LOCATION

Priorities

Editor:

Thanks for all the great info! I’m often thrilled with the breadth of topics covered. I don’t usually complain but I was especially upset to read that Humboldt has decided to allocate funds to repair the horse racing grandstand with moneys set aside for general maintenance in Humboldt (“Supes Pony Up $1 Million in Effort to Save Horse Racing at the Fair,” July 6). There are two (!) landslides on the Briceland/Thorn Road in So Hum that are incredibly dangerous to maneuver. There are just little stop signs around blind corners that prevent us all from driving off a cliff! I beg our supervisors to drive this road and see for themselves what they are putting locals and many, many tourists in large RVs through. There are schools in Southern Humboldt county filled with asbestos that should be torn down but are still being used, threatening the lives of all children and staff who use those buildings. They have to wax the toxic chemicals into the floor each year so that the scrapping of chairs doesn’t release toxic dust into the air in the classrooms!

Most importantly to me, this was a chance to admit that horse racing (let’s not even get started with this rodeo crap everyone thinks is OK to do to animals) is abuse. Horses are intelligent creatures deserving of respect and they should not be forced to risk their lives for the benefit of people to gawk at them and bet money on. It’s horrifying to see how little morals Humboldt really has when it comes to changing traditions. This was a chance to say, “You know what? Horse racing is pretty cruel and since the earthquake

(mother nature) is trying to tell us not to do it, maybe we should listen.” But no, let’s waste tax payer money on fixing the grandstand at the fairgrounds instead of making the roads or schools we use all the time safer.

I beg you No Hum folks to come drive our roads. See why we are upset and feel like we are ignored. It’s literally tragic, the state of our roads and the schools. As for me, I send my kid up north for school.

Pamela Corvid, Whitethorn

‘Good Job’

Editor:

I was amazed that 60 percent of California State University undergraduates pay no tuition (Mailbox, July 13), that the Schneider house will be torn down (“PlanCo Approves Permits to Tear Down Schneider ‘Dream Home,’” July 13). (Can’t something positive be made from it — a native cultural center, a medical clinic, or perhaps just let the kids play basketball and skate on the concrete slab?) And I have saved the article on fungi (“Fungi for All Seasons,” July 13).

Good job.

Gary Sack, Eureka ‘Bravissimo

Kudos’

Editor:

Right now, when our collective cuckoo clocks seem turned back half a century regarding civil rights, tolerance, and basic human decency, it is so refreshing to finally witness first hand an American tradition take a progressively firm stance in favor of all our LGBTQ+ fellow-Americans.

Of course I refer to American rodeos and specifically to the Fortuna Rodeo and obviously to how they lassoed the trans-

Language Lesson

for Rivka, age 3

The language I teach you won’t obliterate wordless thought but leave space for silence and sensation. It counts, categorizes, but also wonders at wild, uncountable, unnamable things.

We’ll send each other messages ripe with meaning, gradually growing a shared comprehension, and all talk stops when we encounter the incomprehensible.

Let’s not fill in the blanks; they are holy places where knowing and not knowing meet and merge, like please and thank you, the two essential words, stronger and kinder than yes and no.

I’ll teach you to speak as the world was spoken into being, every tree, rock and cloud a poetic phrase, each earthquake, storm and sunset an exclamation, every breeze a breath.

Can we chat like bees and blossoms do?

Like fawns following their mother?

Like river water rushing over rocks?

We could recover a primeval proto-lexicon for weaving baskets, gathering berries, following tracks and trails, scanning the forest for opportunity or danger, listening closely, recognizing faces.

Seventy thousand years ago our ancestors brought forth language, and spread from continent to continent, talking all the while, as what was real co-mingled with fictive plans, visions, and tales.

Now two young bucks with velvet antlers step cautiously across the yard, a small doe follows. They nibble grass and thimbleberries that the Wiyot call deerboukshughutsguqhe’ (little-one-hangs-upside-down)

Perched at the picnic table I taste tidbits of language and scribble words on paper, trying to find a way to teach you how to say what you want to say to yourself, to me and to the world.

— Naomi Steinberg

gender supporting Budweiser beer slogan, branded it as their very bucking own and stampeded toward universal equality. As we all know this connective reference is to the brilliant and creatively unique “This Rodeo is for You.” At first glance it seems a Green Horn’s attempt to rustle from a well-known campaign, but a second look reveals how in all actuality by using this particular advert, the Fortuna Rodeo is leading the local LGBTQ+ community’s parade toward gender neutrality in an arena not normally famous for carte blanche acceptance.

Bravissimo kudos, Fortuna. Some suspected you to be nearly as steepled in conservatism as our neighboring Infernal’s Fryinhell Damnwell, but now we have nothing but pride for you, thanks to your enthusiastic waving of the rainbow banner. Can we look forward to dragsters and drag shows at the Autorama?

W.B. Sager, Fortuna

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