A little while ago, I saw that Shane Mauss, a nationally known comedian whose stuff I’ve enjoyed for a long time, was coming to Santa Cruz with a psychedelics-themed stand-up show. Considering that we are home to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, I thought, “Oh, man, Santa Cruz is the perfect place for him to do that! I wonder if he knows about MAPS?”
In hindsight, I might not have looked like such a moron if I’d done a little research before I asked Mauss, “Hey, you’re coming to Santa Cruz with a psychedelics-themed stand-up show, do you know MAPS?”
Now, Mauss is a really nice guy, so he didn’t say what he was probably thinking, which might have been something like, “Hey, I’m coming to Santa Cruz with a psychedelics-themed stand-up show, of course I know about MAPS, ya dumbass!” Instead, he enthusiastically and not at all snarkily told me how MAPS had actually sponsored his 111-city tour of the show in 2016 and 2017, and how it played a big part in his new documentary on the subject, Psychonautics.
Mauss is a real rarity in today’s entertainment culture—a very funny guy who’s also an analytical thinker. Both his “Good Trip” drug-themed show and his “Stand-Up Science” show—which tackles a lot of the other scientific topics he’s interested in—at DNA’s Comedy Lab this weekend should be a blast. In the course of doing this week’s cover story, I discovered just how wild Mauss’ own experiences with psychedelics got, and his story is truly a trip. Hope you enjoy it!
Great article by Jacob Pierce. It’s been quite difficult to find out what is going on with the Santa Cruz City Water Department in terms of infrastructure and water storage issues and how they’re being addressed. The Santa Cruz City Water Dept. publishes precious little in their occasional updates to consumers on such important issues. It’s especially disconcerting for the Santa Cruz County residents who don’t even get to vote on any of their decisions, yet need to live with their consequences. Mr. Pierce’s article was an excellent update.
Robert Malbon
Live Oak
How’s That Working Out?
Since the ’80s, politicians have told us that a “pure capitalism” economy will solve every problem we have economically. An unregulated free market became more important than democracy to many politicians. During those years, Dr. James Hansen testified before Congress, and the public heard that global warming is real and we’d better take actions to prevent it from getting worse. Bill McKibben, former New York Times science writer and founder of the climate change organization 350.org, recently said that it “was unfortunate that political point of view developed” just when we needed a response to climate change.
Unfortunate or deliberate, how is that working out for us? Fossil fuel companies are the obvious companies that—had they been mildly regulated or taxed for their carbon footprint—we would be far better off today. This is really true of most, if not all big businesses. The more we consume what they produce, the more carbon is released into the atmosphere. Our worldwide ecosystem is breaking down, and now we are faced with needing to take drastic measures to prevent going over 2 degrees Celsius. So far the interpretation that “a completely free market solves everything” is still our religious type of belief and appears to be elevated even above the ideal of democracy.
Monday was Earth Day, and this year’s theme was extinction. Species are going extinct at a rapid rate—plants, animals, birds, insects, coral reefs, ocean life. We humans depend on all of those species for our own survival.
How’s that theory of unregulated growth of production resulting in more and more consumption working out for us?
We’ve witnessed other species overpopulate when food is plentiful and die off when it’s not. We could learn something from observing that. In theory, we are smarter than that.
Diane Warren
Boulder Creek
Re: Earth Day
On a sunny day, viewed from the hills above Watsonville, that shimmering ocean below is not Monterey Bay. Rather it’s a sea of plastic covering farmland and crops, especially strawberries.
Estimated at dozens of square miles in the South County and Salinas Valley, this farmland plastic increases profitability, but causes unseen harm. Not only does the plastic release greenhouse gasses as the sun heats and reflects, but causes erosion and sediment in estuarine watersheds. Most telling of all, little of this plastic is recycled, less than 25%. Coated with residual chemicals that kill insects, weeds, and fungi, this single use plastic sea is ultimately buried in landfills, unloaded by farm workers infrequently wearing protection, sometimes not even gloves. Next time, when buying berries from local berry farms for that summer treat, consider the amount of plastic and chemicals it took to deliver those delicious red berries. Buying organic, IMO, is worth the extra cost.
Skip Allan
Capitola
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GOOD IDEA
It’s Mosquito Awareness Week, and Santa Cruz County Mosquito and Vector Control is advising residents of the need to dump and drain all standing water. Rainfall from the past year’s big winter left behind stagnant water—and if left to sit in containers, flower pots and empty pools, that water could create mosquito breeding sites. West Nile virus, which is carried by mosquitoes, was detected in 41 counties in California in 2018, with 217 human cases reported.
