Thai food is in no short supply in Santa Cruz. But there’s not anything like the new pop-up Hanloh, says owner Lalita Kaewsawang. She grew up in Thailand, and says she’s bringing a level of authenticity to the food not normally found in Pad-Thai-heavy Thai restaurants—for example, on occasion she’ll offer the tangy Chiang Mai curry from Northern Thailand. Hanloh’s next pop-ups will be on Friday, Feb. 10 at the Food Lounge and Tuesday, Feb. 14 at Midtown Café. At the Valentine’s Day pop-up, she’s designing dishes specifically for couples to share.
What can people expect from your pop-ups?
LALITA KAEWSAWANG: The way I cook for Hanloh is really inspired by the way I grew up cooking and eating in Thailand. I really want to just bring justice back to Thai food one dish at a time. I just want to do one to two dishes at a time and do it very well. And do it in a way that fits the venue that I work with. I like to serve curries because I think it works well. I really can’t see myself sticking to just one dish. I think it would be so boring.
What is the vibe like?
It’s all casual. It’s pop-up. I’m not a restaurant at all, it’s all takeout style. All my curry that is vegan, I use vegetable stock that I make. The curry with meat, like recently, I got a lot of pork bones to make the stock. With curry, if the base is not good, the curry can’t be good. It’s very time consuming. I’ve been making my own curry paste, basically everything. Good Thai food, it’s complex. They like a lot of flavors in Thailand. It’s seemingly simple, but there are layers in the flavor. My biggest challenge is, is this something that people are going to understand because I’m not making Pad Thai? Even if I make Pad Thai I think it would be a very different look of Pad Thai. If you go to New York or San Francisco, there’s really authentic food out there. Santa Cruz I think is a little different.
Tell me about Chiang Mai Curry.
It’s part Thai, part Burmese. Chiang Mai in the name of the province in the northern region of Thailand, near Burma. I would see this curry every day when I was walking home in Thailand. It can be with chicken, beef, pork. I’m doing it with pork belly. A lot of fresh gingers, peanuts, lemongrass. The curry powder is in there. Southern Thailand doesn’t use curry powder the way northern Thailand does. No coconut milk, either. A lot of tamarind. The tamarind really gives it that acidity that Thai people love. I’m getting to know Santa Cruz. I get to hear people’s feedback. I like to sit back and look at my dishes and see what I can tweak and adjust.
A visit to the Pleasant Valley Vineyards tasting room is always a pleasure. Smack in the middle of the property is a stunning grove of redwood trees, and surrounding vines glisten in the sun in this bucolic setting. And then there are the wines—an exemplary selection of varietals made by Craig Handley. Winery owners Craig and Cathy Handley transformed their home in the Santa Cruz appellation into a boutique winery in 1990, and have been happily producing fine wines ever since.
The winery’s 2013 Brittany Morgan Family Estate Reserve Chardonnay, Santa Cruz Mountains ($40) is handcrafted from nurtured estate vines of French Dijon clones and then aged in French oak barrels. The vines experience a coastal influence of moderately warm days and cool moist nights that produce intense varietal fruit with crisp acidic characteristics, say the Handleys. Here’s a Chardonnay that’s full of subtlety and complexity, with none of the overpowering, over-oaked flavors that some Chards exhibit. Pleasant Valley produces “a golden crop of Chardonnay full of rich flavors of Pippin and Gala apples with a lemon meringue finish,” says the winemaker. It pairs well with chicken, seafood, pork and Asian cuisine. Wine could also be a panacea for all ills. When you walk in the door after a hard day’s grind, a glass of this Chard will do wonders.
The reason this Chardonnay is called Brittany Morgan is because the Handleys name all their wines after family members; nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. With their ever-expanding family, they’re not about to run out of names.
Pleasant Valley Vineyards’ tasting room is open from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays, but call ahead to check. The tasting fee is around $10-$15. 600 Pleasant Valley Road, Aptos, 288-0074.
Wine-tasting for Valentine’s Weekend
Valentine’s Day is next Tuesday, and I suggest you and your sweetie go wine-tasting this weekend in order to stock up on some sexy red wine and a bit of bubbly. What could be more romantic than cracking open a sparkling wine and sharing it with a loved one? Check the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association website for info on where to go.
Artists Helen and Newton Harrison had already been happily married for 17 years and raised four kids when they made a pact to do no work that did not benefit Earth’s ecology. That was in 1970, when Helen was 43, and Newton, 38.
Since then, it appears that the Harrisons did nothing but work for the ecology. The proof is in their book, The Time of the Force Majeure: After 45 Years Counterforce is on the Horizon, published in October, which chronicles a joint-career so prolific that the square tome—a delicate balance of art and philosophical dialogue around the life web—weighs in at 6 pounds and 496 pages.
Since their collaboration began, the Harrisons have acted not just as artists, but as diplomats, historians and investigators, picking up the science they needed to address large-scale challenges, like feeding Europe if food crops are lost to drought and sea level rise.
But even while they’ve established a worldwide network of biologists, ecologists, architects, politicians and urban planners, and earned wide acclaim around the globe—not just as art activists, but as the pioneers of the eco-art movement—the couple enjoys a certain anonymity in Santa Cruz, which they’ve called home since 2004.
“We’re isolates,” says Newton, 84. “I really like being tucked away, and thinking.”
Love Blooms
The Harrison Studio at their midtown home is a spacious room with high ceilings. Its shelving space is piled high with scrolls containing what I can only imagine are the intricate, hand-drawn maps characteristic of their work—present and future topographies of an ever-warming planet.
