“Bucketman in San Francisco. He plays 10 or 12 buckets and pans simultaneously for 15 hours. He’s a solid percussionist.”
Chaos 938
Santa Cruz
Teacher
“The Great Morgani. He always has the greatest costumes, and he’s a great Santa Cruz entertainer.”
Carolyn Getschow
Santa Cruz
Americorps Program Manager
“The xylophone [players] are undoubtedly the best. They’re so enthusiastic, they play homemade instruments, and there’s like 15 of them of all sizes and all ages. ”
Virginia Scott
Santa Cruz
Retired
“Miming in France. I had never seen it before and it was pretty cool. People laughing in the outdoor cafes.”
Pedro Smith
Santa Cruz
Window Cleaner
“In Boulder, Colorado there was this man that would ride a unicycle and throw fire and he would catch it in his mouth. It was pretty cool.”
Quitapenas is an infectious afro-cuban dance band from the Inland Empire, thus adding further proof to my theory that all of the best music coming out of Southern California right now is from the Latino-American communities. Afro-cuban is an exciting genre that, as the title suggests, mixes Latin and African rhythms. But if you hear the term “afro-Cuban” and immediately feel like you’re reading a boring textbook, you are precisely the person that needs to shell out the modest door price and feel the band’s vibes in person. This is make-you-forget-all-your-cares music. The guys have such an interesting tropical-meets-lounge-meets-funk take on the music. AARON CARNES
Remember “Far From Any Road,” the haunting song from season one of True Detective? That was the Handsome Family. A husband-and-wife Americana duo comprising Brett and Rennie Sparks, the Handsome Family does not sing about the good old days in the country or romanticize life on the land—they create dark, textured stories from the underside of the American West. At times shadowy and beautiful, and at other times terrifying, the music has an unsettling depth that makes the duo one of the most remarkable American roots acts around. CAT JOHNSON
Keron Salmon’s eclectic mix of hip-hop and reggae garnered internet fame in the early days of Myspace Music. The Kingston native drew inspiration from African roots for his stage name—Kabaka is Ugandan for king, and the long-lasting survival of the Pyramids of ancient Africa represent his “desire for longevity in music and his deep connection to Kemetic roots.” Kabaka Pyramid has made it his goal to leave spiritual messages for generations to come. Opening the set are Raging Fyah, a five-piece regarded as one of Jamaica’s most promising young acts for their nuanced harmonies and expressive roots rock reggae. KATIE SMALL
In 1970, Dave Mason released the album Alone Together, with the hit song “Only You Know and I Know.” The solo debut from the Traffic guitarist, who would later be inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, the album is packed with star power, including Bonnie Bramlett, Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge, and has since become a staple of classic rock music collections. Mason is currently revisiting the masterpiece on his Alone Together Again Tour, along with his band, comprising Johnne Sambataro, Alvino Bennett, Tony Patler, and Bekka Bramlett—daughter of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, who toured with Mason in the 1970s and had a No. 2 hit on their own with Mason’s “Only You Know and I Know.” On Thursday, Mason and company hit the Rio. CJ
INFO: 7:30 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $55/gen, $125/gold. 423-8209.
FRIDAY 12/9
AMERICANA
PATTERSON HOOD
Former Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell may be getting “the future of country music” write-ups in the press, but Patterson Hood—co-founder, and member of Drive-By Truckers—is a country-rock-Americana artist you don’t want to miss. He has a handful of solo albums, which aren’t far from the worn-torn roots sound that’s made Drive-By Truckers a favorite for folks seeking intelligent and vulnerable country-inspired music. Hood’s solo material taps into the bleakness, loneliness and regret of the music in a much more haunting way than when he’s surrounded by his longtime bandmates. AC
Two years ago, local folk ensemble Mylo Jenkins wrote the tearful ballad “California Funeral Song.” (“You died so sad and slow”). It may have been written a couple of years back, but hearing it, you can’t help but immediately be transported to the general despair of 2016’s election results. California may have overwhelmingly rejected Trump, but we are tied to the rest of the country in this epic intellectual and moral funeral. “California Funeral Song” is a sad, cathartic acoustic tune—the likes of which Mylo Jenkins delivers on the daily. It’ll hopefully heal your wounds enough to get you out of the house and back in action, to fight what’s most definitely wrong with our country over the coming years. AC
Austin-natives Kelsey Wilson and Alexander Beggins met during a mutual backup band stint for a Danish artist’s U.S. tour. With Wilson on violin and Beggins on ukulele, the pair share lead vocal and songwriting responsibilities, and are backed by a formidable five-piece band. Wild Child’s sound is difficult to pin down, landing somewhere between pop and indie rock, with distinct Romanian folk influences. The bright and cheery instrumentation contrasts with more serious lyrical material. As Wilson puts it, “The instruments may belong in a granola commercial, but what we’re saying is often dark and angry and bitter.” The group recorded their third album earlier this year in Dr. Dog’s “Mt. Slippery” studio in Pennsylvania. KS
Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur led their own musical revolution in the 1960s with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, which reinvented early 20th century roots music for a new generation. They weren’t playing country music, they were playing boondocks music—the songs from way out in the sticks. And they inspired a whole lot of bands, including the Grateful Dead. The Jug Band also happens to be where Geoff Muldaur met Maria Muldaur (then known as Maria D’Amato) when she joined the band in 1963. Hmm, wonder if that went anywhere? In any case, Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur joined up again in 2006 for more Jug Band albums, recreating the chemistry that is partly responsible for the Americana movement as we know it. STEVE PALOPOLI
INFO: Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $25/adv, $32/gold circle. 479-9421.
