The Santa Cruz City Council voted to allow a large apartment building on the Peace United Church land on the upper West Side, near the UCSC campus, denying an appeal to shut it down. The 40-unit apartment building has nine affordable units and two co-living units. The vote was 6-0 with council member Scott Newsome recusing himself because he owns property nearby.
The housing complex built on a slope below UCSC was appealed after approval by the Planning Commission. The appellant Norman Tardiff of the Springtree HOA and Westlake Neighbors Association was satisfied by conditions added to the approval of the project, according to Senior Planner Brittany Whitehill.
These conditions are arborist inspections of heritage trees on the property, doubling the number of mitigation trees planted if more heritage trees are removed, and a geo-technical engineer to sign-off on the building permits.
The project has been a longtime coming for the parish of Peace United Church. Planning on the housing started 10 years ago by members of the parish who view it as essential to continuing the church’s mission.
“It’s most exciting as a vision of our future, a place to live, and learn and play, with the church at the heart of it all,” said Pastor David Pattee.
The building is built into a slope so while it has six levels it is only four stories, according to Workbench founder Sibley Simon. All of the units will have views according to Simon.
Both the Food Bin and the Peace United Church projects are examples of transit oriented development that Workbench wants to build, according to Simon. Only twenty spaces in the Peace United Church parking lot will be reserved for residents of the complex, which will be charged for. There will also be “one or more shared vehicles” at the property.
The housing complex will be co-owned by the Peace United Church and Workbench under a new 501(c)(3). While it is a church affiliated project, “it is not restricted to anyone associated with the Peace United Church,” said Diana Alfaro of Workbench.
A memorial service for Rowland “Reb” Rebele (1930-2023) will be held this Saturday (Feb 17th) at Cabrillo College, beginning at 1 p.m.
We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them.
— T.S. Eliot
Late autumn—when the light changes and the frigidity of northern winds sweep down along the coast — is a time of darkness and death, and so it was for Rowland “Reb” Rebele, the beloved philanthropist and, truly, a community saint who passed away at the age of 93 on November 25 of last year.
It was a sudden and unexpected departure.
It certainly came as a shock to me. I had just spent several afternoons with him in recent months, interviewing him at Pacific Coast Manor in Capitola for a lengthy profile for Good Times.
My family and I were preparing to leave for Cuba, and I went to visit him one last time before our departure. He had been at the rehabilitation facility recovering from a back injury (aggravated by osteoporosis), and he assured me that he would soon return to his home at Dominican Oaks, where he would reunite with his beloved wife of nearly 70 years, Pat, whom he had described to me in our conversations as “the love of my life” and “my everything.”
When I learned upon my arrival that he was no longer a patient there, I assumed he had recovered to the point where he had made his way home. Reb was nothing if not a salesman, a man whose will was forceful and indomitable, and I had every reason to believe that his recovery had been accomplished and that he was back with Pat. I was so convinced that he must be better and on his feet that I smiled at his guts and invincible fortitude. Any alternate explanation never even occurred to me.
A few hours later, as I was packing my bags to leave, I learned that he had died.
I was heartbroken and a bit numb. I fell into a dark, contemplative mood.
Here is a secret about writing that Reb (an avid writer himself) would want me to share: Whenever you read a longer profile of someone, the person who has written it literally has lived inside their subject for a considerable amount of time. I had spent weeks researching his life in the back pages of newspapers and magazines, dating all the way back to the 1940s, had listened to interviews, and spoken to many of his friends and colleagues.
It was largely a joyful process because everyone who I spoke with about Reb truly loved him (and Pat) and admired his work in the community — his tireless advocacy for those experiencing homelessness; his generous commitment to the arts, education, journalism and newspaper publishing; his relentless protection of First Amendment rights; his delight in political campaigns (win or lose); ad infinitum. Reb was seemingly everywhere at all times. Just tracking down the major threads of his life here (he moved to Santa Cruz County in 1980) was a remarkable journey. His passions were broad and his energies both enthusiastic and unyielding.
As I gazed out over the waters of the Florida Straights revising the profile, I thought of Reb and our nearly 40 years of friendship (he was a strong supporter of the old Santa Cruz Sun, for which I wrote in the 1980s) and how much I admired him throughout the years, even when we disagreed about local or national politics. He was a happy warrior; he delighted in the jousting. And he was always gracious afterwards, in both victory and defeat.
I chuckled when I thought about his colorful language — he was a retired Navy man– and “bullshit” was a particular term he liked to invoke as a noun and transitive verb.
