James Herold had been thinking about getting a new sofa in his living room for a while, but he wasn’t in a rush. Then the pandemic changed everything.
Suddenly the 58-year-old was working at home and was stuck there even when he didn’t have to work. After he rearranged some furniture to create a home office, he no longer had space for a sofa. But the need for comfort was greater than ever. A cozy recliner was the perfect solution to make his living room a place of solace and still be efficient in terms of space.
Though Herold lives in Danville, he drove down to SC41 in Soquel as soon as they were open for in-store shopping—that way he could try out some recliners and find the one that would suit him for his lazy weekends and evenings. His wife Stephanie went with him and decided to replace the mattress on their bed. A little extra comfort wouldn’t hurt.
“When you’re cooped up in the house, you’re just looking at everything. You know, ‘It’s about time,’” Herold says. “I redesigned the home office for more comfort and full-time use.”
Furniture and home design stores have been open for in-person visits for a few weeks now, and they’re finding that customers are ready to buy furniture. During the initial months of shelter in place, many of the stores were open for curbside pickup and delivery, but they weren’t doing a lot of business.
“This is a particular part of retail that people still like to come in and see things and touch things. It’s a little bit difficult to do it online,” says Jackson Allen, owner of Soquel’s Couch Potato.
Business shot up as soon as in-store visits were back. Some stores have reported higher June sales than in previous years.
“There was some pent-up demand. We have actually increased traffic because people are fed up with online shopping,” Jackson says. “They want to come in and sit if they have the opportunity.”
Michael Baetge, owner of SC41, says he’s noticed that people are particularly concerned with comfort right now. His number one purchase since reopening has been recliner chairs, with comfy sofas a close second, and home office furniture third.
“We’ve been sheltered in place for so long, and the likelihood of us having to shelter-in-place again is high. I think comfort has really come to being right up there with safety and design,” Baetge says. “There’s a renewed interest in fixing up the house, doing projects around the house, replacing furniture, changing out rooms. Because the longer we’re unable to travel, the more our home becomes a true castle.”
Another change in how furniture and home design businesses are operating during the pandemic is that they are accepting appointments. Stephen Schwinn, the owner of Ironhorse Home Furnishings, says that even though they are open for walk-ins, the majority of their customers have made appointments.
“I think people are enjoying this private shopping experience. It allows a little bit more one-on-one time,” Schwinn says. “Before I could have had 10 or 12 people in the store, with one or two salespeople getting pulled all over the place. Here, people get the attention that they deserve when they’re purchasing something of this magnitude.”
He is seeing some of the same drivers other store owners have reported: comfort, efficiency, and upgrading of the home office. One interesting change specifically in the home office department is that a lot of people are purchasing sit-to-stand desks, something he only sold once or twice a month previously.
“I haven’t sold a single desk that you sit at without the ability to be sit-and-stand,” Schwinn says. “I think people have probably been thinking about doing them. They weren’t sure. Then, when they got stuck at home for three months, they decided it was time to do it. Our industry is seeing a huge surge right now. What we’re running into is that the manufacturers don’t have product to ship because there was such a blitz on some of the things.”
Recently, Ella Fleming noticed something bizarre at her local gardening shops: Everywhere she went, Santa Cruz businesses were sold out of soil, seeds, and garden supplies.
“I’ve been farming for 12 years, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen that. It’s like people are just obsessed,” says Fleming, the farm manager at the Homeless Garden Project. “It’s really incredible, I’m just so heartened by it.”
For Fleming, the timing of Santa Cruz’s gardening surge couldn’t be better. As unrest and uncertainty rise nationwide, she says the therapeutic effects of gardening can help quell some of the stress that many Santa Cruzans are feeling.
“Having some level of participation in your food system, in the food that you eat, is crucial right now. It has so many benefits for mental health,” she says. “I can attest to this in my own life and the lives of so many trainees who come here in severe mental health crises.”
The science seems to agree. Not only does gardening reduce the body’s cortisol levels, it can actually boost your mood and reduce feelings of anxiety, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
“As shelter in place goes on, we’re definitely seeing a deterioration in people’s mental health,” says Tim Hartnett, registered therapist and executive director at the Shine a Light Counseling Center. “Gardening is one of the things we can do while sheltered-in-place that feels good and nurturing to us.”
In addition, gardening can offer necessary relief from “screen fatigue,” the exhaustion that often accompanies spending a 9-to-5 work day on the computer. This is particularly important as more services—and human interactions—are conducted virtually during shelter-in-place.
“As I’m spending more time on the computer, having sessions on the computer, the best way to make sure I get a good break in between counseling sessions is to go outside, put my hands in the earth and connect with nature,” says Hartnett.
To amplify these feel-good benefits further, Hartnett recommends gardening with a friend. “One of the main things we’re suffering from during shelter-in-place is social isolation,” he says. “Gardening is an activity you can do six feet apart, so you can even do it with someone with whom you’re not sheltering in place.”
Getting into the garden also boosts memory function, focus and self-esteem, says Trish Hildinger, a Santa Cruz-based horticultural therapist. At work, Hildinger relies on the therapeutic effects of gardening to assist clients with dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other physical or cognitive conditions. One study of 2,800 participants found that daily gardeners were 36% less likely to develop dementia later in life, according to the National Library of Medicine.
While Hildinger’s work might be a bit atypical, the world of Western medicine seems to be catching on. In 2018, Dignity Health Dominican Hospital opened its first “healing garden” to help patients undergoing physical or neurological rehabilitation. When announcing the project, hospital staff cited research that access to a garden can accelerate healing time, reducing the need for pain medication and shortening overall hospital stays.
“It’s definitely becoming more mainstream,” Hildinger says. “The science has finally caught up to what many of us knew intuitively: that anybody in a hospital, or in this situation with the pandemic, their physiological body benefits from a view of plants and gardens, even if they’re not in it.”
Trish Hildinger (left) is a Santa Cruz-based horticultural therapist, and LaTrina Candia (right) is working toward both her bachelor’s degree and her registration in horticultural therapy.
The garden also boasts major benefits for our physical health. “Being around dirt, getting dirty and occasionally getting a mouthful of the stuff when you’re crawling around actually serves to inoculate your intestines with beneficial bacteria,” says Dawn Motyka, a board certified holistic doctor who practices in Santa Cruz.
In turn, this beneficial bacteria boosts the immune system, making us less susceptible to diseases. Plus, it provides a low-maintenance, full-body workout which improves cardiovascular health and stamina, Motyka says.
If all that isn’t reason enough to start planting seeds, gardening might even get your kids to eat their vegetables. One study published in Science Daily found that children who help their parents garden are far more likely to consume high-vegetable diets and carry the habit into their adult lives.