MONDAY 12/12
JAZZ
ROBERT GLASPER EXPERIMENT
The Robert Glasper Experiment gained fame and crossover success with 2012’s Black Radio, which won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album and 2013’s Black Radio II, Blue Note releases that found the ensemble keeping company with a succession of soul stars such as Lalah Hathaway, Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Ledisi. After serving as music director on Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, Glasper decided the time was ripe to unleash the Experiment. Featuring Casey Benjamin on alto and soprano saxophone and vocoder, bassist Burniss Travis II, guitarist Mike Severson, and drummer Mark Colenburg (who’s propelled recent albums by Amos Lee, Maxwell, and A Tribe Called Quest), the band delivers a sleek mélange of grooves inflected by hip-hop, funk and Herbie Hancock-inspired 1970s jazz fusion. They even supply their own vocals on several pieces, to mostly good effect. ANDREW GILBERT
INFO: 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $35/adv, $40/door. 427-2227.
TUESDAY 12/13
ROCK
GARY HOEY
Guitarist Gary Hoey’s music spans the spectrum, from surf and prog to rock and the blues. A long-running favorite of fellow guitarists and fans alike, Hoey has been holding down instrumental rock guitar duties for more than 20 years and 20 albums—including several holiday albums that see the Boston-born rocker producing driving, shredding versions of classics tunes such as “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” A family-friendly entertainer who always makes time for his fans, Hoey has a reputation for rocking hard and celebrating the season in style. On Tuesday he brings his Ho Ho Hoey Rockin’ Holiday Tour to Moe’s. CJ
When I was editor of Metro Santa Cruz back in the early 2000s, our annual “Best of Santa Cruz County” awards were called the Goldies. And every year, as sort of a tongue-in-cheek take on the name—and on the awards themselves, really—we’d photograph Santa Cruz’s favorite street performer, the Great Morgani, in a costume he called “The Oscordionist.” It wasn’t even close to the most outrageous of the head-to-toe lycra outfits locals and tourists have seen him in on Pacific Avenue and at events around the county for two decades, but it made him look like a giant gold Academy Award statuette—and posed in front of various Santa Cruz landmarks on the cover of the awards issue, he embodied exactly the quirky-yet-captivating vibe we were going for.
One year, while heading to the Goldies photo shoot with him, I got a chance to see something that few outside of his closest friends have seen: the inside of his house. And let me say that it was everything locals would expect it to be, times a hundred: costumes of every color hung in various spots around the living room, and there were multi-colored accordions on the couch. Underneath the tools of his artistic trade, however, the décor was shockingly normal.
EYE SPIED Morgani’s ‘Eyes Watching You’ ensemble at the 2016 Capitola Art and Wine Festival.
Now, as Frank Lima celebrates 20 years of performing in Santa Cruz as the Great Morgani, he tells me that he still lives in that house, as he has for the last 43 years. And the 74-year-old Lima says the décor is still as bland as he can possibly get it.
“My whole place is beige,” he says. “I don’t like color. I love color in costumes, but I cannot live in that. So the beige is my Zen.”
His 800 square-feet now houses 150 costumes (the most elaborate take him around 100 hours to make) and 39 accordions. But I must have seen it during a particularly busy performance stretch, because generally he needs everything put away out of sight or he’ll pretty much go crazy, as he was reminded after doing the Cotati Accordion Festival, Palo Alto Fine Arts Festival and Capitola Art and Wine Festival in the space of just a couple of weeks this summer.
“Oh my god, I didn’t put anything away for three weeks,” says Lima. “There were bodysuits and accordions and wings—it looked like a clown threw up in my place. So then I spent two weeks putting everything away to get back to my Zen. I just really need that in my life. I’m very good at hiding stuff. In fact, I lost a pink accordion for a year. How do you lose a shocking pink accordion?”
Hitting the Street
When Lima started all this Great Morgani business 20 years ago, he didn’t have a shocking pink accordion to lose. He didn’t even have a costume. His was just the typical story of a successful stockbroker who gets fed up after 18 years and sells his share of the business, retires at the ripe old age of 35, does nothing for another 18 years, loses his motivation to get out of bed, and finally re-invents himself as the most famous post-earthquake street performer on Pacific Avenue. Textbook!
That’s not even the craziest part, though. Though he’d been playing accordion since the age of 9 (saved from a life of rock ’n’ roll by an honest-to-god door-to-door accordion salesman, who showed up at his parents’ house and talked them out of starting him on guitar—four years before Elvis broke), Lima had never aspired to live the artistic life; he just happened to pick up a book on street performance and decided to try it. But clearly there had been something in the back of his head pushing him toward Great Morgani-ness, even two decades earlier, in his life of finance, as evidenced by the jokes he’d make to his business partner about quitting.
ONE MAN, ONE ACCORDIAN, TWO DECADES APART Left: The Great Morgani’s first day performing on Pacific Avenue—Nov. 25, 1996. Right: Frank Lima recreating the photo in the same outfit on Nov. 25, 2016. ‘I didn’t know tweedy wool pants would have shrunk so much in 20 years,’ he says.
