Some salamanders and frogs have tongues up to 10 times as long as their bodies, and the world’s largest salamander can grow to a length of 5 feet. Discover some of the secretive salamanders that live in the redwood forest, and learn all about salamander life cycles, behaviors, adaptations, and the current threats they face. The trip totals about 2 miles. Don’t forget to bring water and hiking shoes.
INFO: Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park Visitor Center, 101 N Big Trees Park Road., Felton. 335-7077. Free/vehicle day use $10.
Art Seen
Random With A Purpose XXVII: Via
UCSC’s annual student dance production Random With A Purpose is a collaboratively student-run and student-created dance production. Now in its 27th year, choreographers create dances about an ongoing process or one which they have experienced, presenting the audience with a changing and developing environment to exhibit the various ways we are influenced by the spaces we navigate.
INFO: 7:30 p.m., 3 p.m, Sunday matinees. Friday, Feb. 15-Sunday, Feb. 24. UCSC Second Stage Theater Arts Center, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz. ucsctickets.com. $18/$5 parking. Photo: Photo by Stephen Louis Marino.
Thursday 2/14-Saturday 2/16
‘What Is Erotic? I See You/Te Veo’
The 418 Project’s latest show focuses on their annual V-Day question: what is erotic? In the spirit of this year’s focus on viewpoints, the all-volunteer cast and crew wants to showcase different perspectives. Now in its 14th season, What Is Erotic? puts local artists’ brave, original, sometimes-poignant, and sometimes-funny reflections on view with pole dance, spoken word, burlesque, theater, and more.
INFO: 7:30 p.m. The 418 Project, 418 Front St., Santa Cruz. 466-9770, the418project.com. $25-125.
Monday 2/18
‘Marlon James: Black Leopard, Red Wolf’
New York Times bestselling author Marlon James comes to Santa Cruz to talk about his latest novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf. The book includes a colorful cast of characters, like a shapeshifting man-animal, a monstrous eater of human flesh, witches, roof-walkers, murderous hyenas, trolls, mermaids, and conjoined twins.
INFO: 7 p.m. Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. 423-0900, bookshopsantacruz.com. Free. Photo: Mark Seliger.
Thursday 2/21-Sunday 2/24
43rd Banff Mountain Film Festival
The annual Banff Mountain Film Festival is traveling to some 400 communities around the world. From an exploration of remote landscapes and mountain cultures to adrenaline-fueled action sports, this year’s world tour is making a pit stop in Santa Cruz to bring stories of distance runners and skiers, beavers and grizzlies. Benefits the UCSC Wilderness Orientation Scholarship Fund.
INFO: 7 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. 423-8209, riotheatre.com. $18-22.
Under the towering eucalyptus trees in the Monarch grove at Natural Bridges, Gabriela Cruz and her 5-year-old classmates were doing their best to follow their Head Start teacher’s instructions to let the butterflies sleep in peace. That didn’t last long. A clattering sound from something hitting the wood platform under their feet triggered an eruption of black and orange, delighting the young crowd.
After that, Cruz always looked forward to the annual Bay View Elementary School field trip to the sanctuary, studying metamorphosis and the importance of the grove in providing shelter for the butterflies in their long annual migration. So it only seemed natural last year for Cruz, now 29, to don a pair of Monarch-colored wings to cement her own transformation into an activist, joining a group of fellow first-generation immigrant “Dreamers” at the nation’s Capitol to protest President Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration policies.
Cruz, who still lives in Santa Cruz and now works full-time as a community organizer for the group United We Dream (UWD), is undocumented. Her mom brought her to the U.S. from Oaxaca, Mexico, when she was 1 year old. This is the only country she has ever known.
In 2012, Cruz was awarded legal protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Her grandmother, also firmly rooted in the community, started the annual week-long festival Las Posadas, of processions reenacting Joseph and Mary’s search for shelter for the birth of their baby, Jesus, and Cruz now continues the Christmas tradition.
On September 5, 2017, when the Trump administration reversed the protected status for Dreamers like Cruz and rescinded DACA, she and 800,000 other recipients had already undergone rigorous vetting and given the government information about every aspect of their lives. Cruz was working at a downtown bank when she heard the news. She was terrified when she thought about what might happen next.
“It could have been the worst-case scenario, like tomorrow they are going to show up at my house or at my work and find me, because they have all of that information,” Cruz says. “Luckily that didn’t happen, but that was a fear, and it was a realistic fear.”
Santa Cruz, with its border on the Pacific Ocean, is well within the 100-mile zone where U.S. Border Patrol is able to operate random immigration checkpoints. The U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect Americans from arbitrary stops and searches, but undocumented residents in the area increasingly find themselves at risk of being targeted by law enforcement under a previously unenforced regulation that was passed in 1953 without any public comment or debate.
Devastated but determined after the sudden reversal on DACA a year and a half ago, Cruz stumbled across an announcement on Facebook that protesters would be gathering at the clock tower in downtown Santa Cruz. She had never attended a protest, but that day she brought her cousins, her niece and a few friends. It was there that she spoke openly about being undocumented for the first time, in front of a crowd of about 50 strangers.
As news began to spread about what was happening with DACA, Cruz felt it was important for people to hear directly from someone who would be impacted by the decision. “I was just at such a low place emotionally,” Cruz says. “I felt like I had nothing to lose because everything I had been working towards my entire life—being stable and thriving in this community—is being taken from me.”
Miriam Stombler, a retired attorney who worked for the San Francisco City Attorney’s office, and later for the Santa Cruz County Counsel’s office, was at the clock tower that day. Stombler says that when Trump was elected, she felt the need to go back on active status, reactivating her bar license to help immigrants who are being affected by his administration’s policies. She met Cruz after she shared her story with the crowd.
“As I got to know her,” Stombler says, “I got to realize what a leap that was for her—from living quietly, never talking about her status, to suddenly bursting out with this passion for justice. I’m just astounded and enthralled with how she has grown.”
Stombler had also been considering offering shelter to a person or family in need. After she heard Cruz speak, she approached her with a hug and an offer of a place to stay if she needed one.
”I was overwhelmed by the fact that this person I didn’t know would open her doors to me,” Cruz says. “The fact that this woman was offering me her home to hide in, essentially, it was also like, ‘Holy shit, this is really happening, right?’ We all don’t know what’s going to happen to me. It was comforting to know that someone was so loving to open her doors to me, but it was also the scariest thing of my life.”
STANDING UP
Stombler also introduced Cruz to Sanctuary Santa Cruz, an immigrant rights group. Soon, Cruz was managing the group’s Facebook page. After that, she started planning her first trip to Washington, D.C., where she would meet a group of young immigrant activists from all over the country who were making their voices heard in Congress as members of immigrant advocacy group United We Dream.
