Santa Cruz humorist Sven Davis is driving our clown car this morning, the other clowns being Laurence Bedford, Sleepy John Sandidge and me. We stop at the entrance kiosk to the world-famous Henry Cowell Old Redwood Grove Park in Felton and observe their sign: “Entrance fee $10, small bills please.”
The park attendant smiles brightly, but Sven looks crestfallen and his head sinks: “I’m so sorry. We don’t have the small bills, we only have the regular sized ones.” The attendant’s eyes move to her left and dart up and down like a malfunctioning robot unable to scan something that computes. Sven hands her a ten-dollar bill and we drive into the parking lot. We meet up with more of our hiking buddies, the legal power couple Tamara and Ben Rice, and Katherine Beiers, former three-term mayor of Santa Cruz.
About 150 feet from the parking lot we saunter into the 0.8-mile loop of the Redwood Grove of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, home of the old-growth “virgin” Coast Redwood trees that extend into the 1,400- to 1,800-year-old-range. They can live more than 2,000 years. The walking trail passes within a few feet of some of the tallest trees in the world. The largest tree in the grove has a diameter of more than 17 feet and a height of 280 feet. They pull more carbon out of the air than any other tree species.
It is noon Wednesday and families, school groups and couples walking hand in hand pad slowly through the loop. I can imagine on weekends it would be crowded with the free, guided walks led by docents.
There is a nature center with stuffed local animals like a coyote and a mountain lion, and native plants. The center tells us about our coast redwoods: native with growth and longevity enhanced by proximity to the ocean and its fog, with a free-flowing, year-round stream to replenish these giants. Even the thick bark, 6 to 12 inches, is laden with tannin and offers protection from damage by wildfires and insects. It is the tannic acid that creates the red color.
We learn the trees were born before 1066, when the Battle of Hastings began all the Norman hijinks in England. My last name is Stockton, an old English name derived from “severed tree-trunk.” My hiking companions are pillars of the community. I am a stump.
Former Santa Cruz Mayor Katherine Beiers, 92 years young. Coast redwood, 1,800 years old. Photo by Richard Stockton
The Unbelievable Lightness of Being Katherine Beiers
One of our community pillars is Katherine Beiers, and there is no other way to state her age than to say she is 92 years young. This woman’s physical feats are astonishing.
As we walk, Katherine tells me about walking the 500-mile Camino de Santiago in 2017. It starts in France, goes up the Pyrenees mountains and then across the north of Spain to Santiago de Compostela.
“Compostela” means field of stars, based on the stars of the Milky Way, and has been followed by pilgrims for a millennium to reach St. James’ tomb. The Camino de Santiago hike follows the pilgrim’s path, the hikers walking between six and 20 miles a day, staying in hostels at night.
Katherine says, “We walked almost all the way, but one day it rained hard for four hours and we went into a bar and after an extended drinking session we called a cab to finish the last 5 miles. I make friends on these Camino de Santiago hikes [she’s done it twice] that I get together with to this day. Two of them are coming from New York to visit me in Santa Cruz this weekend.”
She tells of one man who was walking the Camino de Santiago to kick his alcohol addiction. He had been struggling with his AA 12-step program. I like it: If the 12 steps are too hard, take 1,000,000 steps. Katherine says that he would not drink on the trail, but he would eat bags of candy—big bags every day—to satisfy his sugar craving.
Katherine says for the entire 500 miles she would meet new people on the hike who would always say, “Oh, you are the 84-year-old.” The next year, at 85, she ran the 26.2-mile Boston Marathon.
The Boston Globe ran a photo of her running through Newton, wearing a garbage bag to shed the pouring rain. The Globe reported, “Despite the near-freezing temps, heavy rain, and furious winds, Katherine Beiers crossed the finish line in seven hours, 50 minutes. Beiers ran her first marathon in 1984 in Napa, California, and has run the Boston 14 times.”
In her age category, Beiers has come in first every time. To prepare for it, she ran 45 miles per week around Santa Cruz. She ran the Boston Marathon with her son, who told CBS News that she always enjoys a postrace beer. Katherine says, “A beer is my recovery drink.”
More About the Redwoods
The loop can be completed in under an hour, and on summer weekends there are free docent-led walks. According to the park’s website, standout redwoods include one with albino growth lignotubers and the John C. Fremont tree (a tree hollowed out by fire that was once used as a resort honeymoon room).
Next to the entrance kiosk, all three known types of redwood trees—the coast redwood, the giant sequoia and the dawn redwood (the latter two are not native to our area)—are planted together, providing an opportunity to compare and contrast the members of the family.
Different habitats at the park include riparian, sandhill community, mixed evergreen and redwood forests.
How to get there: Redwood Grove Loop Trail is just south of Felton. Access begins off the Meadow Trail. The trailhead is located in the day use parking lot near the nature center.
Walk up to a total stranger on the street and ask them any question on a topic that sparks your curiosity. What would it be?
Would you do it? Could you do it?
That was the assignment I was offered in June of 2023 when I was the lucky journalist who visited the office of Brad Kava, the new editor of Good Times. One of Brad’s first decisions was to bring back Question of the Week, a popular feature that had not been seen in years, and I wisely (and impulsively) accepted his offer to make it my responsibility.
It was a daunting assignment for this fledgling journalist, asking random people on the street for their answers to questions that I happened to think might be fun or important to ponder for five minutes out of the day.
I almost gave up on day one. A few polite rejections and a case of cold feet were enough to awaken my long-dormant social anxiety. I said, “I don’t think I can do this.” But Brad wouldn’t let me back out, not without turning in my interviews at least once.