When I returned to Santa Cruz, I learned that a miracle had happened, that the story had indeed been received by my editor, and though I hadn’t seen the story, virtually everyone I encountered wanted to talk to me about Reb’s life. I mean dozens and dozens of people brought him up. Everywhere. It was an absolutely inspiring community conversation. From all walks. Slowly, my darkness over his death lifted and his inimitable spirit came back to life.
I also received a perceptive email about Reb from Second District Supervisor Zach Friend. “I always [found] our conversations enlightening and always guided toward how a need can be solved by partnership,” Friend wrote me. “Whether it was helping build skate parks for local youth or ensuring that the least fortunate are elevated in local government, Reb always quietly and effectively finds a way to make our community better for future generations.”
It was a perfect summation. Past and present tense alike.
A memorial service will be held for Rowland K. “Reb” Rebele this Saturday (Feb. 17), at 1 p.m., at Cabrillo College’s Crocker Theater, 6500 Lower Perimeter Road, Aptos. Seating begins at 12:30.
Rowland is survived by his wife Pat, their three children, Marianne, Andy and Chris, his daughter-in-law Jeanne, and five grandchildren: Lily, Jessica, Chantou, Pidor and Elodie.
Donations may be made in Rebele’s honor to Housing Matters; Cabrillo College Journalism Department; or the Santa Cruz Symphony.
Santa Cruz filmmaker Dan Partland, an Emmy-Award winner and unflinching voice of sanity in insane times, still remembers what book he was reading over the December 2020 holiday break: Katherine Stewart’s The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.
And he still remembers how much the book, recommended to him by his friend actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner, was freaking him out. Partland (director) and Reiner (producer) were considering doing a film on the subject, and Partland remembers prepping for a pitch meeting sometime later in the week starting Jan. 6, 2020. Watching the attempted insurrection in Washington DC that day, Partland was even more freaked out.
“I had this experience of watching the insurrection in real time, having just done a deep dive of research into the state of this movement,” he says. “And I think had I not been so sensitized to the content, I would not have seen the myriad signs and symbols, all of the evidence that January 6th was at its core, a Christian nationalist uprising. And it was stunning to me because I was watching television news coverage on multiple channels, and no one was speaking about it. It was there plain as day for anybody to see. Anybody who was at all steeped in the political movement that is Christian nationalism would’ve seen.”
Given the very real possibility that either a Donald Trump victory–or a Trump defeat–in the upcoming November presidential election could unleash his private army of religious-extremist followers to further violence and anti-democratic agitation, Partland’s powerful new film God & Country: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, could hardly be more timely. It opens Thursday at Santa Cruz Cinema with a Q & A discussion with Dan Partland moderated by former Good Times staffer Wallace Baine, at 7 pm.
From the time President Trump had tweeted in late 2020, about the upcoming January 6 fracas, “will be wild,” gears were turning, a network of self-described evangelical Christians was mobilizing to the cause of supporting a man many claimed to believe was a Messiah.
“People didn’t just show up at the Capitol that day,” Partland says. “There had been weeks-long campaigns in churches and in church groups, and email lists driving the faithful to the capitol for Jericho marches on January 5th, and with the plan to stay over for the big demonstration on January 6th.”
The Christian nationalist flavor of the January 6 attempt at overturning democracy was unmistakable, and yet powerful people in a position to bring the point home to the general public colluded in keeping it quiet.
Consider that the January 6 Committee investigating what happened never even mentioned the name “Virginia Thomas” in its voluminous report, even though, as the Washington Post reported, “Buried in the explosive news that Virginia Thomas aggressively advocated for Donald Trump’s coup attempt is a choice revelation: The spouse of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas texted with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about Jesus Christ’s otherworldly role in delivering the election to Trump. Meadows texted to Ginni Thomas that the ‘King of Kings’ would ultimately ‘triumph’ in the quest to overturn the election, which Meadows characterized as ‘a fight of good versus evil.’ Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, replied: ‘Thank you!! Needed that!’”
Partland recalls his shock at seeing a video the January 6 committee put together to provide an overview of what happened that day. “I was very familiar with the footage for January 6th by this point,” he says. “And I watched their reel, and there are no Christian images, no references, no bible verses, no ‘Jesus Saves’ signs, no images of Jesus, no images of Mary, no crosses. Completely all of the Christian imagery was omitted in their reel. … There was so much of it there, you would have to very carefully cut around it. And that told me that the January 6th committee was fully aware that this was a Christian nationalist uprising and they wanted to be very careful that they didn’t want to pick that fight.”