“I’d say ‘I am getting out of this business. I’m going to go to the Azores and raise goats, or I’m going to go out on the Avenue with my accordion and play music.’ Just kidding, just a very flip remark! So I went to the Azores to visit some relatives, and they had goats. Man, those things smell. That’s off the list. Never thinking I would end up on the Avenue.”
He did, though, taking his name from the “J Morgan” emblazoned in rhinestones on his 1933 Guerrini accordion, which was actually the name of its original owner. Lima went with it, adding an “i” to the last name to make it sound more Italian (although he’s actually Portuguese), and creating the first name “Julio,” which he later dropped.
And how he got the other part of his stage name? It is, of course, a “great” story: the late Peter Ciccarelli, who hired him to play at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, saw a photo of Lima on the front page of the Gilroy Dispatch serenading the festival queens, and credited as simply “Morgani.”
“Peter called me the next day and said ‘If you ever go by the name of Morgani again, I will deduct 1 percent of your pay. I can get a Morgani on any street corner! I’m paying for a Great Morgani!’” Lima remembers, laughing. “I changed up my business cards and became the Great Morgani. Which sounds a bit egotistical. I’d rather just be Morgani, and that’s what people generally call me: ‘Hey, Morgani!’”
Just as boredom had driven him to the streets in the first place, so did it push him to cover himself up in full-on bodysuits and craft wilder and wilder costumes, complete with fiber optics, 10-pound shoes, dozens of plastic egg shells sewn on the fabric, clocks, full-body black-and-white stripes, giant cones and a whole lot more. Who-knows-how-many thousands of locals and tourists have caught him performing on the street over the years, and he’s upped his design game at events like First Night Santa Cruz, Seventh Sense, and FashionArt.
Lima came along after what locals generally think of as the Golden Age of street performing in Santa Cruz; famous acts like the Flying Karamazov Brothers and Artis the Spoonman that are the cornerstone of Pacific Avenue lore had long since left. However, Tom Noddy—who performed on Pacific Avenue from 1977 to 1983, before being invited on The Tonight Show and finding international fame with his “Bubble Magic” act—thinks that “Golden Age” was actually much longer than most locals remember. Noddy was instrumental in forming the Santa Cruz Street Performers Guild, and has seen the local tradition wax and wane through several eras. “In the 1980s and ’90s, we had some truly amazing acts coming through town because of the reputation that had grown up around the Karamazovs and their rise in show business,” says Noddy. “Of course we also had Tom Scribner as a fixture downtown, and an ever-changing group of musicians who called themselves the Ethnophonic Orchestra. They played Mexican or Balkan music, classical pieces or odd Hungarian music with the strangest time signatures … and they were regulars! You might step outside of the Woolworths and be transported to one of these remarkable places.”
However, he thinks Morgani’s imagination, humor and musicianship have made him a headliner of the Pacific Avenue “show.”
“Frank is a charmer,” says Noddy. “He loves what he does. That’s what’s kept him and the others around.”
Symbol with a Squeezebox
Lima doesn’t like being called a local “icon,” even though he is. (He’s not too crazy about the times he’s been called an “oddball” in the local press, either.) He sees himself as just another “colorful Santa Cruz character.” But he admits his view of his status in Santa Cruz did change in February of 2014, after he was threatened with a ticket under the ordinances governing street performance downtown. He had permission from the Verizon store he was playing in front of to be there, but was still told he’d have to pay the $300 fine.
“I could have gone in a really nasty direction. And I had some people who were advising me to go in front of the city council and raise holy hell,” says Lima. “And I said ‘no, I won’t do that.’”
THE MASKED MAN GOES WEST The Great Morgani as ‘The Coetaughty Kid’—a western theme at this year’s Cotati Accordion Festival.
Instead, he posted on Facebook that he would be retiring from street performance—and Santa Cruz basically lost its collective mind. He was flooded with interview requests, and the idea that the already-controversial ordinances would drive away a performer like the Great Morgani turned a lot of the public against them for good.
“Since the 2014 thing, maybe I do realize now that I have an image, but I think I’ve always had this image,” he says. “I want to be respectful. I’ve always had a good relationship with the businesspeople, and the cops, and the downtown hosts.”
Lima’s longtime friend Woody Carroll, who once produced a video about him for Comcast, isn’t afraid to use the i-word when describing him, and thinks many people are fooled by the theatrics into overlooking his genuine talent.
“There are a number of reasons the Great Morgani is still going strong after 20 years, and has become an icon in Santa Cruz,” says Carroll. “Yes, the dayglo spandex and outlandish costumes first get your attention, but if you pause to actually listen, you’ll hear that Frank Lima is actually a very talented musician. That’s a good thing as far as longevity goes. If you’re a bad accordion player, you’ll get run out of town pretty fast.”
Lima disappeared for nine months after the 2014 incident, but after Louis Rittenhouse offered to let him perform in front of the Rittenhouse Building, he returned. (The Rittenhouse alcove facing Pacific is private property and thus not covered by downtown ordinances.) To this day, people are still coming up and saying ‘welcome back” and he responds with typical Morgani humor: “I say, ‘Yeah, I had to buy the building. I’m going to open a store here selling accordion-shaped pot holders.’”
Since he dreams of eventually kicking it while playing a Puccini opera, then immediately being spray-painted bronze and hoisted onto a Tom-Scribner-like pedestal, it’s unlikely Lima will retire from his retirement anytime soon. Until then, he’ll chuckle at the great irony of it all.
