Page 819 – Good Times

New Water Storage Design Could Pave Way for Water-Neutral Homes

Local News

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March 1, 2017

New Water Storage Design Could Pave Way for Water-Neutral Homes

A 46,000-gallon rainwater tank made entirely of stainless steel hides behind a grove of oak trees atop the highest slope on John Haskins’ 5-acre Corralitos property. If all goes according to plan, that tank and two others will make the Haskins home water-neutral, which is why he wanted to install it after so many dry years.

This winter’s historically high rain levels, however, filled up Haskins’ new rainwater storage system quickly, and have left it consistently full. Still, these storms only reassure Haskins that he’s made a good investment as he resists temptation to call the five-year California drought over—no matter what the meteorologists say.

“Nobody predicted all this rain,” he says, noting that last year’s El Niño winter was slated to bring massive levels of rainfall to California, and didn’t. And this season, a La Niña year, was supposed to be rather dry. “Weather patterns are only becoming more unpredictable.”

The tank is 27 feet in diameter, and holds enough rainwater to supply his family of four with the water they need year-round, so long as they remain frugal with their usage and cut back on irrigation during the summer.

The Haskinses hope to eliminate their impact on Santa Cruz County’s groundwater, which has been under stress from over-pumping since the 1950s.

Last year, the family used an average of 600 gallons of water per day during the summer months and 200 gallons per day during the winter, including household use, drinking water, irrigation, and filling their living swimming pool—a chemical-free alternative to the backyard amenity.

Haskins’ property is still connected to a well, which used to be the home’s primary source of water before the rainwater catchment system was built. And with the simple flip of a lever, Haskins can still draw from the well just as easily as before.

But in theory, if the Haskinses follow through with their plan to cut back on summer water use, they should have enough rainwater in the tank to shut off flow from the well year-round, something that would help out their many neighbors.

Water in the Pajaro Valley aquifer below—the Aromas Basin—has fallen well below sea level due to decades of over-pumping, causing seawater intrusion along the coast, which could permanently contaminate the groundwater source.

Haskins almost certainly won’t ever experience seawater intrusion on his property in Corralitos, but Chris Coburn, executive director of the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County (RCD), says that drawing from any groundwater source in the county contributes to the overdraft problem. So by going off the water grid with his project, Coburn says Haskins has provided an “excellent example of what individual homeowners can do to help.”

Jack Schultz, a civil engineer with experience on what he calls “unconventional projects,” designed Haskins’ system—his second rainwater system in Santa Cruz County. Schultz hopes his design will inspire other locals to consider curbing their groundwater use by catching rainwater.

Schultz built solar water heaters beginning in 1974 with his company, Solar Utilities, long before home solar use became popular in the United States. Since then, he’s worked on a variety of projects—from protecting creek banks from erosion in Scotts Valley and Aptos with redwood-log cribbing to repairing water systems damaged in Sumatra after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Schultz says rainwater systems designed for drinking water purposes are rare in Santa Cruz County, in part because the regulatory codes do not normally allow for them. He’s designed Haskins’ system to meet EPA requirements for water purification, which he hopes will eventually be approved for permitting in Santa Cruz County.

Regardless, the county still granted a permit to Haskins’ storage tank because his property has access to a well, and the new disinfection system is considered an addition, not the primary source of the home’s drinking water.

Schultz’s design uses three tanks, allowing for maximum capacity and purification. Rainwater that falls on Haskins’ roof runs downhill into a transfer tank and then passes through a series of filters, as it is pumped back uphill to storage and has all of the pollutants removed along the way.

The large storage tank is high on the property’s slope, allowing gravity to send the water back down to a supply tank connected directly to the home’s water pipes. On its way to the domestic supply tank, the rainwater goes through the final stages of its disinfection process.

Water districts typically disinfect municipal water with filters and chlorine, which protects against any accidental contaminants. Because Schultz’s design doesn’t use chlorine, its water runs through ultraviolet light and back into the supply tank, completely re-purifying it, about once a day.

The storage tank is also linked to a fire hydrant, and home use shuts off if the water level goes below 5,000 gallons, which gives the fire department an emergency supply in the event of a fire.

Schultz—whose son Jozseph owns India Joze restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz—thinks of Haskins as a pioneer in sustainable living, especially because the project benefits the whole basin, more than it does his own family.

Grounded Solutions

Another way to ease the groundwater problem is with aquifer recharge.

In October of last year, the Pajaro Valley Water District teamed up with the RCD and Andy Fisher, a professor of hydrogeology at UCSC, to launch their Recharge Net Metering program, the most recent step in a process Fisher has studied for years. The program provides financial incentive for landowners willing to retrofit their property to direct rainwater into the ground.

The five-year pilot program is the first of its kind in California, and aims to attract landowners whose properties are particularly favorable to groundwater recharge.

Qualifying landowners will provide upward of 100 acre-feet of water infiltration per year—roughly 32,600,000 gallons—and will receive a rebate from the district based on the amount they contribute. The program aims to serve as a model for future programs across the state of California.

The Scotts Valley Water District (SVWD) unveiled a groundwater strategy of its own last month, when it announced a recharge system at the Scotts Valley Transit Center.

Construction crews replaced portions of the concrete parking lot with permeable surfaces, allowing rainwater to percolate back into the Santa Margarita Aquifer, which provides drinking water to all of SVWD’s roughly 11,000 customers.