GOOD WORK
The Homeless Service Center’s Soupline fundraiser at Cocoanut Grove on Thursday was a big success, with more than 40 restaurants donating soups to the packed event, and celebrity ladlers from Santa Cruz Mayor Martine Watkins to SCPD Chief Andy Mills to every other corner of local government and law enforcement (and everywhere else) serving them up to the crowd. HSC staffers also talked movingly about some of the organization’s success stories getting people off the streets in Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz live music highlights for the week of April 23, 2019
WEDNESDAY 4/24
REGGAE
CONKARAH + ROSIE DELMAH
If you’ve been wondering to yourself whether Adele’s “Hello” would make a banger of a reggae song, I can answer that for you right now: yes, very much so. At least that’s the case with Kingston singers Conkarah and Rosie Delmah, who turn the song into reggae gold. It’s already surpassed 97 million views on YouTube. The duo has also covered “Shallow” from A Star Is Born. And Conkarah has a whole slew of reggaefied jams in his catalog from Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” to Shawn Mullins’ “Lullaby.” AARON CARNES
Canadian indie trio Douse will inspire your wanderlust with moody textures and expansive soundscapes. It’s the kind of gleaming guitar tones and indie flourishing that inspire impromptu road trips and smartly titled mixtapes to that one someone who almost gets you. Almost. Douse frequently gets dreamy without getting lost, keeping their musical meanderings exploratory, but focused on a goal. It’s a nice balance of sonic adventure, like a backpacking trip in the desert armed with a trusty map. AMY BEE
Burnin’ Vernon rips. He likes to refer to his latest project Aftermath as “From A to Z,” meaning from Al Green to Led Zeppelin. Does that sound like he’s overstating his abilities a bit? He’s not. The originally-from-Texas guitarist has been tearing up Bay Area stages for the last 30 years. He’s shared the stage with bands from every genre: Peter Tosh, Etta James, War. He brings it all. He’s got the funk chops, the rock riffs and the R&B soul. But the real treat is checking out his lead guitar abilities. Some say you can see his finger literally smoking after he’s done soloing. AC
Armed with a quiver of melodies, Pat Hull’s voice is a weapon. Alright, so it might be a weapon of peace, but it’s still just as deadly. Combined with his insightful and reflective lyrics, it’s easy to catch yourself plucking at the ole heart strings. Born in Connecticut, this singer/songwriter now resides in Chico and seemingly draws inspiration from the two, drifting between sounds that capture the cold, history-worn cobblestones of New England to the dusty skies of a California summer. MAT WEIR
Oi! Oi! Oi! Dust off the boots, break out the braces and fill up the scooter’s tank because the original L.A. skins, Doug & The Slugz, are coming to Santa Cruz! They are kicking off the Boss Weekender (a weekend for punks and skins: music, a scooter rally, lots of drinking). Band leader and namesake Doug Dagger is notoriously known as the singer from Schleprock and the Generators. But way back in the fledgling days of 1983, Doug and the Slugz was Dagger’s original group, belting out singalongs about short hair, street honor and lifestyles of the broke and working class. MW
Oakland’s Allblack connects two long-standing threads in Bay Area hip-hop. On the one hand, the bounce in his beats and his bike-riding swagger are an outgrowth of hyphy, the sound and image of Oakland at the turn of the millennium. But where hyphy artists were all about the party, for Allblack, the trap is never far away. Not the ATL trap of Migos and Gucci, but the modern East Bay trap of artists like SOB x RBE. Allblack is still on the rise, but he won’t be playing rooms the size of the Atrium for long. MIKE HUGUENOR
The Vandoliers, a six-piece band from Texas, features the kind of gravelly, raspy vocals that remind one of mid-’80s hard rock, so it’s surprising when the fiddles and strings come in and undulate through the crowd in pure Southern rock glory. Songs veer from jubilant punk anthems to folk-rock diddies, all coated in a thick sheen of country pride and Texas twang. It’s probably that Texas audacity that compels the Vandoliers to add horns to several songs, a kind of special middle finger to the world’s expectations of what a dirty, grimy, down-home country rock band ought to be. AB
Included in Rolling Stone’s list of “New Guitar Gods,” Kaki King is a mercurial force for creative good. Impossible to pigeonhole, her emotionally bare instrumental music is guided only by her virtuoso guitar skills. Jumping between finger picking, acoustic percussion, lap steel, and some full on shredding, King’s discography is lyrical without lyrics, a kind of poetry written outside of language. In 2007, she collaborated with Eddie Vedder and Michael Brook for the Emmy-nominated Into the Wild soundtrack, only one of many high points in a career defined by them. MH
Claudia Villela’s new album Encantada Live offers a sensational reminder that whether she’s composing at her piano or spontaneously generating new songs on stage, the Rio de Janeiro-born vocalist, percussionist and bandleader is a sonic conjurer who can summon an infinite array of moods, textures and settings. She’s celebrating the release of the album, which focuses on original material, as well as the beloved songbook of Antonio Carlos Jobim. She’s joined by a world-class cast including saxophonist Gary Meek, bassist Gary Brown, drummer Celso Alberti and guitarist Carlos Oliveira. ANDREW GILBERT
INFO: 7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $28.35 adv/$33.60 door. 427-2227.
Michele Murphy and Michael Owens really wanted to start a band together.
Murphy had been taking voice lessons at Cabrillo and getting voice coaching outside of class. Owens was connected to the local music scene. He’s played in the China Cats, the Post Street Rhythm Peddlers and more. So a couple years ago, he put together an all-star lineup that included members of Mudfrog, Medicine Road and Rose Bud.
They started off with a plan to play covers. But when selecting songs, they wouldn’t go towards the bigger hits that you’d expect to hear.
“We needed to play covers to get used to each other, get a little following, play songs that people want to hear,” says Murphy. “You have to be a real fan to know these songs. Like we do a Little Feat song, and you would think ‘Dixie Chicken.’ That’s the song that everyone knows. Instead we do ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Doctor.’ Not many bands would do that.”
More recently, the band has broadened their sound to include songs by artists like Johnny Cash, Al Green and Paul Simon, and they’ve also allowed some more popular tunes in the set. About six months ago they started to write some originals—and they’re hoping to do a lot more of that in the future.
“It’s taking a shape that we weren’t really anticipating. But we didn’t really know what we wanted to do,” says Owens. “And as we gained members, we gave everyone freedom of their expression and what they wanted to do. We just let things form naturally. And we’re really happy with it.”
INFO: 8:30 p.m. Friday, April 26, Michael’s on Main, 2591 Main St., Soquel. $10. 479-9777.
Brian Bellinkoff remembers when he found out Shane Mauss had lost his mind.
In 2017, the director had been working on a documentary for several months with Mauss, using Mauss’ comedy show about psychedelics, “A Good Trip,” as a jumping off point. As with the drug-themed stand-up show—which Mauss had just taken on a successful 111-city tour—there was a deeper point beyond the jokes and stories about wild experiences with pretty much every psychedelic under the sun.
Using interviews with top scientists and thinkers in the field, the film aimed to show how breakthroughs in psychedelic research are poised to change the way we think about healing, biology, psychiatry, and psychology. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Mauss’ groundbreaking tour was sponsored by Santa Cruz’s Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), or that MAPS Founder and Executive Director Rick Doblin was interviewed extensively for the film.
But Mauss took the idea further—a lot further. Fancying himself a “psychonaut”—which would eventually give the documentary its title, Psychonautics: A Comic’s Exploration of Psychedelics—he wanted to do as many of the drugs discussed in the movie as possible on camera. Bellinkoff had already filmed him going out with a mushroom hunter and chowing down on psilocybin, as well as tripping on ketamine in a clinical therapy setting. Next up was supposed to be a date with the extremely potent shaman’s brew ayahuasca, which was also to be filmed.
Except that Mauss had suddenly disappeared, leaving Bellinkoff baffled. What neither he nor the film’s producer Matt Schuler knew was that Mauss had already done the ayahuasca without them—way too much of it, in fact.
STAND UP SCIENCE Mauss also has a podcast named after his psychedelics comedy act, “Stand Up Science.”
