Santa Cruz City Councilmember Tony Madrigal is concerned about how the current recession will have a lasting impact on teenagers. In these very formative years of their lives, many are forced to do without such basic staples as food, shelter, iPods, Wii’s, unlimited texting and clothing. That is why he has teamed up with Classic Cleaners to launch a community effort to help needy teens get to their proms in the style that they are accustomed to. They are launching the Prom Dress Drive.
UCSC Students Receive Summons
The 45 UCSC students who occupied Kerr Hall in response to a 30 percent tuition hike have been summoned to appear before a council.
Ten Questions for Shane Desmond
The big wave rider from Santa Cruz, who took second place this year at Maverick’s, talks about juggling family, surfing and three jobs.
Banff Film Fest Slams Into Santa Cruz
The Olympic sport of curling involves two teams of players carefully sliding large stones down an icy lane while “sweepers” use brooms to polish the rocks’ gradual paths toward a target.
There will be no curling shown at the Banff Mountain Film Festival.
America’s Invisible Immigrants
Author Gabriel Thompson may have spent two months cutting lettuce (no one says “picking lettuce,” as he discovered) in the blisteringly hot fields of Yuma, Ariz., for his new book, but he had his first glimpses of the backbreaking work of immigrant laborers just outside Watsonville. “I grew up surfing Manresa and Sunset Beach,” says the Cupertino-raised Thompson, a contributor to the New York Times and the Nation. “I’d often drive through the strawberry fields just off of Highway 1, and I would just pull over and watch people work. I would be very curious about what it was like to do the work and who the people were. It seemed like a completely foreign place.”
Free Downtown Parking Over
Like pull-tabs and 8-tracks, free parking will soon be a thing of the past in downtown Santa Cruz.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch Bigger than Anticipated
Researchers studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have reached a disturbing conclusion. It’s a lot bigger than they originally anticipated. Giora Proskurowski of the Sea Education Association says that the reason scientists have miscalculated is the wind. It tends to push the plastic down from the water’s surface to the upper ocean. After studying the phenomenon he realized that there’s about as much plastic in the next 9 meters of ocean as there is in the top 1 meter that has been studied.
Twitter Gets Spiritual
“Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.” It’s a quote attributed to Tenzin Gyatso, known around the world as the 14th Dalai Lama. It’s also just 58 characters long, perfectly tweet-sized, as are so many others of the Dalai Lama’s insights. More quotes like this could soon become available from the source himself—on Twitter. It’s not just for devotees either. As the Dalai Lama said: “If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it” (88 characters).
Grateful Dead Archive to Feature in ‘The Atlantic’
UCSC’s Grateful Dead Archive hasn’t even opened for business yet and it’s already getting plenty of attention. It will be the focus of a feature article in the March edition of The Atlantic. The article spotlights the academic and scholarly impact that the archive will have on a wide range of disciplines, some of them unexpected. Sure, music historians and ethnomusicologists will be interested, and the Dead were a historical phenomenon—the voice of a generation.
Women Ventures Project Training Women for Construction Jobs
The Women Ventures Project in Santa Cruz County is using federal stimulus funding to train women for careers in construction.
