Page 968 – Good Times

Staying Alive

Local News

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January 6, 2016

Ask Don Scott to tell the story of how two UCSC students rescued him from a heart attack in a crowded theater and he’ll say all he knows is that he blacked out.
The Monterey musician was about to perform with his wife, Charmaigne Scott, for a psychology and religion class of 350 students on Dec. 1 when he collapsed onstage.
“I don’t remember driving up. I don’t remember picking my equipment out of the car, and I don’t remember falling down and being revived,” says Don Scott, 66.
What he does remember: waking up at Dominican Hospital after doctors had chilled his body, inducing something like a coma, and operated on him. He stayed at Domincan for 16 days and was told he likely had had prior heart attacks without realizing it, and his brain showed evidence of multiple strokes. He is now in long-term recovery and speech therapy, but feels nearly normal and is playing music again, he says.
Scott’s wife, Charmaigne, says she heard the entire theater gasp when he collapsed, and she ran over to see his eyes rolling back into his head. She describes the following seven minutes as “amazing,” as she watched with the audience as two “angels” from the crowd used CPR to breathe into his lungs and pump his heart until paramedics arrived.
“I can only think that it was providence that got him to the theater when he did,” Charmaigne Scott says, “because if it had been 15 minutes earlier or it had occurred while he was on the road, he wouldn’t even have had a phone.”
Craig Schindler, the class’ guest lecturer, says the rescue was powerful and beautiful.
“If you’ve ever been to a birth, or if you’ve ever been to a dying process, there’s this sense of the veil thinning. There’s this sense of being in the presence of something that’s bigger than any of us,” Schindler says.

In the Moment

UCSC senior Luke Smith, 23, was sitting in the back row when he saw Don Scott collapse. Smith, a former Southern California lifeguard, had given CPR a few times during beach rescues but said he was not prepared to perform that day. For one thing, he had a broken wrist in a cast. He also didn’t know if the theater was equipped with a defibrillator.
Don Scott is diabetic, so at first his wife and fellow musicians thought he needed some sugar. But no sweets could be found, and he wasn’t responding.

“I just had that moment of clarity,” says Vierra. “This is all there is and I’m in this moment. I’m going to do this and I know how. I didn’t even think.”

Smith says he sat there, stunned and not fully grasping the emergency of the moment.
“I kind of said something like, ‘Oh, does anybody know CPR?’” Smith remembers, before noticing that the entire class was frozen still. “I didn’t realize I should have just jumped up, and it took a minute to realize.”
He snapped to action and ran down the aisle, yelling for classmates to call 911 and get the defibrillator.
Jenni Vierra, a 27-year-old single mother, was also at the back of the room watching the scene. The pre-medicine student had taken a CPR class this past spring at Cabrillo College before transferring to UCSC.
“I noticed his chest doing this jerking, rising, falling thing, and immediately recognized it as an unconscious gasp, not low blood sugar,” says Vierra. “So I jump up and I told the girl sitting next to me, ‘call 911 right now.’”
The gasping, also known as agonal respiration, is often seen in heart attacks and is a clear sign that the victim needs help to breathe.
Vierra ran to help Smith administer CPR. She performed chest compressions and he gave breaths.
“I just had that moment of clarity,” says Vierra. “This is all there is and I’m in this moment. I’m going to do this and I know how. I didn’t even think. It’s just thoughts without words and just being completely present in the moment.”
Someone came with the defibrillator just as the fire department paramedics arrived. Scott’s pulse was restored, a breathing machine was inserted, and he was whisked away.