Cruz and her fellow Dreamers wore orange-and-black Monarch wings as they gathered in a rotunda at the Capitol to push for a “clean” Dream Act. The Dream Act was introduced in 2017 as bipartisan legislation that provides a pathway to citizenship for the 2 million immigrant youth and young adults who came to the U.S. as kids, including the 800,000 DACA recipients who were left in limbo when the program was rescinded in September 2017. A “clean” act would not include additional conditions, such as funding for a border wall or increased law enforcement targeted at immigrants tacked on.
Cruz promised her mom that she would not get arrested in D.C., and she kept that promise—on her first visit, anyway. The weight of the situation started to sink in during a visit to the Holocaust Museum, and as she watched members of Bend the Arc Jewish Action stage a protest with songs of liberation from Jewish internment camps.
“They understood what was happening back then is happening now,” Cruz says. “It’s not something they wanted to just sit back and watch.” Knowing that others were willing to risk arrest for Dreamers was emotional, she said. “I cried my whole face off.”
As Cruz became immersed in the world of activism—volunteering for Sanctuary Santa Cruz, joining activist groups on social media, meeting young adults from across the nation who shared similar stories—she thought back to growing up in Santa Cruz, “a goody two shoes” who avoided any risk of getting in trouble. “For so long, I was walking on eggshells trying to be this perfect person worthy of citizenship,” Cruz said. “I thought, ‘If I never commit a crime, they can never call me a criminal.’”
TRUTH TO POWER Gabriela Cruz speaks in the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
One of Trump’s most common refrains is that immigrants who come here illegally commit crimes. While this feeds his political base and helps justify racist policy proposals like border walls and increased deportations, a wide array of research concludes that it is simply not true that immigrants commit more crimes. A recent New York Times article based on a comprehensive study by four universities reported that while immigration rates have grown steadily in the past few decades, plateauing more recently, crime rates during the same period have declined. The national violent crime rate today is well below what it was in the 1980s.
Cruz’s anxiety went out the window on her second trip to D.C. a year ago, when she was arrested during a planned protest demanding the inclusion of a clean Dream Act in a deal to fund the government. She knew when she left Santa Cruz that she would participate in civil disobedience that would likely result in her arrest. Her spotless criminal record passed the test of the criminal and immigration attorneys who screened protestors for the action.
“Our people are being found in cages already, so it was to show what was happening and that our lives are in danger,” Cruz says. “And yes, we are taking a risk, but we are taking a stand against injustice.”
Growing up, Cruz was taught that bad people are criminals. But she now realized that entire populations could also be criminalized with political rhetoric. “Being called criminal simply because my mom fled a country where she didn’t see a future for me to offer me a better life—to call her a criminal, it really hurt,” Cruz says.
As Cruz and her fellow Dreamers gathered in the rotunda of the congressional building last year, it initially felt like the other actions she had been a part of. But when the Capitol police gave a third warning to move from the area or be arrested, things got real. Cruz and about 80 others stood chanting “Undocumented, Unafraid” and sang the song “We Shall Not be Moved.” Those who didn’t want to be arrested went up the stairs to watch over them from above. As Cruz looked up and saw some of her friends crying, she became emotional. “I remember thinking, ‘Don’t cry, because they’re going to think you’re scared, and you’re not scared. You’re fine. So just stay strong and keep chanting,’” she says.
Cruz was the first person to be arrested. Her arresting officer removed her wings and put zip ties around her wrists with shaking hands. “I kind of felt like, ‘You’re nervous. I’m scared. We’re kind of in this together in a sense. Which is a weird feeling to have for someone who obviously has authority over you and is about to arrest you,” she says.
“The funny thing is I wanted to be a police officer at one point. When I realized I wasn’t going to be going to law school, I thought, ‘Well, maybe I could be a police officer,’ so at Cabrillo I took almost all of the criminal justice classes.”
The activists were detained for about five hours in a freezing warehouse before they were released and fined $50 each. Afterword, while she and her fellow protestors were eating dinner together, Cruz asked the person sitting next to her if he had ever been arrested. “Yes,” he told her, “but never for something so important.”
‘WHITE LIES’
Cruz was in middle school when she found out that she wasn’t documented. Teachers and students were preparing for an 8th grade field trip to Washington, D.C. when her mom broke the news to her. She couldn’t travel because she wasn’t a U.S. citizen, and the risk of that being discovered was too great.
It was a jarring discovery for a young person who had developed a deep sense of patriotism thanks to a 6th grade teacher at Bay View Elementary, Donna Merlotti. Cruz was in Ms. Merlotti’s class on Sept. 11, 2001. Merlotti, who has since passed away, had asked students to write letters and send care packages to firefighters who cleaned up the wreckage, sometimes to a soundtrack of Mariah Carey’s song “Hero.”
“We would read the newspaper every day. I think that’s where I started to read about politics that were happening around the world and got more interested in it,” Cruz says. “She really taught us so much more than what you would normally learn in school. She taught us to have good, moral character, and how to behave.”
Not being able to go to Washington with her classmates stung, but Cruz really started to internalize the stakes of being undocumented in high school. Staying motivated with her future uncertain was difficult, and her grades suffered during freshman and sophomore year.
“I remember having this argument with my mom about my grades one time. I said, ‘Why does it even matter?’” Cruz recalls. “Why does it matter if at the end of this, I could work so hard for something and one, we can’t afford me going to a four-year college, and two, I can’t go because I’m undocumented?’”
Still, Cruz became captain of the cheerleading team at Santa Cruz High. In her “little bubble,” avoiding parties or anything that might get her in the slightest bit of trouble, she often didn’t have anyone to talk to about what was really going on. Her friends and teachers didn’t know, and there was no visible support for students in similar situation.
“I had to come up with these little white lies as to why I couldn’t get a job, or I could get a job in certain places, but not anywhere like anybody else,” Cruz says. “I couldn’t get a driver’s license, and I used to say, ‘Well, I don’t really need a car.’”
There is no telling exactly how many students in Santa Cruz County are undocumented. Collecting that information at schools is a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Still, there are indicators of how many local residents are directly impacted by shifting immigration policies. At the time DACA was rescinded in 2017, there were 1,700 DACA recipients in Santa Cruz County, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Cruz’s grades rebounded in her junior year, and she wanted to take an honors U.S. History class. Cruz says a counselor discouraged her. Getting a C in civics was admittedly not great, but it also didn’t seem disqualifying.
“She didn’t know that my mom was a single parent to four girls and whenever my little sister was sick, I would have to stay home from school to take care of her so my mom could go to work,” Cruz said. “She didn’t know that I had an after-school job and I cheered and I was undocumented.” It hurt to think that “no one else cared enough to ask,” assuming that she just didn’t want to do her homework, or wasn’t smart enough.
Under A.B. 60 in California, undocumented residents can now get a driver’s license, but not much else has changed for students. They still can’t get jobs and aren’t eligible for most scholarships. Higher education is more accessible for those who can pay for it through the California Dream Act and A.B. 540, the in-state-tuition law that allows students to pay in-state-tuition instead of out-of-state tuition if they attended at least three years of high school in California.
