Posted inOpinion from Community Voices

Conversations with Jody: Bestseller Ng talks new novel, hope in dark times, humanities crisis

Bestselling novelist Celeste Ng is blessed with prodigious gifts. She writes gorgeous, lush sentences that make us look at ourselves and our world differently. Her first two novels have sold more than 2 million copies and her second novel, “Little Fires Everywhere,” became a popular TV series starring Reese Witherspoon. She comes to Santa Cruz on Oct. 18 for a Bookshop Santa Cruz event at UCSC’s Cowell Ranch Hay Barn to talk about her new novel, “Our Missing Hearts.” Witherspoon just tapped the book as her October pick. Community Voices editor Jody K. Biehl talks to Ng about the book, writing, the role of the humanities and artists, the rise of Donald Trump, motherhood and more.

Posted inOpinion from Community Voices

Stop watering your cactus! Why succulents matter and how to stop killing them

Martin Quigley, director of UC Santa Cruz’s Arboretum & Botanic Garden, is back with more tips on climate-friendly planting. This time, he tackles succulents, everyone’s favorite office and garden plant, and outlines why they are excellent choices for our Mediterranean climate. And he takes us backstage at the Arb to show us how he “makes” plant babies. You can do it, too.

Posted inOpinion from Community Voices

A year after my father’s death, I’m still getting to know him; turns out his time with Pranksters wasn’t so merry

Dean Quarnstrom died in 2021 and his son Evan has spent the year since traveling the world, mourning and reading his dad’s journals, which chronicle his days hovering on the fringes of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters in 1960s Santa Cruz. Dean describes the Pranksters as “pretentious,” “untrustworthy” and a “bunch of a–holes.” As he reads his father’s writing, Evan relives the counterculture generation — including his dad’s stories about Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and Hells Angels — and gets to know a side of his father he never knew.

Posted inOpinion from Community Voices

From warring yard signs to national vitriol, election season has pre-Civil War feel

Election season is in the air. For Claudia Sternbach, the constant vitriol and opposition she sees online, in the news and even in warring Santa Cruz County yard signs is disturbing. Worried about our current divisions, she headed to her local bookstore and bought two new novels on the Civil War — “Booth” by well-known Santa Cruz author Karen Joy Fowler and “Horse” by Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks. Both, she writes, speak to us today as we edge toward Nov. 8.

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