Osprey fall 2016

OSPREY

STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016

1 Photo by Oliver Cory

editor@ospreymagazine.com Osprey Magazine c/o Department of Journalism and Mass Communication 1 Harpst Street, Arcata, CA 95521

table of contents: A Dog’s Life

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Holy Cacao!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

College for Two

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Foundations of Flair

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Knot Stressed, Knitting

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Sex, Lies and Shame

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Tiny Houses, Big Dreams

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

On the Beat with Campus Police

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

ISSUU.COM/OSPREYMAGAZINE

staf f and contributors: editor in chief:

Ian Thompson

layout editor:

Mo Lee Thornburg

photo editor:

Oliver Cory

copy editors:

Mo Lee Thornburg Oliver Cory

writers:

Ian Thompson Carlos Olloqui Stephanie Krutolow Claire Roth Mo Lee Thornburg Alexandria Hasenstab Christian Lara Kellen Costantino

adviser:

Victoria Sama

marketing manager:

Stephanie Krutolow

advertising:

Garrett Purchio

distribution manager:

Kellen Costantino

moral support:

Moose Johnson

• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

6 Photo by Ian Thompson

A Dog’s Life Waiting to Find a Home Written by Ian Thompson

Roylee inside his dog pen at the Sequoia Humane Soceity.

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Photo by Oliver Cory

T

he terminally-ill man was in tears as he dropped off his Basset Hound Roylee at Eureka’s Sequoia Humane Shelter in August. Kennel Director Rebecca Chesterton said the man’s promise of housing fell through when he moved up from Southern California. When his new home didn’t allow pets, he surrendered Roylee to the shelter.

Roylee is a 9-year-old Basset Hound who weighs about 45 pounds. The old man dropped him off at the shelter with his best friend, Marbles, a 2-yearold female Red Brindle Rat Terrier.

The old owner hoped to have the dogs adopted as a pair.

“Older animals are harder to adopt,” said Ros Chapman, a long-term volunteer at the shelter.

Roylee limps over to the grass field where dogs at the Humane Society are free to play off-leash. Roylee shuffles over to Chapman and lets her massage his droopy face and ears.

When he sniffs the grassy lawn with

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his wet snout, his floppy ears touch the ground. While Marbles runs around the grass, Roylee looks over to make sure his gal is in sight.

“Marbles is more independent, but Roylee seems to have abandonment issues when Marbles isn’t around,” Chapman said.

Roylee has a tendency of tripping over his left front paw when he runs.

That’s because he was stabbed by one of his previous owners, according to Chesterton. The nerve damage can still be seen on his paw and spine. When the paw folds over, he loses balance, but he tends to recover quickly when Marbles is around.

Marbles, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to mind the idea of being free from Roylee. She is quite the escape artist. The first time Marbles escaped, Chapman used Roylee to lure her back.

“I took him outside and, because he couldn’t walk well, he sat by the tree,” she said. “He was shaking while calling

Roylee and Marbles playing on the field at the Sequoia Humane Society with volunteer Christian Lara. for her, so I wrapped

the blanket him.”

around

Chapman was hoping Marbles would hear Roylee’s voice and come back.

The second time Marbles escaped, Roylee let Chapman know his girlfriend was gone.

“When I pulled up and got out of my truck, Roylee was pacing in front of the pen outside and howling for her,” Chapman said. “She had actually climbed out and took off. We think she was looking for her owner.”

Eventually, Marbles was found and safely returned later that day.

Unlike Roylee and Marbles, most of the dogs at the Eureka shelter were rescued from shelters in Monterey and Salinas County, which euthanize dogs that aren’t adopted. Sequoia Humane Society is a no-kill shelter.

“We rescue from the shelters that are overcrowded,” said Nancy Flemming,

• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

the executive director of Sequoia Humane Society for five years. A small poodle named Sailor -- a rescue dog -rests beneath her desk.

As of November, more than 300 dogs and 150 cats were adopted this year, according to Flemming.

The shelter has to be selective about which dogs it chooses because the dogs it takes in are cared for until adopted or until they die of illness or old age.

Feather was a German Shepard mix who was at the shelter for about eight years, according to Chapman. She was put down by Sunny Brae Animal Clinic after experiencing medical problems. Chesterton said they didn’t know her exact age, but they believed her to be around 10 years old.

According to Chesterton, most young dogs and puppies at the shelter are adopted within two or three weeks after they have received the necessary shots, deworming, blood tests, vaccinations

and microchipping as well as being spayed or neutered.

Volunteers and staff train the dogs in walking and other behaviors in hopes of getting them adopted. Even so, the dogs spend most hours of the day in their pens waiting for a new home. Sequoia Humane Shelter is three blocks from King Salmon, so it’s convenient to bring the dogs to the beach.

“We spend a lot of time socializing them,” Flemming said. “I believe the dogs are pretty happy here. They get to walk on the beach.”

Roylee and Marbles are walked three times a day unless they are recovering from surgery or need rest. Because of his old age and the nerve damage he sustained from his stab wound, Roylee walks for no more than five minutes down the road. He spends most his time playing in the grassy field with Marbles.

Roylee struts past the pens and howls as a cacophony of barks from other dogs respond. Roylee loves to let everyone know when he’s going outside with Marbles.

Shelter employee Nicole Bradley has an office that overlooks the parking lot where Roylee and Marbles walk outside. Bradley laughs when she sees Roylee howling with Marbles.

“They are just a crack up together,” Bradley said.

Roylee twitches and flops over on his side when someone scratches his butt.

He gets excited to go back to his pen after playing.

“He stays still when the volunteers buckle on his leash,” she adds.

In mid-October, a woman from Fremont was interested in adopting Roylee, Marbles and Hobie, another Basset Hound that Roylee entered the shelter that

and Marbles dressed up as skunks for Halloween.

9 Photo by Christian Lara

10 Photo by Oliver Cory

Roylee and Marbles sniff around the playing field at the Sequoia Humane Society.

month. She apparently set up her house specifically for Basset Hounds, which made the shelter workers excited.

Unfortunately, the lady changed her mind, according to Flemming.

After that potential adoption failed, volunteers put in extra effort to get the dogs adopted, and so they dressed up Roylee and Marbles in Halloween costumes. HSU student and Osprey magazine writer Christian Lara is a shelter volunteer who oversaw the doggy fashion show.

“Rebecca brought in a big bag full of costumes for the dogs and cats,” Lara said.

The staff dressed the dogs and cats while Lara took photos.

“Roylee and Marbles both had skunk costumes on,” Lara said. “Roylee was mellow but Marbles was trying to go everywhere. It was hard because Marbles is so wild.”

Chesterton held the Brindle Terrier’s leg during the photoshoot to make sure she didn’t run away, according to Lara.

Little is known of Roylee’s past besides his physical abuse and his kinship with Marbles due to the shelter’s policy on animal history, where the previous owners’ names are kept secret. Thus, the full lives of Roylee and Marbles remain a mystery. However, two days before this magazine went to print, Roylee and Marbles were adopted together. Now, whatever lies ahead will be tackled by the two of them together.

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12 Photo by Oliver Cory

Holy Cacao!

Getting a Taste of Dick Taylor Chocolate Written by Carlos Olloqui

Cacao beans: how it all begins.

