#88. From Queens to Humboldt: Larry Goldberg's Journey

Larry Goldberg's life story reads like an adventure novel, spanning from protest movements in 1970s New York to pioneering renewable energy and internet infrastructure in Humboldt County. This wide-ranging conversation reveals how a philosophy major from Queens found himself sailing a square-rigger through the Caribbean, studying at Jerusalem's Holocaust museum, and eventually transforming Northern California's energy landscape.

At just 20 years old, Goldberg crewed on the ship used in the movie "Hawaii," sailing through the West Indies during the early days of reggae music before joining what he affectionately calls a "hippie ship" bound for Grenada. These formative adventures sparked a lifelong pattern of seeking meaningful challenges and embracing change—a philosophy he articulates as "Do what you can with what you've got, where you are, in the time you have."

After completing his MBA at Humboldt State with a focus on alternative energy (one of the earliest such programs on the West Coast), Goldberg established Northern California's first municipal solar utility in 1979. When Reagan-era policy changes eliminated crucial tax credits, he pivoted to energy efficiency work across eight counties before founding North Coast Internet in 1994—Humboldt's first internet service provider. His subsequent tech support business grew to serve CompUSA nationwide before the dot-com crash forced another reinvention.

Throughout these professional evolutions, Goldberg's commitment to community service remained constant. His 30-year involvement with the Redwood Alliance helped successfully decommission Humboldt Bay's nuclear power plant, while his 29 years in Rotary International (where he recently became president of Southwest Rotary) exemplify the organization's motto: "Service above self."

Today, Goldberg continues his solar energy work as a consultant with Six Rivers Solar while pursuing his passion for documenting local music through video recordings of regional festivals—a project he shares annually at his "Best of the Fests" gathering. His story demonstrates how adaptability, service, and finding joy in collaborative projects creates a life of purpose and impact.

Want to discover how your passion can become your purpose? Join us for this inspiring conversation with one of Humboldt County's most innovative community leaders.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:30

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors and those out at sea, my good friend Larry Goldberg, with Scott Hammond, 100% Humboldt Podcast. Welcome, Larry, Thank you. It's good to be here. It's great to see you, man. How are you Good? Tell us the Larry Goldberg story. Where'd you come from? How'd you get to Humboldt?

Speaker 2 0:46

Well, I grew up in New York City. I was born and raised in Queens, new York, and I was there through high school. I went to high school in downtown Manhattan, a place called Stuyvesant, a very math science school, and it was in the 60s.

Speaker 1 1:00

And this is with David Lipman, my friend.

Speaker 2 1:03

He went to my school Same class, I think. We were one year apart but we went to school at the same time. But he migrated to Humboldt too. Right right, small world. I Right right, small world. I don't know if he came the same time as me, but we both went to school there and I was there during the protests of the 70s. Wow, I was there in 69, 70, right when the invasion of Cambodia happened and protests. I actually was part of an Occupy Wall Street in 1970 when they bombed Cambodia. How about that? Was that?

Speaker 1 1:34

Abbie Hoffman stuff.

Speaker 2 1:35

It was the same time he wasn't there, but we were a protest. High school and college kids went to Wall Street Wow, and we got beat to crap Really. Construction workers they came and they broke us up and the police just stood by and it was a riot.

Speaker 1 1:54

So this was not police beating, this is citizenry.

Speaker 2 1:58

It was the construction workers downtown and they came and they just were throwing rods and concrete and beating us up and it was a mess.

Speaker 1 2:10

Different world, different world, you bet. So, you graduated high school in.

Speaker 2 2:14

I graduated high school in 71 and then I went to Wisconsin. I went to a college, a small liberal arts college called Beloit in southern Wisconsin.

Speaker 1 2:22

Sure.

Speaker 2 2:22

And that's where I had a chance to do some exciting things.

Speaker 1 2:25

Yeah, wisconsin is great. Oh, it's really—. So Libman went to UW.

Speaker 2 2:29

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:29

David Libman. Shout out to David Linda.

Sailing Adventures in the West Indies

Speaker 2 2:31

Yeah, yeah, hey, dave. He went to the university at Madison. I went to a small college called Beloit and for years I was in Wisconsin and I got the chance to really see the country and get to know Wisconsin and the Midwest and what have you. But during that time I did some exciting adventures. Exciting adventures.

Speaker 2 3:00

One adventure was we had a program at the school called Work Study, that the school actually gave you a term off to work somewhere in the world and they helped find jobs. And I found an amazing job crewing on a square rig sailing ship in the West Indies. That's cool. And I sailed all through the West Indies as I was 20 years old and I was on the ship that was used in the movie Hawaii Wow, and it was the ship from that movie and they were doing cruises in the Virgin Islands. And so I got to sail and really learned how to sail a square rigger. And then from that I signed on to a hippie ship that was going down to Grenada and we sailed all the way down to Grenada and had some adventures and so forth during that time.

Speaker 1 3:42

This is way before Jimmy Buffett stuff.

Speaker 2 3:44

Well, this was during some of the early reggae, jimmy Cliff. I saw Jimmy Cliff in the islands. Oh, that'd be cool and it was really cool. It's just when he was coming out with the Harder they Come and all of that. It's just when he was coming out with the Harder they Come and all of that Was Bob Marley living at that time. He was going, but he wasn't really well known yet. He came later. Jimmy was first. Jimmy was first and there was a lot of other musicians back then.

Speaker 1 4:04

How big was the ship from Hawaii? How big stem to stern?

Speaker 2 4:06

was that? 110 foot overall, 25 foot beam, 150 tons. Very cool, yeah, I can actually show you a picture.

Speaker 1 4:14

We wouldn't see it. I'll look at it after. We'll show you later.

Speaker 2 4:18

And what's a hippie ship? Well, a hippie ship, here's the deal. There were some hippies living on, you know, in Sausalito, where they have the boats there, Sure, of course. Well, these folks were living on one of those houseboats and they decided to buy a ship and try to sail around the world as a world educational school. But they bought the ship, sight unseen, that had been sitting in St Thomas Harbor for over a year and when we got out, I mean they didn't know what they were doing, but they hired us. We were a couple of sailors who knew what we were doing. There was over a foot of growth on the bottom of the ship and when we got underway we started leaking. And I'll tell you what. We started out pumping an hour every I don't know six, eight hours. By the time we got to Grenada, we were pumping every hour.

Speaker 1 5:10

On the hour, yeah, I mean, it was leaking like a sieve, every hour, on the hour, on the hour.

Speaker 2 5:12

Yeah, constantly it was leaking like a sieve.

Speaker 1 5:14

The hippie ship, the hippie ship.

Speaker 2 5:16

Yeah, it was a catch rig and it was an 80-foot long ship and they had a bunch of kids with them.

Speaker 1 5:23

Yeah, man, it was a school it was a little school they were putting together, actually, the appropriate response would be far out, man yeah, far out. Far, far out.

Speaker 2 5:32

Far out or no. The other one was out of sight. That would have been out of sight, out of sight man. Maybe groovy was still there it was still groovy.

Speaker 1 5:38

It was I said groovy to a young kid in Texas and he looked at me and he goes.

