On Jan. 6, activists from Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom stood outside of Bookshop Santa Cruz to protest the law preventing homeless people from sleeping downtown. They handed out fliers to passersby and soup to the homeless. And they sang. In fact, they had a whole repertoire of songs, from Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” to John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” to Petula Clark’s “Downtown” (lyrics altered to reflect the occasion). It was around noon, but some of the neighbors considered them a nuisance. One of them, Sean Reilly, even called the police.
Psychedelic Conference a Big Hit
Timothy Leary once said that “We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history, but they’ve got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.” Well, they could have gone to the San Jose Holiday Inn to attend the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Conference. The Santa Cruz-based group brought together 1,000 people to discuss the benefits of psychedelic drugs, especially as a means of helping people tackling such problems as depression, OCD and PTSD.
A Bike Ride on the Westside
The bike cost 20 bucks at the Goodwill, what timing to find it, what a deal, it’s white with rusty spokes, it works, it fits, and so you take your aging heart for spin, sunlight revealing a long view across the bay, that purple slope of a distant peninsula akin to a tall nude lying on her side, reminder of distant springs, but now you are turning a corner downhill on Arroyo Seco letting gravity have its way with you and your wheels one late afternoon in April, breeze in your helmet, subtle joy in the soul to be gliding so easily along through such hard times …
Ten Questions for Chris Eckstrom
The writer and videographer for National Geographic tells us about her childhood heroes, her surfing plans and her new work with mountain lions.
Fire on The Mountain
Firefighters were called last night to put out a fire at the new McHenry Library. The building, which is under renovation, is slated to house the Grateful Dead archives, and some of the documents were already in the building. Nevertheless, university authorities say that the collection was not damaged in any way.
Two Dead in Family Spat
Two men are dead after a family spat ended with a shooting on Hutchinson Road, off Highway 35 near the summit.
County Superior Court Could Lose One-Quarter of Its Staff
Faced with a $2.3 million shortfall on its $18 million budget, the Santa Cruz County Superior Court is preparing to lay off between 20 and 30 of its employees by the end of this fiscal year on June 30. The total staff of the court is 140. The decision comes on top of a major restructuring effort announced two weeks ago.
Transportation Commission Eyeing King Street
The Transportation Commission has called on the city to study a bike-friendly King Street corridor.
Vets Hall to Cost $1.4 Million to Fix
First the good new: the Veterans Memorial Building can be repaired. Next the bad news: it will cost $1.4 million. This was the finding of a report by the Streeter Group Inc. of Soquel. The problems, according to the report, include fractured concrete columns in the auditorium and shaky soil beneath the foundation. It could pose a danger to people in the event of a significant earthquake. Repairs to the building could take anywhere from four to six months, but first the county will have to come up with the $1.4 million.
Santa Cruz Welcomes Its First Poet Laureate
Last year, when my friend Gary Young received the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, given annually to a “mid-career” poet, I couldn’t help wondering why the PSA had named such a prize after a poet (the English Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley) who had died at age 29. Shelley was a reckless genius, famous not only for his passionate verse but for his revolutionary politics and scandalous conduct, who drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Italy.
