Janice (Jan) McFarlan
March 2, 1950 – Sept. 26, 2023

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those who I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.” Jan carried this quote by W.H. Auden with her always. And it was true. If there was a thread throughout Jan’s life, it was laughter. She learned it at an early age from her Mom and Dad, Nana and Grandpa and Grandma and Grandpa. That laughter extended to cousins, aunts and uncles, her stepdad, and then to lifelong friends and friends that she met along the way. She laughed as she told the story of how, in kindergarten, she spent half of the year in the corner for laughing and couldn’t stop the giggles while in the corner.

Jan was born in San Francisco on March 2, 1950, to her parents John and Marie. Her dad and mom moved with her to Eureka, where her dad’s family lived. Jan attended St. Bernard’s Elementary and high school as well as College of the Redwoods. Her first job was at the Snack Bar at the Sequoia Park and Zoo at 14 years old. She worked at the State Theatre, OH’s Hamburger King, Roos Atkins, McMahan’s and finally, for 31 years, at Humboldt State University. Jan left Humboldt to care for her mother after her stroke.

Jan is survived by her first cousins Geri and Cathy, her stepdaughter Megan, granddaughter Aurora, stepsister Carmen, other cousins, and many wonderful friends. Also her beloved four-legged companion, Paris.

She was preceded in death by all three of her parents (John, Marie and Tex), her longtime partner, Karl, and many dear relatives and friends, all of whom shared her love of life and laughter.

Jan requested no formal gathering. Please get together wherever you would like, and share some smiles, stories, and laughter. Part of Jan’s ashes will be returning to San Francisco where she was born and a city that she loved. The other part will be scattered locally in the ocean. So, the next time you lookout at the ocean, the Eel River or cross the Golden Gate Bridge please smile for Jan and know she is smiling down at you with Love!

Written by Jan.

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Laphonza Butler, a longtime political strategist with close ties to organized labor and Gov. Gavin Newsom, will take the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat in the U.S. Senate following her death Friday.

The appointment, reported by Politico tonight and confirmed by the governor’s office, closes a brief but rapid period of speculation about how Newsom would fulfill a promise to return a Black woman to the Senate without tipping the scales in what is already a crowded race to succeed Feinstein.

Butler’s profile pic on Twitter.

Butler currently serves as president of EMILYs List, an organization that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights. She was for many years the head of SEIU Local 2015, a union representing California long-term caregivers, before becoming a partner in what was then known as SCRB Strategies, Newsom’s political consulting firm, and later working in public policy for Airbnb. She’s also a former University of California regent.

Newsom faced tremendous pressure to appoint a Black woman to the position. He had promised to do so during an MSNBC interview in March 2021, an effort to alleviate the anger some activists felt when he chose Alex Padilla to be California’s first Latino senator after then-Sen. Kamala Harris was elected vice president.

But earlier this month, the governor told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would make an “interim appointment” if he had to fill Feinstein’s seat because he did not “want to get involved in the primary,” even as he remained committed to choosing a Black woman.

That seemingly ruled out Rep. Barbara Lee, an Oakland Democrat who is already running for Senate, where she trails Reps. Adam Schiff, a Burbank Democrat, and Katie Porter, an Irvine Democrat, in public polls about the March primary.

Lee and her supporters were incensed, calling it offensive that a Black woman should only get to serve in the Senate in a caretaker capacity. Many of them, including the Congressional Black Caucus, publicly urged Newsom to select her anyway in the days after Feinstein’s death.

Newsom subsequently appeared to back off his earlier pledge. His office confirmed Sunday that his appointee would be free to run for a full term. It isn’t clear yet whether Butler will run.

Newsom communications adviser Anthony York denied that the governor had changed his mind and said his comment referred to the fact that his appointee would serve as an interim until the next election. York said Newsom regretted not clearing up the confusion sooner, but the decision about a replacement was still hypothetical at that time.

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

Press release from the United States Coast Guard:

The Coast Guard rescued a person Saturday afternoon, after his sailboat the “Agua Star” was beset by weather approximately 80 miles west of Eureka.

U.S. Coast Guard Sector Humboldt Bay watchstanders received multiple radio transmissions around 11:40 a.m. Saturday from the Captain of the Agua Star, stating he needed immediate assistance and was approximately 80 miles west of Eureka.

Sector Humboldt watchstanders directed the recall and launch of a Coast Guard Air Station Humboldt Bay MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew from training around 11:40 a.m.

The Dolphin aircrew arrived on scene around 3:50 p.m. and made contact with the Agua Star’s captain. He reported that he needed to be evacuated due to weather conditions and damage to his sailboat.

 The aircrew then hoisted the passenger from the sailboat to the helicopter at 4:30 p.m. and began their transit back to Air Station Humboldt Bay.