Speaker 2 5:44

What does that mean? What do you mean by that? Well, I still say cool, cool is cool, cool is cool, but out of sight. That's another story.

Speaker 1 5:52

Out of sight man, I'm still cool with cool. Yeah, I remember bitchin' came in. Oh, bitchin' was cool. That really offended my uncle. He didn't have any part of that. He goes hey, you can't be talking like that around here.

Living in Jerusalem and Holocaust Research

Speaker 2 6:02

Yeah, and then later it's the bomb, the bomb, the bomb. We're going to go. Year later I got to live in the Middle East for six months. We had an overseas exchange program and we went to Egypt, jordan and Israel and I got to live inside the old city of Jerusalem, inside the wall, and I was living by the Jaffa Gate which anyone who's been to the old city will know where it is, and the souk where they have all of the booths and stuff, where people sell stuff, and I lived in Jerusalem for four months. Is that close to the Wailing Wall? It's not far, it's walking distance.

Speaker 1 6:46

Okay.

Speaker 2 6:47

Yeah, it's not that far.

Speaker 1 6:48

Wow.

Speaker 2 6:49

And this was 1974. And so this was a year after the Yom Kippur War and so it was still kind of uptight. I mean, there were soldiers everywhere, everyone had guns. But I was there as an overseas study program and I was actually doing a research project on the Holocaust. I was interested in learning more about it and I studied at a place called Yad Vashem and Yad Vashem is like the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and it was a mind blower.

Speaker 1 7:19

It was a total mind blower, peter Robinson, been to the one in Houston. It was life-changing, peter Robinson, exactly. Peter Robinson, you come away and it just changes your day.

Speaker 2 7:27

Well, the thing I came to realize is I felt an affinity with we didn't have any immediate Holocaust victims in my family, but I felt an affinity with the people of Ukraine and my people were from Ukraine. They were in Odessa, but before that they were in Kirsten and some of the other, the shtetl, the little Jewish community. They're all gone, they're all decimated. But they were in Kerstin and some of the areas that we hear now on the news that they're fighting around, they live there. So I had an affinity for what was there and the thing you learn is that the Holocaust we think of gas chambers and we think of, you know, all the people that were just herded in cattle cars Back then. That's not how it worked In Kiev. They literally pushed everybody out and they lined them up and there was a ravine called Baba Yar and they shot everybody 33,000 people in a weekend Crazy, I mean, it's so insane.

Speaker 2 8:35

Yeah, unbelievable, right. And the thing is it's like there's nothing to relate. It's hard to relate to because we, you know, have wars and we have, you know, there is genocide, but it's like when it's, you actually have a connection to it.

Speaker 2 8:49

It was a connection. So these are Nazis killing, these are Nazis, but not only Nazis. A connection. And so these are Nazis killing these are Nazis, but not only Nazis. They used a lot of Ukrainian and Lithuanian and other police, and so what they used? Every country they occupied, they would find folks that would help them, and I would just call them helpers. And so they enlisted a lot of the police to do their dirty work. Hard to imagine it today.

Speaker 1 9:17

It's mind-blowing.

Speaker 2 9:18

The thing that really amazes me and the thing that I had a hard time with is that these were some of the most sophisticated people in Europe. They weren't primitive Germans were one of the most sophisticated people and for them to do it, you realize anyone could do that, and I hate to say it, but I could see our country doing that as well. I mean, we could go down that route. I hope we never do, but it was a real eye-opener.

Speaker 1 9:45

Well, history has this place called Rome, and they went sideways.

Speaker 2 9:49

Sure.

Speaker 1 9:51

History would bear that out. So it sounds like you traveled the world, did a lot of stuff, so what'd you graduate with is Boulogne.

Speaker 2 9:58

Boulogne, boulogne College, I got a, a, a, a undergraduate degree in philosophy.

Speaker 1 10:02

Of course so.

Speaker 2 10:03

I, I, yeah, so that. Well, actually it was Eastern philosophy.

Speaker 1 10:06

That's what really fascinated me Recreation administration Humboldt.

Speaker 2 10:09

There you go, all All right. Yeah, that's cool, and so I graduated from Beloit Out of sight.

Speaker 1 10:15

Out of sight. If you might, totally, if I may it was wicked, it was the bomb, the bomb man.

Speaker 2 10:21

We're not going to stop with that, it'll just keep going. But after Beloit, during Beloit I traveled quite a bit and I got to see the West Coast and one spring vacation we did a spring break of several friends of mine and we went to school, we did a car trip and we went to San Francisco all the way up Highway 1, you know, 101 and 1, up to Seattle and then back to Beloit and we had a chance to see the whole West Coast and this is like 1974. And I had a wonderful time and it really impressed me and I said I want to move there. And so I moved to the Bay Area in 75. Really, what part? Originally I was in San Francisco, I was in Noe Valley and Noe Valley back then was cool, it was really a nice, nice area. Was it bomb? It was wicked. Here we go again, again.

Speaker 2 11:17

Yeah, it was great. And from there I went to San Jose and then up to Oakland and then from Oakland in 1978, I met a girl as things happened and she wanted to go to Humboldt State and so she brought me up north and it was an eye opener.

Speaker 1 11:35

Is this the girl you're still with?

Speaker 2 11:37

No, no, not now.

Speaker 1 11:38

Happy 40th anniversary to you guys.

Speaker 2 11:40

Thank you. We just celebrated our 40th two weeks ago.

Speaker 1 11:42

What's her name? Kathleen Kathleen, I think I've met her. I think you have.

Speaker 2 11:46

Yeah, so she and I've been together 40 years now. Shout out to Kathleen putting up with you know she is a martyr.

Speaker 1 11:53

You and I have married up.

Speaker 2 11:54

Yeah, we married up. I tell you she must have done something terrible in her last life to deserve me. Don't say it, Come on.

Speaker 1 12:01

Yeah, I am her penance.

Speaker 2 12:05

Yeah, that's okay. Anyhow, the thing was this girl that I was with at the time. Her brothers were growers in Bryceland. They actually were marijuana growers back in the 70s.

Speaker 1 12:16

Marijuana in Humboldt. Marijuana in Humboldt County. Can you believe it? How could they do that in Humboldt County?

Speaker 2 12:21

I'll tell you what Back then it was outlawed. Oh, I think it was heroin.

Speaker 1 12:26

It was underground. Oh yeah, you didn't know anything.

Moving to Humboldt County

Speaker 2 12:29

You see that movie? Remember that movie Humboldt? There was a movie years ago about this kid that comes up from LA and he's just like taken aback. That was me, that was you, that was me. I came up here with my girlfriend. She brings me to her brother's farm and I'm seeing these plants that are 10 feet tall and 6 feet wide, loaded with buds. I have never seen pot like that before. But then they were getting $4,500, $5,000 a pound. People were making real money. They were making serious money.

Speaker 1 12:57

Well, scarcity, yeah, supply and demand. And look what happened today.

Speaker 2 13:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1 13:01

Boom and super bust, yeah, total bust. And somebody mentioned that our economy here at Humboldt's based on boom and bust. That's right, timber Right.

Speaker 2 13:10

F Fishing.