Four Keys to Rescue

Mark Ramsey, a Cabrillo CPR instructor and assistant athletic training director, says CPR is usually not enough to revive a heart attack victim.
“If you catch them early enough then you can increase the chance of getting the person back, but a lot of the time CPR alone isn’t effective,” says Ramsey. “You’re just trying to keep blood pumping to the brain while you’re waiting for emergency medical services to get there.”
Ramsey says the first step is recognizing the emergency and calling 911 for help. He teaches students to look for signs of life: skin color, movement, breathing, and consciousness. If the victim is unresponsive, pale or blue, or their chest is not moving, then it’s time to call 911 and begin CPR, he says.
Students in his class receive certification from the American Heart Association (AHA), which updates its guidelines on best CPR practices every few years.
Nonprofessionals are advised not to check for a pulse, since a heartbeat can be tough to find and it wastes time, delaying the most important part: chest compressions, says Ramsey.
Chest compressions are so important that the AHA recommends “hands-only CPR,” without mouth-to-mouth, for teens and adults who are seen collapsing. In cardiac arrest, the heart and lungs usually contain enough oxygen to keep the vital organs healthy for a few minutes, as long as chest compressions are performed quickly and correctly, according to the AHA website.
Conventional CPR with mouth-to-mouth breathing is now only recommended for babies, children, people who are discovered unconscious and not breathing normally, and victims of drowning, drug overdose and collapse due to breathing issues or prolonged cardiac arrest.
“Everybody should learn CPR. It’s a great tool to have,” says Ramsey. “Ambulances and paramedics aren’t there all the time, so citizens are the ones in the field and out there seeing most of these emergencies happen. So having knowledge about what to do and how to act is very important.”

Upcoming CPR Classes:

Kinesiology 15, a half-unit class that meets 5:30-9:45 p.m. Feb. 1 and Feb. 8, and Kinesiology 13, a three-unit class that also teaches first aid and meets three times, with an online component. Cabrillo College, 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos. Cost varies. Register at cabrillo.edu.
Online class that requires one in-person meeting for certification. Meetings are scheduled almost daily. Above Bar CPR, 3121 Park Ave., Suite E, Soquel. $63. Register at abovebarcpr.com.
CPR workshop for non-healthcare professionals. Certifications occur on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Defib This, 1543 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $45, plus cost of manual. Register at defibthis.com.

For a list of other local classes, visit aptosfire.com.

Mark Ramsey’s four keys to successful CPR:

Push hard on the center of the chest, to a depth of at least two inches on an adult. This ensures the blood will reach the brain and other vital organs.
Pump fast—at a rate of about 100 to 120 compressions per minute. The AHA recommends pushing to the beat of the disco song “Stayin’ Alive.”
Allow the chest to recoil in between compressions so the heart can fill with blood.
If performing conventional CPR, use a ratio of 30 compressions to two breaths, so oxygen can fill the lungs and reach the blood.

Foodie File: Emily Jane Freed

Aaron Carnes

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January 6, 2016

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Emily Jane Freed uses local herbs for her line of salt blends
Working at Santa Cruz’s Jacob’s Farms, Emily Jane Freed had access to tons of fresh organic herbs. Since June of 2014, she’s been making use of those herbs with her own company, Farmer Freed, which sells culinary salt blends. Freed sells six flavors; some are tame, like Everyday Herb Salt and Spice It Up Salt, while others are more adventurous, like Pucker Up Citrus Salt and Vanilla Bean Baker’s Salt. Farmer Freed products are available at Mountain Feed and Seed in Ben Lomond, the Davenport Roadhouse, and some other spots around Northern California. She got down to the nitty gritty with us about salt.
So, are you actually a farmer?
EMILY JANE FREED: I am. I did the program at UCSC. I got a job at Jacob’s Farm Del Cabo, the largest producer of organic culinary herbs and edible flowers in the U.S. We have 10 farms on the Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Pescadero coast. I am the regional production manager at Jacob’s Farm. I help manage all the farms.
Are your salts only for seasoning?
You can add the salts while you’re cooking or put it on top while you’re sitting down to enjoy a meal. It lends itself to both ways. It’s not always a finishing salt, which some salts are. I always encourage customers to come back and tell me how they used the salts, which is interesting.
What do you use the Vanilla Bean Baking Salt on?
On the label it says waffles, pancakes, breads, cookies, pies, cakes. Recently, I have a caterer that uses it for steak. The vanilla comes from the Vanilla Company, which is local, [owned by] Patricia Rain. She uses it on macadamia crusted fish. So, you can also use it for meat and fish.
What advice would you give amateur cooks?
The salts are great for people just learning their way around the kitchen, and for those that are already familiar. The Everyday Herb Salt (parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme) is the most popular because people are familiar with those herbs. We’ve all grown up, hopefully, hearing about them. That blend can be used on eggs, popcorn, avocado, meat, fish, poultry. I always encourage it for people who don’t know how to cook. Most people that don’t know how to cook, they still do know how to make eggs and popcorn.
farmerfreed.com.

