Bruce Bratton hosts University Grapevine, linking local and campus issues, every Tuesday 7:30-8:30 p.m. on KZSC 88.1 fm.
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ATTENTION HIGHWAY 101 DRIVERS. I always use 101 to get anywhere south of Aromas in California. It is with extreme regret that I warn you that all the California Highway "Official Safety Roadside Rest Areas" rest stops are not only closed but the Camp Roberts stops are being demolished, and I assume will be rebuilt. Check out all the data here. Camp Roberts stops won't open again until 2010, Gaviota stops are closed for the winter season, so plan accordingly.
POLITICAL HISTORY REVISED. Historian Stan Stevens tells us that he and wife Carli just had dinner with Phil Baldwin. Phil as you old timers may remember, was once the young County Supervisor from the Live Oak district. What happened to Phil was that he got impeached as Supervisor. He was elected and replaced Dan Forbus noted washing machine repairman and 100% conservative. Phil was trying to organize trailer parks which was way too liberal for that district. This was back in 1978. Dan Forbus then replaced Phil. And that's just part of the Live Oak District's never dull history. Well the news is that Phil Baldwin is now the mayor of Ukiah!!! Stan says that Phil's winning liberal ways have completely won over the conservatives up there and that Phil's doing a great job. John Leopold has his work cut out for him, and bueno suerte!!
WALNUT & PACIFIC. Regarding last week's Christmas shopper historical photo Kevin Gotti said it in no uncertain terms, Kevin Newhouse pointed out that even the street sign shown in the photo over the cop's right shoulder plainly says Walnut Street MK Saint stated that "Walnut is Walnut" so I went and called it Lincoln Street. There was too much excitement about going to Victorville and Mar Vista, and thanks. That was a stupid mistake and I appreciate your attention, more than that I appreciate it when you correct my not so stupid mistakes, so write on!!! Anytime. And on the other hand we do need to change the way we spell Gharky street. It isn't Gharkey, the street signs are wrong, and with Katherine Beiers now in office, we can be sure that will get taken care of.
HALF DOLLARS. Last week I asked the puzzling but non essential question what's happened to our half dollar coins. It was quite cool that Marty Lane took the time to express his idea of the 50 cent piece. He said, "We may have better things to think about , but I like to give myself a little hiatus from reality during the week between Christmas and New Years - So, I must respond to your 'what ever happened to half dollars' question in this weeks column. I don't know the actual answer to the, but once a year for work, I find myself in the 7th circle of hell, otherwise known as Las Vegas. On the 'when in Rome' philosophy I will play some $5 a hand blackjack; When you draw 'blackjack' for the 1 1/2 times pay out, they give you a $5 chip, 2 x $1 chips, and the aforementioned half dollar. So, to make a short story long, I think that the majority of them are either in Nevada or the change jar of the budget travelers to the silver state. -Marty". Sounds like part of the answer.
WIKIPEDIA APPEAL. Wikipedia is the greatest tool on the internet. They are asking for help because they do not accept advertising.
Jimmy Wales Wikipedia spokesperson is NOT a schnorrer.
Harvey Milk Movie Not intending to tread on the movie reviews that appear in Bratton Online, the latest blockbuster, "Milk", brought back memories of the '70's in Santa Cruz. Sharon and I were invited to a Democratic Party event (1977?) at the "old" Holiday Inn, and we both had a chance to meet and greet San Francisco Mayor George Moscone after he addressed the faithful at a fundraiser for Leon Panetta. He must have been effective because Leon was elected and served for 16 years as our Congressman. I'll never forget Moscone's handshake and look-you-in the-eye demeanor. He certainly had "it", as far as getting people to listen to him and to support his causes. The actor who played Moscone in the move "Milk" was about as close to what George Moscone looked like in the 1970's as Hollywood could come up with. It's hard not to forget those years, with the Jonestown massacre taking place just a few days after Moscone and Milk were killed in San Francisco.
The movie "Milk", the story about San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk's life, is a sure bet for multiple Academy Awards. About the only problem I had with the movie was its scheduled release, after the November 4th election. Anybody want to bet that Californians would still have voted for Prop 8 if the movie "Milk" would have been released a month earlier than the election? How could this have been allowed to happen? Go and see this movie!
Paul Blue, one courageous and very nice guy
We look forward to our daily walks at Seacliff Beach State Park, one reason being we can almost count on friend and fellow progressive Paul Blue being there. The nicest caregiver one could ever hope for accompanies Paul, now in a wheelchair. We remember Paul and his wife Harriet Blue walking together there before she passed away over a year ago. We enjoy our regular meetings and discussions of how nice it will be to see George Bush out of office and Barack Obama in after January 20th. For those who can make it and the weather permits, I'd highly recommend a walk at Seacliff State Beach. You meet the nicest people there!
Come One Come All! John Leopold will be sworn in as 1st District Supervisor on Monday, January 5th at 11:30 AM, at the Board Of Supervisors Chambers, 5th Floor of the County Building, 701 Ocean Street in Santa Cruz. John will take the oath of office, introducing a new era of leadership in Santa Cruz County! Congratulations to you, John!
Budget problems continue to plague just about every public body. The Santa Cruz crisis is bad and will be worse, or so City Manager Dick Wilson says;. The Council recently had an open session where more than 200 residents attempted to persuade the Council not to make cuts to their favorite social group or cause. All these people must have known that the Council would listen attentively, and then vote for the cuts. As outgoing Councilmember Ed Porter said, this vote was 5-2 coming in and it's going to be a 5-2 vote going out. We all know that the services provided by the Surfing Museum, Beach Flats Community center and the other targets of the proposed cuts are valuable for the City. The Councilmembers all know that too. The alternative is trying to raise more money. Indeed the Council acted quite reasonably in setting up a forum to allow citizen suggestions about how to raise money. What and how many additional involuntary contributions, also called taxes, are citizens willing to provide? Voluntary contributions certainly may help, but these will be targeted for the benefit of the services the donors favor. Perhaps that's good, but I have a question about its fairness---perhaps the most valuable services are the least popular with the donor class.
If the budget must be cut, the Councilmembers have only the choice of what to cut. One aspect of all this that only been hinted at is that budget cutting somehow seems to inordinately affect the less affluent groups---perhaps because they (we) use more public services. Whether maintaining the teen center as valuable as retaining a police officer is a reasonable question. Is reducing the protection now provided to the homes and safety of residents more important than giving Beach Flats kids a better head start? I'm not sure the answers are obvious".
PATTON'S PROGRAM. Gary, a long time veteran of Santa Cruz County land use battles tells of the post mortem on The Santa Margarita Ranch Development in San Luis Obispo County. He ruminates on the topic of Land Use Reform and how democracy works. He tells of the "Seven Elements" of the local General Plan and the "Invisible Hand" and "The Tragedy Of The Commons"....and still more on how we should all get involved and care about how development happens...especially in Santa Cruz, if you catch my drift.
EAGANS DEEP COVER. Scroll down to see how Tim views the invasion. What invasion?? Check it out.
LANDAU'S PROGRES. Saul Landau has summed up in this week's Progreso article all that's damnable about US coverage of Cuban affairs. He takes on NYTimes reporter and "schnorrer" Roger Cohen and how the Times and U.S press distorts what's going on in Cuba. Don't NOT read this..
"Schnorrer" look it up on Wikipedia, it's an absolutely great word. As a perfect example, Scott Kennedy is a schnorrer.
LANDAU AND CUBA EVENTS IN BERKELEY. The press release reads, "Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution on January 3rd and 4th at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley. 7:30pm Saturday Jan 3 will feature Saul Landau summarizing 50 years of revolution, highlighted by his film clips of Fidel and Cuba from the 1960s to the present. Mayors of local sister cities will give messages of greetings and local Cuba activists will have tables with Cuban literature, art and crafts and will take part in a Q&A panel. The evening will end with Cuban music and dancing, featuring DJ Emiliano Echeverria.
At 7:00pm Sunday Jan 4 the Taiko drums and a Shisa lion will entertain. The Bay Area Japanese-American cultural group Tsukimi Kai regularly challenges the blockade of Cuba. Program begins with clips from their film "Under the Same Moon" chronicling their cultural exchanges with the Japanese Cuban community on the island. The evening will also FEATURE the award-winning film, "Man of Two Havanas". Vivien Lesnik Weisman set out to do a film about her father, Max Lesnik, a historic figure in Cuba and Miami, and how his love-hate relationship with the Revolution stole him from her. But the film ends up teaching us a lot about Cuba, Miami and US Cuban policy as Vivien gets reluctantly drawn into her father's world.
For more information about the program, contact Paul Chin pchin@lapena.org at La Peña Cultural Center or Karen Wald at kwald@california.com.
SECRET CEREMONY. This is a sincere best wishes to Christa Martin of Good Times who will be taking part in what I deduce is a secret ceremony this Saturday January 3rd. Everything is apparently off the record so if you run into her just give an all knowing wink as if you know what she's up to.
