Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage By Susan Shillinglaw University of Nevada Press, cloth, $34.95 Seventy-five years on, John Steinbeck’s masterwork, The Grapes of Wrath, remains potent reading. The opening prose poem about the drought that drives the Joad family to the promised land of California—“The sun faced down on the growing corn…
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Review: ‘Particle Fever’
Director Mark Levinson followed a bunch of nerds for five years to create a documentary that is, dare I say, the most riveting story ever based around particle physics. In fact, it’s really set up like a mystery, with physicists flocking to the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest machine ever built by mankind. Will it…
Foodie File: Local Catch Monterey Bay
“Every fisherman you talk to would have a story that could easily be turned into a movie or book,” says Alan Lovewell, co-founder of Local Catch Monterey Bay. “They’ve all had their scary encounters. They’ve all had that huge fish get away. They’ve all lost friends at sea, and they’ve all struggled.” Lovewell, who grew…
Local Classes Promote Alternative Diets
PALEO PROLIFIC: You might want to check out the Spring Paleo Cooking demos presented by licensed nutritionist Rebecca Hazelton at the Westside New Leaf Community Market starting March 19 from 6 to 7:30pm. Surely you’re familiar with the “Paleo” food phenom? Think of it as a “back to the future” backlash against all things dairy…
Tips for Conserving Water During California's Drought
With California officially in a drought emergency, Gov. Jerry Brown is asking everyone to take a look at their daily habits and reduce consumption by 20 percent. “We can’t make it rain, but we can be much better prepared for the terrible consequences that California’s drought now threatens, including dramatically less water for our farms…
More Than Words at TEDxSantaCruz
TED talks have a reputation for being thought-provoking, but Irene Tsouprake’s ambitions for the TEDxSantaCruz conference aim a lot higher than that. “People can expect to have their minds and hearts blown,” says Tsouprake, the co-organizer/speaker curator for the conference, which comes to Hotel Paradox on Saturday. “Be prepared—it’s not like any conference you have…
Santa Cruz Blues Festival Announces 2014 Line-Up
Once a strictly blues festival, the Santa Cruz Blues Festival has come to encompass a wider range of music in the past decade or so, including rock ‘n’ roll, soul and roots music.
Nick Gallant’s Free Music for Santa Cruz
By giving his record away for free, Gallant hopes to jumpstart some serious discussion about how much we value music as a culture—or more to the point, why we don’t anymore.
Preview: The 2014 Oscars
Almost nothing is as commercial as an Oscar-nominated film—except in the case of the nominees that frankly aren’t. This year’s nominees are as eclectic a marginal mix as anyone can remember: a grumpy alcoholic mumbling his way through a high plains road trip, an elderly British woman tracking the baby she gave up for adoption,…
Preview: 'Three Days of Rain' at Center Stage
In all families, there is at least some gap between how much kids want to know about their parents’ early adult life, and how much the parents would rather not divulge—which is ultimately probably a good thing. How many people really want the gory details of their parents’ college years? These communication gaps become the…