Still, many people in urban or low-income communities lack access to outdoor spaces at all. In recent years, urban and community garden initiatives have tried to address this issue, but there’s still a long way to go in closing the access gap, Fleming says.
“I want every child, every human being, to at least be exposed to a garden,” she says. “For people that have some abundance in their life, I’d love for them to be able to share and support organizations doing garden education for kids in places where it’s harder to garden, places where it’s harder for people to have a little plot of land.”
Motyka echoes this sentiment, explaining that while gardening can provide much needed respite from daily stressors, it shouldn’t be used as a way to tune out bigger issues.
“I want it to be a balanced escape. I don’t want people to unplug totally and hide because I think this is an amazing opportunity for transformative change,” she says, referring to the nationwide protests for social justice. “We need to do some stewardship of our society, just the way you might ameliorate the soil in a garden by adding or changing things that aren’t working.”
“I like urban things,” she says. “I’ve never had a garden. I’ve never wanted a garden. I’m 66 years old and I don’t anticipate that I’ll ever want a garden.”
Yet somehow she now shares her downtown Santa Cruz condo with cucumbers, peas, beets, spinach and tomatoes—though she doesn’t even eat tomatoes—all of it “on the vine.”
How did this happen? As is the case with many surprise developments in 2020, the culprit was Covid-19.
In March, when the state issued its first shelter-in-place orders, Barbara’s 26-year-old son Jesse moved in with her. It was Jesse who insisted that she grow her own food, as insurance against the spread of the virus and potential food shortages.
Barbara Gibson’s response was to make it clear that she had zero interest in watering or weeding.
“I don’t remember ever saying yes to this at any point,” she says. “But every time I said no, some new plants would appear. Then it was, ‘OK, this is fine. Now stop.’”
However, she raised a son who didn’t take no for an answer. Despite his mother’s resistance, Jesse designed and built an elaborate system that allowed him to take the best advantage of the limited space his mom’s condo afforded. He set up a system to water plants on an upstairs deck that would then drip down on plants growing on the downstairs patio. He planted tomatoes, allowing the neighbors to share in the bounty.
“It’s like a victory garden for someone who doesn’t have a yard,” Gibson says with a laugh.
The “victory garden” is a notion that dates back 100 years to the American entry into World War I, when the U.S. government launched a public campaign to get Americans to embrace gardening.
The idea sprouted from the fear that the war might negatively affect the nation’s food supply. In fact, President Woodrow Wilson reportedly said, “Food will win the war.” There was even a federal program to encourage children’s interest in gardening called the United States School Garden Army.
Today, the victory garden concept—which became even more popular in World War II—is being quietly refashioned as the “pandemic garden” in the wake of Covid-19. Even without a government-funded campaign, many Americans—including some Santa Cruzans—responded to the pandemic with an impulse to plant a garden, including many who had never done it before.
Santa Cruz’s Helen Behar, for example, had had a couple of bad “black thumb” experiences with tomatoes in her life. But, like Gibson, she also had a son who sounded the alarm when shelter-in-place went into effect.
“My son was, like, ‘Mom, you have to get a 50-pound bag of rice and a 50-pound bag of beans,’” Behar says.
That prompted her to follow through on an idea that she had already been entertaining: Why not give gardening another try? She didn’t have a lot of space to work with, just a small patio. She bought a few starter plants, which were relatively hard to come by in the early days of the pandemic, and enlisted friends with more gardening experience for advice. And then she planted herbs, kale, collards, squash, eggplant and tomatoes.
It was her first experience with gardening success. “I’m loving it,” she says. “It brought out a real nurturing with me. The mothering part was there for me, transferred to my little starter babies.”
Some of the planters Jesse set up on their patio. PHOTO: TARMO HANNULA
Artist Angela Gleason never had much time or patience for gardening either, nor had she a good track record. She grew succulents exactly because they required next to no care. But she caught the pandemic-garden fever as well. She found a few stackable plastic boxes that she used for raised beds and then planted cucumbers, tomatoes, and other goodies.
“I was totally surprised by how huge everything got and how fast it all went,” says Gleason, who grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of a man committed to gardening. Her father worked seven days a week to support a large family, but still planted and maintained a big garden. “My job was harvesting,” she says, “going out and pick a leaf or two for salad. Now I’m doing that again.”
Santa Cruzan Randie Silverstein was raised in the Bronx, where her mother grew tomatoes on the fire escape. She and her husband Steve had not done much gardening until the pandemic. But Steve is a retired E.R. doctor, and he was particularly quick to react to the threat of Covid-19.
“He started talking about this pandemic in January,” she says. “Every time he would say something (about the spread of the virus), we’d see it a week later on the national news. So I looked at him and said, ‘Do we need to start growing our own food?’”
Randie Silverstein then went to work building a series of raised beds on wheels. By mid-April, her raised beds were planted with a wide variety of vegetables. “We’ll have lettuce until the cows come home, basically.”
For Michelle McDougall, her pandemic garden has become symbolic of a special moment in her family’s life. McDougall, a teacher at Linscott Charter School in Watsonville, had planted small gardens with her husband Chris in the past. But 2020 brought about a dramatic new commitment to gardening.
On the morning after her school closed due to Covid-19, Michelle cleaned out an old shed, found a seed starting kit that may have been 20 years old or more, and bought some seeds. The McDougalls live in Aromas with their son and daughter, 13 and 11 respectively. Everyone participates in the upkeep of the garden, which includes potatoes, strawberries, corn, zucchini, onions, snap peas, asparagus and more.
Michelle has been doing her teaching duties from home since shelter-in-place, and Chris has seen his workload drop by half. But the McDougalls have been using the time to recalibrate their lives, reorienting their passions and values to their home life.
“One of the things that the last three months have taught us,” she says, “is how much we miss the things we really value, reading stories and playing board games with the kids. This whole thing has made us by force slow down. I feel like I wouldn’t wish this time to come. I would not choose it. But for the last few years, I’ve wanted to put the brakes on, to slow down, to be with the kids as they grow up. And now, literally, here it is.
“I don’t want to go back to the way things were before,” she says. “Even if we go back to working full-time, there’s so much I’d like to cut out of my life to make room for down time with the kids, to make room for a garden, to make room for my values, all those things that get crowded out by the things you feel you have to do.”
Jerold O’Brien has been in the wine biz for over four decades. It’s guaranteed he knows more than a thing or two about turning out excellent vino. This experienced winemaker puts all his accumulated knowledge into every bottle of wine he makes.