INAUGURATION DAY, SANTA CRUZ. This should be the celebration of the year, note...An Inauguration Day Celebration, Tuesday January 20th from 2:30-5:30PM in downtown Santa Cruz. The Santa Cruz Branch of the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF) invites you, your friends, family, and co-workers, to a celebration of hope and commitment. What do you most hope for in the next four years? What are you willing to work for? President-elect Obama has emphasized again and again the importance of the Citizens staying involved if we truly want the changes we seek, so let's show him we care. Join us as we:
1) Gather at the County Courthouse, 701 Ocean St., for music and ceremony,
2:30-3:15PM
2) Parade from there through downtown Santa Cruz, 3:15-4PM
3) Re-circle at the top of Pacific Avenue, by the Post Office and the Town Clock, for more music, celebration, and a street party,
4-5:30PM (or as late as it goes!)
This is a participatory event!!!
We will all have the opportunity to be sworn in as Citizens in Chief for the next four years, to join in song, to promenade, and to recommit to the timeless values and standards we all share when we rekindle the torches of our 20 foot tall Statue of Liberty!!!!
Bring your *HOMEMADE signs of your greatest hopes and commitments!
Bring banners and flags!
Bring drums, bells, and gongs!
Be creative! Be outrageous!! Be thankful!!!
Breathe a sigh of relief that the last eight years are coming to an end and take a deep breath of hope for the years ahead!!
*there will be a sign making party at the Veterans Hall, next to the Main Post Office in Santa Cruz, on Saturday, January 10th, from 11AM-3PM . Some materials WILL be provided, or bring your own!!
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Thomas Paine
This event is happily cosponsored by (a growing list): Art & Revolution SC, CODEPINK SC, Palestinian Israeli Action Committee, People United for Peace, Resource Center for Nonviolence, .......contact WILPF (chair@wilpf.got.net)
NAKED BIKE RIDE!!! Say it isn't so...but Pat Matecjek sent this notice... "In cities around the world, people ride bikes in various states of undress to celebrate cycling and the human body. The ride demonstrates the vulnerability of cyclists on the road and is a protest against car culture". If we act now we can stop this from happening here or at least make a list of people we don't want to see participating
I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG. Kristin Scott Thomas has never been better and along with her Golden Globe Nomination for Best Actress and Best Foreign Film well you simply need to see this masterpiece. It makes Doubt (Meryl Streep & Philip Seymour Hoffman) look very Hollywood in comparison. Don't read any part of the plot like David Denby's in the New Yorker he gives away too much and the surprises and mystery are important. One of my top ten this year, for sure.
VALKYRIE. Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh and Eddie Izzard and Adolf Hitler and it's still a confusing, almost entirely dull movie. It's only a re-make of every bank heist movie you've seen since about forever. I never did figure why Cruise kept popping his glass eye in and out but it provided some excitement. Rent it but don't spend all that money seeing it on the big screen.
THE SPIRIT. Back in the 40's the Spirit comic character was clever, wildly satirical, a bit nutty, and had an African American kid named Ebony White if you can believe that as a sidekick and personal cab driver. This movie has Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, and Eva Mendes and it's a waste of your time to even think about seeing it. It has none of the style or class of Sin City or any of Tarantino's film efforts. It might actually be better watching it at home.
SEVEN POUNDS. I said last week that the much-hyped Will Smith movie Seven Pounds was junk food in an Organic wrapper. (I didn't say that but I should have), it was manipulative and phoney. BOnline reader Anthony Walton agrees, and then some. He says, "That movie is pathetic. It does a real disservice to the medical profession. It perpetuates the ideas that blood type has something to do with rejection of transplants. Blood type only matters in the case of rh (fetus) rejection and has nothing to do with organ transplant. The rejection comes from the histocompatability proteins that mark a given cell as self or not-self. The trick is to get the transplanted tissue to be close enough in histocompatability match, the immune system only requires minimal suppression. I have a degree in biochemistry so I like to think I know what I'm talking about. Also there is no known way to kill a person by touch - none. If the poison is not introduced via a bite or puncture it is unable to do anything other then make the victim extremely uncomfortable. So the CGI jelly fish suicide is something only in the movies. I thought the movie was stupid. Anthony". Obviously he's right, because we agree.
MOVIE CRITICS, 5. (repeat item)This will be the fifth year that Morton Marcus, Wallace Baine, Lisa Jensen and I have assembled our TOP TEN films of the year and faced the movie going public with them. It's happening Saturday January 10 at 11am at the Nickelodeon Theatre. It's free and you'll have plenty of chances to tell us your opinions too. There is absolutely no reason to think that Morton Marcus and I will agree on any movie, those are mere rumors.
"FILM" INSTRUCTOR/DIRECTOR EARL JACKSON. Earl Jackson was one of few "film" instructors I've had that actually changed and opened my view of "film" (now called movies since they don't use film anymore) Earl taught some amazing classes at UCSC in spite of the way UCSC hassled and treated him. He's gone onto far better things then UCSC as he says in his Christmas email... "Happy holidays. I'm in Kuala Lumpur interviewing Malaysian digital filmmakers – I've met James Lee, Amir Muhammed, and Tan Chui Mui so far. Tomorrow I go to Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo - (birthplace of Tsai Ming Liang) will return to Seoul on Jan 3. Kim Soyoung and I have completed shooting on our first feature length fiction film, entitled "Viewfinder" - what an extraordinary experience. We have a rough cut that's still far too long - we hope to have a finished version ready by end of march -mid April and I will shop it to film festivals
would love to have a screening in Santa Cruz. Life is so hectic but very rewarding. I will do three different workshops in India in January - one at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, one in Omsmania University and one at the University of Hyderabad. I'll check in again soon. Hope you are all well, warmly Earl J."
BrattonNote...Kim Soyoung is a very influential South Korean woman film maker who has fought fiercely for women's rights in the film business. She is a Professor of Cinema Studies at the Korean University of the Arts in Seoul.
HOSTETTERS HOT STUFF. As per usual Paul Hostetter and I can't quite get our online schedules in sync so some of the events he reports and touts here are over and gone. On the other hand he regales us with some events and concerts that take us way into the '09 category. He says," This very odd year comes to a lovely close with two concerts, tonight and tomorrow, in Santa Cruz and Berkeley respectively, of the estimable mandolin duo of Mike Marshall and Caterina Lichtenberg. ( more from her later) A couple of other new things have been added as well for the first quarter of 2009, please check this link:
http://www.lutherie.net/live.music.html and have a good look. Best wishes for a safe and efficient conclusion to 2008, and for a profoundly better 2009. We deserve it!"
UNIVERSITY GRAPEVINE. Continuing on with the best of University Grapevine radio interview programs which I host every Thursday 4-5 on KZSC 88.1 fm. This week we repeat the January 11, 2007 broadcast of columnist and advisor Offra Gerstein talking about Santa Cruz relationships and normal people too. In the second half Gary Griggs tells about living on the Pacific Coast, the joys, fears, stupidity and brilliance of doing same.
QUOTES.
"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man," Benjamin Franklin. "Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols," Thomas Mann." I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me, Anaïs Nin. "New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual,"- Mark Twain. "New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions," Mark Twain.
Deep Cover
Bruce critiques films every Friday on KZSC-FM (88.1) on The Bushwhacker Breakfast Club at 8am.
It's free! Click here.
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SHOPPING DOWNTOWN. Asking several of our Downtown Santa Cruz business owners about Holiday business...whew, they said, not well, not well at all. That's what businesses all over are saying but it hurts us more here at home. Plus I heard that Rhythm Fusion is closing....they'll be missed. It's the same new story everybody is browsing locally but doing their buying online. Books, musical instruments, you name it and it's available online. Try real hard to picture what Pacific Avenue will look like next Holiday Season. I was shopping for a computer shoulder bag last Saturday and saw only 8 shoppers out there in big barny Staples and not many more than that in Office Max last Saturday. Yes I know, but I'd already gone to both Palace Stationery stores. Never did find one.
SANTA CRUZ BRIDGE. Thanks for all the correspondence re that new bridge across the San Lorenzo River. I agree with you it is ugly, it is worse than ugly. It is an eyesore that could have been beautiful and even drawn praise and appreciation. It ranks right up there with Louis Rittenhouse's cheap and empty and haunted mausoleum at Pacific and Church Streets. Whether it's the gee gaws and fru fru trimming on the Mausoleum or the dark foreboding ham fisted bridge to nowhere we end up having to live with those ditzy designs. That bridge leading to the equally ugly County Building makes one wonder just who and why is Santa Cruz forced and coerced to have so much man-made ugliness when we live in such a beautiful place?
HALF DOLLARS? We know you have better things to think about but can anyone explain whatever happened to half dollars? Did they stop making them? Did collectors keep them all?
ELECTION STATS UPDATED AGAIN. Don Webber who did all that election stats in last week's column emailed to report, "I have changed this file slightly, adding material, including a map, and incorporating several corrections suggested by Bruce Van Allen. I would appreciate it if you would replace your linked file with this new and updated report as soon as possible. I sent an earlier update to you on 12/17, but that update is superceded by the one attached to this email. Thank you. Don Webber. Check out his updated file here.
