A few weeks ago, I was ranting in these pages about biographical movies that commit a sin of admission—unable to be selective about the facts of a person’s real life, they let the point of the movie drown in too many details. Not so in Goodbye Christopher Robin. In telling a story about A. A. Milne, author of the celebrated Winnie the Pooh children’s books, director Simon Curtis seizes on one aspect of Milne’s life and career to focus on, and follows it through to its conclusion. A larger picture of Milne and his era emerges along the way, but it never distracts from the emotional core of Curtis’ very poignant film.
Curtis has impressive credentials for translating real-life stories to film, after directing My Week with Marilyn and Woman in Gold. Working from a thoughtful script by veteran Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon Vaughan, Curtis crafts a gentle-spirited movie around a serious theme: how Milne’s harrowing experiences in World War I drove him to create the healing fantasy of Winnie the Pooh, inspired by his young son and his son’s toy animals. Serious, too, is the minor theme: the effect of worldwide fame on a 6-year-old boy.
After an ominous 1941 prologue, the movie switches back to the glitz and glamour of Jazz Age London. Alan Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) is a writer of frothy stage comedies who’s finding it hard to adjust to his old life after a tour of duty in the trenches of France. He keeps having devastating flashbacks of the battlefield—whenever a champagne cork pops, for instance, or a car backfires.
To “cheer him up,” his social-butterfly wife, Daphne (Margot Robbie) consents to bear their son, Christopher Robin. But after enduring childbirth, Daphne is eager to resume their usual round of parties and opening nights. Alan, however, who finds London too disturbing, shocks his wife by moving the family, along with Olive (the always endearing Kelly Macdonald), the young nanny who has raised the boy, to a country house in Sussex, where he hopes to start writing again.
Although he longs to produce a work that will convince people to abolish war, as they once abolished slavery, Alan is still unable to write in the country, and Daphne soon flees back to London. But when Alan is left alone for a few days with 5-year-old Christopher, whom everyone calls Billy (the disarmingly dimpled Will Tilston), wandering the benign, sunlit wood on their property, the two begin to bond. Alan starts to get drawn into the imaginative world Billy creates for his stuffed animals, which jump-starts Alan’s own creativity. Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet are born.
These lovely scenes between Tilston and Gleeson (reserved at first, then playfully loosening up) are the heart of the movie. The publication and immediate global mania for the Pooh books and poems go by in a fleeting montage. (Director Curtis is smart enough to realize that’s the part of the story we already know.) But even as Billy becomes an accomplished, if reluctant celebrity (to Daphne’s delight), their father-son relationship is damaged. It’s heartbreaking that they can never again regain that golden time when the stories were just for the two of them, before the whole world was watching.
The movie has a brief, smart denouement as well, that never feels tacked-on, as Billy enters boarding school and suffers the consequences of being Christopher Robin. Alex Lawther is excellent as teenage Billy, trying to reconnect with his father after surviving his own personal hell—with the deeply ironic result that he seeks the anonymity of becoming a private in the army, just in time for the next World War.
It’s a little odd that, except for her hairstyle, Robbie’s Daphne doesn’t seem to age at all in the 20-some years the story covers. But otherwise, in these last few absorbing scenes, Curtis and his scriptwriters return to their main themes, which are paid off with very sharp attention to emotional detail and an enormously satisfying resolution.
GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN
***(out of four)
Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly Macdonald, Will Tilston. Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon Vaughan. Directed by Simon Curtis. A Fox Searchlight release. Rated PG. 197 minutes.
When Alec Stefansky from Uncommon Brewers and Chris La Veque from El Salchichero joined forces to create the Oasis Tasting Room and Kitchen earlier this year, anyone in the know assumed this would be a marriage filled with creative and experimental food and beers—and they were right. One of the most interesting aspects about Oasis is that in the half-year they’ve been open, the menu has already undergone several changes. The latest puts its focus on ramen, while keeping some old favorites. Executive chef Elijah Chausse talked to us about the new menu.
Why are you shifting gears to focus on ramen?
ELIJAH CHAUSSE: It’s something that we wanted to try before we opened. We went a different route when we started. We are not tied to anything there. My executive sous-chef Jasper Ramirez and I are really trying to go with the flow and see what people are receptive to, and test the waters in a few different cuisines. Neither Jasper nor I have a ramen background. So we hit the books hard and did a lot of reading. It’s certainly not traditional by any means. The cool thing about ramen is it’s one of those dishes that you can kind of make your own. And the beer pairs really well with the Asian flavors. Alec does a lot of Asian-influenced beer, as far as the flavors and profiles go.
Will the menu continue to change?
As of right now, the response to the ramen has been pretty good. It might be one of the items that sticks around. In five months, we’ve had a handful of menu changes. And we’ve kept one or two from each one. This might be the evolution of a more semi-permanent menu. But we don’t really want to be tied to anything.
How many different ramens do you have?
Right now we have two broths. Tonkotsu ramen and a veggie ramen with additions as options. You can add a miso bomb, which turns the tonkotsu broth into a miso broth. Then you can add three different kinds of meat. You can add tofu. There are a lot of different possibilities, kind of a build-your-own-ramen kind of thing. We started with four different kinds of ramen, and we slimmed it down to the two. More options, less menu style. So, we can add other menu items and still keep the menu rotating and not be 100-percent a ramen shop.
I spotted this Pacific Redwood wine in New Leaf for $8.99—a totally organic Chardonnay with no sulfites added. Many people are allergic to sulfites in wine, but this one contains only naturally occurring sulfites.
“Uncork a bottle of real organic Chardonnay,” says Pacific Redwood. “We don’t stop halfway when it comes to bringing you organic wine. It’s not just grown organically, but processed organically.” They also note that their Chardonnay is acceptable for vegans. “Natural farming is a way of life for our family winery.”
This Mendocino 2015 Pacific Redwood Chardonnay has a distinctive label featuring, fittingly, a single redwood. It’s fermented in stainless steel, and the end-result is a fruity bright wine with notes of apple, pear and caramel that goes well with many kinds of food.
Around a dozen breweries have united to help David Purgason, a local brewer who was severely injured on the job in July, and was hospitalized in Valley Medical Center with major burns over 60 percent of his body, says local brewer Dustin Vereker of Discretion Brewing. Donations are ongoing. To donate directly to the VMC Fund set up for David, visit: vmcfoundation.org/vmc/support-the-david-purgason-fund.