I have been grateful for that push ever since, for 58 consecutive weeks of Street Talk and meeting the most kind, thoughtful, surprising, and articulate people on the streets of Santa Cruz County.
I’ve made real friends and formed lasting memories—learned a lot, laughed a lot, and more than once cried. I’ve vicariously enjoyed the delight of visitors discovering Santa Cruz for the first time, heard stories of Santa Cruz past, and learned of the hardships of our street people.
I discovered that far from being the all-white enclave some may perceive Santa Cruz to be, our community is very much ethnically diverse—a beautiful reality that I strive to display with the neighbors who appear in Street Talk.
I shivered to hear stories of UFOs and the supernatural.
Lindsy Valdez recounted a bonfire gathering visited by an eerie hovering light, and Kamran Aghevli, 11, believed aliens are “thinking of a chance to strike soon, waiting for when we’re vulnerable.”
I laughed as Phillipe Cartin recalled Bruce Almighty, his favorite Jim Carrey movie.
Lindsy Valdez
Kamran Aghevli
Phillipe Cartin
I was amazed to learn that Leila Hakimi finds her inner peace in wrestling, as does Van Swanson in sword fighting.
Leila Hakimi
Van Swanson
I loved hearing Watsonvillers’ deep affection for their City Plaza, their pride in their many festivals and their connection to history and heritage.
I learned that composer Bela Bartok owned a curved piano, that we once had a downtown music venue called Palookaville, and that a woman, Bertha Benz, drove the first long-distance test of an automobile.
We weighed in on the Otter 841 Affair, on COVID, and we rethought the slogan “Keep Santa Cruz Weird.”
And our Street Talkers were prescient when they agreed across all demographics that Joe Biden had become too old to be President.
Thanks to all for the time to talk, and your time to read. Street Talk returns in its usual format next week.
Do you have a favorite question or answer from the past year of Street Talk?
Do you have a suggestion for a question in the year ahead?
Post to the Good Times Facebook page, or email us at le*****@*******es.sc.
Since long before states started legalizing weed about a dozen years ago, the default assumption has been that cannabis use among young people, specifically teenagers, would surely increase.
This came mostly from two cohorts: prohibitionists who tend to look under rocks to find reasons why weed is bad, and the much larger group of people who came to that conclusion via “common sense.”
If something is legal, the thinking goes, it’s more readily available, so of course more people are going to use it, including those for whom it remains illegal. In this case, teenagers. But as is always the case when “common sense” is invoked, a deeper look is warranted.
Last week, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration issued a report that teen cannabis use actually declined slightly between 2022 and 2023. Over the past decade, meanwhile, reported use among people aged 12 to 17 has plunged 18% (the measure was of people who had ever tried cannabis). The rates of people in that age group reporting use of cannabis in the past month and past year have also fallen over the past 10 years.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the rate of cannabis use among all adults has fallen over the past couple of years, though it remains somewhat higher than it had been before legalization started sweeping through the states.
The takeaway: the legal status of weed might have an effect on whether some people will decide to use it, but it seems to have little aggregate effect on usage rates in either direction.
And pot being legal might actually make teens less prone to use it. One hypothesis for this is that some teenagers use weed, in part, as an act of rebellion, and the fact that it’s legal for their gym teachers to use might make it seem less rebellious to them, or even straight-up uncool.
About a quarter of all Americans say they have used “illicit” substances, including cannabis (which is still illegal federally and in several states) cocaine, heroin, meth and others.
That figure hasn’t changed over the past two years, and cannabis is by far the most popular of those substances. Just under 9% of respondents said they used an illicit substance other than cannabis in the preceding year, according to the survey.
The longer-term data was collected in the ongoing National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Officials note that the survey’s methodology has changed. That yields better data, they say, but it also makes longer-term comparisons somewhat less reliable.
Meanwhile, there have been some studies indicating that pot use in legal states has risen slightly among teens and other cohorts, along with others that more-or-less comport with the SAMHSA study. But all of them indicate that, contrary to so many predictions, there has been no substantial increase in cannabis use among young people resulting from legalization.
The SAMHSA findings show that the “sensational claims” that legalization has encouraged more young people to use cannabis “are simply not backed by reliable data,” said Paul Amerntano, deputy director of NORML, the nation’s leading advocate for reforming pot laws.
The relatively few remaining prohibitionists seem befuddled as to how to spin this data. “These drugs aren’t safe and they aren’t medicine,” said Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, as quoted on the website Marijuana Moment. “This latest round of data should make it even more apparent that marijuana doesn’t meet the criteria to be rescheduled by the federal government.”
Of course, the latest round of data shows precisely the opposite.
Marijuana Moment also checked out SAM’s social media thread about the study where the increasingly flailing prohibitionist group said nothing about falling cannabis use among young people, and instead focused on the fact that more people of all ages use pot than was the case decades ago (which, duh).
It also warned, irrelevantly, about “new products engineered for addiction [that] have built an industry that will likely soon overtake Big Tobacco as America’s vice of choice.”
Independent station KPCR-LP, known as Pirate Cat Radio, is back in Santa Cruz for the first time in more than a year, when the station moved to Los Gatos. Pirate Cat recently added KMRT-LP 101.9 FM to its list of frequencies, allowing Santa Cruz listeners to once again tune into everything Pirate Cat has to offer.
KPCR-LP is licensed by the Central Coast Media Education Foundation, whose mission is to provide educational resources for journalism and media creation. Pirate Cat follows the foundation’s mission by building community through sharing the knowledge possessed by artists with local audiences.