Partland’s wish isn’t that people see his film and come away thinking just like he does–he wants people of all viewpoints, and religious faiths, to come take a look, and soak up the viewpoints of those included in the film, including many people of faith.
“It isn’t really important what I think,” he says. “We have the very best voices from a wide spectrum of vantage points. We have a lot of prominent Christians. And that’s really important because this idea that Christian nationalism is a threat to democracy, that’s why I started on the film. But what I learned along the way is some of the people who are most concerned about this are American Christians because they see it as a real threat to the church. And I think that’s not surprising because at this point, this particular politically-charged American right-wing religiosity is becoming the dominant expression of Christianity in America. And it is so far field of what centuries of Christian teaching has said that Christianity is really about.”
Partland’s film is far from the only important contribution on this difficult but pressing subject, but it remains notable that a local filmmaker has checked in with a high-profile documentary that Hollywood Reporter hailed as a major event, quoting angry-Cajun political pundit (and one time Bill Clinton strategist) James Carville: “This is a bigger threat than al-Qaeda to this country. Let me tell you something, they got the Speaker of the House, they got probably at least two Supreme Court justices, maybe more. Don’t kid yourself … this is a fundamental threat to the United States.”
Partland, whose other work includes #Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump, released in 2020, tries hard in discussing the content of his new film to steer away from undue alarmism. His tone is measured, calm and thoughtful, even when he spells out the deeper threat: “There is an overwhelming opinion among a lot of American Christians that the United States itself has a kind of messianic role in human history,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “That God has chosen the United States to play a certain role that only the United States can play in human history, where it is central to God’s plan to spread Christianity around the globe,” he continues. “If you believe this and you feel like democracy is getting in the way of achieving God’s plan, then you can convince yourself that democracy is what has to go.”
Let that sink in.
“That’s the central scary idea to it,” Partland says. “We are at a point where this idea of the role of the United States in human history as ordained by God is so central that a lot of American Christians really feel–have convinced themselves–that it is their duty as Christians to undermine democracy where they have not been successful in persuading their fellow citizens about the way forward. So they’re going to force it, either by democratic means or if necessary by undemocratic means. And at this particular point in time, they have decided that violence is an acceptable option.”
Sarina Simon, Nina’s mother, is sitting in the treatment center, receiving a chemotherapy infusion for her Stage 4 lung cancer. She has an inspiration and calls her daughter. “Nina, I figured out a great way to kill this guy, a poisonous frog in Elkhorn Slough.”
Sarina’s voice stops and Nina hears commotion.
“Mom? Are you still there?”
“Still here honey. The nurses got a little concerned by what I was saying.”
If you’re planning to read the New York Times bestseller, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, the murder weapon is not a poison frog. Nina says, “There probably aren’t poison frogs in Elkhorn Slough, but that’s the great thing about writing a novel, you create the world you want.”
In 2020, Nina Simon, former director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History and founder of a global non-profit, stopped working to care for her mother after the cancer diagnosis. Nina’s self-described “type-A personality” had to shift from her juggernaut non-profit career to sleeping in the same bed with her mother, trying to get her to drink a milkshake. They both loved murder mysteries, Sarina had started Nina out on Nancy Drew Mystery Stories in junior-high school. They started re-reading their favorite murder mysteries together to make their lives about more than arguments over protein shakes.
Nina wrote her first draft lying in bed beside her mom and says her mother reviewed every page. The bonding experience would have been enough, but then Nina decided she wanted the book published. It rocketed to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List, became the Reese Witherspoon Book of the Month and is read around the world, translated into Spanish, German, Hebrew, Polish and Japanese. It was recently named Best Mystery of 2023 by the California Independent Booksellers Association.
The Two Arc Tale
Mother-Daughter Murder Night tells the tale of Lana Rubicon, a Los Angeles real-estate mogul who discovers she has cancer and must move to Elkhorn Slough to live with her daughter Beth and 15-year-old granddaughter Jack. Jack discovers the body of a dead man in the slough. When she is accused of the murder, her force-of-nature grandmother, cancer treatments and all, goes on the hunt for the real killer.
Nina says her book is “two stories smushed together.” It is both a murder mystery and a book about the relationships between three women. The heart of the novel is founded in mother-daughter-granddaughter-hood, porous connections for the author’s dive into generational bonding. It’s the heart of the story and we get from the outset that this tale of three generations searching for each other comes from the author’s heart.
Nina gives Lana and Beth plenty of chasm to fill; in the beginning, after the powerful Lana falls and can’t get up, she decides against calling her nurse-daughter Beth, and before dialing 911, she calls her secretary to reschedule a meeting.