Revival Ice Cream
A wine event I attended in Carmel Valley was serving Revival Ice Cream, made with organic milk from Clover Dairy and fresh, organic, locally sourced, in-season ingredients. I tried the Heart of Darknesschocolate, and the award-winning Bee’s Knees—a vanilla ice cream with bee pollen and honey comb. Both flavors were incredible.
Shelley’s Biscotti was one of the vendors at Gourmet Grazing on the Green in Aptos Village Park this month. Shelley Patterson always turns out the best and crunchiest biscotti—and they’re all handmade and delicious. They’re available in gift boxes, too. Shelley’s Biscotti, 216B Fern St., Santa Cruz, 479-4121. shelleysbiscotti.com.
She has green skin, long flowing hair, and a pregnant belly that looks like, or perhaps is, the Earth. Her name is Gaia, and she’s one of the many goddesses on display in miniature statuette form in the large glass case next to me.
On the other side of the room I see a couple shelves of toy dinosaurs, a collection so vast and diverse, I can only assume it was accrued over the course of several decades.
To its left, there’s a display case of skulls, which catches my attention. I ask its owner, Oberon Zell, about them.
“I used to find roadkills, take them home, clean them up, dissect them and collect the skulls,” says Zell, who is the 74-year-old proprietor of the shop we’re sitting in, Academy of Arcana, in downtown Santa Cruz.
The skulls are creepy—and all real, he casually explains, except the top shelf, which includes the skulls of an alien, a werewolf, and a cyclops.
We’re in the back room of the Academy of Arcana, the museum and sanctuary, he calls it. The front of the store features mostly merchandise and curiosities that can be purchased. Behind that is the library, which contains materials on magick (ie: not performance magic), paganism and the occult, as well as mythology, science, nature, history, astronomy, science fiction and fantasy.
The museum is lined with strange things displayed along every square inch of the walls. Later, I learn that one section has extensive pictures of Zell’s unicorns from the ’80s—yes, unicorns. If you went to Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey circus in this period you likely remember Zell’s unicorns. (“We discovered the secret of the unicorns. They were not a myth. The world has completely forgotten, but for a while it was in every magazine, every newspaper,” he says.)
What I find most interesting is Zell himself. He sits in front of me, long flowing grey hair, massive, thick beard: a real-life wizard. Or, rather, a pagan, the godfather of the neopagan movement in fact. He formed the Church of All Worlds in 1962, which kicked off the neopagan movement, and started Green Egg magazine in 1968, which “injected key memes into the whole mix.”
“I like living in a world that is strange and mysterious. It’s not so much about the answers, it’s about the questions,” Zell says. “They don’t always give you the answers, but they take you in interesting directions in the journey along the way. That’s what I try to work with.”
The Sacred and Mundane
Zell and Morning Glory with one of their ‘unicorns,’ Lancelot, in 1980.
Right now, he’s reading my tarot cards. He lays down three cards: the Lovers, Queen of Pentacles, and the Ace of Rods. He’s considering the cards’ meaning. My dilemma, I told him, was that I was torn on whether I should write an article. I’m considering that could bring a considerable backlash.
My second card, Queen of Pentacles, represents security and financial matters, he tells me. The third, The Ace of Rods is apparently speaking directly to the dilemma itself: “The Ace of Rods wields the power to have an impact to change the world. Probably a major reason why you’re into journalism is really wanting to have some far-reaching thing with your words.”
He considers how it all works together: “Pursuing what you believe to be right is more important than worrying about the consequences.”
He suggests that I take a picture of the cards before he picks them up and reshuffles them back into his deck. “I hope that’s helpful. I do this for a lot of people. I do card readings—and counselling,” he adds. “It was my professional career in the mundane world for many years.”
It’s hard to imagine Zell in the “mundane world,” especially as I glance over to the right and see a large photo of him in an actual wizard outfit. But he confirms that from 1966-1975 he worked as a family counselor and director of social services for the Human Development Corporation in St. Louis. This was while starting and running a religion. Zell, it turns out, is something of a legend.
But he’s new to Santa Cruz; he moved down from the North Bay, just outside of Cotati, in October 2015. According to Skot Colacicco, the president of the board of directors of Community Seed, a local pagan event coordination organization, the news that Zell was relocating here generated quite a bit of excitement in Santa Cruz’s vibrant pagan community. It’s a diverse group, and many of the resources locally focus on very niche aspects of paganism, whereas Zell’s vast eclectic knowledge, Colacicco says, makes him a remarkable resource.
He’s also got his own unique style that is, in its own way, very Santa Cruz. “He went down the wizard route, which a lot of us haven’t been brave enough to pose ourselves in,” Colacicco says. “He’s always been like, ‘yep, this is who I am.’ In that way, he’s been a huge inspiration to many of us who were like ‘I don’t want to be too weird.’ He’s willing to be weird so that other people can see that it’s OK.”
Changer of Worlds
Zell relocated to Santa Cruz following the death of his wife and longtime life partner Morning Glory, after her battle with cancer. The two met at the third annual Gnostic Aquarian Festival in Minneapolis in 1974, where he was a keynote speaker. They instantly clicked, and their first conversation lasted all night.
“It was love at first sight,” he says. “From then on, we were inseparable.”
Less than a year later, they married, and did everything together, including running the Church of All Worlds and Green Egg—and, of course, raising unicorns.
Now a couple of years after her death, Zell is still trying to figure out what to do with himself.
In 1990, original members of the Church of All Worlds reunited at the Heartland Pagan Festival in Kansas.
“We were just total soulmates. We shared everything,” Zell tells me, stopping to hold back tears. “It’s very strange to have her not with me. We watched all the same TV shows, and movies. Read all the same books and magazines. Had the same friends, listened to the same music. It was a running commentary on everything. I can’t turn to somebody and say hey, ‘how about that?’”
After she passed away in May of 2014, Zell was unsure of what to do with his life. A friend in Bonny Doon invited him to come down and stay with him, suggesting he take all of those memories and accomplishments that he and Morning Glory had created in their life together, and put them on display in downtown Santa Cruz. Zell did so, and opened the Academy of Arcana on Nov. 27, 2015.
