We may be living in a dog’s dream, but we this ‘Doggo Dreamland’ is no delusion. The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History and Santa Cruz SPCA are teaming up for a celebration to help local dogs. There will be adoptable pups, plus plenty of room to bring your own furry friends. There will also be a DIY dog toy station, face painting (for humans only) and a selection of animal portraits by local artist Janice Serilla.
INFO: 6-8 p.m. Friday, July 26. Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz. santacruzmah.org. $10 admission includes museum access.
Art Seen
‘Pinocchio: A Bot-Treemian Rhapsody’
Pinocchio meets futuristic techno-rock plus magic fairies? Sure, why not. In retro-futuristic Italy, the poor woodcarver Gepetto carves a puppet from an enchanted log that was the very last tree in the forest, because the greedy Stromboli family makes robot toys and games as their factory pollutes the water and destroys the environment. The puppet Pinocchio must resist temptation to join the lazy children in their endless gaming, and help the Green Fairy and her magical forest friend the Loraxini save the forest. In other words, you have to see it to believe it.
INFO: 7:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 24, through Sunday, Aug. 4. Park Hall, 9400 Mill St., Ben Lomond. lprt.org. $20.
Saturday 7/27
‘Books and Brews’ La Selva Beach Summer Fair
Over 50 arts and crafts vendors will sell their handmade jewelry, pottery, photography, jams, soaps, succulents, garden art, woodcraft, books, cards, bags, clothing, and more. The one-day Books and Brews festival also includes the Friends of the La Selva Beach Library Book Sale, with a giant selection of all genres of books and media at great prices. Food trucks, local craft beers, live music, and kids’ activities like facepainting are all on tap as well.
INFO: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. La Selva Beach Clubhouse, 314 Estrella Ave., La Selva Beach. bo**************@gm***.com. Free.
Saturday 7/27
Puppeteers for Fears
This isn’t your stereotypical lo-fi puppet show. This is a puppet show on drugs, plus a full rock band. The play tells the story of a sasquatch hunter and a sasquatch, both of whom are abducted by extraterrestrials and subjected to kooky medical experiments on a UFO. Imagine the sci-fi camp of Plan 9 From Outer Space paired with the bawdy comedy of Avenue Q. Despite its off-the-wall nature and somewhat cutesy puppets, be aware that this is not a show for children. It’s R-rated, for mature audiences only.
Back in the age of when people actually watched cable TV, the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” was a national summer event. In the age of the internet, we can now watch shark attack videos whenever we want; unfortunately, they don’t always give much educational context (gasp). Luckily, the Seymour Center is coming to the rescue. For a full week, they are hosting a Shark Science Week full of facts about the cartilaginous fish with big teethies. They will be exploring shark adaptations like sharks’ extraordinary senses and the unique ways in which they reproduce (hint: there are sometimes teeth involved). The shark touching pool will also be open every day.
INFO: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Seymour Marine Discovery Center, 100 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz. $9 general admission.
If there is one day from the Trump presidency that will be remembered as a key turning point, my pick is Aug. 12, 2017. The footage coming out of Charlottesville, Virginia, that weekend was horrifying: first, on Friday night, a torchlight rally of pallid-faced white nationalist marchers on the University of Virginia grounds, chanting “You will not replace us” and “Blood and soil!” Then on Saturday morning, Aug. 12, melee in the streets of Charlottesville, a surreal mix of self-caricaturing militia and KKK types parading in broad daylight—white supremacist groups cranked up on years of midnight chat-room binges, now out in numbers looking to hurt people.
The nation saw, and shuddered. This was not coded racism, like the Willie Horton ads the George H.W. Bush campaign for President ran in the 1988 campaign. This was Nuremberg in 1934, a rally of the right conceived as an exercise in self-justifying propaganda. Hate-filled cultists on a mission, preening and strutting and showing us all they think they’re superior and that many of their fellow citizens are subhuman. The mob in Charlottesville made clear they felt encouraged and even egged on by the demagogue in the White House, with David Duke, a national KKK leader, confirming that very point in Charlottesville that day.
The question was, how would President Trump respond? I’ll make an admission that might make me sound like a naif: Watching the horrors unfold from here in Santa Cruz, I actually thought Trump might condemn the white supremacists who had come from 35 states—some of them from Northern California—to gather in Charlottesville and revel in hate and violence. I know I wasn’t alone in thinking that the reality-TV president might actually decide to act presidential.
It’s more than an idle point, as former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s new book, Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism, makes clear. McAuliffe, who was governor at the time, talked with Trump on Aug. 12, and hung up the phone convinced Trump was going to do the right thing.
“I had no illusions that a guy whose favorite thing to do was watch himself on TV was suddenly going to turn into Bobby Kennedy,” McAuliffe writes on the second page of the book. “Eloquence was no more his thing than consistency. But in the middle of a crisis like this, I honestly did expect him to rise to the occasion. That’s what presidents do.”
Instead, infamously, Trump showed up before the cameras that afternoon at his golf course in New Jersey, condemning “in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence”—and then, in a Dadaist twist, adding, “on many sides, on many sides.” Donald Trump had just hit the gas and barreled past the last exit ramp left in his presidency; instead of veering toward decency and democracy, he went with his base impulses, choosing blatant racism.
“I was shocked,” McAuliffe writes. “I felt our nation had just been suckerpunched.”
It fell to McAuliffe, as the sitting governor, to say the words many thought the president of the United States should have spoken. “I have a message to all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today,” McAuliffe said on national TV that afternoon. “Our message is plain and simple: go home and never come back. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you. You pretend that you are patriots, but you are anything but a patriot. You are a bunch of cowards.”
LEAD TIMEThough he was already known as the governor of Virginia and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, McAuliffe’s response to the violence in Charlottesville thrust him into the national conversation on racism.
McAuliffe’s words were widely cited. He had shown leadership when the man in the White House showed none. Congressman John Lewis, one of the giants of the Civil Rights movement, heard those words and called the Virginia governor the following Monday to thank him. “I cried when I heard your speech,” Lewis told McAuliffe. “That was one of the great speeches I’ve ever heard in my life.”