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A

dam Dick is riding in a beat-up pickup truck heading deep into the jungle of the Solomon Islands. Forty-five minutes after leaving the capital of Guadalcanal, Dick arrives at Elsie Vota’s small cacao farm, surrounded by nothing but untamed tropical rainforest.

“It was just really excellent stuff, just great cacao,” Dick says. “Nobody in the world has ever tasted stuff from Elsie Vota’s farm, ever.”

Dick stuffed 55 pounds of the cacao beans into his luggage and brought them back to Eureka, where he and his business partner Dustin Taylor turned them into 600 oneounce bars of chocolate for their company, Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate.

“We had one shot at roasting it, one shot at the entire preparation and we kinda felt that most likely we’d have to just chuck it since a lot of time your first test batch isn’t all that great,” Dick says. “But this stuff actually turned out really good.”

That batch became their Solomon Island bars, which have sold out.

Dick Taylor uses only two ingredients in their chocolate: raw cacao and organic cane sugar. They mix and mold it the old-fashioned way by using machines from the 1950s and 1960s.

“When we buy a piece of equipment, we don’t know what its previous life was, so we totally take it apart, down to bare metal, and we rebuild and repaint the whole thing,” Taylor says. “We just scour eBay to find some beat up, gnarly old thing and bring it up to food grade.”

Dick and Taylor have always been good with their hands.

They met while studying recreation administration at Humboldt State University. After graduating, they worked together as carpenters for 13 years.

“Our dads are both carpenters and contractors, so we’ve kinda had that skill set since we were kids,” Taylor says.

“We built houses, millwork and restored some wood boats,” Dick says. “We were always kind of interested in the craft of carpentry and woodworking, not so much just being contractors.”

How did they go from banging nails to crafting chocolate?

“It wasn’t like either of us had really been these like chocoholics our whole lives,” Dick says. “I mean, we like chocolate but the idea of handcrafting a food product was really cool.”

Dick says that at that time they got turned onto chocolate there were only a few craft chocolate makers, probably less than 15 or 20 in the United States.

David Bethuy fills the cholcate molds.

Photo by Oliver Cory

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• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

David Bethuy fills the cholcate moulds.

“We just kind of began to experiment, not so much as like ‘could this be a business,’ but just as a hobby,” he says.

“We were making it in my laundry room, really low Abby tech, and it was really terrible stuff that we were Toews gets making ‘cause we just didn’t know what we were ready to vibrate doing.” out any leftover air bubbles.

When they first opened for business in November of 2010, Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate was producing about 50 chocolate bars a month. Now, they are producing 50,000 to 60,000.

“I’d say 90 percent of our product is sold outside Humboldt,” Dick says.

One of the first stores in the country to carry their bars is The Meadow, a high-end chocolatier in Portland, Oregon, which is considered one of the benchmark retailers of craft chocolate. Taylor Klobertanz is the store’s chocolate connoisseur.

“Their chocolate is just really well-made and has a very nice, creamy finish to it,” Klobertanz says. “By far one of my top favorites.”

“If you can get on the shelves of The Meadow, you’ve made it,” Dick says.

Yelena Caputo is the head administrator of Tony Caputo’s Market and Deli in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they sell Dick Taylor and more than 300 other brands of chocolate.

Photo by Oliver Cory

Photo by Oliver Cory

“Dick Taylor is an extremely popular brand for Jordan Spencer us and is one of our top selling chocolate lines,” individually wraps Caputo says. and packages the Dick Taylor’s factory is filled with sacks of cacao from all over the world, including Ecuador, Belize, Madagascar, Guatemala and Brazil.

chocolate bars.

“We’re producing something on a smaller scale, focusing more on the quality and the sourcing of the ingredients than necessarily the bottom line,” Taylor says.

According to the International Cocoa Organizations, 2015 Cacao Barometer, Ivory Coast is the largest cacao bean producing country in the world, while the U.S. is the second largest cacao-consuming country, following Europe.

“I believe 70 percent of the world’s cacao comes from the Ivory Coast and Ghana, but cacao isn’t even from there,” Dick says. “It has been imported over the years and cultivated from that region. They breed it for disease resistance and productivity, not flavor, which is one of the reasons why we don’t buy from there.”

Each of their cacao beans is given a unique roasting profile.

• OSPREY •

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How they make Dick Taylor Choclate

1.

Sort beans.

3.

Dick Taylor’s chocolate bars are all individually handwrapped in packages that reflect the roots of their carpentry, with each having a wooden boat on it.

Winnow (crack) beans to remove remaining husk.

Ground into chocolate liquor and mix while adding cane sugar.

5.

7.

4.

Grind into smooth paste using 3-roll mill.

Conch (heated stirring) for 24 to 72 hours.

6.

Age chocolate for 2-3 weeks.

Cool and melt to temper.

9.

Wrap and package.

“We don’t have a factory where 24 hours a day we pour beans in and 24 hours a day bars come out the other side and nobody touches them,” Dick says.

“Adam and I have kinda split up tasks in the chocolate factory: Adam is the main chocolate maker and mouth of the company and I am more of the eyes,” Taylor says.

2.

Roast beans to release nib.

They are then winnowed, refined, milled, conched and molded, resulting in a single-origin bean in each chocolate bar.

8.

Pour into molds.

10.

“For me, it really is the packaging, the new ideas, the new concepts and the art behind it,” Taylor says. “We want to have quality packaging that reflects the product that’s inside.”

Sheila Rose, who lives in Elk Grove near Sacramento, is an avid Dick Taylor chocolate consumer. Her daughter lives in Humboldt and mails her Dick Taylor chocolate.

“There is nothing local that compares to Dick Taylor,” Rose says. “It is just so classy, the way it’s packaged with such care and everything. She’s been sending me their chocolate for quite a while now, and I just love it.”

Dick Taylor hopes to get more cacao beans from the Solomon Islands for a second release.

“Never, ever, in a million years did I imagine myself being a chocolate maker,” Dick says. “But it certainly has clicked with who we are as individuals, and it is Adam Dick something that we really love.” and Dustin Taylor,

owners of Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate.

(Permission to use photo from website.)

Photo by Oliver Cory

Vaccuumpressured machines remove the remaining husks from the beans.

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College for Two Finding a Balance Between Motherhood and College

By Stephanie Krutolow

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Photo by Oliver Cory

Photo by Claire Roth

A

fter waking up one January morning feeling nauseous, Bianca Garcia made a call to the HSU Student Health Center. She set up an appointment, made her way to campus and checked herself in. A nurse handed her a pregnancy test, the results of which would change her life forever.

“I was so scared,” Garcia said. “I wasn’t scared like, ‘oh my god, what am I going to tell my mom?’ It was more like, ‘holy shit, I’ve never had anyone tell me I’m pregnant.’”

Garcia decided that talking through all of her options with her boyfriend, Connor French, would be her first step.

“I’m super pro-choice,” Garcia said. “I laid out all my options. I laid out what would be best for me mentally and physically. Connor was on board from the beginning.”

At the time, Garcia was using Nuvaring as a form of birth control and was not yet planning on starting a family. After talking over the new circumstances with French, however, she knew that neither dropping out of school nor getting an abortion would be the right option for her.

