Banana slugs are embedded in Santa Cruz culture, but few know about the creatures’ secretive, sultry sex lives — or the local banana slug “rancher” documenting what slugs do under cover of night. Janet Leonard, an ethologist at UCSC, has built a career on understanding the mysterious sexual world of hermaphrodites, with a 20-year focus on West Coast banana slugs. She’s part of a long line of puzzled slug researchers. As Henry Pilsbry and E.G. Vanatta wrote in 1896, “he who attempts the identification of a West Coast slug to-day is not only a bold man but also one probably doomed to a miserable failure.”
Lookout Q&A
Posted inPolitics & Policy
$40 million later, Metro CEO Michael Tree’s priorities remain doubling ridership, zero emissions and housing
Having managed four transit systems before making his way to Santa Cruz, Michael Tree lives and breathes public transportation. With a recently secured $40 million from the state, the head of the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District sat down with Lookout to discuss what that money will help fund, how his past experience informs what to do in Santa Cruz, the difficulties in building passenger rail, and more.
Posted inEducation
‘Antisemitism is real and we’re seeing it’: UC Santa Cruz provost shocked by antisemitic incidents
Elizabeth Abrams, provost of UC Santa Cruz’s Merrill College, says she’s stunned by two recent antisemitic incidents, including that a group of students held a birthday party for Adolf Hitler on campus. Abrams is also vice president of Santa Cruz Hillel’s board of directors, which held an emergency meeting Wednesday night to discuss how to move forward. “We need more than messages at this point,” Abrams said. The latest incidents come little more than a year after anti-Black, antisemitic and white supremacist graffiti was scrawled on Merrill College.
Posted inCoast Life, Events
The last wave: Ambitious and locally rooted publication Santa Cruz Waves closes up shop
Santa Cruz Waves, the glossy periodical devoted to covering surfing and its influence on Monterey Bay culture and environmental issues, has ceased publication. “To put it quite bluntly,” CEO and founder Tyler Fox told Lookout, “I was just not getting enough financial return to make it worthwhile for me, personally.”
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Q&A: State Sen. John Laird on Pajaro levee, affordable housing crisis and California’s budget deficit
State Sen. John Laird announced last week that he plans to seek reelection in 2024. A second four-year term in the California Senate would put Laird at the end of his term limits, marking the finale of his time as an elected state legislator. Laird, who turns 73 this month, agreed to hop on the phone for a Q&A a day after announcing his plans to seek one more term in Sacramento.
Posted inCity Life
Into ‘The Candy House’: Jennifer Egan on her timely new novel, ChatGPT and the demise of fiction
Jennifer Egan comes to UC Santa Cruz’s Cowell Ranch Hay Barn on Wednesday riding the wave of “The Candy House,” which revisits the same universe her acclaimed “A Visit From the Goon Squad” inhabited, but this time with Big Tech in the bull’s-eye.
Posted inEnvironment
Q&A: UCSC researcher Chris Wilmers on how a new Highway 17 animal crossing protects Santa Cruz mountain lions
UC Santa Cruz professor of environmental studies Chris Wilmers has spent more than 15 years researching the population of around 50 mountain lions living in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Wilmers helped the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County develop a wildlife crossing underneath Highway 17 at Laurel Curve, which opened in January. He shares his thoughts on how to protect mountain lions from encroaching development.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Q&A: Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson believes her home country of Iran is on the brink of a revolution
For Santa Cruz City Councilmember Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, the ongoing uprising in Iran is personal. She and her family fled Iran in the early 1980s, only a few years after the Islamic regime came into power following the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Posted inLatest News
Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley on his ‘intentional’ avoidance of cameras during January’s storms
Even as politicians from President Joe Biden on down flocked to tour storm-ravaged areas of Santa Cruz County, Fred Keeley steered clear of the photo ops, with Santa Cruz’s mayor saying he’s keeping his powder dry for when the city needs a strong advocate during the rebuilding phase.
Posted inEducation
UCSC graduate student union leader Jack Davies on strike, strong opposition to new contract
Nearly 48,000 University of California academic workers went on strike for better pay and benefits late last year — earning a new contract in December. The loudest opposition to the contract was at UC Santa Cruz, reflecting, UAW unit chair Jack Davies says, that members “were ready and prepared to continue the fight.”