Speaker 1 13:10

The IT Fishing Mm-hmm Dot com, and now weed.

Speaker 2 13:15

We have the university, we have the bay Mm-hmm. I got involved when I first moved up here. I came up to do an MBA Mm-hmm. I did my MBA at Humboldt Mm-hmm, and while I was doing that I got involved in community development and one of the things we looked into is what can we do to break that cycle? You know, timber was not yet on the way out, but it was getting weak.

Speaker 1 13:39

Signs of death were Late 70s right.

Speaker 2 13:42

And I remember the plaza and I don't remember what year it was like 1980 or 81. It was a serious recession. There were a handful of stores boarded up on the Arcata Plaza.

Speaker 1 13:53

And half of them were bars. Yeah, back in the day At least.

Speaker 2 13:56

There used to be the co-op used to be located on the Arcata Plaza. That's right, and it moved, and this was after that, but there were all these boarded up storefronts.

Speaker 1 14:05

I mean it was terrible? Yeah, I remember I came up in 78. It was fun. I went in there to shoot some pool.

Speaker 2 14:11

It's all bikers, oh yeah, what the hell am I doing here? Yeah, you got to be careful what you say and do there. And the red pepper. Yeah, the red pepper, that was a great yeah. No, I'll give you one. My first job was at Fat Albert's. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 14:24

Down in Old Town.

Speaker 2 14:31

It's now the Sea Grill. It was a we call it a meat market. I mean it was just a big hookup place.

Speaker 1 14:36

Everybody would show up down there.

Speaker 2 14:37

Yeah, it was a big party place, but Merv George used to play on a regular basis Got it. Merv Yep, and it was, it was a scene.

Speaker 1 14:45

It was a scene Then Tommaso's was down there.

Speaker 2 14:47

Tommaso's was down there and the Palace it used to be, you know, Is that the Chrome building. Chrome building they were going. Do you remember Menorah Thai? Sure, you used to eat there. I did too, and you know what? All the bartenders from that area would meet there after work, and so we'd work until 2 am, 1 or 2. And they stayed open, and so we went over to Menorah Thai. We'd hang out at Menorah Thai.

Speaker 1 15:11

Who started that? Was it Steve Young or Youngbergs? I don't recall Somebody was a partner in that. I don't remember they had the delicious peanut sauce? Yeah, they did. I could just do shots of that Well back then it was totally exotic.

Speaker 2 15:23

I mean, you know, there weren't any, you had the low table. Yeah, you sat on the floor, right. I mean, it was really cool.

Speaker 1 15:35

It's far out. No, back in the day, back in the day. So you took me from back east to up the coast and so you came with your girlfriend. You studied, got an MBA, lived in Arcata, yeah.

Speaker 2 15:44

So we were living in Arcata to start with, and Bayside and around there, and then she decided to. We broke up and she joined the Peace Corps and she went to Ecuador and she went native. She actually married somebody from Ecuador and brought him back up here and then divorced him, and now she and her current man live just up the block from me, of course, in Trinidad. Poetry of life, small world, that's how— Small world.

Speaker 1 16:13

That's how things work.

Speaker 2 16:14

That is how things work. It's how things work.

Speaker 1 16:15

That is how things work. It's so funny, you know they're saying back then.

Speaker 2 16:18

I think it's still true when you go to a party, you see your past, present and future all at the same time.

Speaker 1 16:23

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. I ran into a guy on a pier in Oceanside that was the worked at Guest Hall. Oh no, kidding, it was just like rando at the same time at the beach Seeing the sunset. So you just never know. Wow, so you got your MBA at Humboldt.

Speaker 2 16:42

I got my MBA and you met your wife. Well, also what I got involved. I got involved with a new program at Humboldt. I started working. This is the late 70s, this is 78, 79, 80,. That period I took the first classes that Humboldt offered on alternative energy. Oh right, they started doing a renewable energy At the Buck House. Well before the Buck House. I helped build the Buck House and the Yurt behind it. All of that came later. I was there before that.

Speaker 1 17:15

So I was in cluster for two years.

Speaker 2 17:17

Okay.

Speaker 1 17:17

All right, so we took over the Buck. Well, we did all the alternative energy stuff.

Speaker 2 17:21

I was there to build it originally. How about?

Speaker 1 17:23

that.

Speaker 2 17:23

Yeah, I helped build it, but that I was taking the classes before the Buck House even existed Understood they had. I don't know if you knew Mike Menendez, Peter Lehman there were professors who were starting. I think it's one of the oldest renewable energy programs on the West Coast.

Speaker 1 17:41

And now it's all fixed up and really hardcore, right yeah?

Speaker 2 17:43

it's totally hardcore now but back then it was revolutionary and that was a minor. So I did my MBA in small business management and I did a minor in alternative energy Perfect. And one of the things I got interested in there was a grant at the time from the. I was working for a while at Redwood Community Action Agency down in Eureka and there was a grant that came available from the California Energy Commission for what was called a municipal solar utility program. Municipal solar utility program. The idea was they wanted to encourage solar and they created legislation that enabled people who leased solar hot water systems to get the same tax credits as people who bought them. And I got involved in the first solar utility in Northern California and we got six cities and the county to form a JPA and we got involved with solar leasing and I ran what was called a municipal solar utility and that was my master's thesis.

Speaker 2 18:40

How about that? And that's when I got started in solar. And it's the same time Norm Ehrlich got started at Six River Solar Right. He started his business 1979, 1980. Where you work now, right.

Speaker 2 18:51

Where I work now right and I've managed it for a while, and now I just work there as an independent consultant.

Speaker 1 18:56

Is he still the owner?

Speaker 2 18:57

He's a part owner. We brought in new blood and so he's a part owner. There are three owners and younger guys now and they're doing very well. I mean the company's changed a lot, but it's been around 40 years 45 years now.

Speaker 1 19:11

Solar's great. We have like 45 panels on our house. There you go In foggy McKinleyville Right and still love life.

Speaker 2 19:17

It works everywhere. Yeah, it's it's, it's.

Speaker 1 19:20

The tech is just great. It's the bomb. It is the bomb and it's happening. You might say it's, it's hot, it's hot I'm moving on from the descriptors, so tell me more about did you ever work at the yes House, or YES, I know about it, but I didn't work there Because that was community involvement, right On a different level.

Speaker 2 19:40

Yeah, you know what I worked on is I got involved with the Redwood Alliance. Okay and this is something a lot of people may not know Back in 1976, we had a nuclear power plant here. A lot of people don't remember that we had a nuclear power plant.

Speaker 1 19:55

South of town.

Speaker 2 19:56

And they discovered an earthquake fault going right under the plant. What a faux pas, man, total, total. But to their credit, they didn't have the geology, the tech, the tech that we had later, so it was a legit accident.

Speaker 1 20:11

It was an oversight, it was an oversight.

Speaker 2 20:13

It was an oversight, I mean, you know, it's one of those things where you know hindsight is 20-20. But in any case, some people got involved as interveners to shut down the plant at a group forum called the Redwood Alliance.

Speaker 1 20:25

And.

