[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ednesday is Valentine’s day. On this day let us “be of love a little more careful than of everything.” (e. e. cummings poem). It is also the day Lent begins. Do we eat that chocolate, or don’t we? That is the question! We are in our last week of Aquarius, the “light that shines on Earth and across the seas, shining in the dark, purifying the dark, until the dark is gone.” Aquarius prepares us for Pisces. Aquarius is the “waters of life for thirsty humanity.” Pisces is the “waters that save humanity.”
One serves, the other “saves.”
Thursday is Aquarius new moon and eclipse of the Sun (27 degrees Aquarius)—the Sun and moon together at new moon times, creating something new. Where is 27 degrees Aquarius in everyone’s chart? The solar eclipse tells us that something essential in our lives has fallen away, its work complete.
Friday, in the lunisolar calendar, is Losar (Tibetan Buddhism) and Chinese New Year of the Yang Brown Earth Dog (1922, 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006, 2018). Dog is an auspicious and kindly animal, communicative, serious, symbolizing good fortune and loyalty. Dog people are devoted, sincere, independent, harmonious and unafraid of difficulties. They have courage, are sensitive, clever and responsible. Dog people have the ability to capture monsters, if necessary.
During the Chinese New Year festival, there are explosions of light and sound and firecrackers, ringing bells with dragon and lion dances. Houses are swept clean of bad spirits, and flowers, oranges and tangerines adorn tables; red envelopes are filled with lucky money. The Tibetans celebrate Losar, their New Year, with prayer, sacred folk dances, ceremonies of purification and the hanging of new prayer flags. The festival lasts two weeks, till March 1, at the full moon, Pisces Solar Lantern festival. Here and there, quince is blooming.
ARIES: Your work in the world will be directed, protected and guided more and more by promptings and impressions from above. You are to initiate new ideas, new possibilities, and new probabilities that create new outcomes not reflecting the past. You will meet important people, eventually becoming one yourself. You will need to act with humility while attaining goals. Develop what is necessary to anchor this task. Only you can do this.
TAURUS: It’s important to contact people far away concerning future plans, actions, agendas, and perhaps matters of a legal nature. The outer aspects of these interactions hide a deep spiritual purpose. With strength and calmness, speak the truth of your aims and purposes; listen carefully to others. There’s a seed of enlightenment in their words. Be not afraid to ask for all that is needed. Read Matthew 7:7. Share.
GEMINI: You hold within yourself secret talents, abilities and gifts. They need to be called forth by you with both curiosity and intention. Ask them to reveal themselves and that you recognize them. When you realize your gifts and talents, you must cultivate and protect them. They are the guardians of your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual self. You and another may need to travel somewhere warm and beautiful. Why would that be?
CANCER: There’s a spiritual task you’re being asked to provide from Jupiter, the planet central to the Aquarian Age distributing Love/Wisdom, Ray 2. You are to provide more love to yourself. You are to distribute truth to those around you. Not gossip, not opinion, not another’s point of view, but the truth within your heart. You will begin to remember things from the past. Your memories will safeguard you.
LEO: You are the leader and communicator to co-workers and colleagues. Leo is the sign with love at the heart of the matter. Sometimes that love is obscured by hurts, sadness and remembering imperfect interactions in relationships (all relationships are). Sometimes, in our sadness, we turn away from people, lavishing love on pets, gardens, rocks, and trees. It might be good to think of all the people you’ve known. And say to them, “Hello, my friends, hello.” From the heart.
VIRGO: It’s a special time for you to think upon healing old wounds, bringing together all that has been separated, and finding your way along a new path. Consider what avocations you want to pursue, what talents, gifts and skills you possess. Bring those talents and gifts into a garden with vines of Mandeville, pale roses and hops climbing a tall garden gate. Create this now for summer. Include a swing.
LIBRA: You’re thinking about family and friends, love and relationships and what you need. Friends are often Libra’s family. You seek a greater sense of foundation. It may bring up childhood wounds (as it should). We cannot heal or understand until wounds surface. You have the strength to face these, the wisdom to understand, and the love, latent and in potential, to heal and forgive. In emotional times, ignatia amara, the homeopath, soothes and settles grief.
SCORPIO: You need to enter into more interchanges with those who share your intelligence, loves and interests. You need interchanges of like-minded ideas so you can grow and expand the sense that you are of great value. Then you can experiment with future plans. A new foundation of thought is needed to meet the challenges of the new world we are entering. Remain focused with purposeful intent. Study all the information on how to thrive in a changing world.
SAGITTARIUS: In observing how your sense of identity has expanded, look to your values. Compare today’s values with values held 14 and then 21 years ago. You’ll realize you’ve deepened into greater responsibility, and achieved a level of success. You ask, “What’s next?” Some Sags wonder if they care anymore. Caring and not caring, both are developmental stages. To the first Sag, remain poised in the Light. Your journey has been long and arduous. To the second Sag, you’re stepping into the unknown. You will be safe there.
CAPRICORN: You communicate these days with great depth of feeling. Don’t worry if people step back. Your heart, your life force, displays the fire of intention and conviction. It has the power of God speaking. Capricorn’s glyph is almost the signature of God. You’ll be asked to organize things, to show leadership and drive, to impress (give to) others with ideas that become ideals within them. You do this already. Yes, but now more so. Avoid those who resist.
AQUARIUS: You’re going to enter into an internal state for a while, interacting and investigating things deep within; things confidential, religious and personal. Do not feel caught up in limitations. Their appearance means you’re working within a certain needed discipline. Place yourself first in the coming days so that you can protect yourself. Tend to health and well-being. This comes first.
