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On Friday night, a real-life Grinch stole a truck-load full of toys from a warehouse north of Eureka where the local Toys for Tots organization was storing toys to be distributed to less-fortunate local children this Christmas season.

Gregg Gardiner, coordinator for the last 17 years for Toys for Tots in Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte and northern Mendocino counties, said that “a significant portion” of the toys collected this year were stolen. 

“[I]t’s hard to imagine that anyone would break into the Toys for Tots warehouse but that’s exactly what happened on Friday night,” the organization said in a post to its Facebook page this morning.

Gardiner told the Outpost that the thief (or thieves), armed with bolt cutters, apparently broke into a truck owned by a local engineering company at Green Diamond Resource Company’s Brainard property, on Hwy. 101 north of Eureka.  The perpetrator(s) then broke into the warehouse, disabled and removed the video surveillance equipment as well as a truck that was full of toys, which was driven through the gate at the facility. 

According to Gardiner, the truck has been recovered but the toys remain missing. The Eureka Police Department has increased patrols at the site.

Toys for Tots is asking the public to be on the lookout for people selling toys or other children’s gifts, such as girls’ hairdryers, at a reduced price, as they may have come from the organization’s warehouse.

Gardiner says anyone wishing to help can send a donation to 2383 Myrtle Ave. Eureka, CA 95501, or donate through the Toys for Tots website.  

Green Diamond Property Manager Craig Compton posted the following message on the Toys for Tots Facebook page this morning:

All,

We have been made aware that there was a break in and theft at the Brainard property last night (12/8). The northern main gate was damaged and is now secured with a chain and a lock. Both Toys for Tots and Wahlund Construction have let us know they were impacted by theft. Toys for Tots has initiated a Police report and let us know that the Eureka Police Department (EPD) has agreed to conduct some nighttime patrols at Brainard. I think this a temporary commitment on the part of EPD, still very much appreciated.

We will be evaluating some alternatives to improve security for the Brainard site this coming week as several of you have expressed concern and frustration. I don’t know how many different places I saw this weekend with numerous folks volunteering for the Toys for Tots toy drive. It was quite a few. Knowing how hard all the volunteers work to make the organization successful makes the news of them being the target of theft that much harder to accept.

We will work to get the main gate repaired as soon as possible.

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Lost Coast Communications owner and President Patrick Cleary contributed to this report.

A line from the song “Freedom,” by Rage Against the Machine, tells us that “anger is a gift.” How often do we try to tamp down our anger, like it’s an embarrassing feeling we attempt to avoid or whistle past in the dark knowing it’s lurking behind our tight words. Maybe it’s because anger is so often misunderstood. As an Enneagram 9 (peacemaker), anger scares me — my own anger or other people’s. It seems unpredictable and erratic and unstable. It doesn’t communicate my feelings well and gets lost in all the extra noise it tends to make. But anger is a truth-teller, and under that noise, if I look deep enough, it will tell me something is wrong.

Anger is a gift, but only if we can patiently pause long enough to notice the truth.

The war happening in Gaza right now is horrifying. The images you’ve seen of children’s bodies being ripped apart, whole families dying together from weapons our country has provided makes my blood boil in a mixture of grief and anger. Women raped by Hamas and those who were murdered or kidnapped. Israel’s colonization of land. Hamas’s terrorism. Constant violent threat towards LGBTQ folx. Subjugation of women and brainwashing of children. The apparent genocide of Palestinians in Gaza without any rescue from neighboring countries. The ways religion is used as a dehumanizing bludgeoning tool, excusing hatred and affirming violence.

And, yes, it’s complicated, but aren’t you furious? Aren’t you angry? In my anger I feel such helplessness, powerlessness. I am paralyzed by it all, which tends to feed my anger, and the cycle continues.

Anger is a gift, but only if we can patiently pause long enough to notice the truth.

The problem is the truth keeps getting covered up by blaming the other side, by pointing fingers and saying “they started it,” like it’s all “their” fault and if “they” no longer existed everything would be better. Blame then becomes its own sort of cycle, feeding my anger and justifying my beliefs, justifying the violence and hatred and “self-defense.”

But when I pause long enough for my justifying blame to subside, it’s there I notice the truth: the suffering, objectifying, subjugating, colonizing, abusing and killing of humans is wrong. Full stop.