“What Pirate Cat radio with KPCR is doing is bringing a very specific format of alternative subgenres mixed in liberal arts radio, radio with interviews of makers and creators, and hosts who are those makers and creators,” says Daniel Roberts, founder of Pirate Cat Radio.
“We are not just being like Fresh Air, giving an interview with somebody doing something,” Roberts explains. He provides artists with radio programs “so they can share their wealth of information, not just a one-off, but every week at the same time. Plus, we get to bring some cool and different sounds that you really wouldn’t get anywhere else.”
One of the community services Pirate Cat Radio provides is giving artists a resource to talk to hosts who have found success in a specific genre or scene and gain information on how to move forward and grow as artists. Roberts feels that the information provided in radio shows is essential to not only artists but can be applied to our day-to-day lives.
“One of my personal music heroes—Mike Park, who is the singer of Skankin’ Pickle, founder of Asian Man Records—just launched his radio show on the station last week on Wednesdays from 8 to 10. One of the pieces of information he gave a band last week was, ‘Do not ever play in the bar. Create a scene of your own.’”
Creating a scene of their own is exactly what Roberts and Pirate Cat Radio are doing with alternative radio in the Bay Area. Tune in at KPCR-LP 92.9FM in Los Gatos and KMRT-LP 101.9FM in Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz schools are on a mission to change the way your kids think about vegetables.
For the first time ever, five county school districts jointly participated in a culinary training program designed to present a fresh take on produce to the standard school lunch.
Farm to table came to life last week as lunch staff from Pajaro, Live Oak, San Lorenzo Valley, Soquel and Santa Cruz school districts met at Del Mar Elementary school, where, under the tutelage of a CIA-trained chef, they spent five days in an intensive culinary training bootcamp at the Live Oak District Central Kitchen.
Yes, the school cafeteria has evolved since the days when ketchup counted as a vegetable. Today’s school lunches are balanced according to federal nutrition guidelines, and in Santa Cruz most of the produce is organic. Healthy meals are made and served up by the Child Nutrition experts formerly known as lunch ladies.
Flavorful food can seem an afterthought in schools bound by a highly regulated system built on consistency, federal nutrition requirements and scalability, to name a few. Yet Santa Cruz County schools are flexing within the system by improving the way they treat the food that comes into their kitchens. And more importantly, the people who prepare it.
Directors on hand for the first-ever multidistrict training were enthused about the benefits they’d already witnessed among the participants. The combination of skill building and opportunity for connection with fellow district colleagues brought a new level of engagement to work not always recognized.
By training culinary staff in preparing new large-scale recipes, schools can offer fresher food from a network of local farming partners. The produce is high quality, and the meats are grass fed and free of hormones and antibiotics. But the big benefit to kids and parents is a school lunch staff devoted to tickling developing taste buds.
The mastermind behind this grant-funded training is Cathy Powers, MS, RD, LD, a founding partner in Culinary Nutrition Associates and CIA-trained chef turned trainer. She developed this program, eight years ago, for the state of Indiana.
She explains, “We did it in Santa Cruz twice last year and they brought us back they loved it so much. The best thing to see is how the nutrition experts transform. They increase their confidence.”
The training begins with culinary basics. “So yesterday, they were learning how to use a shelf knife, practicing different techniques,” Powers says. “Today is all about vegetable cooking. The staffers form teams, they’re assigned to a different vegetable and they do it three ways—, a steamed, a roasted and a cold. They learn there’s so much you can do with vegetable, because really the key for a healthier generation is helping our students learn to love vegetables.”
Powers continues, “Today is about creating vegetable lovers because, really, that’s what we’re missing. Kids are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. While this program is not vegetarian, it’s heavily focused on making vegetables delicious. I like to say to the class, ‘if a student’s first experience with the vegetable is negative, you might have created a vegetable hater.’
Because if they tasted the broccoli and it wasn’t seasoned, you know, they may never try broccoli again. However, if you create delicious vegetables, you might create vegetable lovers. And tomorrow we’ll do the same thing with grains. We have sorghum, we have quinoa and couscous, we have brown rice and each team will have a different grain to work with.”
Since high volume cooking is so different from single-meal cooking, even chefs with a lot of culinary experience need specialized training to manage these large-scale recipes. After this week, the nutrition experts will decide which recipes they want to bring to the cafeteria menu.
They may only adopt one or two to start with, but as Powers says “we’re not teaching them recipes, we’re teaching them techniques. So whether it’s roasted broccoli, or roasted cauliflower or roasted brussels sprouts, the technique is the same. They’re learning how to use seasoning. So, whether its cumin roasted broccoli or ranch roasted carrots, they’re learning the techniques that they can implement according to their students’ palettes.”
And how do the nutrition experts know whether the kids like the food? New recipes are announced with cards containing a QR code placed on the lunch tables in some schools, so kids can scan to access a form where they can share their opinions.
In the words of Amy Hedrick-Farr, “The combination of nutrition education and outreach allows us to bring our Life Lab grown foods into the classroom and cafeteria. Thanks to our grant funding, we’re able to combine all three very successfully.”
The ’60s left a lasting mark on our city, sparking a love-hate relationship that still sizzles. Today Santa Cruz remains a hotspot for those chasing an altered state, with edibles, smokables and sippables galore.
But you can also find a natural high here, minus the hangover. New research suggests finding your bliss can be as simple as hiking a scenic trail, grooving to your favorite tunes, or indulging in a tasty treat—just as satisfying as a trip to your local dispensary without the hefty price tag.