PISCES: Be careful and discriminating with whom you share future hopes, wishes, visions and dreams. They may not be understood. Careful with your time each day. Plan early what your actions will be. Outline a time schedule. Use discipline—the first step toward working under the Will of God. Speak softly, vibrantly and always with love (another discipline). It will soothe disappointments and stabilize all endeavors. Have courage and always be kind.
Free will astrology for the week of February 14, 2018.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): At 12,388 feet, Mount Fuji is Japan’s highest peak. If you’re in good shape, you can reach the top in seven hours. The return trip can be done in half the time—if you’re cautious. The loose rocks on the steep trail are more likely to knock you off your feet on the way down than on the way up. I suspect this is an apt metaphor for you in the coming weeks, Aries. Your necessary descent may be deceptively challenging. So make haste slowly! Your power animals are the rabbit and the snail.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made a few short jaunts through the air in a flying machine they called the Flyer. It was a germinal step in a process that ultimately led to your ability to travel 600 miles per hour while sitting in a chair 30,000 feet above the earth. Less than 66 years after the Wright Brothers’ breakthrough, American astronauts landed a space capsule on the moon. They had with them a patch of fabric from the left wing of the Flyer. I expect that during the coming weeks, you will be climaxing a long-running process that deserves a comparable ritual. Revisit the early stages of the work that enabled you to be where you are now.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 2006, five percent of the world’s astronomers gathered at an international conference and voted to demote Pluto from a planet to a “dwarf planet.” Much of the world agreed to honor their declaration. Since then, though, there has arisen a campaign by equally authoritative astronomers to restore Pluto to full planet status. The crux of the issue is this: How shall we define the nature of a planet? But for the people of New Mexico, the question has been resolved. State legislators there formally voted to regard Pluto as a planet. They didn’t accept the demotion. I encourage you to be inspired by their example, Gemini. Whenever there are good arguments from opposing sides about important matters, trust your gut feelings. Stand up for your preferred version of the story.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Ray Bradbury’s dystopian bestseller Fahrenheit 451 was among the most successful of the 27 novels he wrote. It won numerous awards and has been adopted into films, plays, and graphic novels. Bradbury wrote the original version of the story in nine days, using a typewriter he rented for 20 cents per hour. When his publisher urged him to double the manuscript’s length, he spent another nine days doing so. According to my reading of the planetary configurations, you Cancerians now have a similar potential to be surprisingly efficient and economical as you work on an interesting creation or breakthrough—especially if you mix a lot of play and delight into your labors.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Poet Louise Glück has characterized herself as “afflicted with longing yet incapable of forming durable attachments.” If there is anything in you that even partially fits that description, I have good news: In the coming weeks, you’re likely to feel blessed by longing rather than afflicted by it. The foreseeable future will also be prime time for you to increase your motivation and capacity to form durable attachments. Take full advantage of this fertile grace period!
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In 2004, a man named Jerry Lynn tied a battery-operated alarm clock to a string and dangled it down a vent in his house. He was hoping that when the alarm sounded, he would get a sense of the best place to drill a hole in his wall to run a wire for his TV. But the knot he’d made wasn’t perfect, and the clock slipped off and plunged into an inaccessible spot behind the wall. Then, every night for 13 years, the alarm rang for a minute. The battery was unusually strong! A few months ago, Lynn decided to end the mild but constant irritation. Calling on the help of duct specialists, he retrieved the persistent clock. With this story as your inspiration, and in accordance with astrological omens, I urge you Virgos to finally put an end to your equivalent of the maddening alarm clock. (Read the story: tinyurl.com/alarmclockmadness.)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Was Napoléon Bonaparte an oppressor or liberator? The answer is both. His work in the world hurt a lot of people and helped a lot of people. One of his more magnanimous escapades transpired in June 1798, when he and his naval forces invaded the island of Malta. During his six-day stay, he released political prisoners, abolished slavery, granted religious freedom to Jews, opened 15 schools, established the right to free speech, and shut down the Inquisition. What do his heroics have to do with you? I don’t want to exaggerate, but I expect that you, too, now have the power to unleash a blizzard of benevolence in your sphere. Do it in your own style, of course, not Napoléon’s.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit,” said French playwright Molière. I’m going to make that your motto for now, Scorpio. You have pursued a gradual, steady approach to ripening, and soon it will pay off in the form of big bright blooms. Congratulations on having the faith to keep plugging away in the dark! I applaud your determination to be dogged and persistent about following your intuition even though few people have appreciated what you were doing.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The growth you can and should foster in the coming weeks will be stimulated by quirky and unexpected prods. To get you started, here are a few such prods. 1. What’s your hidden or dormant talent, and what could you do to awaken and mobilize it? 2. What’s something you’re afraid of but might be able to turn into a resource? 3. If you were a different gender for a week, what would you do and what would your life be like? 4. Visualize a dream you’d like to have while you’re asleep tonight. 5. If you could transform anything about yourself, what would it be? 6. Imagine you’ve won a free vacation to anywhere you want. Where would you go?
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You may think you have uncovered the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But according to my analysis of the astrological omens, you’re just a bit more than halfway there. In order to get the rest of the goods, you’ll have to ignore your itch to be done with the search. You’ll have to be unattached to being right and smart and authoritative. So please cultivate patience. Be expansive and magnanimous as you dig deeper. For best results, align yourself with poet Richard Siken’s definition: “The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet.”
