District 27 incumbent Bill Monning and Watsonville mayor and District 28 candidate Luis Alejo will do well by the Central Coast in Sacramento.
News
The Curious Esthetic of Charles Burns
Halloween comes early this year with the release of X’ed Out, the new book by Charles Burns. Of the phantoms that stalk it, one of the unquiet is the ghost of punk rock, called forth from the late-1970s setting of this nightmarish but oddly innocent graphic novel created by one of the most notable exponents of the form.
Hospital Prepares for Nurses Strike
Nurses at the Watsonville Community Hospital are preparing to walk off the job on Thursday for a 24-hour strike. They’ve been offered a bonus, but they say the problem is a shortage of staffing and the burden that this places on nurses, even with a pay hike. And, they say, the hospital has been unresponsive to their demands by failing to make alternative suggestions and only meeting with them six times over the past nine months. The strike is intended as a wakeup call to the hospital administrators at Community Healthy Systems, the country’s biggest publicly traded hospital network.
Endorsements: Lompico Water Board
Four candidates are vying for two open seats on the board of directors of this small but troubled water district, which this year has been beset by embezzlement, the firing of its longtime district manager and a grand jury report detailing a history of gross mismanagement.
City About to Get New Beach for Free
Plenty of people frequent Sunny Cove Beach, a three-acre strip of waterfront at the end of 17th Avenue in Live Oak. They come for the sand, the bluffs, and the view—a panoramic outlook over Monterey Bay. What many of those visitors don’t know is that they are only able to go there because of the owners’ generosity. The beach is actually private land, he extended property of a home on one end.
Zipcars Come to Santa Cruz
The national car-sharing program Zipcar has expanded from UC Santa Cruz campus to cover all of Santa Cruz. Now anyone in Santa Cruz who registers for the program can take out one of six Zipcars for anywhere from an hour to four days. The cost of renting the cars is $8 per hour or $66 per day. The cars, which include three Prius hybrids, are parked in four lots, or pods, throughout the city.
Silko Heads for Santa Cruz
In 1977, just a few months after the publication of her bestselling novel, Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko found herself alone in a hospital bed in New Mexico, face-to-face with her own mortality. She was about to undergo emergency surgery for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, a procedure that was risky but without which she would certainly die. The possibility of death helped her, as the saying goes, to focus.
UCSC Names Its Streets
It’s easy to get lost on the UCSC campus. Roads meander along the contours of the hills, and often devolve into dirt paths, which may be great for hiking, but are hardly friendly to the underbelly of a car. “It’s more like finding your way around Yosemite than a campus,” says the school’s Director of Transportation Larry Pageler. For all the rest, it is like finding your way to Schrute Farm on The Office: “Turn left at the big tree, take 62 paces, and turn right. If you smell bear droppings you have gone too far.”
Man Shot Dead During Watsonville Robbery
The Fiesta Latino Market on East Beach Street at Beck is a popular spot in Watsonville, often frequented by students from Watsonville High School. On Tuesday night, an armed robber entered the store and demanded money. The owner, Yahya Ahmed, 32, gave him what he asked for, but before the robber left he shot Ahmed dead. Police are now investigating the crime, wondering if it is in any way connected with a shoplifting incident that took place at the 98Cent Discount Store on Freedom Boulevard on Monday.
Santa Cruz Poets, Santa Cruz Inspiration: Ken Weisner
From the Seabright poet, who teaches writing and literature and edits Red Wheelbarrow through De Anza Community College, a piece titled ‘Indian Summer.’