Rather than discouraging her, the honor’s class where Cruz would learn about civil disobedience became a catalyst to prove the counselor—and everyone else—wrong. “I just remember my ears burning. They were so red and hot just because I was so mad that she told me, like, ‘You’re too stupid to take this class,’” Cruz says.
She told the counselor that if she didn’t let her take the class, she was going to go to another counselor. “I ended up getting an A in that class,” Cruz says, setting her up to finish high school early with a 3.5 GPA. She then went to Cabrillo College, working full-time to pay for it, while also applying for DACA.
After six months of waiting to hear whether she would be awarded DACA or denied the stability that the program offered—all the while leaving her personal information in the hands of the government—Cruz got the good news. She saw an opportunity to live as an independent adult who could apply for an apartment without being asked why she didn’t have a social security card. Now she could build credit and provide a credit score in a rental application and move out of her mom’s house. She took a break from her college education to work at the bank full time, and she didn’t go back.
LIFE DEFERRED
Cruz recently returned to Santa Cruz from an internship with United We Dream in Los Angeles, where she worked with other immigrant youth on a civic engagement campaign to get out the vote in the 2018 primary elections. She covered notoriously red corners of Orange County to help turn the entire county blue—an undertaking that received national attention. Next, she went to Modesto, where she joined the United Farm Workers union to help elect pro-immigrant rights Democrat Josh Harder to Congress.
“She gave up the safety of her job to pursue social justice work,” Stombler says. “I have the impression from getting to know her that she’s always played it very safely, and now she’s just following this spark that’s been ignited in her. She’s really extraordinary. This activist has been ignited in her.”
Quitting her job to become a full-time activist was easier with Cruz’s growing support network. Stombler introduced her to Vicki Winters, a web design consultant and Sanctuary Santa Cruz member, who Cruz worked up the courage to ask to go in her place to protest child detention centers in Tornillo, Texas. Though Cruz was helping UWD organize the protest, she needed a U.S. citizen to stand in for her because it was on federal property so close to the border. Winters agreed.
“She was in over 100-degree weather—in the heat and melting ice on her face because it was so hot during this action—waiting to get arrested,” Cruz says. “I’ll never forget that she was willing to put herself on the line for me personally, and people like me.”
STILL DREAMING There has been a wave of activism nationwide since President Donald Trump rescinded DACA in 2017.
Winters did not get end up getting arrested. Partly, she thinks, because local law enforcement there also did not support the camps. Though it is not a new U.S. policy to detain unaccompanied minors, Winters says she saw the protest as a way to bring attention to what she describes as Trump’s new practice of “creating unaccompanied minors” by separating them from their parents.
“We really need to get in there and interfere with this system that’s ruining people’s lives,” Winters says. “Being an ally, I think you need to take the cue from the affected people.”
As Cruz turns her newfound organizing acumen back to her hometown of Santa Cruz, she hopes to bring the organizing force of United We Dream to local schools. One of Cruz’s goals is to work with high schools, UCSC and Cabrillo College to create support systems for students that she didn’t have.
Cruz is also helping documentary filmmaker Brenda Avila-Hanna promote a documentary, Vida Diferida (Life, Deferred), which follows a young woman through the DACA process over several years. The film, they hope, will serve as a starting point for discussions about supporting undocumented students through United We Dream’s established toolkit.
Thinking back to the honors U.S. History class that she fought to get into, Cruz recalls a project she did on the Little Rock Nine, and how much learning about history has shaped her current activism. Now, she hopes to help students forge similar connections between the classroom and civic engagement.
Ultimately, Cruz hopes to create UWD groups at each local school, where immigrant youth are encouraged to develop their voices and become leaders in the community, especially on issues related to immigration.
TAKING FLIGHT
On August 3, 2018, federal courts ordered the Trump administration to fully reinstate the DACA program. But the ruling only applies to renewals, not new applications, and Congress has yet to address the long-term fate of affected young people. Cruz is hopeful that newly elected leaders in Congress will finally move forward on a clean Dream Act. Cruz has successfully renewed her DACA status and carries a DACA ID, but is hesitant to show it and flag herself as an immigrant—and a vulnerable one at that.
As I was talking to Cruz on the phone during a recent last-minute trip to Las Vegas, to surprise a friend for his birthday, there was a scare with her boarding pass. Cruz’s middle name wasn’t printed on the ticket, but it is on her new California ID. Hoping to avoid unnecessary attention that might provoke further questioning, I heard her calmly asking a gate agent to reassure her about going through security. Later, she called me, relieved, on the other side of the security checkpoint.
In instances like this, she takes some comfort in an app that UWD has developed called “Motifica” that is available to the public. It sends an SOS with her location and a prepared text to her attorney and loved ones, and then deletes the contacts. “I keep my phone with me all the time,” she says.
This week, Cruz is sending five volunteers from Santa Cruz to Washington D.C. as United We Dream mobilizes youth leaders in an effort to make their voices heard. “We want to have our presence known at Capitol Hill while the ‘negotiations’ for Trump’s wall funding continues,” Cruz says.
While her future and the future of millions of other immigrants is far from settled, Cruz still finds inspiration in the Monarch. Just as she and her classmates looked up at butterflies just taking flight all those years ago, she now sees other potential activists everywhere.
“I see just a normal person before they find their voice,” she says. “You do not need to be a U.S. citizen to be worthy of having rights and feeling safe in the only country you’ve ever known.”
Claudine Désirée, locally known as the “Santa Cruz Cob Queen,” is the proud creator of Santa Cruz’s first legal cob house. Cob is a natural building material made from Earth, sand and straw, and cob houses have been around since at least the 15th century. Since cob buildings are fireproof, resistant to seismic activity and inexpensive, Désirée says they should also be the future of housing in California.
Until a few years ago, Désirée lived in a vintage streetcar house nestled in downtown Santa Cruz, with her three sons. Search “Claudine Désirée” and “cob house” online and you may find a video of her wandering around the property in her purple crocs. “It’s a she cave!” Désirée exclaims, gesturing to her cob house and ducking under an avocado tree. The video has nearly 365,000 views and 400 comments praising Désirée’s homemade urban paradise.
Cob’s uses aren’t just limited to structures. People use cob to build ovens, benches and saunas because of its heat-retaining properties. After attending a cob building course in 2003, Désirée says she fell in love with its affordability, beauty and durability.
“It’s quiet, gentle, sensual construction. There aren’t any right angles. It’s very intuitive,” Désirée tells GT. “I just loved it. I had this property in downtown Santa Cruz and we had a 500 square-foot house. We needed space, but I didn’t like regular construction and didn’t have much money, so this was the answer.”