The battle between Beth and her mother engulfs all three women. The 15-year-old Jack strains towards her freedom and on a day when her mother’s “familiar warmth of concern felt too hot, too smothering, Jack knew what she had to do.”
Beth muses to Jack about her grandmother, “She uses people, you know, your Prima. When I was little, she would pinch me so I would cry, and we could skip the line at the airport. Everyone is just an employee to her, in service to her goals.”
Jack knows what freedom smells like, saltwater spray and motor oil. As she rides her bike, she dreams of having a boat that she will sail away on.
“It would be magic. Freedom! Her sweatshirt billowed in the wind, and she allowed herself to imagine for a moment that the fabric was a sail.”
NOT SISTERS Her mom Serina Simon has recovered and Nina Simon is a best-selling author.
The murder mystery takes place at the Elkhorn Slough. Photo: Bill Skinner
Nina’s Audience
Nina Simon, wearing jeans and a black tee shirt, voice slightly hoarse and looking every bit like she had spent the weekend in the sun playing volleyball, looks over the Santa Cruz High School library filled with her adoring, female fans.
“Like I told my mom, ‘I want to write a story where women are all the good guys and men are all the bad guys and dead people.’”
The all-ages crowd of women erupts into cheers.
I asked the event’s producer, librarian/English-teacher Veronica Zaleha, “Why do you like Mother-Daughter Murder Night?”
“I like this book because it’s got three strong female characters. I really identified with them because at each stage of life they have their own flaws and foibles, you could see their vulnerabilities in the way they interact with one another. It’s a fun, who-dunnit mystery read, but it also deals with land-use issues and… well, with feminism.”
“What feminist issues?”
“The grandmother, Lana, felt she needed to direct her daughter Beth to use her womanly wiles to get information. When Lana heard Jack quote, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick,’ Lana pointed out to her granddaughter that no one gives women a big stick.”
“So, what’s the answer?”
Veronica laughs and throws her head back, “Be loud!” She looks down at her copy of the novel, “These three women, since I finished reading the book, I’ve missed them.”
In the Santa Cruz High School library, Nina starts with why she wrote the book.
“I never expected to write this novel. In high school I cared about playing water polo and math and science, because that is the only way I could become an engineer for NASA. And after I got my degree, I did get that dream job at NASA. Six months into my job, I hated it. On the weekends I was cleaning exhibits at a museum and making masks for three-year-olds, and I loved it. So, I made the phone call that no Jewish mother from LA wants to hear, ‘Yes mom, I’m going to quit my engineering job and make puppet masks for 3-year-olds.’
I worked in museums for a long time designing exhibits, first in Washington, D.C. and then I moved here to Santa Cruz in 2007, and a few years later, took over running the MAH. I started writing about how we can make museums more interactive, more relevant. I wrote two non-fiction books about museums and cultural classes, self-published.
I decided to leave the MAH a year after Abbott Square opened, to start a global nonprofit to work with organizations around the world, museums, libraries, parks, theaters, that wanted to embrace the community we had created at the MAH. At 39 years old I found what I wanted to do, and it was this non-profit activist work. And then, two years later, in the fall of 2020, I got a phone call that changed everything.”
The call no Jewish daughter wants to hear.
A neurologist told Nina, “Your mother has a brain tumor, and she needs someone to help her. She has lung cancer, and tumors throughout her body.”
Nina says, “This was the fall of 2020. It was the first time in my life that I felt like it was not my choice what I was going to do next in my life, and instead of me driving the future I wanted, I was pulled to leave the thing I thought I wanted to build. I moved in with my mom in Los Angeles, and every day I was afraid my mom was going to die. Every day, my mom and I fought about whether she would eat. All we could talk about was, ‘could she drink more of the milkshake and what time do we have to go to the doctor?’ We were lucky to be together, but we were not doing great. We needed something else to talk about.”
HAPPY ENDING Nina and Sarina Simon celebrate good health and good fortune. Photo: Bill Skinner
Making mom the hero
“We needed a project. My mom and I have always loved murder mysteries. When she got sick, I thought, ‘OK, let’s reread those old books.’ And then one day I turned to her and said, ‘What if I tried writing a murder mystery? What if I made the hero, the lead detective, someone like you?’ And that’s where Mother-Daughter Murder Night was born. All I was thinking was how could I write a scene that would make my mom smile.”