In their living room, a ceiling-high mural transforms an entire wall into a window looking out on a Sri Lankan lagoon—placing, where the average American household may have placed a big-screen TV, a life-sized water buffalo. It’s a scene from one of the couple’s most well-known works, The Lagoon Cycle—a 60-piece, 360-foot-long mixed-media mural completed between 1974 to 1980.
Artists Helen and Newton Harrison
As Helen’s health is fragile, I’m speaking with Newton, who is fresh from the post office, where he’s just mailed the 6-pound Force Majeure overseas, to friends he and Helen met while lecturing in Budapest years ago.
In an interview with KQED last year, Newton explained that his pact to take on only environmental work with Helen was because “neither of us could face that alone.” I assumed he meant that solving environmental problems on such a massive, global scale was simply too ominous for one person. But, though their life work certainly does swim against a strong current of human expansion and environmental exploitation of all kinds, that’s not what he meant at all. Their work together was always fun. And even more so, he was in love with his collaborator.
“It was the kick of a new project,” says Newton, settled into his studio chair. “That’s how you get past difficulties. You do something where you’re having a whale of a time.”
“But there was something else, you know. I had concluded something that I think was very obvious to Helen and most women, and that is that the deep creativity wasn’t going to happen in the work unless there was female energy and male energy thrown together. That’s why many ecological works are collaborative,” he says. “I could be wrong, but I have a hunch there’s something called an empathy gene. And I think women have more of it than men. I do know that I learned about that from Helen, much more than anybody else.”
Perhaps it’s fitting that the Harrisons’ first date was to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City—art and intellectual discourse play a key role in their attraction to each other.
“It is too easy to forget that every entrepreneurial act, even recycling, is itself a tax on the ecosystem.” — Helen and Newton Harrison
“What happened was very simple. We met and we talked from the very beginning,” Helen told KQED in the same interview. Newton figured that after 20 or 30 years, they’d still have an infinite supply of things to talk about—as he likes to say, “I’m way smarter than Helen, but Helen is way smarter than me.” Around the time of their pact, Newton and Helen became the first husband-and-wife team to share a professorship at UC San Diego, where Newton was a founding member of the Visual Arts Department and Helen was Director of Educational Programs at UC Extension. But the couple decided never to teach together or administer together. It was a decision based on their different talents in academia, and perhaps a wise move that kept them from working together every single second. The art, then, remained an enclave of shared passion.
“We made this deal. There was a ton of work in front of us. So if Helen disagreed with the work, we didn’t do it. If I disagreed, we didn’t do it. So we didn’t have any arguments,” says Newton.
They also encouraged each other to be themselves in the work: Newton was a far better painter than Helen, he says, and she was far better at drawing. A fair amount of dialogue runs through the couple’s writings—which accompany most of their works, and which they’ve made sure to keep in the public domain. Helen, drawing on her philosophical background, takes on the role of questioner, while Newton is often the producer, builder and technician. Newton often writes the initial text, while Helen edits and develops it—a comfortable process, they say, where Newton has the first word and Helen has the last.
“It was a common labor, you know? Like, let’s go back to what used to be normal around here, which is family farms,” says Newton. “The husband worked it, the wife, the family, the kids, and grandma and grandpa made butter… it was a unity. So, rather than look at us as a special case, lament the fact that we’ve lost community.”
Work Together
In the early ’70s, the Harrisons focused on urban farming with The Survival Series, whose daring live exhibits included fish farms, portable orchards and a pasture piece that featured a live pig named Wilma. Almost all of these early exhibits are now being repeated at museums around the world, including the world’s smallest discrete ecosystem of brine shrimp and algae currently at L.A. County Museum, which, driven by the sun, Newton says “has the great advantage of starting to smell extremely strong.”
By the ’90s, the Harrisons were traversing the globe, well into their body of large-scale, Earth-inspired art installations and proposals. In addition to uncovering innovative solutions to support biodiversity and community development, their work has also effectively changed governmental policy.
ADAPTATION ON DISPLAY The artists beside one of their live museum exhibits; this one a crab farm which explored artificial habitats in larger cycles.
To that respect, one of their greatest successes was The Green Heart Vision, commissioned by Holland’s Parliament. Taking into account the biodiversity rings in the region, it proposed a solution for saving 800 square kilometers of farmland and 13 small historical villages in the center of the surrounding cities, thus spinning more than 200 billion dollars that would have gone to outside developers back into the country.
“So the right wing moved in and threw us out,” says Newton. “And then five years later, we got a call from the Ministry of the Environment, they’re going to do the piece, and it’s now part of the government plan.”
On an even larger scale is the three-part Peninsula Europe (2000-2008), which, looking at Europe as a peninsula surrounded by water on three sides, offers a solution to sea-water rise which will negatively impact the food supply for more than 450 million people. “It costs about a trillion dollars, about what a Bush war would cost,” says Newton, of the proposal, which proposes re-terraforming the land and reforesting high grounds to conserve waters and generate biodiversity.
“It’s on hold. The reason that it’s on hold is it’s too big a mouthful for them to deal with when they’ve got all the problems they’ve got,” says Newton. “At a certain moment, the drought will get much worse, and this will get pulled off the shelf.”
He suspects the same thing may happen in America under the Trump administration—that we may come around to systemic changes, but only after great damage. But the trajectory of our current practices is a slow moving trainwreck—and the Central Valley, which the Harrisons address in 1976’s Sacramento Meditations as “an improbable profitable expandable system” is a good example. As early as 1976, the Harrisons predicted a sea level rise of 300 feet—the first artists to do so—coming within 10 percent of glaciologists’ current estimates of around 270 feet.