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I first met Garcia in our communication research class last spring semester. Toward the end of the semester, she mentioned her pregnancy to me in class.

Bianca Garcia on campus a few weeks before giving birth.

With extra support from both Garcia’s and French’s families, Garcia knew that she would be able to handle her pregnancy while still attending her classes and staying on track for graduation.

After learning that she would be giving birth to a girl in early October, Garcia realized that she had to find a balance between becoming a new mom and remaining a student.

“I tried to look at the Student Health Center, but the only thing they provided was a list of resources, which was nice because I didn’t know where to start,” Garcia said. “It had all these places where you could get your maternal needs.

It wasn’t just for students who wanted to go through with their pregnancies. It also had information for students who wanted to abort their pregnancies. I appreciated that. I feel like everyone should know their options when they are put in this situation.”

• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

Garcia knew she needed to inform her professors about her pregnancy and the fact that she would eventually need to miss class for doctor appointments.

Along with speaking to her professors, she consulted her Educational Opportunity Program adviser Celeste Robertson. Robertson asked Garcia how she planned on bonding with her future daughter while in school. Garcia responded that every moment spent with Sofia would bond them as mother and daughter. She went on to explain that French would be strengthening his father-daughter bond with Sofia when Garcia could not be there.

“I think it is important for her to have alone time with her dad,” Garcia said. “I don’t want her to be super connected to me only.”

As an HSU senior and communication major, one of the first faculty members Garcia spoke with was the communication department chair, Armeda Reitzel.

“I have two words for her: well-organized and proactive,” Reitzel said. “That’s a really good word to use in terms of the process, and I think being proactive is really important so that professors have a heads up on what to expect.”

After speaking with Reitzel, it was time for Garcia to approach her professors.

know how you’re going to feel,” Donaldson said. “It’s the kind of thing where hormonal surges or various kinds of nausea-inducing sensations can just come and go. It would be so difficult to stick to a pattern of behavior against all that.”

Donaldson supports students who are pregnant but also want to continue their education.

“It is such an important thing to happen and I look at college very much the same way, and rather than finding competitive frames for these situations, I think we have to find symbiotic ones,” Donaldson said. “We need to find ways we can make the most of both of these at the same time so that we don’t have to make the trade-offs. Having to decide between having a kid or going to college is the kind of thing that breaks my heart.”

Once Garcia hit the eight-month pregnancy mark, Sofia was getting more energetic and was moving around a lot more. Sofia tended to kick more in Donaldson’s class due to to her enjoyment of conversations.

“She likes voices,” Garcia said. “She really likes when he talks loud. She will kick the whole time. But sometimes it hurts. I was in class and I was like, ‘stop moving!’”

Garcia attended class until six days before giving birth.

“I talked to Hunter Fine, Aaron Donaldson and Chris Martinek. They were all super onboard,” Garcia said.

“They all knew what was going on. I feel confident with my academics.”

On October 3, Garcia was induced at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka. Garcia had mild contractions for two days until they became severe enough to get an epidural to help with the pain.

The beginning of Garcia’s pregnancy was tough. In March, the side effects of the pregnancy started kicking in. On top of being exhausted, she had morning sickness that lasted all day. However, despite her difficult days, Garcia made it a point to continue going to class.

Garcia gave birth to her daughter, Sofia Lynn French, Wednesday, Oct. 5 at around 3:30 a.m.

“When I had professor Fine last semester, he knew early on that I was pregnant and he knew that when I came to class, I wasn’t trying to be really tired-looking and really out of it,” Garcia said. “He was just really understanding and super lenient if I was late or had to leave. I think that was really considerate of him.”

Aaron Donaldson, a lecturer in the communication department, is expecting his first child with his wife, Katie Donaldson, in February. Donaldson’s direct experience with his wife’s pregnancy has given him some understanding of how side effects from pregnancy can affect women. This helped him to recognize when Garcia wasn’t feeling well.

“A lot of the stuff that really stuck with me is how hard it is to keep with your consistent routine because you just never

“I thought it would be a piece of cake, but I was so wrong,” Garcia said. “Once the contractions got harder, I asked for pain medication. When the pain medications weren’t enough, I asked for the epidural. As soon as my body was ready to start pushing, the epidural wore off and I was on my own, but luckily I only had to push for 40 minutes. As soon as Sofia was out, they cleaned her up and stitched me up! Overall, it was unforgettable. I’m happy that I had the support of Connor, my mom and her fiancé there.”

Garcia stayed home for three weeks before returning to campus to meet with professors.

Garcia and I are both enrolled in Donaldson’s rhetorical theory class this semester. Before returning to class, Garcia asked me to set up my laptop so that she could livestream the class session from her home. Donaldson agreed to the arrangement and gave us the go-ahead.

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Photo by Oliver Cory

Sofia Garcia being fed while waiting for her mom’s advising appointment with Armeda Reitzel.

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“I loved it. I thought it was a good idea. It would have been interesting to find a way that she could have asked questions,” Donaldson said.

after their World Series victory this year. Reitzel referred to herself as “grandma” and asked permission to put a photo of Sofia in the Telonicher House.

Once in class, I connected my laptop to the internet and faced the camera toward Donaldson and the whiteboard.

Minutes later, Garcia was on the laptop screen cradling Sofia in her arms. We chatted for a minute, but I soon had to return to my desk. I asked fellow classmate Olivia Neu if she could keep an eye on the laptop screen.

Some parents may choose to take their newborn baby or child to classes with them. While there is no set policy on doing so, talking to faculty beforehand is recommended.

“I thought it was really cool because it gave her the opportunity to be in class,” Neu said. “It’s different than her being physically there with her baby. It’s funny how most people didn’t notice she was there. They just thought a laptop was open facing the board.”

Once class ended, I walked over to shut my laptop down.

Neu and I said our goodbyes to Garcia and Sofia. While doing so, we caught the attention of other students, such as Abby Hamburg.

“Wait, is there someone on that screen right now?”

Hamburg asked.

We informed Hamburg and the rest of the onlookers that Garcia was there with her newborn daughter. A few students rushed over to say hello and catch a glimpse of Sofia.

Donaldson was one of the first faculty members to meet Sofia.

“There was a stroller sitting right outside and I heard voices and started looking around like, ‘where is she? She is here somewhere!’” Donaldson said.

Garcia had been introducing Sofia to another faculty member at the time. Donaldson patiently waited in his office, hoping to be included in the introductions. He was thrilled when his turn finally came to meet little Sofia.

“I chatted at the little one and talked to Bianca about her school work, it was a really sweet visit” Donaldson said.

When advising season rolled around in November, Garcia brought Sofia to campus with her while she attended an advising meeting with Reitzel. Reitzel’s office is located in the Telonicher House, the communication department.

Trying to find parking close to the Telonicher House proved to be difficult, especially when adding a stroller and baby bag into the picture.

After finding parking, Garcia walked up the stairs to Reitzel’s office. Reitzel’s eyes lit up when Garcia and Sofia arrived. Her voice jumped two tones higher as she cradled Sofia and talked about how the baby would need a Cubs hat

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“I would encourage students to let the professor know that they may need to bring the baby in a few times,” Associate Dean of Students Christine Mata said. “But if the baby cries or disrupts the learning environment, the professor may ask the student to leave. Students are responsible for arranging child care.”