Since the move, Zell has been the subject of international write-ups and documentaries, including a segment shot by the Chinese travel channel. The impact that he and Morning Glory have had on American culture, even beyond paganism, is surprisingly significant. They were involved with environmentalism, women’s rights, and polyamory—in fact, Morning Glory is credited with coining the term “polyamory.”
Zell’s influence in paganism and the occult is hugely significant. There likely wouldn’t be a neopaganism movement had he not started the Church of All Worlds.
“There were sort of small scattered groups and individuals, but there was no movement. Church of All Worlds is one of the main driving forces of that,” says Sarah Pike, a professor of comparative religions at CSU Chico. “It would be hard to overstate his importance. He was one of a very small group of people that saw what was happening, and really saw the coming together of the environmental movement, feminism, and the sexual revolution, and sort of the emergence of a new religion during the 1960s. Before that, it was just some scattered people practicing individually.”
Everything leads back to the formation of Church of All Worlds, which predates his meeting with Morning Glory. In fact, the early years of Church of All Worlds seems more of a goof by college students who were obsessed with Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. But they turned out to be very serious about their efforts to revive the ancient pagan ways and deities, create a training system for self-actualization, ordain priestesses, celebrate the old seasonal festivals, revere nature and the Earth, and in general, create an alternative to Christianity and other contemporary religions.
Coffee Shock
Fifty years ago, Zell announced that he was the high priest of the Church of All Worlds—to a scattering of people at a St. Louis coffee shop.
“I said the fateful words: ‘We’re pagans.’ That was the first time anybody had ever put those two words together. It had always been ‘those pagans,’” Zell says. “It had always been a term of appropriation. Nobody had identified themselves as pagans.”
The Church of All Worlds began in 1962 between Zell and college friend Lance Christie, inspired by Stranger in a Strange Land. What started as conversations between the two about paganism, philosophy and the growing cultural changes, eventually evolved into a secret society that by 1965 had 100 members. The idea of a new religion was implicit in the book. After he and Christie read it, they dedicated their lives to manifesting that vision.
In 1967, the group was printing a newsletter of their ideas. In order to raise money for a ditto machine, they held a garage sale at a local coffeehouse over Labor Day weekend. The newspapers gave free ads to churches, so they advertised as the Church of All Worlds.
Regular patrons at the coffee shop wondered who the Church of All Worlds was. On the following Thursday, Sept. 7, Zell got on the mic to satisfy their curiosity. Dressed in a white turtleneck sweater and nicely trimmed goatee, he officially declared the Church of All Worlds a religion open to the public. People asked what this “Church of All Worlds” was. He replied, “I guess you could say we’re pagans.”
Of course, deciding to move his little group from secret society to a public religion brought up a lot of questions. For instance, what was their theology? As a student of mythology and organized religions, he didn’t want the Church of All Worlds to be controlled by any specific dogma. He certainly didn’t want it to become a cult. He made the decision to make it as open-ended as possible, while still embracing the ideals of paganism.
“It was intended to be all this inclusive, all-encompassing thing that could draw the wisdom and good experience from anywhere, but not be bound to any single, particular source. It’s still going strong,” Zell says.
The church grew in large part because of Zell and his kind nature, and because he treated people like family. He never tried to recruit or force his beliefs on anyone.
Gwydion Genzoli has known Zell since he was three years old. Genzoli’s father was a close friend of Gwydion Pendderwen, who purchased a 55-acre parcel on Greenfield Ranch in 1975. When Zell and Morning Glory moved in next door in 1977, they saw Genzoli and his dad fairly frequently.
“He and his wife had this idea of accepting what it is people are into and what it is they are about, even when—especially when—it contradicts your own [beliefs],” Genzoli says. “He’s a much better person than I am. I try to be as good as him, and sometimes, I think of him looking over my shoulder, to correct the choices I’ve made. You kind of appreciate him ’cause it leaves you a little less jaded about the world. We can use a few more dreamers out there.”
The Church of All Worlds was more to Zell than just an expression of his philosophies and ideals for how people could live in harmony together; it was a family of like-minded weirdos. Zell can’t recall a time in his childhood when he didn’t feel like the odd duck in his own family.
“My father was Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager for his first presidential bid. That gives you an idea where my family was on this stuff,” Zell says.
They weren’t quite sure what to do with him. As a kid, Zell would talk about memories that were his late grandfather’s, and that he would have no reason to even know. Looking back, he now says that he is his grandfather reincarnated.
“I remember dying very well. It was a very big deal when I was a kid. I used to have nightmare about it. Many kids’ nightmares, if you talk to kids about nightmares—really look at the story—it’s memories of their former death.”
When Zell became a pagan leader (he appointed Don Wildgrube as ‘high priest a few years later, giving himself the title of “Primate”), his father couldn’t accept it. At his marriage with Morning Glory in 1975, where 500 people attended, including a film crew from Japan that showed up to document it, one of Zell’s friends asked his dad if he was proud of everything his son had achieved. His response was: “I feel like I’ve given birth to the anti-Christ.”
The Empress
Morning Glory had a profound impact on Zell and the Church’s happenings. Zell and his organization were always interested in fostering a women-empowering organization. Her partnership made that all the more real. Her focus, and even workshops on goddesses through the years would help Church of All Worlds, and even the pagan community alone become a place where women held leadership positions and were viewed as equals within the structures of power.
Originally from Long Beach, Morning Glory moved to Eugene, Oregon a few years before she’d gone to the third annual Gnostic Aquarian Festival. Like Zell, she was different from other people around her. But her friends appreciated her interests, and helped chip in to get her a bus ticket to go the festival.
She got her name at age 16 during a trip to Big Sur, on a vision quest. She woke up one morning covered in morning glories people had picked and left on her. From then on, that was her name.
The Church of All Worlds was always a pro-feminist religion, which is what made it so attractive to Morning Glory. Their first priestess, Carolyn Clark, was also an ardent feminist, as would be anyone ordained as a Priestess. Morning Glory carried that on even further.