And, yeah, that’s nice and sentimental but not possible on the grand scale — I know that. But it’s possible in myself and my small community. It’s possible to lean away from the expected retributive justice and towards restorative justice that God desires. It’s possible to allow my anger to tell me the truth of every person’s inherent worth and their belovedness and allow that truth to break my heart wide open.

“I sat with my anger long enough,
until she told me
her real name
was grief.”

-CS Lewis

I’m no politician and can’t solve or heal historical injustices, ancient land rights and historical crimes against humanity. But I can learn about them. I can be angry for every side of every injustice and dehumanizing act. I can weep and groan with the God who weeps and groans. I can fall on my knees and pray.

As a Christian person, I follow Jesus Christ, who was a non-violent pacifist, who silently went before a brutal government that violently occupied his people and homeland, and was tortured and murdered in a humiliating way. Jesus commanded us to pray for our enemies and those who cause us harm and while dying on the cross, prayed out, “Father, forgive my enemies. They don’t understand what they’re doing.”

In a world where we do our best to keep the bad guy/good guy lines clear by making excuses for every action, this war keeps blurring the lines and forcing people to live in that honest but uncomfortable tension. So, yeah, I’m angry and feel helpless, and I want to blame or double down on a side. But really I’m just sad. So sad. Because historically traumatized people are being killed and re-traumatized, both Jews and Palestinians alike. And while we can make a case for who has been more traumatized or attacked over history, the truth is something needs to change so that history stops repeating itself. And I believe that something often looks like a radical change of heart: loving our enemy, rehumanizing those we hate and being angry about every form of injustice, regardless of sides.

Maybe anger really is a gift.

“…even when a memory is proven wrong, beyond all doubt, a person still remembers it.”

— Sallie Tisdale, Harper’s Magazine, November 2023

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I’ve been thinking about memory a lot lately, after experiencing several “senior moments.” (“They’re just normal at your age,” my physician says, which kinda-sorta reassures me — what’s normal five years from now? Ten years from now?) Author Sallie Tisdale, no stranger to memoir writing, wrote an essay in the November Harper’s about memory which touched many nerves for me. In particular, she offers the thought that we are incapable of distinguishing accurate memories from false ones: All memories feel true!

She cites a study by the late psychiatrist-researcher Daniel Offer challenging the common belief that “adolescence is inherently a time of storm and stress.” That’s certainly my experience, and talking to others, I’ve rarely heard someone say, “I had a very happy childhood.” (My wife used to think she had an unhappy childhood, but changed her mind!) In his Offer Longitudinal Study, he interviewed 73 14-year-olds about their lives, most of whom were pretty happy with their lives. That was in 1962. He re-interviewed them (other than two who had died) at 48-years-old, when the majority remembered their teen years as times of great sadness and turmoil. Specifically, when going into details, their “…recollections were about the same as would be expected by chance.”

“Memory” (1896), bronze door by Olin Levi Warner. Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building. (Carol Highsmith, public domain)=

In another study reinforcing the notion that our memories are tenuous, Elizabeth Loftus (famous for challenging sexual abuse allegations in many court appearances during the 1990s) and Lawrence Patihis managed to convince 30% of volunteers that they’d seen a video of the crash of Flight 93 following 9/11. There is no such video,

As far as early memories are concerned, they’re all based on photos or stories we’ve heard — our ability to form permanent memories doesn’t kick in until we’re at least age seven, and usually later.

My own particular problem with memory, besides forgetting faces and names, is that I selectively remember what I’d just as soon forget! For example, instead of remembering, with great joy, the wonderful week we spent in a town in the Dolomites a few years back, the first thing that comes up is the negative review we received on booking.com (our only one!) when we left dishes in the sink after leaving in a hurry to catch a train. Even though the review was written in German, Gott sei Dank, I’m still mortified. (It makes sense, of course, that we selectively remember negative experiences — they’re the ones that our ancestors learned from back when life was “nasty, brutish and short.”)

Nearly 100 years ago, psychologist Frederic Bartlett (cited by Tisdale) summed it up: “Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It is an imaginative reconstruction.” (My italics.)

Ah yes. I remember it well.

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Press Release from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office:

On 12-07-2023 at 6:18 PM, Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office received a missing person report regarding 63-year-old Scott Graves (see photos).

Scott was last heard from by family members on Monday, 12-04-2023, at about 9:30 AM. Scott informed family he had tried to leave his property in the 73000 block of Island Mountain Road in Piercy (California), but it was too wet and the roads were unsafe for travel. Scott informed family he would instead attempt to leave on Tuesday, 12-05-2023.