I was struck immediately with the importance of what happened in Charlottesville. Later, I reached out and urged McAuliffe to do a book about it. I was the co-author of McAuliffe’s first book, What a Party!: My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators, and Other Wild Animals, which hit the New York Times bestseller list when it was published in March 2007.
I helped him with this project, as well, and it was fascinating to be there with McAuliffe as he talked to a variety of people about what went wrong in the preparations for Charlottesville, and what lessons need to be drawn. McAuliffe can come across as very sure of himself, and always ready with an answer, but he learned from doing this book about listening—as all of us, especially white people, are going to have to do if we’re going to make any real headway.
“I wrote this book because I wanted people to have a full understanding of what happened in Charlottesville,” McAuliffe told me on the phone last weekend. “It was such a shocking moment in U.S. history that a thousand people could walk down a city street spewing the most hate-filled, vile, disgusting language at fellow Americans.”
I asked him what he learned from working on the book.
“Upon reflection, as I wrote the book, as bad as Charlottesville was, there was an upside to it, which was that we exposed this sickening underbelly in American culture and realized that we have to do much more to deal with racism and its effects,” he said.
Charlottesville was not a wakeup call for African-Americans, McAuliffe added, as they did not need a wakeup call—they knew all about these racist white supremacist organizations. But for a lot of the rest of us, the horror of Charlottesville endures in a way that needs to be explored. What more can we do? How do we truly keep alive the memory of Charlottesville?
Susan Bro lost a daughter in Charlottesville, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was peacefully protesting when James Fields drove his car into a crowd, killing her and injuring many others. (Two Virginia State Police pilots, Berke Bates and Jay Cullen, were also killed that weekend when their helicopter went down.)
“Heather helped to open my eyes to a lot of things I’d been putting my head in the sand about,” Susan Bro said recently. “If, after Charlottesville, we just talk about ‘Love one another’ and have a kumbaya moment here, then we accomplish nothing. We’re back to square one. If we don’t do it now, then we definitely wasted an opportunity—and wasted a life, frankly.”
Beyond Charlottesville details how the governor and his advisors considered declaring a state of emergency late on the morning of Aug. 12, finally doing so in time to clear the park where the “Unite the Right Rally” was centered just before noon, the scheduled start time for the gathering of white supremacists.
“Once we’d cleared the park and everybody had been dispersed, outside of several violent fist fights, there had been no damage to property,” McAuliffe told me. “My biggest relief was that, even with so many people with firearms, nobody got shot. It wasn’t until later that I was informed that this maniac James Fields had weaponized his car and run into a crowd in downtown Charlottesville. Soon after that, I was told that one of our State Police helicopters had gone down and we’d lost two pilots, Berke Bates and Jay Cullen, who were friends of mine and my family. So in a matter of just a few hours, what had seemed like a successful operation had turned into a nightmare.”
It’s always hard to say, but there are indications that a new urgency on fighting against racism might shape up as a major component of Democrats’ path to victory next year against Trump, assuming he’s actually running for re-election. Political reporters who work in Washington would have us believe there is a difficult choice for Democrats to make between emphasizing a positive alternative vision to Trumpism, on the one hand, and fighting back against his demagoguery on the other.
But both can happen, even with intermediaries in the press seeking to sabotage the effort. It’s not dangerous for Democrats to have differences of opinion on how to call Trump out for the racist he is. It’s healthy and productive; let different voices come at Trump from different directions, and we’ll see how it all adds up.
The main point is: No Democratic candidate who is flying on auto-pilot when it comes to issues of racism will survive the primaries. The historical moment—and a lot of angry voters, including many young people—demand much, much more. Joe Biden seems to be slowly tuning into that reality, with his new one-liner about Trump being “more George Wallace than George Washington.” It’s worth noting that Biden dropped the line last week in California, and we’re sure to hear more about Trump and Wallace, the notorious white supremacist governor of Alabama in the 1960s and 1970s.
McAuliffe’s new book has a real shot at becoming part of that larger discussion. Newsweek is planning a cover package next week, including excerpting an entire chapter. Biden has said he was inspired to run for president this time around because of what happened in Charlottesville—and he’s liable to get a book.
Just last week, the White House issued a statement condemning Beyond Charlottesville. “Terry McAuliffe’s slander against the president is nothing short of disgusting,” Judd P. Deere, a White House spokesman perhaps unaware that slander refers to spoken speech, not the printed word, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Trump himself is sure to get involved, firing back at McAuliffe one way or another, but for people who actually read the book—as opposed to just looking at the pictures and searching the index for their own name—the tense run-through of events will be disturbing and thought-provoking. That’s McAuliffe’s hope, to generate a deeper and wider discussion of the need for major change than we’ve ever had.
“For me, if we’re going to have discussions on racism, we have to talk about looking forward and how we deal with racism today,” he told me. “I don’t want to go back 30 or 40 years. I want to look at today and the future. I want discussions of dealing with these problems. It’s not about statues and hateful symbols, it’s about actionable items that deal with the horrible effects of racism.
“My goal is that the book will help open peoples’ eyes. For far too long, we’ve tried to sweep racism under the rug. It’s important that this be brought ought into the light of day for a full discussion. Until we all realize that, we’re going to be in the same place.”
He’ll be meeting with some local community leaders and office holders here in the Santa Cruz area when he arrives for an Aug. 7 book discussion and signing at Bookshop Santa Cruz. It’s a great chance to ask Gov. McAuliffe your own questions about Charlottesville, and to share your own perspective. He may or may not give you an answer you like, but he’ll be listening.
Terry McAuliffe will discuss and sign his new book ‘Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism’ at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. 423-0900, bookshopsantacruz.com. The event is free.
Half Moon Bay’s Bob Dooley has been fishing since he was 11, and as a boat owner, he’s traveled many times to the waters off Alaska searching for pollock and other whitefish.