“We didn’t hear from him for a while,” says Bellinkoff. “And we were like, ‘This is strange.’ Then one day Matt calls me and says, ‘Hey, I just got off the phone with Shane, and if he calls you, unless you’ve got 30 minutes to blow, don’t pick up the phone, because he’s just going to talk a bunch of nonsense. Sure enough, my phone rings 10 minutes later, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to let this one go to voicemail’—not knowing that he was having this crazy manic episode.”
Mauss was overwhelmed by paranoia and delusions, eventually getting himself committed to a psych ward about a month after his trip.
Rather than trying to gloss over it, the filmmakers turned Mauss’ episode into the compelling climax of Psychonautics, in which Mauss recalls what he went through in narration over a stunning animation sequence. It serves as a sobering counterpoint to the movie’s bright optimism about the future of psychedelics; while they may be tools for positive change in the proper context and setting, they are still psychoactive agents that must be respected for their still-unquantified power.
“There’s a built-in disclaimer throughout the documentary, because I did lose my mind in the course of doing it. I eventually got it back, but I had to be hospitalized for a little while,” says Mauss. “I wanted to find the edge of where the human mind could go, and I found it. And in hindsight, I’m not sure why that was a goal of mine in the first place.”
Big Time vs. Big Ideas
When I talk to Mauss by phone in April, it’s been nearly two years since drug-fueled moviemaking briefly drove him crazy—and he’s just fine, thank you. I tell him that I first discovered his comedy several years ago on Sirius XM’s Comedy Central Radio, which would play bits from his 2010 debut album Jokes to Make My Parents Proud. I liked his rapid-fire absurdist takes on everything from common sayings to time travel to electric blankets. They were funny bits, but the structure already hinted at something more ambitious—for instance, the way a joke about the stupidity of macho truck ads led to a story about how hard it was to get the censor to let him do that same joke on late-night TV, which led to an even better bit about the ridiculousness of FCC regulations.
His act started to evolve quickly after his Comedy Central Presents showcase in 2010. His 2013 Netflix special Mating Season had already begun to move away from traditional stand-up subjects, as he worked his thoughts on things like evolutionary biology and negative bias into his comedy.
GUIDED TRIP Mauss took ketamine as part of a therapy session for his new documentary ‘Psychonautics.’
By 2014, he was doing a weekly science podcast called Here We Are, for which he has now released more than 200 episodes. In 2015, he did a whole album called My Big Break centered around how he broke both his feet at the same time, which he calls the absolute worst way to break them. (“If this is something you really have your heart set on, what you want to do is break one foot first, let that sucker heal, see how you liked it, and then—if you’re really committed to this—go ahead and break your other foot,” he jokes on the album.) In October of 2016, he started the “Good Trip” tour, which stretched into the summer of 2017. Since then, he’s also developed his “Stand Up Science” comedy show, which draws on his love of non-drug-related science topics.
It is, I point out during our conversation, pretty much the weirdest path a successful comic can take.
“Tell me about it,” says Mauss, his unmistakable, Midwestern-accented voice accompanied by an implied sigh as it floats through the speaker. He grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the kind of city that wins a lot of “Best Small City for Doing Business”-type awards, but was also named the 15th-coldest city in the nation and the sixth-drunkest city in America by 247wallst.com. I always kind of assumed the 38-year-old Mauss’ stories on his early albums about getting blackout drunk and doing lots of drugs were exaggerated for effect. Not so much, it turns out.
“I was probably understating it,” he says.
Still, his comedy about his working-class background—he did time in a furniture-manufacturing plant for years before pursuing comedy—and left-field observations quickly got him attention when he moved to Boston and started performing regularly in the comedy scene there.
“I think I got kind of a false sense of confidence early on in my career, when everything went really well for me in a hurry,” he says. “I was doing the traditional comedy stuff like late-night TV and all that, and I just wanted to challenge myself more, do something that was really just following my natural curiosities.”
A New Path
On Saturday, those pursuits will lead Mauss to Santa Cruz, where he’ll perform two entirely different shows at 7:30 and 10 p.m.—first, “Stand Up Science,” and then, for the late show, “A Good Trip.”
Obviously, Santa Cruz is a no-brainer for his psychedelic show, especially with his connection to MAPS.
“I interact with the MAPS organization all the time. I’m friends with everyone over there,” he says. “I imagine they’ll be at my show. I’ll probably have one of them come up and say a few words in the middle of it.”
Still, he was surprised at the reception “A Good Trip” has gotten in cities that most people probably wouldn’t expect. And that was even before some of the more recent milestones in psychedelics research, like MDMA getting a “breakthrough therapy” designation from the FDA for treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and MAPS’ plan to make MDMA-assisted psychotherapy a legal prescription treatment by 2021—for which it just went into Phase 3 clinical trials.
“I had no idea,” says Mauss. “Throughout the country I would do small towns like Minot, North Dakota, and hundreds of people would come out. People were just really excited that someone was talking about this stuff. We’ll see how popular it is now, because a lot’s changed in the couple of years since I stopped doing the show. And psychedelics have been that much more normalized; it seems like people are pretty excited. You know, Michael Pollan’s book that came out last year is still in the front of bookstores. It’s a subject that’s seemingly still taking off quite a bit.”
He admits his personal connection to the psychedelic community makes him biased, but attending conferences and talking to researchers over the last several years has led Mauss to believe that something unprecedented is on the horizon in the field.
“It does feel like we are entering another potential psychedelic revolution,” he says. “I think this one is a lot more toned-down and responsible than it was in the ’60s, and that’s probably for the best. This is a lot more therapy-driven and clinical and taking the science of it and trying to legitimize these things.”
Blast Off
That, of course, is what Mauss and Bellinkoff are also trying to do with their Psychonautics documentary, which was released last month on Amazon Prime, iTunes and Google Play.
The project started when producer Schuler heard Mauss talking about his “Good Trip” tour on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and suggested to Bellinkoff that they approach him about making some kind of special based on it.
“Then Shane was going to be in L.A. performing at the Largo, so Matt said, ‘Brian, just bring the camera and record the show,’ because he wanted to pitch it to Showtime or something,” remembers Belinkoff. “And that Largo show is actually the main stand up that you see in the film. I didn’t even know Shane at the time. I was interested in psychedelics because I’d dabbled in mushrooms and MDMA, but nowhere close to Shane’s level.”
Mauss was initially skeptical, and says he never really had a clear vision for what the movie was going to be. But Bellinkoff won him over.