Donaldson was ecstatic about the idea of having Sofia sit in on his lectures, though sitting up may not yet be her strong suit.

“My stance always is that children are people and they are members of our community. I think that they are welcomed any place anyone else is,” Donaldson said.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, pregnant women who qualify as temporarily disabled due to their pregnancy can get accommodations from the Student Disability Resource Center. Accommodations include things such as rides to class and a note taker for classes. However, a note from a doctor is required.

“Pregnancy itself is not considered a disability in federal law.

However, complications as a result of the pregnancy can be considered,” said Kevin O’Brien, Director of the Student Disability Resource Center. “Various kinds of issues that come up in pregnancy can cause a disabling condition and then that’s considered a temporary disability.”

Pregnant students have several resources available for them on campus. Planned Parenthood comes to the Student Health Center every Wednesday from 1 to 4:30 p.m. to offer outreach services. Their hours at the center may vary depending on the semester, so it is recommended to look up their schedule before visiting. Some services offered include pregnancy tests and resources that cater to the needs of the pregnant mother.

Currently, Garcia is catching up on assigned homework and readings and has not let anything stand in the way of her work ethic. With only four classes left before Garcia graduates, she is already thinking about how Sofia will be at her graduation in May. Garcia will be the second of her six siblings to graduate from college.

“I feel like because I didn’t give up on school, I have a sense of new self pride,” Garcia said.

• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

A nurse at St. Joseph teaches Bianca how to properly feed Sofia.

25 Photo by Stephanie Krutolow

Foundations of Flair The Heart of Arcata’s Hairstyles Written by Claire Roth

C

hanneling more than 50 years of experience through her fingers, Vivian Day skillfully applies curlers to 96-year-old Berniece Rowe’s white hair.

Day leans in close to speak with Rowe, asking if she was around when people milked dairy cows many years ago in what is now the location of the Arcata Plaza. Day had come across an old photo of this phenomenon once and wondered if Rowe had been there to see the real thing.

“They milked cows there, fenced in.

Do you remember it? Were you here then, when it wasn’t the plaza?” Day asks, her hands remaining busy with Rowe’s perm.

“Heavens, no!” Rowe responds, and the two break into a fit of youthful laughter.

Day is the owner of House of Flair, a hair salon and barber shop located on H Street in downtown Arcata. Her conversations with clients are studded with questions about their lives and interests, an indication of Day’s curious and sharp personality. Though Day fits the role of hairdressing to a T, she started out on a very different and much more rural path in life.

Day was born at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka in 1946. During her childhood, her family owned and operated a dairy farm in Ferndale. When she was in the fourth grade, her father leased their farm in Ferndale and bought a dairy

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farm in the Arcata Bottoms, where Day’s brother still lives and milks cows today.

While attending Arcata High School, Day helped around the dairy farm in her spare time but soon realized that she wanted a change of scenery.

“I used to carry milk and help milk the cows,” Day says. “I’d go back and forth and I finally said, ‘you know, I’ve got to get a job so that I can be finished.’”

This thought proved to be the first step toward Day’s lifelong profession as a hairstylist.

According to Day, not all hairstyles are truly original; they are simply recycled.

“They all cycle around and then come back around,” Day says. “I’ve done ‘em all. It’s just a recycling over and over. Maybe they have a little twist to it, then they think it’s new, and it’s not new.”

Day recalls a time when, in the 70s, a popular hairstyle fashion for teenage girls was to have their bangs cut in a short, perfectly straight line.

“Teenagers used to come in to get their hair cut and the girls would put scotch tape around their bangs so that you wouldn’t cut them any shorter than the eyebrows,” Day says. “We had to cut below the scotch tape. They’d come in all scotch-taped right underneath the bangs, as if we couldn’t do it.”

After graduating from Arcata High School in 1963, Day went through a nine-month beauty school program at

Frederick and Charles Beauty College in Eureka. She explains that many of the local hairdressers and barbers attend this college but aren’t prone to keeping in touch with each other.

“Everybody tends to their own business, you know?” Day says.

“Hairdressers don’t really talk to each other. They’re afraid you’re stealing an idea.”

Day continued on a path of upward trajectory in the world of hairdressing after beauty college, beginning work in a salon directly after receiving her cosmetology license from Frederick and Charles.

Little did she know, the salon she found work in would one day become the location of House of Flair.

Aside from a curbside sign advertising walk-in appointments and a red, white and blue barber’s pole stationed loyally near the front window, House of Flair looks like someone’s home. This is because years ago, it was.

Prior to becoming House of Flair, the location was a salon called Mable and was where Day began working fresh out of beauty college. It was owned, operated and resided in by Mable Rodrick.

Day purchased the building after working at Mable for 2 ½ years. She scrapped the original house-shop setup, turned the space into a fullblown beauty salon and renamed it House of Flair.

Day gestures upwards to a large ceiling

• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

Vivian Day gives 96-yearold Berniece Rowe a perm. Rowe visits House of Flair every week for a hair appointment.

Photo by Oliver Cory 27

House of Flair client Ric Replogle sits tall and still as Vivian Day cleans up his new haircut.

Photo by Oliver Cory

beam running above her own haircutting station, spanning the entire length of the shop from north to south.

“See this beam right here? That was the beauty shop,” Day says, referring to where Rodrick’s beauty shop and living space had once been. “And right here were the hallway and the bathroom. There was the bedroom, the kitchen, the living room. Yeah, so I opened it all up and made it into a business.”

House of Flair’s name, Day says, came from how hairstyles were and are done at her salon: with style and panache.

“I came up with what I thought we do here, how we make hair look big, flair-y, done-up. And that’s how I came up with the name of ‘flair.’ We were

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going to name it Hair Flair, and then we decided, you know, it’s a house.

Maybe House of Flair has a little more ring to it. Styling, back-combing, making curls, teasing. That’s where we got the flair from. Volume.”

Day’s renovation and creation of House of Flair brought with it a need for more personnel. Day hired numerous employees in the years following her purchase of the building and currently rents out booths.

“They don’t work for me, they rent a booth. Independent contractors, they would say,” Day says of her renters.

Danny Bertrand, better known as “Danny the Barber” by his clients and faithful Yelp reviewers, rents out one of Day’s booths. Prior to beginning work at House of Flair in 2010, he spent eight years as a barber at Beau-

Monde Barber & Beauty, an Arcata salon that has since closed down.

Bertrand is a third-generation barber and received his barber training in San Diego. He started at age 19 and has now been barbering for 20 years.

“Coming here from SoCal, the community really took me in.

Having three young children, I really appreciate everyone being so inviting,” Bertrand says.

Bertrand explains that he comes from a family of barbers.

“My dad, brother, uncle and grandpa were all barbers,” Bertrand says.

“We’re really creative about our career choice,” he adds, jokingly.

Bertrand orders special barbering supplies from a supplier in New York.

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“I carry old-time barbering supply stuff. Nobody else carries this stuff in town,” Bertrand explains.

Brady Goodwin, HSU environmental science major, shares his experience of going to Bertrand for a haircut.

“It was definitely a quirky place. Danny talked about how, when I walked in, my hair was all ‘codelly-wop,’ which was an accurate description,” Goodwin says.