SUBSCRIBE OFTEN. Folks still don't seem to understand that if you subscribe to BrattonOnline.com every week you get a little email automatically when the new column goes online. It's free, confidential, and a lot easier than trying to remember. Just put your email address in the upper right hand corner....that's it!!!
SAUL LANDAU, CINDY SHEEHAN, CYNTHIA McKINNEY, AND NELSON VALDES STATEMENT ON THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS 60 YEARS LATER. "We celebrate 60 years of failure. Human rights have been converted from a noble goal into an instrument of foreign policy used by rich and powerful nations against the poorest and weakest people of the world. In 2008, almost 3 billion people throughout the world suffer the most basic privations. After 60 years of empty human rights rhetoric, we demand that governments focus their attention on fulfilling the promises of 1948. We write this document on the parchment of environment, which everyone shares, and has warned us all to drastically change the ways in which mass production and consumption take place.
1. The United States is a member of the commonwealth of nations;
2. Benefits accrue to those who cooperate with the global community and view other countries as potential partners for the upliftment of humankind;
3. Unfortunately, the leadership of the United States Government has consistently been a disappointment to those of us who value the tenets and the possibilities for humankind embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
4. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the rights of self-determination, the rights of women, the indigenous, and the rights of association, expression and resistance to protect and preserve these precious rights;
5. Poverty, severe income inequality, on one hand, and greed and over consumption by a few, on the other hand, deny for far too many on the planet universal application of the Universal Declaration;
6. Climate change, unsustainable agriculture, unbridled militarism, terrorism with impunity, nuclear proliferation represent threats to our planet and threats to humankind;
7. The current implosion of the engine of US imperialism and global capitalism contains the seeds of a new global order in which the rights of humankind and the Universal Declaration can find universal application;
8. The incoming Barack Obama Administration has a unique opportunity to make a clean break with the policies of the past, including installation of dictatorships, campaigns of invasion, terror and slander, torture and occupation, and can build bridges of peace and justice with dignity and respect to Africa, Latin America and Europe;
9. Therefore, we call on President-elect Obama to put the United States on a clear course of global fraternity by (a) invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (b) rejecting torture and terror and demonstrating this by closing and vacating Guantanamo and ceding to Cuba its rightful patrimony, (c) ending the US embargo, (d) releasing the Cuban Five, and (e) extraditing Luis Posada Carriles.
10. While this list is not exhaustive, it represents a much-needed down payment on hope and change.
11. We will disseminate this document through our respective networks.
Signed: Saul Landau, Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney and Nelson Valdés
SANTA CRUZ WIRE. Be sure to check out all recent additions to this newest Santa Cruz website. Such items as Free Compost, an inside the Santa Cruz Sentinel story, Acupuncture, and a piece on the proposed Bicycle Boulevard. It's all at http://www.santacruzwire.com/index.php/maria-gaura.html
As a long time customer of CRUZIO, we've had excellent service from this Independent Service Provider. As long as PG & E has power to our house we've always been able to use our Internet and email service from CRUZIO. But then I had a problem getting access, and all the usual gimmicks to get around a problem failed, so I called CRUZIO, left a message with their tech support as to the nature of the problem. They called back within the hour, had already diagnosed the problem and asked me to bring my modem, the possible culprit, to their office on Pacific Avenue for testing. This made sense, I took the modem in, they gave me the use of an Internet connected PC while I was waiting for the results of the test. It took 15 minutes; the tech support guy came out and verified the modem was kaput. I bought a new one (they had them in stock), brought it home and was back online in five minutes. Such a courteous and efficient staff was a joy to behold. If you were looking to change ISP's, I'd recommend CRUZIO.
Aptos and Seacliff plans – lots is happening
For those readers who live in the Aptos/Seacliff communities, there are lots of plans on the fire. But it looks like the plans to develop Aptos Village have been moved to the back burner. About the only thing good happening on that property is the elegant "extreme" dirt bike jumps that are in use by daredevil teenagers. The Barry Swenson plan to build out the village doesn't seem to be moving very fast, if at all. In fact, Barry has appointed a new "point person", Jeff Major who is one of his lieutenants. The word on the street is that the cost of installing proper utilities wasn't factored into the cost of the project, which has Swenson and Co. taking a closer look at what the project is going to cost. Other than density, traffic and building height, most long-time Aptosians still think the Swenson plan offers a good starting point. Locals are hoping that the Aptos Village Plan of record is strong enough to stand on its own, no matter who the developer is.
The plan for a Seacliff neighborhood park moves ahead.
The 1.25 acres dedicated to the park at the corner of State Park Drive and McGregory has been committed. Neighbors in Seacliff are working together, thanks to the Seacliff Improvement Association's new leadership, to raise the funds to complete the park that has been laid out.
No more De Cinzo in Metro Santa Cruz?
Say it ain't so! There must be something that infects newspaper management's common sense. As reported in Bratton Online last week, the De Cinzo political cartoon has been replaced by one that can't hold a candle to De Cinzo. If Metro axed De Cinzo based on the swastika/KSCO cartoon, they didn't hear station owner Kay Zwerling's editorial back in November mocking Barack Obama's middle name (Hussein), which was in extremely poor taste. I guess when you own the station; you can say anything you want. Is KSCO still up for sale?
PV SCHOOL DISTRICT SETTLES BROWN ACT LAWSUITS.
The PVUSD Board of Trustees settled two Brown Act lawsuits filed earlier this year against the trustees by Luis Alejo, local attorney and newly elected Watsonville City Councilman. The settlement requires the entire PVUSD Board of Trustees to attend a full one-day training on the Brown Act and Public Records Act and to post the school board agenda backup materials on the PVUSD website to provide easy access to the public. The settlement also requires the District to approve future contracts only in open session and those materials will be provided to the public in a timely manner. The District is required to pay for attorney's fees and costs of the first lawsuit in the amount of $9582. Attorney's fees and costs of an equivalent amount were waived for the second lawsuit.
The first lawsuit, filed on February 20, 2008 and prepared by First Amendment attorney Judy Alexander on behalf of plaintiff Luis Alejo, alleged the District failed to deliver to the public copies of the district's proposed Response to the 2006-2007 County Grand Jury Report at the same time they were delivered to members of the Board of Trustees. Copies were delivered to trustees on the morning of September 24, 2007, but were not made available to the public until the Board considered adopting the proposed Response during the Board's September 26, 2007 meeting. Some community members had requested copies, but those requests were denied. The lawsuit alleged that the failure to release the 63-page proposed Response to the public in advance of the Board meeting violated the California Ralph M. Brown Act and denied the public the ability to give meaningful input to the board prior to adopting it and delivering it to the presiding judge of the Santa Cruz County Superior Court.
The second lawsuit, filed on May 9, 2008, requested the Superior Court find that the Board of Trustees violated open-meeting requirements of the Brown Act. The complaint, prepared and filed by Alejo, alleged the PVUSD Board of Trustees violated state open government laws, including its failure approve contracts of various assistant superintendents and associate superintendent in open session (instead of closed session), and its failure to post on the agenda the approval of the contract for the associate superintendent 72 hours in advance. The contracts contained an estimated price tag of over $600,000 according to the plaintiff, and were approved one month prior to the District issuing 200 pink slips to local teachers and school employees. The pink slips later resulted in dozens of long-term teachers leaving the district or accepting early retirements.
In both cases, the District was unwilling to correct and settle the violations with the plaintiff after being informed of the violations. Alejo states that there was no other option but to bring the lawsuits to have the PVUSD comply with state open government laws after it refused to recognized that any violation had occurred. The District will surely reconsider taking a similar position next time.
CITY SHUTS DOWN FOR TWO WEEKS. In an effort to deal with the budget shortfall that resulted from the failure to pass Measure C (the 911 phone tax) last November 4, the Watsonville City Council voted earlier this month to shut down city services for 2 weeks. Essential services such as police and fire will continue at the same levels, but took a similar budget hit that will be spread out throughout the year or be deducted in other ways. All this came through agreement by all the unions representing all the impacted workers, including the management units. The city manager explained that the last two weeks of December were the slowest time for the city and is the best time to take this time off. Although the phone tax had already been in place, Measure C failed to pass by 650 votes or about 6 percent. Many blame the misleading information given by Measure C opponents for its demise. Their flyers attempted to scare voters by claiming outrageous rates would be charged if they owned multiple phones, but failed to report that the rates would be capped at a limit. Now, when Watsonville voters find their city government shut down for two weeks, they now have someone to thank.