With the help of friends, family and workshop students, Désirée eventually built two cob houses on her property, plus a compost toilet, chicken coop and wooden barrel sauna. It was an “urban eco village,” she says, that she’d spend years growing and building. But when her youngest son turned 18, she decided it was time to sell the property, which meant legalizing the cob houses.
It’s currently legal to build a cob structure up to around 120 square feet without a permit and with the help of a state-licensed engineer, but it cannot have any running water or electricity. Désirée was the first person to legalize her cob residences in Santa Cruz. They cost around $500 combined to build, but around $16,000 to modify and permit, she says. She had to make several adaptations and modifications in the process, including installing wire mesh on the inside and outside walls and adding window rebar reinforcement.
“If you were to go to the city today and say, ‘I want to build a legal cob studio,’ they would say you have to get an engineer,” Désirée explains. “Then you would go to an engineer and have them design what you wanted. It would be much less than what I had to do, because I had to retrofit stuff.”
In 2014, the cob queen sold her property for about $500,000, including the legal cob houses, to bike around the world teaching cob building workshops, she says. She often returns to California to teach workshops. She says her dream is to build an eco-village of cob houses behind the Homeless Garden Project with the help of volunteers.
Already, Désirée says, “There are quite a few around Santa Cruz that are not permitted. There was around a dozen when I was there and probably more now.”
Several California state laws now make accessory dwelling units (ADUs) more viable and attractive for homeowners, and they’ve helped eliminate many zoning barriers to building cob cottages in backyards. Now, the main obstacle for cob dwellings is the lack of a cob building code and understanding of structural safety. New Zealand and the United Kingdom have building codes that permit cob houses, but the U.S. doesn’t, so cob building is often sailing some uncharted waters for local building departments.
But the Cob Research Institute (CRI) hopes to change that. The Berkeley-based CRI is in the process of submitting a proposed section on cob construction to the International Residential Code (IRC), a model code that serves as the basis for virtually every residential building code in the United States. Model codes already include adobe, light straw-clay and straw bale construction.
Longtime Santa Cruz resident Yosi Almog is a board secretary for CRI, and he says the group is running tests on cob structures to study their resilience for various climate and seismic zones.
CRI’s proposed cob code is open source, meaning that it is available to anyone and isn’t privatized. The group is on a tight deadline to complete the proposal this month with the goal of drafting laws that could go into effect as early as 2023.
After Désirée moved out of Santa Cruz in 2014, her students and friends continued the legacy of cob and related educational efforts. Two of her students, Miles Taylor and Tree Rozelle, started MuddBums in hopes of filling a void that Désirée left in the Santa Cruz cob community. MuddBums offers hands-on cob building classes, or “work-parties,” around Central California.
Aside from the structural regulations, cob making is a very physically demanding project. Supporters emphasize the sense of community that cob builds. One of the most important traditions is a “cob dance,” where cob is mixed by foot in a big, muddy party of stomping and dancing around.
“If you are paying someone to do cob and you outsource, the cost generally equates to what a conventional house would be,” Taylor says. “How a lot of people approach it is they get friends together and get everyone to come and help create the structure themselves. But that’s not a connection that we are able to make as a society anymore. We shuffle off our duties to a contractor, and next thing you know there’s a house. To involve yourself in the creation of your own space is a sacred thing, and that’s what cob lends itself to.”
Becky Luening remembers first getting to know fellow activist Sherry Conable in early 1990, when the two were planning an Earth Day celebration together.
They were going to be throwing a massive party at San Lorenzo Park, and it was stressing Luening out at the time. As the group ran through its daunting to-do list at Conable’s home, there was a quick moment Luening can’t forget, when Conable chuckled and winked.
“As serious as the issues were, she could retain a sense of humor,” says Luening, who now lives in Portland, but still visits Santa Cruz and saw Conable this past fall at an Armistice Day event.
Although most details of the 1990 meeting escape her now, the quick moment made a strong impression on Luening, who was still an inexperienced activist at the time.
“For me, taking on any sort of task always seemed like a big weight on my shoulders,” she recalls. “Sherry was a good communicator with real integrity. She wouldn’t take anything on unless she knew that she could follow through.”
Those who knew her tireless advocacy for veterans, the homeless and world peace are reflecting on Conable’s life after news broke that she was found dead last Monday.
Astrologer Rico Baker and his wife Claire Joy believe they may have been the last people to talk to Conable on Sunday evening, when they chatted with her over the phone.
“She was saying she felt she was in a really bad place,” says Baker. “We talked to her for as long as possible. We tried to leave on a positive note, which was that we loved her.”
Friends are remembering Conable as honest, empathetic and supportive—not to mention a clear, eloquent and honest communicator.
Conable’s body was found on the morning of Monday, Feb. 4 on Cowell Beach. Lt. Warren Barry says the Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) hasn’t begun a criminal investigation, because it hasn’t seen any signs of foul play. Santa Cruz County’s coroner office is currently investigating the cause of Conable’s death. (Later in the week, on Friday morning, a body was found on Manresa Beach in Aptos. The cause of that death is also under investigation.)
Conable is survived by two sons, Matt and Nate, as well as Matt’s partner Charlie, Nate’s wife Melissa, and four grandkids, Tucker, Kat, Lily, and James. “She was a good mom,” says Matt, 49, a singer/songwriter who lives in Santa Cruz and runs a high-end manufacturer of men’s gifts and jewelry. “And she was kind, and she was caring. And she gave of herself to others without restraint.”
Over the last three decades, the ripples of Conable’s activism stretched far beyond Santa Cruz. In the 1980s, she travelled to Central America for one month as part of the Witness for Peace Delegation. She then began to work on veterans’ issues, which, in turn, led her to work as a homeless advocate, because she saw that many veterans were living on the streets. She worked on LGBTQ issues, police oversight efforts and anti-war protests. She sang with local protest group the Raging Grannies and served as a master of ceremonies for a candlelit vigil for Sean Arlt, who was shot by SCPD officers in 2016.
Conable is pictured on the cover of the book Endurance Activism: Carrying the Torch, Turning Up the Heat by Santa Cruz’s Paula Leroy. Last year, the local chapter of the ACLU bestowed Conable with a Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by her friend Abbi Samuels, who calls her, “an icon to Santa Cruz.”
Samuels has fond memories of Conable standing out on Ocean Street picketing for peace on the Fourth of July, with signs displaying peace symbols. Many times, Samuels joined her friend and borrowed one of Conable’s signs, usually Samuels’ favorite, which read, “Peace Begins with Us.” It featured a white peace symbol and red flowers on the sides.
Samuels grew close with Conable when the two worked together to help launch Santa Cruz Resistance Against Militarization (SCRAM) in 2015, with the aim of preventing Santa Cruz from acquiring a BearCat armored vehicle with a government grant. Although the City Council ultimately approved the vehicle’s acquisition, it also voted to place limitations on its use and prohibited it from appearing at nonviolent protests. Throughout that process, Samuels and Conable had several meetings with councilmembers. In conversation, Conable would always stay true to her beliefs without getting defensive, Samuels remembers.