“The solution suggests that you can keep on doing what you’re doing if you solve this, that and the other, and that’s not true—we have to change systematically,” says Newton, adding that he thinks it’s the reason Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election. “Because she would not propose systemic change, like Sanders.”
“We’ve messed up so bad that everything is a mess. The ocean, the topsoil, the air, the subsoil, the forests, the rivers, the aquifers,” he says. What about Santa Cruz? “We just do a slightly better job than anybody else, which is terrible,” he replies. “I mean, why would we give all of our water to a bunch of strawberry farmers and then talk about transferring ocean water at a great expense? The flaws of late 20th century capitalism are everywhere.”
Force Majeure
When the Harrisons began their decade-long collaboration to save the ecosystems, they realized quickly that they still needed to understand what an ecosystem was—a process they say took them four years. After almost a half-century of work they’ve again adjusted their approach.
MAN VS. NATURE This scene from ‘The Lagoon Cycle’ explores the shift from water buffalos to less efficient, gasoline guzzling tractors in Sri Lankan agrarian culture.
Establishing the Center for the Force Majeure at the University of California in 2009, the nonprofit follows four works—Peninsula Europe, Tibet is the High Ground, Sierra Nevada, and the Bays of San Francisco—and takes on climate change by bringing artists and scientists together to design ecosystem-adaptation projects in these four critical regions.
“We proposed, about two or three years ago, that the core of all of these works is to drop the entropy of the planet, of the major life web planetary systems,” he says. Whereas five years ago that sounded bizarre, says Newton, the idea is starting to sink in. “People are starting to understand that our problems are at great scale, and we have to start looking at them that way,” he says.
The Force Majeure, which proposes “entropy analysis” as a new field of research took second prize two years ago in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, which invites designers, architects, activists, artists, entrepreneurs and scientists to submit their “game-changing solutions to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.”
“The force majeure is of our own making,” he says. “It is the gigantic pollutions we let into the air, into the land, into the water. And it is the heat wave that will consequently touch all things, combined with a water rising that will touch all ocean surfaces, and combined with the way we live—we take energy from all life systems, but we don’t give anything back. So, you’re looking at deeply stressed life systems, the probable death of the ecosystem and the rest of the ocean.” The work argues that if we have 11 million species, we’re likely to lose 5 or 6 million. “Conversely, if you could mediate that, and only lose, not 50 percent but 20 or 25 percent, then nature, the life web can recover.”
The outlook is not totally bleak—at least for bacteria and smaller critters, who benefit from disturbance, Newton adds. “For all I know, if the life web has consciousness, to a degree, not necessarily Gaia-type stuff, but if it has some kind of knowing, maybe what we consider to be ominous is a big relief, because we’re self-cancelling,” he says. “See, it takes nature 10 million years to regenerate from a modest extinction, and 50 or 60 million to regenerate from a big one. So we’ve got four or five 60-million-year periods, at least three, before the sun burns us up. So nature can do it over a few more times.”
But humans need to realize the responsibility they have to the planet, if any progress is going to be made for our own species. “Art is an avenue for that kind of realization,” says Newton. “But so is the best of religion, the best of philosophy, the best of many disciplines.”
His advice to concerned citizens is to take care of their basic needs and then act for the good of the larger whole.
And where does love fall in all of this? “Subtract it and you die. Exercise it and everything lives. Manipulate it and you become sick and unhealthy. And that’s enough,” he says.
When Nondo Estrada left behind a 401k and a career in management at UPS to become a dental hygienist, he researched education options carefully. His brother had been diagnosed with early stage cancer by an observant dental hygienist, an event that had shown Estrada the power of a public health career and inspired him to go back to school.
“I went to orientations at Carrington, Foothill and Cabrillo,” he says. “I chose Cabrillo because they seemed so interested in the success of the students.”
But ever since the state changed rules on repeatability at community colleges, the future of Cabrillo’s Dental Hygiene Program and the accompanying Dental Hygiene Clinic, which served 3,000 community members last year—many of them low-income—has been uncertain.
In 2014, the state mandated that units at community colleges were no longer repeatable. They had aimed the decision at classes like swimming, yoga and choir, which some community members had been attending for more than a decade. Still, some departments geared for students learning a new trade—like journalism, where students often retook classes several times—have suffered too. Though interest in the Dental Hygiene Program has remained consistent, Cabrillo’s overall enrollment has dropped steadily, and the administration was forced to make tough budget decisions—like cutting the Dental Hygiene program in half.
“We determined that Dental Hygiene could continue as an intact program with a class admission every other year, rather than every year,” says Superintendent of Instruction Kathleen Welch.
But students, staff and instructors don’t see it as a viable solution. “If we could accept a class every other year, we’d do it,” explains Dr. Bridgete Clark, Director of Dental Hygiene at Cabrillo and the only full-time instructor. “But our curriculum won’t allow it. It just doesn’t work.”
In January 2015, a last-minute donation of $100,000 saved the first class that would have been eliminated. Thanks to the generosity of former graduate Theresa Crocker and her husband Richard, Estrada and the other students in his cohort will graduate this spring. Last-minute donations saved the class of 2019, too, but everyone agrees the clinic needs a more sustainable model to prevent the stress of desperate eleventh-hour fundraising and avoid cutting classes.
Students insist that the continuity of annual classes is integral to their success. For instance, every incoming student is assigned a second-year student “buddy” as a mentor. “All through my first year here, I had weekly meetings with my big buddy,” explains Estrada. “And now that I’m a second-year, I’m really committed to the success of my little buddy. I orient her to the instruments—there’s 15 of them!—pass on what I have learned about interacting with patients, and help her with self-care.”