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The posh magazine Tatler came up with a list of fashionable new names for parents who want to ensure their babies get a swanky start in life. Since you Aquarians are in a phase when you can generate good fortune by rebranding yourself or remaking your image, I figure you might be interested in using one of these monikers as a nickname or alias. At the very least, hearing them could whet your imagination to come up with your own ideas. Here are Tatler’s chic avant-garde names for girls: Czar-Czar; Debonaire; Estonia; Figgy; Gethsemane; Power; Queenie. Here are some boys’ names: Barclay; Euripides; Gustav; Innsbruck; Ra; Uxorious; Wigbert; Zebedee.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Now that you have finally paid off one of your debts to the past, you can start window-shopping for the future’s best offers. The coming days will be a transition time as you vacate the power spot you’ve outgrown and ramble out to reconnoiter potential new power spots. So bid your crisp farewells to waning traditions, lost causes, ghostly temptations, and the deadweight of people’s expectations. Then start preparing a vigorous first impression to present to promising allies out there in the frontier.
Homework: Confess, brag, and expostulate about what inspires you to love. Got to freewillastrology.com and click on “Email Rob.”
[dropcap]D[/dropcap]eepak Chopra is a man with a fascinating mind. But if you asked him to point to it, he might point to his heart or his entire cellular makeup rather than to his skull. He’s also one who has never been afraid to swim against the current of conventional wisdom or speak openly about his thoughts on consciousness and the nature of the universe—something he’s contemplated since he was a child.
This is a man who’s ventured that, like the dinosaurs, humans could be an experiment of the universe—and that consciousness is not a byproduct of matter, it’s the other way around; “Matter is the epiphenomenon. Consciousness conceives, governs, constructs and ultimately becomes the physical reality,” he says, in Conversations from the Edge of the Apocalypse by local author David Jay Brown. In one of that book’s most thought-provoking interviews, in which Chopra speaks openly for the first time about his personal experimentation with psychedelics as a young man, Brown asks Chopra if he thinks the human species will survive the next 100 years, and Chopra answers, “I think it’s a 50-50 chance.”
Really? Clearly, though, Chopra, an M.D. and a professor at UC San Diego Medical School, is determined to give us a shot—which is where the self-help message that runs through much of Chopra’s life work, and indeed his more than 80 books, takes a less selfish approach: he believes that to lift ourselves up and evolve consciously is to lift humanity as a whole.
Chopra’s recent book, The Healing Self: A Revolutionary New Plan to Supercharge Your Immunity and Stay Well For Life—which brings him to the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on Friday, Feb. 16—is set against an increasingly toxic present-day reality where global travel, environmental degradation, exploding world population, pharmaceutical dependence and poisons in our water and food are working against our health in unprecedented ways.
Co-written with world-renowned expert on brain health, Rudolph E. Tanzi, The Healing Self leads with a sharp edge of fresh science to unpack the connection between the body and mind, which Chopra calls bodymind. It includes studies into love’s unexplained physiological effects on immune response, the links between emotions and social connectedness (and isolation) on heart health, compassion’s correlation with antibodies, and the latest science on how stimulating the vagus nerve (yoga is one of the best ways to do this) can switch our nervous systems from sympathetic overdrive to heightened parasympathetic activity.
The Healing Self offers practical tools for all individuals’ power to heal themselves, and postures that a life built around the bodymind could create a quantum leap in well-being. And While Chopra’s other recent book, You Are The Universe, co-written with leading physicist Menas Kafatos and published on Jan. 30, explores a paradigm shift in our cosmic awareness, The Healing Self explores a paradigm shift in medicine that has been a long time coming.
Chopra has long stirred the ire of the American Medical Association (which he says he is grateful for, because it brought him attention), and in the 1990s, William Jarvis, the president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, accused Chopra of promoting “prescientific nonsense in the name of medicine.”
More than two decades later, the criticism of the body-mind connection—a fundamental message in Chopra’s work since the beginning—has dissolved considerably, as science turns up study after study indicating an undeniable connection between the two.
I rang Chopra’s room at the Arizona Biltmore hotel in Phoenix, where he was speaking at the Unity of Phoenix Spiritual Center, to talk about The Healing Self.
At what point in your career did you realize the body and mind were not separate?
DEEPAK CHOPRA: I would say probably almost 40 years ago when I was in training, and I trained in neuroendocrinology—which is the study of brain chemistry—and I realized at that time that molecules like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, opiates and other neurotransmitters were influenced by our emotions, and that these neurotransmitter molecules were also immunomodulators. They modified the immune system. The science was already there 40 years ago, but it took a long time for the general community in the medical world to accept that. Now because we have new advances in neuroplasticity, epigenetics, the understanding of the microbiome, it’s very clear that bodymind operate as a single activity. So my hope is that just like today we say “space-time,” we don’t say “space and time,” we say “mass energy,” we don’t say “mass and energy,” so too, in the future we will just use bodymind as a single phrase, just in the same way as we say “wave-particle.”
Q You write that the bodymind concept is starting to show up in Western medicine as the “whole systems approach.” You also trace yoga’s inception in the West, from a time in the ’50s when it was done, largely by men, in the East, as well as meditation, which was once a more mystical activity that’s become mainstream as mindfulness shows up even in hospitals. Do you think it’s possible for bodymind to be accepted and fully integrated into Western medicine, and how long might that take?
It’s happening right now. I’m now a professor at UCSD Medical School in California, and we are already seeing medical students and residents taking internships in this area. It’s become part of the curriculum in many medical schools throughout the country. But in medicine usually it takes a full generation to see a full change before it becomes part of the curriculum of the training of both medical students and doctors. I’m happy to say it’s happening, so I think we are pretty close to being mainstream, as this understanding of bodymind is already validated in science. So now it has to be incorporated in the curriculum. The public accepts shift much faster than academia. So, it took us 40 years to get here, but we are almost close to the finishing line.
One obstacle that might be in the way is Western medicine’s dependence on pharmaceuticals and the “silver bullet approach” to treating the symptoms and not the cause. You address this in The Healing Self in a very sobering way—particularly when you address scientific studies of statin drugs and antidepressants—but also in a way that focuses on solutions rather than finger-pointing. The CDC estimates that 91 Americans are dying every day from opiate use. Is this not due to rampant irresponsibility on the part of doctors, and greed of pharmaceutical companies?