Mystery School
Lately, there is a lot of focus on a newer aspect of Zell and Morning Glory’s legacy: the Grey School of Wizardry, which they started in August of 2004. Through it, folks can take online courses on magick. Zell likens it to the old “mystery” schools of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle that explore the mysteries of the universe. There’s no separation between modern science and magick. Astrology and astronomy are treated with the same respect. Physics and metaphysics. Alchemy and chemistry.
The Academy of Arcana serves as a physical space for the school with a library, museum, classroom, meeting place, scheduled classes, and events.
The wizard school was something that Zell always wanted to do, but it wasn’t until the popularity of Harry Potter bloomed that he felt compelled to do it. He was invited to speak in November 2001 at a screening of the first film.
“All these kids with pointy hats. And we sat up there in the balcony—the school had reserved the whole balcony. Looking down, there were all of these kids watching the show,” Zell says. “We thought, ‘this is huge. And these kids, some of them are going to want to look for the real thing. And maybe that’s what we should do is to put it together.’ So this is a real life school of wizardry, instead of just the fantasy one,” Zell says.
Creating a school and a church had been in their minds for a while, and was inspired by Professor Xavier’s School of Gifted Youngsters in the X-Men comics.
A few years following the release of the Harry Potter film, Zell was commissioned to write a book of Wizardry, which became a textbook, so he thought this was the time to create a school for it.
“I realized that the world was finally ready for a school of Wizardry,” he says.
In the back of the museum/sanctuary at the Academy of Arcada, a small section catches my eye. I ask Zell about it. It’s a shrine to Morning Glory. It has different pieces of memorabilia. He shows me an old photo of her where she’s topless and says, “You can see why it was so easy to fall in love with her. She was an amazing woman.”
He then adds that the entire place is a shrine to Morning Glory.
“Everything reminds me of her. She’s so embedded in so many things. This was her priestess crown, these are her magical tools,” he says, holding them up. “I feel like an amputee, running around with a good part of me missing. I go to take a step and there’s none left there. She was just truly a phenomenon. And dearly beloved by so many. I can survive. It’s not what I want to be doing, just surviving.”
There’s more to the Academy of Arcana than simply remembering the past. With all of Zell’s history, rarely has he had it on display for the public to see and learn from. A lot of the reason for his decision to move to Santa Cruz and open this business was to do just that. For the first time, he’s really focusing on establishing his legacy.
“This is my life,” Zell says. “I’m very proud and happy with my life. I don’t have any dark secrets that I want to hide from anyone. To be able to show it off is kind of cool. It’s like having a big fancy estate and having guests come through—escort them through the collections, the library and the exhibits.”
The international fishing community, one of the oldest industries in the world, has plenty to learn when it comes to labor practices and environmental stewardship, says Tobias Aguirre, CEO of FishWise, a local nongovernmental organization (NGO).
“Our world is more than 70 percent water,” he offers, “so as the oceans go, so goes our planet.”
Aguirre says there’s only one way to improve the field, which is rife with overfishing, illegal fishing, mislabeling and human rights violations like human trafficking. That path forward, Aguirre says, is through increased transparency and oversight of an industry that supplies protein to more than a billion people a day.
“There are a lot of critical gaps in this really complicated system,” he says.
FishWise has a plan, Aguirre says, to fill these gaps through a new global alliance for sustainable fisheries called the Seafood Alliance for Legality and Traceability (SALT). With FishWise guiding the way, the SALT alliance aims to do for the seafood industry what Fair Trade USA has done for coffee and chocolate. FishWise will coordinate SALT’s efforts to share information and make industry changes, while working with stakeholders that include other NGOs, countries, and major companies, all with the goal of improving fishery management.
The SALT effort focuses, in part, on making the supply chain more traceable, Aguirre says, with the aim of letting groups track a product through the supply chain back to its origin. “The global traceability system,” Aguirre explains, “is similar to what we have in banking where you can go to any ATM around the world and through this integrated network, it eventually talks to your home bank or credit union. We really need that in seafood.”
Bait and Switch
Repeated research has shown that, due to mislabeling, people often aren’t eating the fish they’ve picked out for dinner. A study last year out of the University of Washington said that up to 30 percent of the seafood in restaurants and grocery stores is getting mislabeled. A report from Oceana, a conservation nonprofit based in Washington D.C., suggested in 2015 that mislabeling is particularly common with salmon, with 43 percent of the popular fish getting labeled incorrectly. Most of those errors were from farmed fish mislabeled as wild-caught. And often times, according to a story in the Atlantic, farmed salmon has quirks of its own, as it is wild salmon’s krill-based diet that gives the species its pink color. Farmed salmon, meanwhile, eat a highly processed kibble, which includes corn, soy, and chicken parts, naturally giving their meat a gray hue—something fish farmers then mask using a pink dye. The Washington study did note, however, that many of these phony alternatives are more sustainable than the real thing when it comes to seafood. But regardless, how can foodies know for sure when they can’t even be sure what they’ve ordered?
Indeed, Aguirre says it can be difficult for restaurants and grocery stores—let alone consumers—to know the backstory of the fish they’re carrying. Fisheries, he explains, “deal in huge piles of paper, if they’re even keeping records.”
It’s common, he adds, in countries like the Philippines, for a lone fisherman to return to shore with a catch and without much information, given his limited ability to easily and efficiently record information about his yield. Crucial information about the fish is lost from the start.
“Maybe they write down their catch and how it was caught, but often they don’t, and it just gets kind of consolidated, and that person on shore moves it to the next person in the supply chain,” Aguirre explains. He says those sparse records end up getting “transferred from one entity to another 20 times.”
“By the time it finally gets to us in a grocery store or restaurant,” he says, “it’s really easy to lose information about that product.”
Tangle of Trafficking
As it prepares for the SALT discussions, FishWise has ideas for how to fix this, including equipping fishermen with apps on handheld devices to record their catches.
Aguirre says that better record-keeping systems can also help reduce human rights abuses, which have garnered attention in Southeast Asia. UCSC alumna Martha Mendoza won her second Pulitzer Prize last year for a series of investigative reports for Associated Press detailing human trafficking on fishing boats in Indonesia. Mendoza and a team of threeother reporters traced the fish caught by slaves to stores like Safeway, Kroger, Albertsons and Wal-Mart. That food, the report detailed, was ending up in everything from popular pet food to fancy restaurants to the frozen section of the grocery store.
