How creative grassroots efforts may keep local state parks open

“How do you close a forest?”

A man in his mid-twenties, dressed in baggy jeans and sneakers, asks his friend this question as they pass a group of climbing students on a trail in Castle Rock State Park. The park—preserved since 1968—is slated for closure July 1, along with 69 others statewide.

What happens now that the maker of methyl iodide has removed its product from markets in California and the United States?

ArystaLifeScience Inc.’s confirmation on March 20 that it had suspended the sale of the fumigant methyl iodide in the United States due to lack of  “economic viability” represents a victory for the health and safety of the public, workers, and the environment. Scientists, environmental and worker advocates, elected officials, agriculturists, and members of the public at large successfully placed pressure on Arysta to remove methyl iodide from the marketplace. In the end, only six California growers applied methyl iodide in the state.   

Films This Week
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Gripping new doc ‘Bully’ exposes schoolyard epidemic

For many people, middle/junior and high school are ordeals to be slogged through on the way to one’s “real” life. Yet, there’s never any shortage of chirpy idiots around trying to convince us that these are “the best years of your lives.” Tell it to Alex, Ja’Meya, Kelby, and Tyler, the real-life teen heroes and heroines struggling (or failing) to survive their school years in Lee Hirsch’s gripping documentary, Bully. If, like me, you’d rather not spend another nanosecond inside of a school, even virtually, Bully will be a kind of endurance test—which is why it limns the endurance test of middle/high school with such effective and sobering clarity.

Fishtank Ensemble turns the gypsy music stereotype on its head

When you hear sultry vocalist Ursula Knudson wail on “Woman in Sin,” it’s hard not to imagine a mythic Gypsy woman covered in jewels and scarves, and surrounded by accordion players.  

Though historically tainted with negative connotations, “Gypsy” is the popular term that refers to the Roma people. Their deep ethnic history is a 1500-year story of multiple movements between diverse regions and cultural acclimation and preservation, which has fueled the mystique and stereotype of the free-spirited Gypsy.

Though Ryan and Kaylee Williams have each been playing music since they were children, they are only now preparing to release their first batch of tunes recorded together. The brother-sister, indie-folk duo call themselves The Native Sibling—an appropriate moniker considering the two were born and raised in Aptos. "Growing up in Santa Cruz had a big influence on our music," Ryan says. "But it's one of those things that you don't really realize until you leave." Currently, the two live outside of this seaside town—Ryan in Venice Beach and Kaylee in Davis, where she is attending college. Santa Cruz is still home, although figuring out exactly what "home" means—in a deeper sense—has been tricky for the pair over the past few years.

Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs earns street cred with edgy and experimental pop

Though 33-year-old Merrill Garbus is the master of mimicking sounds, has the ability to sing in all sorts of pitches—first apparent in tUnE-yArDs’ 2009 debut, BiRd-BrAiNs—and is frequently decked out in eye-catching face paint, that’s about as far as her relation to birds goes.

“I like imitating things with my voice,” says Garbus. “There is something pleasurable about that—this idea that I’m not stuck with having to be any one voice, but that I can be free to explore that voice.” Though born and raised in Connecticut, the singer/songwriter is now thoroughly thriving in Oakland, Calif., a city which, along with the rest of the Bay Area, Garbus finds both fashionable and liberating.