No doubt you’ve heard of dopamine, a hormone and chemical messenger made in our brains that helps us feel pleasure, just like the name implies. It’s a big part of our unique human ability to think and plan. It helps us focus, work toward goals and find things interesting.
Feel-good moments, from a relaxing bath to a thrilling adventure, fire up your brain’s reward center, flooding it with dopamine. The extra hit latches your brain onto the experience like a cat to a laser pointer. As a result, that strong memory of the pleasure you felt is enough to prompt you to want, even crave, that experience again and again.
Dopamine’s role in reinforcing the brain’s quest for pleasure can associate it with addiction. But the shift from simply enjoying an experience to becoming obsessed with it is complex and not fully understood.
The good news is all kinds of behaviors can trigger a natural high. Things like a beach walk, yoga, hiking in the redwoods or dancing with friends are enough to get feel-good hormones going, with the dopamine release ready to seal the deal.
A study published in March in the Journal of Physiology describes how acute physical activity has been shown to trigger dopamine release in the brain. It’s also been shown to boost brain function. Even walking briskly for 40-plus minutes is enough to do the trick, as the study shows.
But when time is tight, there are more immediate options for that dopamine rush.
Certain treats unleash the flood of pure pleasure that comes from surfing that perfect wave. For those with a sweet tooth, biting into dark chocolate from Ashby Confections might do the trick.
Friends of cheese know the protein casein has the power to boost dopamine levels through a fascinating process known as casomorphin production. Luckily, cheese is (arguably) not addictive in the same way as street drugs; researchers say the dopamine hit is likely mild and doesn’t have any adverse effects.
If cheese isn’t your jam, try snacking on foods rich in tyrosine, the protein used to make dopamine—including nuts, seeds, avocados, bananas, and soy products—the next time you need a happiness boost.
The researchers note that “listening to the music you love will make your brain release more dopamine, a crucial neurotransmitter for humans’ emotional and cognitive functioning.”
Yet one more reason to brave the parking and trek to Capitola for the Wednesday evening Beach Twilight Concerts, or to one of the many weeknight brew pub jams.
Too little dopamine can lead to a variety of health issues. Doctors may prescribe dopamine supplements or dietary changes to treat conditions caused by dopamine deficiency, including anxiety disorders, mood swings and depression. Lifestyle choices—such as overdoing the drinking or smoking, or even an imbalanced diet—can lead to a decrease in dopamine levels.
I’d be remiss to discuss dopamine without mentioning celebrity neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman’s work at Stanford University. His research revamps our understanding of dopamine from a pleasure hormone to a “motivation molecule” driving us toward goals and rewards.
Rather than just fueling the pursuit of pleasure via cravings, Huberman describes a three-part dopamine formula for achievement, simplified here as the process of setting incremental goals, celebrating small wins and balancing effort with rest.
Ultimately, where you seek pleasure is solely your business. But it’s nice to know we live in a place where the natural highs are as free and plentiful as a hippie culture dream come true. And what better way to stay motivated than with your favorite music, a little extra movement and a wedge of fresh brie?
Years ago, when I worked as a postal delivery person in Santa Cruz, California, I mastered my route quickly. The time allotted to complete it was six hours, but I could easily finish in four. Soon I began to goof off two hours a day, six days a week. Many great works of literature and music entertained me during that time. I joined a softball team and was able to play an entire game each Saturday while officially on the job. Was what I did unethical? I don’t think so, since I always did my work thoroughly and precisely. Is there any comparable possibility in your life, Aries? An ethical loophole? A workaround that has full integrity? An escape clause that causes no harm?
TAURUS April 20-May 20
From an astronomer’s perspective, Uranus is huge. Sixty-three Earths could fit inside of it. It’s also weirdly unique because it rotates sideways compared to the other planets. From an astrologer’s point of view, Uranus symbolizes the talents and gifts we possess that can be beneficial to others. If we fully develop these potentials, they will express our unique genius and be useful to our fellow humans. It so happens that Uranus has been cruising through Taurus since 2018 and will mostly continue there until 2026. I regard these years as your best chance in this lifetime to fulfill the opportunities I described. The coming weeks will be especially pregnant with possibilities.
GEMINI May 21-June 20
Mountaineer Edmund Hillary is renowned as the first person to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest. It happened in 1953. Less famous was his companion in the ascent, Gemini mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. Why did Hillary get more acclaim than Norgay, even though they were equal partners in the monumental accomplishment? Was it because one was a white New Zealander and the other a brown Nepalese? In any case, I’m happy to speculate that if there’s a situation in your life that resembles Norgay’s, you will get remediation in the coming months. You will receive more of the credit you deserve. You will garner the acknowledgment and recognition that had previously been unavailable. And it all starts soon.
CANCER June 21-July 22
As an American, I’m embarrassed by the fact that my fellow citizens and I comprise just four percent of the world’s population but generate 20 percent of its garbage. How is that possible? In any case, I vow that during the next five weeks, I will decrease the volume of trash I produce and increase the amount of dross I recycle. I encourage you, my fellow Cancerians, to make a similar promise. In ways that may not be immediately imaginable, attending to these matters will improve your mental health and maybe even inspire you to generate an array of fresh insights about how to live your life with flair and joy.