Nina says that her mom is always afraid that people are going to think that she’s a bitch because of how Lana is. “No, no, no. Lana is the super-hero version. While my mom was stuck in bed, Lana was leaping out of bed. While my mom was getting pushed around by the doctors, Lana was pushing the doctors around. I was writing this character as a fantasy of what I wanted to happen. I wanted my mom to be well, I wanted us to be together.”
“Why a murder mystery?”
“I felt I knew murder mysteries, I knew the structural elements, there has got to be a dead body in the first 50 pages, and you gotta resolve it at the end, and then you can figure it out in between. My mom introduced me to the Elkhorn Slough. She came up to visit one time and went for a hike there. I went down there, during the pandemic and got into paddleboarding in Elkhorn Slough. I needed ways to get out in nature. It was natural and industrial; the conflict was great for a murder.”
“When did it become a commercial project?”
“The whole first draft I wrote in six months, sitting by my mom. Writing it for her. Writing it for us. It would have been enough for this to be an intimate project for just her and I. It took us away from the stress and fear. I loved the writing and after the first draft, I said, ‘I’m going to commit to trying to get this published.’ I went to all my favorite books to try to figure it out. I had wonderful friends read it and tell me what worked and what didn’t. Cleaned it up as good as I could. And then I knew I had to get an agent.”
The literary agent pitch
Nina says, “The way you get an agent is to write a 300-word email describing your book. You say, this is like X meets Y. In my case it was the Gilmore Girls meets Only Murders in The Building. I submitted the manuscript to 40 agents. I think about 12 of them made me offers of representation, and I went with Stefanie Lieberman. She said, ‘I love this book, but we need to make it better so we can sell it.’ She put me through three more edits, and eight months later said, ‘It’s done. Now, you need to forget about the book and start writing another one.’”
Publishing houses divided
“I was getting on a plane to go to the woods with my husband when Stefanie called and said publishers want to buy the book. They all wanted to buy it, but they all had a different vision for it. ‘Love the mystery, I feel mixed about the family part. Let’s cut down on the family part to speed it up.’
The next publisher I would talk to would say, ‘Love the family. Not so crazy about the mystery, let’s backseat the mystery and let’s really make this a family drama.’
We went with Liz Stein who said, ‘I have a vision that we can do both, the family side and the mystery side.’ We locked in July. The publisher had to test market the book, send it out to the Reese Witherspoons of the world. I just waited. They needed to get a buzz around the book. Will Good Morning America want it? Will the Book of the Month Club want it? For the first few months of that, no. No, no, pass, pass, pass. We started thinking, ‘Maybe this will be a quiet book. Maybe they paid too much for it. Maybe we’ll be lucky to sell ten thousand copies and then we’ll be done.’
Two months before the book was to come out, I got a call from my editor. I was nervous that they were going to pull the book, that they decided I’m a fraud, that this is no good. My editor said, ‘I just got the call that this has been chosen for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club’s Book of the Month for September.’ Then I knew the book was going to be big.”
PADDLE ON From museum director to author, Nina Simon
has reached astonishing success. Photo: Carson Nicodemus
Advice to young writers
“You have to find a question that fires you up. The core arc around my story’s family side is the question, ‘When do you need other people? And when do you do things for yourself?’ The second thing is you have to find a scaffold that you can work with. I chose murder mysteries because I like them, but also, because the outline is laid out for you; dead body in the beginning, solve it in the end.”
“What makes this book so commercially interesting?”
“I got lucky. There is this current micro trend around warm hearted and humorous mysteries. Books were coming out that hit this very unusual, sweet spot that is in this crossover between warmth and coziness and humor and murder. Mother-Daughter Murder Night came at the right time when publishers were looking for more books like that. I think if it was 10 years ago, when everything was about Gone Girl and unreliable narrator twisty thrillers, I do not think a sweet, comforting murder mystery like this would have gotten the same kind of interest that it gets now.”
“How does all this make you feel?”
“The predominant feeling I experienced in the first few weeks after launch was not delight. It was overwhelming. But I feel lucky that it happened, a total gift. This whole story came out of the terror and crisis of my mom getting sick. My mom’s doing terrific now, and so I feel like we have had a dream path with this book. It started out as a nightmare; I’m so, so grateful about it.”
Next
In the final moments of the Q & A at the Santa Cruz High School library, woman after woman would tell Nina how close they felt to the three protagonists and expressed wistful longings for a sequel. But Nina said she is tussling with a new question for her next book.
“Now I’m working on a book about the question of ‘Can you have extraordinary impact in a field of science and be a mom? Or to be a clinical, career person, do you need to strip everything else out of your life?’ These questions are very potent for me, on a scary, deeper level, that fire me up. So, I know I’m not going to get tired of these questions. A new novel is a three-year process, I need to follow my passionate, personal question.”