PETER NICHOLS THROWS HIS SHOE AT THE COMMITTEE FOR GOOD SCHOOL GOVERNANCE. Anyone who follows the opinion pages of the local papers would have read the various attack pieces on education activist and union leader Peter Nichols whose op-ed originally shed light on the shenanigans by Bruce Woolpert's Committee for Good School Governance when it attempted to remove two progressive school board members this past election. Bruce Woolpert himself, along with defeated Woolpert candidate Geri Simmons and former Aptos area school board member Evelyn Volpa all attempted to throw their shoes at Nichols, but Nichols ducked and hit the Woolpert Committee with a bulls eye column right where it hurts. Check it out
If King St is modified to facilitate bicyclists, will the cyclists that now use Mission St get the hint? One would hope so, just as one hopes that cyclists will stop for traffic signals or ride in the appropriate direction. And it's very nice if King St is safe for bicycles, but how to they get there and what route do they use when they leave? Both ends of King St are at Mission St. I should think that a comprehensive bicycle plan that attempts to accommodate bicycles as well as cars would be the more efficient way to go.
PATTONS PROGRAM. Gary goes even farther in discussing the land use hassles in San Luis Obispo County. The lame duck board of Supervisors giving the developer what Gary calls a huge Christmas present. It's all about developing the Santa Margarita Ranch and the penalty the citizens, the land and the laws will suffer. He closes by talking about Santa Cruz County's Measure J and how much good it continues to do for our land use.
EAGAN'S DEEP COVER. Tim Eagan gives us some deeply introspective last minute shopping tips...scroll downwards.
LANDAU'S PROGRES. Saul is again writing from Venezuela his piece is called, "Then and now, Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008". Read it...as Saul compares Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro and writes things like," Fidel exported his mortal enemies to the United States. Or, Washington had a policy of importing them. Out of Cuba, wealthy exiles could only mount terrorist campaigns -- for almost 50 years -- but not block the dramatic changes that allowed Cuban revolutionaries to transform their island. Chavez doesn't have the option of exporting the wealthy oligarchs, the business class below them and the professionals who adhere to distinctly anti-socialist values. Nor will Washington return to its old "import the anti-Castro Cubans" policy". Read the entire article . The Sentinel, Good Times or Metro sure won't touch it.
COMMENTARY: OUR NATIONAL FACE TRANSPLANT. Wallace "J." Nichols sent in this thought that's worth thinking about.
"I'm heading home, up Highway One, listening to the radio—reports on a miraculous complete face transplant by doctors in Cleveland and a humiliating shoe incident in Baghdad. "Her injuries were ghastly: no nose, no palate, and no way to eat or breathe normally, a face so hideous that children who saw her screamed and ran away."
Dr. Maria Siemionow knew the severely disfigured woman was "the one"—the first American face transplant. "Our patient was called names and was humiliated. You need a face to face the world," said the doctor. Eighty percent of the patient's face was replaced with bone, nerves, muscles, blood vessels, skin and teeth from a donor who had died several hours earlier. "She heard people calling her names, children just scared of her, running away from her. When she was on the street, people were
turning their heads," Siemionow said.
The patient led a life of an outcast, overhearing whispers of strangers, barely tolerated in public and often scorned. When people saw that face, they threw shoes and screamed "you dog!" Asked if she wanted to go through with it, the hopeful patient said, "I'm ready. I've been waiting for this." "The operation took twenty hours, the preparation took twenty years," doctors said.
And on the twentieth of January our nation will see her new face. And she will begin to reclaim her life—our democracy. Following the surgery doctors said the patient was doing well and showing no signs of rejecting her new face". Learn more about "J" Nichols and his Ocean work.http://blog.wallacejnichols.org
MOVIE CRITICS, 5. This will be the fifth year that Morton Marcus, Wallace Baine, Lisa Jensen and I have assembled our TOP TEN films of the year and faced the movie going public with them. It's happening Saturday January 10 at 11am at the Nickelodeon Theatre. It's free and you'll have plenty of chances to tell us your opinions too. Lisa Jensen calls it Dueling Critics, probably because she still likes Seabiscuit.
NOT A BULLETIN BOARD. I get many, many requests to publicize events and want to state for the record that this is not a public "Bulletin Board" type column. I would no more recommend a movie that I didn't like than I would suggest you attend an event that doesn't work or fit what I think is entertaining. For example I don't plug or suggest you attend live musicals or plays that use body microphones to amplify voices. If an actor/singer can't naturally sing loud enough to be heard without amplification they shouldn't be cast in the part. Anymore than someone who can't dance should be cast in a dance number. In the same vein, I only rarely recommend a live performance before it opens unless I've heard or know the people involved and can be relatively sure you'll like them too. That's' why there aren't more event mentions in BrattonOnline.
FROM CAPE TOWN. Ros and Jim Munro of this town emailed from Cape Town, Africa to say they were going to Obama's Inauguration. They also sent a link to a surfing article... read their letter here (link expands, click again to collapse).
That reminds me you can't live in Santa Cruz long without knowing some serious surfers. You also probably know a type of surfer who's spent so much time staring at the sun, thinking about waves, toking and creating an entire philosophy of life that they're known as Salt Water Daffy's ? Just wondering.MOVIE NUTS ONLY. I found this great You Tube site "100 Movie Spoilers in 5 Minutes" hilarious and almost profound...go for it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN5avIvylDw&eurl
SEVEN POUNDS. It is exciting to watch Will Smith play a bad guy for a few minutes, it proves he can do it, but ultimately this is a supreme do-gooder movie. It's also very poorly assembled so that you might find yourself paying a lot of attention to the plot just trying to figure it out. After you leave the theatre you'll feel suckered into thinking you were watching an intriguing movie...and you were. Here's the entire plot spoiler and all http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814314/synopsis read it...if you still want to go, phew!!!
YES MAN. I'm forced to agree with just about every other critic and say that watching middle aged Jim Carrey still trying to do his old schtick and make it with Zooey Deschanel is not fun. He's got better things to do with his talent, besides he's 46 and a Canadian, she's 28 and from LA. This film's a rip off. Rent it if you have to, but don't blame me.
THE TALE OF DESPERAUX. All great voices, like Dustin Hoffman, Robbie Coltrane, Matthew Broderick, Kevin Kline, Frank Langella, Emma Watson, and William C.Macy, don't end up adding much to this movie. After a while you don't think about which actor's voices play which characters. Add to this what in my opinion is the best, most technically advanced animation and it's still a boring motion picture. Too many rescues, too many danger scenes, no depth to the characters...but it is a great advance in animation. I'll bet the kids fall asleep when you take them.
OLD TIME RADIO FANS. I've collected old time radio programs on lacquer, vinyl, tape and cassettes for nearly 50 years. Pat Matecjek just sent me a link to a website that has over 12,000 Old Time radio programs that you can listen to on your computer. Go to http://www.rusc.com. It's fascinating reading and being able to listen and download any of your favorites is amazing. Try it.
HOLIDAY WISHES. We've all been saying variations on the bad times to each other since this Holiday Season began." these are tough times", "we'll pull through", "things have got to get better", "Obama will do it"....let's just hang in there, or here, and enjoy our family, and our community, we've been through worse. Celebrate whatever holidays feel right for you. And I can't say it enough, thanks for reading BrattonOnline and thanks for writing and contributing it has truly been my pleasure...as always.
UNIVERSITY GRAPEVINE. It's the best of University Grapevine time because I'm going to spend Christmas in Victorville with my sister and her huge family then to Mar Vista to be with my daughters and their families. So on Christmas day University Grapevine (which I host on KZSC 88.1 fm 4-5 pm. every Thursday) will re-play UCSC Professor Bruce Rosenblum discussing his book, "Quantum Enigma" and historian Phil Reader once again telling us why it's LONDON Nelson, not Louden. Remember you can hear it online anywhere by going to KZSC.ORG and clicking on the HOME page http://razorfrog.com/kzsc/audio and click again on the "LISTEN NOW" thingee in the upper right corner.
SPAM NAMES. Margot Madeleine and Errol Farrell are the only two spam faux names worth repeating. I suppose that even the internet spam thieves finally realized that funny fake names don't bring results. I'll keep searching.
QUOTES. "Never make excuses, never let them see you bleed and never get separated from your baggage", Wesley Price. "No man is an island but some of us are pretty long peninsulas", Ashley Brilliant. "I have bad reflexes. I was run over once by a car being pushed by two guys", Woody Allen. "There is nothing safer than flying-it's the crashing that is dangerous", Theo Cowan.
Deep Cover
Bruce critiques films every Friday on KZSC-FM (88.1) on The Bushwhacker Breakfast Club at 8am.
It's free! Click here.
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THE 2008 SANTA CRUZ CITY COUNCIL ELECTION RESULTS-ANALYZED.Don Webber studied analyzed and documented this last election in 20 pages that you can download here. You can study and compare districts and candidates for hours AND learn a lot about Santa Cruz. See the two areas where Terrazas beat Madrigal and how Madrigal beat Terrazas downtown, Ocean Street and River Street. There are surprises in The Beach Area results like Canada beating Cabrera!! Katherien Beiers did well over the city. Don't forget that there was an astounding (Webbers' Words) 88% turnout of voters and instead of voting for the four candidates voters only voted on the average for 2.6 candidates.