GRAIN OF TRUTH Emily Jane Freed uses organic and local ingredients in her Farmer Freed culinary salt blends. PHOTO: CHIP SCHEUER

Certain Storm: The 2016 El Niño Forecast

Local News

Jacob Pierce

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January 6, 2016

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Forecasters say El Niño is finally here, and it looks big
We were promised Godzilla, and Godzilla we just might get. The potential “Godzilla El Niño,” as it’s been called, which Californians have awaited for months with a mix of excitement and dread, is just now arriving. This week’s rains showering Santa Cruz are El Niño-related, according to the National Weather Service—and it shows no signs of slowing. Locals, who after years of drought had all but forgotten what rainy days are like, are now dusting off their raincoats and stomping through puddles.
The Sierra Snowpack is now listed at 36 percent higher than average, according to the state’s Department of Water Resources, although it’s too early to say whether or not the drought will actually end this year.
A news release from NASA on Dec. 29 shows a striking resemblance between satellite images of this growing El Niño and a similar El Niño system from December 1997—an El Niño that rocked the globe and is considered the worst on record. In between severe droughts in Southeast Asia and flooding, it resulted in 23,000 deaths worldwide and more than $10 billion in damage in the United States alone. It also caused unprecedented damage to the world’s coral reef systems.
In a way, it feels odd that people would be so worried about rain in a town that in its long history has weathered major natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. Since Santa Cruz’s most recent substantial floods in 1983, the city initiated a Levee Improvement Project and installed new levee pumps to prevent water from spilling out of the San Lorenzo River.
Still, much of the city is in the floodplain for 100-year floods, according to FEMA’s Flood Insurance Rate Maps, which show that downtown Santa Cruz, the area around the San Lorenzo River and the beach area are all at risk. Farther south, the neighborhoods near Soquel Creek, Pajaro River, Corralitos Creek and Salsipuedes Creek are also all considered at risk.
With a serious downpour, pump stations and other facilities can flood, forcing officials to get water from the Loch Lomond Reservoir instead of local streams and rivers. Each storm provides its own set of unforeseen challenges.
One possible red flag this time around is that four years of dry weather has led to a build-up of fallen trees and debris that hasn’t washed down the San Lorenzo. In past years, heavy rains following a dry spell left a mess of branches and huge tree trunks all over the river mouth and Main Beach. “We’re hoping that doesn’t occur again,” Parks Superintendent Mauro Garcia says, adding that they have trimmed and cleaned up as many trees as they could.
Those logs can get trapped under the wharf, Garcia says. “The weight actually moves like a battering ram back and forth and has the potential to—and has in the past—removed the piles,” he says.
Divers will be standing by to remove them from under the wharf and prevent them from doing any damage.
An eight-page brochure on the city’s public works website has tips for El Niño preparation and procedures, some of them more obvious than others.
The brochure recommends that people have an evacuation plan and know a safe route to higher ground in case there’s a flood. And they should leave early enough to avoid being marooned by flooded roads, which they should try to avoid and drive around if possible. Residents should keep a disaster survival kit and have it ready to go. Household hazardous materials should be stored indoors to keep them out of the runoff water.
Sandbags can be picked up from the city’s Fire Administration Office on Walnut Avenue or from a city corporate yard office located at 1125 River St., Ste. A. Citizens can fill up their bags with free sand from Harvey West Park.
“We’ve been giving out so many sandbags,” says emergency services manager Paul Horvat. At one disaster preparedness workshop alone, Horvat says they gave out 1,500.
Santa Cruz Fire Chief Jim Frawley asked each department to appoint a contact person and a backup contact person in case of emergency this winter. Much of the work in mitigating El Niño has been preventive, like cleaning catchment basins and trimming vegetation. And at an October City Council meeting presentation, Frawley, who moved from Southern California this past April, lauded the city’s disaster preparedness.
Garcia says that the rains have left the ground moist and saturated with water—which can loosen the roots of trees and leave them susceptible to getting knocked over by large gusts of wind. Additionally, the drought has weakened many tree limbs, and they may come falling down in big storm events, something city officials are ready for—even if they don’t want to see it happen. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” Garcia says.
For more information, visit cityofsantacruz.com or santacruzcounty.us. The city of Santa Cruz will be holding an El Niño Storm Preparedness Workshop from 6-8 p.m, Thursday, Jan. 7, at the Beach Flats Community Center, 133 Leibrandt Ave., Santa Cruz.