Matt Conable remembers his mom as not just an activist, but also as a great dancer and a rugged outdoorswoman. As close as he was to his mother, he is still learning about what her passions meant to others.
“She was kind. She was compassionate. She was smart as a whip, and she very much felt the pulse of the planet in the ways that I never did and in away that I don’t know anyone else who could,” he says. “And that was a blessing and a curse. She felt cruelty and she felt suffering. That fueled her activism.”
A celebration of Sherry Conable will be held at Peace United Church of Christ, located at 900 High St. on Friday, March 8, in the late afternoon or evening.
Close your eyes and imagine a Buddhist. Do you picture a robed figure sitting on a mountaintop surrounded by clouds? Or maybe someone giving away their Earthly possessions with the goal of detaching from the material world and finding deeper meaning within?
Maybe, maybe not. What you probably don’t picture is a washed-up narcissist fighting tooth and nail over allegedly ill-gotten profits and his own reputation—or what’s left of it anyway, now that he’s been ostracized by the community for being a power-grabbing sleazebag.
But we digress…
On Jan. 28, Santa-Cruz-son-turned-L.A.-Buddhist-guru Noah Levine filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the nonprofit Refuge Recovery, a Buddhist-based addiction treatment program he helped found. That same day, Refuge Recovery filed its own suit against Levine over trademark ownership, copyright issues and unfair business practices.
The nonprofit claims that many of the issues stem from Levine’s use of the nonprofit’s name and imagery for personal gain through a web of similarly named ventures, like the now-defunct company Refuge Recovery Treatment Centers. Refuge Recovery, the original nonprofit, argues that the knockoffs could have confused people seeking addiction treatment from one of the group’s international meetings, of which there are 660 in the U.S. alone.
The suit also alleges that Levine diverted $130,000 donated to the nonprofit to be used for treatment and rehab for people who could not afford it at another of his side hustles, the Refuge Recovery House. Levine used the money instead for businesses expenses, the nonprofit’s suit claims, including employee salaries.
“The more we dug, the more we saw these legal and ethical problems,” says Refuge Recovery Board Chair Christopher Kavanaugh. “It’s unfortunate. You have no idea how much energy was spent trying to avoid it coming to this.”
Kavanaugh says that it’s “just an odd coincidence” that the two parties ultimately filed lawsuits on the same day (although the timing wasn’t totally unexpected, given that eight days earlier, Kavanaugh notified Levine that Refuge Recovery’s suit would be imminent).
Levine did not respond to GT’s request for comment on the competing lawsuits.
The dispute comes on the heels of another battle Levine fought last year, when he faced allegations of sexual misconduct. A Los Angeles Police Department investigation did not find enough evidence to bring charges against Levine, but the allegations still sent shockwaves through Against The Stream (ATS), yet another nonprofit that the the Buddhist teacher founded. After an investigation, ATS determined that Levine had likely broken the group’s rules. The board dissolved and ATS closed its meditation centers on Sept. 30, 2018.
Refuge Recovery wants to be clear that the new lawsuit, however, “has nothing to do with the allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Levine,” according to a Jan. 28 statement on its website.
Regardless, the organization has been mindful of the whole mess for some time. In 2009, according to the Refuge Recovery lawsuit, ATS members began discussing how Buddhism could help with addiction—and began kicking around the name “Refuge Recovery.” Alcoholics Anonymous-style meetings were soon held under the name, followed by discussions of a collaborative book featuring personal stories from several founders. In 2011, the group created refugerecovery.org and filed a fictitious business name statement the following year.
Refuge Recovery, the book, was published in 2014—with Levine as its sole author, though he acknowledged the group’s collaborative nature—and became widely successful.
Things got more muddled when Levine opened Refuge Recovery House that same year, then created Refuge Recovery Clinical Services LLC in 2015. Both companies advertised under the Refuge Recovery name and logo. Over the next two years, Refuge Recovery House obtained the trademark for the Refuge Recovery name and logo to sell various merchandise, from bumper stickers to baseball caps.
Many directors of the Refuge Recovery nonprofit tried to get Levine to give up the trademark or the copyright, Kavanaugh says, but those talks broke down, which led to the lawsuits. In a Jan. 28 Facebook statement, Levine wrote that he gives licensing permission to the nonprofit to “use the Refuge Recovery name and logo for the purposes of your local meetings, local websites, and local social media accounts, consistent with the vision and program articulated in the Refuge Recovery book.”
After a long and confusing road, Kavanaugh says it’s little surprise the conflict has moved to the court system.
“If you work for the Red Cross, and then open up your own business using similar things and imagery as the Red Cross,” he analogizes, “it won’t be surprising if you have some conflicts with the Red Cross.”
We are in our last week of Aquarius, the sign of humanity itself—of community, freedom and awakening to the beauty of future visions, group life and service to the world. We have a busy week. Thursday is Valentine’s Day. Monday is Presidents’ Day as the Sun enters Pisces. And Tuesday is the full moon, the Pisces solar festival and the lantern festival, ending the Chinese and Tibetan new year celebrations.
Valentine’s Day is a Gemini moon/Aquarius sun day. Gemini (ray two, love/wisdom) is the sign of making contacts and communicating with everyone, everywhere. Gemini is the communicator creating connections and relationships everywhere.
On Valentine’s Day, we may experience hope, love, yearning, devotion, candy, kisses, hearts, flowers—and, for some, delusions, illusions and consuming too much chocolate. With Mars in Taurus (desire, luxury) and Mercury in Pisces (cravings), we could overdo the sugar and fall into a state of languor and oblivion. Hopefully not. Valentine’s day this year (with Gemini moon) should be fun, light, easy, happy, friendly, cheery, breezy, and lighthearted. Like Gemini.
Valentine’s Day always occurs in the depths of winter, in the sign Aquarius.
The heart (soul ruler) of Aquarius is Jupiter (ray two of love/wisdom). A perfect time for Valentine’s Day, where we remember the most famous words of Gemini-rising poet e. e. cummings (Oct. 14, sun/Venus in Libra, Gemini rising, Aquarius midheaven) to “be of love (a little) more careful than on everything.”
ARIES: Venus is in your 10th house of being recognized in the world. You’re becoming a bit more attractive and charming. The vulnerability you carry is your heart on your sleeve, filled with unexpected feelings, diplomatic abilities and magnetic keeping-the-peace responses. To be even more interesting, show a real interest in art, dance, ancient artifacts, and music. Tend to health with care–your valuable asset. And be willing to cooperate more.
TAURUS: It’s good to be in retreat, a healthful state of affairs for Taurus—who can be seen in fields, meadows, farms, hill and dale, but often not in crowds. Taurus is not very urbanized. A good thing. They are private, expressing love behind protective veils (doors), in the quietude of their homes. Venus is known for bringing romance and ending things no longer useful. Taurus is either the singer or the one who can’t sing. Both express themselves in hopes and dreams. Uranus (change) is in your sign soon!