LEO July 23-Aug. 22
The coming weeks will be a wonderful time to waste time on the internet. If you are properly aligned with cosmic rhythms, you will spend long hours watching silly videos, interacting with friends and strangers on social media, and shopping for products you don’t really need. JUST KIDDING!! Everything I just said was a dirty lie. It was designed to test your power to resist distracting influences and mediocre advice. Here’s my authentic counsel, Leo. The coming weeks will be a fantastic phase to waste as little time as possible as you intensify your focus on the few things that matter to you most.
VIRGO Aug. 23-Sept. 22
Scientific research suggests that brushing and flossing your teeth not only boosts the health of your gums, but also protects your heart’s health. Other studies show that if you maintain robust microbiota in your gut, you’re more likely to avoid anxiety and depression as you nurture your mental health. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to focus on big-picture thoughts like these, Virgo. You will be wise to meditate on how each part of your life affects every other part. You will generate good fortune as you become more vividly aware and appreciative of the intimate interconnectedness that underlies all you do.
LIBRA Sept. 23-Oct. 22
The official term for the shape of a single piece of M&M candy is “oblate spheroid.” It’s rounded but not perfectly round. It looks like a partially squashed sphere. An Iraqi man named Ibrahim Sadeq decided to try the difficult task of arranging as many M&M’s as possible in a vertical stack. He is now the world’s record holder in that art, with seven M&M’s. I am imagining that sometime soon, Libra, you could achieve a comparable feat in your own domain. What’s challenging but not impossible?
SCORPIO Oct. 23-Nov. 21
I’ve heard many people brag about their hangovers. The stories they tell are often entertaining and humorous. One of my best laughs emerged in response to two friends describing the time they jumped on the roof a parked Mercedes Benz at 3 am and sang songs from Verdi’s opera Falstaff until the cops came and threw them in a jail cell with nothing to eat or drink for ten hours. In accordance with astrological omens, Scorpio, I ask you to not get a hangover in the coming weeks, even an amusing one. Instead, I encourage you to studiously pursue extreme amounts of pleasurable experiences that have only good side effects.
SAGITTARIUS Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Most famous musicians demand that their dressing rooms be furnished with specific amenities. Beyoncé needs rose-scented candles. Rihanna expects her preparatory sanctuary to have dark blue or black drapes topped with icy blue chiffon. Eminem insists on a set of 25-pound dumbbells, and the hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd wants Super Soaker water guns. Since the coming weeks may be as close to a rock star phase of your cycle as you’ve ever had, I recommend you create a list of your required luxuries. This imaginative exercise will hopefully get you in the mood to ask for exactly what you need everywhere you go.
CAPRICORN Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Sleep deprivation is widespread. I see it as a pandemic. According to some studies, over half the people in the world suffer from insomnia, don’t get enough sleep, or have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Most research on this subject doesn’t mention an equally important problem: that many people aren’t dreaming enough. And the fact is that dreaming is key to our psychological well-being. I bring this to your attention, Capricorn, because the coming weeks will be a favorable time to enhance your relationship with sleep and dreams. I encourage you to learn all you can and do all you can to make your time in bed deeply rejuvenating.
AQUARIUS Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Only 47 people live on the volcanic Pitcairn Islands, which are located in the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific Ocean. Pollution is virtually non-existent, which is why the honey made by local bees is the purest on the planet. In accordance with astrological omens, I’d love for you to get honey like that in the coming weeks. I hope you will also seek the best and purest of everything. More than ever, you need to associate with influences that are potent, clear, genuine, raw, vibrant, natural and full-strength.
PISCES Feb. 19-March 20
Many Indigenous people in North America picked and ate wild cranberries. But farm-grown cranberries available for commercial use didn’t appear until 1816. Here’s how it happened. In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a farmer discovered a secret about the wild cranberry bog on his land. Whenever big storms dumped sand on the bog, the fruit grew with more lush vigor. He tinkered with this revelation from nature and figured out how to cultivate cranberries. I recommend this as a teaching story, Pisces. Your assignment is to harness the power and wisdom provided by a metaphorical storm or disturbance. Use it to generate a practical innovation in your life.
No one likes to see homeless people camping in public places, not even those of us who are sympathetic to their plight. It’s time to try a solution that would benefit us all: a campground, with sanitation and hygiene, social services and basic employment, in the little-used Sycamore Grove area of city-owned Pogonip at the bottom of Highway 9. With easy access to homeless services on Coral Street, they would have an incentive to keep it clean and safe or risk losing it. We should get state and federal money to support it, and it could be a national model.
This problem is not going away. Let’s do something realistic to deal with it.
Steven Robins | Felton
NOT A MONARCH
Hi, your photo contest caption last week is incorrect. This is not a monarch butterfly.
Laura Woliczko
OR WAS IT A TRICK?
This week’s photo is a trick question! There is no Monarch in the photo…
It is a Gulf fritillary, Agraulis vanillae!
However, the Monarchs are beginning to arrive for another spectacular migration season.
Welcome Monarchs!
Fiona Fairchild | Monarch Activist
PRESCHOOL FUNDING
I’m writing to thank our state representatives for their support of childcare legislation and increased funding. I urge them to continue this vital work by supporting Assembly Bill 2292 and related provisions in the California State Budget Act 2024. AB 2292 would establish the Classroom Planning and Implementation Grant Program, providing crucial funding for new childcare centers and state preschool classrooms.
This addresses the urgent need for high-quality childcare, especially for infants and toddlers. The proposed enhancements will benefit spa-poor families and ensure more children access to early education.
The California State Budget Act 2024 includes provisions to set new subsidy payment rates and continue funding for the Emergency Child Care Bridge Program for Foster Children. Investing in childcare infrastructure is essential for our children’s well-being and families’ economic stability.