“The system is designed to add 1 to 1.5 million gallons of water to the Santa Margarita Aquifer on an average wet year,” says David McNair, the district’s operations manager who oversaw the recharge project. Construction is almost complete at the Scotts Valley Transit Center parking lot, and percolation into the groundwater store has already begun. “We’ll be monitoring it closely to see exactly how productive it will be.”

The Importance of Vitamin D, and How to Get It

Andrew Steingrube

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March 1, 2017

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The Importance of Vitamin D, and How to Get It

The recent deluge of rain has filled our lakes and rivers, but has the sun-scarce streak of weather had an opposite influence on our bodies’ levels of vitamin D? Also known as the “sunshine vitamin,” because it’s produced via UV exposure on the skin, vitamin D is lacking in much of the U.S population.

“Vitamin D deficiency is now recognized as a pandemic,” said Dr. Michael Holick, one of the country’s leading vitamin D researchers, in a 2008 article published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. More recently, a 2011 study published in the journal Nutrition Research found that 42 percent of all Americans were deficient. Symptoms of deficiency vary and are nonspecific, including muscle weakness, bone pain, fatigue, and difficulty thinking clearly. The best way to check for a deficiency is by getting a blood test.

Since vitamin D is involved in many biological processes throughout the body—some health professionals believe it should actually be classified as a hormone—deficiency can have vast and serious health impacts. Because it promotes calcium absorption in the gut and helps maintain adequate levels in the blood, vitamin D’s most commonly accepted health impact is on bone health and associated diseases like osteoporosis.

But emerging evidence is showing that it can affect cancer risk as well. According to an article published on the National Institute of Health’s website, “Strong biological and mechanistic bases indicate that vitamin D plays a role in the prevention of colon, prostate, and breast cancers.” It is also thought to be linked to cardiovascular disease because it’s involved in immune function and reducing inflammation. The article also states that vitamin D might play a role in both the treatment and prevention of conditions like type 1 and 2 diabetes, glucose intolerance, and high blood pressure.

New evidence published in February 2017 in the journal The BMJ showed that vitamin D supplementation protected against acute respiratory infections like colds and the flu. These two conditions are not only most common in winter and spring, when vitamin D levels are usually at their lowest, but are also a leading cause of doctor visits and days off work. Said the study’s lead author, “This major collaborative research effort has yielded the first definitive evidence that vitamin D really does protect against respiratory infections.” One explanation for this effect is that vitamin D increases levels of natural antibiotic-like substances in the lungs.

Vitamin D may also play a crucial role in psychological health and well-being through its impact on serotonin. Often thought of as the “feel good” neurotransmitter, it is implicated in long-term love and companionship as well as being acted on by drugs like antidepressants, LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin. A 2015 article published in the FASEB Journal proposed a direct link between not only vitamin D, but also marine-based omega-3 fatty acids, and serotonin synthesis, release, and function in the brain. The study estimated that around 70 percent of the U.S. population has inadequate levels of vitamin D and that optimizing intake “… may help prevent and modulate the severity of brain dysfunction.”

Being that vitamin D appears so crucial to both mental and physical well-being and that so many of us aren’t getting enough of it, what do we do? For one, don’t shun the sun. A little goes a long way: Vitamin D researchers generally recommend around 15 minutes of direct unprotected sunlight two to three times a week for sufficient vitamin D production. But conditions like cloud cover, shade, and pollution can reduce UV light by around 50 percent and it does not penetrate glass. And the more melanin that’s in the skin, the less UV light that gets through, meaning that darker-skinned people may need even more sun exposure in order to meet their needs. But it can also be obtained through the diet, although its natural sources are few, including fish liver oil, fatty fish like salmon and tuna, as well as cheese and egg yolks. The best vegan source of vitamin D is mushrooms, but many foods like breakfast cereals, orange juice, milk, and yogurt are fortified with it, and supplements are also widely available.

Film Review: ‘A United Kingdom’

A&E
Film

Lisa Jensen

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March 1, 2017

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Most of us know the story of Edward VIII, the popular King of England in 1936 who gave up his throne for love. When his proposal to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson was deemed unsuitable and forbidden by the British government, he abdicated after one year of his reign, famously declaring he could not rule “without the woman I love.”

A decade later, another “scandalous” royal marriage shocked the British Parliament, as well as its African protectorate, the Kingdom of Botswana. A young African king-to-be also chose an “unsuitable” bride, who was not only a commoner, and a foreigner, but the wrong color—a white Englishwoman. Their story, less well-known than Edward’s, is told in A United Kingdom, a timely love story for this historical moment, dealing as it does with issues of race, immigration, persistence, and revolution.

The film was directed by Anglo-African filmmaker Amma Asante; her last movie, Belle, told the story of the abolition of slavery in the British West Indian colonies through the eyes of a young black woman raised in gentility by her aristocratic English grandfather. In A United Kingdom, a similar story of political liberation—as Botswana slips out of the yoke of British colonialism—is made personal through the experiences of a protagonist with a foot in both worlds.

We first meet Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), heir to the Kingdom of Botswana, as a university student in postwar London in 1947. The spirit of independence is in the air as Britain has just ceded its colonial rule of India. Seretse is discussing politics with his fellow African students at a dance one night when he meets Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), who types documents at a government agency. They talk about jazz: she says she doesn’t trust Englishmen to play it. That night she goes home and looks up Botswana on a map. Next morning, he sends her a Louis Armstrong record. A romance begins.