O’Brien’s voluptuous 2013 Syrah ($34) is the perfect companion for meat-driven dishes—think Fourth of July barbecue. Blackberry, cassis and a smidgeon of baking powder on the nose are the first signs of what’s in store—followed by mouthwatering flavors of ripe plum that give way to deep black cherry mid-palate with green olive and spice. O’Brien calls this full-bodied wine “very seductive” with its rich flavors and a lingering finish of dark baking cocoa. It’s a typical smoky-peppery-meaty Syrah full of dark fruit and lip-smacking flavor. Two well-known vineyards provide lush grapes for this wine: Muns Vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains (40%) and Weideman’s Vineyard in the Santa Clara Valley (60%).
Silver Mountain Vineyards has two places to taste its wonderful wines—one on O’Brien’s property up Old San Jose Road—where picnics are welcome and his certified organic vineyards stretch to infinity—and one in the Swift Street Courtyard complex (home to several shops and other tasting rooms, and the popular West End Tap and Kitchen gastropub).
Silver Mountain Vineyards, 269 Silver Mountain Drive, Los Gatos; and 328D Ingalls St., Santa Cruz, 408-353-2278. Open noon to 5pm July 4-5 at both locations. silvermtn.com.
Love Apple Farms and Dig Gardens
If you’re thinking about planting a summer vegetable garden, Love Apple Farms most likely has just what you need.
Fed up with your boring old face mask? Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing is selling its own cool bandanas for $8. Buy online or head to SCMB and check out their new Drink Tanks, which they say is everyone’s favorite way of drinking fresh, cold draft beer.
Among the quotes that jumped out at me from Jacob Pierce’s cover story this week was this one from a critic of predictive policing: “Technology’s never really neutral.” From social media companies’ failures to crack down on hate speech to YouTube documentaries spreading false and deadly misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems like we are discovering more and more how true that is all the time.
But in this case, the quote refers specifically to whether predictive policing can truly eliminate systemic racial bias in policing (and if you’ve watched Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, you know just how historically systemic it is). The creators of Santa Cruz’s PredPol have claimed for years that their version of it does. Almost a decade ago, even while the company was getting accolades nationwide, it was the alternative press here that was skeptical, and years later those concerns are finally being taken seriously. Leading the push for the ban on predictive policing was Santa Cruz Mayor Justin Cummings, who explains exactly why in our story, and talks more specifically about Black Lives Matter and the protests in Santa Cruz after the death of George Floyd in a Q&A in our news section.
One of the duties of every newspaper in this time, I think, is to take a look at specific problems with racial bias in the policing of its own community. This week’s cover story takes a thorough look at why Santa Cruz has finally rejected predictive policing, and I urge you to give it a read.
What do you believe to be the greatest active threat to life in this country right now? I know we’ve all been watching an influx of out-of-towners swarm the beaches, we continue to debate and worry about the spread of COVID-19, and there are bottomless rabbit holes of conspiracy theory about everything you could imagine. Coronavirus has brought panic to our doorstep, and a feeling that is new to many of us here, the feeling of real danger.
It must be said however, that any amount of danger we may be feeling here is entirely trivial when compared to other communities in this country, and around the world. This virus continues to claim lives, our day to day existence has been thrust into uncertainty, and even us white people now have had our lives unignorably interrupted by this global pandemic. But, we must understand that as white people, we remain in a privileged place of relative safety.
I assert that the greatest active threats to life in this country right now, remain the same as they have been: racism, white supremacy, and state sanctioned violence.
Right now, demonstrations and uprisings are expanding across the country to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Sean Monterrosa, Erik Salgado, David McAtee, and the ever-growing list of people being murdered by US law enforcement.
We need every single person’s participation. Showing up to a protest is a good first step, but we need to adapt into a strong, well organized, county-wide initiative to bring about substantial systematic change. This cannot be accomplished through a directive of reform, instead we must legitimize and mobilize the call to abolish institutions of oppression. I do not have the capacity to fully explore abolition here, but a great place to start is Alex Vitale’s book, The End of Policing, exploring how and why our criminal justice system needs to end.
The biggest barrier, in my view, stopping white folks from getting involved in the movement is that we often “don’t know where to start”. We start by giving up our comfort and security for the sake of a whole. If we only do what is easy or convenient to us, we are standing in the way of progress. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves on anti-racism and take daily actions to disrupt and abolish these systems of power.
Passively supporting is not enough, we must be active. We must protest, and if we aren’t able to, then support protestors.
If we are going to a demonstration, then we must show up to follow the leadership of local organizers and people of color. That being said, us white people cannot go on expecting black people and people of color to tell us what to do, that is not their responsibility, and they’ve been telling us for dozens of decades.
This is not about us, but we must show up willing to do what must be done to support the cause.
Support the efforts to defund the police, support the people on the front lines of this fight, and if you think you are supporting enough, you aren’t. We can’t let this moment slip past us, let’s make anti-racism more contagious than any virus ever could be.
Gabriel Kittle-Cervine | Santa Cruz
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GOOD IDEA
TEACHING MOMENT
A GoFundMe campaign is raising money for a Black youth empowerment workshop for local high schoolers. The four-week workshop will begin online the week of July 22, culminating in an August celebration. The empowering workshop will cover the teachings of Black history, Black feminist theory and youth organizing grounded in critical race and ethnic studies curricula. Funds will go toward care packages, course material, art supplies, notebooks, food and guest speakers. For more on the fundraiser, visit gofundme.com/f/santa-cruz-black-youth-empowerment-workshop.
GOOD WORK
BEACHING MOMENT
Santa Cruz has gotten completely off Heal the Bay’s “Beach Bummer” list for the first time in 10 years. The list comes out every summer, and over the past decade, Santa Cruz’s Cowell Beach often found itself listed as one of the state’s dirtiest. Eventually, Santa Cruz staff figured out that the main culprits were flocks of birds that gathered on the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf and relieved themselves in the water. City leaders and a Cowell’s Working Group worked to reduce places for birds to rest on the wharf.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The Precogs are never wrong. But, occasionally … they do disagree.”
Because many in-person events across Santa Cruz County have been canceled or postponed during the pandemic, Good Times is compiling a weekly list of virtual events hosted by local nonprofits, artists, fitness instructors and businesses. To submit your virtual event, send an email to ca******@go*******.sc.
ARTS AND MUSIC
CONNECTIONS: A VIRTUAL PRINTMAKING EXHIBIT View the virtual Resource Center for Nonviolence “CONNECTIONS” Printmaking Exhibit online through July 31 at rcnv.org/programs/rcnv-exhibits-the-art-of-nonviolence. In this time of the coronavirus and sheltering at home, we yearn for connection. These prints link us to the healing power of nature, our history and our memories. They provide a window of hope for the current moment. The art helps us to remember the past and to face the future. Features eleven artists: Jody Bare, Molly Brown, Marcus Cota, Esmeralda DeGiovanni, Emma Formato, Jane Gregorius, Anita Heckman, Bridget Henry, Glenn Joy, Stephanie Martin and Melissa West. The exhibit has moved online due to Covid-19, since RCNV is temporarily closed to the public. For more information: an***@rc**.org.