HAWAII NEWS CONTINUED. There are many reasons that 1500 surfers on Kauai floated out in Nawilliwilli Harbor and successfully stopped the Honolulu Superferry owned by a Bush military advisor from landing. They claim it had secret military backing, it was killing whales, it would encourage scab labor, the actual boat structure was unsafe and more. Read it here, it's all part of FreeHawaiiTV. It's in dry-dock right now. Safeway just got unanimous approval to build their 21st store in Hawaii. This one will be 56,000 square feet and it'll be near Kukui Grove on Kauai. It'll have 1028 parking spaces. How many will our new Safeway on Mission have - I forgot. Hawaii Telecom went bankrupt. This was Hawaii's biggest phone company. There are now too many people not using landlines and belly up they went. I'm only now learning just how big the USA military investment is in Hawaii. It's the number 1 money source, after that is tourism. Honolulu and other Hawaiian newspapers were full of local Democrats berating Republican Governor Linda Lingle for dissing Barack Obama's Governors Conference. Lingle came to the mainland three times to support McCain and Palin's campaign but said she was too busy to go meet with Obama. That's all I know and want to know about Linda Lingle....that sounds like a name Robin Williams would make up.
NEWS ON THE NEWS. Monday's NY Times had this story about The Mercury News and Media Services owners of The Santa Cruz Sentinel amongst other things. But, don't read it if you need a laugh.
TWO GOOD FRIENDS. There were wakes at exactly the same time and day last weekend for both Donald Coyne and Holt Murray. I'd shared hours, afternoons and evenings over the years with both of them and learned very much from them. Donald was a UCSC particle physics professor and Holt taught and lived art at and around Cabrilho College almost forever. Holt gave as much to the world of art as Don gave to the world of science...equally as important they both devoted much of their lives to people, their neighborhood, and the world around them. They are much loved and missed.
BILL BROOKS DEVELOPMENT. We haven't heard diddley about that much hyped Park Pacific seven story tall monstrosity that's supposed to be built next to Lulu Carpenters in the earthquake hole on Pacific. Brooks did get approval to do a town center in Scotts Valley but when I asked some friends who know Brooks about Park Pacific they said the entire project "is in the toilet". If only we had a City Council that cared as a much about the community as they do for the imaginary developers profits we could make a move forward instead of allowing Brooks to tie up otherwise valuable property.
Another parting shot from Supervisor Beautz.
At the December 9th Board of Supervisors meeting, outgoing supe Jan Beautz asked the board to appoint current board chair Ellen Pirie to replace her on the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District for the next four years. This would have effectively given up the only 1st District (hers) representation to Pirie in the 2nd District, and given Ellen's district three representatives on the Santa Cruz Metro Transit District. There seemed to be only one purpose in such and move, and that was to block 1st District Supervisor-elect John Leopold from being appointed to the important SCMTD Board of Directors. Which in essence was a move to continue Beautz' pro-highway widening effort even after she leaves the BOS. Pirie is another staunch widening supporter. The vote to approve Beautz' request was passed by the board on a 3-2 vote, with supervisors Pirie, Beautz and Campos in the majority. But wait! Looking at this week's Board Of Supervisor's agenda, there's an item that modifies the action taken at their last meeting (the Pirie appointment for four years). Included is a letter from Pirie asking the she only be appointed for the remainder of Beautz appointment to 12/09. Could it be that calmer heads prevailed, at least partially, by only giving away the 1st District seat on the Metro Board for just one year? Was giving it away for four years even legal? Not a very auspicious welcome to a newly elected member of the Board of Supervisors. Wouldn't it seem fair to hold back on this appointment until John Leopold was sworn in?
Back to the future with septic systems
We had the unfortunate experience of moving to an Aptos neighborhood that was not part of the county's sewer district. Over 150 homes were built here in the early '60's without sewer connections, which means everybody had their own septic system, drain fields, tanks that had to be pumped periodically when the drain fields became saturated. Just about every home had the same problem, i.e., their septic system failed. Petitions were gathered, an assessment district was formed, and the county had sewer lines dug and connection was made to the county's sewer system. Not cheap by any means, but better than having sewage back up in your shower or bathtub. Move the clock ahead to 2008. Zayante Oaks, a 55 unit "affordable" subdivision being proposed for Felton will not have a connection to sewers, they will have one gigantic septic tank, supposedly "processing" everything that's flushed into something that's "almost" pure. I don't think the county approvers know what happens to the waste when a failure occurs. That entire load of poop has to go somewhere, and it's not going to be into thin air. This project has been in the works for years, and continues to move ahead. There was a recent septic failure last week in the same area where the subdivision is being proposed, reported in a weekly newspaper, and even the Sentinel. Here's the Good Times article.
Michael Lewis took offense at my comments blog last week about the desirability of PRT, Personal Rapid Transit for Santa Cruz. You may read his complete e-mail above. His primary point seems to be that Santa Cruz does not have a traffic problem. The extent of congestion is a relative matter, but I doubt there are many people in Santa Cruz who would agree with him. Mission St is heavily impacted now, and estimates are that current approved projects will add about 20,000 more trips per day to the 28, 500 that existed in 2004 (the latest year I have). That's somewhat less than double the amount as of 2004. Roads cannot be widened; and people and goods have to move. Some kind of alternative, off-road transportation is required if we are not to have gridlock. PRT is simply the most efficient and environmentally friendly way to accomplish that. It also can be aesthetically pleasing, although aesthetics, like the extent of congestion, is a matter upon which reasonable people may disagree.
The more publicity PRT gets, the more the public learns about it, the better. There's little doubt that PRT will not be coming to Santa Cruz unless the Santa Cruzans want it. We certainly should and will have a substantial community debate about PRT, whether we should have it, where it should go, how it is to be financed. I am more than confident that when a PRT demonstration or test track is installed in Santa Cruz and made available for public use, support will be overwhelming. Tourism is one of our two major industries; education is the other. PRT can materially assist both. ---it is ideal for our community. PRT will operate in conjunction with busses---busses can do things that PRT cannot do, and vice versa. But busses cannot move the 30,000 or so people that need to access UCSC every day. City streets cannot handle all the tourists that we have and the more than we want to have. Both the business community and the environmental community to the extent these are conflicting groups, can come together on PRT. PRT offers a means of preserving the ambiance of our City and still accommodating growth so that it does not strangle us.
PRT at one time was "out of the box" thinking; no more. PRT has been called as revolutionary as the automobile or the airplane. Ask Google about Personal Rapid Transit and you'll find any number of articles, both pro and con. Here's a quote from the most recent Forbes magazine. "Or imagine commuting in a lightweight, computer-driven podcar that rides on elevated guideways that extend into every neighborhood in the city", Bill N. Reinert, national manager for Toyota's advanced technology group, suggests that an on-demand, personal rapid transit system might be just as effective and no more costly than self-guided cars. Riders would reserve a vehicle on a phone and the car would be waiting at a nearby station (rather than the other way around)." Watch what happens after the applications from a number of PRT vendors which have responded to the City's request for qualifications are made public. PRT will receive lots of attention, and will become much more of a probability and Santa Cruz may soon be ready for that community debate.
PATTON'S PROGRAM. Mr. Patton writes about San Luis Obispo County and on going developers schemes. He tells about the "Code Rangers" in Monterey County and maybe we need a similar group here. More news about Rural Subdivisions and our very own Measure J and ends with CEQA and development deals.
EAGAN'S DEEP COVER. Scroll down to see Tim's interpretation of exactly how voting and elections work in the USA...ha!
LANDAU'S PROGRES. Saul is in Venezuela and reports nearly live from Mac Donald's and other locations exactly how politics and Chavez are doing . Don't fail to read his first hand report.
DeCinzo and METRO SANTA CRUZ. I asked Steven DeCinzo what's happened...why aren't we seeing his cartoons in the Metro anymore he replied, (and I edited) to say..." I will tell you, for the record, I do not believe I was let go for the reasons I was given. Steve Palopoli said there was nothing left in his "freelance" budget and that he had to "let me go". Further, he was not only letting me go from the San Jose paper but from the Santa Cruz paper as well. Metro is backed by Boulevards New Media, which is doing very well. All of sudden, they have no money for freelancers? Possible...but not likely. DeCinzo went on to say that he thinks it's probably because of the Swastika KSCO thing. Who knows... Traci Huikill, Dan Pulcrano, Steve Pulcrano? We'll never find out and another part of great and vital newspaper content bites the dust.
SANTA CRUZ WIRE. There's a new news and area items source for online persons and it's Santa Cruz Wire also known as www.santacruzwire.com Those four birds illustrating the Banner either represent the four founders of the Wire namely, Maria Gaura, Jennifer Pittman, Tara Leonard and Peggy Townsend OR...as local wits have already expressed maybe they're crows, thrushes, warblers or double breasted seersuckers. I asked Maria about the birds she said, "As for the birds, they are the kind of little birds that tell you things. ("A little bird told me.") If we have to be more specific, I think they look like black-capped chickadees, which travel in small groups and keep in constant communication using a variety of calls, according to the Audubon Society. On a bad day, I suppose they might be Borogroves ..." Check out Santa Cruz Wire and watch the progress.