Their relationship grows, until Seretse receives word from his uncle, acting as regent on his behalf, that it’s time to come home and assume leadership of his people. Unwilling to leave Ruth behind, he proposes marriage, and she accepts. The highest-ranking British diplomat posted to Botswana, Alistair Canning (played to oily perfection by Jack Davenport) quickly informs them the marriage is off, but Seretse and Ruth refuse to comply, and he takes her home to his kingdom.

The Brits are especially worried that Seretse’s mixed-race marriage will sour relations with their important ally, South Africa, which is just beginning to roll out apartheid, its vile program of separating the races. (“Have you no shame?” sneers Canning to Ruth.) Neither are the Africans crazy about the new white queen they consider a foreign interloper. “Were you not a king, would she even look at you?” snipes Seretse’s uncle (Vusi Kunene).

But Seretse pleads his case to the council of which he is chief, challenging his people not to judge his wife by the color of her skin—and they approve the union. Ruth, meanwhile, sets out to earn the respect of the tribal women, including Seretse’s disapproving mother, and his sister, Naledi (the fiercely beautiful Terry Pheto), who gradually becomes Ruth’s supporter and mentor.

Seretse and Ruth face many more obstacles—a period of forced separation, the looming specter of apartheid, and the evil machinations of British authorities less interested in governing Botswana than in stealing her resources. It’s a large canvas, but director Asante keeps it all comprehensible by maintaining her focus on the couple at its center. It helps that Oyelowo (who also played Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma) and Pike infuse their roles with a natural, easy rapport based on humor and affection that keeps us rooting for them.

Asante sometimes resorts to standard-issue storytelling moments—the ridiculous pomp of a British official attempting to take over leadership of the council; women rallying around Ruth with a song of admiration. But these moments are effective because the story is so compelling. And so is the prevailing idea that an individual, sticking to his or her principles, is the first step toward effective change.

A UNITED KINGDOM

*** (out of four)

With David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport, and Tom Felton. Written by Guy Hibbert. Directed by Amma Asante. A Fox Searchlight release. Rated PG-13. 111 minutes.

Local Coconut Yogurt Uses Proven Probiotics

Food & Drink

Lily Stoicheff

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March 1, 2017

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Local Coconut Yogurt Uses Proven Probiotics

As Santa Cruz-based Living Cultures Superfoods founder Arne Heissel explains the meticulous journey he and his wife Constanze have endured to create their Proven Probiotic Coconut Yogurt, I think to myself: leave it to the Swiss.

This yogurt is a powerhouse, a healing superfood packed with probiotics, aka living cultures that support a healthy microbiome and prebiotics, which are food for probiotics. The Heissels spent months sourcing pure coconut without shelf-stabilizing additives, which they fermented with scientifically proven strains of good gut bacteria, keeping a critical eye on taste and texture.

The result of their effort is a blend that he says, “Gives all the same benefits of a high-quality supplement in a real food.” Plus it’s free of dairy, additives, stabilizers, sweeteners, or anything else anyone may want to avoid.

But, as Heissel notes, none of this would matter if it wasn’t delicious. And it is. It’s so good. I can’t stop thinking about dipping my spoon into that luxurious, coconut-y goodness. With the thick creaminess and gentle tang of Greek yogurt and the sweet fruitiness of coconut, it’s far yummier than cow’s milk yogurt. It’s the best yogurt I’ve ever had.

Easy to love on its own, it’s also great sprinkled with cocoa nibs or fresh fruit. Heissel says some customers wait a week or so for the yogurt to naturally get tangier, and then use it like sour cream. “We’re always inspired by the creativity of how our customers use our product,” he says with a smile. Just don’t heat it up—doing so would kill the living cultures.

More than 70 percent of our immune system is in the gut, and consuming a variety of probiotic bacteria strains, like those occurring naturally in fermented foods, has been proven in multiple scientific studies to support overall health. What sets this coconut yogurt apart is that from the thousands of bacteria strains found in fermented foods, it includes only the highest quality of probiotic strains with the most proven results. While the $22 for 16 oz. price tag will shock some, Heissel insists that because just 2 oz. is enough to experience gut health support, it’s worth the nutritive value. As he puts it, “It’s either an expensive yogurt or an affordable supplement.”

A tasting will be held at Westside New Leaf on Sunday, March 4 from 2 to 5 p.m. Available at Staff of Life and Westside and Felton New Leaf Markets.

La Honda Winery, A ‘Best-Kept Secret’

Josie Cowden

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March 1, 2017

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Located in Redwood City, the gem that is La Honda Winery is well worth a visit. Often called “a best-kept secret,” whose clients love to surprise their guests with “uniquely charming atmosphere and delicious artisan wines,” it’s only open to the public on certain dates, as the facility is used mostly for private and corporate parties, team building, charity events, wine tastings, cooking parties, winemaker dinners, and so on. Owner and general manager David Page oversees La Honda Winery and its 50 private estate vineyards between Hillsborough and Los Gatos.

One of La Honda’s artisan wines is the 2015 Santa Cruz Mountains Sauvignon Blanc. La Honda’s winemaker, Colin McNany, got everything right in this hand-nurtured wine with delectable aromas of passionfruit, papaya, star fruit, and melon—and its citrus fruit and floral notes combine for an enticingly crisp and dry wine. On the palate, the wine has a full impact and clean fruit purity balanced by a slight minerality, says McNany, adding that this wine should be drunk now as it’s not meant for aging.