SPEED SKETCHING Come with paper and pencil and try your hand at speed sketching: All artistic experience is welcome. Prior to beginning the program, please select an object in your home and place it in view of your computer’s camera, and let’s have fun together and see who can draw the silliest, stylish, true to life, or abstract interpretation of it. Every Tuesday afternoon at 2pm, take a break out of your day for some fun! Register for Zoom at: santacruzpl.libcal.com/event/6780189.
MIKE THE MAGICIAN Magician Mike Della Penna creates wonder and laughter with family magic performances that are equal parts playful and astonishing! He is a favorite at preschools, libraries and family venues and is known for captivating the 3-to-7-year-old crowd with his fun-filled, participatory magic shows. Tuesday, July 7, 1pm. Visit santacruzpl.org for more information.
CLASSES
GROW YOUR SELF-LEADERSHIP FOR OPTIMAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING Join us for a one-hour event to learn five simple tips you can use any day to help yourself feel great, manage your stress response and continue to lead yourself in a positive direction even in this unusual time. Tuesday, July 7, 10:30am. On Zoom. Learn more: gatherinsantacruz.com.
SEVEN SIMPLE STEPS FOR CREATING YOUR SUCCESSFUL EVENT Join us for a one-hour event to learn seven simple tips for creating, promoting, inviting to, and holding your successful webinar or workshop, in person, or online! Thursday, July 2, 1pm. On Zoom. Learn more: gatherinsantacruz.com.
SALSA SUELTA IN PLACE: Free weekly online session in Cuban-style Salsa Suelta for experienced beginners and up. Contact to get a Zoom link. Thursdays at 7pm. salsagente.com.
COMMUNITY
2020 SUMMER LUNCH PROGRAM Children and youth aged 18 and under can get free lunches this summer at 12 sites throughout Santa Cruz County! The annual Summer Lunch program, sponsored by La Manzana Community Resources, a program of Community Bridges, combats food insecurity and supports good nutritional habits. The Summer Lunch program begins June 8 and serves lunch Monday through Friday from 12-1pm. Free meals will be provided to all children, without eligibility documentation, who are 18 years of age and younger. Visit communitybridges.org/lmcr for more information.
KIDS CREATE STEAM PROJECT SERIES Series of STEAM programs through the summer for kids of all ages, presented via Facebook and our YouTube channel. Look for new videos on Tuesdays at 3:30pm and Fridays at 10am through July. Check out our Facebook (facebook.com/santacruzpl/) and Youtube channel (youtube.com/user/SantaCruzPL).
LEGO BUILDING CHALLENGE Join our eight-week summer Lego Building Challenge. You will only need common Lego pieces to complete these challenges. To join the fun, register each week via our online calendar, June 10 through July 29. On Wednesday, you will receive an email with the weekly challenge. If you would like to share your creation, post a photo on our Facebook SCPL Lego Building Challenge webpage. Bonus building challenges will be posted there for intermediate-level Lego fans. Learn more at santacruzpl.org.
TALES TO TAILS GOES VIRTUAL Tales to Tails goes virtual to create a comfortable, neutral, and fun reading experience. Bring some books, a stuffed animal or your own pet, and come read with us! This is a YouTube livestream event so you might be reading to up to six animals at once. Woo hoo! Caregivers, you can post your child’s first name and city in the comments section, along with the book they are reading, and we’ll read off as many of those names as we can, live, during the break we need to give the dogs. Each week you register we’ll send you your dog bone “punch cards.” These will be dated dog bones your child can color and email to us. The following week, we’ll display them live on the feed. This will also be recorded so if you can’t make it live, the dogs will still be there for you. Every Wednesday, 10-11am. Learn more at santacruzpl.libcal.com/event/6764929.
PEOPLE AND STORIES: READING DEEPLY IN COMMUNITY People and Stories is dedicated to opening doors to literature for new audiences. Through oral readings and rigorous discussions of enduring short stories, we invite participants to find fresh understandings of themselves, of others, and of the world. Please note that some stories contain themes and language of an adult nature. Santa Cruz Public Libraries offers People and Stories regularly in our county jails. We invite you to our special eight-week session on Zoom! Drop in for one or attend all 8 People and Stories sessions! Wednesdays, June 10-July 29, 1:30pm. Learn more at santacruzpl.libcal.com/event/6760931.
GROUPS
SUNSET BEACH BOWLS Experience the tranquility, peace and calmness as the ocean waves harmonize with the sound of Crystal Bowls. Every Tuesday at 7:45pm. Moran Lake Park.
VIRTUAL YOUNG ADULT (18-30) TRANSGENDER SUPPORT GROUP A weekly peer support group for young adults aged 18-25 who identify as transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, agender, or any other non-cisgender identity. This is a social group where we meet and chat among ourselves, sharing our experiences and thoughts in a warm, welcoming setting. Our meetings will be held on Discord during the shelter-in-place order. For more info, contact Ezra Bowen at tr***@di*************.org.
LGBTQNBI+ SUPPORT GROUP FOR CORONAVIRUS STRESS This weekly LGBTQNBI+ support group is being offered to help us all deal with stress during the shelter-in-place situation that we are experiencing from the coronavirus. Feel free to bring your lunch and chat together to get support. This group is offered at no cost and will be facilitated by licensed therapists Shane Hill, Ph.D., and Melissa Bernstein, LMFT #52524. Learn how to join the Zoom support group at diversitycenter.org/community-calendar.
OUTDOOR
SEYMOUR CENTER’S OCEAN EXPLORERS VIRTUAL SUMMER CAMP Ocean Explorers experience the thrill of scientific discovery at a working marine lab. Join the Seymour Marine Discovery Center for behind-the-scenes virtual visits, live streaming interactions with scientists and animal trainers, and much more! Children actively learn in a distance learning format. Enjoy a week of fun this summer learning about ocean science. Investigate the incredible creatures that inhabit Monterey Bay. Discover how ocean scientists work with marine animals at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center and Long Marine Lab to help conserve animals in the wild. Space is limited–APPLY NOW! Masterful Marine Mammals, ages 9-11, July 13-17, and August 3-7. Masterful Marine Mammals, ages 12-14, June 29-July 3, and July 20-24. Something’s Fishy, ages 7-9 (waitlist only), July 6-10. Marine Science for Girls, ages 9-11, (waitlist only), July 27-31. Programs run 10:30am to 2:30pm (1-hour lunch break from 12-1pm): varied activities and mini-breaks. Fees: Members $250 (was $610); General Public $300 (was $650). Learn more at seymourcenter.ucsc.edu/learn/youth-teen-programs/ocean-explorers-summer-camp.