I urge our representatives to support these measures, ensuring all California children have access to quality care and early education.
Doreen O’Donovan | AAUW Santa Cruz County President
“New oil rigs loom just over our horizons, and we can stop it. The companies would have us believe that the technology is safer now. The fact is that no oil rig in the world is impervious to a bad storm.” —Chuck Lehneis, surfer (Surfer.com).
Our coastline is renowned for its stunning beaches. Each of our crown jewels is unique, from rugged cliffs to the north to endless golden sand in the south, from surf lanes with big waves to secluded coves. Tourists from around the globe come to our coast. It’s where our families gather, where we get married, where we dream.
California has 27 operating offshore oil platforms, but they’re way out there, mostly out of sight, safe and sound. Except when they aren’t. What could possibly go wrong?
With Oil Rigs Come Oil Spills
The largest oil spill to occur off the California coast was the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which spilled 3 million gallons of oil. Over a 10-day period, beginning Jan. 28, 1969, a blowout of Union Oil’s Platform A washed crude oil onto beaches from Pismo to Oxnard.
The resulting tar killed an estimated 10,000 birds, suffocated marine plant and animal life over 35 miles of Santa Barbara coastline, left it covered with tar, smelling like an oil refinery.
It keeps happening.
In California alone: Amplify Energy Corporation spilled 144,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean at Huntington Beach (2021), the Refugio Oil Spill (2015) dumped 100,000 gallons of oil off Santa Barbara, the Cosco Busan Oil Spill (2007) dumped 53,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay, the American Trader Oil Spill (1990) unloaded 416,598 gallons on Huntington Beach, the Standard Oil Company Oil Spill (1971) dumped 800,000 gallons of oil in San Francisco Bay.
To be clear about how oil companies view making the victims of spills whole, after the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon blowout (2010) killed 11 men and injured scores, British Petroleum paid 79% of the victims a mere $1,300 each.
Comedian Stephen Colbert said, “If I learned anything from playing whack-a-mole, the oil spills will stop once we run out of quarters and our mom picks us up.”
After taking a look at the failed methods used to contain the oil spill in the Gulf Coast, Colbert realized, “So, no one knows what the fuck they’re doing.” He offered authorities alternative ways to clean up the spill: “Breaded Juggalos delivered by trained dolphins,” or “ultra concentrated packing peanuts delivered by monkey submarines.”
Big Oil has perpetuated the myth that offshore drilling is safe, but 509 oil rig fires have broken out in the Gulf of Mexico since 2006. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that with deeper drilling depths comes increased danger including higher risks of accidents, spills and fires.
Former Shell Oil civil engineer and UC Berkeley professor emeritus Robert Bea says, “You’ve got equipment and steel strung out over a long piece of geography starting at surface and terminating at 18,000 feet below the sea floor. It has many potential weak points.”
PRICE OF OIL With deeper drilling depths comes increased danger,
including higher risk of spills. Photo: Thomas Leikam Shutterstock
If Project 2025 Should Come Knocking
The Heritage Foundation–driven Project 2025 has a 922-page handbook that is a crafted manual of actions the next president’s appointees could take and details the steps to take them. Former President Donald Trump has tried to disavow the politically toxic project, but the work has been done to set policy and to prepare him to replace thousands of members of the “deep state” with MAGA loyalists.
Two years into Trump’s presidency, the Heritage Foundation touted that he had instituted 64% of its policy recommendations—like leaving the Paris Climate Accords and increasing offshore drilling. They opened more than 90% of the country’s coasts to oil and gas leasing, including the Pacific Coast.
If that administration should return to power, Project 2025 proposes that California open to the offshore oil industry. California Rep. Jimmy Panetta says, “New offshore drilling threatens millions of jobs and the safety of our families … we simply cannot afford the environmental and human impacts of new leasing off our coasts.”
Winning the First Round
In 1985, back when current state Senator John Laird was up for re-election to the Santa Cruz City Council, he went all in on protecting California shores by blocking the oil companies from offshore drilling with zoning laws. Laird was running in an off-year election, and he wanted to get people to the polls with an exciting ballot measure.
He went to an environmental activist and said that he would like to have a ballot measure on offshore oil drilling. The activist pushed back, suggesting the measure would have no teeth. Laird was flummoxed. He thought, “Jeez, we’re a city … it’s federal leasing. The state has a role, but cities and counties are not really there.”
Then in a flash, Laird was granted the wisdom of Shazam: it occurred to him that the one constitutional power granted to cities and counties is zoning, and if you pass a measure that says there can’t be a zoning change in support of offshore drilling without a vote of the people, that would allow the cities and counties along the California coast to shut down the oil companies’ ability to build on-land infrastructure.
Laird says because the measure changed the way zoning was approved and was not an outright ban, that made it defensible in court. When Western Gas and Oil Association sued 13 local jurisdictions, they lost. The locals won them all.
Laird says, “By making it need to have a vote of the people, that meant that some city council or some board of supervisors could not be purchased. The right is vested in the people. You have to go to the voters to be able to change zoning laws.”
That 1985 measure passed in Santa Cruz with over 80% of the vote, and it authorized money in the city budget to educate other cities and counties on how they might do the same. Save Our Shores was contracted to spread the word.
A Coastal Wall of Resistance
Former Save Our Shores Executive Director Dan Haifley says that for coastal jurisdictions to fight offshore drilling, they need to prohibit onshore drilling support facilities such as a pipeline or helicopter platform or dewatering facilities—things oil companies need on land to be able to drill offshore.