Nina Simon will be giving a free talk at the Belmont Branch of the San Mateo County Public Library on Sunday, February 25th at 2 pm. Details at ninaksimon.com.
I’m working on more discipline in my life—to sleep and wake up and study at certain hours. I make a schedule on Google Calendar, and so far I think it’s going pretty good.
Evie Coulson, 18, UCSC Earth Science Student
My plans are to get into classes and survive as a freshman—it’s kind of a work in progress. Just to pass classes is the goal. It’s been good though!
Ben Coulson, 16, Student
I planned to play sports at my school, and I got onto our badminton team. It’s fun and it’s pretty competitive, that’s why I like it.
Jia Hiremath, 18, UCSC Computer Science Student
My plans involve getting good grades in my first year at UCSC, and planning future classes to get me a job in my field of computers. I’m happy I’m in all of the classes I wanted now.
Stuart Coulson, 60, Adjunct Professorof Design for Extreme Affordability
My teaching subject is very dynamic, so I make some lesson changes every year. Also planning to getting back to a normal routine, not having to adjust for covid—and it’s kinda working.
Mel Coulson, 45, volunteer-mom
I deliberately did not make any resolutions this year, because you never keep them. I planned to come to Family Day at UCSC, and that was very good, I really enjoyed it.
One of the better-known wineries in California is J. Lohr. It makes a plethora of different varieties in all price ranges – and you absolutely can’t go wrong with their 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon. Priced at $17 and available in many local markets and liquor stores, you will uncork a wealth of flavors such as black currant and cherry, and an olfactory overload of aromas including vanilla and spice. Dense and soft, this Cabernet “is an excellent companion to grilled beef, lasagna, or dark chocolate.”
Beni Velázquez is the new chef at Sanderlings Restaurant at Seascape Beach Resort in Aptos. At a special dinner I attended at the resort, paired with J. Lohr wines, each course was exceptional. Velázquez attended the Culinary Institute of America and has turned out delightful cuisine in many well-known restaurants since then.
Caroline’s Thrift Shop in Aptos has a sole aim, to raise money for children’s charities. Christy Licker, its owner, named the store after her daughter who died at the age of 16. This beautiful, well-run thrift store raises money by selling all manner of goods, furniture and clothing – donated by locals. More than $500,000 was given to various charities at a recent event held on the UCSC campus. Beneficiaries included Jacob’s Heart,Hospice of Santa Cruz County, the Siena House and theTeen Kitchen Project. This special occasion was catered by Feel Good Foods – with cuisine beautifully presented, utterly delicious, and most definitely a cut above the usual fare. I congratulate Amy Padilla and Heidi Schlecht, owners of Feel Good Foods organic seasonal catering, on their outstanding presentation and impressive food. Caroline’s Nonprofit Thrift Shop, 8047 Soquel Drive, Aptos, 831-662-0327.
Millions and millions have seen the viral clip, but before now no one has heard the deeper story behind it.
The clip reveals a Honolulu coffee shop busker singing the Matisyahu anthem “One Day” when a tall silver-haired stranger in board shorts, a flannel, sandals and a backward hat inches into the frame to harmonize on a few buoyant refrains.
“And our children will play!” the tall man booms between sips of coffee.
After the song closes, the stranger (Matthew Paul Miller, aka Matisyahu) asks the performer (Clint Alama) if he knows who wrote it.
“Matis,” Alama says.
Matisyahu points to himself.
“Nahhh,” the busker scoffs.
When Matisyahu assures Alama it’s him, the recognition sends Alama’s eyebrows high, they clasp hands, and the younger artist concedes, “You look a little different!,” a nod to the reggae headliner’s previous Orthodox Jewish braids and long beard.
“Yeah, man, I shaved,” comes the reply.
What was happening on his interior during that exchange?
“It was a very spiritual thing for me,” Matisyahu says, “because it was a very rough day.”
He describes the preamble to the duet as “one of the worst shows I’ve ever had,” citing sound problems and an audience unenthused by his improvisational phase, then a promoter setting him up with a gorgeous woman who later revealed she was a sex worker planning intercourse and drug use, which he declined.
“Sitting alone in my room after that show was a hard moment, then it was followed with this really cool moment in time,” he says. “It was like, ‘Do the right thing and God will reward you.’”
As Matisyahu approaches two decades in his alt-reggae craft, he says he “feels more alive than ever right now.”
Part of that vivacity is having the chance to tour with his son.