Updated June 30, 9pm: This story was updated with information from a media report by KION.
It probably isn’t a good sign when a business has to post a message on social media insisting that its “ownership, management and staff do not condone violence or racism.”
The owners of the downtown Santa Cruz restaurant Alderwood said on Instagram Monday that they had reviewed security footage of an “extremely unfortunate” fight that broke out in the restaurant’s dining area last week. “After reviewing security footage, both parties were found to be at fault and removed,” the post read.
The post—apparently written in response to online backlash Monday—discussed how the founders of Alderwood, which opened at the end of 2018, have always wanted it to be part of the Santa Cruz community and a staple of the culinary arts scene in Santa Cruz. “Our staff and guests are multicultural and always have been,” the post continued, before elaborating that the business’ leaders are “trying to heal” from the incident.
According to Reddit user Necessary-Parking, who posted about the incident on the Santa Cruz subreddit, a group of white diners shouted racial and homophobic slurs at an Alderwood chef in the restaurant before attacking him physically. The chef, the user wrote, retaliated in self-defense and “was subsequently fired a week later.”
The Reddit post, which came before Alderwood’s statement on Instagram, called on the restaurant to respond.
Alderwood did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Good Times on what happened. Grainy footage has surfaced on Imgur of a fight at the restaurant. Although the video does not provide a clear shot of what transpired, it appears to show an older white couple fighting with an Alderwood employee. At a few points, the employee and a man nearly came to blows.
In a Tuesday evening report by KION, restaurant managers told a TV news reporter that they’ve received multiple serious threats since the firing. They also said they had no choice but to fire the employee because of his role in the fight.
“The security footage shows both sides escalating the situation, and perhaps not an equal measure, but it’s important to note it was violent,” Executive Chef Jeffrey Wall told KION, adding that the executive team messed up by not communicating the reasons behind the firing.
According to the report, the restaurant was closed Tuesday and does not have a plan for when it will reopen.
Restaurant employee Evan Maine told KION at least 10 employees have resigned due to the situation. He expressed frustration with leadership over its handling of the fiasco and the decision to fire his colleague.
“It’s just unjustified. They wanted to cut their ties from the situation by letting him go, which ultimately had a major blow-back on them in the public eye,” Maine told KION. “In today’s social climate we all know no one’s going to stand for that kind of behavior.”
Since Monday afternoon, more than a dozen users have posted one-star reviews on Alderwood’s Yelp page. That prompted a note from Yelp that the page is being monitored by the site due to current events, which have been known to drive people to leave low ratings. The pop-up note on Alderwood’s Yelp page says the site has temporarily disabled posting.
Alderwood’s Facebook page has filled up with comments from upset users who want to know more about what happened at the restaurant, how management handled the situation and why they handled it that way.
Many pictures of fancy-looking dishes now have
long streams of comments—some of them referring to “Karens,” a slang term for
entitled white people.
“Your risotto looks like
Karen needs to speak to the manager,” Donna Bosworth wrote.
Before she moved to Santa Cruz in 2004, Brenda Griffin, the president of the Santa Cruz chapter of the NAACP, worked for a New England civil rights law firm in a big industrial city. The job left her with sad memories after witnessing the devastation caused by police violence and its aftermath. “The police officers were very brutal,” she says.
But Griffin says she had never seen someone be killed in cold blood until videos circulated in May of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of a Black bouncer named George Floyd for more than eight minutes. The footage ignited protests around the country and prompted nationwide discussions about police violence and racial bias. All of that has given Griffin some semblance of faith that protesters may keep marching until U.S. leaders address the inequities facing the country.
“I am hopeful because the floodlights are on this issue—not just the spotlight, what the NAACP and other organizations do, but the floodlights—are on our racial inequities in healthcare and education and law enforcement. Not only in the United States, but throughout the world,” she says. “Seeing all the different ethnicities in these protests makes me hopeful that we’ll see some changes come about. I also hope that people will go the distance. We’re in a movement; we’re in a moment right now. And I’m hoping that we will continue this moment until we see systemic changes.”
The Santa Cruz City Council voted on June 23 to display the Pan-African and Black Lives Matter flags in front of City Hall every year during the month of July. That same afternoon, the council voted to establish two new groups to review police policy, preemptively ban facial recognition software, and to effectively ban a controversial predictive policing technology that Santa Cruz first started experimenting with nine years ago. Additionally, Police Chief Andy Mills announced changes to his department’s policies. He banned no-knock warrants, neck restraints and shooting at moving vehicles. He also modified parts of the department’s use-of-force procedures.
But it’s been the predictive policing decision that has received the most attention.
Santa Cruz Mayor Justin Cummings says there’s much work left to do to get bias out of police data before departments can start relying on such data to make patrolling decisions.
“If we have racial bias in policing, what that means is that the data that’s going into these algorithms is already inherently biased and will have biased outcomes, so it doesn’t make any sense to try and use technology when the likelihood that it’s going to negatively impact communities of color is apparent,” says Cummings, the city’s first-ever Black male mayor.
Santa Cruz became the first community in the country to take such action on predictive policing, which uses data to target law enforcement to areas where crime is statistically most likely to occur. Last week’s vote on predictive policing represents a significant plot twist for a high-profile invention that has garnered flashy headlines for Santa Cruz over the last nine years—and one that has deep ties to the county’s top politicians.
The technology’s future locally is not abundantly clear.
Brian MacDonald, CEO of Santa Cruz-based predictive policing company PredPol, says he doesn’t think of the council’s recent vote on the matter as a ban at all. He paints it as an opportunity for the city to press reset and make sure that predictive policing systems do not have any biases baked in. MacDonald is adamant that they do not.
According to the language in the City Council’s motion, however, the council would need to pass a new resolution to let the police start using predictive policing again.
PREDICTION MARKETS
In 2011, Santa Cruz became the country’s second community, after Los Angeles, to try predictive policing.
Although it’s impossible to ever pinpoint the reasons behind fluctuations in crime, Santa Cruz saw an 11% decrease in burglaries during a six-month pilot, compared to the six months prior, and a 4% decrease compared to the same stretch of time one year earlier. (Some contemporaneous news reports cited more significant reductions in crime, but MacDonald couldn’t confirm their veracity, as he wasn’t with the company at the time.)
The system operated based on the notion that property criminals are very often creatures of habit—that when they are successful, they tend to strike again in an area nearby. Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) deployed predictive policing partly as a way to cope with increasingly scarce resources during a time of Great Recession-era budget cutbacks. The pivot earned nationwide coverage, including a spot on Time’s list of the 50 best inventions of 2011. Predictive policing promotional materials from that period wrapped up the system in the metaphorical language of earthquakes: After a quake strikes, seismologists can calculate the probability that an aftershock will happen in the area and when. Property crimes, the thinking went, would follow a similar pattern. Journalists often preferred to compare the system to Minority Report—Steven Spielberg’s science fiction thriller starring Tom Cruise, wherein suspects are caught before they commit crimes.
