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.”

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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.

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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.

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Midnite Snack Delivers Tasty Tunes

Midnite Snack members, Denny Yoints, Trever Hope, Shaina Elster and Dody HaulinSteck. Photo By Brian Harker.

When singer and guitarist Denny Yoints wakes up in the morning, he thinks, “What do I even like about music or playing?” and whatever creative force strikes him he brings to the Midnite Snack. The result might be a pounding post-punk song with scratchy solos and penetrating vocals or a synth-driven number about a freezer and its contents, but whatever it is, Midnite Snack is doing its own thing.

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Three Arrested in Pogonip Drug Sting

SCPD Officer Mike Medina talks to an IV drug user at Pogonip in November 2009. Photo by Curtis Cartier

Santa Cruz police arrested three suspected drug dealers in the Pogonip Thursday after a sting operation was conducted, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports. The men, 23-year-old Alfonso Marquez, 23-year-old Rey Antonio and 31-year-old John Pitts, were charged with crimes related to heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana.

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