SHORE ENOUGH During major storm events, waves can wash large tree logs ashore and damage the wharf. PHOTO: ALEKZ LONDOS

Hanging Tens: The 8 Tens @ Eight festival

Stage

Wendy Mayer-Lochtefeld

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January 6, 2016

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Preparing the expanded 8 Tens @ Eight festival means finding great art from all over the world—and a top team of artists here in Santa Cruz
Culture watchers have been wringing their hands over our shrinking attention spans for many moons, but one plucky local theater company chose to embrace it long ago—and Santa Cruz audiences have been showing up in droves ever since. This is the 21st season of 8 Tens @ Eight, the little festival that could, which pioneered the 10-minute play festival on the West Coast.
It began as a showcase for playwrights from the Santa Cruz area, and gradually began to draw talent from surrounding regions. It challenged audiences in the same way that short stories challenge readers, measuring every word and gesture for impact. As winning plays were picked over many summers, resulting winter productions handed us wit, wisdom and pathos in 10-minute bites of every flavor.
There were 53 submissions in the summer of 1999, all from within a hundred-mile radius. This year, there were close to 300, from 30 states, and countries as far afield as Korea. One play was even submitted by an inmate serving a life sentence in Texas. It was among the winners. There have been so many submissions, in fact, that last year 8 Tens @ Eight doubled in size.
“We used to have a second set of shows called the Best of the Rest Fest, which showcased runners up, but that became so popular there were fights in the alley about why this or that play wasn’t one of the eight,” says Wilma Marcus Chandler, the festival’s founder and longtime artistic director. “Better to have two nights of winning plays instead.”
This year continues the expanded format—16 pint-sized plays presented in repertoire on “A” and “B” nights, from Jan. 8 to Feb. 7. That means 16 different playwrights, directors, casts, and sets.
“We’ve gotten a lot more technically savvy with lights, sound, and set changes,” says Chandler. “The crew shifts sets in less than a minute.” Take that, Broadway.
Steve Capasso, who has acted in 8 Tens @ Eight since 2008, goes for laughs this year as a hapless husband in Flirting with Age, about a son who brings his 70-something-year-old girlfriend home to meet his parents. In You Too, he seethes as a blue collar worker with a chip on his shoulder, grilling a guy who works on Wall Street.
“I found my tribe,” says Capasso of the actors he works with during the festival. “We know our work, our strengths, our weaknesses. We’re extremely supportive of each other.”
It’s a tribe that’s ever expanding, in geography and scope. Helene Simkin Jara—who has been involved with 8 Tens @ Eight since 2003 as an actor, writer and director—is directing a play from New Zealand this year called Threatened Panda Fights Back, by Rex McGregor.
“It begins with choosing a play that you think you can interpret well enough so that the audience and playwright will be pleased,” she says. “As a director, I’m like a proud mom, watching my actors and hearing the audience’s reaction to the creation we were all a part of.”
Themes tend to emerge. The 2015 season saw characters surviving crisis, and some LGBT themes. One year was all about food.
“This year, a lot of the plays submitted deal with aging and ecology,” says Chandler. “The world shapes what we write, and we shape the world. Every year, it’s completely different.”
There’s a lot of local talent among the playwrights this year, but it’s not because of some kind of quota—their work was selected on the basis of merit alone.
“About a third of this year’s winning plays are from local writers, which is very unusual. Judges don’t know who wrote the work they review or where it’s from,” says Chandler. “Out of 16 plays, five or six are by locals. Some years we don’t have any.” She shies away from taking personal pride in 8 Tens @ Eight, she says, but feels gratified at how much its scale has grown.
“It’s a lovely melting pot,” she says, “that brings us all together.”
The 8 Tens @ Eight festival will be presented Jan. 8 – Feb. 7, Wednesdays through Saturdays, at 8 p.m., with 3 p.m. matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Center Stage Theater, 1001 Center St., Santa Cruz. Tickets are $25 general, $22 senior/student. For tickets, call 800-838-3006 or go to brownpapertickets.com. For more information, go to sccat.org.

DOUBLING UP ‘Port City Blues’ was part of last year’s 8 Tens @ Eight festival, which returns this week with 16 10-minute plays.