Goodwin attests to the old-timey yet quality experience.

“It was good,” Goodwin says. “He really paid a lot of attention. He got out the straight razors and did all of the classic barber stuff. Something that was kind of funny was a conversation that the old lady, Vivian, was having with an old man. And it was the old man who was talking about how he saw these clouds one day that were so beautiful. They were the most

beautiful clouds he ever saw, and they made him feel like Jesus was real.”

House of Flair customers leave their hair appointments with more than just quality haircuts at reasonable prices.

Many have unique stories of the salon and barbershop that add depth and color to House of Flair’s character.

Tarah Moleski, an environmental management and protection major at HSU, has visited House of Flair a few times for trims and feels that the salon fits right in in terms of Arcata’s overall personality.

“Quirkiness, I think that’s a good adjective for it,” Moleski says. “Just unique and not like bigger cities.”

Moleski’s boyfriend and HSU botany major, Mason Richins, recalls a curious sight from one of his visits to House of Flair.

“When I went to get my haircut once I remember that she told me that

God told her that pennies were holy, or something along those lines, and had a lot of pennies scattered on a nativity scene,” Richins says. “It was interesting, to say the least.”

Dalton Hedin, a graduate of the HSU environmental management and protection major, feels that House of Flair is an inviting place for students, especially if they are new to town. He explains that he had gone in looking for a haircut from Danny the Barber, but when Bertrand wasn’t in that day, Vivian offered to cut Hedin’s hair instead.

“She’s a really nice, cute old lady who’s adorable and reminded me of my grandma, so I was like, ‘yeah, of course you can cut my hair!’” Hedin says.

Hannah Kelly, a sociology major at HSU, used to live a few blocks down the street Hair from House of Flair dryer chairs line the rustic walls of House of Flair.

Hair dryer chairs line the rustic walls of House of Flair.

29 Photo by Oliver Cory

and would often pass it on the walk home to her old house. She remembers glancing into the salon’s window once and thinking that she saw something quite odd.

“I once walked by there and I swear I saw an older woman turning butter,” Kelly says.

Joben Penuliar is an HSU graduate of the geography major. Though he has since moved away from Arcata and is now living in the city of Norwalk in Southern California, he remembers Day and a particular haircut she had given him.

“I remember this one time I was complaining about my cowlicks and she said, ‘you know why you have them, don’t you? Well, God put them there so he can see where you are from up above,’ which is a classic sweet old lady thing to say,” Penuliar says.

House of Flair and the hairstylists and barbers within all seem to have a knack for creating positive, lasting impressions on customers. In a town where word of mouth is pivotal, House of Flair makes the cut.

Vivian Day steps aside to answer her business phone, penciling in an appointment.

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31 Photo by Oliver Cory

Photo by Ian Thompson

Knot Stressed, Knitting!

Managing Stress with the Help of Knititng Written by Mo Lee Thornburg Photos by Oliver Cory

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t was the spring semester of my junior year at HSU: I was taking my second, back-to-back 18-unit semester and I was running 50 miles a week for Track and Field. I’d had a falling-out with my best friend, and I’d broken up with my long-term boyfriend. I tried to tell myself that I was handling everything just fine, ignoring the fact that my hair was falling out and itchy hives were breaking out all over my body — hives that the school doctor didn’t know how to deal with when the Prednisone treatment offered no relief. I was at a loss: running had become more of a business at the college level of competition than the love affair I’d been a part of since the 5th grade. Even worse, it no longer alleviated stress, but added a weight of its own.

I finished the semester feeling discouraged and wanting to quit everything. I ended up going home for the summer, where I could recover and figure out what to do next.

Shortly after arriving home, my mom handed me a pair of knitting needles and some glittery yarn — a pastime she’d been obsessed with for as long as I can remember. I accepted the gift and viewed it as a way to relax with her on the brick patio with a glass of red wine. Two weeks later, my hives were nearly gone and I found myself feeling rejuvenated.

By the end of the summer, I had knitted a variety of scarves and stoles and I had started a sweater pattern that I intended to finish during the fall semester.

However, when classes started up again, my knitting basket, with my one-and-a-half completed sweater sleeves, ended up under my bed, all but forgotten: work, training and homework took center stage, and I began to feel the weight of the semester crush me.

My mother would ask, “how’s your knitting going?”

I always gave her the same excuse about being too busy, which I thought was true.

“Take it to school and get in a few rows between classes,” she would suggest.

But public humiliation wasn’t something I was interested in — I’d just made some new friends, and I found myself more interested in hanging out with them between classes than working on what I considered to be “old lady” projects.

It wasn’t until I found myself unable to sleep at 2 a.m. that I finally retrieved the yarn from beneath my bed and put in a few rows. After several nights of lying awake, I decided to use the otherwise wasted time to work on my sweater, even if only to appease my mother.

The result shocked me: after a few rows of knitting, my mind fell silent and I was finally able to fall asleep.

my day and within two weeks, I’d completed my sweater. I sent my mom a variety of pictures, reveling in the pride I got from having completed something.

It was this sense of accomplishment that my mom had tried to use to get me interested in knitting for years — when I was growing up, I’d get a ball of yarn and some needles for Christmas almost every year, but found myself more interested in other gifts, whether it was nail polish, a new paint set, or Nicholas Sparks’ latest romance novel.

But this “sense of accomplishment” is only one of the many benefits that knitting offers — and the least relevant benefit to someone like me, who was struggling to cope with with all of the things on her plate.

According to several studies, knitting offers the same benefits as meditation, including decreased heart rate and decreased blood pressure, and helps to alleviate stress and anxiety.

As Psychology Today explains, the brain loves rhythm and repetition, and knitting is all about repetition — something that most people would think boring. To go hand-in-hand with this, knitting requires one’s eyes to move back and forth, a meditative practice that has been used by yogis all over the world for decades.

All of this sounded like a bunch of blah, blah, blah to me until I found myself in need of a way to deal with my workload.

The biggest benefit that I got from it was a distraction: according to Psychology Today, the brain can only focus on one thing at a time. Because of this, many people use it to cope with pain. Similarly, many rehabilitation centers use knitting to help people overcome addictive behaviors, such as smoking, drug use, overeating and compulsive checking, as well as to help those who are suffering from PTSD. For me, it meant that I could shut off my over-thinking mind from the friend drama, the essays and assignments, the urge to scratch my stress-induced hives and even the heartache I was trying to overcome. Similar to the way I check out on an easy morning run, when I put on some music and began to knit a few rows, I’m able to “check out” and relax, whether I’m in my bedroom, the library or even on the beach. All one needs is a ball of yarn, a couple of needles and a printed pattern and he or she is ready to go.

And the best part is that knitting can be fairly cheap — at Michael’s, a ball of yarn costs anywhere from 2-7 bucks, depending on the yarn quality, while a set of knitting needles costs about 5. In the end, you’ll walk away with something you made, unlike meditation, where the mental benefits are only felt instead of transformed into an item you can wear, give away as a gift or possibly even sell!

I decided to try knitting before bed as a way to unwind from

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How to Get Started 1.

2.

3.

4.

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5.

• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

6.

7.

8.

9.