HARVEY MILK COMES TO SANTA CRUZ. Long time friend Dan Dickmeyer who is almost packed and ready to move to Canada remembers when Harvey Milk came to Santa Cruz. I asked him to tell us about it....he wrote, "Harvey Milk came to Santa Cruz only once and that was on January 29, 1978just one month into his aborted term as San Francisco's gay supervisor. We had been organized as a gay community here since 1975 but with the anti-gay Brigg's initiative waiting in the wings we were about to be thrust into action doing hardcore organizing within the community as a whole. Harvey came to speak about this at a potluck/meeting to 75 people on a Sunday Afternoon at the YWCA, now the Walnut Avenue Women's Center. None of us active at the time seem to remember anything specific about him except him saying his boyfriend was down at the Boardwalk. But here is what local boy Larry Friedman wrote in the March issue of the newsletter of the Gay Rights Coalitionthe activist group of the day: "Throughout his very extensive, yet fascinating and informative talk, Milk emphasized the need for Lesbians and gay men to get actively involved in local politics and for their organizations to become a viable political force in the local community. Milk also expressed concern that gays can no longer afford to allow straight politicians to run for office who are conditional supporters of the gay community.Few left Milk's talk uninspired and/or uninformed. His rousing talk left us inundated with facts and the need to organize our own community into an effective political force."About one month later on Feb. 26, Cleve Jones came down and attended an organizational meeting of our Anti-Briggs group (Community United to Defeat the Briggs Initiative) that was held at the gay dance club, Dragon Moon, at 1130 Soquel where now sits the Arteak Interiors store. About 75 people attended this. Briggs got his initiative qualified shortly after that and in November, thanks to the inspiration of Harvey and Cleve, and the hard work of dozens of local gay and straight activists, we helped defeat the initiative with a 72% vote in Santa Cruzsimilar to the margin of Prop 8 in our area. The state tally was 58% opposed.
Less than 11 months after Harvey's appearance, he lay dead. Folks in Santa Cruz turned out in huge numbers at the Town Clock for a Candlelight March. Pipa Pinion sang a song. And in the true spirit of Harvey one activist, Kathy McCrae, said, "We must tell our stories to each other and learn from our experiences to get stronger for these heavy times we have entered. How can anything ever change if we don't let people know who we are?" Now I'm telling this history so that others today can learn about the importance of Harvey Milk".
Thank Dan quick before he leaves town. I also didn't know that Oakes College at the University of California, Santa Cruz has an on campus apartment building named for Harvey Milk.
DOUBT. There's no Doubt that this movie has the best cast of any movie this year. Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and they are all at the peak of their art. The plot isn't quite up to their capabilities and we don't need the lightening and thunder to tell us when evil is happening (duh!) but do not miss this award winner.
THE YEAR KEANU REEVES STOOD STILL. Many critics have said that Keanu Reeves should have played the robot in this re-make of "The day The Earth Stood Still" but he didn't, he plays Michael Rennie and this movie is zip, nada. No reason for all the fuss, the original said something interesting but not even the effects are worthwhile in this poor imitation with no heart. Avoid at all costs.
TWILIGHT. This dippy teeny bopper piece of fluff is about teen age vampires. The theater will be full of screaming 10 year olds when and IF you go. You must have something better to do, I did but I went anyway. Go see "Happy Go Lucky" quick before it leaves, it's wonderful.
BEST MOVIES YOU NEVER HEARD OF. These 38 movies are not Academy Award films, they are all dvd's I rented from Cedar Street Video and East Cliff Video during 2008. They are mostly foreign, never widely released in the USA, well made, may have lots of sex (or not) but every one of them is a special piece of good movie making. Rent them at Cedar Street Video, East Cliff Video or add them to your "queue " or whatever...but if you're tired of mainstream muck check these out. "Since Otar Left", "Allegro" (Denmark), "Tinsel and Sawdust", "This Is England", "Pierrepoint", "Bloody Aria", The Deaths of Ian Stone", "Khadak", "A Little Bit Of Freedom", "Under The Flag Of The Rising Sun", "The Duchess Of Langeais", "The Lovers" (Malle), "The Fires Within Me", "Happy Together", Fear and Trembling", "Asfalto", "Alias Betty", "The Aura", "The Willow Tree", "Le Cercle Rouge", "Evil"(Sweden), "Berlin" (Germany 1957), "Blood Brothers" (2007), "Machuca"(Chile), "Fear of Fear"(Germany), "Pauline and Paulette", "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (13 hours-Germany), "Flickering Lights", "Pale Flower", "Friday Night", "Mama Rosa", "Water Lillies" (France 2007), "Four Minutes", "Arctic Son", "Bad Boy Bubby" (Australia 1993-whew!), "Rojo Sangre", "Kamikaze Girls" (2005-Japan), "Fuera Del Cielo"(2008 Mexico). What I recommend is that you FIRST check these titles out on www.rottentomatoes.com to see if it's what you like, and then go for it. Don't trust Netflix to critique their own films. Watching all of above plus at least 50 more dvd's plus nearly 250 movies on big screens kept me busy....I hope it provides you with hours of genuinely rewarding viewing. Kamikaze Girls is one of the nuttiest most creative movies I've seen in years but it does require patience until you get in the mood for it. Rojo Sangre is a new addition to the growing Mexican violent street realism cinema, try it. SPAM NAMES. Brain(not Brian) York, Agatha Kaba, Abena Bathurst, Letha Khan, Toupe Kenngott, and that's it for this week. I am still keeping a vigilant eye peeled.
UNIVERSITY GRAPEVINE. Each week on KZSC 88.1 fm I host University Grapevine from 4-5 p.m. This week CHIP, the executive director of The Santa Cruz Downtown Association will be my first guest. Ed Porter outgoing Santa Cruz City Council person will be on 4:30-5p.m. and we'll talk politics some more.
QUOTES. "This is the age when Gods are diseases", Carl Jung. "Things are more like they are now then they ever were", Dwight D. Eisenhower. "People need good lies. There are too many bad ones", Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Deep Cover
Bruce critiques films every Friday on KZSC-FM (88.1) on The Bushwhacker Breakfast Club at 8am.
It's free! Click here.
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TWO WEEKS ON MAUI & KAUAI. Visiting family in Hawaii means seeing and going almost everyplace that isn't tourist oriented. We along with about 700 locals, heard the Na Mele O Maui 2008 annual song competition among the school children grades K-8, went to the Kauai DMV in Lihue, visited Long's Drugstores in Kakui Grove and Kapaa , then we got to eat some home cooked taro root, and even some legendary breadfruit, and we had rambutan which is delicious and also hermaphroditic, and some star fruit that we got at the Kohoa Farmers market (which had about 18 pickup trucks). I read that Poipu beach on Kauai is now polluted about 50% of the time. Tourism is down at least 10%. Honolulu Airport has built huge new runways and lowered airfare to attract the vanishing and big spending Japanese tourists. There was a huge brush fire on Lanai that almost totally destroyed the Four Seasons Resort.
MUCH LIKE HOME. There's talk of recalling the mayor of Kihei, 1 in 6 students in Hawaii are obese, teen age suicide rate is the highest of all our states, and The Maui Sun daily newspaper had a statement saying that, "The destruction of special sites, religious, cultural, environmental and scenic destroys the very reason that people want to visit and live there', which is something all too few of us having been saying about Santa Cruz for decades now. There aren't as many roosters and chickens on Kauai as there used to be and you do notice that, and they still wake up just about 6:05am. They are working on banning aerial advertising like in LA because there are lots of planes carrying banners, which are visual pollutants. Great Hawaii ideas...regulate, don't terminate vacation rentals. 89% of Maui County residents say they should regulate and tax vacation rentals instead of banning them. Orchids for the world famous Hawaii Leis were all coming from Thailand now that's stopped and Hawaiian florists are going crazy. The kid's game of POG played with paper bottle caps from POG soft drink bottles is coming back.(POG stands for Passion fruit, Orange and Guava) Gasoline was dropping fast while we were there and was about $2.67 near Hanapepe.
STILL MORE HAWAII MATERIAL. State House of Representative Joe Bertram III (11th District South Maui) says, "End the destructive war on cannabis especially for patients without time, we should follow the Big Island and Massachusetts lead and decriminalize at the State Level." About world famed Waimea Canyon (Kauai) if you've been up to the canyon, and you should go, next time take the original highway 550 behind the Waimea High school it's not as touristy, and you can see where the locals live. The Green Gardens Restaurant is shuttered. When I was there first in 1982 or 83 with Tim Seidel and my daughter Jennifer it was a lovely place. So was The Coco Palms hotel, which was where Elvis filmed Blue Hawaii and Esther Williams along with Howard Keel made Pagan Love Song. Actually the Coco Palms is almost totally collapsed and ruined but there is STILL talk of reviving it. There's also a new book out which I perused of the history of the Coco Palms, which is an odd collection of silly publicity photos and an almost diary of The Guslanders who ran the place.
