What started as a Santa Cruz book club/discussion group now has its sights set on inspiring a critical mass of humanity to make the commitment to avoid catastrophic climate change. That begins Saturday with the first in a series of talks aimed at building a bridge between science and spirituality, to take “a next step beyond religion” into a broader movement.
Civic Life
Posted inEnvironment
Arrowhead bottled water company sues to continue piping from California forest
California ordered a bottled water company to stop taking much of the water it pipes from a national forest. BlueTriton Brands is suing to challenge the ruling.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
More working Californians slipped into poverty as pandemic aid expired
California’s poverty rate climbed and its working poor grew this spring, says the Public Policy Institute of California. Safety net programs played a major role in poverty rate changes.
Posted inWatsonville / Pajaro
Watsonville springs to life honoring the dead for Día de Los Muertos
“It’s really important that people know this is not Mexican Halloween,” the director of the Watsonville Film Festival says of Día de Los Muertos, being celebrated this weekend at the downtown plaza and elsewhere. “The essence of each is very different. Halloween is all about being scary and funny, and though Day of the Dead can be funny, too, they just come from different places.”
Posted inEnvironment
Officials urge California residents to brace for flooding as El Niño looms
More than 7 million California residents live in an area where they are at risk of flood, officials said — and many don’t even know it. That echoes a warning to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors last week about battered local infrastructure ahead of an El Niño winter.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
In the Public Interest: In first Assembly session, Pellerin picks fight with Northern California conservatives
Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a former Santa Cruz County clerk, ended the legislative session with 10 of her bills signed into law. Of those, six focused on voting. One bill, AB 969, takes direct aim at a controversy over a Shasta County plan to hand-count ballots in an upcoming special election.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Eastside’ vs. ‘Midtown’: Choose your side
Midtown is the name of a simple business district — bounded roughly by Soquel Avenue between Ocean Street and Morrissey Boulevard — but in the hurly-burly of change in Santa Cruz, its wider use features lots of questions of identity itself. While it causes some heads “to burst into flames,” others see it as supporting the commercial district around Soquel Avenue and Water Street. Is the Eastside — Seabright, Branciforte, Prospect Heights, the Banana Belt, DeLaveaga and Live Oak — the only name that’s needed?
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Homelessness 102: Santa Cruz County needs to spend more on emergency response
In the second of two pieces on homelessness, housing activist and former Santa Cruz mayor Don Lane breaks down the differences in the way the City of Santa Cruz thinks about housing people and how the county does. “The city puts much more emphasis on interim shelter,” he writes, “… and spends several million dollars per year here. I believe the county ought to match the city’s commitment.”
Posted inEnvironment
Can California continue to fight the ocean? A new book argues for new approaches
As last winter made clear all over Santa Cruz County, nothing is permanent when confronted with the power of the Pacific. In “California Against the Sea,” Los Angeles Times journalist Rosanna Xia examines the postwar coastal development boom and the daunting challenges facing the 27 million Californians who live in the coastal zone as sea-level rise and coastal erosion become urgent facts of life. She’ll talk about it Tuesday at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
Posted inLatest News
Oops! California earthquake early-warning test goes off 7 hours too early for some
Some Californians received a test of the earthquake early-warning system seven hours before the appointed time, waking them at 3:19 a.m. Thursday. The warning was supposed to be scheduled for 10:19 a.m. Thursday.