Yes, it is. I mean, the fact is, pharmaceuticals are very effective in acute sickness, if you have pneumonia or you have an infection, then of course you need an antibiotic. But generally speaking, for chronic illness, pharmaceuticals do not address the underlying disease. And yet, you know this is part of our educational system, and a lot of the education is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. There’s a strong lobby in Washington D.C. of lobbyists on behalf of the pharmaceutical and medical industrial complex. Ultimately the laws are influenced by Congressmen who are easily influenced by lobbyists, and of course there’s a lot of money involved. So, it’s going to take a while, but in the meanwhile I think that education of the public [is important], and awareness that the number one cause of addiction in the world is not street drugs, but medical prescriptions, prescribed by physicians. And that we have many people dying every day of hospital accidents. Almost 40 percent have iatrogenic disease caused by medical prescriptions [“iatrogenic” refers to illness caused by medical examination or treatment, and not necessarily by medical mistakes]. The more this is brought to public awareness, the more likely it will be that ultimately Congress and government policies will shift. But right now we are almost hijacked by the system.
“The science was already there 40 years ago, but it took a long time for the general community in the medical world to accept that.” — Deepak Chopra
It’s interesting how the government and society demonize some drugs, but are more tolerant of anything prescribed by a doctor. What do you think of psychedelic therapy?
I think we’re learning a lot of it right now and under supervision and expert monitoring it has a role to play in many illnesses, including terminal illnesses and the fear of death.
At one point in the book, you mention that our bodies haven’t evolved fast enough to cope with the disruptions we are forcing on them, which you follow with the physiological response to eating a burger and fries. I’m wondering if you can elaborate on the modern world today, and its risk to our health compared to 50 years ago. How much more dangerous to our health is today’s world than back then?
Well, global travel has increased the risk of spreading infection all over the world. So many infections that were localized in one part of the world quickly spread everywhere in the world, particularly viruses. Also, the problem of jet lag, and also with increased urbanization we have no contact with nature.
One of the ways that animals reset their biological rhythm is that they burrow themselves in the ground when they’re not feeling well, and it resets their circadian rhythms. But we have a world where everybody’s wearing shoes, walking on cement, there’s no contact with nature at all. Although people are creating what are called “grounding devices” right now. But our bodies are not in sync with the biological rhythms that are part of nature, and at the same time, urbanization is causing a lot of problems with poor or contaminated water, even the water that you drink from the tap usually has pharmaceuticals, because you know, it’s recycled water, and if somebody’s on an antidepressant or some other toxic chemical, you might be getting it. Furthermore, your food, most of it which is manufactured, refined, processed, and has high sugar, also has petroleum products like organicides and pesticides, which cause a lot of inflammation. Animals that are produced in factories also have antibiotics and chemicals and hormones in them. So our modern society has definitely, while getting rid of some epidemics like polio, and in the Western world malaria and tuberculosis, it has also brought on a whole epidemic of modern diseases that are major threats to the world. Cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, autoimmune illnesses, which are usually a result of environmental toxins and also, as I said, poison and inflammation in our food chain, which could be a risk factor for cancer as well.
I was surprised to find no mention of cell phones or ubiquitous technology use—though you do mention the impacts of sitting at a computer all day. Was this left out of The Healing Self because you think it does not play a role in our health?
You know, technology is now part of our evolution and its unstoppable, so if you don’t choose technology you soon become irrelevant. So my take on technology is that you use it selectively and actually set aside some time to use technology, because otherwise you’ll be out of touch completely. You and I are communicating, not on the cell phone, but I could have been. And so, you know, the internet also provides us information, and a good assessment of the global brain. So it’s unstoppable. But I personally schedule time for technology, once in the morning and once in the afternoon and once a little bit later, not too late but early evening, and then the rest of the day I don’t address it, and there’s nothing that gets lost in being focused on one thing at a time. So there’s sleep time, there’s meditation time, there’s focused awareness eating time, there’s exercise time, there’s down time, there’s play time and there is technology time.
Reading about the studies of open placebo, in which the patient knows they are getting a placebo, made me wonder: in the context of healing our bodies, how important do you think the human-to-human factor is in having another person express care, support and compassion when we’re feeling sick?
SCIENCE OF HEALING ‘The Healing Self’ explores how achieving optimum health starts with the individual’s realization of the bodymind connection.
It’s crucial. And “placebo” is just a word for the power of intention. And so placebos work through intention, influencing your body chemistry, and ritual helps focus the attention, but now we do know that intention, focused awareness, rituals, have a way of optimizing a thought into a molecule.
You say that we are all works in progress, and that is the best way to exist. How is this inherent to the healing process?
I’m talking about the evolution of consciousness beyond the usual waking, dreaming, sleeping states that we all experience. There are higher states of consciousness, starting with self awareness, intuition, creativity, insight, imagination, and ultimately getting in touch with the nonlocal, timeless aspect of existence, which is really the religious experience, one of transcendence, emergence of platonic values, like truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, equanimity and the loss of the fear of death. So, I think that is very much part of the healing process.
You note that after the 2016 presidential election Gallup polls showed a sharp upturn in worry. What does endemic worry mean for society at large?
Worry is the worst use of our imagination. It’s about anticipating a poor future, and worry can lead to anger and resentment and grievances and hostility and guilt and shame and ultimately depression, and therefore is the number one cause of stress, which is the number one cause of inflammation, which is the number one underlying factor in all chronic illness.