Speaker 2 20:25

I got involved in the early days of the Redwood Alliance and our first thing was protesting at Diablo Canyon and I was a protester down at Diablo and I went down in 1980, and I got arrested and we were fighting Diablo Canyon at the time but we were also fighting to get Humboldt Bay decommissioned and one of the things I'm proud to say it took 30 years but we fulfilled our mission. Very few groups that I know shut down because they fulfilled their complete mission. Our mission was to get Humboldt Bay down, decommissioned down to the ground, and we got it done. It took 30 years.

Speaker 1 21:01

And the rods and the waste are all gone, right.

Speaker 2 21:03

They're actually on site. They're in dry cask storage. That's called dry cask and they're buried in these containers.

Speaker 1 21:10

It would take a heck of a something to the trouble is there's nowhere to put cask and they're buried in these containers. We took a heck of a something.

Speaker 2 21:13

The trouble is there's nowhere to put the stuff.

Speaker 1 21:15

You can't shoot it in space.

Speaker 2 21:17

You can't do anything with it.

Speaker 1 21:18

I thought that was a good idea. In college I said can we shoot a missile? They go. What if the missile misfires, like many of them do?

Speaker 2 21:25

Yeah, well, you know what? There was an interesting idea that somebody had, although I'm not sure if it was feasible to take the waste and take it out to the deep ocean, where the continental plates are turning in back into the mantle, and if you drop it in this zone, it will eventually get sucked back into the earth.

Speaker 1 21:47

In 8 million years, it'll be safe.

Speaker 2 21:49

Exactly Right, but in the deep ocean it would be, you know, out of sight, out of mind, right, but you know we were protesting for that thing, that whole reason it's too dirty. Mission accomplished and we accomplished it. Is Diablo still running? Yes, well, that's a whole other story. It's running now, but it's soon to be shut down. Is that, edison? Pg&e? That is PG&E, that is PG&E.

Speaker 1 22:12

That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 22:18

And they planned to shut it down a couple of years ago and then they decided to keep it going. You know it's clean and it's producing and the legislature decided, the PUC decided to keep it going. So it's still going, but Humboldt Bay is gone and we got it completely torn down.

Speaker 1 22:34

Hey, if you're just joining us, it's my new best friend, Larry Goldberg, telling us about his life and how it interfaces with Humboldt, which is—we're just getting started, so stick around, so tell me more. You graduated Humboldt and then what I?

Speaker 2 22:47

graduated Humboldt in—that was in 83. And I got involved with solar. I was an anti-nuclear protester and I got arrested at Diablo and I fought Diablo. I mean, I fought Humboldt Bay. But I figured you can't be negative all the time, you need to be pro something.

Speaker 2 23:07

And if you're going to be pro, I'm going to be pro-solar. And I started the solar utility at that time. That was 79, 80. And we started leasing and we were leasing. We got investors together, we got the cities organized, we got a bunch of people interested in doing it. We managed to place 200 systems around Humboldt, which actually in a year or two is quite an achievement. This is 1979 we're talking about. But then Ronald Reagan got elected and when he did he killed the tax credits, similar to what we're going through now. He took the solar off the White House and essentially the program folded because all the incentives went away and without the incentives, you know, we just couldn't make the numbers work.

Speaker 1 23:54

And the tech wasn't there either.

Speaker 2 23:55

The tech was well, this was hot water. And solar hot water actually is very economical and very makes a lot of sense, but it's still expensive. It was $3,000, $4,000 for a system.

Speaker 1 24:06

But the panels were different.

Speaker 2 24:08

They were copper. You have copper panels inside a glass and you know they heated up and they did a good job. It's not like what we have today, which is solar electric. Solar electric is a whole different story, but back then it was a thing and it was doing great. But then all the incentives went away and we're going through that now and so we had to kind of retool and I got involved with Redwood Community Action on doing efficiency.

Building Internet Infrastructure in Humboldt

Speaker 2 24:34

It struck me that one of the keys in energy is efficiency. You want to do what are called megawatts, and megawatts is how do you save energy? And we managed to get some grants and some financing from the California Energy Commission, from Western Area Power Administration, from some other grants. I was a grant writer and we put together programs to work with specific target markets. So we did a program for motels, we did a program for tribes, we did a program for small retail stores and we would go in and we would audit these stores and figure out how to make them more efficient, and it was all about saving money and it was a very successful program. People love what we were doing and we spread out over. I had a contract for eight counties and I had an office in Redding. I had an office in Eureka. We were serving all the way down to Sacramento and from Santa Rosa North and we were talking to motels, hotels, tribes, local governments. We worked with lots of folks on helping make them more efficient and that was a big thing.

Speaker 1 25:42

You were also at the ground floor of Internet in Humboldt right. Well that's what came next. I remember that you were at the office down by the Tri-City.

Speaker 2 25:49

Yeah, as I like to say, al Gore and I started the internet.

Speaker 1 25:53

Yeah, good job. Yeah, you and Al have done great.

Speaker 2 25:56

Yeah, we worked together. Yeah, we're good buddies. Thank you. This is 94. I started first a bulletin board. One of the things about efficiency is we were talking how can we work more efficiently, and a big part of it was telecommunications. We need to talk to each other. We need to be able to work better.

Speaker 2 26:15

And it's not just, you know, meeting each other on the street. But how do we work? And we started a bulletin board and the bulletin board was internet email in 1993. And then, eventually, I developed the first internet company in 94, north Coast Internet.

Speaker 1 26:30

Remember that, yeah, yeah and that developed the first internet company in 94, North Coast Internet. Remember that, yeah, yeah, and that was the first of the kind here. Who were the guys in Arcata that had the? Was it Humboldt One?

Speaker 2 26:38

Yeah, but they came later. They were later than that. That was years later.

Speaker 1 26:41

That was when the internet was more developed.

Speaker 2 26:43

It was already taking off. It was starting to take off, but we were the first on board and we really expanded. The problem was my business model was to build it up and then sell it to PacBell. I expected that. Pacbell would roll up the internet companies the way they rolled up the Bell companies? They never did. You know what they told me? We'll build it ourselves. Do you know about PacBell internet? Anyone? Nobody, no, never happened AT&T has some broadband, but yeah.

Speaker 2 27:14

They completely blew it. They thought they could do it on their own and they didn't know what they were doing. They never did it, but we built the internet up and I eventually sold that company. I was able to sell that and what I got into which was interesting, actually, I sold it to a group that was bringing it to cable and it became Cox Cable and then Cox became Suddenlink and Suddenlink became Optimum, and so all of the work we did is now in another form. It's Optimum, you know.

Speaker 1 27:43

I worked for Cox and then Suddenlink for 10 years and you know yeah. No, they were the progressive system and we brought the internet to them.

Speaker 2 27:51

They're the ones who really developed it. But one of the things I learned in doing the internet was the business is not the connectivity, the business is the technical support. It's not enough to say I offer you a connection. You have to help people get on the internet. It's not like today where everything talks to everything. Back then, if you had a Dell computer and an off-brand modem and you know a PacBell phone line, who knows what could happen. It all had to talk to each other and nothing worked together.

Speaker 1 28:23

There's no protocols.