Now 65 and retired, Dooley serves on the Pacific Fishery Management Council, weighing in on regulatory policy. He realizes the term “fishery management” inspires suspicion among fishermen, especially those from the generation prior, but Dooley credits federal regulations with keeping the nation’s fisheries sustainable and letting populations rebound—ultimately giving fishermen like himself a shot at a career.
The backbone of this framework is the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which passed in 1976. Among its provisions was an outline for a system to create fish allotments for individual fisheries. Congress has reauthorized the act a few times over the years, most recently in 2006. In the years since, efforts to revisit the law have stalled out before netting any results. Now, Congressmember Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) is starting a “listening tour” to get perspectives on how to improve Magnuson–Stevens. Huffman plans to introduce a bill to tackle the reauthorization within the next year.
Looking ahead, Dooley says Congress may take this important opportunity to clarify wording that often gets misinterpreted. By and large, though, he’s hoping that legislators hold interest groups at bay.
“The problem is when you open the door, a lot of special interests can climb through. It’s a good act, and I don’t think we need to fool with it much,” he says.
As the recently appointed chair of Congress’ Democrat-controlled Water, Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee, Huffman says his goal is to help manage oceans and fisheries “to be as environmentally and economically resilient as possible.” He’s asking how issues like global climate change should be considered in a revised version of the act.
Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, is looking forward to the listening tour. Oppenheim has his doubts about how Congress can make any legislative progress on global warming under a White House that denies the existence of climate change.Nonetheless, he believes the opportunity will prompt fishermen to start thinking more globally and get involved outside of the individual policies undertaken by local fishery councils.
Representative Huffman, for his part, enjoys support from an environmental community that’s aligned with his values. Huffman riding herd over the process, Oppenheim says, “will be an interesting dynamic to watch.”
“He needs to understand that fisheries management is about the industry first,” Oppenheim adds, and that the Magnuson-Stevens Act wasn’t intended to shut down the industry, but to figure out how to make it work in a manner that’s sustainable for the fish and fishermen alike.
Oppenheim knows full well that fishing has an impact on fish stocks. “But we’ve brought back many stocks from the brink,” he says. He adds that California fishermen have, if grudgingly, “throttled back their activities to protect them.” Overfishing is one issue, but it’s “climate impacts and industrial activities outside of fishing,” he says, “that are the biggest impact” on fish stocks.
Oppenheim says that lawmakers should take a hard look at any offshore industry development as they study reauthorization. He says external threats to fishermen’s livelihoods—offshore oil and gas rigs or wind farms—should be a part of the discussion. Concerned about the impacts of a proposedwind farm south of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Oppenheim notes that current law doesn’t allow for any regulation of industries that might have a deleterious impact on fishermen’s livelihoods.TheBureau of Energy Management oversees the leasing for such projects.
With Huffman still testing the waters on this topic, it’s unclear which direction policy discussions might take.
In Santa Cruz, Tobias Aguirre, CEO of sustainable seafood advocacy group FishWise, believes Congress should strengthen the act’s environmental protections to let fisheries keep rebounding. “We need to keep our foot on the gas,” says Aguirre. With its focus geared toward international issues, FishWise has been collaborating on the internationalSeafood Alliance for Legality and Traceability, which aims to improve transparency in global seafood markets. FishWise’s next mission, he says, will be improving the working conditions of fishermen.
The livelihood of fishermen is certainly a chief concern for Oppenheim. A fisherman himself, he’s the first to admit that they have occasionally been part of an “anti-science” agenda when it has helped business interests, but he says the industry provides valuable data to scientists and regulators. “Fishermen can both be far better observers of ocean conditions and the real-time status of fisheries,” he says, “and simultaneously be in denial over the impacts that broad-scale fishing can have over time.”
But it’s also true that the scientists can make mistakes, and they’ve missed the mark when it comes to fish stocks, he says, with poor survey data. The bottom line for Oppenheim when it comes to fisheries management is that, “We’re doing better than we ever have in the past”—though he admits there’s much to be done. He believes the “ship can be righted to some extent by bringing in the fishermen,” especially small-scale operators. “One of the more interesting things to note about fish politics is to notice how ‘flipped’ it is,” he says. “The quote-unquote ‘liberal’ politics of egalitarianism and support for communities” has not been the traditional Democratic Party approach, he argues.
At the same time, conservative lawmakers pegged as being too pro-business at the expense of the environment, he says, have led the charge to focus on localities and small-time operators.
“Fundamentally, liberals should be about supporting communities,” he says. “Partisanship in fisheries is terrible, counterproductive, and we’ve been seeing too much of it lately.”
Jimmy Grey started building houses with his father as soon as his hands could properly hold the tools. He completed his first electrical wiring job at 13.
When Grey’s father died four years ago, he decided it was time to do some soul searching. “I was just trying to figure myself out after that, after my rock left my life,” he says.
Grey quit his job in sales to travel in Thailand and Bali. After returning to Santa Cruz, he purchased his first van, a 2014 ProMaster, and set off to explore the country with partner Bez Stone and her two children.
Now, the 37-year-old craftsman is combining his flair for construction with a passion for adventure in the grand opening of a full-service van-conversion business, Levity Vans. Considering operations have been underway for about a year now, the grand opening on Saturday, July 19, was really more of a coming out party. “It feels like a declaration. It’s us saying, ‘We’re here, we’re ready, and we know what we’re doing,” says Stone, who is a partner in the business.
The 17th Avenue shop specializes in upgrading ProMaster, Transit and Sprinter cargo vans into full-fledged adventure vehicles complete with tailored kitchens, rooftops decks, customized windows and whatever else customers need to feel at home on the road. “Lots of companies make cookie-cutter RV-type vans, which are great, but I like Jimmy’s style because he really gets to know who people are and what they want, so they can have things like that special little perch for their cat, which more people have wanted than you might suspect,” Stone says.