“In the beginning, he definitely wasn’t quite sure if this was a good idea for his career, and didn’t know if he could trust me,” says Bellinkoff. “But along the way, we became friends. The guy is awesome. He’s got no ego, and he’s super humble. He didn’t even want his face on the poster at first.”
BUDDY TRIP Mauss worked with director Brian Bellinkoff on the documentary ‘Psychonautics: A Comic’s Exploration of Psychedelics.’
When MAPS did its conference on psychedelic research (which is held every four years) in Oakland in the spring of 2017, the filmmakers realized they could interview many of the leading names in the field in one place. They also found a mushroom hunter, Eric Osborne, who offered to lead them around a municipal park (!) in Kentucky to find psilocybin.
Again, Mauss was initially skeptical. “Eric came to one of my ‘Good Trip’ shows. I met him after the show and he was wearing this mushroom hat, it was just a big hat that looked like a mushroom, and I was like, ‘Who’s this weirdo?’”
However, the mushroom hunt sequence turned out to be one of the funniest in the film, and Mauss has gone on to perform at some of the psilocybin retreats that Osborne leads in Jamaica, where the drug is legal.
Bellinkoff quickly discovered that Mauss had the remarkable ability to actually describe pretty coherently what he was experiencing while tripping on camera.
“I think part of that is that Shane does it professionally,” he says. “His whole last tour was trying to describe these experiences on stage; he is just innately able to do it. These are substances that make most people completely incoherent, but he has this strange superpower.”
Mauss is a lot more critical of his own tripping talk.
“Yeah, it just looks like me drooling in a chair or whatever. It doesn’t necessarily represent the experience that well. You’re having this really profound inner experience, but how you look on the outside is just ‘Uhhhhhhhhhhh,’” he says. “I have never liked seeing myself on television, or hearing my voice. It’s just something that I’ve never liked and never gotten used to, and it was hard. It was really hard. Especially once I became manic and paranoid. I really couldn’t watch myself at that point.”
That was also the point where the shooting basically ground to a halt.
“We would have recorded a lot more stuff. There were several more psychedelics I planned on doing for the film,” says Mauss. Although he felt bad that Bellinkoff was left to turn what they had done into a narrative, he says it’s probably for the best that they stopped when they did.
“As I was getting more and more manic throughout the filming, I was having more and more grandiose ideas about what I wanted the film to be. Next thing I knew, I was trying to make, like, the Christopher Nolan Inception of psychedelics,” he says. “It was a bunch of loose footage to me, and I had no idea how to put it all together. But, man, what Brian did with it was incredible. Ultimately, I’m really happy with what he was able to do with the limited amount of time and footage that we actually got.”
Bellinkoff acknowledges it was a dicey situation, but he says all the craziness ultimately worked for the finished Psychonautics.
“In the end, it actually made the movie much better, because it had a full character arc,” he says. “In the beginning, I was like, ‘Are we just going to go talk about these different drugs, and then sort of wrap it up at the end?’ But because he had this episode, it really rounds out the whole movie, because I didn’t want to necessarily just glorify these drugs either, and say, ‘Oh yeah, they’re all totally safe.’ It’s exciting, but you also have to be cautious.”
Mauss continues to find a natural high by pushing himself out of his comfort zone in his comedy career. He’s done his “Stand Up Science” show around 40 times now, and its success in creating a heady mix of comedy and accessible science talk makes him think he’ll be doing it for quite some time.
When I listen back to Mauss’ albums, it seems obvious that he’s been pushing the boundaries of what comedy can be from Mating Season onward. It’s almost possible to chart how he’s moved away from the most basic—and safest—comedy beats to something a little deeper.
“There is nothing more terrifying, I think, than really intentionally almost seeing how long I can go before delivering a punchline—building up a premise and setting the stage for really big ideas,” he says. “Because then when you get to the punchline, it does have to pay off more, because of how long it took to set up. The stakes are just higher. And, man, I love it.”
Shane Mauss performs on Saturday, April 27, at DNA’s Comedy Lab, 155 River St. South, Santa Cruz. The 7:30 p.m. is “Stand Up Science,” and at 10 p.m. he will perform his psychedelics-themed comedy show “A Good Trip.” Tickets for each show are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. dnascomedylab.com.
Caltrans is launching an immediate study of a 1-mile stretch of Highway 9, including the shoulder where22-year-old Josh Howard was struck and killed by a motorist earlier this year.
On the evening of Feb. 21, driver Jeremy Shreves drifted over a solid white line into the narrow shoulder where Howard was walking, according to a report released last week by the California Highway Patrol (CHP).
The pending analysis from Caltrans will look at possible safety improvements, including narrowing the highway’s lanes and pushing back retaining walls to create more space for pedestrians and bicyclists, according to Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) Senior Transportation Planner Rachel Moriconi.
Officials ordered the analysis at an April 18 meeting attended by Assemblymember Mark Stone and 5th District Supervisor Bruce McPherson, along with representatives from the RTC, Caltrans, the San Lorenzo Valley School District, the California Highway Patrol, and Santa Cruz County Department of Public Works.
Congressmember Anna Eshoo and Congressmember Jimmy Panetta also briefly attended the meeting before having to step out.
“The elected officials made it clear Thursday they strongly believe the community deserves an immediate response to the threats posed by the corridor, and they expect tangible responses as soon as possible,” says J.M. Brown, an analyst in McPherson’s office.
Though it may be a step forward, the announcement has rankled members of the San Lorenzo Valley community, many of whom have demanded safety improvements along the Highway 9 corridor for more than a decade.
When 22-year-old Josh was struck and killed walking along the southbound shoulder of Highway 9 during rush hour in Felton, community members launched anonline petition, reigniting a long-simmering, emotional issue among residents of Felton and the greater San Lorenzo Valley.
The petition, which has garnered nearly 1,500 signatures and 400 comments, notes that community members surveyed for the RTC’sDraft Highway 9/San Lorenzo Valley Complete Streets Corridor Plan overwhelmingly identified pedestrian and cyclist safety between the San Lorenzo Valley school campuses and downtown Felton as a top priority.
At the April 18 meeting, Assemblymember Stone and Supervisor McPherson echoed their constituents’ concerns, according to those with knowledge of the discussion, and they demanded Caltrans immediately identify and implement temporary steps to improve the one-mile stretch of highway where Josh died.