How do you activate your own personal healing and stay out of overdrive?I practice meditation
and yoga on a daily basis, and I remain centered and not easily swayed by situations, circumstances, events and people. My next book is called Metahuman, which is just about this.
Do you think that the concept of the bodymind and empowering ourselves to activate our own healing can be applied to the greater picture of healing the world?
Ultimately yes, because our collective consciousness is dependent on individual consciousness and there’s no social transformation in the absence of personal transformation.
INFO: Presented by Bookshop Santa Cruz, Deepak Chopra will share insights from The Healing Self at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 16 at the Civic Auditorium. Tickets are $34.95 and include one copy of the book. 240-5260, santacruztickets.com.
It was three years ago nowthat Newsom first threw his hat intoa governor’s race that has since heated up, shaping into a battle between Northern and Southern California, and between two ambitious golden boys of state politics. Arecent PPIC poll showed Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor, with support from 23 percent of voters, andformer Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa only two points behind, with 21 percent, which was within the poll’s margin of error. We sat down with Newsom during a meet-and-greet with the Laborers’ International Union 270 in San Jose, to talk about cannabis, income inequality and green energy.
You andVillaraigosa have both railed against income inequality, and highlighted what it does to young children. Can California provide prenatal care, early intervention, maybe even free preschool without federal funding?
GAVIN NEWSOM: We can. We’d love to see the federal government recognize what all the experts already know, but the state can amplify better behavior at the local level. Local government needs to significantly increase its investment, counties need to increase their investment, and certainly the state needs to incentivize that. And that’s a big part of what we want to do is incentivize better behavior at the local level. I think what’s happened in the past is governors have done—we’ve modestly invested in this space, but not to the degree that I’m committed to.
How do you pay for it?
It’s a question of priority. We did [universal] preschool in the middle of a recession as mayor. I did universal healthcare in the middle of a recession as mayor.
You garner a lot of support from Silicon Valley, the tech sector, and you’ve championed the tech industry as a potential leader in solving some of the inequalities we’re grappling with. But in many ways, Silicon Valley has exacerbated these social ills. As governor, how would you hold the industry accountable to upholding its end of the social contract?
One of my closest friends, the godfather of my firstborn, Mark Benioff, is a shining example of someone who gets it and gets it done. Follow his example. He’s been an unbelievable leader. He’s walked his talk on gender pay and pay equity, and environmental stewardship. He just announced what they’re doing with the Salesforce tower in terms of meeting LEED platinum levels, and the incredible water efficiency proposals that he’s advancing. My point being that on issue after issue, on homelessness, philanthropy contribution, on what businesses can do in real time—not waiting until a massive amount of wealth is concentrated and then at the end of your life you redistribute it—he has marked, I think, the type of example that others should follow.
A lot of ambitious California politicians, yourself included, have said that communities need to increase housing construction. What’s your plan to get local governments to build their share of affordable housing?
They need to be held to account. In our housing plan, we want to assign sanctions for those who aren’t meeting their housing element. We actually want to be punitive. You got to be tough. How? By withholding transit dollars.
Let’s talk cannabis. One of the complaints we’re hearing is about the high cost of compliance, the high cost of regulation under Prop. 64, which appears to be prompting people to turn back to the black market. What do you think the state can do to strike a regulatory balance here, to prevent illegal sales and to keep the industry above board?
Look, I was the principal proponent, principal author of cannabis legalization. I spent three years organizing an effort to get it on the ballot, and to get it passed, and I feel, as a consequence, a great sense of responsibility to make sure it’s done right.
I made this point on Election Day, but I’ll repeat it. Legalization is not an act that occurred on Election Day. It’s a process that will unfold over a course of years, and that’s why you’ve got to be open to argument, interested in the evidence, those kinds of concerns, and iterative in terms of those applications to the rules. As you know, in the initiative we allowed for a modest majority to amend so we don’t have to go back in front of the voters. So we have the ability to address these issues in a way that won’t allow them to fester.
I’m worried about the small growers—absolutely, unequivocally. I’m worried about the black market being stubborn and persistent because of the regulatory environment, and I want to be in tune and in touch with that and address those issues in real time.
On clean energy, you said today, ‘It’s a point of pride and a point of principal for the next governor to change the bar.’ In what ways would you raise that bar and turn Gov. Brown’s memoranda of understanding on these issues into actionable steps?
If the governor doesn’t sign a bill to get to 100 percent [clean energy] by 2045, then I will. I want to eliminate diesel by 2030. We have to move forward with regionalizing our grid. We’ve got to focus on storage enhancements. I want to double all local efforts. Look, I’m the guy who did the plastic bag ban, I was the one that presided over a city with the first composting requirements in the U.S. and the highest green building standards in the country. San Francisco was the national leader in low carbon green growth. Every year, San Francisco is being called out as one of the greenest cities in the United States—if not literally the greenest. Portland, Oregon, stubbornly, is right there with us. I’m passionate about these issues. Picking up where Gov. Brown left off is very exciting to me and enlivening, and so this is an area where no one has to convince me to maintain our leadership internationally, not just nationally.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he phrase “made in-house” has a special—and very literal—meaning to Bean Finneran, who prefers not to construct work for her shows in advance. A few weeks ago, Finneran showed up to the Radius Gallery with 115 boxes and five days to put together her new exhibit, “Bit by Bit.”
“It’s part of the process, and part of the fun,” she says.
To most people, staring down a deadline like that is more like a helping of crippling anxiety on a stick than “fun.” But Finneran says her process is heavily influenced by her background in theater, and she is used to walking into an empty space and working backward.
Besides, she considers the five days she had to prepare and construct in the gallery space downright luxurious—sometimes she only gets one or two. Fueled by flavored sparkling waterand pain relievers, Finneran and her four assistants worked to place more than 55,000 ceramic curves in large circles to make three-dimensional sea-creature-like structures across the gallery floor for the sea-anemones-gone-wild “Bit By Bit.”