The social media-fueled #vanlife trend has romanticized the urge to hit the road in recent years, but Levity’s grand opening comes as Outwesty, a company that rents tricked-out, modernized Westfalias to customers for their California vacations, is closing up shop in Santa Cruz.
Outwesty is returning to Lake Tahoe after a two-year stint on the Central Coast. Owner Dave Phelps says that Santa Cruz “is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, and you’ve gotta pay your employees a lot to make it work. I don’t think anyone could say it’s an easy place to do business.”
Because Outwesty also assists customers with the booking and planning of their trips, the travel agent side of the business was always a challenge in Santa Cruz’s over-saturated tourist scene. “It’s a little bit over-populated in these regions,” says Phelps. “If you don’t book a campsite far enough in advance, it’s very hard to do a last-minute camping trip to Big Sur in June, July, August. That’s one major issue we ran into.”
For Grey, whose full-scale adventure conversions can run between $30,000-55,000, the high cost of living comes with benefits from a business perspective: the wealth in the area makes it easier for customers to meet his price point. For those not looking to shell out so much cash, however, Grey offers priced-per-job window installations, electrical wiring and other specified services.
“The DIYer aspect is a customer base that we’re really passionate about,” says Stone. “If somebody was on a budget, I wouldn’t want to dissuade them. Instead, let’s get creative. Come here, and we’ll do the few things that you can’t do alone, or that aren’t safe for you to do alone.”
Customers at Levity range from corporate executives looking to downsize to retirees on the hunt for adventure. “There’s such a broad spectrum. It’s not just hippies who want to drop out of society,” says Stone. “It’s people who want the freedom to go away from their life and take a break, whether it’s for a year or a month or a day.”
While van life represents an exciting break from normalcy for some, Grey knows that life on wheels can be a grimmer experience for many in Santa Cruz. An estimated 30% of Santa Cruz’s homeless residents were living in their cars in 2017, according to the county’s most recent Homeless Census and Survey. The right to park has long been a contentious topic in the county.
The cities of Santa Cruz, Capitola and Watsonville all have laws that ban camping in public places, although recent court rulings have taken some of the teeth out of those sleeping bans. Efforts this year from Santa Cruz city councilmembers like Drew Glover to expand car camping and create new areas to park legally faced resistance and criticism that Glover hadn’t done enough public outreach. The right-to-park movement has gained attention at UCSC and around the state as students fight for their right to sleep in vehicles on campus. At California community colleges, 19% of students experienced homelessness in the past year, according to a recent study conducted by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice.
Grey believes van dwellers should have a safe space to go. He says everyone should have the right to park and sleep in their vehicles, regardless of their circumstances.
“I personally think this is a really great opportunity for us to set up some communities and safe places for people to park their vans,” he says, “whether they’re transients or permanent locals.”
For Grey, who has never run a business before, Levity’s opening represents a leap of faith. “There was that one cliff-jumping moment when Jimmy quit his job … then, there was that moment of, ‘OK, let’s do it,’” says Stone. “We ordered some signs, made the website and just said we’re going to go for it. I think it takes a lot of bravery for somebody like Jimmy to quit his day job and just go for it.”
Levity Vans, 1010 17th Ave, Santa Cruz. 531-4151, levityvans.com.
Ever since Museum of Art and History Executive Director Nina Simon announced her departure from the organization this past fall, museum leaders have made it sound like they were mere weeks from announcing their next executive. But after waiting eight months, the MAH has only just now named an interim director in Antonia Franco, an experienced nonprofit executive who’s been involved with the museum over the years. From Franco’s résumé, she looks enormously qualified. But it isn’t clear whether she could be the long-term pick—or what the hold-up is at an institution known for its vibrancy under Simon’s direction.
Honestly, if the MAH doesn’t pick an official director soon, the museum’s gonna find itself the butt of many a joke around town … à la, “Your MAH’s so slow, it took her two hours to watch 60 Minutes.”
FLOWING DOWNHILL
Bill Smallman has resigned from the San Lorenzo Valley Water Board after a year in which he leaked sensitive information and made homophobic remarks. He’s the second boardmember to resign over the last four months, and his departure leaves the district just one former boardmember of the now-defunct Lompico Water Board, which merged with San Lorenzo Valley three years ago.
With its various scandals in recent years, the rural water district may look more polluted than a mountain reservoir under a mudslide. But things could always be worse, and progress is easy to miss. After all, back when the Lompico Water District was a thing, Smallman was one of the board’s saner members.
WARRIOR POSERS
As families of immigrants sit separated in detention camps at the border, Santa Cruz County yoga studios are coming together to organize a Yoga Day of Action on Saturday, July 27. All yoga studios will be putting out collection boxes, with the proceeds going to the National Bail Fund Network, Room for Refugees and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES). Participating studios include Luma, Nourish, Divinitree, Yoga Within, Santa Cruz Yoga, Estrella Collective, Pleasure Point Yoga and Breath + Oneness.
It also makes you think back on the comments we’ve heard from middle-aged homeowners in public meetings, and in letters to the editor over the years that say, “People shouldn’t live here if they don’t want it bad enough”—all while many families live on the verge of homelessness. To be frank, anti-housing Democrats sound a lot like anti-immigrant Republicans, telling everyone, “If you don’t like it, you can leave!”
We typically think of these local “progressive” whiners as not-in-my-backyard—or NIMBY—activists, but one might just as easily call them simply BANANAs, which stands for “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.”
But in light of Santa Cruz’s homegrown poverty problem, perhaps the term we’re really looking for is “jerks.”