BOOKSTORES ON KAUAI. Ed Justis and Cynthia Powell are the folks who own the Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe on Kauai. http://www.talkstorybookstore.com . They told us that there has never been an independently owned new book store on Kauai. Borders Books (yes Borders Books Inc).in Kakui Grove carries an amazing amount of local authors, lots of Hawaiiana, they used to carry even larger amounts of music and DVDs too. Now that the future of Borders is so in doubt and with the only other used bookstore near Kapaa about to close, which was much smaller than Talk Story there will be exactly one book store on the island. That's good for the Talk Story Book store and they deserve all the business they can get but it says a lot about the reading habits. By the way there's a genuine bookstore in the Honolulu airport of all places. I don't mean one of those airport bookstalls that carry all the current junk. Go to gates 12 & 13 and check out "Booksellers". They have remainders, new books, odd books, local books, all sorts of interesting reading.
HAWAII'S GREATEST PROTEST. Next week I'll go into detail about how 1500 surfers stopped the Honolulu Superferry from landing in Kauai. I'll tell about how Border's refuses to sell a book revealing the sneaky practices of the Kauai Police Department in KPD Blue by Anthony Sommer. I'll relate what the reaction was to Linda Lingle the Republican governor of Hawaii when she refused to attend Obama's Governor Conference.
THE CITY BUDGET. So I get back home and some guy named Joe ups to me on the corner of Locust and Cedar and says you know how to fix our local budget? Cut the administrators salaries...start at the top! Perfect logic and we know it'll never happen here in Surf City North. Imagine if each of the Department heads took only a 10% cut...it would save all those closings of Harvey West, London Nelson Center, save jobs too. The City Council could begin work on collecting and raising Visitor Occupancy Taxes. We could be tougher on collecting and governing vacation rental taxes. We could stand up to and force the Seaside Corporation to pay the same taxes as other local businesses do but we won't. We'll go on bitching and whining and cutting jobs. Wait and see if even one City Official offers one cent of a pay cut...just wait. Or better yet wait and see if any elected official dares to suggest such a thing....just wait.
UCSC STUDENTS VOTING. Suggesting that UCSC students either don't vote, or vote at their "home address" before they moved here is like saying no new Santa Cruz residents can vote here until they have lived here at least four years.
CHRIS WATSON. Back in July I wrote that book reviewer Chris Watson was fired from her 30 year stint at the Sentinel. She wrote to ask if I'd change it to "laid off" and said she would still be reviewing for them. Last week she wrote again to say her pieces on Wally Lamb, Joe Stroud and Terry Tempest Williams would be her last Sentinel works. She added "Who knew there were no readers left in Santa Cruz who loved books, ideas and local information?" I disagree, I think there's plenty of folks who care about that stuff...obviously. Chris and I talked a lot at the New Music Works Concert Saturday night. We agree that as depressing as this period in communication is, we are going through a revolution of how the word is spread, and it's happening so fast we just need to try to hold on until we see where it's going. Watch for new developments in Watson's corner.
JANET BLASER SAYS HOLA!! Janet Blaser long of this County and City publications now lives in Mexico....she writes," I want to share with you what I'm doing down here in Mazatlan. I just published the second edition of my own monthly newspaper, M!, modeled after the A&E weeklies in the States. You can see it in its entirety online at www.maz-amor.com, the name of the parent publishing company (which is mine too!) This is what I wanted to do, why I moved down here, what my intention was. I saw the need for it when I first came on vacation - it's a twofold need; one to have reliable information in English of what's going on here (the city has a fabulous renovated theater from the 1800s that houses not only an 800-seat theater but one of the most prestigious music & arts schools in the country, and also music & cultural festivals all year round) and also because our minds hunger desperately for English reading material.
We printed 5,000 copies in November and again in December and it is available in about 100 locations all over this city of 500,000. How many are gringos? Official estimates say 5,000 year-round, but thousands more come as one-day cruise ship visitors and even more come as 5-6 month "snow-birds," renting apartments, condos or coming in the RVs. Whatever the case, people are LOVING M! And as an example, on Dec. 1 we had 600 hits on our website! The local Secretary of Tourism, Antonio Salgado, has publicly stated his support for M! several times, and the local daily, Noroeste, ran an editorial the week after the first issue in November came out praising it as a "bridge between cultures" that would increase understanding and show the Mexicans the love we extranjeros have for their city and the joy we feel at being here.
If you think it appropriate, please feel free to mention this in your e-letter (which is very cool & full of so much information, geez, Bruce!) Check out the historical photo in the December issue, too - we'll be running one each month. Saludos, Janet Blaser
Closer to home, we now have Harold Griffith who opposes just about everything related to government if it involves money. Now he's suing the county over their continuing to charge residents $1.47 per month that pays for our 911 emergency call system. I think it's time to replace 911 with Harold's home phone number, so he can take over this essential service and not charge anybody for it.
Tony Madrigal's victory
Karen Osmundson's victory
Karen Osmundson won her Pajaro Valley Unified School District 3 reelection bid in another close race. Besides returning an excellent trustee to the boarding District 3, PVUSD voters also returned Sandra Nichols in District 6. Neither of these two winners had the support from the Committee for Good School Governance headed by Bruce Woolpert, who actively supported their opponents. There's still hope that good candidates can win, even when up against a power structure of "community leaders" that oppose them.
Sour Grapes?
For those that haven't followed the Board of Supervisors actions lately, they recently decided to form a task force to look into financing of local BOS elections. This resulted from outgoing Supervisor Beautz' request to look into independent campaign expenditures, after the candidate she supported to replace her lost It will be of interest to see the results of such a task force, i.e. who will be on it, will they also consider limiting contributions to ballot measures, will it establish limits on all elections from judge to school board races?
Progressives divided in Watsonville Mayorship and Vice-Mayorship Vote. Watsonville progressives were divided last Thursday, December 4 on who to choose as the next mayor for the City of Watsonville. Some of the progressives believed that current Vice-Mayor (or Mayor Pro Tempore) Antonio Rivas, who is known for his long diatribes and incoherence during city council meetings, was not the best choice for the next Watsonville mayor. He also already served as mayor in 2006. The progressives instead thought current Mayor Kimberly Petersen was better choice to remain as mayor for an additional year with some major issues will be decided next year: budget cuts, negotiations with the airport pilots over Buena Vista development and the Atkinson Lane Housing Project. Plenty of community members spoke in support of Petersen as well while no one spoke in support of Rivas. But Rivas would not go along with his fellow progressives, and instead looked after himself and sided with conservatives, Dale Skillicorn, Greg Caput and Emilio Martinez, to obtain his four needed votes. When it came to the vice-mayorship, Democrat Luis Alejo and Republican Dale Skillicorn were both nominated. Many community members spoke in support of Alejo and no one spoke in support of Skillicorn. Even Antonio Rivas express support for Alejo after one of his typical diatribes that lasted for about 10 minutes. However, after Rivas spoke, Kimberly Petersen changed her previous statements in support of Alejo for vice-mayor and now claimed she would go along with Skillicorn. It was obvious at that point, that Alejo now lacked one vote without Petersen's vote. When roll call was called, Rivas went along with Petersen, and Skillicorn was named the next vice-mayor (or mayor pro tempore). Skillicorn is a former member of the Republican Central Committee and worked very hard to defeat Bersamin and Alejo during those last several months. Why Petersen flip-flopped on the spot and supported Skillicorn is still a question that remains to be fully explained.
Watsonville Opens Agricultural Workers' History Project. On December 3, Watsonville opened its one-of-a-kind Agricultural Workers History Project that celebrates the many different ethnic or racial groups who have made significant contributions to agriculture in the Pajaro Valley. Located in the second floor of the new Watsonville Public Library, the concept for the project arose about 10 years ago as a means to celebrate the rich history of different peoples who came into the Pajaro Valley via agriculture. The key people behind the project were local historian Sandy Lydon, Geoffrey Dunn, Ana Ventura Phares, Nikki Silva, George Ow, Jr. and several others. The Grand Opening was well attended by dozens of local residents and elected leaders as well as the Mexican Consulate based in San Jose. The celebration also featured a Watsonville native and poet Jeff Tagami, author of "October Light," who read a couple of his famous poems including one honoring a Filipino farmworker Fermin Tobera. Tobera was murdered in Watsonville in the 1930s during a period of anti-Filipino sentiment, which came to be known as the Watsonville Riots. Tobera's body was sent back to Manila in the Philippines and became a martyr for the independence movement in the country. There was is some controversy stirring about the Agricultural Workers History Project, but it seems to be, in part, about what moments of agricultural history have been highlighted such as the Watsonville Cannery Strikes or the organizing done by labor leaders Cesar Chavez (still touchy subjects in the Pajaro Valley with old-timers). Nonetheless, the project is surely to educate countless numbers of people about the diverse peoples who made the Pajaro Valley a great place and the many struggles that they all have in common.