This kind of support and mentorship contributes to a pass rate of almost 100 percent on board exams and means graduates have an easy time finding jobs, clinic leaders say. “Our program is well regarded by dentists all over the state,” explains former graduate and current instructional assistant Elicia Hammon. “After I graduated in 1996, I went on a working interview and was employed there for 15 years.”
In 2012, Hammon returned to her alma mater as an adjunct teacher. Half of the 15 part-time instructional assistants at the program are alumni. “We do office work, fix equipment, order supplies and help teach labs,” Hammon says. “I put in a lot of volunteer hours.”
If Cabrillo were to offer only the Dental Hygiene Program every other year, Hammon and her co-workers may be looking for other jobs. “We would probably only need two-and-a-half adjuncts if the administration’s plan went through,” says Dr. Clark with a sigh. “A lot of people would lose their jobs. Our main focus is on educating our students, but we can’t provide the same quality of education with a class every other year.”
The quality instruction also results in excellent care at the low-cost dental clinic.
“I tried to convince my husband to come here for two-and-a-half years,” says Lisa Lavagnino, the front-office specialist at the clinic. “When he finally did, he said it was the best cleaning of his life. I still get my X-rays here, even though my insurance will cover it elsewhere. The amount of enthusiasm and care and personal attention the students put into each patient, it’s just amazing.”
The clinic sees plenty of returning patients, according to Lavagnino. “We have one Florida couple who flies to San Jose every year to visit family, and makes a special trip to Cabrillo to get their teeth cleaned,” she says.
Care is time-consuming at the clinic, but the low cost attracts people who might not have access to dental care otherwise. “I’m a senior citizen and so appreciate the dental care they provide for me,” one patient tells GT. “Medicare does not provide dental insurance, and I can’t afford it.”
The clinic even has at least one millionaire patient, who tells Clark that he just really likes the students.
If the program gets reduced to running every other year, the clinic itself might end up in jeopardy. “First-year students don’t see patients until the second semester,” explains Dr. Clark. “So our clinic would be closed in the fall every other year, and we’d lose a lot of patients and even more income. Patients who are the most in need, who have the most advanced problems, wouldn’t be able to get consistent care.”
In order to continue annual matriculating classes, the Cabrillo Dental Hygiene Program needs to come up with $140,000 every year. Staff work hard to make up that shortfall. “We’ve started running a class for out-of-state hygienists and begun offering continuing education post-graduate classes,” explains Dr. Ian Haslam, Cabrillo’s Dean of Health, Athletics, Wellness and Kinesiology. “If we could fill a class twice a year, we’d have the $140,000.”
Clark also hopes to partner with Salud Para La Gente, an award-winning local health clinic that provides services, including dental care, regardless of patients’ ability to pay.
“There’s got to be somebody out there who wants to make a huge donation,” Clark says wistfully. “If someone donated a million dollars, we could establish an endowment and be self-sustaining. Then we could focus all our energy on education and service instead of scrambling for funds.”
The next time you take a photo with your iPhone, Frans Lanting hopes you’ll think about Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer who documented explorer Ernest Shackleton’s legendary Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition from 1914 to 1916. Shackleton’s story is outrageous—in his failed attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent, he made a treacherous 800-mile open-boat journey after his ship Endurance was frozen and crushed in the ice, eventually saving every one of the more than two dozen members of his crew. But Hurley’s far lesser-known story is, for a student of photographic history, nearly as fascinating. After the ship sank, he had only one camera and four rolls of film left to work with. Yet without the images he captured, Shackleton’s feat would have never captured the public’s imagination in the same way. The Kodak folding camera and roll film that he used were the state of the art at the time.
“It was really the camera that made photography mobile 100 years ago,” says Lanting. “Before that time, photography was done with big heavy wooden cameras with glass plates, cameras mounted on heavy tripods. It was all very static. These Kodak cameras with the roll film made it mobile and it created a photography revolution that was comparable to what the iPhone did 100 years later.”
What Lanting hopes you won’t think about, however, is actually trying to use one of the cameras from Hurley’s era. He did, when he and his wife Chris Eckstrom traveled to the Antarctic last year. In honor of the centennial of the expedition’s safe return, and because he has long idolized Hurley, Lanting took along the exact type of camera that Hurley used, and even recreated some of the photos that he took on the ill-fated expedition. By the end, he was cured of several of his romantic notions about early photographic technology.
“It was really hard,” says Lanting. “It was a very humbling experience. You have very few controls, there’s only two shutter speeds and two apertures, and almost no control over your focus. Everything is laborious. It only increased my appreciation and admiration for Frank Hurley and what he was able to do under conditions that were far more adverse than what I was facing.”
On Feb. 11 at the Rio Theatre, Lanting and Eckstrom will share images and stories from those most recent Antarctic adventures in a program titled “Journeys to the Ends of the Earth.”
As with all of the Dutch-born, internationally renowned photographer’s presentations, there is more going on thematically than just a parade of stunning nature shots.
“I think the Antarctic has a particular resonance with people, because it has that mystique of the most remote, the most extreme place on Earth,” he says. “But it also has a real relevance for all of us now, because it’s becoming one of the epicenters for climate change. That was another thing that we were confronted with during our time down there. We’d been there quite a few times before, and even though I’m not a scientist, you could just see the changes. The glacial retreat is really rapid, and it’s causing changes in the wildlife, in the penguin colonies. Places where I remember going ashore and setting foot on snow and ice, now you’re setting foot on naked rock. The changes are happening very quickly.”
Lanting and Eckstrom’s aim in this show is not to frighten people with the reality of what is happening, but inspire them. To that end, they’ll discuss what they call “hope spots” in not only the Antarctic, but also Patagonia, the Falkland Islands, and the island of South Georgia.