“I used to wear three-piece suits, and I was always on Pacific Avenue a lot delivering securities. I’d see the [street performers] at the Cooper House—Ginger the Rainbow Lady, the guy that tap-danced. My thinking at the time was just terrible: ‘Why don’t these people get a job? God, look at these freaks!’ Never thinking I would be the ultimate freak many years later. So you better watch out what you say.”
Frank Lima’s book ‘The Great Morgani: The Creative Madness of a Middle-Aged Stockbroker Turned Street Musician’ is available at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
Physician Joshua Bamberger does what he can to treat one of his patients, a wheelchair-bound homeless veteran.
But after an appointment draws to a close, Bamberger and the patient go their separate ways, leaving the doctor feeling deeply frustrated on his ride back from work.
“I roll him out to the street corner, I get on BART and go home,” Bamberger tells a crowd of nearly 400 Monterey Bay leaders. “And he’s still there, under the rain and wind, to suffer on the streets, because we haven’t figured a way to serve this one particular individual. That is wrong. That is not what a just society does.”
Housing, he says, is the real solution to this patient’s medical needs. Bamberger was one of more than a dozen speakers at the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership’s “State of the Region” conference at Seaside’s Embassy Suites on Thursday, Dec. 1. Talks centered on housing, health, the environment and transportation, and the area’s affordable housing crisis was a recurring theme.
Stable housing is the primary factor in an individual’s health, yet it’s the least-funded treatment in the healthcare system, says Bamberger, who has spent the past 20 years caring for San Francisco’s homeless.
He urged Monterey Bay entrepreneurs to “get yourself together” and find funding for affordable housing. There are pools of available money out there, he says, such as “community benefit obligations,” which require nonprofit hospitals to give 10 percent of revenue back to the community. Supporting housing qualifies as a benefit, Bamberger says.
Philanthropy is another opportunity, Bamberger says. For example, the Central California Alliance for Health, a nonprofit administering Medi-Cal in Santa Cruz, Monterey and Merced counties, funds grants for mental health, clinic expansion and resources for complex, fragile patients. Of the $116 million set aside for these grants, $10 million is reserved for permanent supportive housing that provides onsite healthcare, says Kathleen McCarthy, the alliance’s business development director and a conference attendee.
A grant for $2.5 million has already been awarded to MidPen Housing, a Foster City nonprofit developer, for a housing complex in Salinas’s Chinatown, McCarthy says.
Bamberger called for the health nonprofit leaders in the audience to invest more in housing.
“We have to ask more of our healthcare system. Stop spending money on expensive tests and medications,” Bamberger says. “We have to stand up and say the healthcare system has to be responsible for the sickest people first and get them into housing first, and then the healthcare costs go down.”
Linda Mandolini, CEO of Eden Housing, a Hayward nonprofit developer, also spoke last Thursday, listing troubling statistics from a recent McKinsey Global Institute report. California ranks 49th out of 50 states in housing units per capita, and needs to build 3.5 million homes by 2025 to satisfy the pent-up demand.
It’s the poorest people who are hit the hardest, but the crisis affects everybody, she says.
“Not building housing doesn’t just affect the people who don’t have anywhere to live. It’s actually a huge economic drag,” says Mandolini, adding that the state loses $140 billion annually from homes not getting built and people spending more on housing than on other consumption.
Nearly 60 percent of households in the Santa Cruz metropolitan area are unable to find housing they can truly afford, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, she says.
“The solutions to these problems have to start regionally and locally, and if we don’t start regionally and locally, we’re not going to get anywhere,” Mandolini says.
When California dissolved its redevelopment agencies in 2012, much of the local funding for affordable housing disappeared, and companies like hers were severely impacted, she says. With elusive funding, it’s “a huge challenge,” for example, to connect sewer lines under a freeway for a new development, she says.
She says that President-elect Donald Trump’s administration has promised to be “very serious about infrastructure” such as improving water and sewer systems, and urges local leaders to take advantage of the opportunity.
Audience member Julie Conway, Santa Cruz County’s housing manager, says the county used to receive $8 million annually for affordable housing from its redevelopment agency, but now lacks a reliable local source of housing funding, she says.
“The loss of redevelopment was absolutely devastating,” Conway says. “There is nothing on the horizon that comes anywhere close to being the tool that it was.”
A few things give her hope.
She says it’s “encouraging” that San Mateo, Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties passed ballot measures supporting affordable housing this November. She’s unsure whether Santa Cruz County voters would support a similar measure, but is motivated by the success of Measure D, the half-cent sales tax supporting transportation.
The county is also starting to see some revenue from its $15-per-square-foot impact fee on new developments, to fund affordable housing. The county began collecting the fee last year, and it’s still too new to predict how much it will raise, Conway says.
Matt Huerta, Monterey Bay Economic Partnership’s housing program manager, oversees a newly created $10 million revolving loan fund for affordable housing looking for its first project.
He’s trying to build a coalition advocating for affordable housing throughout the region. That’s important because too often when affordable housing proposals come before a planning commission or city council, the loudest voices in the room tend to be the naysayers, he says.
“People are afraid of affordable housing because they buy into the myth that it will create more problems than it solves, whether it’s bringing in ‘those people’ or whether it’s decreasing property values or increasing congestion,” Huerta says. “So I think it’s typically a misunderstanding of how affordable housing really works.”