GEMINI: You think about hopes, dreams and wishes, and somehow a bit of a wound appears. Perhaps, for some reason, you feel hindered or limited. Venus, whose light protects you, has plans for you behind the scenes. Venus asks you to create a journal of what you value about yourself, to write an autobiography, in order to make deeper contact with your essential beingness. Venus waits patiently to hear your story, your self-narrative and aspirations. There’s a sadness, because the time for something is not yet. It will be soon. You must be ready.
CANCER: Have you found new friends, perhaps one in particular? Have you left old friends behind? Do you realize why others like you? Because you have qualities they want to emulate, knowledge they want to know about, competency and practicality they want to imitate. People look at your skills and experiences and the presence you bring to all gatherings. You have authority and Venus wants you to share more with everyone. It’s good to pursue something of beauty–imaginative, inventive and splendid.
LEO: Routine things these days make you feel hindered, caught, caged, and slightly crazy. You simply must be let free, able to pursue travel, journeys, new insights, new realities, new waves of thought streaming through the ethers. Something exotic is happening to the way you express yourself. Attractive before, now you’re attractive, lovingly magnetic and becoming even more creative. Something you would never consider becomes a possibility. Paint.
VIRGO: Multiple realities appear, all connected to relationships, creative, and home endeavors. Something financial and resourceful comes forth. Do not allow it to wound or confuse you. Sharing power becomes possible because you want to harmonize differences, soothe any chaos or conflict, become intimate in terms of spiritual understanding (also physical). If partnered, you realize their goodness in the depth of your heart.
LIBRA: Venus provides you with wisdom of how to be in a relationship and how to create a beautiful, balanced, harmonious home environment. You are to love your partner with all your heart and your soul. Create deep intimate connections through praise and appreciation. This heals and brings forth unexpected gifts in the relationship. Be willing to compromise, adapt and make peace wherever there is no peace. If single, apply these to friends and family, past, present, and the future. Everything and everyone become your relationship.
SCORPIO: You have a special task in the coming months: to create and anchor a true (not only outer) harmony in all environments, from work to home to yard to garden to garage to car to people to groups. Organizing outer harmony creates an inner sense of joy, accomplishment and pleasure. Being successful now means being cooperative, instilling in everyone a team spirit, and having the willingness to understand and serve the needs of others. Try.
SAGITTARIUS: You become more charming, playful and dramatic these days. Even your choice of music and food reflects this. Are children or young people around? They will reflect this also, especially the dramatic parts. Your self-expression and sense of values enter a Venusian (soft, loving, romantic) phase of creativity. There’s so much to be kind, giving and cheerful about. So much fun to have. So many dramatic situations to enter. And to be the bright rising star!
CAPRICORN: So much of your focus is home and family. You seek to aid and heal others whenever you see sadness or wounding. Art is a source of strength for you, so you’re often nostalgic for things traditional. You value color, art and books in your home, and all that you create is peaceful, beautiful and useful (like the art of hand-stitched quilts). Think about how to build a greenhouse attached to your home to nurture greens and medicinal plants and herbs. You are calm and serene. Home is your value and your pleasure. You are grateful.
AQUARIUS: We find you talking a lot these days about what you value, making plans, being out and about talking with friends, farmers and seeking to work with them in order to bring forth the necessary food for humanity. You find many companions along the way that agree with your values, interests and exchange of ideas. Great ideas always precipitate down to become great ideals within humanity. As an Aquarian, all that you do benefits humanity. Good work.
PISCES: A level of contentment is felt in your heart and mind. Wherever you find yourself, there is an inner feeling of safety, security and being in the right place. After a while you feel concern for your finances, security and the future. It is good at this time to offer yourself in service to others without thought of compensation. And to make greater and more contact with the spirit world. In this way, love is released which creates your present and future wellbeing. It’s your birthday soon.
If there is such a thing as “art roommates,” Coco Barrett-Tormey and Kyle “Juice” Johnson could be the poster children for the concept. Johnson runs a custom surfboard shaping and sign painting shop, and Barrett-Tormey is a potter best known as the artist behind Coco Chispa pottery. The pair share a studio in the center of the industrial Westside. Amid the clamor of constant construction and in the shade of the afternoon light, they aren’t so much nestled as sprawled.
“You should have seen our old studio. Oh my gosh,” Barrett-Tormey exclaims. “It was tiny.”
“Like it came out to here,” Johnson says, shaping his arms into a box in the corner of the room. “Maybe 20 by 20 feet.”
“We luckily got along really well at first, because we couldn’t escape each other,” Barrett-Tormey says. “Our businesses are so different, but because we are so physically close to each other, we help each other out and encourage each other. Each success lifts the other person up, too.”
Barrett-Tormey and Johnson relocated to their present, much larger studio about a year ago. Between Johnson’s studio downstairs and Barrett-Tormey’s mass of of mountain mugs stacked on the upstairs balcony, the two have created a two-story artistic oasis. They can now comfortably fit dozens of surfboards, hundreds of mugs and a big fluffy white dog in their space.
The two somewhat solitary acquaintances found themselves sardined into a tiny studio out of financial necessity three years ago, but now they can’t imagine not sharing a space. “Juice knows me so well that he is constantly reflecting back on me who I am. That makes me feel a lot more confident,” Barrett-Tormey says. “In a lot of ways the community in Santa Cruz does that for me, too.”
The woman in cheetah print heels making mugs and the surfer dude creating one-of a-kind boards have more in common than it initially seems. They are also both avid outdoors people. Barrett-Tormey’s signature handmade mountain mugs and cantines are inspired by backpacking trips in the Sierras, and Johnson’s board-shaping is a natural extension of his passion for surfing. They have collaborated on a few projects, including a surfboard with Barrett-Tormey’s mountain designs on it and a few mugs.
“We are both practicing skills,” Barrett-Tormey says. “Sign painting and making surfboards—those are skills and will never not be important. It’s the same with pottery. There are older people who are way better at it, but a handmade mug is something that will always be special.”
It’s interesting, though, that the nature-loving artists chose a space in a noisy, industrial space surrounded by construction and building.
“I like the contrast of going out to surf, then coming to work here and there is clanging steel and high beams around,” Johnson says. “It’s an industrial space, but with our work the human touch is all over it.”
Barrett-Tormey started making pottery in Santa Cruz five years ago, eventually getting her own wheel and kiln on Craigslist. She started selling her work in Santa Cruz, and has since expanded to retailers across the country. She’s recently signed a deal with REI and is in the process of shipping them 1,000 mugs.
“I’ve been lucky enough to feel like there is this momentum, and all I have to do is keep up and make sure it doesn’t snowball away from me,” Barrett-Tormey says. “Pretty much every day, Juice and I remind ourselves that we are so lucky. That’s important, to remind yourself that you are lucky all the time.”