“Since Nov. 8, we live in a different country, and we’re facing a different world,” says Lanting. “We think it’s really important to show people that what happens in Washington D.C. is not the only way that we can make progress on things we believe in.”
In Patagonia, for example, the late Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face company, and his widow, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, invested more than $375 million in turning land into protected national parks. While the Tompkins’ immense wealth made their projects possible, Lanting contrasts it with the work that sheep farmers in the Falkland Islands are doing to protect wildlife there.
“It’s not just wealthy individuals who can make a difference, it’s people from all walks of life,” says Lanting. He hopes that these “case studies” leave the audience feeling energized, “because we all have work to do in the next couple of years, instead of giving in to cynicism or fear.”
‘Journey to the Ends of the Earth’ will be presented at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 11 at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz Tickets are $23 general, $40 gold circle, available at brownpapertickets.com.
Singer/songwriter John Craigie has advice for anyone going through a bad breakup: get the heck out of town, for as long as you can—or at least a few days.
“One thing that’s lucky about the traveler is you get to move on—physically move. Other people aren’t as lucky to have that,” says Craigie, who plays the Valentine’s Day show at the Rio Theatre on Feb. 14, which also features performances by Sherry Austin and Sugar by the Pound. Craigie is touring in support of a brand-new album, No Rain, No Rose. “Whenever I have a breakup, I feel bad for the people who have to stay in that town,” he says.
Still, he concedes that there are people out there who like being friends with their exes: “And those people are called insane.”
No offense, but I wouldn’t take you for a Valentine’s Day show kinda guy.
JOHN CRAIGIE: I wouldn’t think so, either. I guess they figured I didn’t have a date.
You tour constantly, and for years didn’t even have a home where you paid rent. What’s love like on the road?
Love is tough. You make pretty brief connections with people. And then if you make a longer, deeper connection, you have to try to maintain that as you travel on. What’s cool about new romance, as a traveler, is that if you’re smart, you won’t get tied down to something bad. That will ideally make you choose wisely. One of the weird things about our generation is that it’s so hard for us to make a decision on something because we have so many options. With our grandparents, we look back and say, “Wow, it’s so crazy to marry someone after two dates.” But they knew they were only going to meet, like, six people in their whole life. With our generation, we got so many options, it’s hard for us to tie ourselves down.
I know. These days, especially with dating apps, we’re always questioning what we have or trying to upgrade.
Yeah, I did my thesis on infinity at UCSC [in the math department]. When you choose one thing, you turn your back on an infinite number of other things. But that’s easier to do, based on your access to the infinite. So our grandparents—their infinity was very small in the window of what was possible for them. But ours is very big now. It’s harder for us to turn around and put that infinity behind us and make one decision—on not just relationships, but on everything. But with relationships, it’s more significant because it’s a much more long-term thing.
Some of your songs could be thought of as unique love songs—“Pictures on My Phone,” “Naked Skype” and “Let’s Talk This Over When We’re Sober (And Not at Burning Man).” Do you think of them that way?
No, not really. My talent does not lie in love songs. It lies in relationship songs. All three of those songs are observational about how modern romance is done. When I think of a good love song, I think of “Leaving on a Jet Plane” or some Beatles song—[singing] “Who knows how long I’ve loved you?” I’m not so good at those, mostly because if I am in love, whenever that happens, I feel like that’s private and no one wants to hear about it. People like love songs. But they also just make me sick.
In our funny English language, we have a word, love, that encompasses so many connotations—I love my mom, I love my friends, I love my girlfriend, my girlfriend loves chocolate. What do you make of all that?
It’s a pretty lazy-ass way of talking.
John Craigie plays the Rio with Sherry Austin and Henhouse and Sugar By the Pound at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 14. Tickets are $25-$40.
Loaded with intricate spices, shimmering and earthy flavors, Indian cuisine is as good as cooking gets. Foods from the northern Indian Punjab provide stand-out memories of the Ambrosia Indian Bistro newly opened in Scotts Valley. Our senses were undeniably expanded after a meal here, and the reason is spice! Ginger, garlic, coriander, cayenne pepper, and garam masala (itself a spice blend combining cardamom, cumin, cloves, cinnamon and black pepper). Most of Ambrosia’s curry dishes, chutneys, and savory sauces offered a blend of some—or all!—of these.
Last week, craving the flavor high that only Indian food can deliver, we checked out the newest Ambrosia, located across the street from the Hilton Hotel, right off Highway 17. The modern and welcoming interior has been smartly inflected with traditional carved and embroidered crafts and fantastic aromas. Attired in crisp black uniforms, the helpful and attentive staff brought water, a basket of feather-light, paper-thin papadums, and a tray of chutneys almost immediately after we were seated. At this point, I want to remind readers that I timed our drive from the Westside of Santa Cruz to the Ambrosia parking lot at exactly 10 minutes.
Crunching away on those gossamer papadums—lentil crackers—we sampled the green mint chutney, the delicious, slightly sweet tamarind chutney, and the house pickle involving lots of red pepper, garlic, carrots, and tiny cauliflower florets. We immediately ordered a second helping of the house pickle, a condiment so vivacious that it could amplify and distinguish almost anything edible. Stupendously spicy, this relish came in handy later in the meal as an adornment for the lavish Tandoori Mixed Grill ($23) that formed the centerpiece of our dinner. A festival for our tastebuds had already begun.