Researcher George Mohler, a one-time assistant adjunct professor for UCSC, developed the predictive policing system with UCLA anthropology professor Jeffrey Brantingham. Together, they created PredPol, which now counts about 50 community agencies—with a combined population of 10,000,000 residents—as clients, according to MacDonald.
PredPol, which is headquartered in Santa Cruz, uses three kinds of data: crime type, crime location and crime date/time. “These three data points are the closest we can come to truly objective crime data to work with,” MacDonald says via email.
The company uses those data points to create its “heat maps”—the 500-square-foot city blocks that officers should make sure to patrol through at certain times on a given day. MacDonald says PredPol never collects any racial, demographic or socioeconomic information, nor does it use arrest data. PredPol also limits its predictions to a rather narrow window of crime: vehicle theft, break-ins, burglaries, assaults, and robberies. He says the company has seen no evidence of bias in its data collection.
“If cars are being stolen on weeknights in a predominantly Black neighborhood, our prediction boxes would show up there,” he writes. “If they are being stolen in a predominantly white neighborhood, that’s where we’ll see boxes. In either case, officers will proactively patrol those areas to deter those thefts from occurring. It’s the presence of the officers that deters the crime.”
Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend was an SCPD crime analyst and spokesperson during the department’s predictive policing rollout. He knows full well that police nationwide have a tendency to show bias when on patrols, but he says that because predictive policing relied on data from police reports, the inputs were as sound as they could possibly be.
“In fact, the greater concern in that situation was, ‘Is there under-reporting in certain populations of crime because of concern with relationship with police?’ For example, you’re more likely to report a crime in the upper Westside than you are in the Beach Flats,” he says.
Friend says that, as he recalls, predictive policing resulted in fewer patrols going to neighborhoods that may have previously been oversaturated with policing.
One prominent critique of PredPol’s methods, though, came in 2015, as published by the Royal Statistical Society’s Significance magazine. Two researchers found that, when they plugged numbers for Oakland drug crime numbers into the PredPol algorithm, the heat maps fell disproportionately into neighborhoods with more people of color.
However, MacDonald notes that PredPol never used drug arrest data for precisely that reason. PredPol’s algorithm doesn’t predict for crime types that can result from officer-initiated actions, like drug use or prostitution—so as to avoid creating a statistical doom loop, where over-policed communities become increasingly over-policed as cops find more and more crime.
Santa Cruz County Supervisor and former Mayor Ryan Coonerty once served as director of government relations for PredPol. He started hearing about possible issues around racial bias in PredPol’s algorithmic data around 2014. Coonerty, who stopped working for the company in 2013, says he takes those concerns seriously and that they should be further vetted and addressed.
PROBABLE CAUSE
Another concern about predictive policing revolves around what happens when a cop shows up to an identified hotspot.
Does the officer simply circle once or twice around in their patrol car, make their presence known and keep an eye out for any obvious crimes being committed—as MacDonald and Friend indicate that they should? Or does the officer prowl around, emboldened by the heat map, looking for the slightest hint that someone might be homeless, poor or maybe even just nervous-looking?
The answers aren’t always clear. Some privacy scholars have raised questions about predictive policing based on Fourth Amendment concerns and also asked what constitutes grounds for reasonable suspicion in the era of highly targeted police operations.
Four years later, Clark—a big supporter of predictive policing—ignited outrage locally when he took a cable news reporter out on a patrol and appeared to profile a Black man walking a bike as a possible criminal, before offering reasons why a white girl on a bike didn’t look suspicious at all. Clark, who could not be reached for comment, retired in December of 2016.
When it comes to perceptions of bias among recent SCPD leaders, Clark wasn’t the only culprit.
Former Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel, who retired in 2017, recently took to Facebook to make what appeared to be a racist statement. Shortly after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings donated $120 million to support historically Black colleges, Vogel announced he was canceling his Netflix subscription because he said $120 million was “a lot of money for a charity that I am not interested in donating to,” as reported on GoodTimes.sc. (Vogel did not mention the colleges directly or respond to requests for comment.) In the comments below his post, the former chief added that he also disagreed with a $1 million donation from Hastings to a data-based research organization dedicated to fighting racial bias in American law enforcement. This happened on the evening of June 19, as activists were taking to the streets for Juneteenth to protest racial bias in law enforcement.
It’s no wonder activists have had concerns about a history of implicit bias at SCPD, dating back to predictive policing’s early days.
The alternatives to the data-heavy approach, however, aren’t always clear. Generally speaking, Coonerty has concerns about what it means when officers don’t rely on data to make decisions. A deputy’s habits and gut instincts may not be colorblind either.
“It’s always better to have people informed, rather having people going out and basing things on their own hunches,” Coonerty says.
He still believes the right data-driven solution could be effective to fight crime, assuming the data is sound and the algorithm bias-free. He gives the example of the recent rash of catalytic converter thefts from Priuses around Santa Cruz.
“That’s exactly what you could predict,” Coonerty says. “People’s habits are predictable. That’s an example of where [predictive policing] could be used.”
It’s also an example of where the line blurs between predictive policing and typical investigative work. Chief Mills says there is a predictive element to investigative work of his department’s crime analyst John Mitchell. But he says the focus is on solving crimes. Mills even framed Mitchell’s work as “predictive policing” in an interview with GT last year, when the term was less politically charged.
When and how exactly SCPD started to phase out PredPol’s software is unclear. Mills told GT in 2018 that he had incorporated the system into his neighborhood policing model. But a recent staff report indicated that SCPD stopped using the formula shortly after Mills arrived at the department in 2017. While on the phone with GT, Mills checked with a police sergeant to ask for his recollection of SCPD’s timeline, and the sergeant told Mills that many officers had pretty much stopped using the algorithm before Mills arrived because they didn’t feel it was working.
SARGE CARD
When it comes to doubts about predictive policing’s efficacy, Santa Cruz police sergeants would not be the only ones to feel that way.
Although Santa Cruz was the first city to pass an actual moratorium on predictive policing, police departments around the country, including in Palo Alto and Mountain View, have dumped the software in recent years because leaders said they weren’t seeing results. And in Los Angeles, after two years of pushback from activists, the Los Angeles Police Department cut ties with PredPol in April. LAPD officials said the reason was due to budget-related concerns, although an audit last year had created questions about the program’s success.
