Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

Staff Writer

The Spring-Summer Fashion Cheat Sheet

Women wear the pants this season. OK, so they also wear flirty lace dresses and bold, Aztec warrior princess necklaces. But first: pants, big pants. From full, fluid trousers to high-waist flare jeans, the spring/summer 2011 silhouette is long and loose. It has a powerful, in-control attitude, helped by its natural pairing with tall wedge platforms, which add height and length. Stovepipes and jeggings, begone!

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New Photos Raise Old Questions About Hatchery

Bird House: The hatchery building near Rodriguez and 7th Avenue in Live Oak. (Chip Scheuer)

Last month, while at the Buena Vista landfill, Kelly Luker saw a white Cal-Cruz Hatcheries truck dumping mounds of fluffy yellowish material. Remembering that Cal-Cruz had been in the news earlier in the year, she pulled out her camera phone and moved closer to take pictures. “I walked up to get a better view, though I had a pretty good idea what it was,” Luker says. “Looking closer, I saw little chick eyes staring out of mangled heads and pieces of feet and beak scattered about. You can’t see something like that and eat chicken again.”

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Why Fish Biologists Are Plugging for Desal

Steelhead and coho salmon in their river colors. Illustration by Amadeo Bachar.

During a rainy year—that is, a good year for fish—adult steelhead salmon swim in from the ocean and up the San Lorenzo River between December and March to lay their eggs in gravel on the river bottom. After hatching in early spring, the juvenile fish linger in the river for at least a year (and sometimes two or three), feeding and maturing. When they’re finally ready, the smolt, or teenage steelhead, head downstream into a lagoon, a sort of all-you-can-eat buffet for oceanbound young salmon.

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Watsonville Nurses Stonewalled Again

Nurse spokesman Tim Thomas. Photo by Chip Scheuer.

Relations between Watsonville Community Hospital nurses and hospital management have been ailing since January, when the two parties entered into contract negotiations. Things heated up in October, when a one-day walkout turned into a three-day lockout and strike. Talks were slated to start back up Dec. 10, with a bargaining day that the hospital offered nurses shortly after the strike. But days away from the planned meeting, the situation needs life support. 

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