Laird agrees: “That is exactly it, and why we tried to keep infrastructure in local control. All those ordinances are still on the books. They are in place in case this 2025 change of administration happens.”
Many dedicated people were involved back in ’85—Gary Patton, Mardi Wormhoudt, Mike Rotkin, Kim Shunts, Leon Panetta (Jimmy Panetta’s father), and others—but most of the legwork came from Laird and Haifley. Save Our Shores hired Haifley to drive up and down the state in his Ford Pinto to convince other communities to pass this ordinance.
Haifley remembers, “My total budget was $30,000 a year; I slept on a lot of couches. I had a slideshow with the old-fashioned slide carousel, with a little lamp and the slides. We had sent out a letter to every coastal community, I called people, called elected officials, then I would go make presentations and drive up and down the coast.”
By the time Laird termed out in 1990, 26 cities and counties on the coast of California had adopted the ordinance.
What Can California Do Now?
Let’s fast forward to a possible Jan. 20, 2025, that moves Project 2025 closer to realization.
Laird says, “The ordinances are still in place, and it is such a long and complicated process. We were able to fight it back then, and they [the oil companies] were not able to accomplish it in four years. We’re ready to do it again. If offshore drilling comes now in a second round of a conservative administration, then it’s up to us to throw everything in the way of it … and fight to block it for four years.”
While Monterey Bay is a National Marine Sanctuary and will remain untouchable for oil companies, there may be no clearer nightmare of losing our precious coastline, leaving our beaches and coastal animals covered with tar, than the Project 2025 proposal to open offshore drilling in the coastal waters south of Monterey Bay.
To stop the dangerous expansion of oil drilling platforms off our coast, Dan Haifley says we start with areas that already have marine sanctuary protection, places where you cannot drill.
In California, that includes the national marine sanctuaries of the Greater Farallones, Cordell Bank and Monterey Bay, as well as those south to the Channel Islands around Santa Barbara off southern California. Everything outside of these sanctuaries—a lot of Southern California and everything north of Mendocino County—would be fair game for offshore oil development.
Haifley says the idea is to infill between these sanctuaries by going to local jurisdictions and showing them how they can pass local zoning laws to keep the oil companies from setting up supply bases on land.
The oil companies’ technology has improved; now they can use floating oil rigs, known as FPSOs (floating production storage and offloading) without having to build a pipeline to shore. A giant ship can fill up with oil and then go to a port or refinery.
Laird says, “The technology does exist for offshore oil transfer, but it’s more expensive and much more dangerous, the worst for an oil company.”
Laird adds that there are other tools to fight offshore drilling: Oil companies need to go through environmental review and different public hearing processes. “We really weigh in, we require them to state what the impact will be,” he says. “Those impacts will not be mitigated in environmental review, and that will give us an opening to sue.”
Monterey Bay is now a National Marine Sanctuary, known as the “Serengeti of the Sea”—a diverse ecosystem that plays host to 34 species of marine mammals, more than 180 species of seabirds and shorebirds, over 525 species of fishes, and countless invertebrates.
While Monterey Bay is off limits to oil leasing, south of Monterey is currently fair game. But there is a proposed national marine sanctuary designation immediately south of Monterey called the Chumash Heritage Sanctuary, a grassroots effort led by the Northern Chumash Tribal Council.
NOAA/Marine Sanctuaries says, “The proposed sanctuary stretches along 134 miles of coastline and would encompass more than 5,600 square miles of water. Examples of prohibited activities include causing seabed disturbance such as seafloor cables … or the removal of structures on the seabed such as oil and gas platforms.”
If the Chumash sanctuary designation goes through, then the Central Coast from Mendocino to Santa Barabara would be protected from offshore drilling. U.S. Senator Alex Padilla and San Luis Obispo’s member of congress, Salud Carbajal, are pushing hard to get NOAA’s designation. Laird says that Carbajal believes they can get the designation before January 20, 2025.
The Northern Chumash Tribal Council has led this campaign since 2015. Laird says, “They are way into it, they’ve taken all the public comments (over 27,000), done the environmental work, I think it’s on track to be done by Jan. 20.”
What Do We Do Now?
Dan Haifley and John Laird have been there before. Haifley says that the 26 communities that took action in the ’80s, each organized in their own way—“either persuading their local government to act or organizing to get a ballot measure passed, it broadened and deepened a citizen ocean protection movement then, and if necessary, it will do it again.”
As to what Californians can do now, Senator Laird says we have a chance to do the real prevention with the November election. If we must defend the shoreline ourselves, “We should be vigilant, we should always stand ready to organize.”
He quotes fabled former Coastal Commission Director Peter Douglas: “The coast is never saved.”
Last month, a screening of Stop Making Sense—Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads concert film—lit up the UCSC Quarry. This weekend, Talking Heads keyboardist/guitarist Jerry Harrison joins up with guitarist Adrian Belew for the Remain in Light Summer Tour, hitting the Quarry stage with an 11-member band to play iconic selections from the 1980 Talking Heads album Remain in Light, plus songs from their respective discographies.
Talking Heads were part of the punk explosion at CBGB in New York City during the mid ’70s. David Byrne (guitar and vocals), Chris Frantz (drums), Tina Weymouth (bass) and Harrison combined African rhythms, electronics and social criticism in a revolutionary way. Remain in Light was the fourth album from Talking Heads. In 2018, singer Angélique Kidjo released her own version of the album.