Speaker 2 28:24

Well, we developed the knowledge base for how to support those customers. As a result, I developed another business which was doing tech support, and the tech support business turned into a monster. I remember this that took off. What happened was after I sold the internet company, we began working with a company developing what are called knowledge bases. The idea was to integrate databases of know-how so that people can follow a script and fix a problem. So, in other words, if you have this computer with this modem and this problem, this is what you do to fix it, and a lot of it was very technical. You had to know certain switches to turn and how to set it up and blah, blah, blah. So we got involved doing the tech support and this company that we were working with had a major contract, and the contract was CompUSA.

Speaker 1 29:21

Remember them.

Speaker 2 29:22

CompUSA at the time was one of the largest retail.

Speaker 1 29:26

I mean not internet computer stores, Computer retailers yeah.

Speaker 2 29:29

They had 250 stores nationwide.

Speaker 2 29:31

They were huge. They were doing tech support for CompUSA and we were doing their internet component. So in other words, when somebody had a computer, if an internet problem happened, they'd give it to us. They handle all the rest. Well, the owner of that company we did that for about a year and we were doing very well I hired I must've had 50 people working for me at the time. I mean it really blew up. And then and this is nine, let me think this is 96, thereabouts 95, 96. And the owner of this other company that I was working for said Larry, I have good news and I have bad news. And I said, okay, tell me. He says well, the bad news is I can't handle this contract anymore. I just won the Toshiba laptop contract for USA. He had to do all the Toshiba support for all the Toshiba computers in America. He said I'll give you the CompUSA contract and all of a sudden we we got the whole contract. We're doing all CompUSA nationwide. We were 24-7, 365. And you know, I went from 30 to 75 employees. I mean it just exploded In Eureka.

Speaker 2 30:45

In Eureka by 2000,. I was doing $2.5 million a year. So you've done it all yeah well, I did a lot. I mean, I'm not going to— You've done it all. Yeah well, I did a lot. I mean I'm not going to You've done it all. I did a lot.

Speaker 2 30:53

But the bottom fell out in 2000. I started outsourcing tech support with all of these internet companies nationwide. I had companies from Hawaii to Alaska to New York who all wanted tech support and I was their outsourced tech support. Wow. So we did tech support and I was their outsourced tech support. So we did tech support for CompUSA, we did tech support for internet companies, independent internet companies and others, and we were booming. And then the internet bust happened in 2000. And it was over Pretty much. I mean it's like I was doing great but my customers were folding like crazy and they just disappeared. So I had to move on. So I managed to get out, but at one point the company was worth a couple million dollars. By the time I sold it I don't think we got more than half a million dollars for it.

Speaker 1 31:41

Better than a sharp stick. Yeah, I have a question for you. The $2 question, then, is what keeps you motivated to innovate and serve after all these years? Because you seem to be invigorated by Rotary. To innovate and serve after all these years? Because you seem to be invigorated by Rotary.

Speaker 2 31:53

We're going to talk about Rotary.

Speaker 1 31:54

International in a minute. Yep, yep. What do you think it is that keeps you doing, larry?

Speaker 2 31:59

I like a challenge, I like learning new things, I like people, I like working with people and I like tech. I'm kind of a techie and I, like you know, I'm really into AI. I really love the stuff that's happening. I wish I had it 20 years ago. Yeah, you know I could have used it then. I was a chat GPT's right here.

Speaker 2 32:18

Man, I got all the questions when we were doing our tech support. We were moving in that direction. I was moving to where a computer. We were trying to get a computer to answer basic questions first. So when you call in, you know how they put you on hold at the time. It was like a minute or two. In that minute we wanted to say did you try this, did you try that? And we were doing the first initial forms of AI, which is to say, what did you do to get where you are? And then by the time you were done with the easy questions, then our techs would take over. They said you did this, you did that. Okay, try this now, try that. And we were trying to get AI to do exactly that. But this is 1996.

Speaker 1 33:01

Yeah, I know. You know, and it just wasn't ready yet it wasn't ready and now it is. And I think my biggest irritation is I'm getting an AI response to a hotel reservation. I just want the live body, bro. Come on, man, I don't care where who I'm talking, I just want a person I hear you who can actually make a decision. Yeah, I had a subtle nuance. I wanted to cancel and do this thing, and it's like I couldn't put that on the schedule.

Speaker 2 33:24

Well, believe it or not, AI I hate to say it does it better than most people. I mean, the thing is you could train. I mean we have live agents, but people are expensive. I mean at the time this is 96 or 98. I was paying 10 bucks an hour for techs. That's big money, that was top dollar back then. You know that'd be equivalent of 25 bucks, 30 bucks an hour today. It's real money. It was real money and I'll tell you what 30 bucks an hour today.

Speaker 2 33:49

It's real money. It was real money and I'll tell you what. If you could get a computer to do it for next to nothing? You only reserve your talent for the hard questions. Yeah, that was the key is correct. Use your people for what they're good for. You don't want them to have to do the same stupid thing over and over.

Speaker 1 34:06

Let AI tell them the hours Exactly and the days open Right Exactly and the day is open.

Speaker 2 34:09

Right right, right. A couple of questions for you?

Philosophy of Resilience and Adaptation

Speaker 1 34:11

Yeah, and I'll let you just answer these in order, and this is almost my quiz part of the show, because I want to end in Rotary and I want to hear about your involvement, your passion.

Speaker 2 34:21

You bet.

Speaker 1 34:21

Because you seem to be a passionate president.

Speaker 2 34:22

I'm passionate about a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 34:24

A passion president. A passion president. Yeah, I kind boss man. Yeah, uh, that's aces. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna come up with some more before the show's over. So question, uh, if you were to a dynamite? Dynamite, they keep coming, nick, they're. It's okay, uh and groovy. So if you were to write a letter to the, your teenage self growing up in new york as an older gentleman with advanced maturity, what would you write to young larry In 30, 40 seconds?

Speaker 2 34:56

Follow your passion. Follow your passion. My dad was a CPA and he became a partner in what is now one of the largest accounting firms in America Ernst Young but he started in a very small accounting firm and they got acquired early on. This is back in the 80s and he taught me don't worry about the techniques. You can learn techniques. You want the passion.

Speaker 2 35:23

Go for what motivates you, and it's this idea that if you love your job, you're never going to work a day in your life Correct, or your education Exactly, you want to keep learning. One of the things that became really clear to me, and I could tell any young person today you're never done learning. You are going to keep learning. One of the things that became really clear to me, and I could tell any young person today you're never done learning. You are going to be learning your whole life and if your job doesn't change, things will change around you. You have to be prepared for change. Change is inevitable.

Speaker 2 35:53

Now I want to teach everybody out there a very important thing. I'm involved in climate change and issues like that, and one of the things that we talk about is evolution, and I want to tell this is something that I really try to hammer home. Charles Darwin never said the survival of the fittest, never said it, never used the term, never used the term. He said it's not the smartest that survive, it's not the strongest that survive, it's those best adaptable to change. Adaptation, it's adaptation, and the key is be adaptable. And the key, the term we use today, is resilience, resilience.

Speaker 1 36:33

I like it.

Speaker 2 36:34

Resilience is the ability to bend and to change and accept change. And the one thing I know from getting older we tend to fall back on the things we know.