When family members had not heard from Scott by Thursday, 12-07-2023, they became worried. Family members then traveled to Scott’s property, but they were not able to locate his whereabouts.  It did not appear Scott had left the property as the majority of his personal belongings and vehicle were at the property.

On 12-07-2023 at about 11:00 PM, Deputies arrived in the 73000 block of Island Mountain Road in Piercy. Deputies and family continued searching for Scott until 3:00 AM but were unsuccessful in located him.

The Sheriff’s Office deployed local Mendocino County Search & Rescue resources for a further search during the morning of Friday, 12-08-2023.

Search & Rescue was unable to locate Scott and were deployed again on Saturday, 12-09-2023, and are still actively searching at this time.

Mendocino County Sheriff’s Search & Rescue resources are currently in the planning stages for additional searches for Sunday, 12-10-2023, and Monday, 12-11-2023 with the use of Search and Rescue mutual aid resources.

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After more than 70 years of service, off and on, the Fieldbrook Market & Eatery may close its doors for good. The owners of the beloved neighborhood grocery store took to Facebook on Friday morning to announce the “very difficult decision” to close the market “for the foreseeable future.”

If you’ve been to the Fieldbrook Market, you know it’s a lot more than a convenience store and sandwich shop: It’s an essential part of the community.

“It’s a really special place,” Lisa Springer, co-owner of the Fieldbrook Market, told the Outpost during a recent phone interview. “It’s always been a part of the community. We have a really tight-knit community here, so this is pretty rough news for our local folks.”

Springer and her husband Clark befriended the previous owners, Kelli and Ross Costa, after moving to Fieldbrook from Pennsylvania. A little over two years ago, Lisa said, she was talking to the Costas about using their commercial kitchen to make ramen when they asked if she and her husband were interested in buying the market.

“They had owned it for about six years at that point and were feeling like they were ready to let it go,” Springer said. “My husband and I felt like we were at a stage in our lives with our family that we were ready to take that on. We’ve had an absolutely amazing time doing it, you know, getting the community jazzed up again after COVID and being that community hub again.”

Unfortunately, rising costs have made it difficult to make ends meet, Springer said.

“I think it’s common knowledge that our local communities are struggling with the change in the economy, and we’ve been struggling too,” she said. “We’ve been trying to be creative with different pop-up events, trivia nights and more live music to get more people up here but we’re really remote. We can’t survive without people patronizing us, but I get it. Everyone is really struggling.”

When asked whether she and her husband would be open to selling the business, Springer said she’s open to the idea but they’re not quite sure what their next move is. 

“We’re just going to take a moment,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what that looks like right now. After the new year, we’ll probably have a firmer grip on what we’re doing and what the future looks like for the market. I just don’t want to put it in one box right now.”

Springer’s going to keep using the market’s commercial kitchen to make ramen for delivery and pick-up. She said she’s still figuring out the logistics, but folks interested in grabbing a bowl should keep an eye on the Fieldbrook Market’s Facebook page for more information in the coming weeks.

The market will be open during its regular hours this weekend and will close next week. They’re planning a big party on Friday, Dec. 15, with food, live music and one very, very special guest.

“Santa’s coming to town, which is a big deal for our local community,” Springer said. “He’ll arrive on the Fieldbrook firetruck around four o’clock. We’ll also have live music from the Lost Dogs.”

Do yourself a favor and grab a tri-tip sandwich before the market closes. Here’s hoping it won’t be closed for too long.

On this week’s EcoNews Report, Humboldt’s preeminent bird nerd, Ken Burton, drops by the show to discuss the bird buzz.

The Christmas Bird Count is coming up. This bird count is very important to understanding long-term trends in bird populations and identifying species that require conservation attention. If you would like to help our local Redwood Region Audubon Society with this year’s count, please visit their website. 

Local birders are atwitter because of a new visitor to the area: a purple gallinule! This striking bird boasts a purple, blue and turquoise plumage with long yellow toes. Often found in tropical settings, this is a first time visitor to our area who somehow got far afield from its Florida breeding grounds. 

Bird names are changing! Out are bird’s named after someone—no more Stellar’s jay or Anna’s hummingbird—in are more descriptive names to be determined. And you can help. Our Redwood Region Audubon Society is looking for suggestions for the birds that call our area home. Give them a hand!