ARIES (March 21-April 19): After analyzing unusual animal behavior, magnetic fluctuations, outbreaks of mayhem on Twitter, and the position of the moon, a psychic has foretold that a moderate earthquake will rumble through the St. Louis, Missouri, area in the coming weeks. I don’t agree with her prophecy. But I have a prediction of my own. Using data about how cosmic forces are conspiring to amuse and titillate your rapture chakra, I predict a major lovequake for many Aries between now and Aug. 20. I suggest you start preparing immediately. How? Brainstorm about adventures and breakthroughs that will boost exciting togetherness. Get yourself in the frame of mind to seek out collaborative catharsis that evokes both sensory delights and spiritual insights.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are,” wrote Taurus philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. You could use that idea to achieve a finer grade of peace and grace in the coming weeks. The navel-gazing phase of your yearly cycle has begun, which means you’ll be in closest alignment with cosmic rhythms if you get to know yourself much better. One of the best ways to do that is to analyze what you pay most attention to. Another excellent way is to expand and refine and tenderize your feelings for what you pay most attention to.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano wrote that in Havana, people refer to their friends as mi sangre (my blood) or mi tierra (my country). In Caracas, he reported, a friend might be called mi llave (my key) or mi pana (my bread). Since you are in the alliance-boosting phase of your cycle, Gemini, I trust that you will find good reasons to think of your comrades as your blood, your country, your key, or your bread. It’s a favorable time for you to get closer, more personal and more intimate. The affectionate depths are calling to you.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Your emotional intelligence is so strong right now that I bet you could alleviate the pain of a loved one even as you soothe a long-running ache of your own. You’re so spiritually alluring, I suspect you could arouse the sacred yearning of a guru, saint or bodhisattva. You’re so interesting someone might write a poem or story about you. You’re so overflowing with a lust for life that you might lift people out of their ruts just by being in their presence. You’re so smart you could come up with at least a partial solution to a riddle whose solution has evaded you for a long time.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The Queen of North America and Europe called me on the phone. At least that’s how she identified herself. “I have a message for your Leo readers,” she told me. “Why Leo?” I asked. “Because I’m a Leo myself,” she replied, “and I know what my tribe needs to know right now.” I said, “OK. Give it to me.” “Tell Leos to always keep in mind the difference between healthy pride and debilitating hubris,” she said. “Tell them to be dazzlingly and daringly competent without becoming bossy and egomaniacal. They should disappear their arrogance but nourish their mandate to express leadership and serve as a role model. Be shiny and bright but not glaring and blinding. Be irresistible but not envy-inducing.”
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Congrats, Virgo! You are beginning the denouement of your yearly cycle. Anything you do to resolve lingering conflicts and finish up old business will yield fertile rewards. Fate will conspire benevolently in your behalf as you bid final goodbyes to the influences you’ll be smart not to drag along with you into the new cycle that will begin in a few weeks. To inspire your holy work, I give you this poem by Virgo poet Charles Wright: “Knot by knot I untie myself from the past/ And let it rise away from me like a balloon./ What a small thing it becomes./ What a bright tweak at the vanishing point, blue on blue.”
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I predict that between now and the end of the year, a Libran genetic engineer will create a new species of animal called a dat. A cross between a cat and a dog, it will have the grace, independence and vigilance of a Persian cat and the geniality, loyalty and ebullient strength of a golden retriever. Its stalking skills will synthesize the cat’s and dog’s different styles of hunting. I also predict that in the coming months, you will achieve greater harmony between the cat and dog aspects of your own nature, thereby acquiring some of the hybrid talents of the dat.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio poet Marianne Moore (1887–1972) won the Pulitzer Prize and several other prestigious awards. She was a rare poet who became a celebrity. That’s one of the reasons why the Ford car company asked her to dream up interesting names for a new model they were manufacturing. Alas, Ford decided the 43 possibilities she presented were too poetic and rejected all of them. But some of Moore’s names are apt descriptors for the roles you could and should play in the phase you’re beginning, so I’m offering them for your use. Here they are: 1. Anticipator. 2. The Impeccable. 3. Tonnerre Alifère (French for “winged thunder”). 4. Tir á l’arc (French for “bull’s eye”). 5. Regina-Rex (Latin for “queen” and “king”).
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): It’s conceivable that in one of your past lives you were a pioneer who made the rough 2,170-mile migration via wagon train from Missouri to Oregon in the 1830s. Or maybe you were a sailor who accompanied the Viking Leif Eriksson in his travels to the New World 500 years before Columbus. Is it possible you were part of the team assembled by Italian diplomat Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, who journeyed from Rome to Mongolia in the 13th century? Here’s why I’m entertaining these thoughts, Sagittarius: I suspect that a similar itch to ramble and explore and seek adventure may rise up in you during the coming weeks. I won’t be surprised if you consider making a foray to the edge of your known world.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): When the dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago, the crocodiles didn’t. They were around for 135 million years before that era, and are still here now. Why? “They are extremely tough and robust,” says croc expert James Perran Ross. Their immune systems “are just incredible.” Maybe best of all, they “learn quickly and adapt to changes in their situation.” In accordance with the astrological omens, I’m naming the crocodile as your creature teacher for the coming weeks. I suspect you will be able to call on a comparable version of their will to thrive. (Read more about crocs: tinyurl.com/toughandrobust.)
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “My only hope is that one day I can love myself as much as I love you.” Poet Mariah Gordon-Dyke wrote that to a lover, and now I’m offering it to you as you begin your Season of Self-Love. You’ve passed through other Seasons of Self-Love in the past, but none of them has ever had such rich potential to deepen and ripen your self-love. I bet you’ll discover new secrets about how to love yourself with the same intensity you have loved your most treasured allies.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “Poems can bring comfort,” writes Piscean poet Jane Hirshfield. “They let us know … that we are not alone—but they also unseat us and make us more susceptible, larger, elastic. They foment revolutions of awareness and allow the complex, uncertain, actual world to enter.” According to my understanding of upcoming astrological omens, Pisces, life itself will soon be like the poems Hirshfield describes: unruly yet comforting; a source of solace but also a catalyst for transformation; bringing you healing and support but also asking you to rise up and reinvent yourself. Sounds like fun!
Homework: What’s the most amazing feat you ever pulled off? What will you do for your next amazing feat? Tr**********@gm***.com.
Fans of the seminal Colombian alt-rock band Aterciopelados can rest easy—after years of contention, the frayed creative partnership behind one of Latin America’s most iconic combos has mended.