Speaker 1 36:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2 36:46

Embrace change, because it's change is inevitable and through change we grow.

Speaker 1 36:53

Modern proverb blessed are the flexible, there you go, for they shall not be broken. There you go, and I like that.

Speaker 2 36:58

Hey next question.

Speaker 1 36:59

You bet, if there's one message you'd want every humble resident to hear today, what would that be?

Speaker 2 37:04

I'm going to teach you a motto of mine Go Do what you can with what you've got, where you are, in the time you have.

Speaker 1 37:13

Beautiful. Say it again.

Speaker 2 37:15

Do what you can with what you've got, where you are and the time you have. That's a good word. That's my motto. That's all you can do. That's all you can do. But the thing is, you know, I learned this in my MBA program. Actually, I had a really excellent finance professor. His name was Tim McCoy. He's passed away, but he really was a fabulous professor. We were doing case studies of businesses and the way the class ran he ran, it was a brilliant class. You'd get about a 50-page summary and this is a real company. I did you know Tabasco the Tabasco, yeah, from Louisiana, mcallen-y or whatever it is. That was one of my projects and they told you the whole history of the company, all about the company, how it was founded, the key officers it's on every shelf, everywhere still.

Speaker 2 38:03

Exactly. But there's a whole story behind that. I might get to that. But the thing, the point is you'd get this big study and then they'd say here's their problem, what is the next product they should develop? And you are the consultant and you need to come up with a report to give to the board of directors. And so you had two weeks to do this. And it was a small class, there was only, I think, 10 of us and we all had these assignments and one week it would be, you know, one person a week would give their report.

Speaker 2 38:34

And the trouble was you'd go to the library we didn't have internet back then We'd go to the library and you start reading all these publications and you'd read history and you go to Forbes magazine and you know you dig and dig and dig and you find out like what's the industry looking like and what's the economy, and you know you really can dig in. And the trouble is and I would, I would, you'd go crazy and you say, well, what's the right answer? And the professor said there is no right answer. You do what you think is best. You need to come up with your analysis. And guess what the analysis was for the McElhinney Company for Tabasco, chipotle, tabasco.

Speaker 1 39:14

They do have it.

Speaker 2 39:15

Well, that's a new thing.

Speaker 1 39:17

Green Tabasco. Do nothing different.

Speaker 2 39:17

Well, that's a new thing. Green Tabasco Do nothing different. Stay the course, stay the course.

Speaker 1 39:22

Good answer.

Speaker 2 39:23

Yeah, because it turns out what they have. No other product can call themselves Tabasco. No, they have a unique, it's a trademark. But not only that it's on an island, they have the pepper and no one else can grow that pepper. They have a monopoly.

Speaker 1 39:42

Here's a parallel company, sriracha Sauce that's new From City of Industry. Right, but that's new. That's newer, but it's-.

Speaker 2 39:48

We're talking about nine.

Speaker 1 39:49

This is back in this is 60, 80 years ago, yeah.

Speaker 2 39:53

I'm talking about. We were studying this back in 97, 98. There was nothing like that. There wasn't no hot sauce.

Speaker 1 40:00

There was nothing else but Sriracha's positioned itself as a product Sure.

Speaker 2 40:03

And the thing is, there's a million products now and now they have, you know, ghost pepper and all these crazy wicked things. Oh all of it, but the moral is you never have enough information. You need to make a decision.

Speaker 1 40:17

Ah, that's the point.

Speaker 2 40:18

That was the key you have to make a decision and the other thing that is part of my life. Several years ago, I developed a disease it's been probably developing for several years, but it only got diagnosed about four or five years ago where I'm losing muscle in my arms and legs and, as a result, I can't do a lot of things I used to do. I can't make a fist anymore, I'm losing strength. There's all these things that you can't do, and I developed and this has happened during COVID. It wasn't related, but it was during that time I started developing and I developed the attitude carpe diem.

Speaker 1 40:57

Carpe diem.

Music, Festival Life and Community

Speaker 2 40:58

And for those who don't know, let me explain something about carpe diem I had. My father-in-law was a plumber and he was retired and later in life he was in his I would say it's probably his early 70s. He developed bladder cancer and they had to remove his bladder and they had, I think, a kidney. I mean he was in bad way and he had to remove his bladder and they had, I think, a kidney. I mean he was in bad way and he had to do dialysis. Sure, and he was on dialysis for years. I'm talking about, you know, five, eight, maybe 10 years. It was horrible. Dialysis is a terrible thing but it keeps you alive.

Speaker 2 41:34

He decided finally that he just wanted to pull the plug, and the nice thing is, you don't have to blow your brains out. All you have to do is disconnect, just say I'm done, I'm not going to do it. So my wife's a nurse and she explained that once you pull the plug, you have about a week. That week he had was exceptional, really. He got to say goodbye to everybody, he got to talk to all of his family, all the people, and he did a remarkable thing that I'll never forget, and this is where I talk about Carpe Diem. He went out with my son and I. My son was young, he was probably eight, nine years old at the time. He took us to Pearson's and he said buy everything you need to plant a garden. I want to have some flowers, I want to have some flowers, I want to have some berries, I want to have some. You know all these things. And he had us plant a garden.

Speaker 2 42:27

And it was for his wife, marie, but that's what he wanted to leave behind. And the thing about carpe diem and a lot of people think it means just seize the day. It means more than that. It means plan for the future, knowing you may never be here to harvest the fruit of the tree you plant.

Speaker 1 42:46

Love it.

Speaker 2 42:47

So, carpe, diem Be here now, but think about tomorrow hey man. But you're not focused on tomorrow, you're focused on here and now.

Speaker 1 42:57

And maybe yes and both.

Speaker 2 42:59

Yes, and.

Speaker 1 42:59

So here's a question what Humboldt citizen has impacted you the most in your history here and you can name a couple if you want to who's made an impact on?

Speaker 2 43:09

you, he was an assemblyman, then he became state senator and he's worked in Sacramento and all that. But he's, you know, in my tradition we call him a minch. He's a minch.

Speaker 1 43:25

He's a minch.

Speaker 2 43:26

He's the kind of guy you want to say he'll be there. You know he's solid. I've been in Rotary for almost 30 years and I've met people in Rotary who I look like Some minches. Yeah, there's met people in Rotary who I look like Some menches. Yeah, there's menches in Rotary. There's a man named Hyder, regina Yep and Hyder. You know Hyder, I know Hyder.

Speaker 1 43:43

Shout out to.

Speaker 2 43:43

Hyder. Hyder's a mench, what a nice guy. Good guy, good guy. And there's a lot of people like that. There were professors I had, like this Tim McCoy. He's impression on me and he I'll never forget him and I appreciate all that he did. Betty Chin yeah, lovely what Betty's been doing. I mean she lives, she lives it.

Speaker 1 44:04

She says she sleeps four and five hours a night, maybe.

Speaker 2 44:07

Isn't that amazing?

Speaker 1 44:07

And she's out there taking care of people, man.

Speaker 2 44:09

I'll tell you and it's not easy work, it's hard work.

Speaker 1 44:12

What's the best day of your life, Larry? What do you remember as one of the best days? It's hard to say one.