Here’s a bit of somber news for the politically savvy, H20-loving Santa Cruzans who had hoped to see water transfers last winter.
Those water swaps, which didn’t materialize last year, probably won’t this winter either, Taj Dufour, engineering manager for Soquel Creek Water District, told the Santa Cruz Water Commission Monday, Dec. 5.
There’s a number of questions about conjunctive use—the process of the Santa Cruz Water Department sharing water with Soquel Creek Water District, and vice versa, during dry years and months when one agency has more supply than the other.
The idea, borne out of the Water Supply Advisory Committee (WSAC), is for Santa Cruz to share excess river flows with Soquel Creek Water District during rainy winters, and for Soquel Creek to share its groundwater with the city during dry summers. But staff members from both Soquel Creek Water District and the city have been drilling down into difficult questions, including the possibility that the agency’s water supplies may react badly—either with one another, with the pipe mains, or with homeowners’ individual plumbing systems.
The worst-case example of what can go wrong when pumping river water into an unfamiliar pipe system can be summed up in two words: Flint, Michigan. That, of course, is where officials infamously sent Flint River water down old pipes, corroding them and creating an epidemic of health problems.
Here in California, water customers in both Davis and Fresno have run into water quality issues and pipe problems stemming from similar projects.
The concern in Santa Cruz County is that the two water supplies might clash if their pH, alkalinity or mineral makeup doesn’t match up. There could also be issues with sending water flowing down these old pipes in the opposite direction it has been moving in for years.
Water Commissioner Andy Schiffrin wondered aloud if the competing water chemistries from two neighboring districts might be a “fatal flaw” for any hopes of a water transfer.
Schiffrin noted that the district only represents half the water customers in the Purisima Aquifer basin. And if engineers inject Santa Cruz water directly into the aquifer—a possibility that experts are exploring—Schiffrin worries that the districts could open themselves up to liabilities. Private well users who share the basin, like Cabrillo College and Seascape Golf Club, could possibly have chemical reactions with that city-slickin’ water too, he suggested, even if Soquel Creek customers don’t.
These are the types of questions engineers are trying to answer as they explore the recommendations from the WSAC, which the Santa Cruz City Council created in 2014 while looking for alternatives to plans for a controversial desalination plant.
Although the future looks murky now, they hope to have better estimates by mid-2018 on how feasible water transfers would be, as well as the price tag. Monday’s meeting was one of many progress reports in a several-year stretch of careful studies.
Commissioner Doug Engfer suggested a successful conjunctive use program in the Placer area might make a nice case study for what to do. “That’s not to say it would work here, but it might. I want to think they were good more than lucky,” he said, “and maybe there’s some positive lessons we can learn.”
Outside City Hall on a meeting break, Scott McGilvray, a Live Oak resident, mentioned he’s “encouraged” by all the staff members’ hard work, and staying optimistic about water transfers.
“We’re on the right path. I think they’re asking the right questions,” says McGilvray, who likes conjunctive use partly because it’s cheaper to operate than backups like recycled water. “I think they have a sense of urgency about it.”
An eclectic, endearingly eager group of more than 60 people squeezes into the Louden Nelson Community Center. Throughout the crowd sit grandparents, young children, dreadlocked hippies and tattooed punks, all awaiting a talk from Noah Levine, author of Dharma Punx, Against the Stream and other Buddhist-based teachings.
Levine is in town giving a special lecture on behalf of the Mind Body Awareness Project (MBA), a nonprofit he founded here decades ago. The program teaches incarcerated and at-risk youth mindful meditation and coping skills to deal with tough issues. Entry to the talk was by donation, with all proceeds going to MBA, which re-opened a local chapter the next day, headed by Joe Clements—a fellow Dharma Punx founder and singer in longtime local punk rock band Fury 66.
The mindful skills and ideas they teach are just as important outside of the penitentiary walls, Clements says, as they are within. “They are incarcerated, but we’re all prisoners of our minds and emotions,” he says. “The revolution starts inside.”
Micah Anderson, another Dharma Punx founder, has been a practicing Muslim for 20 years, and at the Nov. 19 chat, he alludes to the pall hanging over the crowd in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. He suggests there’s never been a better time to take action and get involved politically or spiritually.
“In this age, especially in the last couple weeks, it seems we’re all disenfranchised,” says Anderson, who also volunteers at a Muslim nonprofit in Fremont called the Ta’Leef Collective that does work similar to MBA.
The event represented something of a coming home, too, for MBA, which is now based in the East Bay.
“The Mind Body Awareness Project is very personal to me and a part of growing up in Santa Cruz,” Levine begins his talk . “The Mind Body Awareness program came out of this local community.”
Officially founded as a nonprofit in 2000, the MBA’s origins go back to 1988, when Levine was locked up in the Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall for a childhood of drug addiction and theft. “At that time, I was constantly blaming everyone else,” he tells the captivated audience. “No responsibility for my actions, just a constant blaming of society.”
Levine believes the type of work MBA performs is not only important to the lives of the young people they interact with, but for the future of the greater community.
“It’s important now, more than ever, to come together in service,” he tells GT. “Especially populations that have been historically underserved, such as the incarcerated.”
It was during Levine’s incarceration that his father, Stephen Levine—also a world-renowned Buddhist author and practitioner who is credited with helping bring Eastern religion to the West during the 1960s—taught Noah how to mindfully meditate over the Juvenile Hall phone.