Rounding up the team at La Honda are Thayer Dunwoody, vineyard manager, and Ken Wornick, vineyard consultant, who I first met at the long-gone Vinocruz wine shop nearly a decade ago.

La Honda wines are available all over, including local New Leaf stores, Whole Foods, The Fish Lady in Soquel, Deluxe Foods in Aptos, and at restaurants such as Café Mare and Café Cruz. I bought this Sauvignon Blanc at the Summit Store in Los Gatos for about $16.

The next date La Honda is open to the public is March 18, so put that date on your calendar if you want to pay this fun place a visit. It’s a small, fast-growing winery that has won “double golds and gold galore” from the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. They are also members of the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association and participate in Passport events. The next Passport is April 15, but check La Honda’s website for info.

La Honda Winery is open the third Saturday of every month from noon to 4 p.m. and for special events. Located at 2645 Fair Oaks Ave., Redwood City. 650-366-4104, lahondawinery.com.

Orwell in the Time of Trump

Steve Kettmann

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March 1, 2017

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One of my favorite characters is a book detective named Thursday Next, the star of a series by the wickedly funny British writer Jasper Fforde. Thursday Next can jump right into the world of a book, meet the characters face to face and even change the plot.

On Nov. 9, we all woke up to find that we had jumped inside a book, and the clocks had finally struck 13. Reality as we knew it had shifted on its axis, and we were living in a garish comic-book version of George Orwell’s masterpiece of a novel, 1984. Only if we overcame our shock and revulsion and came to terms with the specter of a petty, petulant Big Brother holding sway over our lives could we possibly aspire to change the plot of this nightmare story.

Months later, most of us continue to play catch-up, still baffled and demoralized by the inescapable feeling that our reality has been hijacked, bracing for a long struggle of fighting for our beliefs, and opposing bigotry and authoritarianism. The problem is, we’re being attacked where we live. It’s like being in a science-fiction movie where a sinister force invades us through the very circuitry of our consciousness. As a former roving foreign correspondent for wired.com, it hit me during the campaign that the Trump style is like what we call a denial-of-service hack; we are bombarded with so many data points, so much strain on the attention span—many of them bewilderingly loony—that sooner or later we’re worn down and slump into mere anger and thirst for vengeance. This is not a way to steel ourselves for what’s ahead. The morose, life-hating worldview of the reality TV curiosity in the White House cannot be enforced on the rest of us, not without a good fight. We need to keep smiling. We need to keep laughing and keep our sense of wonder and amazement alive. We need to challenge ourselves not to be smug, and to put the current assault on decency in the larger context of history.

Readers have been flocking to Orwell since the election. In fact, the 1949 novel reached No. 1 in January at Amazon and was sold out at bookstores across the country. Top writers checked in with ruminations on the book’s relevance.

We do that through protest, and through support for fierce voices like new U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, but we also have to find more playful, creative ways to arrive at a deeper understanding of the bewilderment of our time. Back in the worst days of the George W. Bush presidency, former Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Neal Coonerty had the brilliant idea of a “Bush Countdown Clock” that sold like hotcakes, a great example of outrage with a smile. His daughter Casey Coonerty Protti, who now owns Bookshop, is carrying on the tradition with a Trump Countdown Clock that marks the days until his term expires.

Paging Resistance

In the meantime, why not use a public reading of the book we seem to have found ourselves in as a form of protest? That is what we’ll be up to at Bookshop on Thursday, March 2, staging a marathon reading of 1984, starting at 10 a.m. Three of us per hour will read aloud, from the first page to the last—a diverse group that includes Rabbi Paula Marcus and Reverend Deborah Johnson; local writers like Laurie R. King, Micah Perks, Thad Nodine and Karen Joy Fowler; Mayor Cynthia Chase; and prominent local journalists Wallace Baine of the Sentinel and Steve Palopoli of Good Times.

By page 10 we’ve already moved well beyond familiar tropes like “newspeak” (here’s to you, Kellyanne Conway) and “ignorance is strength” to a vivid scene involving something called the Two Minutes Hate.

Since the reading was my idea, I’ve been given the honor of kicking it off with the first 20 minutes, so I’ll crack open my copy of the novel and read aloud the amazing opening:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.”

Reading those words now, I feel the cold shudder of recognition of Orwell almost single-handedly establishing the now thriving genre of dystopianism. He’d authored many great books, from Down and Out in Paris and London to Homage to Catalonia to Animal Farm, but it was 1984 that vaulted his name to another realm. That was the book that gave us the adjective Orwellian, which according to The New York Times is far and away the most popular adjective formed from an author’s name, though it has become a word people use to mean many things. Still, the definition in that Times article, back in June 2003, seems to hold sway: “‘Orwellian’ reduces Orwell’s palette to a single shade of noir. It brings to mind only sordid regimes of surveillance and thought control and the distortions of language that make them possible.”

Readers have been flocking to Orwell since the election. In fact, the 1949 novel reached No. 1 in January at Amazon and was sold out at bookstores across the country. Top writers checked in with ruminations on the book’s relevance. “Trump’s lies, and his urge to tell them, are pure Big Brother crude, however oafish their articulation,” Adam Gopnik wrote in the New Yorker magazine. “The blind, blatant disregard for truth is offered without even the sugar-façade of sweetness of temper or equableness or entertainment—offered not with a sheen of condescending consensus but in an ancient tone of rage, vanity, and vengeance.”