To augment the traditional clay-oven bouquet of tandoori chicken, shrimp and lamb sausage, we ordered another curry of lamb ($16), sauced in fresh coconut cream and green peppercorns. And my always favorite vegetable curry, Aloo Gobi ($10), showcasing what a finely spiced sauce can do for potatoes and cauliflower. I enjoyed my glass of Estancia Sauvignon Blanc ($7) and my companion his St. Pauli Girl ($4.50) as we munched ourselves senseless over the spice pyrotechnics of the fiery house pickle chutney.
Then the main dishes arrived, smartly served with obvious pride and flair. Covering every inch of our table were tureens of steaming curries, one with fat chunks of aromatic lamb, the other loaded with spiced veggies. The centerpiece was a sizzling iron platter piled high with huge chunks of colorful chicken (red from tandoori chili powder), shrimp and plump lamb sausages, on a bed of onions. I added some of the pickle to the chicken, and quickly discovered that I liked the beautifully seasoned, finely textured sausage the best. But it was the showcase Aloo Gobi that stole our hearts. Fiery with red and black peppers and cinnamon, coriander, garlic, and cloves, the curry was nothing short of brilliant. Let me confess—Ambrosia’s kitchen had produced the best Aloo Gobi I’ve ever tasted anywhere, including London, New York, and San Francisco. Perhaps the lamb curry could have been a bit bolder for my taste (no worries, I simply added a few hits of chutney), but joined by brown rice, everything was wonderful. We took most of our generous portions home for lunch the next day, vowing to work our way through Ambrosia’s entire, mouthwatering menu.
Ambrosia Indian Bistro is open daily from 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 5-9:30 p.m. 6006 La Madrona Drive, Scotts Valley. 713-5594.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Your reputation is in a state of fermentation. Will this process ultimately produce the metaphorical equivalent of fine wine or else something more like pungent cheese? The answer to that question will depend on how much integrity you express as you wield your clout. Be as charismatic as you dare, yes, but always in service to the greater good rather than to self-aggrandizement. You can accomplish wonders if you are saucy and classy, but you’ll spawn blunders if you’re saucy and bossy.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Using a blend of warfare and diplomacy, Napoleon extended French control over much of Western Europe. In 1804, he decided to formalize his growing sovereignty with a coronation ceremony. He departed from tradition, however. For many centuries, French kings had been crowned by the Pope. But on this occasion, Napoleon took the imperial crown from Pope Pius VII and placed it on his own head. Historian David J. Markham writes that he “was simply symbolizing that he was becoming emperor based on his own merits and the will of the people, not because of some religious consecration.” According to my reading of the astrological omens, Taurus, you have the right to perform a comparable gesture. Don’t wait for some authority to crown you. Crown yourself.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Have you heard the fable about the four blind men who come upon an elephant for the first time? The first man feels the tail and declares that the thing they’ve encountered must be a rope. The second touches one of the elephant’s legs and says that they are in the presence of a tree. The third strokes the trunk and assumes it’s a snake. Putting his hand on a tusk, the fourth man asserts that it’s a spear. I predict that this fable will not apply to you in the coming weeks, Gemini. You won’t focus on just one aspect of the whole and think it’s the whole. Other people in your sphere may get fooled by shortsightedness, but you will see the big picture.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): For now, at least, your brain is your primary erogenous zone. I suspect it will be generating some of your sexiest thoughts ever. To be clear, not all of these erupting streams of bliss will directly involve the sweet, snaky mysteries of wrapping your physical body around another’s. Some of the erotic pleasure will come in the form of epiphanies that awaken sleeping parts of your soul. Others might arrive as revelations that chase away months’ worth of confusion. Still others could be creative breakthroughs that liberate you from a form of bondage you’ve wrongly accepted as necessary.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Human beings upload 300 hours of videos to Youtube every minute of every day. Among that swirling flow is a hefty amount of footage devoted exclusively to the amusing behavior of cats. Researchers estimate there are now more than two million clips of feline shenanigans. Despite the stiff competition, I suspect there’s a much better chance than usual that your cat video will go viral if you upload it in the coming weeks. Why? In general, you Leos now have a sixth sense about how to get noticed. You know what you need to do to express yourself confidently and attract attention—not just in regards to your cats, but anything that’s important to you.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I know you haven’t literally been wrestling and wrangling with a sweaty angel. But if I were going to tell a fairy tale about your life lately, I’d be tempted to say this: Your rumble with the sweaty angel is not finished. In fact, the best and holiest part is still to come. But right now you have cosmic permission to take a short break and rest a while. During the lull, ratchet up your determination to learn all you can from your friendly “struggle.” Try to figure out what you’ve been missing about the true nature of the sweaty angel. Vow to become a stronger advocate for yourself and a more rigorous revealer of the wild truth.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Even if you’re not an occult wizard or pagan priestess, I suspect you now have the power to conjure benevolent love spells. There’s a caveat, however: They will only work if you cast them on yourself. Flinging them at other people would backfire. But if you do accept that limitation, you’ll be able to invoke a big dose of romantic mojo from both your lower depths and your higher self. Inspiration will be abundantly available as you work to reinvigorate your approach to intimacy and togetherness.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Here’s some advice from Scorpio writer Norman Rush: “The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading.” It’s understandable that a language specialist like Rush would make the final word of the previous sentence “reading.” But you might choose a different word. And I invite you to do just that. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to devotedly carve out more time to do The Most Important Thing in Your Life.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sixteenth-century Italian painter Titian was renowned for his brilliant use of color. He was also prolific, versatile, and influential. In 2011, one of his paintings sold for $16.9 million. But one of his contemporaries, the incomparable Michelangelo, said that Titian could have been an even greater artist if he had ever mastered the art of drawing. It seems that Titian skipped a step in his early development. Is there any way that your path resembles Titian’s, Sagittarius? Did you neglect to cultivate a basic skill that has subtly (or not so subtly) handicapped your growth ever since? If so, the coming weeks and months will be an excellent time to fix the glitch.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Our obsessive use of digital devices has diminished our power to focus. According to a study by Microsoft, the average human attention span has shrunk to eight seconds—one second less than that of a typical goldfish. I’m guessing, though, that you Capricorns will buck this trend in the coming weeks. Your ability to concentrate may be exceptional even by pre-internet standards. I hope you’ll take opportunity of this fortunate anomaly to get a lot of important work and play done.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The time is now, Brave Aquarius. Be audacious about improving the big little things in your life. (That’s not a typo. I did indeed use the term “big little things.”) For example: Seek out or demand more engaging responsibilities. Bring your penetrating questions to sphinx-like authorites. Go in search of more useful riddles. Redesign the daily rhythm to better meet your unique needs. Refuse “necessary” boredom that’s not truly necessary. Trust what actually works, not what’s merely attractive. Does all that seem too bold and brazen for you to pull off? I assure you that it’s not. You have more clout than you imagine. You also have a growing faith in your own power to make subtle fundamental shifts. (That’s not a typo. I did indeed use the term “subtle fundamental shifts.”)