Over time, the younger Levine realized he was a drug addict and that he needed to change his life. Once released, Levine continued his practice, and in the 1990s, he began returning to the juvenile detention center as a volunteer to teach at-risk youth the same meditation practices he had learned while he was in their predicament.
“I think it’s a lot easier for someone like me to go in and say, ‘Look, I was here, but I changed my life, and I want to introduce you to it’ in a very open and offering way,” he says.
Today, the MBA headquarters are in Oakland with classes at juvenile halls in Alameda and San Mateo and continuation schools in Oakland, Newark and Hayward. By utilizing meditation and group therapy, MBA teachers show young people their 10-module curriculum with lessons such as empathy, impulse regulation, emotional intelligence and forgiveness. According to its 2015 Annual Report, MBA served 3,659 at-risk and incarcerated youth, with 88 percent saying MBA helped them manage their emotions.
“Here we are, still doing it,” Anderson says. His friendship with Levine having spanned more than 20 years, he notes that while they still teach mindful meditation, MBA is now “less dharma-approached.” Instead, it focuses more on practices based in clinical psychology and therapy.
With Clements spearheading the local reboot, the four-week pilot program features a changing cast of teachers for the youth to work with, including the fourth Dharma Punx founder, Vinnie Ferraro.
Clements believes our world needs more programs like MBA because they give troubled teens an outlet to not only manage their problems, but also provides them with a place to be creative and create meaningful relationships—allowing for a higher enlightenment of both the individual and the society.
Clements, who spent time incarcerated as an adult, never intended to start his own chapter when he began volunteering at MBA. But he quickly realized it was the next natural step, and he’s amazed at how his meditative journey has come full circle.
“It’s a really cool feeling to be a part of this, not just for myself but for our community,” he says. “It gives me chills just thinking about it.”
Homelessness is a complex problem, which is why there are so many different ideas about how to fix it.
“Homelessness is just as diverse as we are,” explains Pajaro Valley Shelter Services (PVSS) executive director Kimberly Ferm. “Anyone can be homeless for any reason at any time. There’s no one cause for someone to become homeless.”
HGP helps give people transitional work, with the goal of getting them working full-time elsewhere, and into a more secure life. They work on an active, functioning farm, and are involved with every aspect, from tilling the soil to selling HGP’s produce and products to the public.
“It’s hard for people to move from homelessness directly into a job. The project is here to make that transition,” says Executive Director Darrie Ganzhorn. “People really need to develop their confidence. People develop a sense of community and belonging, and that helps them in their job search.”
Another factor affecting some members of the homeless community is mental illness—when untreated, with no support system, it can have catastrophic effects, and sometimes those dealing with mental health issues find themselves on the street. MHCAN is a local peer-to-peer organization that seeks to help them gain control of their lives.
Through Santa Cruz Gives, MHCAN is hoping to fund a shower room for its members. While a majority of MHCAN members do have a home, group organizers say, some individuals they work with—housed or not—have issues with daily living skills like hygiene to the point where it affects how they are perceived by others. Sometimes a lack of self-care can come from a history of child sexual abuse, negative self-image, or other issues that increase feelings of vulnerability. MHCAN wants to remodel a small room into a shower room designed to offer a safe space.
The Warming Center, meanwhile, helps the homeless with a different kind of vulnerability. On a cold night, the Warming Center will give those who have nowhere to go a place to stay, and a meal—and possibly save their life in the process.
“There are far too few shelter beds, and they don’t allow people with dogs, or large personal property, often not even bikes,” says program director and manager Brent Adams. “We’ve made a pledge to never refuse anyone. We pack people in pretty tight sometimes.”
The all-volunteer organization often gives out blankets and clothes, and sometimes will even send drivers out to pick people up on cold nights.
PVSS deals with yet another source of vulnerability and homelessness. Women and children often have no home to go to in situations when there’s divorce or an abusive spouse, and PVSS offers transitional housing. They offer an emergency 90-day program for women and children, and there are also one- and two-year programs for homeless families. PVSS isn’t just housing, it’s also a comprehensive program to develop skills for self-sufficiency.
“The programs we have, we would say is a tough love approach. It’s very structured, accountable, and client-driven. The clients set their goals with the case managers. Whatever their goals are, we work with them to make them accountable,” says Ferm.
Saving money, for instance, is required. The case manager even works with the clients by reviewing their expenditures, pay stubs and receipts to help them develop the skills to take care of themselves.
“We help them to know the importance of taking good care of property, as well as taking care of your health, yourself, and your housing and your family,” says Ferm. “Those are the core values that we have.”
Go to santacruzgives.org to give to these groups, and many others, through Dec. 31.
My cat Asimov is as strong and healthy as they come. With a shiny black coat and razor-sharp claws, he resembles a miniature black panther whose paw-eye coordination is spot-on when it comes to mosquitos and flies.
So you can imagine my concern when I arrived home one evening to find the little guy barely able to sit up, wobbling from side to side with each beat of his heart. I watched him walk a slow, crooked line through the kitchen, then stop to gaze at me through half-lidded eyes. An 11-pound sack of flour in my arms when I picked him up, he was docile and purring, but glassy-eyed and sedate, and he slept in my lap as I googled his symptoms. As soon as I read that tulips and lilies—like the ones growing in my backyard—are among several plants known to be fatally poisonous to cats, I gathered his limp body into a carrier and rushed him to the Pacific Veterinary Specialists emergency room on 41st Avenue, suspecting the worst.