Aguirre says that the AP’s investigative stories, along with reporting from The Guardian, “pulled back the curtain in some of these really hard-to-see areas in the seafood industry.”
“You can’t talk about environmental sustainability or sustainability in the seafood industry, without looking at the human side of it,” he adds.
Aguirre hopes that by ensuring that the whole crew has passports and access to reporting grievances, SALT can hold bad players in the industry accountable. And if the fishermen have more access to data, that means they can be more informed about the best times and places to fish as well as how to avoid bycatch, the unintended species that end up in nets. Changes could save fishermen time, fuel, and energy, he explains. “It’s hugely ambitious and there’s a lot of great NGOs, seafood companies and foundations working on it, but we do need more support from tech companies,” Aguirre says.
The SALT alliance will be a five-year $5.3 million project with funding from the United States government, as well as nonprofits like the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.
In a FishWise press release, Teresa Ish, oceans program officer at the Walton Foundation, called traceability “a critical component of an efficient, modern and sustainable seafood industry.” She added that she hopes the new alliance will incentivize companies to use best practices out in the water.
It isn’t clear yet exactly how incentives would work, but Aguirre is optimistic that fishery managers will see a need to modernize their operations, including record keeping and data sharing.
Aguirre grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and attended Mount Madonna School. While in grad school in San Diego he returned to Santa Cruz to do an internship with FishWise in 2004. At the time there were only five employees; there are now 30.
New Leaf Community Markets was already a leader in the green grocery business, as Aguirre noticed at the time. And when he returned to grad school, he immersed himself in learning what corporations need in order to commit to environmental progress. He looked for ways that major chains might sell more fish and become more responsible at the same time.
“In the last 12 years, we’ve created a whole portfolio of examples of companies doing exactly that. It’s been really fun,” he says.
Now 80 percent of the largest grocery stores and foodservice companies have some sort of sustainable seafood program, Aguirre says, adding that it all started with New Leaf in 2001.
Chris Farotte, program and category manager for meat and seafood for New Leaf Community Markets, says that FishWise has been instrumental in helping educate customers on the quality of their fish purchases by developing a data-driven flowchart, which store employees call “the Bible.” Both purchasers and customers can see the sustainability of various fish categorized with a stop light labeling system, split into three areas—green, yellow and red.
“I give a lot of credit to the customers because they voted with their dollars,” Farotte says. New Leaf’s customers, he says, avoided red-designated fish, even as the store saw an increase in overall purchases.
FishWise and its partners aim to empower major seafood buyers like Safeway, Albertsons, Target and Hy-Vee, a grocery chain of 240 stores with sustainable practices in the Midwest. It’s also helping to build comprehensive sustainability goals into the commitments of major companies.
“Now [there] is a groundswell of work to really think about the well-being of everyone that’s catching and raising and processing our fish,” Aguirre says, “and getting this critical protein to us.”
“I bring 65 comedians from all over the West Coast and make them run, literally, from one show to another,” he says. “It’s like The Amazing Race with no prize and more work. They run around like idiots. The point is to be a non-elitist festival, which is very Santa Cruz.”
The festival returns for a fourth time Oct. 28, boasting comedy walking tours and a plethora of free and ticketed shows across downtown. It continues into Halloween and ends Nov. 4 with DNA’s Pop Up Comedy Events, which can best be described as completely bizarre immersive experiences for really weird people—basically all of Santa Cruz.
“A lot of events in Santa Cruz skew one side or the other, either 40 or 50 [years old] and up and others are 35 and down,” DNA says. “I don’t find the middle ground at a lot of things.”
By featuring David Liebe Hart and other well-known West Coast comedians alongside local comics, DNA says he hopes to appeal to a wide range of comedy fans. Hart will headline the Catalyst Atrium, along with Nervous Energy and DJ Real, there will be an All Star show at the Kuumbwa with 15 headliner comics, and Pure Pleasure Shop’s lineup of female-identifying performers returns following their sold-out show last year. And of course there are the WasTED talks, which are exactly what they sound like—wasted comedians hosting a TED-style talk.
“Comedians are like microbrews, everyone has their favorite,” he says, adding that there will certainly be something for everyone from the stereotypical stand up to the ultra weird comedy.
Like many local comedians, Christina Powell got her start at DNA’s standup showcases at the Blue Lagoon, having dragged her friends there weekly until she mustered up the courage to get on stage herself. She will be hosting part of the Streetlight Records show on Saturday, and will then move on to host the Pure Pleasure show. Starting out last year, Powell says she was surprised by how supportive everyone is in the Santa Cruz comedy scene, as well as by their range of backgrounds.
“There are doctors, lawyers, students, people who work in restaurants and weed stores, everything,” says Powell. “You need to have some pieces of a normal life to be a good comedian. If I was just at home writing all day I wouldn’t be experiencing anything or creating relatable material.”
She says that the comedy festival keeps local comics on their toes by bringing a new, unpredictable audience to try out material on—and full-time professional comedians to be completely intimidated by.
“If you are performing in the same town and the same bars, there is a style of comedy that works, and you stick with that,” Powell says. “It’s good to get out of your comfort zone.”
Even though the festival is his brainchild, DNA wants to make sure he doesn’t get all ofthe credit. Besides the comics, there are 100 volunteers helping to make the festival run smoothly as possible—even with frantic comics running everywhere.
“So many of the comics coming to the festival have a socially conscious perspective on life, with a humorous edge,” DNA says. “Not only is it cathartic to laugh for several hours at a show, but it can change your perspective on things, and then change your life.”
A highlight of last year’s festival were the pop up events, including theatrical stagings of two Twilight Zone episodes, followed by DNA himself hosting the Late Late Night Show. The Twilight Zone dramatizations breathed new, tense energy into stories that—despite setting the standard for current mindbender series like Black Mirror—are sometimes mistakenly thought to be outdated. And the faux talk show was a weird and very funny twist on the late-night format set the night before the world ends. This year will see two new Twilight Zone adaptations, followed by the return of the Last Late Night Show at Center Stage Theater, on Oct. 31 and Nov. 2-4.
DNA says everyone deserves a laugh, especially now.
“It’s a cathartic experience. Laughter brings people together and they leave with a smile on their face,” he says. “Laughter is going to get us through. And music, too. And drugs and alcohol.”