Speaker 2 44:18

We adopted my son at birth and I was able to cut the cord and he slept in our arms in the hospital that night. I mean we knew the birth mother and we were with her in the last stages of her pregnancy and we were there at the birth. That was a wonderful night. I mean he was just. We just slept together that's pretty cool In one bed. We held him and that was a wonderful night. Beautiful, that was really good. How old is he now? 30. Just turned 30, june 6th.

Speaker 1 44:48

That's a nice. What was the worst day of your life, or one of them?

Speaker 2 44:54

You know, I don't think to. I had a really terrible disease a while back that really left me debilitated. I had Bell's palsy when I turned 50. Wow, and it was tied in with shingles. It was really like they're related and I was in such pain I had this. It was a nerve pain. Yeah, Nothing would touch it. My dad had shingles, had this.

Speaker 1 45:19

it was a nerve pain. Yeah, Nothing would touch it. My dad had shingles.

Speaker 2 45:21

Oh, it was so painful. I mean, at one point I just remember this I couldn't move my head a millimeter either way without like a shooting pain. I had to literally stay in one position and just sit there, you know, lay in bed, and I thought to myself and this was pretty horrible. If I have to live with this, I'm going to kill myself.

Speaker 1 45:42

Wow.

Speaker 2 45:43

And I believe in life. Yeah, but I'll tell you what that's crazy pain. If I had to live with that kind of pain, I wouldn't want to live. Yeah, that was pretty bad.

Speaker 1 45:51

Awesome, awesome pain, yeah, sorry yeah no, and nothing touches it.

Speaker 2 45:57

That's the thing it's like. You know, they gave me this cocktail and I mean it was intense stuff. It didn't touch it, didn't even phase it. It's nerve pain and nerve pain is not affected the same way as other pain, so another question what do you find fulfilling? I love working with people. I love doing, I like collaborative projects. I see that.

Speaker 2 46:19

You know when I work with somebody, you know what do you think, what do you think and we kind of work synergy. I find when I'm working with other people we create synergy. I do solar design now. I design and I install and I sell and I finance solar and I work with my finance people. I work with a customer, I work with my finance people, I work with a customer, I work with my contractor and we do a collaborative. It's synergy yeah. It's synergy and I enjoy that. Call out Six Rivers. Six.

Speaker 1 46:49

Rivers Solar. Do a shout out here, Ladies and gentlemen Larry Goldberg with Six Rivers Solar on Broadway in Eureka.

Speaker 2 46:56

I worked there. I started in 2017 as a general manager On Broadway in Eureka two and I've been an independent consultant with them ever since and I do mostly off-grid. I do a lot of. I work with folks up in the hills. I work with a lot of the growers, but also people who just want to live out in the country. I also work with on-grid. I do both. I'm starting to do larger projects now. Talking commercial things like that, I believe in solar. I mean. I really I mean, for one thing, it's not hard to sell. When you look at PG&E rates, what they are today.

Speaker 2 47:39

Oh my gosh. I mean I just tell people you like your utility bill. If you like it, I got nothing to say. But if you don't, let's talk. Yeah, you know, easy sell, easy sell, easy sell, easy sell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, coming up with ideas, and you know I like challenges. You know it's nice to say well, we can't do it this way, let's try it this way, out of the box thinking.

Speaker 1 48:00

I enjoy that. I like it. I like the collaborative idea. Yeah, yeah, you're all that. So what's soul crushing for you? What just would zap your spirit?

Speaker 2 48:10

The politics of today are really debilitating. I mean, for one thing, I like finding middle ground. You know I can work with anyone and I've worked with—okay, I'm in Rotary, Been at Rotary 29 years. There's every kind politics there and we all get along, we all get along, we get along great. I mean, if you meet people once a week for lunch, you can't help but figure out a way to get along.

Speaker 1 48:41

Break bread and hang out.

Speaker 2 48:42

You break bread and hang out Common cause.

Speaker 2 48:45

Well, our motto, which is really a great motto, is service above self. Yeah, and it's about providing service. If you are down in your life, help someone else, and when you help others, you help yourself, and that's the thing we all believe in. And whether you're a right-wing Republican, a left-wing, you know, liberal, we all have certain things in common. We all, you know, we're Americans. We want to try to get along. It's this I don't know what you call it this crisis we have today. Divisiveness. It's divisiveness that I just hate. It's r I don't know what you call it, this crisis we have today. Divisiveness. It's divisiveness that I just hate. It's rancor, it's rancor.

Speaker 1 49:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2 49:24

And it's like you can't talk. You know, it's like I'm used to talking through things, oh boy.

Speaker 1 49:29

And we fire each other before we could talk. Exactly, yeah, it's a thread in the show here. It's a thread in the show here. It's frustrating. Come up a lot, larry, exactly.

Speaker 2 49:37

It's crazy, but I'll tell you what I find relief. I love music. I go to a lot of music performances. Tell us about those, okay. So my hobby is recording video recording musical performances, and I've been doing it for almost 15 years now.

Speaker 1 49:54

We've seen you recording at different shows.

Speaker 2 49:56

I have hours and hours and hours. I'm trying to build a website of all these local performances. If you remember the Kate Wolfe festivals I have worked at Kate Wolfe for 20 years.

Speaker 1 50:07

That's down in Laytonville, Black Oak.

Speaker 2 50:08

Black Oak Ranch. I've been going there for 25 years.

Speaker 1 50:11

There's amazing shows right over the years.

Speaker 2 50:13

I mean, I've seen everybody Taj Mahal and you know, I mean just, you know, los Lobos, just tons of great music. I love music. Music is what inspires me and what gets me going, but more than that, it's the community, it's the tribe. The tribe gets together at these events. I've been working at festivals for over 20 years. I work security and I help out.

Speaker 1 50:38

You know the festival and the festival is different from a show, because you're just going to go up to the day You're there for four or five days. Yeah yeah, you're going to hang out and live.

Speaker 2 50:47

And it's a hundred degrees and you're hanging out at night and you're getting loaded together and you know all of it, all of it, and I call it the gathering of the tribe. You know it's a tribal thing and we all get together and that's my people. It's primitive, but cool.

Speaker 2 51:00

It's primitive, it's really cool, and I've been doing that for 25 years now and I videotape a lot of the shows, and so, for me, sharing videos and sharing music revives me, and so I go to local shows, I go to Humbrews, I go to the Redwood Jazz Festival, I go to all these local festivals.

Speaker 2 51:22

I go to all these shows, I try to record as many as I can and I post what I can, but eventually I'm trying to build an archive and I'm going to have an archive of all these shows and I mean I got stuff going back to 2005.

Speaker 1 51:36

You and I are archivists Totally Kind of a little different. Did you go to Folk Life Festival out in Blue Lake with Patrick I?

Speaker 2 51:41

have four years of that recorded. Beautiful, hey, pat, I recorded all of the Joni Mitchell tributes. There's been a Joni Mitchell tribute for years. I have four years of that. They've been doing Bob Dylan tributes. I've been doing that. The birthday party, the birthday party, oh man, I've been recording that for three years. I have years of this stuff. I'm going to at the end of the summer and this goes out to anyone in Humboldt, if you can reach me at the end of September I do a video festival at my house. Wow, we do a party. It's called the Best of the Fests and what it is. Four festivals in four hours, wow. And I do uh ten mile creek, which is taken over from kate wolf. I do uh humble folk life, uh, festival, buddy brown blues, great and dead on the creek. Four hours of those shows, so an hour of each show.