Given how civil liberties concerns have been front and center in discussions about the technology, a review of the academic and journalistic arguments against predictive policing finds them to be thinner on hard data than expected. Many of the articles look at non-PredPol types of predictive policing, including systems in place elsewhere in the U.S. that determine the likelihood that individuals would commit crimes in the near future—a practice that blatantly resembles racial profiling. (It’s a practice PredPol opposes.) Some articles conflate the various forms of predictive policing with one another or confuse them altogether. Others say PredPol relies on arrest or drug data for its algorithms, which MacDonald insists the company has never done.
MacDonald says PredPol is a small company that doesn’t have a public relations representative and that the business has chosen not to engage with its critics. He lists eight other companies—including IBM, Motorola and Cisco—that have been involved in the predictive policing space. He says he feels that many have received less flak, despite being, in his opinion, less transparent and more problematic in their business practices.
Hard data aside, it is the circumstantial evidence fueling activists’ deep-seated distrust of PredPol’s work that may be more compelling.
Critics of predictive policing often place it in the broader historical context. In many ways, the precursor to PredPol was a metric-obsessed approach undertaken in the 1990s by the NYPD called CompStat, which harmed communities of color and the efforts by law enforcement to work with them.
PredPol’s leaders may have a high-minded concept of how their data is divorced from the historical trends in faulty crime data of yesteryear, but given community concerns and the possible breaches of trust caused by former department leaders in the company’s hometown, it would behoove leadership to try to get out in front of the controversies and respond to questions from the community—especially in the midst of a nationwide conversation about reforming the police.
It’s also not unreasonable for critics to put the onus on PredPol to prove that its software helps vulnerable communities more than it hurts them.
MacDonald did not speak up at last week’s City Council meeting, nor did any other PredPol employees or supporters of predictive policing more generally. MacDonald says he sat down with Mills a couple times after the chief’s 2017 arrival in Santa Cruz. Other than that, MacDonald hasn’t talked with any city leaders lately.
“I haven’t taken the time to meet with other Santa Cruz city leaders because Chief Mills said he wanted to take a different approach,” he writes to GT. “At some point I’d like to sit down with [Mayor] Cummings and [City Manager Martín] Bernal to give them an overview of what we do and get their feedback on what we do and how it is perceived.”
UCSC professor emeritus of Sociology Craig Reinarman, who has followed the predictive policing news, isn’t surprised to hear that PredPol didn’t step forward to publically engage. He sees it as part of a larger trend.
“This is the same thing you hear from Silicon Valley all the time—whether it’s [President Donald] Trump and Twitter or Facebook ads that are lying and so on and so forth,” says Reinarman, who has concerns about predictive policing software, based on issues he’s seen with algorithms targeting probation and parole terms and also based on questions he has about how heat maps are both generated and interpreted. “Technology’s never really neutral, and they claim it’s always neutral. So I’m not surprised to hear the people who invented this didn’t want to come out and defend it in public. They may know the most about the ways in which there are risks about reifying preexisting conditions.”
FLEET EFFORT
Going forward, Cummings has ideas for other data that PredPol or another group could use to start tracking a different aspect of public safety.
He’s curious if police officers making arrests and those who file reports may be disproportionately targeting people of color. “Could it be used, not for predictive purposes, but for evaluating police departments?” says Cummings, who first brought forward the idea of the predictive policing ban in January with two colleagues—then-councilmembers Drew Glover and Chris Krohn—both of whom faced a successful, if divisive, recall election.
Although it’s the predictive policing element that earned international headlines last week, the City Council also voted unanimously to preemptively ban facial recognition software, which has been shown to be prone to major errors, particularly in identifying faces of Black and Asian people. The Santa Cruz County ACLU advocated for both changes. The city is additionally creating two new groups—a Mayor’s Community Advisory Committee and a City Council working group—to study police issues more closely.
On top of that, the council will take a close look at the city budget at a Thursday meeting, with the plan of fine-tuning the budget throughout the summer. Given budget shortfalls related to the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent protests about law enforcement, Cummings knows there will be calls to “defund the police.” And although it may sound like a small semantic nuance, Cummings has appreciated how some of the discussion in recent weeks has shifted away from defunding the police per se and toward the idea of reinvesting in the community. Big changes, though, won’t happen overnight, he says.
“We need to have all pieces in place before we start cutting funding from different departments,” he says. “And that’s what this conversation will be all about—how do we want to be policed, what does public safety look like for Santa Cruz, and how can we do so in a way that ensures equal protection for everyone?”
Update,June 30, 7:15pm: This story has been updated to clarify when Ryan Coonerty left PredPol.
If you want to listen to local singer-songwriter Grant Summerland’s recently released debut album Bigfoot Museum in the most ideal setting, he offers a few suggestions. First, head out to Highway 9. Hit play at exactly 11:30pm and drive north up the highway for the duration of the record.
Summerland doesn’t think anyone will go to these lengths, but he did design the album with this optimal listening experience in mind. He came up with the concept for the record years ago when he was a teenager and would go on late-night drives up Highway 9. He wanted to capture the creepy vibe of the Santa Cruz Mountains at night, while also nailing the experience of listening to KZSC and other college radio stations in the off-hours when programming gets strange.
“Santa Cruz is a pretty weird place,” Summerland says. “I think that there is—in the mountains—definitely a dark undercurrent that could make for a good horror movie.”
Bigfoot Museum is a horror concept album featuring a wide range of musical genres like jazz, hip-hop, pop and indie rock. There is a narrator that drives up Highway 9 at night who is replaying the events of the summer that’s just ended, and his story involves evil forces, which may be real or imagined, that kept him locked in the house most of the summer. There’s also a sinister character named Charles that pops up now and again.
“Who he is, I will not say,” Summerland says of Charles. “What I think he is—he’s a really malicious figure. The narrator is constantly talking about how they’ve been inside all summer and they want to go out, but they can’t for some reason. Dealing with paranormal creatures, dealing with being trapped and shut-in.”
The record was also inspired by classic teen horror movies and shows that Summerland loved, especially the weirder ones like Donnie Darko and Twin Peaks. He wanted to make a distinctly Santa Cruz version of this horror style.
“There have been horror movies made in Santa Cruz like Us and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, but I wanted a different type of horror movie. Something more surreal, more of a psychological horror movie,” Summerland says.
The overriding theme of being stuck indoors all summer due to scary forces oddly was conceived years before anyone knew that Covid-19 would make this scenario a reality for people this summer. But Summerland wasn’t grappling with the realities of a pandemic shutting down society, he was thinking about the paradox of the “perfect summer,” a fictitious notion in films that’s impossible to achieve, and in many ways, hampers people from enjoying the summer they do get to have.
“You want to live life to the absolute fullest, and there’s a feeling that you’ll never actually get to live that full experience, ever. No matter what you do, there will always be something that prevents you from actually having the perfect summer,” Summerland says. “A lot of the album is coming to terms that there is no perfect summer. There is no perfect life. That’s not how you should think about life.”
