By Samuel Strait, Report at Large – March 5, 2021 Just recently having viewed the map of all the counties in California that were on board with the Jefferson State movement and those that are within Oregon who are involved with the Greater Idaho movement, it struck me that the island of resistance to both movements was on the very top of the north coast of California in Humboldt, no surprise there, and Del Norte County. When I first arrived in the county to take up residence in 1974, it was the bastion of rural conservative thinking that occupied much of California at the time. People were fiercely independent and hard working. Fishing, logging, and lumber mills formed the backbone of the local economy. Men would lean out of pickup truck windows and converse in the middle of a street. Certain restaurants, long gone or now closed, were other places to meet and talk about things that mattered and sometimes even things that didn't matter. The local government was hardly much more than a token of what it is now, and Sacramento was totally ignorant to the fact that Del Norte County even existed, not that anyone cared. Visitors were few and barely noticed. What a change forty five years has wrought. Gone is the simple and rewarding life of that time to the now Sacramento centric edition of 2021. Our current leadership and bureaucracy lies breathless in anticipation of orders from "down south" unable to take any step that might locally solve just a few of the problems we currently face. Critical lack of real education in our school system, unemployment, an unhealthy dependence on scraps in the form of grants infrastructure debt, and major issues with our roads and streets. The list seems overwhelming, yet paralysis rules the day in city hall and county government. Money is found for irrelevant things, the pool reopening, trips to Japan, charging stations, front street, its park, traffic circles, and lighted cross walks. Last Chance Grade continues to be a trial for a second week. The wastewater treatment plant remains heavily encumbered, while the City orgasms over the "new city hall". Leadership sits in thrall to the possibility of scraps thrown by either the State or the Federal Government. Gone is any sense that the morbid creatures that have been voted as our representatives will ever stir themselves to be proactive. It is a shame as there is much to offer in this small but rural community, but the loudest voices wailing about all manner of injustices seem to have cast us into following the train wreck in Sacramento. None of the issues we face are of the least bit interesting to those in a position to do something about it. That being the case, a concerted effort over the next year and a half to do something about it should galvanize the most faint hearted. Both the Board of Supervisors and the City Council need change to have the County move towards a better future. The current school board must recognize the District's failures and get on with the task of preparing our young people to be other than the next generation of inhabitants of the welfare rolls. Tourism and Government services are not going to cut it. Prosperity solves a whole lot of our current problems. Grasping the pandemic narrative does not. Time to cut the strings and move beyond Sacramento. Maybe Greater Idaho or Jefferson State?