“They are all hand-rolled, so in all of this there cannot be two that are exactly the same. Besides being conceptually important, it’s just better to do that way.” — Bean Finneran
“I knew I wanted to make rings over there,” she says, gesturing in no particular direction whatsoever. “I am hoping this whole thing feels reef-like.”
She flits about the gallery placing individual curves into rings; her blue coat trails around her knees as she hops from box to box looking for the right curves. Each curve is hand-rolled then glazed and fired. The curves are individually placed in a circle structure, held together only by other surrounding curves, the shape takes on a form of its own. It takes anywhere from 8,000 to 13,000 to make a medium-sized ring.
“You could never do this in anything but clay,” Finneran assures me, noting that she would love to dabble in porcelain work, but it is just much too rigid for her means. “They are all hand-rolled, so in all of this there cannot be two that are exactly the same. Besides being conceptually important, it’s just better to do that way.”
Finneran also mounted plate-shaped discs of various sizes on the wall, resembling bubbles in accordance with the marine-life concept. The discs are new additions for her, and like her curves, each disc is unique in featuring a different glaze pattern.
The exhibit is part of the countywide “Spoken/Unspoken” series organized by the Cabrillo Gallery, with funding provided by the Roy and Frances Rydell Visual Arts Fund at Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County. The series includes 11 countywide shows from winter through spring, at galleries like Radius, R. Blitzer, UCSC’s Mary Porter Sesnon, and Museo Eduardo.
The “Spoken/Unspoken” theme factors into this exhibit in a more abstract way. While UCSC and the R. Blitzer Galleries are focusing on more activism aspects and unspoken narratives, the intent behind the Radius Gallery’s show with Finneran is the process behind the exhibit. Since Finneran doesn’t actually know what the exhibit will look like until it is completed, the journey is one of unspoken, unseen collaboration, says Radius Gallery director and owner Ann Hazels.
“It’s a bit more poetic, I think, than the [approach] other venues are taking,” Hazels says. “There is such a musicality in her work, and its a visual vocabulary not a word-based vocabulary. A lot of it is about the color, response and communication and the dialogue and experience you have when you walk through the space.”
Finneran fittingly focused on circular rings because of the name Radius Gallery. Whether it’s a ring, sphere or plate, everything is circular and coherent.
“It’s a difficult thing to articulate, what the relationship to Spoken/Unspoken is,” says Finneran. “To me it seems obvious that there is this language that happens when you install work, and you are responding. All the hand placement of each piece, it has such an impact. It’s definitely a process.”
The Radius Gallery hosts an artist’s talk with Bean Finneran at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 18. Radius Gallery, 1050 River St. #127, Santa Cruz. “Bit By Bit” is on display through Sunday, April 8. For more information about the show, visit radius.gallery.
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ay Area indie group Talkie took most of 2017 off from live shows to complete their follow-up to 2015’s huge double-album Hablas. They are in the final stages of mastering the recordings, but spent so long working on the material that they ended up with two albums.
“We were just taking our time and not trying to rush it,” says drummer Eric Martin. “We set out thinking, ‘hey, let’s write a follow up to Hablas,’ We ended up writing the follow-up to Hablas, and a follow-up for that as well,” says drummer Eric Martin. “It really speaks to the amount of time it ended up taking.”
They’ve released a couple of songs from the first of the records, which are mellow and have a groovier beach-pop feel and lusher production than Hablas. That album should be out this spring. The other will come later, and will have a harder edge.
The band explains the first album as being “cold,” and the second as “warm.” Sensing my confusion, they then explained it in Santa Cruz terms. The first one is “you are going out to Santa Cruz and have yourself a hot chocolate and listen to this record, then [the other is], you’ll be riding the Giant Dipper, drink an energy drink and get on that roller coaster,” says Martin.
As complicated as it all sounds, these two albums are actually a move away from the heady thought processes behind Hablas, which they say is loosely a concept album. They’d only put out one release prior—a short and sweet self-titled EP. While discussing the follow-up, they imagined an album cover taken at the psychedelic, desert-y Salvation Mountain, and then they wrote all of the songs with that visual in mind, capturing the mood of that photo, and then imagining various narratives that would work in that setting.
“We really just wanted to make an indulgent double-album for our debut. We thought it would be hilarious,” says Martin.
Just as the extremity of doing a self-indulgent concept record is the opposite of their bare-bones rock ’n’ roll EP, they see the next two records following a similar pattern of ping-ponging between different extremes.
“Everything reacts to the last thing we did,” says singer/guitarist Brad Hagmann. “We were reacting to the original EP which was very heavy rock. Hablas was the other end of the spectrum. It was kind of psychedelic, a little more delicate. This reacts to Hablas in a similar way, but it’s definitely not the EP.”
The new records are also part of a continuum of self-production that they started with Hablas. After recording their first EP in a proper studio, they decided to build a portable DIY studio, which first got installed in a barn in San Martin. Having their own studio afforded them the time to really devote to fleshing out details without fear of going over budget.
They’ve become competent self-engineers, which has given them the ability to experiment in terms of textures, creative mic placements and little songwriting tweaks. The drums on this upcoming record, for instance, were recorded in a cabin in Lake Tahoe, to give it “a big room sound.”
“There was a lot of experimentation. Because we’re not working in Abbey Road, or even Tiny Telephone, everything we did was the second or third attempt that we did doing it, for us being musicians first and then record engineers and then producers and mixers after,” Martin says. “Doing all three and having the ability to not worry about the clock, that allowed us to really experiment.”