Vocalist/guitarist Andrea Echeveri and bassist Hector Buitrago aren’t just touring together again. They’re creating music in an entirely new way that blends their distinctive sounds and concerns, and they’re performing these captivating songs alongside fan favorites on a North American tour that brings the band to Moe’s Alley on Friday, July 26.
New album Claroscura holds up on its own, even if listeners aren’t familiar with the band’s almost three-decade career of enthralling music.
“In the 1990s, I did most of the composing,” Buitrago says in a recent phone conversation from Barranquilla. “Now we’re composing together, which we hadn’t really done before.”
In the early ’90s, Aterciopelados put Bogota’s thriving music scene on the map with a series of brilliant albums, starting with 1993’s Con el Corazón en la Mano. Exploring the stark reality of life in a country beset by drug cartels and a decades-long civil war, the album introduced a mesmerizing mélange of punk and cumbia, pop psychedelia and surf rock. The band’s sound evolved with each release as they delved deeper into Colombian folklore while absorbing new sounds on international travels.
In those early years, they were a romantic couple, “and in the beginning we did songs about falling in and out of love,” Buitrago says. “Then we started writing about different, broader themes. Andrea specialized in women and human rights, and I specialized in the environment and ancestors.”
The band’s artistic breakthrough was 1997’s ska-inspired La Pipa de la Paz (The Peace Pipe), the first album by a Colombian band ever nominated for a Grammy Award. They followed it with 1998’s electronica-infused Caribe Atomico, an album that combined environmental consciousness with electronic textures reminiscent of Radiohead, Morcheeba and Massive Attack. After a hallucinogenic encounter with a shaman, Echeverri and Buitrago recorded the sublime Gozo Poderoso, which won a 2001 Latin Grammy for best rock album by a duo or group with vocal.
But after the release of 2008’s Rio, the number of Aterciopelados concerts dwindled, and the strained relationship between Echeverri and Buitrago led to a prolonged estrangement. “We had three years that we didn’t see each other,” Echeverri said. “Each of us was working on solo projects. We were a couple at first, then we worked together for like 20 years. And then there was tension in the air.”
Rumors of the band’s demise proved to be premature, however, as Bogota’s Rock al Parque made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Looking for a booking coup for the free festival’s 20th year in 2014, the promoters “started calling us all the time,” Echeverri says. “Usually they give foreigners the good money, and bands from Colombia not so much. But they offered us the good money and insisted.”
What ultimately resurrected Aterciopelados was the ecstatic reaction from fans. Playing era-defining hits from their small-but-mighty discography, Echeverri and Buitrago were overwhelmed by the outpouring.
“The whole park was packed, and you could see the different ages,” she says. “Young people came to us saying, ‘We’ve grown up listening to your music.’ Everyone was so happy, dancing and crying. We’ve been playing for almost three decades, and you felt all those years were worthwhile.”
They were inspired to write new music that reflected the group in the present, even after releasing highly regarded solo albums (Echeverri’s eponymous first album, full of songs inspired by the birth of her daughter Milagros, won a Latin Grammy in 2005). Working together again meant making adjustments.
“Doing it all yourself you get tired. It’s so much work,” she says. “Some things, you know how to do them, and different things, you don’t know, and now you have to do them. That’s the price of being independent. When you have a record label, a good studio, a good producer, you can just write and sing.”
Aterciopelados doesn’t sound transformed so much as reenergized. On Claroscura, their seemingly bottomless bag of melodic hooks yields new irresistible anthems infused by reggae and reggaetón grooves. Together, Echeverri and Buitrago are writing their next chapter.
Aterciopelados perform at 9 p.m. on Friday, July 26, at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $35 adv/$40 door. 479-1854.
Everyone knows Leo is the lion of the zodiac, a fiery, dramatic and creative creature; fun-loving with a sense of child-like wonder. Leo is always creating something, which helps build knowledge of the self. “I learn about myself by what I create,” says Leo. Creating helps Leo leave the womb-like Cancer waters, stand alone and enter into a divine state of individuality (necessary developmental stage before group awareness in Aquarius). Individuality, a sense of fun (sometimes brooding), a golden light, creativity, and a seeking of self-awareness describe a Leo personality in the making. Leo is a fire sign (following the waters of Cancer). Fire always carries forward what water has begun. Sometimes, water with fire creates a steamy situation.
Leo controls the life of all aspirants, or seekers of that which is beyond material reality. Aspirants have an inner, unquenchable fire for things more refined or spiritual, finding it difficult to realize this spiritual reality in the marketplace. Aspirants are “beginning to walk the path toward spirit.” And the first step is the knowledge of self. Leo provides the impetus to create, which leads to a recognition of self as a creator.
Leo needs tremendous courage. We can help by recognizing, praising and honoring their every step along the way. For this they are quietly grateful.
ARIES: Do you feel as if you’re on a cross, divided intensely between four ways, standing in the middle wondering which path to venture upon next? There are past issues that need tending and closure before knowing how to proceed. They are being illuminated now, so look around, assess, ponder, pray for guidance, and have the intention to gracefully complete all things unfinished. Then the next page of your life turns.
TAURUS: Keep going into the future, even though many pressures pull you backward. The new Aquarian realities must be brought forth, and each sign has a specific task and responsibility. You have the illumination needed to communicate to others the plans and purposes of building the new era. You have a model to construct, things to build, expansions to bring forth, information to share so that all that is good can be salvaged. The God of the waters will help.
GEMINI: Truly, you are experiencing much duality. For balance, stand directly center, so you can see both sides before choosing, observe clearly, and understand how to create a triangle of synthesis. There are two paths outlined for you, yes? Choosing the right path is revealed through revelation (symbols). Draw, visualize and ponder upon the following–a seven-pointed star, six-pointed star, five-pointed star, triangle, cross, and circle. Visualize yourself at the center of each.