Josh’s mom, Kelley Howard, 41, of Felton, is gratified to see some progress toward making Highway 9 safer. But promises of an analysis or temporary fix ring hollow in the wake of her son’s death.
“I think that’s a start. Not to sound unappreciative, but actions speak louder than words. The community has been demanding safety along the Highway 9 corridor for 11 years,” Kelley says.
Obstacles Ahead
There are significant obstacles to any plan, large or small, Moriconi says. Narrowing the highway’s lanes will negatively affect the ability of larger vehicles, such as fire engines and logging trucks that use the road on a daily basis, to maneuver. In addition, moving retaining walls is expensive. Even seemingly easy fixes, like additional signage, can be problematic, as more signs sometimes mean more distracted drivers.
“Caltrans knows this is a community priority and are looking at all the data, but they don’t want to do anything that has unintended consequences. If there was a quick fix, this would have been done decades ago,” Moriconi says.
Money, of course, is an issue. Although partially funded by Measure D, which voters approved in 2016, the project would rely on the state’sActive Transportation Program, which is supported by gas taxes. That fund is not as strong as it once was, despite a recent gas tax increase.
“It’s now up to Caltrans, the RTC, and the county to work together, leverage appropriate funding and ensure the safety of this corridor,” says Assemblymember Stone in a statement.
While Caltrans’ analysis may result in a temporary fix to the segment of highway used by students, significant safety improvements to the entire 18-mile San Lorenzo Valley corridor are still years away.
In an April 16 letter addressed to RTC Executive Director Guy Preston, Caltrans Deputy District Director Aileen Loe said Caltrans will begin work on a scoping document for pavement preservation along the San Lorenzo Valley corridor this summer. Improvements, she wrote, would be funded in the 2022 State Highway Operations and Preservation Program.
As a result of this timetable, Kelley fears that another San Lorenzo Valley mother may have to live through the pain of losing a child before planners ensure the corridor’s safety.
“There are a lot of bad spots along Highway 9. Kids are in danger daily. I still see kids taking the path where my son was killed. I’m grateful that no one else has been hurt or killed, but I’m also surprised,” Kelley says.
Kelley is also concerned that Jeremy Shreves, 47, of Boulder Creek, remains free and behind the wheel after killing her son with his 2000 Toyota 4-Runner.
Josh, a hard-working, happy-go-lucky young man on the milder end of the autism spectrum, attended classes at Cabrillo College and held down jobs at two pizza parlors and Castelli’s Deli. He was walking home from an eight-hour shift at the latter when he was killed.
Like Josh, Shreves had just finished a long day of work. He was headed to Safeway in Felton when the accident occurred, according to the CHP incident report.
At the time, Shreves contended he was only traveling 20 mph when he hit Josh. However, his passenger, Bean Bourn, told investigators that Shreves had been traveling 30 to 35 mph.
According to Bourn’s comments, Shreves inexplicably drifted over the solid white line to where Josh was walking along a roughly three-foot shoulder abutted by a sheer concrete retaining wall.
As Bourn yelled, “Whoa, Whoa!”, the Toyota strayed 1-to-2 feet over the solid white line and struck Josh from behind.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office has recommended a misdemeanor charge of gross vehicular manslaughter to the District Attorney’s Office, which has yet to assign a specific attorney to the case.
“From what I understand, they’re not considering it as gross negligence, which would be a felony. I don’t really understand that. He has a long criminal history. He admitted to drinking and smoking pot on the day the accident occurred,” Kelley says. “It boggles the mind.”
Shreves’ criminal history in Santa Cruz County dates back to 1995. It includes a six-month jail sentence for felony burglary and multiple vandalism and drug charges. At the time of the accident, he admitted to the investigating officer that he had drank a beer earlier in the day and smoked marijuana at lunch. However, a field sobriety test indicated he was sober when he struck Josh.
Shreves, who did not respond to an interview request, submitted to a blood test at a hospital after the incident. Results from that test have not been released.
While she waits for the D.A. to address the case, Kelley hopes tangible changes address the stretch of road where her son lost his life. At the very least, she suggests redirecting students through Clearview Place, which is closed to traffic, to avoid the dangerous stretch of highway.
But no amount of highway safety improvements will truly console the grieving mother.
“In the end, nothing will be enough, of course,” Kelley says. “Nothing will bring my baby home.”
Update 4/23/2019 11:20 a.m.: A previous version of this story misreported Kelley Howard’s age.
Ecology Action has put together a new program for the month of May, and anyone who rides to work five times next month will have a shot at a $7,500 prize.
Bike riders will have to download the third-party app Strava to track their rides.Cyclists who ride on Bike-to-Work Day, Thursday, May 9, will get an additional entry—plus a shot at winning a new e-bike. Bike-to-Work Day will have breakfast sites all the way from Watsonville to Scotts Valley. Visitecoact.org/biketoworkfor more information.
Watsonville is also gearing up for an Open Streets event Sunday, June 2, when organizers will close off downtown blocks in celebration of cyclists and pedestrians. Last year, after a scary rash of pedestrian deaths, the city of Watsonville became the first city in the county to sign onto Vision Zero, a campaign to eliminate traffic fatalities, while increasing healthy and safe transportation options for everyone.
SUER SYSTEM
Activism and the court system have a lot in common.
They both incentivize players to throw as much as they can against the wall to see what sticks.
The basis of local homeless activists’ suit against the city of Santa Cruz—over chatter about closing down the Gateway homeless encampment behind the Ross department store—is simple enough. The city doesn’t have enough shelter beds, so there aren’t enough places for the homeless to go, the complaint alleges. (As of press time, the city was conducting a camp clean-up, while the council weighed the possibility of closing the camp permanently, amid a potentially delicate legal situation.)
But the suit pulls in a surprisingly long list of defendants, including city administrators Tina Shull and Susie O’Hara, who’ve both been taking direction from the City Council under the guidance of City Manager Martín Bernal, and appear to be working crazy-long hours as the electeds switch course on homelessness every two weeks.
The suit additionally names the public safety group Take Back Santa Cruz, arguing that the group is tied to SCPD Chief Andy Mills, and because the collective is allegedly spreading “anti-homeless hate.”
We’re not here to defend xenophobic remarks in online forums, but let’s be honest: Some of this legal junk is a lot like Robert Norse’s eloquent bi-weekly rambling during public comment at City Hall—it sounds interesting, it wastes time, and it means absolutely nothing.