They have consulted with some sound experts who steered them in the right direction at times, but a lot of the charm of the recording is that they didn’t always know the correct way to do it. When they would land on the wrong thing, they’d come up with some creative sounds.
“If it’s technically wrong, then who cares? If it sounds cool, let’s try it,” Hagmann says. “When you’re recording in odd spaces, you just try a lot of things.”
Talkie perform at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 17 at the Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $8. 429-6994.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was a sudden parting of the ways. The Oasis umbrella entity that housed both the restaurant Matambre, and the tasting room for Uncommon Brewers closed its doors two weeks ago. Chris Laveque, entrepreneur of El Salchichero who teamed up with Uncommon Brewers in the ambitious—and very spacious—venture behind River St. Cafe had a few reflections to share.
“Its bittersweet that things have come to an end,” says Laveque. “It has taught me a lot in the several months we were open and the many years it took to get open.” Laveque wanted to clarify that Matambre was solely responsible for the food, and Uncommon for the beer, and front of the house. “We had a few things plague us from the start, the main being the name. It was envisioned as a tasting room for Uncommon Brewers but with no direct name association it was not viewed as that by the public,” he says. He’s right about that. Name recognition is something to be leveraged. “In the end we were known for the food, a different direction than what was envisioned by Uncommon Brewers.” Leveque also noted that there were no wine options available for those who preferred something other than beer. “There are many groups of people who do not drink beer—we had no option for them,” he says. Meanwhile, “the butcher shop is doing great as we enter our eighth year in this space,” the artisanal butcher noted. “We’re continuing to grow and are looking at some fun new projects here as well.” Stay tuned.
New Leaf at New Leaf
In a sudden pivot, designs to expand the Portland-based New Seasons Market empire of which New Leaf Community Markets is a part, have changed. There had been plans for a new store in Carmel as well as several in the Bay Area. Mary Wright, VP for New Leaf Community Markets, responded to our query about how the changes in the parent company—for example, its CEO stepping down—might affect our local stores. “New Leaf Community Market’s stores will continue business as usual, and we look forward to continuing to serve our local communities. We are excited to open another New Leaf in Aptos later this year, and we are targeting a fall opening,” she says. Meanwhile, the Felton and Boulder Creek locations, owned by Bob Locatelli, will operate independently as of April 2 of this year, after 24 years of being part of New Leaf.
Lunch at Gabriella
Ladies who lunch find a lot to like at Gabriella, especially when uber-host Paul Cocking is on site as he was last Tuesday. Rita and I succumbed to some feather-light, fresh focaccia as well as two gorgeous seafood entrees. Rita’s buxom salad topped with a filet of true cod was lovely, but my rainbow trout over creamy polenta was even better. We celebrated the fine weather by sharing a glass of white wine and an order of affogato. Rita ate the vanilla gelato, and I scarfed down the chocolate cookie with sea salt. Happy day.
Mutari Bi-location
Hmmm, just exactly where are those chocolatiers of Mutari? Well, as co-owner Katy Oursler explained, they are in two locations. The shop and factory live at Front Street, with its extended drink menu and indoor seating. Except when Mutari inhabits “an extended Pop-Up” of grab-and-go items in the bouncy little Pacific Avenue space next door to Assembly. Hope this clarifies things for you. It does for me. Chocolate. Always a great idea. Heads up: Mutari is open today, Valentine’s Day from noon until 9 p.m. Chocolate. Valentine’s favorite! 504A Front St., Santa Cruz. mutarichocolate.com
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]olden State Warriors shooting guard Patrick McCaw was in Santa Cruz last night and pinned the team’s 105-99 loss on himself.
“Coming down here, I just really don’t want the team to lose. I take this loss. I could have done a lot more,” said McCaw, who had specifically requested an assignment on the Santa Cruz Warriors, an affiliate of Golden State, hoping to shake off the cobwebs and work on his game.
While the sophomore guard felt happy to get his feet wet again and see more game time, he rated his play at a five out of 10—a harsh grade for someone who finished with 22 points, eight rebounds and two assists. The Friday, Feb. 9 match was also the first game this season that Golden State Warriors majority owner Joe Lacob came down to see in person, as he tries to keep tabs on the Santa Cruz team. The team is now 18-17 and riding a three-game losing streak.
McCaw, who has seen his efficiency slump at Golden State this year, started last night’s game slow, with 1 for 5 shooting in the first quarter.
“I tend to start games slowly, but that’s because I’m trying to really pick apart everything, from the opposing team to my team,” said McCaw, who expects to play in Santa Cruz again on Sunday, Feb. 11, against the South Bay Lakers. “I was just getting a feel for everybody, and I slowly did, and I felt a lot more comfortable with our guys. For me, I was just trying to pick apart the defense and make reads out of the pick and roll, knowing when to come up and knock down shots. I’m definitely getting back [to] comfortable, using my mind and being out there playing that many minutes. It’s all gonna come back to me.”
NBA players don’t normally seek game time at the development-league level, but that may change.
After struggling point guard Isaiah Thomas returned from a hip surgery this year, analyst Brian Windhorst suggested that he should have made his debut at a lower level before returning to the NBA, and fellow ESPN writer Zach Lowe recently said he doesn’t know why there’s a stigma against NBA players spending time at a lower-level team, especially considering how baseball players do it all the time. Lowe predicted that stigma would change in a few year years.
McCaw says he doesn’t know why that stigma exists, but such perceptions don’t bother him. “It takes a guy who knows where he wants to be. I know where I want to be two or three years from now, so I can’t slow down for anybody,” says McCaw, who attributes his second-year struggles at Golden State to inconsistent playing time and an inability to rind a rhythm.
Santa Cruz had the game’s better players in Friday night’s game—with not only McCaw, but also Golden State backup center Damian Jones and point guard Quinn Cook, who is playing on a two-way contract, that’s designed to split his time between Santa Cruz and Golden State.