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “Love does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person,” wrote the poet Rilke, “for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?” That’s an excellent meditation for you to entertain during the Valentine season, Pisces. You’re in the right frame of mind to think about how you could change and educate yourself so as to get the most out of your intimate alliances. Love “is a high inducement for the individual to ripen,” Rilke said, “to become something, to become a world for the sake of another person.” (Thanks to Stephen Mitchell for much of this translation.)
Homework: Don’t get back to where you once belonged. Go forward to where you’ve got to belong in the future. Testify at Freewillastrology.com.
Friday afternoon/early evening we have the Aquarius solar festival and full moon with the first lunar eclipse of 2017. The sun and moon are at 22.28 degrees Aquarius/Leo (eclipse). Eclipses are potent, bringing needed crisis; events that change us. Eclipses progress us forward, informing us that something exterior (lunar eclipse) or something within our interior (solar eclipse) self is disappearing. Eclipses have a six-month effect—three months before, and three after.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes behind the Earth and is in Earth’s shadow. The moon is “eclipsed” (hidden). The past, represented by the moon, begins to “fall away.”
Friday’s full moon lunar eclipse alerts us to disappearing and changing circumstances. The changes are different for each of us. We must consult our astrology chart to see what area of life is activated by the eclipse.
At full moon times the moon’s light is veiled. The moon is our past. We focus upon the sun’s light. The Sun represents our present/future. The sun is in Aquarius during this full moon time. Aquarius is a most important sign. Aquarius is the Age we are entering. Along with its ruling planets of Saturn (new structures), Jupiter (love/wisdom) and Moon veiling Uranus (birthing new archetypes), Aquarius is creating the present change and crisis. These changes form the basis of the new world.
Aquarius is like an eclipse. Aquarius changes everything. What is Aquarius? What is its task? Aquarius is the Light that shines upon the Earth across the seas. The light that shines within the dark (ignorance, illusions, maya, glamours, cruelties, unkindness, etc.). Aquarius cleanses with its healing rays that which must be purified until the dark is gone. The keynote of Aquarius, reflecting the words of the Soul, are, “Waters of Life am I, poured forth for thirsty humanity.” Aquarius is, via Uranus, electrical waves. Everything on our planet and in the cosmos is electrical. Everything releases bio-photons, radiation, light. Aquarius is frequency. Light is frequency. Everything is light.
ARIES: Creativity, love affairs, romance, fun, play and things that call for risk-taking—games and sports and all expressions of the self. Will and willingness to love. Any and all of these will be affected, shifted, changed. Emotional comfort comes from creative efforts. Thoughts on children, a new baby, a family. A definite and clean break from the past occurs.
TAURUS: You think about home—either about moving, a long vacation, creating a home elsewhere for a time, redecorating, reconstruction or remodeling. Wondering what a true home means. Seeking deeper foundations and a greater balance between home and work. One’s biology, genealogy, early family life and childhood memories. Mother and nurturing of self and others. Building a spiritual home.
GEMINI: In search of new knowledge, developing mental telepathy, unfolding intelligence through new study, assessing how one relates to others. Is it truthful? Is it real? Building the Rainbow Bridge, walking the Path. Bringing others with us. Contact siblings or those we feel are brothers and sisters. A new level of education is at odds with beliefs.
CANCER: As you give and give, you realize you would like to be given to. You are secure within your own self, your crab shell often protecting you. However, new values have arisen, a new code of ethics. You contemplate right and wrong, good and bad. You consider spiritual resources and values, too. How your life is shaped by these? You remember someone.
LEO: You might feel your emotions more keenly, more deeply. Your feelings may be out and about for others to see. Your physical body and sense of self-identity are changing. How people see you in the world is shifting, too. Your Soul quietly begins to speak with you about the purpose and plan for your life. Be still each day and ask the Soul for direction. Then listen in a garden of peacocks.
VIRGO: There will be events and then a deep turn inward in order to understand the empathy and compassion. Others may come to you, attracted to your silence, asking for help. Be careful to remain in a state of retreat. Allow nothing to hinder the small voice attempting to communicate with you. Tend to your health with the utmost care. Stand in the morning and evening sunlight.
LIBRA: All of the ties that bind you to others will be activated. You will seek to know which ones are real, which are not. You will want a harmonious integration with everyone. You will consider integrating even those you have rejected in order to bring about a Libran poise and balance. This will challenge you, but it is good. Things are beautiful and bright. Like the shiny milagros, you love so much.