There are dangers in turning to Orwell’s famous novel for relief or grounding. No book could have predicted Trump, and no book can keep pace with his incessant need to shock everyone by saying or doing something stupid and offensive almost every day, so long as it gets him more attention, but the book does offer an uncanny road map to Trumpism. For example, by page 10 we’ve already moved well beyond familiar tropes like “newspeak” (here’s to you, Kellyanne Conway) and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” to a vivid scene involving something called the Two Minutes Hate:

“The next moment a hideous, grinding screech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started.”

Minus the sound effects, that sounds an awful lot like all-too-many Donald Trump tweets: The Hate has started! Only now our attention spans are shorter, so it’s more like the Twenty Seconds Hate.

It somehow helps, in swatting away the perpetual droning annoyance of Trump’s antics, to realize that even writing in ravaged post-World War II England, it was not that hard to speculate that to move people, demagogues resort to manipulation of reality and promiscuous provocation of strong emotion. Orwell fills the book with this and other creepy insights.

“In all my years of bookselling, I’ve rarely seen a classic make such an impact so many years later,” says Casey Coonerty Protti. “If there is one silver lining, it might be that people across generations—those who already read the book or never got around to it—are discovering how the timelessness of storytelling sometimes allows us to feel and understand a greater truth than what you can get from scanning headlines in today’s media.”

Orwell was a great writer of nonfiction and essays, so much so that he was a beacon to generations of young journalists, including people like Hendrik Hertzberg, one-time editor of the New Republic, who for years wrote remarkably clear-minded political commentary for the New Yorker. But 1984 is much more than merely a novel of ideas, like, say, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia—which imagined Northern California, Oregon and Washington forming an ecological utopia, and was cheerfully acknowledged by its Berkeley-based author to be more speculative-essay-as-fiction than three-dimensional storytelling. Orwell’s characters in 1984 come alive. We see them breathe, we see them develop, we feel them as human presences straining to come to terms with impossible demands, above all central character Winston Smith striving desperately to remain human.

“He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O’Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O’Brien turned away from the wall.

“Ashes,” he said. “Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.”

“But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.”

“I do not remember it,” said O’Brien.

Winston’s heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of deadly helplessness.”

Because Winston Smith feels alive to us, the fusion of personal and political is perfect and haunting. Those of us who find ourselves grappling in Trump’s dystopian 2017 America with “deadly helplessness” know Winston Smith’s dread as we never knew it before.

And when we read the Party slogan “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past,” we know exactly what it means as we never could have before, because that is the nature of the Trumpian experiment, not only to attempt to wipe out decency and the values that animated the Founders’ experiment of conceiving a land on the principle that “all men are created equal,” but to wipe out even the memory of a time when we could attempt to believe in those core values without letting the siren song of avarice and cheap personal ambition trump all else. Read 1984 now—with us at Bookshop or on your own—and weep, and then smile through the tears as the book enables you to remember.

And keep in mind that a lesson of this year is: It could always get worse. As Coonerty Protti put it: “We can only hope the surge of interest in 1984 is not followed up with a resurgence of Lord of the Flies.”

Steve Kettmann is the co-director, along with Sarah Ringler, of the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods writers’ retreat center in Soquel, which offers weeklong writing residences and other programs in support of writers. wellstoneredwoods.org. Steve is the author or co-author of nine books, including four New York Times bestsellers, and a regular contributor to the New York Times and newyorker.com.

‘1984’ Marathon Reading

The live reading of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ will be held Thursday, March 2, at Bookshop Santa Cruz from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The novel will be read aloud from start to finish, 20 minutes per guest speaker. Free.

Santa Cruz Police Department On Recent ICE Raids

Local News

Leonie Sherman

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March 1, 2017

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Santa Cruz Police Department On Recent ICE Raids

[This article is part of a series about the status of undocumented immigrants in Santa Cruz. Read Part 2 here. Read Part 3 here.]

Jolted awake by the rumble of armored personnel carriers two weeks ago, a young mother says her family still hasn’t recovered.

“The hardest part was the stress it brought,” explains the woman, an undocumented immigrant who asked to remain anonymous, referring to the raid that took place in her Live Oak neighborhood at 4 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 13. “The helicopters woke us up, and now we can’t sleep because we are so scared ICE is coming back for us. My 7-year-old son, who was born here, is afraid to walk around his own neighborhood.”

The operation was the culmination of a five-year investigation aimed at an El Salvadoran gang, which began after a member of the public complained about extortion by the gang. Officials initially said the offensive didn’t target undocumented immigrants at all. The operation immediately followed a weekend of immigration raids around the country, some of them in other sanctuary cities.

“The timing of this blows,” admits Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) Deputy Chief Rick Martinez. “We knew that the timing coincided with immigration raids nationwide and that this was going to muddy the validity of our criminal investigation.”

Years ago, SCPD brought in Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) when they realized families in El Salvador were being threatened with extortion by the international gang MS-13. Last week, the saga erupted into a war of words between the HSI and SCPD.

Trust or Bust

A few weeks ago, local SCPD agents working alongside the HSI team got wind that gang members were planning a local homicide and went before a federal grand jury to secure indictments and proceed as quickly as possible.

City leaders and police all say they participated in the operation only because HSI assured them it was solely a criminal investigation and there was no immigration component. In the aftermath of the militarized raid, they used an HSI press release to assure the public that 12 gang members had been taken off the streets, and that no immigration enforcement activities took place.

Eyewitnesses told a different story. By the afternoon of the operation, community members began reporting that Homeland Security members were doing immigration checks.