Between the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, the jazz program at Cabrillo College and the music programs at some of the area’s schools, there may be no better place in America outside New York or New Orleans to grow up with jazz than in Santa Cruz County.
It makes sense, then, that Santa Cruz County is fully committed to International Jazz Day, a worldwide celebration of jazz sponsored by UNESCO, the Smithsonian Institute and the Herbie Hancock Jazz Institute. In fact, it’s known locally as International Jazz Week, thanks largely to the efforts of Santa Cruz jazz percussionist Prince Lawsha.
This year, Lawsha has been busy bringing a group of accomplished jazz musicians to several of the county’s schools for performances and workshops, all of which culminate in a free outdoor concert on Sunday at the bandstand at the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf, featuring legendary percussionist Pete Escovedo.
Sunday is the official observance of International Jazz Day, and from noon-5 p.m., Lawsha and his impromptu band of jazz all-stars will open the performance at the Wharf, followed by Escovedo and his orchestra, which features his sons Juan Escovedo and Peter Michael Escovedo.
But even before the first note is struck in Sunday’s concert, many of the county’s school children will have already been exposed up close to high-quality jazz performance.
Six years ago, Lawsha—the son of a celebrated saxophonist also known as Prince Lawsha, a veteran touring musician and recording artist in his own right—approached former county school superintendent Michael Watkins with an idea to bring professional jazz players into the county’s classrooms.
“I figured that if I’m going to bring artists from outside the country here [for International Jazz Day], I could do better having them here a whole week with students, rather than just one day at the Wharf,” says Lawsha.
The result was the birth of a local tradition, as Lawsha led a jazz band into one local school every day of the school week. This year, he has assembled a group of musicians from his friends and colleagues in jazz, who he’s met performing around the world. They include Philadelphia bass player Tyrone Brown, French sax man Jean-Jacques Taib and a few California players, including guitarist Cameron Smith, pianist Martan Mann and coronet player Lewis Kaiser.
Lawsha and the band are in the midst of a tour of the county’s schools, which this year includes Harbor High, Soquel Elementary, Pajaro Valley Middle School, Sequoia School in Freedom, and Cesar Chavez Middle School in Watsonville. The aim of the tour, says Lawsha, is to instill a love of jazz in the younger generation, and to allow young aspiring musicians to see models of professionalism in the business. “What we want to do is make sure that these kids will keep these instruments in their hands all their life,” he says.
Audrey Sirota is the arts coordinator for the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, and her job is to act as the liaison between the musicians and the schools. She says the benefits of the jazz musicians coming into schools extend beyond aspiring musicians.
“Seeing how you can make a living as a musician and how you can make a career of it has a profound influence on a lot of the students, even if they never become professional musicians,” she says.
A couple of years ago, Sirota was witness to the process of how jazz musicians inspire the very young when she attended a performance at Mountain Elementary School outside Soquel. “The musicians ended up doing some nursery rhymes and songs that the kids were familiar with—taking ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,’ for example, and turning it into a jazz improv.” This year, Lawsha and his band are planning a similar approach with Spanish-language nursery rhymes.
Also, in keeping with the international flavor of International Jazz Day, Lawsha is intent on bringing to town musicians from other places as a way to underline the power of American jazz around the world.
“I do try to bring in people from outside the country so that kids can get inspired seeing people from other countries playing our music with such love,” he says.
The International Jazz Day program, featuring Pete Escovedo and the Escovedo Orchestra, along with Prince Lawsha and the Jazz Day All-Stars, will be presented Sunday, April 28, noon-5 p.m, at the bandstand at the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. The concert is free and open to the public. jazzday.com.
Aries is always the first sign of the new spiritual year. It is the seed pushing forth the first two leaves (they look like rams’ horns, the Aries sign) emerging from the Earth during spring.
Aries (sign, person, time), the first sign of the zodiac, holds the force of creation. However, Aries realizes that it is only with patience and time that the creative force can come into practical focus and substance. Aries’ fire is unable to complete tasks and projects. Completion is not the task of Aries; that is the task of Taurus. Aries hands the initiating fiery ideas from the Mind of God to Taurus for anchoring, application and completion. And so here we are in Taurus for a month.
Taurus is the sign of desire. It is also the sign of aspiration. Taurus lives within slow time. Taurus ponders things deeply before coming to any final decisions. During Taurus, it’s good to understand the planetary frequencies available and influencing us each day.
Sunday: the sun guiding us, illuminating our mind to look toward the week ahead. Monday’s moon helps us nurture daily home life. Tuesday: Mars helps to ensure that our actions and power are expressed with kindness, wisdom and in a rhythmic regulatory way, creating Goodwill. Mercury, the messenger, rules Wednesday, providing us with discernment and discrimination as to what is right and what is not right. Thursday is Jupiter’s day, offering the qualities of generosity, expansion, love, and joy. Friday, Venus guides us into experiences of beauty and Right Relations. Venus unifies all separations. Saturday is Saturn’s day, helping us learn more, clarify all matters, complete our past week and create new structure for the days and weeks ahead.
ARIES: Past abilities and gifts emerge in your daily life. There are many, and they are good. Wounds go into hiding for a while. Tend with mindfulness to all daily tasks, especially if traveling. Responsibilities increase; love increases, too. Find Taurus people and communicate with them. They comfort you. Be prudent with money while also tithing and sharing.
TAURUS: In these times, as the reorientation of humanity and our economy continues, you tell us why and how and what to prepare for life on the edge, life without comforts, and how to still maintain the art of living. It’s time to gather materials for a greenhouse. Old wood-framed glass doors and windows will do.
GEMINI: So many responsibilities call you. And whatever does, no matter when, you must do your very focused best to tend with care and mindfulness. Two directions imply an opposition, which creates much resistance at first. Later, acceptance comes, and a blending of the many. Your intuition is active, wanting to bring forth synthesis. Ask for more information and ask for all that you need. Then wait for the subtle quiet answers in response.
CANCER: Many of us are experiencing inflammation and pain, especially in the knees (Saturn, south node, Pluto in Capricorn). Turmeric is an anti-inflammatory. Preparing East Indian (or ayurvedic) foods are best for healing and digestion. Indian spices have health benefits—turmeric is anti-inflammatory, as is coriander (it also contains magnesium); cayenne and black pepper for warmth; cumin aids in digestion; chilis have Vitamin C. Dry roast the spices, then add ghee (clarified butter). These are nurturing Capricorn/Saturn health tips. Capricorn is your opposite sign.