Belew has recorded with David Bowie, King Crimson and Frank Zappa. Jerry Harrison has produced numerous bands, including No Doubt, and will be performing “Rev it Up” from his 1988 solo album Casual Gods. Guest musicians include members of Turkuaz, bassist Julie Slick, percussionist Yahuba Garcia-Torres and special guests Cool Cool Cool.
Harrison, who lives in Marin, talked about the tour, including which songs will be performed. “We’re playing songs from the 1980 Remain in Light tour, when Adrian played with Talking Heads,” he said, as well as material from Fear of Music (1979), More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978) and 77 (1977), and “Thela Hun Ginjeet” (from King Crimson’s 1981 Discipline).
“We’re doing a version of ‘Slippery People’ from the Speaking in Tongues album [1983]. Mavis Staples covered that song. The two women singing with us [Shira Elias and Sammi Garett of Turkuaz] take lead on that and do a very nice job. There’s a million possibilities because we’ve all done so many different projects.”
Good Times: 1980 was an exciting time for new music. Even before you went to New York to join the Talking Heads you played with proto-punk Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.
Jerry Harrison: When we were in the Modern Lovers, we felt we were all alone out there in Boston! Obviously, we were very influenced by the Velvet Underground and the Stooges, who stood apart from the music that was happening at that time.
By the time I joined Talking Heads (1977), they were part of the seed that CBGB had begun to form. Four bands—Blondie, the Ramones, Television and Talking Heads—were the initial vanguard at CBGB.
What was interesting at the time was that, though stylistically these bands are not particularly similar, there was an ethos that stood apart from what had become popular in music, which I might describe as an over-professionalization.
Bands like Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer came from the music academy and their shows would have very grandiose lights and costumes. Everybody in the band would do a 15-minute solo. Two solos on one of those records and the Ramones could play 15 songs!
Punk was about being short and sweet and to the point. Punk was a move back to the roots of rock and roll—that excitement, raw energy and getting a point of view or a story across very quickly.
The music at that time gave many of us the sense that the revolution might actually happen. Bands were critical of militarism and other issues. I recall the piece you did with Bootsy Collins using the recording of Ronald Reagan, saying he was bombing Russia (“Bonzo Goes to Washington”). Back in the ’80s, what were you thinking music can do in the world?
I actually thought that coming out of the ’60s, somehow new music had become the heartbeat of the society. Musicians very often would write songs that were commentary on life and politics. This is after the Vietnam War period and the civil rights movement.
Musicians were connected to the demonstrations and to what was going on. I thought that musicians like Bob Dylan or the Beatles were more important than John Kennedy in determining what people were thinking. So, I was excited to make music.
I didn’t actually think I’d be a professional musician. It wasn’t until I met Jonathan Richman, I went, “Wow! I can do this.”
When I met Jonathan, I understood he was doing something that nobody else in the world was doing and I knew how I was going to create parts that would go with what he was doing. The same thing was true when I joined Talking Heads. I understood that my sensibilities about music fit with theirs. I didn’t try to change the band; I tried to enhance the band.
The rhythms on Remain in Light are wonderful. It reminds me of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). I read that Brian Eno played Fela Kuti’s album Afrodisiac for David Byrne and suggested that it be the template for Remain in Light. Is that accurate?
We were all in love with Fela Kuti. But I don’t know if Brian is the one who introduced us to it. Everyone in the band loved African music, like Manu Dibango and King Sunny Adé. I’d say if there was one single African artist I fell in love with it would be Fela.
When Talking Heads recorded “I Zimbra” on the album Fear of Music, that was African-influenced. We all realized we were really excited about that track and that we wanted to do more of that.
So, when we got to doing Remain in Light, that was part of how we set it up. There was also this idea that we were not going to compose everything ahead of time. We wanted to capture things as they were created in the studio.
We had noticed on demo tapes that when we created new music, there was something innocent or special about it, but that when you played it over and over again, you lost something. You gained confidence and clarity but maybe lost innocence and tenderness. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is post Talking Heads doing “I Zimbra.” So, we were already into African music before that.
Remain in Light has the song “Listening Wind,” which always sends chills up my spine. The words bring to mind American colonialism and imperialism in a vivid way. Will you be playing that?
We will not be playing “Listening Wind.” The second half of Remain in Light is a bit more somber and if we’d been doing just theater shows in 1980, maybe we would have done the entire record, but we wanted to keep people dancing. With that said, I agree with you.
It’s an amazing song. Peter Gabriel does a great version of it as well. The song is about the development of thinking of someone perhaps becoming a terrorist. I think maybe we’d be investigated by some part of the government if we wrote that song today!
I don’t think it’s particular to American colonialism or imperialism. It’s the idea of someone being disenfranchised. The Chinese, the Arab nations and lots of countries have this ability and are doing this all over the world right now. The US held that particular position in the ’50s when so much of the rest of the industrialized world was damaged by World War II. Of course, they made massive mistakes, in my mind.
Many governments have displaced people and now millions around the world are saying, “We want our land back.”
Yes, that’s true. The difficult thing is how many generations of land stealing are we going back to? Sometimes there’s multiple land seizures. Many places have had a clash between Indigenous, nomadic people and others who arrive and establish property rights and laws. And very often it’s Indigenous people that lived off the land, usually with less density, that lose out. This obviously happened here in the United States. It’s no fun being on the receiving side of that.
Remain in Light: Concert at UCSC Quarry Amphitheater
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There may be no clearer nightmare of losing our precious coastline, leaving our beaches and coastal animals covered with tar, than the Project 2025 proposal to open offshore drilling in the coastal waters south of Monterey Bay.