When he’s not shaping new boards, Johnson is behind seemingly every local business sign around, including Companion Bakeshop, Marianne’s, Mutari, Specialized Auto and Davenport Roadhouse. Originally from Los Angeles, he moved to Santa Cruz 10 years ago to shape surfboards alongside some of the local legends at Arrow.
“When I tell people that I paint signs and build surfboards for a living they say, ‘Oh, that’s fun!’ And yes, I was initially drawn to both crafts because they are fun, but they’re also professions that I take very seriously; there is a lineage and set of rules to follow with each one,” Johnson says. “I never thought I could be a sign painter nobody ever told me that’s a real job, but it is if you make it one.”
The two artists say that even though they probably have the means to move into their own spaces, they probably wouldn’t. The feedback they get from each other is important, and the daily conversations about art, waves and life are invaluable.
“We are so close now, we have our own little jokes that no one else will think are funny,” Barrett-Tormey says. “It’s pretty easy. That’s how it should be.”
Free will astrology for the week of Feb. 13, 2019.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When directors of movies say, “It’s a wrap,” they mean that the shooting of a scene has been finished. They may use the same expression when the shooting of the entire film is completed. That’s not the end of the creative process, of course. All the editing must still be done. Once that’s accomplished, the producer may declare that the final product is “in the can,” and ready to be released or broadcast. From what I can determine, Aries, you’re on the verge of being able to say, “It’s a wrap” for one of your own projects. There’ll be more work before you’re ready to assert, “it’s in the can.”
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In accordance with astrological omens, I invite you to create your own royal throne and sit on it whenever you need to think deep thoughts and formulate important decisions. Make sure your power chair is comfortable as well as beautiful and elegant. To enhance your ability to wield your waxing authority with grace and courage, I also encourage you to fashion your own crown, scepter and ceremonial footwear. They, too, should be comfortable, beautiful and elegant.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 1995, astronomer Bob Williams got a strong urge to investigate a small scrap of the night sky that most other astronomers regarded as boring. It was near the handle of the constellation known as the Big Dipper. Luckily for him, he could ignore his colleagues’ discouraging pressure. That’s because he had been authorized to use the high-powered Hubble Space Telescope for a 10-day period. To the surprise of everyone but Williams, his project soon discovered that this seemingly unremarkable part of the heavens is teeming with over 3,000 galaxies. I suspect you may have a challenge akin to Williams’, Gemini. A pet project or crazy notion of yours may not get much support, but I hope you’ll pursue it anyway. I bet your findings will be different from what anyone expects.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): A study by the Humane Research Council found that more than 80 percent of those who commit to being vegetarians eventually give up and return to eating meat. A study by the National Institute of Health showed that only about 36 percent of alcoholics are able to achieve full recovery; the remainder relapse. And we all know how many people make New Year’s resolutions to exercise more often, but then stop going to the gym by February. That’s the bad news. The good news, Cancerian, is that during the coming weeks you will possess an enhanced power to stick with any commitment you know is right and good for you. Take advantage!
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Are there two places on Earth more different from each other than Europe and Africa? Yet there is a place, the Strait of Gibralter, where Europe and Africa are just 8.7 miles apart. Russia and the United States are also profoundly unlike each other, but only 2.5 miles apart where the Bering Strait separates them. I foresee a metaphorically comparable phenomenon in your life. Two situations or influences or perspectives that may seem to have little in common will turn out to be closer to each other than you imagined possible.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo basketball star Latrell Sprewell played professionally for 13 years. He could have extended his career at least three more seasons, but he turned down an offer for $21 million from the Minnesota team, complaining that it wouldn’t be sufficient to feed his four children. I will ask you not to imitate his behavior, Virgo. If you’re offered a deal or opportunity that doesn’t perfectly meet all your requirements, don’t dismiss it out of hand. A bit of compromise is sensible right now.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In 1992, an Ethiopian man named Belachew Girma became an alcoholic after he saw his wife die from AIDS. And yet today he is renowned as a “Laughter Master,” having dedicated himself to exploring the healing powers of ebullience and amusement. He presides over a school that teaches people the fine points of laughter, and he holds the world’s record for longest continuous laughter at three hours and six minutes. I nominate him to be your role model in the next two weeks. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you will be especially primed to benefit from the healing power of laughter. You’re likely to encounter more droll and whimsical and hilarious events than usual, and your sense of humor should be especially hearty and finely tuned.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): A study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that people who use curse words tend to be more candid. “Swearing is often inappropriate, but it can also be evidence that someone is telling you their honest opinion,” said the lead researcher. “Just as they aren’t filtering their language to be more palatable, they’re also not filtering their views.” If that’s true, Scorpio, I’m going to encourage you to curse more than usual in the coming weeks. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, it’s crucial that you tell as much of the whole truth as is humanly possible. (P.S. Your cursing outbursts don’t necessarily have to be delivered with total abandon everywhere you go. You could accomplish a lot just by going into rooms by yourself and exuberantly allowing the expletives to roll out of your mouth.)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In the mid-1980s, a California carrot farmer grew frustrated with the fact that grocery stories didn’t want to buy his broken and oddly shaped carrots. A lot of his crop was going to waste. Then he got the bright idea to cut and shave the imperfect carrots so as to make smooth little baby carrots. They became a big success. Can you think of a metaphorically comparable adjustment you could undertake, Sagittarius? Is it possible to transform a resource that’s partially going to waste? Might you be able to enhance your possibilities by making some simple modifications?
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Mongolia is a huge, landlocked country. It borders no oceans or seas. Nevertheless, it has a navy of seven sailors. Its lone ship is a tugboat moored on Lake Khovsgol, which is 3 percent the size of North America’s Lake Superior. I’m offering up the Mongolian navy as an apt metaphor for you to draw inspiration from in the coming weeks. I believe it makes good astrological sense for you to launch a seemingly quixotic quest to assert your power, however modestly, in a situation that may seem out of your league.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “A freshness lives deep in me which no one can take from me,” wrote poet Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf. “Something unstilled, unstillable is within me; it wants to be voiced,” wrote philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In accordance with your astrological omens, I propose we make those two quotes your mottos for the next four weeks. In my opinion, you have a mandate to tap into what’s freshest and most unstillable about you—and then cultivate it, celebrate it and express it with the full power of your grateful, brilliant joy.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): According to the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, the word “obsession” used to refer to the agitated state of a person who was besieged by rowdy or unruly spirits arriving from outside the person. “Possession,” on the other hand, once meant the agitated state of a person struggling against rowdy or unruly spirits arising from within. In the Western Christian perspective, both modes have been considered primarily negative and problematic. In many other cultures, however, spirits from both the inside and outside have sometimes been regarded as relatively benevolent, and their effect quite positive. As long as you don’t buy into the Western Christian view, I suspect that the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to consort with spirits like those.
