There’s a good reason to go to the beach this Saturday, whether you live in Santa Cruz, California, or Omaha, Nebraska (and you didn’t think they had a beach …). Activists in all 50 states and 31 countries are gathering at noon to hold hands and call for a stop to offshore oil drilling.
News
Santa Cruz Gets ‘The Goat’
What are society’s limits? What is acceptable, what is not, and why? These are questions posed by Mountain Community Theater’s production of Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, a play which provoked both laughter and groans of disgust from its audience when it opened last Friday.
Whooping Cough Epidemic Hits California
It’s not even flu season yet, but California is being hit by a new epidemic, this time of whooping cough. The highly contagious disease, also known as pertussis, has shown a fourfold increase from last year, with some 910 recorded cases of the disease in the state as of June 15 and another 600 possible cases under investigation.
Four Arrested in Narcotics Raid
After repeated complaints from neighbors, police obtained a warrant to search a home on the 300 block of Spruce Street in Santa Cruz.
New MO for Rock Throwers
Santa Cruz has long had a problem with people throwing rocks at homes and businesses. Now, however, a new modus operandi seems to be emerging. People in cars are throwing rocks (and in one case, a block of wood) at pedestrians and cyclists. No one has yet to identify the perpetrators or the vehicle (or vehicles), which has alternately been described as a gray (or black) pickup truck, a dark SUV or various models of cars.
Charges Dismissed in Rock-Throwing Case
A judge has dismissed charges against Zakari Adams, suspected of throwing rocks through the windows of homes and businesses across Santa Cruz.
Study: Gray Whales In Crisis
From her boat in Moss Landing, Sarah Graham has seen several gray whales in Monterey Bay this month. But sightings of this majestic animal so late in the migration season are not normal—nor is anything else about this year. “There are not as many large groups of whales coming through the Monterey Bay, and we are seeing a lot of smaller, skinnier animals,” says Graham, who serves as West Coast Director at the California Gray Whale Coalition.
Old-Time Music Revival Hits Santa Cruz
In 2005, three young musicians with a fascination for African-American folk music attended the Black Banjo Gathering in North Carolina, drawn in part by the promise of seeing fiddler Joe Thompson in action. Then in his mid-eighties, Thompson figured among the last remaining links to the originators of the long-dormant black string band tradition. Having picked up the fiddle in the 1920s, at the peak of string band popularity, Thompson had spent the better part of a century learning and playing foot-stomping rhythms, short and scratchy fiddle licks and plucky banjo lines in a just-about-any-instrument-will-do down-home style.
Billion Dollar Baby
A year ago, Richard C. Blum, then the chairman of the regents of the University of California, spoke at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference 2009, held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. The corporate confab was hosted by Michael Milken, the “junk bond king” who went to prison in the aftermath of the savings and loan fiasco in the 1980s. Milken, who is barred from securities trading for life by federal regulators, has since recreated himself as a proponent of investing in for-profit educational corporations, an industry that regularly comes under government and media scrutiny in response to allegations of fraud made by dissatisfied students.
When’s a Good Time to Give a Nazi Salute?
At a hearing before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the city of Santa Cruz’s attorney, George Kovacevich, was grilled by the judges over the ejection of Robert Norse from a meeting for giving a Nazi salute. The city claims that the salute was disruptive, but the judges wanted to know if it was the salute itself that was disruptive or whether it was the time at which it was given. Would the salute have been acceptable, they asked, if it had been given during the normal public comment period?