After a thorough examination that ruled out poisoning by lily or synthetic chemicals like rat poison—he would be vomiting and pooping everywhere, said Mark Saphir, DVM—the doctor sat back and watched Asi slink under a chair, then asked calmly: “Could he have had access to any marijuana?”
I felt what I imagine is close to a mother’s shame. It was a distinct possibility. “It doesn’t take a lot for a cat,” Saphir said. “Look at how big he is compared to you. All it would take is a few crumbs on the carpet.” Very stoned animals are something Saphir says he sees quite a bit at the ER—though much more commonly with dogs, which are notorious for having less than picky palates.
“Take him home, put on some mellow music, and you’ll have your cat back in about 8-12 hours,” said Saphir, who assured me that no, this would not leave any lasting neurological damage.
But Asi was lucky—he ate a small morsel of plant matter, and not a highly concentrated edible product like pot butter, which can be extremely dangerous. “There is a lethal dose for dogs and cats. There is not a lethal dose for humans,” says Ken Cholden, DVM, of Santa Cruz Veterinary Hospital on Soquel Drive. That lethal dose varies from animal to animal, while the most common effects of cannabis ingestion are listlessness, loss of motor coordination and balance, depression, dilated eyes, vomiting and hypothermia. About 25 percent of animals become quite distressed, with a heightened heart rate, panting and pacing. The neurotoxic effects usually last for about 12 hours, and kick in within a half hour to two hours of ingestion.
Of cannabis’ 60 or so cannabinoids, it’s tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that’s most toxic to animals. (Perhaps relevant to people who hike in Pogonip or other areas with high homelessness with their dogs: THC exits the human body in feces, and psychoactive effects have been reported in dogs that come across—and eat—THC-laced poo, though the likelihood of a lethal dose is not probable.)
In cases that aren’t severe, the best treatment is time, says Cholden. But if a dog has consumed a large quantity of edibles within the last hour, the doctor will often induce vomiting. If it’s been more than a couple hours, activated charcoal is administered to draw out the toxins, and in the most severe cases, an intravenous lipid therapy, to soak up fat-soluble THC.
In the rare case that an animal dies, what usually kills them is respiratory depression—where their breathing becomes so shallow that it stops and they need to be put on a ventilator—rapid or slow heart rates, and seizures, says Cholden.
The moral of this story is: Pets and pot do not mix. “It’s something that a lot of times people feel ‘well I like it, my dog should like it.’ But they don’t, they’re very different. People make the decision to adjust our consciousness, but dogs and cats don’t, they’re on a different wavelength.” That means: do not blow smoke in your pet’s face (this should go without saying), and “Keep your stash secure,” says Cholden.
But along with the legalization of marijuana, medicinal oils and capsules containing cannabidiol or CBD are seeing a rapid increase in popularity for topical use on pets (in cases of skin cancer), as well as for internal consumption. While promising, Cholden cautions that dosage is key, and he has seen psychoactive effects from topical application.
Back at home I fed Asi a second dinner and put on some Brazilian jazz, which he has always liked, and he collapsed into my lap, purring the rest of the night away. He was back to his normal self by 5 a.m.
To many who fear a Trump presidency, what happened on election night is enough to make you curl up in the fetal position and try to wait out the next four years. Get up, says comedian Hari Kondabolu: we need to crawl out of our sustainably built underground pacifist bunkers and do our civic duty.
“I feel that people don’t understand how democracy works. I know that sounds condescending, but people seem to think that the election is what democracy is. That’s a part of democracy, but holding people accountable after the vote is cast—that’s democracy as well,” he says. “Now isn’t the time to let up. To use a sports analogy, once you miss the shot, what do you do? You just let the other side score? No! You do whatever you can to defend.”
It’s why Kondabolu is such a casually brilliant comedian: he’s funny and he’s right. His humor is sociopolitical, dark and unforgiving. Kondabolu calls out racism, sexism, homophobia, white privilege, xenophobia, and gender stereotypes, because for him, being a comedian who talks about these issues shouldn’t be “niche,” it should be commonplace—even if it makes some audiences sweat nervously in their seats. Kondabolu’s even got a feminist dick joke (!) and he’s bringing that special brand of slow-burning zing to the Catalyst on Friday, Dec. 9, to promote his latest album Mainstream American Comic with an hour of entirely new material.
Kondabolu, a former immigrants rights organizer, also co-hosts the podcast Politically Reactive with W. Kamau Bell, which landed among the top 15 podcasts in the country in its first two weeks on air. On the show, Bell and Kondabolu have interviewed the likes of Jill Stein, Rachel Maddow, Shaun King, Robert Reich, Kathleen Hanna and other think-producers of the zeitgeist.
Between the podcast, his standup and his in-the-works documentary The Problem with Apu, Kondabolu has slyly emerged as the wokest comic on the national stage and the deputy of our 2016 angst.
But he doesn’t call himself an activist. Kondabolu’s goal is to make people laugh, he says, and he has to talk about the things that matter. He eviscerates Twitter like his personal chew toy, creating trending hashtags like #BobbyJindalIsSoWhite in mockery of his least-favorite politician, vehemently defending his Jill Stein vote, and lamenting how his Bumble matches only ask for tour dates. Sometimes he’s even doing all that with pants on.
In the days and weeks after Nov. 8, Kondabolu says he’s found himself responding to almost every question with something about Trump. “Even the question ‘How are you’ has become so loaded,” he says.
