breakfast next morning. Heaven on earth!

The Mattole has been one of the very best streams on the entire North Coast for salmon and steelhead fishing. When I became interested in the larger fish, I often fished the river and learned of questionable harvesting procedures carried out at the river’s mouth. In a normal rainfall year the mouth would dry up, leaving a narrow spit separating the river estuary from the ocean. When it was determined that the runs were waiting offshore to travel upstream for spawning, it became common practice for a team of locals to open the mouth of the river by digging a narrow channel across the spit with shovels, to fork the numerous salmon out of the narrow channel with pitchforks and to haul away wagon loads of salmon. This was likely one of the factors contributing to the decline in fish populations. Another factor is probably the erosion and silting of the stream resulting from the years of unregulated logging. Modern efforts aim at preventing the anadromous fishes, particularly the Coho, from becoming extinct.

The Mattole Valley has always struck me as a raw uncontrolled landscape of amazing wildness and excesses, such as the earthquake activity, the torrential rainfalls, rapid floods, wildfires, and lawless pioneering. Historically, there are areas of the drainage that have experienced frequent downpours in excess of ten inches in single twenty-four-hour periods, resulting in annual precipitation totals well over one hundred inches and rapid river flooding. Some of the original ranchers repeatedly set fire to their land with the dual purpose of eventually making the land produce more forage and exercising seasonal control of the noxious species and poison oak.

The younger generations currently residing in this area have accomplished clear changes in the social, economic, and cultural structure of the Mattole drainage. Laura Walker’s Mattolia gives a view of current residents’ perspectives about the valley. Current policies of fire control have changed the landowner’s management procedures. Seasonal uncontrolled wildfire is no longer a forage management option. A great deal more attention is directed at preserving the various aspects of the environment, including timber management, water utilization and restoration of the fisheries. The valley now sports day camps for kids and a high school. In earlier times, many valley youngsters were boarded out in Ferndale during the school year because of the time and uncertainty of travel in and out of the area.

Such symptoms of civilization, however, cannot erase the early history, the indelible string of boyhood adventures, and the later years of country experiences that feed my love for the Mattole River Valley. To this day I get up in the morning, go to the sink and splash cold water in my face, pretending it is water from the Mattole.

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The story above was originally printed in the Summer 2011 issue of The Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society, and 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.