When SCPD Deputy Chief Dan Flippo asked the deputy special agent in charge about that claim, the agent denied it. But the next day, at a City Council meeting, enough people complained about immigration enforcement activities to alarm Flippo, who left City Hall and began an aggressive investigation before the meeting even ended.

SCPD learned that after they left the scene, HSI had detained an additional 10 people based on their immigration status—six of them were taken to a facility in San Francisco for the day. Five of the 10 are now wearing GPS monitoring systems, and the rest were given immigration court summons papers.

Police and city leaders were embarrassed and angered by the new information. “If we had known this was going to happen, we would not have participated,” says Martinez.

HSI denied these allegations in a second press release, insisting that SCPD knew about the immigration aspect all along. But SCPD holds firm that the feds misled them. “We were repeating misinformation supplied by HSI,” says Flippo. “We were lied to.”

“This was a total bait and switch,” Martinez explains. “This action violated our trust in HSI and the local community’s trust in us.”

At a press conference on Thursday Feb. 23, SCPD Chief Kevin Vogel went one step further. “We will not collaborate with agencies we do not trust,” he said.

SCPD currently has three open cases with HSI, involving human trafficking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking.

Flippo says the cases have international connections, which extend their scope beyond SCPD’s jurisdiction. But given recent developments, the future of those cases is unclear.

ICE officials failed to provide a response by deadline despite twice assuring GT they would do so.

Seeking Community

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart decided not to collaborate with HSI on the raids, even though six of the search warrants were within his jurisdiction.

“I have serious concerns about outside agencies coming into Sheriff’s Office jurisdiction with SWAT teams and military-grade equipment and not communicating directly with me or my executive staff about what they are doing,” Hart says.

He stresses the importance of arresting violent criminals, but questions the level of force involved in the activities on the morning of Feb. 13. “Did we really need over 200 officers, helicopters, MRAPs and Bearcats to arrest nine gang members?” Hart asks. He believes the display of force was intended to intimidate counties and cities with sanctuary status.

Hart encourages other local agencies to adopt a stance of non-compliance with similar actions in the future. “We can do these operations without federal assistance,” Hart says. “I have 160 deputies, and we are willing to commit our resources to assist local agencies, rather than see a repeat of what HSI did.”

Sheriff Hart joined forces with Live Oak School District Superintendent Tamyra Taylor and First District County Supervisor John Leopold to manage the fallout in the unincorporated areas of mid-county.

“People all over Live Oak were terrorized when they were woken up by helicopters overhead and armored vehicles rumbling through their neighborhoods,” says Leopold.

Together they coordinated a community meeting on Thursday, Feb. 16, with the goal of giving the community a better idea of what to do if these tactics become more common. They handed out guardianship forms and instructions showing what to do if immigration officials come knocking on their doors. “We wanted to help people understand their rights,” says Leopold.

After the newer immigration-related revelations, SCPD is looking at taking a similar approach. And at the press conference, Vogel said SCPD plans to hold a series of community meetings of its own.

In the past two weeks, Leopold has worried about the impact the raids could have on the relationship between the community, local politicians and law enforcement. “We work hard to build trust with the community,” Leopold explains. “Actions like this drive a wedge between local governments, nonprofits and the communities we serve.”

Nonprofit leaders and neighbors also express concern about fractured trust.

“If, when federal agents show up, local law enforcement will do their bidding, how can they possibly hope to build trust with our community?” asks Robert Solis, who works with Barrios Unidos, a local youth violence prevention organization. “A month ago, we’re at sanctuary meetings where local law enforcement is telling us they will give us a heads up if the feds are in town doing an operation, and then at 4 a.m. we’ve got helicopters in the sky.”

Barrios Unidos founder and executive director Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez says that in his 40 years living in Live Oak, he’s never seen such an unnecessary “macho show of force” from law enforcement.

“It brings fear and it leaves behind trauma,” he adds.

Several immigrants, who asked to remain anonymous, say the raids have affected them deeply.

“We feel alone, like we can’t confide in the police or rely on them to keep us safe,” explains one young woman, holding a child on her hip.

Some immigrants have shared ideas about how local law enforcement agencies can rebuild trust with their communities. One young woman suggested they let community members know about an operation ahead of time. Other residents were more straight-forward.

“It’s simple,” says one middle-aged man. “Don’t cooperate with ICE in this town. In other states, there are cops who won’t work with them. If our local law enforcement will, who are we supposed to confide in?”

Though the actions earlier this month and the revelation of HSI’s alleged misinformation undermined some people’s trust in law enforcement, one positive result appears to be the strengthening of community ties.

“As soon as this happened, we started having community meetings and networking with others who are doing the same, about how to respond if this happens again,” says another Live Oak resident. “This is bringing our community tighter and closer, but also making us more distrustful of outside law enforcement agencies.”

The Community Vision Behind the New ARO Gallery

A&E
Art

Christina Waters

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March 1, 2017

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The Community Vision Behind the New ARO Gallery

Lean as a razor, Mark Shunney has the eye of an architect and the energy of a community organizer. He is, in fact, both. As the entrepreneur of the newly refreshed Art Research Office (ARO) Gallery in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz, Shunney has applied his tireless expertise to creating a space for “artist-driven experiments.”

Launched in early February with a riveting exhibition of 260 computer-enhanced drawings—“Audiographa,” by web graphic designer Erik Zwierzynski—ARO invites “exhibits, experiments, and salons” in conjunction with the new Sentinel Printers headquarters.