“It’s fun watching him explore his stage presence,” he says. “Helping mentor him is cool.”
Part of that is renewing a connection to his hits.
“For a long time, I just didn’t like ‘One Day’ or ‘King without a Crown,’ songs I once loved and made because no one was making them,” he says. “I had a problem being fake on stage—I’m not good at that—and fans tell me, ‘Whatever space you’re in, it’s real. We like that journey with you’—so I was uncomfortable, rushing through them, changing the feel, and people didn’t like it.
“So I asked myself, ‘What is it that people love about these songs?’ and I listened to them again, paid attention to the little things, remembered singing [songs like] ‘One Day’ for the first time…and I fell back in love.”
And part of that is widening the uplift and lyricism that are Matisyahu hallmarks with fresh bangers like Hold the Fire’s debut single, “Fireproof.”
“It’s a vision, a spiritual concept: There are a lot of flames, how do you move through them?” he says. “How do you keep your ideas intact without being consumed?”
The deep—even defiant—Jewish identity that has long defined him, whether or not he rocks the yarmulke any more, has been catalyzed by the Israeli-Gaza conflict, which gives his catalog and new EP added import.
“The Jewish people have been slaughtered and murdered for thousands of years…[and] the world has a problem with us fighting back,” he says. “The world is OK with Jews being funny or the lawyer or the doctor, but when things get really crazy, they want to see us hiding in the closet rather than fighting back.”
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In some ways, he admits, the war has brought him from a more serene place to new territory that simultaneously feels familiar.
“I started off with a punk rock attitude—that the world is shallow and full of shit, and I’m going to get into my culture and my people and the history of Torah. As I grew up and became more a part of the world, Jewishness was less important, [my music] became less of a fight, I had less angst, and I focused less on my Jewishness and more on being a human being, being a father, and themes like joy, loss, pain, addiction.”
“Not that I am not thinking about those other things, but when I step out on stage every night it’s at the forefront of my mind. Now, with this [war], I’m back to the original Matisyahu, times 10.”
I am a low income person who is receiving free internet access from this program. Internet access is ESSENTIAL for my job so if the program is not given renewed funding, I may not be employed.
Orly, commented on the Good Times web page
Sober Center Badly Needed
Santa Cruz county has a serious problem with inebriation and addiction. We need this new sobering center. We need to realize that people with these issues are NOT evil because of their condition, but are seriously ill. they need the opportunity to redirect their lives from addiction and find a new path for life that is not substance based.
As a counselor for LGBTQ seniors in Watsonville, pro bono, and with an MA in counseling from SJSU (1989), i will reiterate: alcohol and narcotics are NOT your friend, they never were, and never will be. If you have difficulty staying sober, get to the Janus sobering facility as soon as possible. Life is too important to spend it in a state of inability to remember what you did yesterday.
Steve Trujillo, commented on the Good Times web page
Affordable Housing Needed
We NEED more affordable housing. The city needs to crack down on Air bnbs like Palm Springs did. Even the “Affordable” units are still too expensive for the average person in santa cruz. I’m slowly being choked out of my current apartment since the landlord wants to be at “market value”. We need rent control. We need to house the homeless. A landlord supplies housing like a scalper supplies tickets to a show.
Nolan, commented on the Good Times website
Vision for the Future
Where is the vision of what Santa Cruz should be and look like for the future? I read about all the issues involved but no overall vision. This is the essential element which provides the foundation for all future building.
Santa Cruz can easily be turned into just another asphalt jungle without vision that considers its historic past, and geographic placement within the central valley.
Do you want it to look like Orange County and remove all the magic it has spun over the years? I think not! Yes, we need affordable housing but not slums of the future. Read the history of both public housing and affordable high rise developments throughout the country. You need to be creative and think outside the box. That is the essential element missing. That is what has always given Santa Cruz its magical edge.
Elisa Trujillo, commented on the Good Times website
Every time I perch at Abbott Square downtown, I silently thank Nina Simon for being so instrumental in creating something this town sorely lacked: a central gathering point, a place to share culture, drink coffee or something harder, a hang for people of all ages.
Every great town has one, but Santa Cruz didn’t.
I attended several meetings she chaired asking for local stakeholders to share what they would want to see in the space outside the Museum of Art and History. She used a formula of having people write suggestions down and posting them on the walls to narrow down the choices.
To see the vision come true years later has been one of this city’s greatest accomplishments. When visitors come, I usually take them first to Abbott Square, especially if there’s music playing or events around it, like the lights festivals that turn us into a sort of Burning Man refuge.