CASTING ON: 1. In your right hand, hold one knitting needle. Droop the yarn over the knitting needle with the tail closest to you. *Note: Generally, the length of your forearm is approximately 20 stitches.

2. Make an “L” with the thumb and forefinger of your left hand, then put this “L” between the two strands of yarn. Use your other fingers to hold onto the ends of the yarn, keeping the yarn taught.

3. With your right thumb, hold the “stitch” on the top of the needle so it can’t move — this is the first stitch you’ve casted on. Holding onto that stitch, pull the needle back and down

so that a triangle is formed with the yarn in your left hand.

4. The easiest way to look at this is to see the triangle as a mouse’s face: the loop over your thumb and first finger make the ears, and the triangle that is pulled taught with the needle is the muzzle. What you want to do to make a stitch is insert the needle under the “mouse ear” that’s closest to you, then through the “mouse ear” that’s farthest away from you.

5. Then, the loop from the first ear will naturally want to slip over the loop from the second ear — let it, and then pull both strands of yarn down: this will give you your new stitch.

Repeat this method until you have a total of 20 stitches on your needle.

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*Note: If there is a long “tail” left over at the end, you can cut it so that you don’t accidentally use it as your knitting yarn — just make sure it’s not too short or else your entire piece will unravel.

You can count your stitches (the number of loops on your needle) as you go, but it’s a good idea to count them all at the end, just to be safe. If you have too many stitches, simply slip the loop (or loops, if there’s more than one,) off of the needle. Untwist the two strands of yarn from each other, and you will be ready to start.

After casting on, you’re ready to get started with the actual knitting, described on the next page!

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Knit Stitches 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

1. Hold the needle with all of your newly-cast-on stitches in your left hand. Using your right hand, insert your free needle into the first stitch, going in from the left side of the stitch and straight out through the back.

2. Take the working yarn (the strand that is attached to the ball of yarn, not the tail) and wrap it around your bare needle, counterclockwise.

3. This wrap-around loop will be your new stitch. Using your left hand, carefully drag the old stitch (the one you stuck the needle into) up and over the newly-formed stitch on the right-hand needle. Then, slip the old stitch off of the left needle so that you have your new stitch on the right needle.

Repeat this on every stitch. When you get to the end of the row, you’ll have 20 stitches on your right-hand needle. Voila!

One row of knitting is complete. For a hot pad, knit ~35 rows, or until you’ve reached your desired length.

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• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

Casting Of f 1.

2.

3.

4.

All that’s left is the casting-off!

1. Start by knitting two new stitches onto your right-hand needle.

5.

2. Using the tip of your left-hand needle, pick up the bottom stitch (the first one you knitted,) and drag it over the top stitch (the second one you knitted.) After doing this, you’ll have one stitch remaining on the right-hand needle.

Then, knit one stitch, and drag the bottom stitch over it again.

3. Repeat this process of knit one, drag one until you’re left with one stitch on your right-hand needle.

4. Cut your yarn, leaving a lengthy tail. Pull the tail of the yarn through the center of this last stitch, and slowly tighten it up so that you tie off your knitting. Weave in the tail from the cast-off and the tail from the cast-on row and you’re hot pad will be complete!

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Heart It? Tr y This: Try this heart pattern, from molliemakes.com — perfect for drink coasters!

1. Cast on 5 stitches and knit first row.

5. Knit row.

2. Increase row: Knit into the front and back of the first stitch like normal, but after dragging the old stitch over the new stitch, don’t slip the old stitch off the left needle (Fig.1).

Instead, you’re going to make a second stitch with the same “old” stitch by inserting the needle through the back loop of the old stitch (Fig. 2-3). After knitting these two new stitches, you can drag the old stitch off the left-hand needle. Knit the remaining stitches.

6. Increase first stitch using the knit in front, knit in back method. Knit to the end of the row.

3. Knit 1 row.

4. Knit to last stitch: Make a new stitch again by knitting into the front and the back of the last stitch before slipping it off the left needle.

1.

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2.

7. Knit 4 rows.

8. Cut your yarn and scoot the piece to end of the needle.

Repeat this process so that you have two “heart humps” on your needle. Then, join by knitting across both rows, as tightly as possible, and your new row will be formed from knitting both pieces together.

9. Knit 4 more rows.

3.

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10. Decreasing: Now you’re going to make a point.

Instead of inserting your needle into the first stitch, insert it into both the first and second at the same time, as if they made one, thick stitch.

12. Knit one row.

11. Wrap your yarn counterclockwise around the needle, then carefully drag both of the old stitches over your new stitch. This will decrease one stitch. Knit to the last two stitches, then decrease again by knitting two stitches together.

14. Knit one row.

1.

13. Decrease: Knit the first two stitches together, knit to the last two stitches, then knit those two together.

You should now have two stitches remaining on the needle: cut the yarn, leaving a long tail. Then, cut a new length of yarn and pull it through both stitches. Tie a knot, weave in the ends and you’re done!

2.

3.

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Sex, Lies and Shame The Double Standard on Sexual Activity Written by Alexandria Hasenstab

S

ophomore Victoria Davis was lying on her bed after having sex with her latest romantic interest on a Friday night. They had been seeing each other for about two weeks. He is four years older than her and is traveling through Humboldt for business. Davis began talking about her college experience and revealed that she lost her virginity during her freshman year of college.

“How many people have you slept with since then?” she said he asked.

Oh god, why that question, she wondered.

“Ummm, two?” she replied, knowing that she slept with more people than that. But she didn’t want to tell him the truth. She was worried that he would judge her.

Has society created a double standard where men can have as many past sex partners as they want but women are labeled and seen as promiscuous for doing the same thing?

The Double Standard In a non-scientific, online survey of 156 HSU students -- 108 of them women -- one in four women admitted to lying about their number of past sexual partners. Of those 26 women, 23 of them said they lied to make the number lower than it actually is.

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“Women are judged differently,” Davis said. “Women can’t be as sexual as men can.”

Gender communications professor Maxwell Schnurer says that there are social expectations that women are supposed to present themselves as sexually inexperienced. Women who do not follow this expectation are at risk of backlash.

“Many women are encouraged to put on the brakes,” Schnurer said.

“Someone might be like, ‘I might even want to have sex, but I’ve been socialized to say no.’”

“Guys get so much credit for sleeping with someone,” said Araceli Gracia, child development senior. “Us girls feel like we need to lower the number so we won’t be labeled.”

Schnurer says that the language we use to describe women has allowed this double standard to thrive.

“Words like ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ are used to police humans,” Schnurer said. “In particular, women.”

How did these social norms about sexuality come about? Religion and culture apparently play a part.

“There’s a lot of focus placed on virginity in many cultures and many religions,” said Sara Hart, professor of world religion.

Hart says that religious figures like the Virgin Mary have a big influence on culture and society’s view of women’s sexuality.

“This is a real elevation of the value of virginity,” Hart said. “The problem is what happens when you put someone on a pedestal? They don’t get to move.

And what happens when you make virginity the best thing ever? Then sex is somehow dirty. And who shows sex?

It’s the women, they’re the ones who get pregnant.”

It’s a Man’s World Professor Mary Bockover teaches a class titled The Philosophy of Sex and Love. She says that our concepts of sex are spoon-fed to us from the male point of view.