The aircrew dropped the passenger off at Air Station Humboldt Bay around 5:15 p.m. The passenger was reported to have no injuries.

The sailboat’s last reported position is reported to be approximately 80 miles west of Eureka.

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.

— Niels Bohr to Wolfgang Pauli, after Pauli presented his “non-linear field theory”

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If my life is judged by my mistakes, I’m basically one big failure! Money, parenting, choice of profession, compassion for others (and self), sexuality, countless missed opportunities … years littered with one mistake after another. Which should, if emotions have anything to do with it, leave me in a state of guilt and regret. Instead, I have to remind myself: of course I made mistakes and of course I beat myself up for them — this is life we’re talking about. How else do we learn if not by (a) making mistakes, (b) feeling bad about them, leading to (c) doing something different next time.

On the Leh-Nubra road, Ladakh. John Hill, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

I think I first came to grips with this obviousness — not only are mistakes okay, but they’re essential if we’re do do anything other than hibernate our lives away in a cocoon — many years ago, reading wise old Tom Robbins’ sweet, hippy novel about Sissy (of the enormous thumbs), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues:

So you think that you’re a failure, do ya? Well, you probably are. What’s wrong with that? In the first place, if you have any sense at all, we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail! But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

Evolutionarily speaking (and I trust the unsupported conjectures of evolutionary philosophy), it makes sense that we feel bad, sometimes literally, about the mistakes we make. Eat poisonous fruit and you get sick; if you recover, you learn not to eat that particular fruit again. What doesn’t kill you makes you strong.

This ramble was prompted by a recent outcry about a theory of consciousness known as Integrated Information Theory. IIT is, to be brutal, as nutty as every other theory of consciousness. I’m a “mysterian,” that is, I doubt we’ll ever truly understand consciousness, there being no way to inspect our brains from the outside. The outcry was in the form of a letter, signed by 124 researchers, which claimed IIT was pseudoscience — which it probably is, being untestable, like the existence of God or that we’re in a simulation. Which, per se, doesn’t make it wrong. What caught my eye was a rebuttal to the criticism by a neuroscientist, Erik Hoel, who feared that the letter would discourage young researchers from dabbling in wild and outrageous theories. “The most important thing for me is that we don’t make our hypotheses small and banal in order to avoid being tarred with the pseudoscience label,” he wrote.

In other words, think big and embrace your failures.

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After more than 20 years of providing transportation services, the Blue Lake Rancheria Transit System will discontinue operations on Monday, ending bus service for Rancheria residents, as well as riders in Blue Lake, Glendale, Arcata, McKinleyville and Eureka, according to a notice posted to the Rancheria’s website.

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The reason behind the decision remains unclear. The Blue Lake Rancheria did not immediately respond to the Outpost’s request for additional information.

[DISCLOSURE: The Blue Lake Rancheria is a minority owner of Outpost parent company Lost Coast Communications, Inc.]

Reached for comment on Friday afternoon, Blue Lake City Manager Amanda Mager said the city was not aware of any issues with the transit program “until we received a letter from the Rancheria on Sept. 15 stating they would cease operations on Oct. 2.”

“[T]he situation has been very fluid as the City has been scrambling to find alternative options in a very short period of time,” Mager wrote in an email to the Outpost. “We are working closely with our local transportation partners to find a solution, or most likely, solutions. We are working right now with Humboldt Transit Authority (HTA) to see if we can add a Blue Lake stop to their Willow Creek route. This looks like it could be a good and functional option [and] could happen by next week if all of the pieces fall into place.”

Mager noted that the City of Blue Lake has provided about $32,000 in annual funding to supplement the transit service for a number of years, “although the City’s contribution was not enough to support the full cost of the transit program,” she said.

In the long term, Mager said the city is looking at options for dial-a-ride services to meet the regular needs of area residents. “This could include weekly trips to the grocery store or the local pharmacies.”

The Blue Lake Rancheria Transit System will cease operations on Monday, Oct. 2 at 6 p.m. 

Anyone who’s traveled between Arcata and Eureka lately has seen a whole lot of construction going on. Humboldt County Supervisor and Coastal Commissioner Mike Wilson joins co-hosts Jen Kalt (Humboldt Baykeeper) and Colin Fiske (Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities) to talk about several projects that have been in the works for many years. Once the Indianola Interchange is built, CalTrans will close all the medians, meaning no more left turns across oncoming traffic. The final four miles of Humboldt Bay Trail will be finished by next fall, completing a decades-old goal: a continuous section of California Coast Trail connecting the two largest cities in the County! Other topics include sea level rise, billboard removal, why those Eucalyptus trees had to go, and what’s in store for the former lumber mill at Brainard.

