Blue Marble Planet lover Lea Haratani dives deep
“A lot of people attack the sea. I make love to it.” —Jacques Cousteau
Lea Haratani has had a lifelong passion for the ocean, and every day she tries to show it. Some days, it means not eating fish. Other times, it’s all about taking a walk on the beach—or diving off the coast of Belize with Jim Simon, the vice president of one of the nation’s largest ocean conservation organizations, Oceana. She might also be found circulating petitions against offshore drilling with her children at Bookshop Santa Cruz, or organizing a fundraising event for Oceana at the Saint Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco.

Local history teacher brings the Zinn Education Project to the classroom

The wall behind Jeff Matlock’s desk is covered with photographs and paintings of his heroes from American history: Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Abraham Lincoln, and Jane Adams among them. There is a photograph of women marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1913 with a sign that reads, “I wish Ma could vote!” And, as if to encapsulate Matlock’s “nothing is black and white” view on history, he also has two contrasting photographs beside one another: one of a group protesting World War I with signs that say “Don’t send our boys to die in a useless war,” and the other, a shot of U.S. soldiers wading ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day. “There are two sides to every story,” he says simply.

One UCSC student’s project will save energy in campus apartments
“The Boardwalk’s going to be gone,” says Jennifer Helfrich, a freshly graduated UC Santa Cruz environmental studies student. “It’ll be underwater.”

While she isn’t talking about tomorrow, next year, or even this lifetime, studies do predict that sea levels will have dramatically risen by the end of the century.

“Climate change is happening,” she continues. “A lot of people are going to die and a lot of people are going to be hurt. There’s probably going to be some violence over it, and ecosystems are going to change. A lot of species are going to die but new species will evolve and some will move around. The environment will be fine; it always has been. It changes. The question is whether humans will be OK.”

“A Perfect Match” by Jodie Picoult. She’s a great novelist and I learned compassion and what it must be like to be a parent, and I don’t want to be one.
Eve Krammer
Santa Cruz | Bartender

Something is missing in our public debate. Something big. It’s the difference between politics and governance. From Washington to Sacramento to Santa Cruz, people are debating the issues, but it’s unfortunate that the issues they care about really don’t get at the reality of how government runs day to day.

Opinion, as discussed and argued about on television, can be exciting. Olbermann can get in his licks. O’Reilly can be outraged. CNN can invite people in from both sides of the political divide to holler at each other. And we’re not much better here in Santa Cruz. Just take a look at the recent State Senate election where neither Democrat John Laird nor Republican Sam Blakeslee bothered with commercials discussing their own records. They just trashed each other.

If you happen to find yourself on Broome Street the next time you visit NYC (as Christa and I did on our Big Apple adventure last month), a stop at Marie Belle New York is an absolute must. This delectable confectionary and tea boutique houses what may be the most toothsome and tantalizing candies east of the Mississippi. Upon entering the aromatic space, your senses will go into immediate overdrive. Combine the scent of chocolate, a delicate robin’s egg blue and chocolate brown color palette and an ambiance replete with stained glass, chandeliers and dark wood and you’ll have the sudden feeling that you have stepped straight into the pages of an Edith Wharton novel.

Santa Cruz joins in symbolic gesture opposing offshore oil drilling
On Saturday, June 26, Santa Cruzans joined hands at Main and Cowell beaches as part of a national, peaceful protest against near- and offshore oil drilling. Sparked by the oil spill in the Gulf Coast, the event was organized and sponsored by nonprofit Hands Across the Sand (handsacrossthesand.com), and had local support from Save our Shores and the Surfrider Foundation. Local ocean conservationist Lea Haratani, who will be featured in the Thursday, July 1 issue of Good Times, wrote the following poem for the occasion:

On Thursday, June 24, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that California will receive $415,844,376 to improve its Tier I and Tier II schools, which are defined as the “persistently lowest-achieving” schools in the state. The funds are the latest from the School Improvement Grants program, a part of the stimulus bill. Santa Cruz County has five schools that fall under Tier I and Tier II; Monterey County has 11, and San Benito County has one. School districts will be applying for their share. “We owe it to our children to give them every chance possible to get a good education,” says Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel). “And we owe it to our schools to provide the resources for that mission.”

Girl vs. chaotic world in taut Southern Gothic noir ‘Winter’s Bone’
It’s always something, as Gilda Radner used to say. It certainly is  in the relentless narrative of Winter’s Bone, a nerve-rattling exercise in dread and redemption that knocked the bejeebers out of critics and audiences alike at this year’s Sundance festival. (It won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Picture, as well as the Best Screenplay award.) Directed with grit and assurance by Debra Granik, this Southern Gothic noir thriller is taut, scary, more than a little creepy, and strangely poignant. It’s a bracing alternative to the bloated franchises, inane comedies, and action extravaganzas of the summer movie season.

The old Neil Diamond song about a good guy who can’t find a faithful woman is an odd choice for the title of this film (it’s sung by Johnny Cash over the opening credits). This movie’s male protagonist is the exact opposite, a prowling horndog who’s inability to keep it in his pants destroys every relationship in his life. Maybe co-directors Brian Koppelman and David Levien didn’t listen to the lyrics, or maybe it’s just another colossal miscalculation in this highly preposterous and unpleasant film. Michael Douglas stars as Ben Kalmen, once a powerhouse New York City car dealer. But philandering has cost him his ex-wife and business partner (Susan Sarandon), a fraud conviction makes it impossible to get financing for a new dealership, and now that he’s pushing 60, he’s a slave to his wandering libido, deluding himself that his compulsive sexual conquests will stave off the ravages of time.