“Both men and women are conditioned to accept a certain concept of sex, but that context conditionally has privileged males,” she said.

Bockover speculates that men would desire a less experienced woman because they can maintain a certain amount of ownership over them.

Hart agrees that the major world religions are skewed toward the masculine, and none have treated women fairly. She says virginity is prized in some cultures but only for women.

• STUDENT-RUN MAGAZINE • FALL 2016 •

Photo by Alexandria Hasenstab

“I don’t know of a single religious tradition that, in its historical development, has been what we would consider equitable in terms of gender,” Hart said.

Junior David Crowfield says that he used to ask girls about their sexual past but has realised that it’s not significant.

“I would laugh and say ‘you’ve made some mistakes and had some experiences,’” Crowfield said.

Although women are generally the ones getting the backlash from the double standard, men are aware of it as well. In the Survey Monkey questionnaire, 28 of 42 men who responded to the question said they believe it is more acceptable for men to have a higher number of past sexual partners than it is for women.

“Guys don’t get judged for sleeping with ten girls, but girls will get judged for sleeping with ten guys,” said Sophomore Anthony Jimenez.

Jimenez and his girlfriend Karen Lopez have been dating for one year.

The couple said they told each other the number of people they slept with in the past when they were just friends. Although the couple says they never lied to each other about their sexual history, they agree that there is a difference in acceptable sexual behavior for men and woman.

Lopez said that she has never lied to anyone about the number of sexual partners she’s had, but that it is an uncomfortable subject to talk about.

“I feel like when it comes to sex, a lot of women are looked down upon,” Lopez said.

“Girls can’t come out and say, ‘I want this.’”

The Science Behind the Double Standard Biology Professor John Reiss explains the natural, evolutionary reason for men to be more sexually promiscuous.

He calls it sociobiology.

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“Females have more investment in their offspring,” Reiss said. “They’re limited in the number of offspring they can have, whereas men are fairly unlimited.”

Reiss says that in some species, such as sea horses, males are responsible for birthing offspring. As a result, the males are more selective than females when it comes to mating. Whichever sex can get pregnant is usually more selective.

With modern birth control, intercourse does not have to lead to pregnancy.

Still, it seems that society accepts men’s promiscuity more than it accepts women’s.

“There’s a tendency to say, ‘well, this is evolutionarily beneficial; therefore, it’s okay, it’s alright, it’s ethically justified,” Reiss said. “Just because it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint doesn’t mean culturally it’s something we have to tolerate. We can make choices as a society and a culture about what’s right.”

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42 Photo by Alexandria Hasenstab

The Problem with Promiscuity Junior Fabien Cuevas says that if he were interested in someone, their sexual history is important.

“It could make the relationship hard,” Cuevas said. “It will always be in the back of your mind. You’re wondering who they’ve been with. But if you really care about that person, it’s an obstacle you can overcome.”

Philosophy professor Bockover says the invention of the contraceptive allowed women to behave like men. However, she sees that indulging in sex purely for pleasure can be an issue.

“What’s becoming clearer to me is that more and more people are not thinking of sex as requiring intimacy at all,” Bockover said. “And then the question philosophically is, is there a problem with that?”

Bockover and Schnurer make the point that the reason for having sex is more significant than the act itself.

“The joy of sex is the actual pleasureable sex part,” Schnurer said.

“The notion that you’re better at sex because you have a higher count is a distortion.”

Castillo says that she has never lied about her number of past sexual partners, but not all women can say the same.

Sexual Health Assistant Ravin Craig explains why a lack of honesty in sexual activity can be harmful.

“Society values, at least in women or people who identify as women, a lack of experience,” Craig said. “That can be harmful in that women who have experience and enjoy sex are shamed.”

She says the shame that women face can cause a lack of honesty in their sex life and this can lead to unsafe and uncomfortable sex practices.

“If someone is lying about their number of sexual partners, they could be obscuring a history with STI contact,” Craig said.

Craig says it’s important to be honest about your sexual history so that you and your partner can make choices about sexually transmitted infections, screenings and protection. Regardless of the number of people someone has slept with, the risk for contracting an STI is determined by whether or not protection is used.

Bockover explains that once a person begins living a promiscuous lifestyle, it can be hard to change.

Craig knows that shame about sexuality is difficult to overcome, but she encourages women to own their sexuality.

“Sex, like any other behavior, can become a habit,” Bockover said. “And habits are hard to break.”

“Every person, no matter the gender they identify with, has a right to healthy, happy sex,” she said.

Cupid’s Itch

You can contact Ravin Craig at 707-826-5228 or Health Education Supervisor Mira Friedman at 707-826-5234 to speak to a peer health educator. Find them at the Recreation and Wellness Center in room 123.

Senior Communications major Cindy Castillo says that when it comes to dating, someone having a large number of sexual partners wouldn’t be an issue. But she is concerned about STDs. “If they got tested, it wouldn’t matter how many people they’d been with,” she said.

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Sid Riley standing in front of his tiny house.

Big Dreams, Tiny Houses Minimalistic Living in Humboldt County Written by Kellen Costantino

45 Photo by Kellen Costantino

Over the course of the next month, Riley planned out the construction of his tiny home.

Building a house was new to Riley, but he had A halfwaterproofed experience in working with raw materials and a exterior wall, in drive to learn. need of completion before the rains “I wanna build things,” he said. “I used to come again.

fabricate things for people when I worked at Florida Aluminum and Steel. First I was an installer, but I wanted to learn to weld. So one day the boss man gave me an opportunity. He let me do it for a week to see if I’d catch on, and I did. I learned to work with raw steel and tack-weld and how to fabricate metal. I want to do that here too.”

Riley asked his landlord, Franco Pepe, to let him build it on his property in rural McKinleyville. Pepe agreed.

“He worked his way to living on the prairie, and we like Sid, so that was OK,” Pepe said. “Sid’s part of the family.”

So in addition to renting the shop, Riley began leasing a plot of land from his landlord. He also had to consider the Humboldt County Planning Department’s codes.

Photo by Oliver Cory

S

id Riley battles a flailing blue tarp against the rain into position over the corner of his roof. It’s late January and the rain is putting his home to the test. He clambers around on the cold and dripping shingles while the wind whips and snaps the flimsy blue rectangle. He eventually ties the corners down, but it does nothing to stop the leak. It was a small, stilt-suspended house that Riley had been renting and fixing up since September. He had carpeted the floors, re-shingled the roof and put in new drywall, but he had never installed gutters, so the water ran down the exterior walls and soaked through the new drywall. The ceiling was dripping and flaky, the walls had become sponge-like and the floor was a mildewy, wet rag. It was absolutely drenched and smelled of rot still.

The County’s Health and Safety codes require the primary residence to be a minimum of 120 square feet with an extra 100 square feet per person living in the home. Riley had to to make his tiny house the right size or face potential fines of $100 per day; a rate that can increase by $100 each month.

However, the county doesn’t go out hunting for unpermitted structures.

“I couldn’t believe it, months of hard work gone in just a night,” Riley said. “But it kind of pushed me to think outside the box as far as housing goes.”

“We don’t go out looking for permit violations,” said Mark Phippin, a county building inspector. “But people can call in anonymously and we have to follow up on those.”