LEO: Tending to self is your Easter season task. Is there contact, communication and emotional support with and from family? Are many things from the past remaining behind the scenes and hidden away? You can no longer stay hidden. Leo is the light of life for others. Leo is to discover their creative loving self, like a found object of self. We are to discover that we are each an art form. Leo is to discover this first.
VIRGO: Focus on serving others and not on anything else. Sometimes it’s hard to do our work with concentration and dedication. However, if we have an intention to do something in a certain way, like focusing on our intention to serve, then it becomes easier. What you receive by doing this is a clear and grounded sense of self. The wound that’s always hurting will slowly dissolve. Clarity of vision and purpose then emerge. You need all of these.
LIBRA: In daily life, you’ve become prudent, disciplined, focused, reliable, industrious, serious, reserved, patient, and persevering. You’ve assumed more and more responsibilities. Some Librans have stepped into a healing role. Are you, however, the one in need of healing? Do not allow any type of insecurity or inhibitions to limit you. Think these through. Be only with those who care for, love, support, and see you as perfect.
SCORPIO: There’s a new state of creativity flowing through you. Music, very important at this time, must be in your environments at all times. Travel, study, culture, sculpting, hiking, archery, horse tending and/or riding are past abilities, talents and gifts you can again cultivate. Tend to mundane tasks carefully and honor the details. Blessings create new and deeper awareness and responses.
SAGITTARIUS: Home, for so long in a state of here and not here, now assumes a more defined reality. Bring in bright colors—plants, vines, cactus, aquariums, Tibetan art, lights, and a flash of neon. They create the style you seek. Home is your sangha (refuge), sanctuary and retreat. Try not to be at odds with anyone. Tend to all tasks with constancy and loving care. You are to expand into a new identity, growth and development.
CAPRICORN: The tension and pressure you’re feeling can be used creatively. Know that a self-transformation is slowly coming your way. Cooperation is available from everyone. Teaching others to cooperate nurtures them and you. Everyone sees you as someone of great value, providing you with the courage needed that transforms all situations. You answer to needs. You are the harmony after the conflict. All that you do is good.
AQUARIUS: It’s important to secure your money and not use it indiscriminately. It’s also important to share it with those in need. Your money should be used to safeguard your future, work and family. Invest with others in land, consider what it would take to build an agrarian community. Assess the world situation, and be the first to communicate what you see. A new world is coming. You will play a major part in its establishment.
PISCES: Is your daily life feeling somewhat shrouded in a mist? Can you assess your present daily needs and priorities? You want to be practical while initiating new goals. Relationships are expanding. How will this affect your life? Do you think about serving others? Serving is a Virgo task, your hidden sign. Always the world calls to you. Always you respond with grace.
The allure of Baja California has always been tied to its separateness. Separated from Alta California—that is, the state of California—by a contentious international border, and from the rest of Mexico by the Sea of Cortez, Baja has developed a distinct identity that you can only feel if you escape the centrifugal force of its polar party cities, Tijuana and Cabo San Lucas.
The Bruce family of Santa Cruz do not need to be sold on the magic of Baja. They’ve been going there regularly for decades, and their abiding love of the place is the guiding spirit that animates the new documentary The Devil’s Road: A Baja Adventure, which makes its world premiere at the Rio Theatre on April 27.
The Devil’s Road is an adventure story that takes the viewer along for the ride down nearly 800 miles of the Baja peninsula. Filmmaker J.T. Bruce and his dad Todd Bruce (the film’s producer) made the trip on a couple of rented motorcycles. Their mission was to follow a 1905 expedition by American naturalists Edward Nelson and Edward Goldman, who covered Baja top to bottom to catalogue the peninsula’s unique flora and fauna. To tie it all into one nice thematic bow, the Bruces learned that they were in fact related to one of the naturalists.
Drawing on both what Nelson and Goldman learned, and the Bruces’ own travels, the film delivers about as complete a portrait of Baja as you could expect in an under-two-hour documentary. The Devil’s Road wraps its arms around the history, ecology, economy and culture of Baja, visits with many of its people, and chronicles alarmingly rapid changes brought about by population growth and climate change. If you’ve ever wanted to get to know Baja California better, this film is a full meal.
“Baja has pretty much formed me,” said Bri Bruce, sister of J.T. and daughter of Todd, and the film’s associate producer. Bri joined the expedition as it traveled south, and at one point participated in a horseback outing tracing the very path that naturalists Nelson and Goldman took more than a century ago. “It was really an incredible experience,” she says. “I kept asking myself, ‘Am I in 1905?’”
With an eye toward the work of Nelson and Goldman—the latter of whom the Bruces knew as an ancestor in an old family photo before they learned he was a celebrated naturalist—The Devil’s Road strikes a mournful tone when it contemplates the rapid changes that have consumed the Baja peninsula. Working in the immediate post-Darwin world of natural science, Nelson and Goldman catalogued and identified scores of species of plants and animals, some of which bear their names in their present-day scientific nomenclature.
The world that the naturalists discovered in Baja a century ago is disappearing, thanks to pressures brought on mostly by development and climate change.
“Baja has boomed over the course of the last century,” says Bri. “A hundred years really doesn’t seem like all that long ago. Things can change so quickly on a year-by-year basis. When that whole region is seeing these intense boom-and-bust cycles, you’d be surprised how much can change in just a few years.”
In that sense, The Devil’s Road emerges as a snapshot of a Baja utterly changed since Nelson and Goldman, yet still in the throes of that change. The broad transformation taking place in Baja convinced the Bruces that their film had to have a wider scope of vision than their own relationship with the region. “I don’t think initially we set out to get that big complete portrait,” says Bri. “But we realized that we couldn’t just follow one string of the narrative without telling the rest of it. It was so intertwined.”
Still, the film is a family story. The Bruces trace their lineage back in Santa Cruz several generations, but their connections to the Baja peninsula are no less profound. J.T. and Todd Bruce covered more than 5,000 miles on their motorcycles going up and down the peninsula, and while much of it was fueled by a sense of discovery, there was a deep familiarity at play as well. Bri Bruce says she has been traveling to Baja regularly with her family since she was a baby. “The saltwater from the Sea of Cortez runs in my veins a little bit.”