SCORPIO: Though you may not sense it, a new phase of life is being initiated. It will bring forth a healing and a fixing of what you thought was wrong or broken or not yet completed. You will seek a deeper cooperation with others, giving up something of self, so a greater intimacy can develop. You don’t understand all of this. It’s the great mystery of the stars over-lighting you.
SAGITTARIUS: Saturn is your teacher these days. Helping you bring forth new concepts and philosophies, research into and understanding of religious ideas, all to be used creatively in your work. You are to expand limited small minds into large spacious minds. So they can know the truth of the kingdom (Earth) and all of its geometric beauty. You are to use your ambition to serve and educate others.
CAPRICORN: It seems the words for Capricorn are always hard work, responsibility, ambition, achievement, and ladders to success. Let’s talk about foundations here. That ladder needs a firm foundation. Love is that foundation. Remember to have love in all that you do. Sometimes Caps are seen as hard and cold. We know you’re not. You’re just sensible, with sensible shoes. Do you need new ones?
AQUARIUS: You become more aware of yourself, your age, your limitations. Impatient at first, you learn to adapt. They are lessons along the path. This is a positive time of learning, even if you feel somewhat restrained. Later you will see a new opportunity, possibility and perspective dawning. You will feel a new sense of strength, inspiration and confidence. In the meantime, be kind, always.
PISCES: Old identities, events, people, previous beliefs and ways of being come up for review, completion and understanding. They are shielded in swift-moving clouds so you don’t feel blame or guilt at any previous behaviors. If these occur take ignatia amara, the homeopath that helps heal grief. Or Rock Rose, a Bach Flower Remedy. New values begin to emerge as the old drifts away. You are a vital part of “all things new” that will come to pass.
Ron Finley was sick of seeing inordinately high rates of Type 2 diabetes, childhood obesity and high blood pressure in his community of South Central Los Angeles. So in 2010, he started planting vegetables in the small parkway next to his house, offering the produce to his neighbors for free. He was quickly faced with city citations for gardening without a permit and created a petition to fight for the right to grow food in his neighborhood. Finley won. Now, the self-proclaimed “gangsta gardener” continues to work for urban gardens as community hubs for nutritional learning and business management. His journey is featured in the film Can You Dig This?, the screening of which will be followed by a conversation.
Info: 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8. Colleges Nine and Ten Multipurpose Room, UCSC, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz. Free.
Art Seen
‘Painted Ultra-Space’ Exhibit
‘Painted Ultra-Space’ Exhibit at Cabrillo College
What’s just beneath the surface of our glossy America? Inviting us into the subconscious of someone who grew up under the influence of too much TV and advertising, Academy of Art University teacher and artist Terry Hoff is here to tell us it’s a world of dark humor and subliminal conflict. Fusing acrylic paints, spray paint, airbrush, house paint, and other combinations, Hoff creates candy-colored visions that allude to familiar imagery through a fractured, disoriented space. His exhibit at Cabrillo Gallery runs until Feb. 24.
Hospice Volunteering Q&A at Aptos Coffee Roasting Company
January has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean that New Year’s resolutions have to as well. Continue to support your local community by volunteering with Hospice of Santa Cruz. Learn how to support those facing the end of their life and play an important role in someone’s final days with Forbes Ellis, director of volunteer services, at this Q&A. Call for details.
Info: 9 a.m. Aptos Coffee Roasting Company, 19 Rancho Del Mar, Aptos. hospicesantacruz.org. 430-3045. Free.
Saturday 2/4
Comic Strippers Improv Comedy Show
Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, so ladies, gents, and gender-nonconforming folks, feast your eyes on the sexylarious talents of Canada’s best improvisational comedians and male stripper parody maestros. Semi-undressed and completely unscripted, the Comic Strippers take both art forms to a new level. As their website says: “Women often say the most attractive thing about a man is his sense of humour—so ladies, these stripped-down comedians are sure to make your head explode.”
Info: 8 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. riotheatre.com. $25-$30.
Sunday 2/5
‘Dream Caravan: A Festival of All Things Dream’
‘Dream Caravan: A Festival of All Things Dream’ at Inner Light Center
Everybody dreams. But why? Some say that while you dream, millions of neurons are scrambling to make your life more rich and fulfilling. Whether or not we remember our dreams, research shows that dreaming helps us wake more calm and centered than when we went to sleep. Bringing dreams into consciousness can enhance a sense of well-being, which is why Deborah Johnson, local reverend and activist, will speak on the importance of “awakening the force within.” Dream practitioners will lead interactive workshop and a panel discussion will follow the keynote speaker.
Find one female you know that doesn’t think about her weight, appearance, or body at least a few times a day. Whether it’s the off-the-cuff remark about eating “too much” for lunch, or not having a good hair day, women are socialized to obsess over their outsides—and it affects men, too. It’s why Taryn Brumfitt created a documentary about learning to embrace all of our shapes and sizes after her 2013 before-and-after image sparked an international media frenzy. “This body of mine is not an ornament,” says Brumfitt in the film. “It’s a vehicle.”
Info: 7:30 p.m. Nickelodeon Theatre, 210 Lincoln St., Santa Cruz. gathr.us/screening/19074. $10.50.
Find one female you know that doesn’t think about her weight, appearance, or body at least a few times a day. Whether it’s the off-the-cuff remark about eating “too much” for lunch, or not having a good hair day, women are socialized to obsess over their outsides—and it affects men, too. It’s why Taryn Brumfitt created a documentary about learning to embrace all of our shapes and sizes after her 2013 before-and-after image sparked an international media frenzy. “This body of mine is not an ornament,” says Brumfitt in the film. “It’s a vehicle.” 
