A nice girl in Blocksburg

Through the glory that is Facebook, I found out yesterday that my friend, Kristin Windbigler, is, among other wondrous and creative things, a filmmaker. Kristin is a Humboldt County girl who, like me, went off to other places as soon as she could, but was eventually lured back home by a force that can only be understood by those who've experienced it. She made this fantastic short film about returning to Blocksburg (that's a tiny little town southeast of Bridgeville, which is another tiny little town southeast of Fortuna) and its notorious reputation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.



Kristin also maintains a website about Blocksburg and helped to write a book about growing up there called Children From Our One-Room Schools.

Her films have been featured at the Western Folklife Center. You can also see more of them on her blog. I highly recommend Story Machines, which is a fascinating tale of her grandfather who was a logger and owned a machine called a Phonacord that created records, and how he used it to record her family's history. The film features old footage from Washington State and Mount Shasta, as well as from Humboldt County.