Three years ago, local dance-rock-jam ensemble Wooster played their last show, a sold-out Moe’s Alley farewell at which they played both of their albums in their entirety. Over the course of the night, they had everyone on stage who’d ever been in the band. It was an emotional celebration.
The band members haven’t spent too much time together since, and have gone on to pursue individual goals. But this Halloween, the band gets together once again to headline Moe’s.
“I definitely had a little bit of a breakdown after the whole thing was over,” says guitarist Brian Gallagher. “But it was a chance to see what was next.”
The band had a good run locally. They even had a legitimate hit—in Guam. Gallagher says the last time he checked the numbers on Spotify for their low-key, reggae-influenced “Ooh Girl,” it had nearly 900,000 plays.
On YouTube, there are more than a dozen videos of would-be Woosters, mostly from Guam, covering the song. “Ooh Girl” got so big that the band was flown to Guam in late 2013 to play five sold-out shows. Gallagher recalls going to a high school and getting swarmed by kids asking for their autographs.
“We got treated like royalty. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Gallagher says. “Everyone was waiting for us to play that song. When are you guys going to play ‘Ooh Girl?’ We could have just played that 12 times in a row.”
Around the same time as this Guam trip, Wooster was just releasing its second album. Things were looking bright for the group, which had been touring the West Coast regularly and selling out local venues—usually Moe’s Alley—with some consistency. They were averaging 50 to 75 shows a year.
But less than a year later, the band played its final show. A combination of touring exhaustion, new personal responsibilities and a feeling that their second album didn’t take off quite to the extent that they had hoped it would led to them calling it quits.
“I think in the back of our heads, we always knew we’d be down to do it again. We had such a cool thing going. It’s more of a community experience for us. People that came out to the show, we’re all still really good friends,” Gallagher says.
Before Wooster became a band, it was Gallagher’s solo project. Originally from New York, he named the band after Wooster Street in his hometown. He moved to Santa Cruz for college, and started working with Zack Donoghue and Caroline Kuspa for about a year. Together they reworked some of Gallagher’s songs and wrote some new ones. When it came time to record what would be Wooster’s debut record, he hired some players he admired in town—Bobby Hanson, Nate Fredrick, Dustin Hengl and Gianni Staiano—who’d eventually join.
“I figured out who were some of the best musicians in Santa Cruz, and surrounded myself with as many of those people as I could,” he says.
In the coming years, they adapted those songs into an eclectic live band experience, pulling from the diverse influences of reggae, soul, indie, folk, and creating the sound that Santa Cruzans would come to know and love.
There was so much energy and support for the band by the time they recorded their second album that they were able to fund it through money they’d made from touring. When it didn’t propel them forward, it was kind of a surprise.
“It definitely seemed like the first album caught on more,” Gallagher says. “The second album didn’t pick up or have the same hits. Our second record was more of what we do at our live show, where the first one was based on the songs.”
This upcoming show could be the beginning of something regular again for the group. They probably won’t be touring and playing 75 shows a year, but they might make it a regular thing to gig locally, depending on how this show goes.
“It’s kind of like a big reunion for us to get back together to play this music that was such a big part of our lives,” Gallagher says. “It’s very meaningful for us that we get to play these songs again and revisit those days and all those memories we have.”
Wooster plays at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 31, at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $15/adv, $20/door. 479-1854.
Vinocruz has returned! Which is great news for those of us who loved combing around the former wine shop specializing in wines made right here in our own Santa Cruz Mountains appellation. The new owners, Jordan Iversen and Matt Schofield,have finished jumping through all of the regulatory hoops and will open the wine shop this week—in a new location, at the corner of Soquel Drive and Main Street in greater metropolitan Soquel.
“We wanted to retain what made Vinocruz special in the first place: A focus on Santa Cruz Mountains wines,” Iversen says, but adds that Vinocruz needs to evolve.
“So we changed the business model to allow for a huge selection of wines by the glass (30-plus) and the option to taste Reserve wines that would normally only be available by the bottle, using the Coravin wine system,” he says. This is very exciting news to fans of locally made premiums. “We also wanted to add local beer, cider and wine on tap, something that was not previously available,” Iversen adds.
Chef Anthony Kresge, industry veteran and opening chef for Sotola, will be providing a choice tasting menu. “With a focus on local, we are trying to bring everyone a true taste of the Santa Cruz Mountains,” Iversen says. Stop by and welcome them back. vinocruz.com.
Oh My, O’mei
“Turns out that after studying the new lease extended to me that we have decided to not go with this opportunity. Because of this, O’mei closed permanently this past week,” Karl Cook emailed me on Monday.
The O’mei chef and manager of 15 years who had hoped to take over ownership, also thanked “the individuals who reached out to me did so in a very supportive way.” Grateful for all of the community support during a difficult time, Cook says he has not made any firm decisions as to his next move. “There is a good chance that you’ll see me offering ‘O’mei-style’ food here in Santa Cruz in the future.”
New Winter Hours for Downtown Farmers Market
Fans of the fresh and seasonal will want to note fall/winter hours for the Downtown Farmers Market. Beginning Wednesday, Nov. 8, the operating hours will change to 1-5 p.m. This means an earlier opportunity for the lunch break crowd to check out the market action before it grows dark (yes, winter is coming up). It’s true there is less of the flashy opulence of summer produce happening right now in the market, but think of the deep and earthy flavors coming up as the sun slides lower in the sky. I’m talking about beta carotene! Yes, that would include orange carrots, red (and yellow) beets, and deep green kales, chards, and of course our local hero—Brussels sprouts. As the temperature cools, many herbs, chicories and lettuces pop up in the market. This is their time to shine. And it’s the season for persimmons and pomegranates for salads and tea breads. Did I mention pumpkins? They’re not just for carving. Get ambitious and try making your own pumpkin pie from scratch this year, starting with organic pumpkins from the Farmers Market. And this is the last week for UCSC Market Cart at the foot of campus—the last day is Oct. 27. Until next year.