Riley still had a place to sleep, since he had been renting a workshop adjacent to the house he had been working on.

But he wanted a home.

Riley built his tiny house as a 10-by-12-foot-tall box, somewhat resembling a milk carton. Each floor is exactly 120 square feet, for a total of 240 square feet. On the first floor he has a kitchen, couch and TV. Upstairs is his bedroom, and the extra space matters.

“So not long after that, I started building my own little house,” he said. “I just did it because it was quick and I saw everyone doing it.”

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The County lays out specific guidelines for anyone wanting to build their own tiny home. The County classifies tiny houses as “efficiency dwellings.” To get a permit, one has to submit a complete plan of the house, including plumbing, electricity and appliance locations. The permit must then be reviewed and approved by a county inspector prior to construction. Waiting until after construction is an option, but it comes with a fine that effectively triples the cost of permitting.

“That’s the thing that makes my house liveable,” Riley said.

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“It’s two stories and I have a full-sized bedroom on the top floor.”

“We just want to live here and have a little community,” Schneider said.

Other tiny-house dwellers such as Gabe Schneider have managed to live in even smaller houses.

Riley hoped for people to join him in building a community, but the dream has fallen a bit short.

Schneider is a tiny-house architect who built a commune of three houses with his friends on Samoa. When I drove out to visit, we sat around the firepit in his yard, which had been constructed by welding rods to the edge of a drier tumbler.

Schneider told me about some misconceptions people have about tiny houses.

“It kinda blows the steam out of it that no one is joining me here,” Riley said. “If everybody gets together, we can sit back, work a day out of the week and we could live off the land.”

“People want to take all the things from their big house -clothes, appliances, TV, whatever -- and bring it into their tiny house,” Schneider said. “What they don’t get is, it’s a tiny house. A lot of people just don’t realize what they’re getting into.”

Tiny houses are often only one room, and after putting a bed, desk and cabinet into one room, there’s not enough space for, say, a walk-in closet or any unnecessary furniture.

His house also has an exposed outdoor shower, equipped with a salvaged water heater and a trifecta of hammocks hung between a triangle of trees; all of which Schneider and his friends built themselves.

But Riley hasn’t given up. He sees the project as his prototype, something to be improved upon.

“That’s why you build prototypes,” Riley said. “You slow down and think about it. And I know how I’d make it better next time.”

Moving into the future, he has plans to renovate his shop and expand his construction knowledge.

“That’s the dream,” he said. “Get it cleared out so I can build stuff, hang out and bring people in.”

Schneider’s tiny house and outdoor kitchen.

47 Photo by Kellen Costantino

Sergeant Carpenter introduces himself to Sunset residents.

On the Beat with Campus Police What a Ride-Along with UPD is Really Like Story and Photos by Christian Lara

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ergeant Joseph Jones and I are hiking through the redwood forest behind the Creekview dorms. As we walk up the trail that winds along the creek, he catches the smell of marijuana and begins searching for the pot smokers.

On a quiet week night after Halloween, Sergeant Chance Carpenter checks in with students during his patrol at the start of his night shift. He approaches two students grilling food by the Sunset dorm gazebos and asks, “What’s cooking, guys?”

“A lot of students think we don’t go in the forest, so they think it’ll be okay to smoke pot there and not get caught,” Jones said.

“I like to get out and about and touch base with some of the students,” Carpenter said. “I kinda just check on them and sometimes when I am doing this, I walk into something.”

Jones joined the University Police Department in 2008 and was an officer for 11 years prior to that. He says as long as he is helping people, he is not concerned about putting his life on the line.

Before joining UPD almost 10 years ago, Carpenter was in the Hoopa Tribal Police for about eight years. He is the first in his family to join law enforcement. Carpenter says interacting with students and building a connection with the community makes him feel good about himself.

“I don’t think about it too much because it’s a good feeling to arrive at a scene and provide assistance, whether it’s medical or anything else,” Jones said. “My successful day is when I have a positive impact on campus, when I have good interactions with the public.”

To report this story, I spent four different days on duty with university police officers to see what their days are like.

The University Police Department includes a chief, lieutenant, four sergeants and six officers. They work 12hour shifts, three to four days a week.

With recent events across the nation involving police brutality, Jones says it is important for people to know that the violent officers caught on video do not represent all cops.

“I can’t speak for everyone, but some cops are acting inappropriate,” Jones said. “But there are misconceptions of the police officer.”

On a fall, Monday afternoon, Officer Justin Winkle is patrolling the streets of Humboldt State University. He cruises up and down campus streets in his police car. All of a sudden, he throws on the siren and chases after a cyclist who is riding toward oncoming traffic on Union Street. Winkle rushes out of his patrol car and gives the cyclist a warning.

Next time, he says, he will get a citation.

“When I was in Hoopa, I dealt with a lot of negative calls, like child abuse and domestic violence,” Carpenter said. “But the cool thing about here is that we have a lot of positive students because most people here have great goals.”

During his shift, Carpenter visits every gazebo on campus, the African American Center and Latino/Latina Center, the Walter Warren House and other locations to check up on students and meet anyone there. After introducing himself, he tells them that if they see any unusual activity or need any police assistance, to not hesitate and to call 911.

“I would rather have a student know me from a good contact and be able to come to me for an issue or problem, no matter what it is, instead of seeing Sergeant me for the first time on scene having to handle Carpenter and something in whatever way,” Carpenter said.

Josh Hanson engage in gym chatter.

“I am not patrolling to look for students and get them in trouble or arrest them,” Winkle said. “We don’t have a quota. I want to keep them safe because I care about their education.”

Winkle was in the Army from 1992-1995 and worked for the Eureka Police Department for eight years before joining UPD. He took stunt driving lessons in Los Angeles and is featured in two episodes of the Discovery television series “I Almost Got Away With It.” “If I was not a police officer, I would be a stunt driver,” Winkle said.

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Letter from the editor: What do a shelter dog, a hair stylist, tiny houses and the Humboldt State University Police Department have in common? I have no idea, but maybe after you’ve read the rad stories in this magazine you will have found a common thread between them. I’m stoked on how these stories turned out.

We ended up making an awesome magazine regardless of a couple unforeseen setbacks. Because of Humboldt State University’s limited budget, we weren’t able to afford a dog translation machine, which would have been great for our story on Roylee. We also lost our official Osprey fortune teller due to a severe Mercury retrograde, leaving us incapable of predicting Bianca’s delivery date. Luckily, we still managed to get photos of her in the delivery room with her newborn baby. The Osprey staff learned valuable lessons throughout the semester, such as the fact that all sizes of people live in tiny houses and that the woods behind campus where students smoke weed isn’t outside of the University Police Department’s jurisdiction. Yet the most valuable lessons we learned throughout the semester were from our chief adviser and counselor. This leader challenged us when we were losing hope, gave us critical feedback simply by looking at us a certain way and was always there to lend an ear or a shoulder to lean on. I am talking, of course, about Moose. Thanks for always being there, buddy.

Seeing the joy you get from butt scratches made all of the hard work we put into Osprey worth it.

Peace,

Ian Benjamin Finnegan Thompson

• OSPREY •

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Moose Johnson, official Opsrey Chief Adviser Photo by Oliver Cory