Two years ago, Karla and Daniel DeLong and their two young daughters fled their Ben Lomond home during the CZU fire. Their house miraculously didn’t burn, but they lost hundreds of trees and were left with acres of scorched land. Aided by friends, the community and Karla’s “crazy-cool” vision, they have transformed their property into a dahlia farm “with the sole purpose of bringing color and joy back to our devastated community,” Daniel DeLong writes. It’s open this Saturday to the public.
Community Voices
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Don’t let Santa Cruz City Council mute your voice on development decisions
Save Santa Cruz believes the city’s new “objective standards” are flawed and will radically change the fabric of the city; the city council is scheduled to vote on them at its meeting Tuesday. The group, led by the author, Gary A. Patton, who served as District 3 Supervisor from 1975 to 1995, believes the new standards will significantly cut back public hearing rights and will not adequately project the quality and character of life in Santa Cruz.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Come with us to the Benchlands: Listen to five voices of Santa Cruz’s unhoused
We often talk about “the unhoused” in Santa Cruz County, but we rarely talk to them. Here, in video clips, Lookout’s Jody K. Biehl and Kevin Painchaud take you to the Benchlands, Santa Cruz’s largest homeless encampment — a place of ongoing controversy as the city plans its closure — and hear from five people living there. If you haven’t walked the Benchlands, this is your opportunity. As part of our interviews, we asked Benchlands residents what they want you — the public — to know about them and their lives.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Letter to the editor: City must tell unhoused to ‘abide by the rules, or move on down the road’
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here. To the editor: One. Overdose. Death. A. Week. Let that sink in, from a recent Lookout report of there being “at least” six fentanyl-related ODs in the Santa Cruz Benchlands since July. Homeless advocates are threatening another lawsuit […]
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Letter to the editor: Residents’ viewpoints are missing in coverage of changes to downtown
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here. To the editor: I am concerned about the little information residents have and really don’t understand about the city’s objective standards, related to all future building in Santa Cruz. This is so important, yet no one I know […]
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Jewish law requires COVID-19 vaccines, and so does Simcha preschool: We must protect the most vulnerable
Temple Beth El’s preschool program, Simcha, is requiring all children, teachers and staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to attend the play-centered program in Aptos. Some families have objected to the temple board’s vaccine decision and have left the program. Rabbi Paula Marcus, the congregation’s longtime leader, argues that caring for the most vulnerable among us, and thus getting ourselves and our children vaccinated, draws directly from the commandment to preserve life — which the Jewish faith places above all others.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Santa Cruz’s arts community needs a protective ‘SCAARF’ to survive
Longtime mixed media artist Sara Friedlander has a retrospective at the Curated by the Sea gallery in downtown Santa Cruz through Sept. 10, with her friend and fellow artist Dee Hooker. Friedlander’s art has encouraged us to rethink immigration, the systemic oppression of women, climate change, the threat to democracy and more. In a Community Voices op-ed, she writes about the need to support Santa Cruz’s artists through the “SCAARF fundraising wall of art,” which is showing along with their exhibit. Check it out; you might get to take home your favorite piece.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Letter to the editor: Hear from the unhoused at 6 p.m. Monday; don’t let city clear the Benchlands
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here. To the editor: The City of Santa Cruz wants to clear the Benchlands and says it will relocate residents to shelters. But the shelters are already filled to capacity. Unless city officials magically find at least 300 more […]
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
My new yoga place is not a safe space. How could it be?
Santa Cruz yogi Valerie Moselle has been trying — and failing — to quit teaching yoga. She loves it, but she also believes yoga is too often a “colonized white space of privilege, rife with cultural appropriation and spiritual bypassing.” In a Community Voices op-ed, she explores the dichotomy and her own mixed feelings and writes about the warning sign she’d like to post outside her studio for her students.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
I don’t want high school to end; the pandemic cheated me out of two years
Maren Detlefs started Santa Cruz High School as a senior Wednesday and already doesn’t want high school to end. Maren is excited for college, they write, but feels cheated by the pandemic and wants to milk this final year for all the experiences they lost since COVID-19 hit in 2020. Maren is technical director in the school’s theater program and describes how the chaos backstage, the long weeks hot-gluing sets together and the roar of the audience at a final performance offers a sense of belonging the actors will miss dearly when high school ends.