Dessert of the Week
It came together just by chance, this delicious juxtaposition of flavors. We bought fresh blackberries, small oatmeal cookies, and a container of crème fraîche, tinged with Madagascar vanilla from Vermont Creamery. Our hosts, Jim and Lisa, suggested perhaps some ice cream? Maybe strawberry ice cream? So, in a classic DIY moment, I boldly put some of each of these ingredients on our little dessert plates. We all went for it, and found ourselves amazed by how these flavors and textures worked together. The special discovery was the pairing of the cool, sweet strawberry ice cream with the pungent, delicately sour flavor of the crème fraîche. Cool and warm, fruit and cookie—almost everything you want in a dessert experience on a single plate. These are ideas you can try with whatever you have in your own kitchen—contrast of textures, sweet and sour, make the heart of a memorable sensory experience. Trust me.
Free Will astrology for the week of October 25, 2017.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I share Vincent Van Gogh’s belief that “the best way to know life is to love many things.” But I also think that the next 12 months will be an inspiring time for you to be focused and single-minded in your involvement with love. That’s why I encourage you to take an approach articulated by the Russian mystic Anne Sophie Swetchine: “To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.” Halloween costume suggestion: a lover celebrating a sacred union to the love of your life, to God or Goddess, or to a symbol of your most sublime ideal.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Yes, We Have No Bananas” is a silly novelty song that became a big hit in 1923. Its absurdity led to its wide use for humorous effect. For example, on the kids’ TV series *The Muppet Show,* puppets made out of fruits and vegetables sang parodies of the tune. That’s why I find it droll that the “No Bananas” songwriters stole part of the melody from the “Hallelujah Chorus,” the climax of classical composer George Handel’s religious oratorio Messiah. I’d love to see you engage in comparable transmutations, Taurus: making serious things amusing and vice versa. It’s a time when you can generate meaningful fun and playful progress through the art of reversal. Halloween costume suggestion: a tourist from Opposite Land or Bizarro World.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In the next two weeks, you may have to navigate your way through careless gossip, distorted “facts,” superficial theories, hidden agendas, fake news, and official disinformation. To prevent problems in communication with people who matter, take advantage of the Halloween spirit in this way: Obtain a bicycle helmet and cover it with aluminum foil. Decorate it with an Ace of Clubs, a red rose, images of wrathful but benevolent superheroes, and a sign that says “No Bullshit Allowed.” By wearing this crown, you should remain protected. If that’s too weird for you, do the next best thing: Vow to speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and ask to receive the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Watch out for a fake pizza-delivery driver who’s actually trying to issue you a legal summons. Be careful you don’t glimpse a blood red sky at dusk, in case it’s a prophetic sign that your cell phone will fall into a toilet sometime soon. Beware of the possibility that a large bird carrying a turtle to its nest accidentally drops its prey into a rain puddle near you, splashing mud on your fancy clothes. Just kidding! All the scenarios I just described are stupid lies. The truth is, this should be one of the most worry-free times ever. You’re welcome, of course, to dream up a host of scary fantasies if you find that entertaining, but I guarantee that they’ll be illusory. Halloween costume suggestion: an indomitable warrior.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): What is the material object you want most but don’t have? This is an object that would serve your soul’s highest purposes, although not necessarily your ego’s. Here’s another question: What evocative symbol might help keep you inspired to fulfill your dreams over the course of the next five years? I suggest that you choose one or both of those things to be the inspiration for your Halloween costume.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Did you get a chance to go to circus school when you were a kid? How about magic school? Or maybe detective school or time-travel school or superhero school? Probably none of the above, right? Much of your education revolved around what you had to learn rather than what would be fun to learn. I’m not saying it was bad you were compelled to study subjects you felt ambivalent about. In the long run, it did you good. But now here’s some sweet news, Virgo: The next ten months will be a favorable time to get trainings and teachings in what you yearn to learn. Halloween costume suggestion: a student.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Now is an excellent phase in your cycle to scour bathrooms, scrub floors, shampoo carpets, and wash windows. But the imminent future will be an even more favorable period to purify your motivations, tonify your emotions, purge your less-than-noble agendas, calm down your monkey mind and monkey heart, disinfect the moldy parts of your past, and fact-check the stories you tell about yourself. So which set of tasks should you focus on? It may be possible to make great strides on the second set as you carry out the first set. But if there’s not enough time and energy to do both, favor the second set. Halloween costume suggestion: a superhero who has wondrous cleaning powers; King Janitor or Queen Maid.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “You never sing the same song twice,” said chanteuse Billie Holiday. “If you sing it with all the same phrasing and melody, you’re failing your art.” That’s an extreme statement, but I understand what she was driving at. Repeating yourself too much can be debilitating. That includes trying to draw inspiration from the same old sources that have worked in the past. I suggest you avoid this behavior in the coming days. Raise Holiday’s approach to a universal principle. Fresh sources of inspiration are available! Halloween costume suggestion: a persona or character unlike any you’ve ever imagined yourself to be.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): How can you enjoy the lavish thrills of rebirth later unless you die a little inside now? It’s the trickiest phase of your cycle, when your energies are best used to resolve and graduate from the unfinished business of the last 10 months. I suggest that you put the past to rest as best as you can. Don your funniest sad face and pay your last respects to the old ways and old days you’ll soon be leaving behind. Keep in mind that beauty will ultimately emerge from decay. Halloween costume suggestion: the mythical phoenix, which burns itself down, then resurrects itself from its own ashes.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): There are no such things as magic healings and miraculous redemptions and impossible breakthroughs. Right? Hard evidence provided by science precludes the existence of exotic help coming from spiritual realms. Right? Well, no. Not right. There is in fact another real world that overlaps the material world, and it operates according to different laws that are mostly imperceptible to our senses. But events in the other real world can have tangible effects in the material world. This is especially true for you right now. Take advantage! Seek practical answers and solutions in your dreams, meditations, visions, and numinous encounters. Halloween costume suggestion: white-magic sorcerer or good witch.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Many years from now, in your last hours on Earth, you will have visions that show you how all the events in your life were crucial to your life story. You will understand the lesson that was provided by each twist and turn of your destiny. Every piece of the gigantic puzzle will slip into place, revealing the truth of what your mission has been. And during that future climax, you may remember right now as a time when you got a long glimpse of the totality. Halloween costume suggestion: the happiest person on Earth; the sovereign of all you survey; the wise fool who understands yourself completely.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): You might be able to pass for normal, but it will be better for your relationship with yourself if you don’t. You could try to tamp down your unusual urges and smooth your rough edges, but it will be smarter to regard those urges and edges as fertile raw material for your future happiness. Catch my drift? In the coming weeks, your main loyalty should be to your idiosyncratic intelligence. Halloween costume suggestion: the beautiful, interesting monster who lives in you.