CANCER: A duality is being presented to you in terms of your religious or spiritual practices. Perhaps there’s a fusion occurring between what you were taught and what you know or seek now. Perhaps you have found a new spiritual practice. Or maybe your friends don’t participate with you or support what you believe in. Is your communication possibly critical? Careful. You may not realize your tone of impatience. The homeopath Aconite neutralizes impatience (an excess of electrical energy). Stay out of rainstorms.
LEO: Tend carefully to finances; ask for assistance if puzzled, and embrace the future by banking locally and investing money in tangibles and goods that are practical yet sustaining. Plan on others learning from you. Humans, plants and animals, too. Past memories may appear. It’s good to ask, “Did I love enough?” If not, there’s still time. The saying, “Love is all there is” is real. It’s your mantram. A group offers two suggestions. Relationships fall sideways.
VIRGO: There may be some ongoing self-criticism and resulting heartaches. Previous beliefs and actions may no longer suffice. It’s important to know the critical thoughts are not true. They’re simply old remnants. It’s good to turn toward words of praise creating a journal of self-praise, which then allows your true identity, gifts and abilities to come forth. Praise of all things all around you neutralizes mental and emotional fear, sadness, illusions, and distortions.
LIBRA: Something profound, transformative, different, and new will occur in the foundations from which you live your life. It is from here also where change occurs. By autumn, you’ll know what these are. In the meantime, so much has shifted with work and your professional life. Are you feeling somewhat out to sea? Are you doing what you love to do? Do you know what this is? Are you thinking about more travel? Tend with care and kindness all relationships. They sustain, nourish and fortify you in all ways you don’t see yet.
SCORPIO: As your home life tumbles and bobs about here and there (expansion, then wounding, then a sense of dissolving) you could feel a bit of sadness and despair along with a sense of exhilaration. Both are occurring, along with a shift of friends (are you feeling somewhat alone?) and new information coming in about work and your professional life. Tend to money carefully. No excess expenditures on baubles or things that shine. Matter all around you is disappearing quickly. The world is changing. You understand its underbelly.
SAGITTARIUS: It’s time for something new in terms of relationships. It’s also time to travel somewhere you’ve been before, to assess it with new eyes. Be aware of how much work you’ve done, how much you do each day, where you are today, and where you’ve been. In the next seven years, your usual ways of thinking and interpreting will change into a profoundly new way of assessing the world. Your creativity alters, too. Some of this is already occurring. As you hover forever at the razor’s edge, inch closer to the middle and stay there a while
CAPRICORN: You stand between two themes with money: you have enough, you don’t have enough. In between is a possible wound. Perhaps you grew up with very little money, enough money or too much. This gave you a certain lens concerning money. But here we are today, and all around us the monetary world as we’ve known it is changing. Don’t fret or be fearful about anything. You always have what you need. Ponder upon priorities considering your creativity. What will you create now? You always come to true answers.
AQUARIUS: There is and will be a breaking away from your usual ways of being. What’s normal will be upside down for a while. This gives you time to assess who you are, what you value about yourself and how you would like to change. Increased social interactions lead to increased social success. You are accomplishing life’s tasks on your own, in your own timing and rules. This is good. Finally, you have the freedom to step into your dreams.
PISCES: Things feel very complex. You’re in a state of solitude, and all your expectations are surfacing, providing information previously not known. Clearly you see that disappointments and sadnesses, those that lead to despair, are based upon unrealized hopes, dreams and wishes. These were not incorrect. Now you are aware of them. What you will do next? This question isn’t answerable yet. Keep observing, refining yourself, and remain in a state of praise.
Effective political protest these days requires more than just showing up and solemnly marching to city hall. It requires a degree of savvy, a media plan and a bit of creativity.
The Santa Cruz-based organization ARRT (Artists Respond and Resist Together) is all about adapting protest to the media-saturation age. Formed just days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, ARRT has made it a mission to keep local artists engaged politically by tapping into their creative impulses.
With another presidential election on the horizon, ARRT is planning an action-packed summer, the foundation of which is an art show called Human/Nature, featuring the work of 30 local artists on the broad, inescapably political theme of how humans live in to the natural world. While the works of Human/Nature are on display at the Resource Center for Nonviolence (July 26-Sept. 14), ARRT will be sponsoring three events:
On July 27, filmmaker Sasha Friedlander will present a screening of her new documentary Grit, which tells the story of political protest in the aftermath of a harrowing natural disaster in Indonesia (think a volcanic eruption of mud that buried 16 villages), brought on by careless industrial drilling.
On Aug. 9, three activist artists—David Solnit, Martabel Wasserman and T.J. Demos—will gather for a community conversation about strategies for potent political protest.
And on Aug. 10, Solnit, a veteran of direct-action demonstrations for more than 20 years, will lead a day-long workshop on the mechanics of art-oriented protest in the realms of climate change and social justice. The workshop is designed for the artistically inclined (or otherwise) to make flags, banners, murals, and other work with stenciling, screenprinting or other methods.
“We’re just trying to bring more people together through these art experiences,” says Sara Friedlander, co-founder of ARRT, “and to engage people rather than having them not knowing what they can do.”
Sara is the mom of Sasha Friedlander, whose previous film Where Heaven Meets Hell was also the story of an environmental disaster in Indonesia brought on by extractive industrial interests. The power of Grit, says Sara Friedlander, is in its ability to inspire. “It’s really about a woman who is indigenous with no education, and how she becomes one of the leaders of this movement. And her daughter, who is 12 [when the disaster happens], also evolves into a leader. So we’re witnessing the making of a citizen activist.”
The Aug. 9 event is the second attempt to spark collaborative energy after a similar event in 2018. “It pulled people together like no other conversation we’ve ever had in Santa Cruz,” says Friedlander of last year’s artist/activist panel discussion. “We had about 75 people in that room, and everybody connected with someone they didn’t know to do some project.”
The Aug. 10 workshop throws the spotlight on the activist work of Solnit, the Oakland-based artist whose career in protest includes the iconic 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO), and successful demonstrations for workers rights in the Florida agricultural industry.