Zwierzynski, a webware designer, “was interested in seeing how his work fit in with the idea of fine art,” says Shunney. His boldly colored drawings are graphic manifestations of specific musical tracks—data-visualizations of songs, from Sonic Youth to Bob Dylan, Talking Heads to Nina Simone—created in a year-long project in which Zwierzynski produced a drawing a day. Gallery text sheets devised by Shunney explain the origins of each artwork in the show, which stays up until March 31.

“Artists we’ve worked with in the past are the first ones we will be showcasing,” he says, showing me through the suite of workspaces, which printing staff share with handsomely framed artwork.

Described by Shunney as a mid-century flatiron building, 1025 Center St. gleams with polished interiors and innovative conversation alcoves—constructed and designed by Shunney—and most appealingly, with acres of wall space for evolving displays.

“The entry room is all gallery,” he explains, grinning. “A white cube with track lighting. Plus there are various offshoot rooms with great wall space.”

The alliance Shunney formed with Sentinel Printers several years ago has traveled neatly into the new Center Street gallery, whose trapezoidal-shaped front salon serves as the main gallery and focal point of First Friday receptions.

Shunney is a native of Rhode Island and did graduate work at the renowned Rhode Island School of Design. He honed his genius for space transformation working in New York on interior restoration. He paid for his undergraduate schooling at University of Massachusetts Amherst by painting and restoring industrial, residential and commercial venues in the summers.

“As a kid in Rhode Island, I was also very taken with extreme cultural innovations—I did breakdancing and skateboarding,” says Shunney.

That East Coast fervor is still evident in his intensity and visual sophistication. For the past five years his day job as assistant gallery director and manager at UCSC’s Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery, has provided ample opportunities to demonstrate his array of skills. Longtime exhibition colleague Shelby Graham, director of the Sesnon Gallery, praises Shunney for his knack for mentoring. She notes that Shunney has created through ARO a place for art student alums to show their work locally and gain professional art world experience.

Shunney, an ace negotiator, prefers working side by side with student colleagues. “Many of my associates currently, and early adopters of ARO space, have been former students with whom I’ve built relationships,” he says.

Shunney’s ARO Gallery forges further alliances with the university by offering internships to History of Art & Visual Culture department students. The walls gleam with intriguing artworks, most of them framed oil paintings, digital prints, and lithographs by top UCSC art graduates.

“There are lots of blue-chip, mid-career artists with galleries,” Shunney says. “But my breakaway moment came when I decided to open a gallery for emerging artists.”

And not a gallery in the 20th-century sense, either. “My position is more of artist/curator producing shows. Historically I had been an installation artist, but now I feel like an environmental artist.”

The residential arena as art is another corollary to his current ARO workspace as gallery. “Now that I live downtown I have a fresh sense of the community,” he says.

Living in small confines, such as his current house, allows him to continue exploring “efficiency of space,” as an ongoing environmental artform. Yes, this man can make an artistic practice out of almost any spatial situation.

In addition to launching a broad concept gallery, Shunney is forming a set of rules for an artist-driven salon.

“Once a month,” he says. “My intention is to focus on the artist stepping outside his comfort zone and creating impromptu dialogue. A Fluxus kind of thing. The Salon Hour will be a project-driven encounter, as well as a great way to explore what people want.”

Even in a town full of art venues, ARO stands out in attracting outside and international perspectives. “I feel confident in my own taste as I’ve matured,” says Shunney. “I’m told I’m creating bridges between the campus and the community.”

ARO Gallery is at 1025 Center St., Santa Cruz. Open Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m., First Friday, and by appointment. 332-4142, artresearchoffice.com.

Preview: Lyrics Born to play Moe’s Alley

A&E
Music

Aaron Carnes

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March 1, 2017

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Preview: Lyrics Born to play Moe’s Alley

Lyrics Born has some passionate fans. Last year, the Berkeley rapper released his greatest hits album, a strange move for someone who is the textbook definition of left-of-center DIY indie rapper. What’s even weirder is that he funded the project via Kickstarter, meaning fans paid money—a total of $21,911—so he could compile songs from his existing catalog for this release. Let that sink in for a moment.

What might explain the fans’ exuberance is how fervently the emcee has throughout his 20-plus year career included them in the creative process. For this greatest hits record, officially titled Now Look What You’ve Done, Lyrics Born! Greatest Hits, he took to social media to ask them what songs should be on it, scrapping some songs he would have included in favor of their choices. (“I make the songs, but the fans make them hits,” he says.)

As an indie artist, this greatest hits album has been a true milestone. A couple of years ago, he would have thought that the idea of doing this was a corny, major-label-style money grab. But he came around to thinking that it made sense for him to show new fans—and remind old fans—of everything he’s accomplished.

“I was just thinking to myself, you know, I’ve got a lot of music out there,” says Lyrics Born, aka Tsutomu Shimura, over the phone. “There’s a generational change happening all the time in music. I’m getting to the point where I could probably be one of these new artist’s fathers. If there was ever time to do it, it was now.”

Analyzing Shimura’s entire career, it isn’t as odd as it first seemed that he’s focusing on his hits. Younger Lyrics Born fans might not realize it, but his national success came off the back of the unlikely 2003 hit “Calling Out.” At the time of its release, he’d been taking the song, which was released off an indie label he co-owned called Quannum, to different hip-hop/R&B stations in the Bay Area. They all ignored it. It was SF alt-rock station Live 105 that started spinning the track. According to a 2004 East Bay Express article, it was the most requested song for four weeks straight. Shimura never reached out to anyone at Live 105.