The album’s title, Bigfoot Museum, is a reference to the very real Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton. However, there’s nothing in the album that has anything to do with the museum. For Summerland, the Bigfoot Discovery Museum was the perfect example of the weirder, creepier side of the Santa Cruz Mountains that he wanted to bring to his album, so why not name the album after it?
“There’s definitely the Santa Cruz summer. Usually, it’s images of surfboards, and the beach and burritos,” Summerland says. “I think there is a whole other side to the Santa Cruz experience, for people that live outside of the city. I wanted to flip the Santa Cruz summer upside down and show a different take on what that could even look like. And of course, it’s a really extreme take with monsters and the boogeyman and violence. That’s one part of Santa Cruz that I really wanted to include.”
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Marge Piercy writes, “The people I love the best, jump into work headfirst without dallying in the shallows.” The Aries people I love best will do just that in the coming days. Now is not the right time to wait around passively, lazily hoping that something better will come along. Nor is it prudent to procrastinate or postpone decisions while shopping around for more options or collecting more research. Dive, Aries, dive!
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip by Bill Watterson. It features a boy named Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. In the first panel of one story, Calvin is seated at a school desk looking perplexed as he studies a question on a test, which reads “Explain [Isaac] Newton’s First Law of Motion in your own words.” In the second panel, Calvin has a broad smile, suddenly imbued with inspiration. In the third panel, he writes his response to the test question: “Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz.” The fourth panel shows him triumphant and relaxed, proclaiming, “I love loopholes.” I propose that you use this scenario as your victorious metaphor in the coming weeks, Taurus. Look for loopholes! And use them to overcome obstacles and solve riddles.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves,” wrote philosopher and activist Simone Weil. I’m hoping that this horoscope of mine can help you avoid that mistake. In the coming weeks and months, you will have a stronger-than-usual need to be seen for who you really are—to have your essential nature be appreciated and understood by people you care about. And the best way to make sure that happens is to work hard right now on seeing, appreciating and understanding yourself.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Some readers wish I would write more like Cormac McCarthy or Albert Camus or Raymond Chandler: with spare simplicity. They accuse me of being too lush and exuberant in my prose. They want me to use shorter sentences and fewer adjectives. To them I say: It ain’t going to happen. I have feelings similar to those of best-selling Cancerian author Oliver Sacks, who the New York Times called, “one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century.” Sacks once said, “I never use one adjective if six seem to me better and, in their cumulative effect, more incisive. I am haunted by the density of reality and try to capture this with ‘thick description.’” I bring these thoughts to your attention, my fellow Cancerian, because I think it’s important for you to be your lavish, sumptuous, complex self in the coming weeks. Don’t oversimplify yourself or dumb yourself down, either intellectually or emotionally.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Travel writer Paul Theroux has journeyed long distances by train: once from Britain to Japan and back again, and then from Massachusetts to Argentina. He also rode trains during part of his expedition from Cairo to Cape Town. Here’s one of his conclusions: “It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.” I’d like to offer a milder version of that counsel as your metaphor for the coming weeks: The funky, bumpy, rickety influences will bring you the best magic.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno declared, “Everything that exalts and expands consciousness is good, while that which depresses and diminishes it is evil.” This idea will be intensely true for and applicable to you in the coming weeks, Virgo. It will be your sacred duty—both to yourself and to those you care about—to enlarge your understandings of how the world works and to push your awareness to become more inclusive and empathetic. What’s your vision of paradise-on-earth? Now is a good time to have fun imagining it.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): What do you want to be when you grow up, Libra? What’s that you say? You firmly believe you are already all grown up? I hope not! In my vision of your destiny, you will always keep evolving and transforming; you will ceaselessly transcend your existing successes and push on to accomplish further breakthroughs and victories. Now would be an excellent time to rededicate yourself to this noble aspiration. I invite you to dream and scheme about three specific wonders and marvels you would like to experience during the next five years.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has advice that would serve you well in the coming weeks. She says, “Keep a little space in your heart for the improbable. You won’t regret it.” In accordance with your astrological potentials, I’m inclined to amend her statement as follows: “Keep a sizable space in your heart for the improbable. You’ll be rewarded with catalytic revelations and intriguing opportunities.” To attract blessings in abundance, Scorpio, be willing to set aside some of your usual skepticism and urge for control.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author Malidoma Somé lives in the U.S. now, but was born in the West African country of Burkina Faso. He writes, “In the culture of my people, the Dagara, we have no word for the supernatural. The closest we come to this concept is Yielbongura, ‘the thing that knowledge can’t eat.’ This word suggests that the life and power of certain things depend upon their resistance to the categorizing knowledge that human beings apply to everything.” I bring Somé’s thoughts to your attention, Sagittarius, because I suspect that in the coming weeks, you will encounter more than the usual number of experiences that knowledge can’t eat. They might at times be a bit spooky or confounding but will mostly be interesting and fun. I’m guessing that if you embrace them, they will liberate you from overly literal and materialistic ideas about how the world works. And that will be good for your soul.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Pioneer Capricorn scientist Isaac Newton is often hailed as one of history’s greatest geniuses. I agree that his intellectual capacities were sublime. But his emotional intelligence was sparse and feeble. During the time he taught at Cambridge University, his talks were so affectless and boring that many of his students skipped most of his classes. I’ll encourage you to make Newton your anti-role model for the next eight weeks. This time will be favorable for you to increase your mastery of three kinds of intelligence beyond the intellectual kind: feeling, intuition and collaboration.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): When future writer (and Aquarius) Charles Dickens was 12 years old, his parents and siblings were incarcerated in a debtors’ prison. To stay alive and help his family, he took a job working 12 hours a day, six days a week, pasting labels on pots of boot polish in a rotting, rat-infested warehouse. Hard times! Yet the experiences he had there later provided him with rich material for the novels that ultimately made him wealthy and beloved. In predicting that you, too, will have future success at capitalizing on difficulty, I don’t mean to imply you’ve endured or will endure anything as harsh as Dickens’ ordeal. I’m just hoping to help you appreciate the motivating power of your challenging experiences.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Maybe you feel that the ongoing pandemic has inhibited your ability to explore and deepen intimacy to the degree that you would like to. But even if that’s the case, the coming weeks will provide openings that could soften and remedy your predicament. So be extra receptive and alert to the clues that life reveals to you. And call on your imagination to look for previously unguessed and unexpected ways to reinvent togetherness and tenderness. Let’s call the next three weeks your Season of Renewing Rapport.
Homework: Decide on three special words that will from now on serve as magic spells for you. Keep them secret! Don’t even tell me. realastrology.com.