But the Legends, who were without their top two scorers, played with more hustle and a stronger team effort. “No question,” said coach Aaron Miles. “They were down guys, and they said, ‘You know what, we’re gonna do it together.’”
The Legends outscored the Warriors in every quarter, but the third.
Santa Cruz Warriors GM Kent Lacob, who sat courtside next to his dad Joe for the game, said he and the Warriors owner spent most of the game talking basketball. He said he and his dad view the Santa Cruz and Golden State teams as one organization, so it’s helpful when guys from the NBA team come down to see how things are going.
“We do have that family atmosphere,” Kent Lacob said. “It’s good, and I think the guys appreciate it, to know that people are watching and they care about their progress.”
It’s been a week now since our Santa Cruz County vs. Monterey County issue came out, and of course I can’t stop thinking of things that we forgot to put in there. One reader wrote in wondering why we didn’t point out that our weather is infinitely better than theirs. “Ever been to Monterey in August?” he wrote. “Sheesh, it’s colder than San Francisco.” Also, I realized I forgot to put any surf movies like Chasing Mavericks—which is basically a love letter to Santa Cruz—in the Movies category. And seriously, we should have had a category for Sex Positivism, which we would have won hands down. I mean, Susie Bright, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens all live here, for god’s sake!
We’re making up for that last one this week in our Valentine’s Day issue by profiling two Santa Cruz podcasters who are quickly becoming icons of sexual consciousness, Amy Baldwin and April Lampert. I’ve been all about podcasts for the last few years, and I just added their show Shameless Sex to my subscriptions. After reading Maria Grusauskas’ story about them, you might do the same.
Meanwhile, Sven Davis looks at a different, but no less important kind of love: the bond between humans and their ruff-ruffs. His insights are as Sven as you’d want them to be—and, of course, very funny. I hope this month brings lots of love for you and your significant others, no matter how many legs they have.
County lines (GT, Jan. 31)? Some of us don’t see it that way. When I moved to the Monterey Bay area in December 1983, I expected it to be for the rest of my life. And so far, it has.
I am one of many of us who escaped Southern California—Los Angeles County to be precise. While I am pleased that there are improvements in L.A. since I left, I would never return there to live. Twice as many people live there now. Too, too many.
I have lived in Pacific Grove, Monterey, Salinas, Capitola and now, Watsonville. I was a renter in Pacific Grove and Monterey, a condo owner in Salinas and Capitola, and now a house owner in Watsonville.
I have lived in both counties, and I have never regretted it. I now live on the border of the two counties, just a few yards from Salsipuedes Creek, and less than a mile from Monterey County. What Monterey County lacks, Santa Cruz County has, and vice versa. But we live in a fabulously beautiful region that people who don’t live here would love to live in.
Don’t believe me? Listen to visitors in restaurants or shopping areas or any attraction we have. “God, I wish I lived here !” “This place is beautiful; you are so lucky to live here!” I have heard this so many times.
And then you tell them about the homeless problem and tell them the price of homes to buy or rent. And then they faint, mouth wide open.
I am grateful for the job interview at Soquel High School in 1977 that first brought me here. And I knew if I did not get the job I would return. And six years later, I did. There is a God.
Steve Trujillo | Watsonville
GRACIAS FROM SENDEROS
In this time of dire uncertainty for immigrants, we are so grateful for the Good Times support of Senderos in the Santa Cruz Gives holiday fundraising program. Your feature article on Nov. 29 highlighted the important pathways Senderos is creating with free dance, music and educational support programs for Latino youth and families.
In 2017, Senderos performed at 30 community and school events for an estimated 23,000 people. Sharing the rich cultural diversity of our region encourages understanding and boosts the confidence and pride of our participants. We are deeply grateful to Good Times, Volunteer Center, sponsors, and all the new and returning donors who gave so generously to Senderos and the other 32 nonprofits serving our County.
¡Muchas Gracias!
Fe Silva, Senderos Director
Carolyn Coleman, Senderos Board Member
Busted System
Re: “Vouch For ’Em” (GT, 11/1): It still has not gotten better. Landlords are still turning down vouchers left and right. People are losing their vouchers every day due to lack of landlords accepting vouchers and not getting extension notices ’til a month later, with each extension only lasting two months leaving you a month of nos. There should be an alternative.
Antonyette L. Fuller | Santa Cruz
CORRECTION
Last week’s news story on tiny homes (“Seeing a Shrink,” 1/31) misquoted Boxed Haus owner Todd Clayton. He had actually said, “I feel like an outlaw by trying to make a better world with a very decent product, a product people need, but can afford.”
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
Submit to ph****@go*******.sc. Include information (location, etc.) and your name. Photos may be cropped. Preferably, photos should be 4 inches by 4 inches and minimum 250dpi.
GOOD IDEA
OPENING TIP
Soquel Drive in Aptos Village returned to being two lanes starting late Friday, Feb. 2. The repair project took several months to complete as the Santa Cruz County public works and Watsonville-based contractor Granite Construction, worked to fix a large slip-out at Valencia Creek. The Federal Highway Administration provided primary funding, with supplemental money from Caltrans. Local funds came from SB 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017.
GOOD WORK
COUNTER WEIGHT
Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeffrey Rosell announced a civil law enforcement settlement last week against Walgreens for more than $2 million. The DA’s office, along with other district attorneys and Santa Cruz County Environmental Health Services, had found that Walgreens was charging consumers more than the advertised prices, and selling infant formula, baby food, and over-the-counter drugs after their expiration dates. The company admits no wrongdoing.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Straight talk is a virtue. Dirty talk is a goddamn blessing.”
