Quick Take:

Santa Cruz needs more water if it is going to comfortably grow as planned. A new policy aimed at future water-supply...

Nonprofit Spotlight stories
Expand ocean education: O’Neill Sea Odyssey seeks support for hands-on youth programs Amplifying coastal science & addressing climate change: Make a gift to the Seymour Marine Discovery Center Preserving natural beauty: Coastal Watershed Council shares their ongoing mission to protect our community

Andy Carman matches restless locals with volunteer opportunities in defense of the planet

Andy Carman is the driving force behind Environteers
Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

Where the enormity of the challenges facing the planet drags some into defeatism, it had the opposite effect on Andy Carman, galvanizing the Santa Cruz psychotherapist into action. “Andy, quit whining about what’s needed and what’s missing,” he told himself, and Environteers soon followed. Wallace Baine profiles Carman for our Unsung Santa Cruz series.

➤ MORE UNSUNG SANTA CRUZ: Lookout highlights regular folks doing great things

Preserving our diverse ecosystems: All Land Trust donations doubled through Dec 31

Her classroom and sex education curriculum help students feel safe and included

Delta Charter High School teacher Jamie Cutter talks about her curriculum in her classroom on Dec. 12, 2022.
Credit: Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Local

As an English and health teacher at Delta Charter High School, Jamie Cutter has her hands full. Students and other education leaders say she’s made a difference in Santa Cruz County by helping youth develop healthy and critical decision-making skills in and outside the classroom. Hillary Ojeda profiles Cutter for our Unsung Santa Cruz series.

➤ MORE FROM K-12 EDUCATION: California schools, including in Santa Cruz, set for ‘windfall’ in arts funding starting in 2023-24

Click here for a $12 per month Lookout membership

This really is a season of magic and memories

Claudia Sternbach spent a lot of time making Christmas memories with her daughter and husband.
Credit: Via Claudia Sternbach

Lookout columnist Claudia Sternbach remembers her “Christmas pasts” in Santa Cruz, when as a young mother she tried to give her daughter the sort of memories she didn’t have as a child. She remembers window shopping at Leask’s department store on Pacific Avenue and when shopkeepers handed out cookies and cocoa. Now, she realizes, the memories are more hers than her daughter’s. She’s OK with that. The memories sustain her all year. Read her column here.

➤ MORE FROM CLAUDIA STERNBACH: Need holiday reading recommendations? Try these books on for size

Dirty Girl Produce display ad
As desalination gains traction in parts of California, Santa Cruz weighs future of its water supply ‘The world is missing something without him’: Santa Cruz memorializes its unhoused fatalities How climate change is reshaping the Christmas tree ‘It’s not ‘us versus the whales’’: Delayed crab season weighs heavily on Central Coast fishermen As Benchlands broke up, overdoses spiked: How much does displacement create dangerous isolation?

Over the past decade, Christopher Neely has built a diverse journalism résumé, spanning from the East Coast to Texas and, most recently, California’s Central Coast.Chris reported from Capitol Hill...