Staying Alive: UCSC students rescue Monterey musician

Local News

Kara Guzman

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January 6, 2016

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Two UCSC students rescue heart attack victim during class with CPR
Ask Don Scott to tell the story of how two UCSC students rescued him from a heart attack in a crowded theater and he’ll say all he knows is that he blacked out.
The Monterey musician was about to perform with his wife, Charmaigne Scott, for a psychology and religion class of 350 students on Dec. 1 when he collapsed onstage.
“I don’t remember driving up. I don’t remember picking my equipment out of the car, and I don’t remember falling down and being revived,” says Don Scott, 66.
What he does remember: waking up at Dominican Hospital after doctors had chilled his body, inducing something like a coma, and operated on him. He stayed at Dominican for 16 days and was told he likely had had prior heart attacks without realizing it, and his brain showed evidence of multiple strokes. He is now in long-term recovery and speech therapy, but feels nearly normal and is playing music again, he says.
Scott’s wife, Charmaigne, says she heard the entire theater gasp when he collapsed, and she ran over to see his eyes rolling back into his head. She describes the following seven minutes as “amazing,” as she watched with the audience as two “angels” from the crowd used CPR to breathe into his lungs and pump his heart until paramedics arrived.
“I can only think that it was providence that got him to the theater when he did,” Charmaigne Scott says, “because if it had been 15 minutes earlier or it had occurred while he was on the road, he wouldn’t even have had a phone.”
Craig Schindler, the class’ guest lecturer, says the rescue was powerful and beautiful.
“If you’ve ever been to a birth, or if you’ve ever been to a dying process, there’s this sense of the veil thinning. There’s this sense of being in the presence of something that’s bigger than any of us,” Schindler says.

In the moment

UCSC senior Luke Smith, 23, was sitting in the back row when he saw Don Scott collapse. Smith, a former Southern California lifeguard, had given CPR a few times during beach rescues but said he was not prepared to perform that day. For one thing, he had a broken wrist in a cast. He also didn’t know if the theater was equipped with a defibrillator.
Don Scott is diabetic, so at first his wife and fellow musicians thought he needed some sugar. But no sweets could be found, and he wasn’t responding.
Smith says he sat there, stunned and not fully grasping the emergency of the moment.
“I kind of said something like, ‘Oh, does anybody know CPR?’” Smith remembers, before noticing that the entire class was frozen still. “I didn’t realize I should have just jumped up, and it took a minute to realize.”
He snapped to action and ran down the aisle, yelling for classmates to call 911 and get the defibrillator.
Jenni Vierra, a 27-year-old single mother, was also at the back of the room watching the scene. The pre-medicine student had taken a CPR class this past spring at Cabrillo College before transferring to UCSC.
“I noticed his chest doing this jerking, rising, falling thing, and immediately recognized it as an unconscious gasp, not low blood sugar,” says Vierra. “So I jump up and I told the girl sitting next to me, ‘call 911 right now.’”
The gasping, also known as agonal respiration, is often seen in heart attacks and is a clear sign that the victim needs help to breathe.
Vierra ran to help Smith administer CPR. She performed chest compressions and he gave breaths.
“I just had that moment of clarity,” says Vierra. “This is all there is and I’m in this moment. I’m going to do this and I know how. I didn’t even think. It’s just thoughts without words and just being completely present in the moment.”
Someone came with the defibrillator just as the fire department paramedics arrived. Scott’s pulse was restored, a breathing machine was inserted, and he was whisked away.

Four Keys to Rescue

Mark Ramsey, a Cabrillo CPR instructor and assistant athletic training director, says CPR is usually not enough to revive a heart attack victim.
“If you catch them early enough then you can increase the chance of getting the person back, but a lot of the time CPR alone isn’t effective,” says Ramsey. “You’re just trying to keep blood pumping to the brain while you’re waiting for emergency medical services to get there.”
Ramsey says the first step is recognizing the emergency and calling 911 for help. He teaches students to look for signs of life: skin color, movement, breathing, and consciousness. If the victim is unresponsive, pale or blue, or their chest is not moving, then it’s time to call 911 and begin CPR, he says.
Students in his class receive certification from the American Heart Association (AHA), which updates its guidelines on best CPR practices every few years.
Nonprofessionals are advised not to check for a pulse, since a heartbeat can be tough to find and it wastes time, delaying the most important part: chest compressions, says Ramsey.
Chest compressions are so important that the AHA recommends “hands-only CPR,” without mouth-to-mouth, for teens and adults who are seen collapsing. In cardiac arrest, the heart and lungs usually contain enough oxygen to keep the vital organs healthy for a few minutes, as long as chest compressions are performed quickly and correctly, according to the AHA website.
Conventional CPR with mouth-to-mouth breathing is now only recommended for babies, children, people who are discovered unconscious and not breathing normally, and victims of drowning, drug overdose and collapse due to breathing issues or prolonged cardiac arrest.
“Everybody should learn CPR. It’s a great tool to have,” says Ramsey. “Ambulances and paramedics aren’t there all the time, so citizens are the ones in the field and out there seeing most of these emergencies happen. So having knowledge about what to do and how to act is very important.”