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The six survivors of the Greely Arctic Expedition. Back: Fredericks, Connell, Long. Front: Biederbick, Greely, Brainard. Circa 1885.

In 1888, Maurice Connell was appointed observer at the Eureka weather station, located in the Buhne building at Second and G streets. Connell had gained his appointment to Eureka’s station as a result of his participation in the ill-starred Lady Franklin Bay Polar Expedition, more commonly known as the Greely Expedition, which had been marked by governmental dysfunction and by rumors of bizarre and even gruesome circumstances.

Maurice Connell was born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States in 1864 at the age of twelve. He lived with an uncle in New York until 1869. His desire for adventure took him to many new and foreign places, including Panama, South America, California, and finally to San Francisco where he enlisted in the United States cavalry. His military service lasted ten years, during which he fought in several Indian battles. During that time he was promoted from the rank of private to sergeant. In 1881 Connell resigned his rank as sergeant and joined the Greely Expedition led by Lieutenant Adolphus Greely. The team set out from Greenland on the steamship Proteus on July 7, 1881.

The expedition’s ostensible purpose, as publicly stated, was to possibly discover and rescue members of the Jeanette, a previous expedition that had not been heard from and was presumed lost. In reality, its other and undisclosed purpose was to reach a point farther north toward the North Pole than had been reached by Britain, thus breaking the polar exploration record that had been held by Great Britain for three hundred years. The Greely party was successful in achieving that goal for the United States. The twenty-five-member expedition, however, was poorly prepared for the ordeal that lay before it. None of the group had any polar exploration experience, and personality conflicts, inadequate supplies, and complaints of rigid and inflexible leadership were contributing factors that led to unbelievable hardship and suffering, and the death of nineteen members of the party.

As previously planned, a government resupply ship was sent to the Greely party in 1882, but failed to reach it, as did another attempt in 1883. The Greely group, without needed supplies, was hopelessly stranded at a point called Cape Sabine, and although it was successful in its goal of achieving polar exploration supremacy, the members of the expedition now had but one mission: survival.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., officials convened an investigation into why both resupply missions, each with supplies for one year, had failed. After considerable political infighting, a third rescue ship was launched in August 1884. This rescue mission succeeded and the members of the Greely party were brought home.

There were six survivors of the ill-fated venture, among them Maurice Connell.

The investigation revealed that much of the blame for the unsuccessful 1882 and 1883 rescue attempts lay with the Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the late President Lincoln, because of his lack of interest in polar exploration and his refusal to provide needed funds for the rescue parties.

In spite of Lieutenant Greely’s attempt, as leader of the expedition, to cover up many details that led to the men’s desperate fight for their lives, Washington was shocked at what was disclosed. Further investigation brought to light not only harsh criticism of Lieutenant Greely’s leadership style, but also the execution of one of the party for stealing food, the questionable death of the group’s medical officer, and what was regarded as most shocking of all, acts of cannibalism.

All but one of the other five survivors swore they had no knowledge of what the investigation discovered, and remained loyal to their cause. Maurice Connell was that lone dissenter.

In 1885 Connell transferred from the U.S. Cavalry to the Signal Corps and in 1888 was serving as an assistant weather observer in San Francisco. He had long believed that he should be promoted from private second class to the rank of sergeant and, apparently, realized he had a way to achieve that. In a letter to Lieutenant Greely, Connell wrote, “If you are aware of the pressure brought upon me to talk on certain subjects and which I’ve so far resisted, you would think differently of my conduct.” Connell threatened to speak out and to even write a book about the extreme hardships, suffering, starvation, and the unimaginable challenge to the human spirit endured by the members of the Greely party if Lieutenant Greely did not see that he received his promotion.

And in a short time he was promoted to private first class, and then to sergeant. That wasn’t all that Connell wanted. He wanted a transfer to the weather station in Eureka because it was, as he said, “an easy station and a good climate.”

Maurice Connell was the last observer in the Signal Corps to man Eureka’s weather station. During his tenure there, he married Hettie L. Bast of Eureka, a teacher at the Eureka Academy.

Lieutenant Greely, with help from influential government officials, was successful in keeping much information concerning the tragic fate of the Greely Expedition from the general public, and as a result one could assume that the residents of Eureka had no knowledge of Maurice Connell’s adventurous but tragic and possibly even gruesome background, or that it was blackmail that brought him to Eureka.

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NOTE: The author of this story, Mary Dawn Cunningham, passed away last month.

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The story above was originally printed in the Summer 2015 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.