In the fall of 1923, Mickey Gillette went to San Francisco to play with Paul Ash at the Granada Theater. I was playing with Lee’s Merrymakers and was offered the job that Mickey was leaving … in Young’s Cabaret on Second Street.

Anyone knowing my parents would know how much they did not want me to take the job. But some way I talked them into it and played there from 8 to 12 p.m. seven days a week while attending Arcata High School. I had just passed my eighteenth birthday. Two years before, I had worked my summer vacation in the woods at Crannell, and six years before I was the only non-Indian boy on the Hoopa Reservation, except when the Mortsoff boys were home.

I started on a Sunday night and got initiated quickly. There were about twenty-four girls working, a 3-piece band, a bartender, and the proprietor and his wife. The cabaret was in the rear of Young’s restaurant. Directly behind the bar a window opened on the alley and when the pitcher of “moonshine” on the sink ran dry, the window opened and an arm came through with a full pitcher, the arm withdrew and down would go the window. In four months, I never saw the owner of that arm!

Now, back to the Sunday night I started work. There were two girls who decided to give me a rough time.One was Maxine, a blond, and her pal, Frenchie, a brunette, who wore very low-cut dresses. The two would come up to me and say how innocent I looked and in explicit terms tell me how they would like to further my education.

After a time I couldn’t stand it and, interspersed with the best logging camp profanity I knew, I stood up, took my sax apart, burst into tears and said, “I’m going home. I never heard women talk like this. My folks don’t want me to work here anyway.”

Then Pansy Minor stepped in and told my tormentors that she would give them a bad time if they ever gave me a bad time gain. The proprietor stepped in and soothed my feelings. (I should have asked for more money then as I was the only sax player they could get.)

Pansy Minor was a sweet character in a somewhat tawdry place. She and her husband had been a star act in vaudeville. He died, or was killed accidentally, and without him her star descended and she drifted to Eureka and made it from day to day, not caring. She played beautiful piano and spelled Cecil La Chapelle when he was away from the piano. She had known many of the great stars of Broadway and told me many stories of celebrities she had known. Years later in San Francisco, I met people who had known her in brighter days and everything she told me was the truth.

Cecil La Chappelle was the finest piano player I ever worked with. Every musician who worked with “Cec” was a much-improved musician from then on. He was from Marshfield, Oregon, and came to Eureka and either formed, or joined, the Bay Novelty Orchestra, a fine group of that day. He later went to San Francisco and played on the Blue Monday Jamboree with Meredith Willson. He bought a plane and was killed when it crashed. I lost a true friend.

There was a bootblack who came into the Cabaret and to the music of “Runnin’ Wild” he did a dance around the floor, picking up speed until he seemed to be a blur. Also, a singer came in occasionally. His specialty was “Melancholy Baby.” He had a fine voice.

The girls all sang, if you could call it singing. Their job was to separate the customers (mostly woodsmen) from their money. Business picked up as the week went along and Saturday nights the place really jumped. The woods boss waited at the train Sunday afternoon to pay the fare back to camp for any logger who had gone broke over Saturday night. The cabaret girl’s measure of success was the new clothes she could show on Monday evening, after a day’s shopping, after a Saturday night.

One night the place was raided. The boss’s wife was carrying a loaded tray of drinks when the swinging doors burst in and a figure, dressed in a floor length black coat, black hat pulled away down, and dark glasses, went darting across to the bar. The tray crashed to the floor, the bartender and the invader struggled for the pitcher of moonshine, the bartender won and the evidence went down the drain.

The officer was “Bally McKay” of the District Attorney’s Dry Squad. He took the bartender to jail, booked him, the bartender returned to Young’s, the window went up, the arm came through with the pitcher of moonshine, and business went on as usual. Then Mickey came back from San Francisco and sold every would-be sax player in Humboldt (including myself) a sax mouthpiece for $10 that he said had been given to him by Chester Hazlett, Paul Ash’s star sax player.

I found out later that Mick bought a raft of the mouthpieces for $2.50 per. Each of the buyers got a mouthpiece used by the great Hazlett, given personally to Mickey and sold to us for $10, because of Mickey’s great liking for us and “don’t let anyone else know that I let you have it.” Strangely, mine was a good one and I used it for years.

So my trips back and forth across the marsh from Arcata to Eureka every night ended. The faithful Model T with the broken isinglass in the flapping side curtains that let in the rain. The lights that ran off the magneto and dimmed as you slowed, and brightened as your speed increased. The windshield with no wipers that fogged up so you had to lean out in the rain and use the side of the road as a guide. Going to sleep with my head on my arms in Mr. Ham’s late history class.

All this ended. Yet I was never late for work or failed to get home or missed a day in the four months that I worked in Young’s Cabaret on Second Street in Eureka fifty years ago.