MARK RAMSEY’S FOUR KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL CPR:

Push hard on the center of the chest, to a depth of at least two inches on an adult. This ensures the blood will reach the brain and other vital organs.
Pump fast—at a rate of about 100 to 120 compressions per minute. The AHA recommends pushing to the beat of the disco song “Stayin’ Alive.”
Allow the chest to recoil in between compressions so the heart can fill with blood.
If performing conventional CPR, use a ratio of 30 compressions to two breaths, so oxygen can fill the lungs and reach the blood.

Upcoming CPR Classes:

Kinesiology 15, a half-unit class that meets 5:30-9:45 p.m. Feb. 1 and Feb. 8, and Kinesiology 13, a three-unit class that also teaches first aid and meets three times, with an online component. Cabrillo College, 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos. Cost varies. Register at cabrillo.edu.
Online class that requires one in-person meeting for certification. Meetings are scheduled almost daily. Above Bar CPR, 3121 Park Ave., Suite E, Soquel. $63. Register at abovebarcpr.com.
CPR workshop for non-healthcare professionals. Certifications occur on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Defib This, 1543 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $45, plus cost of manual. Register at defibthis.com.
For a list of other local classes, visit aptosfire.com.

PUSH IT REAL GOOD A demonstration of the CPR technique used on 66-year-old musician Don Scott when he collapsed in a UCSC classroom last month.

Here and Don: California Republicans in the era of Trump

Tom Gogola

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January 6, 2016

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California Republicans in the era of Trump
Donald Trump’s campaign has so far been a general exercise in name-calling, immigrant-bashing and snippy tweets directed at out-of-favor reporters.
He’s running on the power of his celebrity and channeling Ted Nugent while saving the gory policy details for later—except as they relate to immigration. That one’s a no-brainer: Everyone must go!
It’s a drama driven to heights of nativism, and thanks to the pugilism of Trump and his extreme views on immigration, we’re looking at the most hateful electoral throw-down in memory. At the first GOP debate, he laid claim to the immigration mantle and said nobody would be talking about it were it not for him.
None of the other candidates disagreed, even as Trump has driven the other top-tier candidates to the right on immigration and pushed the GOP establishment into frenzied distraction in the process. Trump’s willingness to spill buckets of blood goes beyond his support for those two thugs who beat up a Mexican in his name in August (“The people that are following me are very passionate,” was his heinous defense, before he thought better of it).
Trump has already dropped a Willie Horton ad on Jeb “Third Time’s a Charm” Bush for daring to utter the word “love” in connection with a fair enough question about why Mexicans come here to work and then send money back to their families.
Trump’s ad juxtaposed Bush’s “love” comment with the Mexican rapists he plans to exploit all the way to the White House. The ad is priceless in its irresponsibility and rhetorical violence, and his poll numbers are holding steady. That Trump. He just says what’s on his mind. Mexicans have meanwhile responded with Trump piñatas—Watsonville’s Marquez Bros. Piñatas made the news last year when “the Donald” became their most popular model.
With the caucuses in Iowa and New Hampshire fast approaching, Trump still leads every major national poll for the GOP primary race. A Monmouth University poll from the middle of December put him at 41 percent—a 28 percent lead over second-place Ted Cruz—while others show the race at least somewhat tighter. According to CNN Poll of Polls averages, Trump enjoys the support of more than twice as many New Hampshire GOP voters than the next closest candidate; he’s polling at 26 percent, versus Marco Rubio’s 12 percent, with every other candidate registering single digits. In Iowa, CNN has Trump two points behind Cruz, with the rest of the pack again at less than 10 percent.
On Monday, Trump released his first campaign ad, which rather than shying away from his roundly criticized proposal to ban all Muslim immigrants, instead doubles down, actually opening with the promise of this “temporary” (whatever that is supposed to mean) ban. A radical immigration policy, it is now abundantly clear, is the backbone of his campaign.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Dec. 14 reported that six in 10 Republican voters back Trump’s proposed ban.