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Portland Americana singer-songwriter John Craigie has played all over the country and built up a sizeable audience in the 15 years he’s been in music, with six excellent, moody indie-folk records to his name.
But it all started here in Santa Cruz. When he was a student at UCSC, he discovered KPIG—and by extension, Americana music.
“I started hearing music that I never would’ve heard in L.A. growing up,” Craigie says. “John Prine, Gillian Welch, Todd Snider, Greg Brown, Lucinda Williams, Loudon Wainwright III, and so many others.”
He got his feet wet as a live performer around the same time, playing in a group called Pond Rock.
“I met other serious musicians who were open to jamming together. House parties, Catalyst Atrium, Moe’s Alley, Henflings, etc. It was a great time to be in a jam band,” Craigie says.
He’s since scaled down the jam sounds and developed into one of the most respected singer-songwriters in the DIY touring scene. His latest album, Scarecrow, is a somber record that he recorded in a room alone, with the engineer stationed elsewhere. These are down-tempo, morose folksy songs.
“I wanted to capture that quietness that one feels alone on the road,” Craigie says.
The songs were written mostly when he was writing music for his previous record No Rain, No Rose.That album has a totally different, upbeat vibe. Though he sings about hard times, a lot of the focus is on the light at the end of the tunnel. When it came time to record it, he rounded up a bunch of musician friends and had a big jamboree acoustic recording session in a comfortable living room, and the enthusiasm is apparent all over the songs. But there were several songs that just didn’t have the right feel, and those were the basis for Scarecrow.
“I wanted to give them their own home that tied all these songs together,” Craigie says.
These two records mark a turn in Craigie’s career. They not only document his endless touring lifestyle, they showcase his finding a sense of home. After cutting his teeth in Santa Cruz’s music scene, he dove into the touring lifestyle. That’s when he really saw his songwriting blossom.
“It was always my dream to travel, and I had no problem roughing it. I loved sleeping on couches and meeting people and hearing all their stories. I noticed when the venue would give me a hotel, I would head back there alone and not meet anyone or get any stories. I craved those connections. It 100 percent affected my song writing in that most of my songs came from those interactions, whether they were romantic or tragic or new friendships,” Craigie says.
As serious as his songs are—and the ones on Scarecrow might be his most serious yet—Craigie is known for being a funny guy and putting on fun shows, with lots of hilarious in-between song banter. He even gets compared to Mitch Hedberg—not something you often hear about singer-songwriters—but his banter tends to include more funny true stories than absurd observations.
“I listened to an interview with him where he was asked about his delivery,” Craigie says of Hedberg. “He said that he was pulling a lot from jazz musicians and beat poets. He said something like, ‘shy people trying to sound cool.’ I don’t think I have much in common with Mitch’s style of humor, but I do think we have that similar delivery inspired by those beat poets and jazz musicians. We’re both shy guys trying to sound cool.”
It’s not that the new songs are devoid of humor. He thinks it’s just a little less overt.
“I think sometimes there is a type of humor in sad songs,” Craigie says. “It just depends on what you’re going through while you listen.”
We hear a lot about refugees fleeing violence and poverty in war-torn countries. They swarm across borders in caravans, we’re warned, or sneak in by stealth. Most of us understand that these people are seeking a better life, or a chance to survive at all. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we can imagine the kind of desperation that would drive anyone to leave behind everything they know and risk so much for such an uncertain fate.
It’s a situation Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki addresses in Capernaum. Nominated for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar, it’s the often harrowing, deeply engrossing tale of a 12-year-old boy struggling to navigate the world the grown-ups have made—indifferent, at best, and carelessly brutal—in the refugee-haunted slums of Beirut. In Capernaum (the word loosely translates as “chaos”), Labaki puts a strikingly human face on a shadow existence so untenable that the dream of escape is the only possible response.
Zain (the remarkable young Zain Al Rafeea) is the eldest child in a family of Syrian refugees who occupy a crumbling Beirut tenement. His short-fused father and volatile mother (Kawsar Al Haddad) are likely to smack him at any moment, and he has too many younger siblings to count. When his parents sell his 11-year-old sister into marriage (kicking and screaming all the way), and Zain can’t protect her, he heads out on his own.
Scavenging food and sleeping in a Ferris Wheel car at an amusement park, he’s noticed by Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), an Ethiopian refugee who works in the kitchen at the carnival cafe. Rahil has a secret of her own: not only is she “illegal” (her work permit is forged), she has a toddler who sleeps hidden in her backpack while she works.
Rahil invites Zain home to her tiny, ramshackle lean-to, and feeds and bathes him alongside her little boy, Yonas (winsome Boluwatife Treasure Bankole, whose gleeful good cheer and eager curiosity delight viewers throughout the film). Rahil strikes a bargain with Zain to provide him food and shelter if he will stay home and mind little Yonas during the day while she is at work.
Within this framework of plot, Labaki paints a broader portrait of the perilous lives of undocumented immigrants on foreign soil. Rahil and the other African women who clean and scrub around the amusement park are wholly dependent on the surly tough guy in the marketplace who forges their work permits for them. They live in fear of being herded up and caged, en masse, like animals. A Syrian girl Zain meets in the marketplace (she’s peddling a handmade wreath, he’s trying to sell a couple of Rahil’s meager pots to feed the baby) infects him with her fantasy of Sweden—a Utopia where everyone lives in a house, breathes fresh air and has plenty of food to eat.
In young Al Rafeea, a real-life Syrian transplant and first-time actor found on the streets of Beirut, Labaki has found the perfect vessel to express her views on the refugee experience. His Zain is aggressive and foul-mouthed, like his father, but quick-witted and resourceful, too. He rigs up a mirror outside Rahil’s window so he and Yonas can watch cartoons from the neighbor’s TV—then makes up scatological dialogue to fit the images.
But Zain also has the capacity to care deeply about others, and develop an unshakable sense of loyalty to them. He shows far more responsibility and initiative in caring for little Yonas than his own parents ever showed toward him—especially after Rahil disappears. It’s the plight of children like Zain, thrust into a baffling world through no fault of their own, that Labaki strives to illuminate. And it’s Zain’s response to that world—first, in a courtroom, on trial for a violent crime, then in a stark manifesto he calls in to a local radio show—that gives Labaki’s film its urgency and power.
CAPERNAUM
*** (out of four)
With Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw and Kawsar Al Haddad. Written and directed by Nadine Labaki. A Sony Classics release. Rated R. 126 minutes. In Arabic and Amharic, with English subtitles.
Becky Luening remembers first getting to know fellow activist Sherry Conable in early 1990, when the two were planning an Earth Day celebration together.
They were going to be throwing a massive party at San Lorenzo Park, and it was stressing Luening out at the time. As the group ran through its daunting to-do list at Conable’s home, there was...