Santa Cruz has never been known for moving quickly on much, but Abbott Square and the Warriors arena were important exceptions. They popped up and changed the town for the better (while losing the Nickelodeon theaters was a move to the worse).
There’s music, comedy, art, food, drink and conversation in one perfect patch outside what Simon helped turn into an exciting community museum. They should have named something for her. Maybe they will.
But after that stunning achievement, her second act is almost as big. She’s written a best-selling novel inspired by her mother’s hospitalization for cancer. She wrote much of it lying in bed with her mother, helping her recover. This is the kind of stuff they make movies about, almost too good to be true.
Richard Stockton’s cover story shows how the book came to be and gives Nina’s background story. It’s a must-read.
Other important articles in this issue include Geoffrey Dunn’s tribute to Rowland Rebele, who will be honored Saturday at 1pm on the Cabrillo College campus. HIs loss is staggering to so many people in this county. There’s also a story by Steve Kettman about a local director who has teamed up with Rob Reiner for an important movie about the takeover of the Christian Right.
Much of the country will be talking about this one and we are proud to have a local tie.
Thanks for reading.
Brad Kava | Editor
Photo Contest
TERRAPIN STATION Golden tortuga swims in the sky near Black’s Beach. Photo: Ali Eppy
Good Idea
New Leaf Community Markets will now accept Electronic Benefits Transfer Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (EBT SNAP) for same-day delivery and pickup via
Instacart.
With this program, EBT SNAP participants will be able to use their benefits to access local and organic produce and groceries online for delivery or pickup from five locations throughout Santa Cruz County and Half Moon Bay.
Good Work
There will be 150 new electric bike docking stations in Live Oak, Twin Lakes, Pleasure Point and Capitola. Each docking station has between 4-6 bike parking spaces for a new fleet of 75 bikes, according to the County Department of Community Development & Infrastructure.
Capitola’s 20 bikes will be added in March, while the others open in February.
BCycle, launched last June, is designed to provide accessible, convenient, and sustainable transportation.
The system has more than 400 electric-assist bikes, found at 86 stations.
Quote of the week
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” —William Shakespeare
Known for their authentically Mexican made-from-scratch baked goods and tamales, El Rosal Bakery on East Cliff Drive has been a local’s go-to market for over 20 years. Cashier Lisa González started there 10 years ago after being raised in Michoacan, Mexico, where she was a cook. She says the talented and hard-working bakers start at 3am every day, making everything fresh.
Tamales are available in five varieties: chicken with green or red salsa, pork with red salsa, jalapeño and cheese, and sweet corn. Baked goods include conchas, a sweet and fluffy bread topped with sweet masa in myriad colors, and the pansino, a firmer bread decorated in pink sweet masa and sugar. They also offer traditional cakes like the niño envuelto and tres leches, as well as classic flan and sweet empanadas.
Hours are 7am-8pm every day (Sunday close at 7pm).
How do you compare living and working in Mexico and Santa Cruz?
LISA GONZÁLEZ: Working here, the owners, my coworkers and I all work well together and are nice to each other. It’s almost like working with your neighbors, and that’s the same here and in Mexico. The difference is that I used to live in a big city in Mexico and there was a lot of noise and traffic, and my commute to work was difficult. But here, it’s more slow-paced and a little easier, and I’m able to live really close to where I work. It’s been a pleasure working here for so long, and I feel very welcome.
Let’s talk tamales?
LG: The recipe for our masa is the owner’s mother’s recipe and it’s been in the family for many generations. The salsa recipe is hers too, and we make it fresh every day. The red salsa is made from guajillo chili pods and is mild and a little bit smoky. The green salsa is made from tomatillos, jalapeños and a couple other secret ingredients, and is spicy. The chicken is shredded and the pork is pulled, and both are very good. And our sweet corn tamales are made with fresh young corn and are a very traditional Southern Mexican dish.
Sarina Simon, Nina’s mother, is sitting in the treatment center, receiving a chemotherapy infusion for her Stage 4 lung cancer. She has an inspiration and calls her daughter. “Nina, I figured out a great way to kill this guy, a poisonous frog in Elkhorn Slough.”
Sarina’s voice stops and Nina hears commotion.
“Mom? Are you still there?”
“Still here honey. The nurses...
How are your plans for 2024 going so far?
I’m working on more discipline in my life—to sleep and wake up and study at certain hours. I make a schedule on Google Calendar, and so far I think it’s going pretty good.
My plans are to get into classes and survive as a freshman—it’s kind of a work in progress. Just...