Speaker 1 52:36

oh, that's great. So buddy brown is still out at Blue Lake, yeah, and where's Dead on the Creek?

Speaker 2 52:41

Dead on the Creek is at Black Oak Ranch.

Speaker 1 52:43

Okay, they've been going there for a couple of years now, and the other one that took over Kate Wolfe, is that this coming weekend, I think, my son's-.

Speaker 2 52:47

No, the one that took over Kate Wolfe happened like two, three weeks ago. That's already happened called 10 Mile Creek. 10 Mile Creek Revival Festival.

Speaker 1 52:58

Jody and I just saw the California Honey Drops up at the Brit Festival in Jacksonville.

Speaker 2 53:01

Oh, that must have been nice. They're great. Yeah, he's a great guy.

Speaker 1 53:04

They were Oakland subway buskers.

Speaker 2 53:06

Oh, I like it I like it.

Speaker 1 53:08

They don't have a set list, uh-huh, they just go on and they have fun. I love it. Oh, they're coming in November at Arcata Theater Lounge.

Speaker 2 53:14

I'll be there.

Speaker 1 53:15

All right, I'll be there. Maybe, if I play my cards right, larry will invite me to his house because I want to go to that thing in September. And Larry, it turns out, is a winner of the Tanzania 65% Dark Dick Taylor Chocolate Bar. Larry, on behalf of A Grateful Universe.

Speaker 2 53:33

Thank you and my wife thanks you. Oh, you guys are going to love it.

Speaker 1 53:36

Remember just a little piece at a time, because that's all you need. Yeah, this is jet fuel, this is jet. You know what really makes the jet fuel fly. What's that? A little bit of red wine with it, just a pairing.

Speaker 2 53:48

I was going to say a little bit of rum, Rum could work, Rum works. Yeah, I'm a rummy. When I started sailing I got into rum. Rum is amazing. Yeah, a little shot of rum and chocolate a nice combination.

Rotary Leadership and Service Above Self

Speaker 1 54:00

So there's this tiki bar in Alameda called the Forbidden Island. Oh I like it, one of the original four or five in the Bay Area. Uh-huh, my son was part of the rum club so you could have a checklist. Nice, come in and just experiment. Yeah, chocolate, rum, vanilla rum, pineapple rum.

Speaker 2 54:17

I'm always experimenting, I love experimenting.

Speaker 1 54:19

That's great. Rum's a whole thing. It's like whiskey or wine or even beer folks.

Speaker 2 54:24

Well, I've become a pretty good cook. Oh really, you don't say Well, let me tell you a little story. This is how Kathleen and I met my best friend. And I met her at the same time and this was in 1984. But he started dating her and I was already dating another gal.

Speaker 2 54:46

So we went to a party together that winter and she's kind of shy, she's kind of introverted, not into a big crowd. So she was in the living room kind of sitting around and I happened to just, you know, I didn't bring my girlfriend to the party, I was just there and we sat down together. We're just talking, and the talk kind of moved around to food, and you know. And she said you know, I cook Spanish, italian food. I said, well, I make a pretty good chicken soup. I make chicken soup, I mean Jewish chicken soup is like the best. My chicken soup, I make chicken soup, I mean Jewish chicken soup is like the best.

Speaker 2 55:21

My chicken soup can cure a cold, nice. And she said well, you haven't tasted my chicken soup. My chicken soup can cure a flu, cancer. My chicken soup can cure a broken leg. And it all escalates. There's only one way to find out we're going to have a chicken soup cook-off Nice. A couple months later we're doing our different things. A couple months later, a party came up and she said, okay, you want to do the cook-off? I said, yeah, you're on.

Speaker 2 55:47

I made some really killer Jewish chicken soup with chicken and vegetables, big old matzo balls. I mean it was delicious, but she cheated.

Speaker 1 55:59

What'd she do?

Speaker 2 56:00

She used two heads of garlic. Aha, I'm not talking about little pieces of garlic. I'm talking about two heads of garlic.

Speaker 1 56:07

And it just tasted like.

Speaker 2 56:09

When you make two heads of garlic and she used two chickens and all those vegetables kicked my ass, killed it, killed it. Nice, but that's not chicken soup anymore, that's garlic soup. That's garlic soup, it becomes garlic soup. But the deal was the winner. The loser had to take the winner out for ice cream.

Speaker 1 56:27

Oh, that's fair.

Speaker 2 56:28

And I took her out and she had just broken up with my friend. I had broken up a little while ago with my girlfriend and we started dating, and that was 40 years ago. That's Kathleen. That's Kathleen hey.

Speaker 1 56:38

Kathleen shout out Good story. I love that. She's taught me how to cook. She's your cook, I got it and she's a good cook. So shout out for Rotary real quick, and then I'm going to shout out and sign off. But I want to thank you and high five across the table. All right, quick hour, dude. This is fun, that's super fun, man. Thank you for sharing. Sure, so you're president of Rotary Southwest Rotary.

Speaker 2 56:59

I became president of Southwest last Friday Give me Rotary in two minutes. Rotary in two minutes is is it fair? Is it, does it, does it build friendship? Does it help the community? Is it beneficial to everybody?

Speaker 1 57:12

Yes.

Speaker 2 57:13

We live by a principle of moral and professional quality and we work for our community, and the motto is service above self.

Speaker 1 57:25

And there's seven or eight clubs Garberville, fortuna, herndale.

Speaker 2 57:28

There's actually, I think, 10 clubs.

Speaker 1 57:29

There's four or five here. There's Arcata McKinley. There's four clubs, Two in Arcata.

Speaker 2 57:33

There's four clubs in Eureka, there's two in Arcata. We just formed a satellite club. Oh, is that right? So now we have an evening club, is that right? Yeah, so it's on Thursdays, two Thursdays a month, at 5.30.

Speaker 1 57:44

Is it a Zoom or is it?

Speaker 2 57:45

No, it's at Old Growth Cellars. Very cool, and we'll be promoting that.

Speaker 1 57:49

That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 57:50

My club meets at noon on Fridays at the Elks. Anyone is welcome to join us. We're going to have a lot of interesting programs coming up, beautiful.

Speaker 1 57:58

May you have a great presidency. Thank you, yep. Hey, appreciate you being here. You bet, and I'm going to sign off with a thank you, hey. Scott Hammond voted almost best podcast of the North Coast Journal made the top three. Should have asked for your vote way earlier.

Speaker 1 58:15

You know better for next time. Miles Cochran, you're amazing. Mm-hmm, you know better for next time, miles Cochran, you're amazing. So Miles got it again. He's an amazing cool guy. He had him on the show, uh-huh. And so if you know us, like us, subscribe to us, make some nice comments. We'd love that. Larry Goldberg, thank you for your time.

Speaker 2 58:28

You're welcome, Scott. It's a pleasure being here. Appreciate you being here, brother you bet.