People shouldn’t normalize Trump’s win or what has followed, says Kondabolu. It’s emboldened some people to a sickening degree, even shouting Trump’s name as a weird sort of justification for interrupting a show, as some of Kondabolu’s friends have experienced.
“He makes people feel that they have power, and it’s not a power to create positive change, it’s a power to destroy and not be held accountable,” he says.
On his album Mainstream American Comic, Kondabolu hits on all the politically charged topics that make him so beloved, like the immigrant experience and how it has affected those close to him: “I think about what my mom’s been through in this country, people saying things like ‘Take that dot off your head,’ or ‘Why are you wearing bedsheets out of the house,’ or ‘Why don’t you shut up and make me food?’ And this is just stuff me and my brother said growing up. Can you imagine what she dealt with out of the house from people who didn’t love her?”
It’s the kind of funny that hurts, because it’s true—immigrants, women, people of color, they’re all going to have it harder, says Kondabolu, which is why the momentum to hold Trump and the media to task needs to keep growing.
“Every day on Facebook I read about a different hate crime or something that’s happened to a friend, someone being attacked or harassed or targeted—and this is before [Trump] starts,” says Kondabolu. “If we’ve learned anything, it’s that passiveness, allowing for violence, allowing for oppression—that’s almost as evil. I don’t think that everyone who voted for Trump is racist. I do think if we see racism as a crime against humanity, they aided and abetted in that crime.”
There is a wide swath of people who will probably never change their hearts or minds on the issues that liberals hold dear, says Kondabolu, and if the children of those voters aren’t the answer, hopefully at least they’ll see after four years that Trump was full of hot air and empty promises.
For those who still grieve, Kondabolu will be there.
“I want people to know that we’re in it together, this is a safe place where for at least an hour you get some relief, some catharsis, and a feeling that you’re not alone,” he says.
The best girl-power stories are true. Fiction can inspire, but what better validation can there be for girls in the audience than a young woman who beats the odds in real life to excel at some traditionally male-dominated activity that she loves? Someone like Aisholpan Nurgaiv, the 13-year-old heroine of the stunningly beautiful documentary The Eagle Huntress, a daughter of Mongolian nomads who defies tradition to master the ancient art of hunting with eagles.
Directed by first-timer Otto Bell, the film was shot by Simon Niblett, with great sensitivity to the severe beauty of the vast, craggy steppes of the Kazakh region of Mongolia, and for the folkways of its people. Nomadic families move out into the grasslands with their yurts to graze their sheep during the warm weather, but band together in their village of stone bunkers when winter comes.
Aisholpan’s father is distinguished among the villagers as an eagle hunter, a skill learned from his own father. Indeed, the men in their family have been eagle hunters for 12 generations. Anyone bred into the brotherhood learns to capture his own baby eaglet from an unattended nest, bond with the bird he trains to respond to his commands, and hunt the small game the nomads need to provide fur lining for their winter clothes. At the end of seven years of service, the hunter returns his bird to the wild with a ceremony of thanks.
It’s always been a skill handed down from father to son, but Aisholpan has been fascinated by her father’s birds from a very young age. He’s taught her to feed and handle the bird, and to wear the forearm cuff on which the eagle perches. Eagle hunting is “a calling,” he says. “It has to be in your blood.” So when his daughter wants to train to be an eagle hunter, he encourages her—and the filmmakers are there every step of the way.
Her father takes Aisholpan out into the mountains where she must “earn an eagle of her own,” by scrambling down a cliff to snatch a female eaglet out of a nest. (Including some amazing up-close footage from a body cam Aisholpan is wearing.) We see her feeding and cuddling with her eagle (a juvenile, yes, but still an enormous bird), and teaching her bird to respond to her particular voice commands. Aisholpan is the youngest and the first-ever female to compete at a festival for eagle hunters from around the region. But the real test comes when she and her father take their shaggy ponies and their birds out into the mountains in deep winter to hunt for real.
It feels a little stagey that the filmmakers set up a chorus of male tribal elders to ask their opinion of a mere girl hunting with an eagle, but their responses (and especially their expressions) are priceless. In contrast to their stoicism is Aisholpan herself, sturdy, rosy-cheeked, quick to laugh, and incredibly poised, either at her chores, or in the traditional fur hat and embroidered regalia of the eagle hunters. Her mother doesn’t mind that Aisholpan “takes after her father more than me.” She tells us, “I just want my daughter to love her life.”
The details we glimpse of that life are impressive. Eagle hunters are held in such esteem, they rarely appear in public without their birds on their arms. When they ride their horses, a ceremonial post is attached to the saddle to provide a rest to hold their arms horizontal so their birds can perch. Each hunter’s rapport with his or her individual eagle is very stirring.
According to a recent interview with Aisholpan, the movie came about after Niblett heard about an eagle hunter teaching his craft to his daughter and took a series of still photographs of them. Director Bell signed on, with Niblett as cinematographer, and when they showed their footage to Star Wars franchise heroine Daisy Ridley, she begged to be involved, as both narrator and co-producer. Aisholpan’s story in this soaring film inspires that kind of devotion.
THE EAGLE HUNTRESS
**** (out of four)
With Aisholpan Nurgaiv A film by Otto Bell. A Sony Pictures Classic release. Rated G. 87 minutes. In Kazakh with English subtitles.