STATE BREAKAWAY

Even as the national Republican Party has pivoted hard right, the California state Republican Party has started to lay off the immigrant-bashing rhetoric.
In advance of its convention in September, the state party defanged some of its immigration plank—in apparent recognition of the fact that Trump is a looming demographic disaster of the highest order.
For his contribution to a necessary national conversation around immigration, Trump has pledged to forcibly remove 11 million undocumented immigrants now living here. There’s somewhere around 1.5 million in this state alone, many in the agricultural sector, working in the proverbial shadows.
Along the way, Trump promises he’ll force all those Syrian refugees back to their home country, too, or whatever’s left of it. It seems like a lot of what Trump stands for has to do with forcibly removing people. According to his immigration plan, he would also force American employers to hire American workers if elected president.
Progressive author and former congressional candidate Norman Solomon says nobody with a clue about American history should be surprised at the xenophobia driving the Trump phenomenon. Solomon says it can be seen through the lens of a country that’s experienced tough financial times and is now angling for scapegoats. Trump has stepped into a breach where a silent minority no longer remains silent, and will say and do the darnedest things in the service of Trump America. Much of that battle has played out in the anonymously enraged avenues of the Internet and right-wing radio. The image of a thoroughly progressive Bay Area is undercut, and sharply, through just a cursory spin through a couple of weeks’ worth of local rants and raves on Craigslist.
Indeed, last summer’s killing of Kathryn Steinle by an undocumented alien along San Francisco’s Embarcadero put that city’s “sanctuary” status in the national crosshairs—and sanctuary cities across the country right along with it.
David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist, says immigration and the sanctuary issue will likely find its way onto ballot measures in around half the states in 2016—a great issue for “tilting at windmills,” he says.
“Trump has unleashed but really just revisited the issue,” McCuan says about immigration, an issue that will serve to stimulate Republican turnout in 2016.
McCuan sees a future California GOP as one that focuses its efforts on hyperlocal races—school boards, planning commissions—and uses the ballot process to fan the flames of anti-immigrant sentiment. The most extreme end of the state party is the California Republican Assembly, he says, and that organization is hell-bent on rebuilding the farm team via local elections, regardless of what the state party does or doesn’t do when it comes to immigrants.

OUT OF CALIFORNIA’S PAST

So there’s a disconnect on undocumented immigration between the national party and the California GOP—and within the state party itself—but at least they agree on one thing: Benghazi. That story has trickled all the way down to local Republican committees, like so much supply-side manna from Libya.
This fall, NorCal county GOP committees flocked to see serviceman Kris Tanto Paronto, who was in Libya when four Americans were killed. His appearance was in advance of the release this month of the Michael-Bay-produced film 13 Hours, based on the book Paronto co-authored, 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi. Partisans are promoting the film as the bombshell that will prove once and for all that Barack Obama let Americans die while Hillary Clinton stood there and did nothing. Meanwhile, Trump issued a very screwy video that accuses politicians of “having fun” during the catastrophe.
Benghazi is a great way to get the base worked up, but shouldn’t California Republicans be a little more concerned about Trump and his immigration plan?
A request for comment made to the chairman of the Santa Cruz Republican Party was not returned by press time. Edelweiss “Eddie” Geary, chair of the Sonoma County Republican Party, believes that maybe Trump was on to something when he said that Mexico wasn’t necessarily sending its best across the border.
“Well, Mr. Trump said they send us their criminals,” Geary says. “I don’t know if Mexico is concerned about saying goodbye to those people.”
Geary says she supports legal immigration and says the GOP is “branded unfairly as being against immigration.”
A common theme in stories about California is how the state has led the proverbial way. It led the way in gay marriage, curbing emissions and medical cannabis.
“Every Republican I know is kind of embarrassed at this point,” says second-term U.S. Rep Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael. “Most of the time they will tell you that they’ve voted for Democrats for years. Most will tell you that the party has left them.”
Huffman sees in the Trump anti-immigrant gambit a corollary from California’s not-distant past. Voters here passed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994, which turned out to be a disaster for the state party that pushed it.
“At the national level, the GOP led by Trump and Cruz and others—it’s exactly what happened to the California GOP in 1994 with Wilson,” Huffman says, referring to former governor Pete Wilson, Republican. “He played to an ugly type of populism to win an election, and it’s cost them elections ever since. The same thing is now going on at the national level.”

