Lookout columnist Claudia Sternbach has fallen for Anderson Cooper. His podcast, anyway. On it, he unpacks his grief at the death of his famous mother, the heiress and fashion trendsetter Gloria Vanderbilt, and the suicide of his brother, Carter. Like most people in their 70s, Sternbach has lost loved ones and has become accustomed to carrying her grief with her. “The older we get, the more we lose,” she writes in this latest column on aging. “And yet, as we continue on, we are expected to carry more. More memories, more grief, more tools to deal with said grief. We fill up a virtual backpack with it all and just keep walking as the load gets heavier.”
Opinion from Community Voices
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Anti-density stances are bad for Santa Cruz — so are ballot initiatives on building heights
Economist Richard McGahey responds to Housing for People activist Susan Monheit’s Sept. 15 Lookout piece. The two have been engaged in a lively public debate about changes to downtown Santa Cruz and the usefulness of a ballot initiative on tall buildings Housing for People is trying to get on the March ballot. McGahey, whose 2023 book on inequitable cities was nominated for a National Book Award, is against the initiative. “Not only do we voters not know enough, but such voting actually is anti-democratic, favoring wealthier people and homeowners,” he says.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Need an escape from bad news and politics? Try fiddlin’ in the forest
Lookout columnist Claudia Sternbach is amazed at her friend Nora, who at 68 took up fiddling in 2019 and recently performed in the Valley of the Moon Fiddle Extravaganza at DeLaveaga Park. Sternbach attended and was mesmerized by the range of emotions the music brought. “I had gone from foot tapping and clapping to sobbing silently, a lump in my throat the size of a boulder,” she writes. “I thought of the people I miss. The people I loved.” She also got a brief respite from the woes of the world. “Who knew that such a small instrument could provide such an abundance of joy?”
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Santa Cruz needs to stay a beach town: Let the people vote on high rises
Santa Cruz housing activist Susan Monheit believes Santa Cruz’s iconic status as a beloved beach town is endangered by planned development. Here, she responds to critiques by economist Richard McGahey, who, in a recent Lookout piece, called her advocacy and a petition by Housing for People circulating for the March 2024 ballot “misguided.” Below, she unpacks what Housing for People does and does not do.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
I had never been arrested for anything. But I got addicted to crack and woke up in jail in Santa Cruz at 50.
Justin Marc, a second-generation Santa Cruz milkman, spent 19 months in jail in Santa Cruz for check fraud, fueled by an addiction to crack. While incarcerated, he found his voice as a poet. He was released two years ago, on Aug. 31, 2021, and has been sober for four years as of last week. Here, in both video and written form, he tells his story, often in rhyme. “That’s how words come out in my thoughts,” he says. “The rhyme is automatic.”
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Santa Cruz needs more housing density; misguided advocates are making our housing problems worse
Economist Richard McGahey, who has held federal, state and local leadership roles and is regarded as a national expert on urban and regional economic development, has a message for Santa Cruz: Stop supporting misguided housing petitions and policies aimed at curtailing growth. The only way to move Santa Cruz off the list of the nation’s most expensive cities, he says, is to build. He lives part-time in Santa Cruz and points to the petition by the group Housing for People as an example of ill-considered advocacy.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Prison visits matter: I know because I spent decades making them to see my dad
Jeri Ross lost her father to incarceration when she was 10 and then, as an adult, spent decades wishing she could visit him. But he was housed in a prison 3,000 miles away from her Santa Cruz home. In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to change that pattern for the 195,000 kids who currently have a parent or guardian in state prison. The “Keep Families Close” bill orders the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to place a parent, legal guardian or caregiver of a minor child in the correctional facility closest to the family’s home. Ross celebrates the bill and what it means for kids.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
California is its own sort of slave state — we need to enact farmworker rights now
Ann Lopez, the executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families, believes California farmworkers “make up a slave subclass modeled after the slavery model from the South.” Farmworker families experience poverty, live in fear of family separation and are suffering high rates of pediatric cancer, birth defects and pesticide-related illnesses, she says, because they lack rights and government safeguards. Here, she offers three steps we all can take to help transform the lives of farmworkers in Santa Cruz County.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Here’s some good news: The Santa Cruz bus system is aiming for zero carbon by 2036
The Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District is expecting $66.7 million dollars in state and federal grants and Volkswagen settlement money that will allow the district to move more quickly to a completely carbon-free transportation solution. This is the largest purchase of hydrogen cell buses in the nation’s history. Lookout columnist Mike Rotkin, who is a member of the Regional Transportation Commission, breaks down the numbers and explains the significance.