Nobody knew where her red hair came from. Her father believed there had been a red-headed uncle on some distant limb of the family tree, possibly on the McAfee side. But her abundant red hair was just one of the things that made Barbara Anne Bader so special.

Times were tough in the Midwest  during Depression ’30s, when Barbara was growing up. But she had an unquenchable zest for fun. She loved to read and draw, and listen to swing bands on the radio. She adored the movies. And she was nuts about the ocean, as only someone born and raised in the flatlands of Nebraska can be. At 21, she moved to California with her kid sister, Jeannie, where she met and soon married Art Jensen, a sailor who shared her love for the sea.

Women’s History Month is off and running, and it isn’t going unnoticed. On March 1, Assemblymember Bill Monning named Seaside resident Regina Mason as the 27th Assembly District’s 2010 “Woman of the Year.” Mason works as a social worker supervising a team that investigates child abuse allegations. Additionally, she volunteers with the NAACP, where she serves as the Back-To-School/Stay-In-School Program Coordinator. Mason also cofounded the Annual Youth Summit, now in its 15th year and The Village Project, a family based resource center for the African American community. In a March 1 press release Monning calls Mason “a true example of acting locally, having donated countless hours to making Seaside a better place to live.”

UCSC researchers use game to explain findings on speciation

What does the game of rock-paper-scissors have in common with speciation? More than you may think, according to a paper by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published this week in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The idea that morphs within the same population could eventually evolve into separate species is not a particularly new one. But a study by researchers Barry Sinervo, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, and Ammon Corl, who led the new study as a graduate student at UCSC but is now a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, about side-blotched lizards finds new evidence to support the theory.

Years ago, when I lived in Monterey, a friend and I often frequented a Denny’s restaurant that was nestled near the corner of Abrego and Freemont streets. We’d spend countless hours there chatting about life and, whenever we went our separate ways, we barely noticed the hotel that shared the same parking lot with the diner.

Well, those days are over—it’s hard not to pay attention to the hotel now. For starters, the Denny’s bit the dust. In its place is a new structure that makes up just one portion of an impressive 93-room vacation—or staycation—portal that was once dubbed the Sand Dollar Inn.

Welcome to Hotel Abrego.

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Ideas, not action, drive wry Romanian cop drama ‘Police, Adjective’
If you expect a lot of shootouts and car chases from your police dramas, if you can’t imagine a crime investigation that’s not an action thriller, then Police, Adjective is not for you. Low-key in the extreme, this police drama from Romania unfolds at such a glacial pace, it often recalls those experimental Warhol movies of the ’60s  which were all about the depiction of absolutely nothing. But viewers willing to pay attention and get into its slow, spare, real-life, real-time rhythm will discover a sly black comedy from director Corneliu Poromboiu, depending more on a gradually building intensity of ideas than conventional action.

Tips for local bands on how to book a show at The Crepe Place

As local bands come up the ranks from street corner to coffee shop to house party, they eventually reach the point where they’re ready to hit the big stage. While getting your name in lights (or at least on a flyer) may seem like an impossible mission, I’d like to give you—or the aspiring musos in your life—a fighting chance.

Hitting the stage doesn’t have to be a heartbreaking struggle, and I’m here to do the local music scene homework that all bands should be assigned. To kick off this “How to Book a Show” blog series for local musicians, I’ve spoken to the man behind the concerts of the Crepe Place (1134 Soquel Avenue), booker Adam Bergeron.

La Selva Beach resident Ronald Schusterman, best known for his research on the hearing, vision, and cognitive abilities of marine mammals, died on Feb. 11 at the age of 77. Throughout his life, Schusterman had many notable achievements, among them was helping debunk the idea that pinnipeds use echolocation and demonstrating that sea lions can understand syntax and a serious of commands. In 1985, Schusterman moved his research program to UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory, where he conducted experiments to understand how California sea lions, harbor seals, and elephant seals think about the world around them. He helped establish the lab’s reputation as a leading center for marine mammal research. Schusterman was also a research marine biologist and adjunct professor of ocean sciences at UCSC from 1985 until his retirement in 2003. A memorial service is being planned for Sunday, Feb. 28. For more information, contact in**@pi*********.org.

Well, here I am, a month to the day, fully healed and not even thinking about my absent tonsils (and I did NOT get a sore throat and tonsillitis with a recent cold!).  Overall, I did much better than the average patient, pretty well fully functional by 12 days following surgery and no complications.  I think that the prayers, herbs, craniosacral treatment, nutritional IV’s, and acupucture all helped—at least as much as the love of the people providing them.  And I have to give a grateful nod to Western medicine, for as much as I loved all the holistic approaches, nothing came close to the passion I felt for my bottle of liquid Vicodin in that first week.

I was promised, by the good Dr. Lane, that this surgery would hurt.  A lot.  And she never lies.  I started out gagging down the disgusting, yellow, sickly sweet liquid Vicodin and, honestly, by the end, I looked forward to its pineapple-like flavor.  Amazing what the imagination can do.  I have a whole new appreciation for the difficulty of living with chronic pain and a new sympathy for the longing of addicts for their substance of choice.  After 10 days, I graduated myself to Tylenol and poured my lovely Vicodin down the drain.