Good Times staff contributed to this story.

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Steve Palopoli

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January 6, 2016

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Film, Times & Events: Week of January 1

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GT Staff

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January 1, 2016

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Films this Week
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For Reel: Favorite Films of 2015

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Lisa Jensen

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December 30, 2015

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Fact trumped fiction at the movies in 2015—at least in the majority of my favorite films. There’s often more truth than strict historical fact in anything calling itself a “true story” onscreen, but a lot of entries in my Top Ten had at least a nodding acquaintance with historical reality. Stream these for a happy New Year!
TRUMBO Bryan Cranston plays blacklisted real-life Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo with edgy, raging wit in Jay Roach’s entertaining plunge into the dark heart of anti-Communist witch-hunting in Hollywood during the 1940s and ’50s. A movie for anyone interested in backstage Hollywood stories, the craft and business of screenwriting, or the (belated) triumph of reason over fear-mongering.
SONG OF THE SEA Anyone who loves seals, ancient Celtic folklore, or mythology will be charmed by Tomm Moore’s ravishing, hand-drawn Irish animated feature, combining traditional selkie tales with a stunning visual palette, and an endearing tale of a young girl and her destiny.
COMING HOME Oceans of feeling roil beneath the surface in Zhang Yimou’s spare, resonant story whose characters will break your heart. At the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a schoolteacher and her teenage daughter await the return of her husband from a labor camp, but when he arrives, his amnesiac wife no longer recognizes him. A chamber piece for three voices, full of small exquisite notes to be savored.
IRIS A fixture on the New York City design scene for more than 60 years, 93-year-old Iris Apfel proves that fashion has no expiration date. With her wry wit and easy laugh, she’s a beguiling subject for this lively doc by legendary Albert Maysles.
DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL A 15-year-old girl navigates the tightrope between child and adult in Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s graphic novel. It’s a fresh, poignant female coming-of-age drama set in 1976 San Francisco—a liberating, yet dangerous world of almost no taboos. Star Bel Powley makes an impressive debut.
LOVE & MERCY Paul Dano is terrific as Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson in the 1960s, at the height of his creative genius, in Bill Pohlad’s generally absorbing fiction film. John Cusack is effective as the ’80s-model Brian, and it’s all connected by a fabulous, gluttonous feast of Wilson music, from surf tunes to Smile.
INSIDE OUT In the mission control center of the brain, where five key emotions constantly jockey for position, a foul-up in the control booth temporarily disconnects an 11-year-old from her personality. A trek through the adolescent brain is needed to set things right—a journey both hilarious and moving in Pete Docter’s smart, animated Pixar movie.
THE DANISH GIRL In the 1920s, real-life Danish painter Einar Wegener was one of the first people to have sexual reassignment surgery, transitioning into a woman, Lili Elbe. Tom Hooper tells the larger story of the evolving relationship between Wegener and his wife. Nuanced performances from Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander highlight this compassionate portrait of love and identity.
TESTAMENT OF YOUTH Vera Brittain’s WWI memoir inspires James Kent’s searing, heartfelt drama. Maintaining Brittain’s focus on the minutiae of women’s daily lives, and the encroachment of war that leaves no aspect of those lives unscathed, the film paints a broad canvas in delicate strokes of all that is lost in the brutality of war.
STEVE JOBS Leave it to scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin to come up with a punchy way to distill the complex story of the visionary who invented Apple computers. Sorkin’s sharp script, and the propulsive energy of Danny Boyle’s direction make for an entertaining biographical drama.
Most Egregious Misfire: Pan. Oh, please.
Guilty Pleasure: A Little Chaos. Harry Potter’s Snape (Alan Rickman, who also directs) as Louis XIV. Kate Winslet as a female landscape designer at Versailles. Plausible? Not remotely, but still loads of fun.
Comeback Kid: The Star Wars franchise. J. J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens recaptures the spirit of the 1977 original—by replicating all the original elements: desert planet, lost droid, cantina scene, Storm Troopers, space pilots, ominous father-son relations. With a few fun twists, like a female protagonist, and a chance to see our favorite characters 30-plus years on.