Homework: Name your greatest unnecessary taboo and how you would violate it if it didn’t hurt anyone. FreeWillAstrology.com.
Jupiter, the Truth Teller (ruler of Sag) has entered Scorpio’s deep waters of desire, remaining in Scorpio for a year (till Nov. 8, 2018). During last year’s Jupiter in Libra, we saw unrest, intolerance, turmoil and a country divided. For humanity to see what was not in balance and choose which side to stand upon.
Now with Jupiter in Scorpio—sex, power, money, rock ’n’ roll – (the Hollywood sex scandal broke right after Jupiter entered Scorpio; now the Iran scandal and JFK records to be released)—what’s hidden (silenced, secret, repressed, held back, etc.) comes to light. This revealing will continue through the year. Keynote: dismantling dominant paradigms, providing avenues of awareness, acknowledging, revealing, stepping forward into the light.
We will develop more courage and determination. Simultaneously, we will consider the wise (and unwise) use of power and control. Jupiter in Scorpio exposes corruption, vice, immorality, fraud and the manipulations of the elite. Over time we will demand transparency, ethics and financial reforms. Personally, we could be over-extravagant and over-confident (Jupiter) about our own finances. Careful, everyone.
Our belief systems will be tested. There can be rigidity and a fanatical observance of old (religious, political, etc.) beliefs. Scorpio rules study, research, reorientation and death, expanding us into realms unknown. Many will seek mediums who speak to the dead. Others will begin studying Kabbalah, the Bible, Course in Miracles and Ageless Wisdom teachings. For one whole year, humanity becomes Persephone, taken into the underworld by Pluto, with Jupiter benevolently protecting us, and, while we are in the dark Scorpio recesses, asking each of us, “What are your heart’s deepest desires?”
Tuesday is Halloween. Something wicked our way comes (we hope)! The night (Pisces moon) is void-of-course. Careful, everyone!
ARIES: The coming year brings you deeper understanding of self in relationships. Intimacy becomes you, generosity, trust and compassion too, as you more fully embrace the “other.” This brings a certain empowerment and feelings of joy and happiness. Careful with finances. Don’t beg, borrow, depend on credit or accumulate debt. Learn to be frugal. Tithe each month to those in need.
TAURUS: You assume new ways of communicating, cooperating and negotiations which allow relationships to experience greater happiness. It’s a blessing to extend beyond compromise and have harmony in relationships. You begin to understand the Law of Right Human Relations and ideas that foster the well-being of others. Love comes surprisingly and unexpectedly and assuredly.
GEMINI: Daily life rhythms and rituals, health, small animals, serving others—these bring you deep enjoyment. You enter into the world of form and matter, and find that it is good. Gemini (and Pisces) tend to remain somewhat “out and away from this world.” What is all around is what really matters now and during this time you recognize your part in the world, your usefulness and goodness in helping others. Life purpose comes to stay.
CANCER: It’s time to have fun, amusement and pleasure for the entire year, time to express yourself in ways unknown before. It’s time to be artful and creative, to be playful, take risks, expand and grow like a garden in the wild. Notice new ideas, new dreams, desires and aspirations. Discover what nourishes you and allow yourself to be entertained without apology. Explore all possibilities, especially the emotional and romantic.
LEO: Family life, living arrangements, comfort, beauty, the rooms in your house, your garden, all things domestic, your origins and foundations … all of these will be an expanding focus in the coming year. Some Leos will buy real estate, others will decorate, move, or invite family and friends home often. A sense of peace prevails and privacy, too. Begin to build a garden gate.
VIRGO: You will do more of the following—express yourself (speaking, writing), take short trips, talk with siblings and friends, relate more consciously with the world around you. Perhaps you’ll purchase a new vehicle to explore new lands. More people will contact you. There will be more errands, too. Daily activities and tending to details may become overwhelming. You’ll need to be in a garden more than ever.
LIBRA: You are the seven-stringed lyre of Apollo. Music, art and architecture create the magic and beauty that released you from daily harsh realities. Social justice, care and kindness for those in need are your greatest gifts. They come from the heart. In always helping others, you reflect the kindness and beauty of God. There is a hidden path to God. It’s called Beauty. God is grateful for you.
SCORPIO: There will be transformations, reorientations and renewal, some rather numinous, in the coming year. When focused in the heart, you move into a level of existence that is honey-yellow, a transparent golden hue. You find the path of “I Am” and then the goals you have set for yourself come true. You will step into new roles, new identities. Life’s purpose catches you and you’re never the same again.
SAGITTARIUS: Reviewing the past year helps integrate all of your experiences, desires, dreams, aspirations and the constant messages encountered from the beyond. The Great Ones left you “breadcrumbs” each day to let you know you’re on track, that wherever you were and are, there is support, and that all limiting beliefs can be laid by the wayside, forever. You will teach and share all that you’ve learned.
CAPRICORN: You worked diligently and persistently this past year and in subtle and interesting ways you will be rewarded. Over half our lifetime we are gathering past-life gifts, learning about ourselves and what our talents and gifts are. This coming year is very private, filled with psychological understandings and recognition of your essential divine self. Whatever you ask for comes to you. Is it balance in relationships you seek? Pray for this.
AQUARIUS: You will assess your place in and contribution to society and culture, and how authentic you can be publicly. There is a balancing of your personal and public lives. One area of livingness ends as another begins. The new is aligned with your heart’s desires. You have vision and farsighted concepts. Follow them. They lead you to the “forest” (Vedic metaphor for where you need to be).
PISCES: The way we live our lives affects our health and well-being. It is important to see the broader picture, not allowing small inconveniences to upset inner balance. This new cycle is to be one of joy and happiness. We can choose this each day. The next 12 months is a time of preparation. Next year Pisces will be called to world service. During this year, travel, write, publish and fine-tune talents and skills in preparation. Life begins to change.
