NEWS ARTICLE ARCHIVE — in chronological order, with pagination below
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Food Bank finds ways to pinch pennies
Jim Shipp was just the kind of guy I was looking for to inform my story on how the Fort Bragg Food Bank spends its money. In the years since I met Shipp while I was working at Parents and Friends, I’ve known him to be able to take as objective a view as possible…
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Food Bank counters fear with giving
Among holiday clichés, a reporter asking the question “what are you thankful for?” is as classic as a retread can be. I used it anyway on Terri Lee Gentry, who smiled and laughed at my quintessential question. Gentry arrived that day at the Fort Bragg Food Bank frowning in a melancholy funk but left laughing.…
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Stories of giving and how it spreads joy
Every year for nearly a decade, I have written seven or eight articles profiling the food, the people and the spending of the Fort Bragg Food Bank as part of our newspaper’s annual Season of Sharing effort. We always find a lot of interesting tales, from generous volunteers to inspiring clients to the sad death…
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Rainforest Alliance
Locals questioned The Rain Forest Alliance at a Aug. 25 Caspar public meeting about whether the non-profit was part of “self certifying greenwashing.” The RFA was in town as part of its process of a green recertification to Mendocino Redwood Company. Audits happen every year. MRC has passed the last 14 audits. Every five years,…
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Dredging OKd, contractor needed
The Noyo Harbor District, with the help of their SHN Consulting Engineers and Geologists, has finally navigated the regulatory maze needed to get permission to dredge its mooring basin this fall. District Manager Jere Kleinbach told commissioners last week that was the good news. The bad news is that bidding closed last week with only…
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Hatchery fish are key to salmon survival
Kori Roberts has a seasonal job that might sound like a horror movie script. She collects heads in Noyo Harbor for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, going to commercial and private boats to saw them off, bag them and carry them away in a cooler. The DFW sends the king salmon heads to a…
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Lions, pets a bad mix in Inglenook
Dave Paoli hopes the mountain lion that attacked family dogs twice recently on his Inglenook place never comes back. But if the lion does in the next few days, authorities have given Paoli a depredation permit to take the animal. These special 10 day permits are rarely issued, with only about a dozen lions taken…
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Crash trial delayed
An infant injured in a bizarre tourist homicide case in Fort Bragg last year appears to still be suffering from the impacts of a crash that killed his aunt. On Oct. 17, 2014, Michael Bradford Bitney, 56, of Oregon was allegedly driving his pickup when he crashed through the wall of the Beachcomber Motel just…
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Another whale stranded; search for causes of death continues
The bad news literally continues to pile up about marine mammals in 2015. More than a dozen whales have washed ashore in the last two months including a sperm whale, a humpback and an orca. More than half were gray whales. This year’s gray whale deaths, while disconcerting, don’t compare to the gray whale die-off…
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Salmon season: next year’s options revealed
Seasons aren’t final yet but Fort Bragg fishermen should have lots of chances to catch salmon this summer and fall, with happy returns in the federal numbers forecast. Yet the continuing California drought could have a major — and still unknown —impact on salmon, as well as everybody else. Two summer recreation fishing season options…
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Hearts and hands needed to save Salmon BBQ
Help! We need volunteers for the World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue to survive. This is now and for real. Funny story. The tale of how our Salmon Restoration Association got into the position to ask this question now began with that same question 10 years ago. The need for willing bodies to run some of the…
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Charges dropped against shooter
Jesse Van Wormer’s beloved hunting dog, a Queensland heeler cross, will no longer sleep in her large doghouse. She sleeps instead in a tunnel she dug under the doghouse after a black bear chased her away and carried her dog dish and food into the woods. The bears that invaded the family property have been…
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Food Bank full of breathing reasons to give
Driving into my parking lot, I waved at Yuki Holand from the Food Bank. I thought “she was a great story I missed. “ Holand turns donated Food Bank foods into a fantastic lunch for volunteers three times a week. She is a lovely and powerful personality. Next, I thought of programs for the developmentally…
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Community
I interviewed Donna Byers in 2012, after trying for some time. She told me how she had turned her life around and was enjoying volunteering at the Fort Bragg Food Bank. At the time, she didn’t really want to be named in that round of these Season of Sharing series. She actually dodged the camera…
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Big ocean waves give Dungeness Crab Christmas vacation
Like those heady days when salmon are coming in on joyful and full boats, crab season can enliven Noyo Harbor with motion, aromas and noise. And then take it all away, leaving the place silent and with only the faint aroma of the sea. That was the crabby up and downs of the past two…
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Anonymous donor drops off $10,000
An anonymous donor recently walked into Harvest Market and gave $10,000 to the Fort Bragg Food Bank. Harvest owner Tom Honer delivered the check last week. At the Christmas season, this kind of amazing gift does happen, but never ceases to impress and surprise the receivers. “The absolute beauty of the “spontaneous things” as you…
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Community
What could be more Mendocino dreamin’ than a classic Volkswagen bus with a trailer carrying peace signs? But something now makes many residents turn away from this image of their only partly apocryphal past. Christian Williams, 26, and Kitty Lyons, 30, were parked out front in that rig enjoying what they got from the Fort…
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Crab season starts with tasty, high quality samples Dungeness fishing brings tasty danger, cash to Noyo
Consumers will soon be able to buy and cook big, juicy Dungeness crabs caught off the coast of Fort Bragg. But the first to sample their flesh every year are government biologists. Commercial fishermen out of Fort Bragg were allowed to pull their pots up on Monday. Crab fishing may be the most lucrative and…
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Season of Sharing
I”ve been investigating strange disappearances at the Fort Bragg Food Bank. Chips. Soda pop. Lemon pies in plastic boxes. At the same time, newcomers like brown rice, yogurt and fresh chard have appeared on the scene, sliding into the places once occupied by the yummy junk foods. Others beyond this cub reporter have noticed these…
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Season of sharing: Fort Bragg Food Bank
There are those rock hard but delicious fresh Mexican squash, or the seemingly endless supply of canned capers and sour little canned mandarins. And there was that can of “spotted dick” I found on Nancy Severy”s desk seven years ago. The Fort Bragg Food Bank”s executive director was visibly mortified after I put our laughs…
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