“The last couple of decades, I’ve become more and more interested in how artists, performers, and musicians use art to create social change,” says Solnit, whose work is mostly in the visual arts, particularly large puppets. “I usually sit with a community and think of what story they want to tell. The value I give is, ‘OK, here’s how we can take that story, make it 10-feet tall and made of cardboard, with materials you can find in anyone’s house.’”
Last year, Solnit was part of a large protest greeting the Global Climate Summit in San Francisco, in which he urged activists to paint images of the future on the streets with washable paint. “We figured we ended up with about 2,000-3,000 people painting in 50 groups, each group doing a 30-foot mural,” he says. “And that made it a very different kind of event. Each group got to serve their own message, instead of having to listen to one person with a microphone.”
The WTO protests in ’99, says Solnit, offer a vivid example of how creative political protest can create compelling images in the public mind that linger for years. “We had people stilt-walking as butterflies and holding giant hand-made signs and puppets in the face of police dressed like Darth Vader shooting projectiles at us,” he says. “We created a visually dramatic contrast, and it was very effective.”
‘ARRT and Human/Nature’ runs July 26-Sept. 14; opening reception Friday, July 26, from 7-9 p.m. ‘Grit: Q&A’ with filmmaker Sasha Friedlander on Saturday, July 27, 7:30 p.m.; Second-annual community conversation with David Solnit, TJ Demos and Martabel Wasserman on Aug. 9, 7 p.m.; ‘Artmaking for Change,’ a workshop with David Solnit, Aug. 10, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. All events at the Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St., Santa Cruz. arrtsantacruz.home.blog.
Santa Cruz County live entertainment picks for the week of July 24
WEDNESDAY 7/24
GARAGE
THE ATOM AGE
Saxophones are sexy! There are a lot of bands right now playing proto-punk and garage-rock—they have the swagger, they have the attitude, but do they have the saxophone? Rest assured, San Jose garage-rockers Atom Age do. The band even has an organ, the kind that will make you want to go-go dance with a vengeance. And it’s all punked-up to John Spencer Blues Explosion levels. It’ll take you right back to the golden age of rock ’n’ roll, when concerned parents were calling this the devil’s music. AC
8:30 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $10. 423-1338.
JAZZ
SUN HOP FAT
While they hail from the East Bay, Sun Hop Fat’s musical inspiration comes from East Africa—specifically Ethiopia, which in the ’50s and ’60s gave birth to Ethio-jazz, a genre which took traditional Ethiopian scales and played them through western instruments. Originally, the genre came about through an order from Emperor Haile Selassie. Today, Sun Hop Fat carries a torch for the genre with a funky, danceable version of Ethio-jazz. MIKE HUGUENOR
There is a bracing quality to Wood & Wire’s bluegrass: the manic precision of the banjo, the slapping strum of the guitar, the sudden vocal harmonies. Together, they evoke the sharp coolness of a mountain spring. On last year’s Grammy-nominated North of Despair, the Austinites tore through bluegrass with the reckless abandon of a punk band. When they settle in to songs like “As Good As It Gets,” the group sounds almost like a real-life Soggy Bottom Boys, complete with boot-stomping rhythm and snap-tight harmonies. MH
Brandie Posey is a big fan of ska music, so right there she’s really dividing the crowd. Luckily, she’s also wicked funny and clever, a co-creator of Picture This and co-BFF of the Lady to Lady podcast, where guests join in once a week for candid games, discussions, admissions, and advice. One listen and you’ll either be loving her more than you already did or forgiving her for her ska proclivities and giving her a second chance. This lady rocks. AMY BEE
7 and 9:30 p.m. DNA’s Comedy Lab, 155 S. River St., Santa Cruz. $20 adv/$25 door. (530) 592-5250
SATURDAY 7/27
INDIE
B BOYS
B Boys hails from New York, and its sound is the city personified, from New-Wave rhythmic showdowns to No-Wave melodic repetitions dripping with disdain and scorn. Frenetic energy, coupled with a solitary sense of detachment, lends both apathy and sharp urgency to lyrics underlining the frailty and absurdity of the world we find ourselves in. Yet pockets of fun are found within any apocalypse, and the same is true with B Boys’ anti-anthem shouts and machine-gun drum rolls. AB
Is it country? Is it punk? Is it cowpunk? Whatever you call it, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ music is as fresh as it is rootsy. Originally a New Yorker, this now-North Carolinian writes songs reminiscent of the best parts of Hank Williams or Merle Haggard, with a voice for fans of Bonnie Raitt, the bravado of Joan Jett and the humor of Dolly Parton. Sophomore album Years paints the picture of a band that has grown—dare we say even matured—since their 2017 debut. MW
9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $12. 423-1338.
MONDAY 7/29
HIP-HOP
MAHTIE BUSH
Sacramento rapper Mahtie Bush doesn’t mess around. He once filmed a video of himself burning local weekly newspaper the Sacramento News and Review in an act of protest. In his music, he’s just as unrelenting. Over hard-hitting, classic boom-bap beats, he spits truth in conversational flow about life growing up in the foster care system. When he sees injustice, he calls it out—fiercely. Now Bush comes to Santa Cruz on his “Mahtie Bush for Mayor” tour. Up in Sactown, he’s a local legend—and maybe the city’s next mayor? AC
9 p.m. Blue Lagoon, 923 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $5. 423-7117.
JAZZ
ALICIA OLATUJA
A singer possessing a voice brimming with joy and glory, Alicia Olatuja is equally versed in gospel and bel canto, R&B and jazz, soul and pop. She draws on all of these currents on her gorgeous new album Intuition: Songs from the Minds of Women, a project reimaging songs written or defined by artists such as Sade, Angela Bofill, Brenda Russel, Imogen Heap, Tracy Chapman, Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, and others. For the show, Olatuja strips the songs down to essentials with a sensational Los Angeles quartet featuring bassist Ben Shepherd, drummer Anthony Fung and pianist Josh Nelson. ANDREW GILBERT
7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $31.50 adv/$36.75 door. 427-2227.
