The Exotic Is Among Us

The Santa Cruz Orchid Society held its show over the weekend.

When travel writer Eric Hansen wrote Orchid Fever in 2000, the Columbus Dispatch commented that “The exotic, it turns out, is among us.” As it was in Santa Cruz this weekend. Botany, obsession, and plant-politics converged in Soquel for the Santa Cruz Orchid Society’s Orchid Show. “You can get off alcohol, drugs, women, food, and cars,” says Joe Kunisch, a commercial orchid grower from Rochester, New York, “but once you’re hooked on orchids, you’re finished.”

Continue Reading →

Go Populist Now

Election results rarely have a single explanation. Yet it’s pretty clear that Scott Brown’s special election win in a state that last sent a Republican to the United States Senate in 1978 is an indicator of the turbulent national political mood a year after Obama took office.

Continue Reading →

UCSC Postpones Cage-Free Policy

Eggs from happy chickens are the goal.

After Prop. 2 passed, banning battery-cage egg production in the state, UC-Santa Cruz senior Eric Deardorff and his group Banana Slugs for Animals approached dining services about making it campus-wide policy to serve only cage-free eggs. As of this fall, it appeared that talks with Director of Dining Services Scott Berlin were going extremely well.

Continue Reading →