‘The Devil’s Road: A Baja Adventure,’ directed by J.T. Bruce, plays Saturday, April 27, at 5:30 p.m. at the Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $15. devilsroadfilm.com.
Free will astrology for the week of April 24, 2019
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the U.S., the day after Thanksgiving typically features a spectacular shopping orgy. On “Black Friday,” stores sell their products at steep discounts and consumers spend their money extravagantly. But the creators of the game Cards Against Humanity have consistently satirized the tradition. In 2013, for example, they staged a Black Friday “anti-sale,” for which they raised their prices. The coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to try something similar. Is it possible you’re undercharging for your products and services and skills? If so, consider asking for more. Reassess your true worth and seek appropriate rewards.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Whether or not you believe in magic, magic believes in you right now. Will you take advantage of the fancy gifts it has to offer? I guess it’s possible that you’re not interested in seeing deeper into the secret hearts of those you care for. Maybe you’ll go “ho-hum” when shown how to recognize a half-hidden opportunity that could bring vitalizing changes. And you may think it’s not very practical to romance the fire and the water at the same time. But if you’re interested, all that good stuff will be available for you. P.S. To maximize the effects of the magic, believe in it.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 1815, the most ferocious volcanic eruption in human history exploded from Mount Tambora in what’s now known as Indonesia. It flung gas and ash all over the planet, causing weird weather for three years. Sunlight dimmed, temperatures plummeted, skies were tumultuous, and intense storms proliferated. Yet these conditions ignited the imagination of author Mary Shelley, inspiring her to write what was to become her most notable work, Frankenstein. I suspect that you, too, will ultimately generate at least one productive marvel in response to the unusual events of the coming weeks.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): For over 40 years, Cancerian musician Carlos Santana has made music that blends rock and roll with Latin and African rhythms. In the early years, his creations sold well, but by the mid-1980s his commercial success declined. For a decade, he floundered. His fortunes began to improve after a spectacular meditation session. Santana says he was contacted by the archangel Metatron, who told him how to generate material for a new album. The result was Supernatural, which sold 30 million copies and won nine Grammy Awards. I mention this, Cancerian, because I suspect that you could soon experience a more modest but still rousing variation of Santana’s visitation. Are you interested? If so, the next seven weeks will be a good time to seek it out—and be very receptive to its possibility
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “Expergefactor” is an old English word that has fallen out of use. In its original sense, it meant something that wakes you up, like an alarm clock or thunderstorm or your partner’s snoring. But I want to revive “expergefactor” and expand its meaning. In its new version, it will refer to an exciting possibility or beloved goal that consistently motivates you to spring out of bed in the morning and get your day started. Your expergefactor could be an adventure you’re planning or a masterpiece you’re working on or a relationship that fills you with curiosity and enchantment. In my astrological opinion, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to identify and fine-tune an expergefactor that will serve you well for a long time.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): We live in a cultural moment when satire, sarcasm, cynicism, and irony are prized as supreme emblems of intelligence. If you say that you value sincerity and earnestness, you risk being considered naive and unsophisticated. Nevertheless, the current astrological omens suggest that you will generate good fortune for yourself in the coming weeks by making liberal use of sincerity and earnestness. So please try not to fall into the easy trap of relying on satire, sarcasm, cynicism, and irony to express yourself. As much as is practical, be kindly frank and compassionately truthful and empathetically genuine. (P.S. It’s a strategy that will serve your selfish aims quite well.)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “Most people don’t find their creativity,” mourned Libran author Truman Capote. “There are more unsung geniuses that don’t even know they have great talent.” If that describes you even a little bit, I’m happy to let you know that you’re close to stumbling upon events and insights that could change that. If you respond to the prompts of these unexpected openings, you will rouse a partially dormant aspect of your genius, as well as a half-inert stash of creativity and a semi-latent cache of imaginativity.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Do you know the word “sfumato?” Its literal meaning in Italian is “smoked.” When used to describe a painting, it refers to blurred borders between objects or fuzzy transitions between areas of different colors. All the forms are soft and hazy. I bring this to your attention because I suspect the coming weeks will be a sfumato-like time for you. You may find it a challenge to make precise distinctions. Future and past may overlap, as well as beginnings and endings. That doesn’t have to be a problem as long as you’re willing to go with the amorphous flow. In fact, it could even be pleasurable and useful. You might be able to connect with influences from which you’ve previously been shut off. You could blend your energies together better with people who’ve been unavailable.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “You have a right to experiment with your life,” declared author Anaïs Nin. I agree. You don’t necessarily have to be what you started out to be. You can change your mind about goals that you may at one time have thought were permanent. I suspect you could be at one of these pivot points right now, Sagittarius. Are there any experiments you’d like to try? If so, keep in mind this further counsel from Nin. It’s possible that “you will make mistakes. And they are right, too.”
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You have one main task to accomplish in the coming weeks, Capricorn. It’ll be simple and natural if you devote yourself to it wholeheartedly. The only way it could possibly become complicated and challenging is if you allow your focus to be diffused by less important matters. Ready for your assignment? It’s articulated in this poem by Rupi Kaur: “bloom beautifully / dangerously / loudly / bloom softly / however you need / just bloom.”
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): When the forces of the Roman empire occupied the British Isles from the years 43-410 A.D., they built 2,000 miles of roads. Their methods were sophisticated. That’s why few new roads were built in England until the 18th century, and many of the same paths are still visible and available today. In this spirit, and in accordance with astrological omens, I recommend that you make good use of an old system or network in the coming weeks. This is one time when the past has blessings to offer the future.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “I’m not enigmatic and intriguing enough,” writes a Piscean blogger named RiddleMaster. “I really must work harder. Maybe I’ll start wearing ankle-length black leather coats, billowing silk scarves imprinted with alchemical symbols, and wide-brimmed hats. I’ll listen to Cambodian folk songs and read rare books in ancient Sanskrit. When someone dares to speak to me, I’ll utter cryptic declarations like, ‘The prophecies will be fulfilled soon enough.’” I understand RiddleMaster’s feelings. You Pisceans need mystery almost as much as you need food. But I believe you should set aside that drive for a few weeks. The time has come for you to show the world who you are with crisp candor.
Homework: Compose an exciting prayer in which you ask for something you’re not “supposed” to. freewillastrology.com.
After pushing the limits of consciousness to the edge in new documentary ‘Psychonautics,’ comedian Shane Mauss brings his science-and-psychedelics-themed shows to Santa Cruz