“Here we were beating our heads against the wall to get it on urban rap radio, and the No. 3 rock station in the country takes this record and starts playing it. Suddenly it’s number one, along with Green Day,” Shimura says.

Shimura had the skills to take the success of “Calling Out” and make a career out of it. He’s built a career around several successful solo albums, and two with Latyrx, his duo with Lateef the Truthspeaker.

Listening to the greatest hits album, it’s surprising how well it works as a single work of art. Shimura’s distinctive sing-songy voice, bouncy funky beats and conscious verses keep the songs grounded. As Shimura’s career advanced, he used less samples, and opted for live instrumentation more often than not. On 2015’s Real People, he even flew out to work with New Orleans musicians, absorbing their sound.

Part of what makes this greatest hits record so special for Shimura is all the feedback he’s gotten from fans. When I asked him what are some songs he would have included were he not considering the fan’s feedback, he responded right away with “Whispers” from his 2008 album Everywhere At Once.

“It’s probably the best song I’ve ever written,” Shimura says. “I can’t even listen to it, it’s so personal. But that’s not a chart topper. Again, that’s the difference between making a greatest hits album and an anthology.”

Whether or not these songs would have all been his picks, he heard many stories from fans about how important they had been to them in their lives. How could he not include these songs? That was the whole point of putting this project together.

“When you get to a certain stage in your career, I’m putting my songs out, I have no idea how they affect people. I don’t get to participate in that,” Shimura says. “When I’d hear some of these stories, it’s like wow, I am actually helping people, even if it’s some small way.”

INFO: 9 p.m., March 3, Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $15/adv, $20/door. 479-1854.

Kaito’s Ramen Game is On Point

Christina Waters

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March 1, 2017

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Pleasure Point is busting out of its laid-back surfing identity and rapidly becoming an appealing destination for ethnic cuisine wrapped around a hipster sensibility. Verve might have been the anchor of all this action, with its impeccable espresso drinks and the fetishistic perfection of its Manresa Bread pastries. Then the Penny Ice Creamery joined the party. Kaito, house of Ramen and Sushi Tapas holds the fort in the former Pink Godzilla headquarters. And across the street, Zameen has opened another dining spot filled with zesty Mediterranean specialties, happily called Zameen at the Point.

I met my longtime singing buddy Meri for lunch at Kaito last week. It was my first visit, but Meri is a regular and helped walk me through the noodle-intensive menu. A raised tatami seating area hugs one wall of Kaito’s interior, and a sushi bar flanks the other, with banquettes in the middle of this friendly, no-frills house of ramen, soba, udon and freshly conceived sushi specialties.

The menu offered me a galaxy of noodles, with variations on toppings and a few standard sides. The dinner menu adds grilled items plus small-dish salads. I had to dive in somewhere, so I did! My Ja-ja Ramen ($11.95) arrived in a bowl the size of a hot tub, filled with fragrant miso broth and succulent, chewy ramen noodles. Here was ramen worthy of the name, definitely not the noodles I used to inhale mindlessly at college while struggling to analyze Kant’s transcendental deduction. On top of the quivering mass of steaming goodness perched a mound of steamed cabbage and bean sprouts, green onions and a generous helping of minced, spiced pork. The freshly chopped toppings sparkled like green jewels and I ate steadily for 25 minutes without putting a dent in this astonishing portion of ramen.

Meri’s order of Tonkatsu ramen ($10.95) was almost as generous. Filled with ramen suspended in a pork-rich broth, her noodles were topped with beautifully arranged groupings of red pickled onions, black mushrooms, corn, barbecued pork, and chopped seaweed. We had ordered tiny sides of gyoza (fried pot stickers) stuffed with minced chicken ($2), and another of vegetable tempura ($3). I was captivated by a thin slab of carrot, cocooned in the lightest, most transparent of tempura batters. So crisp it shattered upon impact (with my teeth), the tempura was classic, although given the Himalayan proportions of the noodle entrees, the tempura was frankly superfluous. I found myself eyeing an intriguing order at the next table. “That’s the Japanese curry,” Meri informed me, her son’s favorite. It was one of those earthy plates of chicken and vegetables in a curry gravy, with a plump cake of white rice on the side, that makes you smile just to look at. I’ve got to try that, I nodded, still slurping the addictive ramen. Carrying two huge containers of remaining ramen, we headed out into the sunny afternoon.

Kaito is open for lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday. 830 41st Ave., Santa Cruz. 464-2586.

New Leaf Works It

The month of March is loaded with tempting and unexpected cooking workshops at New Leaf Westside to fill in those hard-to-handle food niches in your life. I like the looks of the March 8 class in Gluten-Free Baking and Tea Pairing. 6-8:30 p.m. $40 each and $35 for two. Learn about how to use a variety of GF flours and turn them into better-than-decent baked goodies. On Thursday, March 23 get creative with Protein-Rich Vegan Meals with vegetarian chef Jenny Brewer. Get familiar with tempeh and sea vegetables while honing your knife skills. 6-8:30 p.m., $45/$40. More at newleaf.com/events.

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‘1984’ Marathon Reading

The live reading of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ will be held Thursday, March 2, at Bookshop Santa Cruz from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The novel will be read aloud from start to finish, 20 minutes per guest speaker. Free.

Trust or Bust

Seeking Community

New Leaf Works It