Hello there, friends and neighbors. It’s Tuesday, May 19 – another warm one around Santa Cruz County, heading toward 90 in the mountains and low 80s possible even at the bay.
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We’ll start out with the latest theater review from Jana Marcus, who took in Mountain Community Theater’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”. On through June 7, this version of Edward Albee’s play is “a thoughtful, emotionally charged production of a notoriously difficult American classic,” Marcus writes. “It’s long, messy, funny, cruel and exhausting, exactly as Albee intended.”
In Lookout’s Community Voices opinion section, UC Santa Cruz professor and current provost of Oakes College Marcia Ochoa takes aim at the university’s reorganization of provost positions at the school’s 10 residential colleges. Ochoa’s job is among those being restructured, but it’s the students who will pay the greatest price, they write.
With the school year winding down, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education is recognizing our community’s top educators, and Ashley Palma-Jimenez has that news. Leading the way is Shireen Goudarzi, a third grade teacher at H. A. Hyde Elementary School in Watsonville, who’s the county’s teacher of the year.
To the headlines …
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Cocktails and cruelty fuel Mountain Community Theater’s fierce ‘Virginia Woolf’
Powered by standout performances and emotional precision, Mountain Community Theater’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” pulls audiences straight into the middle of one very dangerous late-night cocktail party, Jana Marcus writes. Capturing both the venom and heartbreak inside Edward Albee’s iconic play, audiences are in for a marathon, but the effort is rewarded. Read her latest theater review here.
OPINION: Shrinking UCSC’s college system means more than losing my provost position; students will lose access and mentorship
UC Santa Cruz says its college provost reorganization is about investment and efficiency. But UCSC professor and current provost of Oakes College Marcia Ochoa says the changes were made with little consultation, will weaken students’ sense of belonging on campus and might actually cost the university more money. Ochoa is being pushed out of their provost position in the restructuring, but says it’s the students who will lose the most. Read Ochoa’s Community Voices op-ed here.
DAILY DIGEST
Among what Tuesday still holds from Lookout is the latest in Santa Cruz County food & drink, on its way to inboxes a little later in the form of Lily Belli on Food – one of the many free newsletters and breaking news alerts you can sign up for here. You can also opt into breaking news notifications in the Lookout Santa Cruz app, available for download in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and you brave social media souls can keep up with it all by connecting with Lookout on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and/or Threads.
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Stay hydrated, and I’ll see you next time – thanks for reading!
Will McCahill