Teatro Campesino's Play in San Juan Bautista Mission is One to Watch. You will not see community theater like this anywhere else in the United States, and it is done inside the historic San Juan Bautista Mission. It is one of the El Teatro Campesino's annual Christmas-time plays entitled "La Virgen de Tepeyac" or "The Virgen of Tepeyac," which was written and adopted by renowned Chicano playwright and filmmaker Luis Valdez. El Teatro Campesino started during the Grape Boycott led by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the 1960s. The play is about the appearance of the Virgen Mary (or the Virgin de Guadalupe) to Mexican Indian peasant Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico, which was a ceremonial ground for the Aztecs for their goddess Tonantzin or mother-earth. The play features some superb local acting, wonderful songs by local musicians, and excellent dancing featuring some folkloric dancers of La Esperanza Del Valle Folkloric Dance Company. Bring the family along to check this one out. Shows run through Sunday, December 21 and they are selling out quickly. For ticket information times and dates see: www.elteatrocampesino.com.
So, PRT is fast becoming a possible new transportation methodology for our City. The proposed initial route extends from the Boardwalk to the University via the transit center and Harvey West. Other possibilities are to connect the Beach area with downtown and Ocean Ave. PRT "pods" normally hold about 4 people. They operate on a (generally) elevated platform, with individual pods either above or below the support. They offer rapid, off street, point to point and non-stop transportation. PRT would not compete with cars and certainly would not replace them---but PRT offers an alternative which would move students, for example, from the transit center to campus in about 7 minutes. It would permit easy tourist access to the downtown from the Beach. If and when a remote parking lot is built, auto congestion downtown would be minimized. And it would do this safely, with no noise and no pollution. At one time it was out of the box thinking , but recently it has found root in several cities in Europe. A PRT line is being installed at Heathrow Airport and in Uppsala, Sweden. PRT is being considered for several cities in the US.
Our famously liberal and progressive city is infamously conservative when it comes to any substantial change, and PRT would be a substantial change. Yet PRT could be a huge tourist attraction as well as a means to unclog our streets. Efforts are sure to be made to attract seed money from the federal Transportation people and as a part of the Obama public works program. Public support for a PRT proposal is building as awareness of the advantages of a system are becoming known. We hear a great deal about being proactive; PRT is an opportunity to act before we become completely gridlocked and gassed.
EAGAN'S DEEP COVER. Professor and poet Eagan rhymes it like it is...scroll down another 2 or 3 pages...
PATTON'S PROGRAM. Gary pays tribute to Jan Beautz and includes his rules for good supervisors which should be memorized by all office holders. He tells about the Santa Margarita Ranch Project that the developers are winning. Then he talks about AB32 and Global warming and SB375 and how it will affect all of us.
LANDAU'S PROGRES. Saul takes on the long USA history of scandals in a piece titled "Requiem For A Scandal". You need to read it, and especially the joke he closes the article with...
WATERS WEIGHING IN AGAIN. Christina Waters emailed while I was gone to strongly suggest we check her website because, "I take a closer look at the exciting new Bonny Doon tasting room, visit the dining room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and go wild for the handmade jewelry available at this Friday's UCSC Women @ Work Holiday Craft Sale. All at http://christinawaters.com. Check out my cheap wine suggestions in this week's Metro Santa Cruz. And go dine well!"...unquote.
SHRIMP SUCK. COM. My KZSC ally and fellow programmer Kady Lyons has been working on alerting the world to the dangers in eating shrimp. Shrimp is the number 1 seafood product in the world and we are decimating the oceans and the animals in it because of that love for shrimp....even farmed shrimp. I'll have more on this topic but for now go to www.shrimpsuck.org while you're there read about Ocean Revolution and the works that Wallace J. Nichol is doing....very impressive, important and immediate.
MOVIE CRITICISMS (IN ORDER OF GREATNESS).
MILK. It's sad that this movie wasn't released in time for the state wide Prop 8 vote. Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn have made a powerful statement in this movie. Full of tears, excellent acting, and the opera had the same effect too. It's a bad pun but the movie did drag in the middle. Van Sant made this one long thin movie. It has little imagination, no depth of character, little wisdom, almost an automatic and a not very well told plot. It is however so full of emotion, historical interest, and social importance, that it still is a winning picture. See this movie it'll do you good.
CADILLAC RECORDS. The music on Chicago's Chess label changed the music world forever, and this is a half true story of that label's history. Great music, fine singing by actors such as Beyonce Knowles, Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Columbus Short and everybody else. Prepare to leave the theatre singing.
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Can a lowly street urchin, chai server win the big prize on India's Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? Getting to the final answer makes for a good movie in this case. Great visuals, no problems with the acting, it's worth seeing, and most of all it's an inventive, creative idea...that's rare nowadays.
AUSTRALIA. Cloying, pandering, fake, miserable cartoon-like effects, and Baz Lurhmann the director should either start or stop sleeping with Nicole Kidman he's not doing her any favors. Hugh Jackman is in it too for some reason. Renting it and watching it on your little screen would be even more ridiculous. It's worse than being a parody of African Queen, which it is. Baz Lurhmann directed Moulin Rouge and the script writer wrote two of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies...that helps explain it.
HOSTETTER'S HOT TIMES. You can skip the first few concerts because it's too late, but do check out all the 2009 events that Paul's tipping us to....looks like a fabulous year ahead. http://www.lutherie.net/live.music.html
SPAM NAMES. After two weeks in Hawaii I figured I'd come back to the computer and face 100's of fake and funny spam names. Not so. I counted and collected exactly 7 worthwhile cuckoo monikers...to wit and woo...Hyon Adelaida, Afua Rehart, Akua Bath, Bangor Bandika, Mohabir Vanlew, Agatha Kaba, and a very brilliant Florine C. Link.
UNIVERSITY GRAPEVINE. I host University Grapevine every Thursday 4-5pm on KZSC 88.1 fm. This week Julie Boudreau and Scott Hawkins from Hospice will be my first guests. In the second half hour City Councilperson Emily Reilly will talk about her past and present on the Council and some ideas about the future directions the City Council could take.
QUOTES." Egg and sperm perform a round dance and in fallopian folds life begins" Life Magazine. "Mrs. Krishna is really saying; "Hurry Krishna, ram it, ram it; Hurry Krishna, hurry, hurry, hurry," Paul Krassner. "Man is about to become a woman", Marshall McLuhan.
Publisher, M! www.maz-amor.com. Janet doesn't mention it but Kathy Bisbee wrote an article on blogging and the web, Don Monkerud's name is in there and so is astrologer Risa D'angeles' Good Times Column. It's a quick download of 24 pages...go for it.
Those Anti-Tax nuts.
Am I the only person who is getting fed up with a minority group running things for the rest of us? Starting with Sacramento, it takes two-thirds of our elected representatives to pass a budget for the state. The Dems have a solid majority, but not two-thirds, so we continue to run the state into the ground financially because the Republicans vote no on anything that has 1 cent of tax increase in it.
Here's to newly re-elected Councilmember Tony Madrigal! Nobody worked harder than Tony to win a position on the Santa Cruz City Council. The Sentinel, in their predictable style when commenting on labor-backed candidates they don't like, never let their readers forget about a couple of Madrigal's public statements that may have offended the police department. Now they continue to remind their readers that he was backed by UCSC precinct voters and SEIU, as if their voices were less important that others. Congratulations Tony, you deserved that reelection victory!
Manuel Bersamin won his Watsonville City Council race, but no word on recount. As everyone knows by now, Councilman Manuel Bersamin won his Watsonville City Council race by only 11 votes. But the question that remains is whether his opponent Gabriel Gonzalez will ask for a recount, which comes with a price of $650. Will he ask for a recount and who will pay for the recount remains to be seen? Some expect the Watsonville airport pilots to fund Gonzalez' recount expenses since they had already funded 95 percent of his campaign. But some wonder whether they might stay out of it with the likelihood that Bersamin will still win the race. The pilots may cut their losses now after having contributed nearly $17,000 to oppose Bersamin and Luis Alejo on their city council races, and preserve their ability to negotiate with the NEW city council. The deadline for requesting a recount is on Monday, December by 5:00pm.
Deep Cover
Bruce critiques films every Friday on KZSC-FM (88.1) on The Bushwhacker Breakfast Club at 8am.
It's free! Click here.
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TWO WEEKS ON MAUI & KAUAI. Visiting family in Hawaii means seeing and going almost everyplace that isn't tourist oriented. We along with about 700 locals, heard the Na Mele O Maui 2008 annual song competition among the school children grades K-8, went to the Kauai DMV in Lihue, visited Long's Drugstores in Kakui Grove and Kapaa , then we got to eat some home cooked taro root, and even some legendary breadfruit, and we had rambutan which is delicious and also hermaphroditic, and some star fruit that we got at the Kohoa Farmers market (which had about 18 pickup trucks). I read that Poipu beach on Kauai is now polluted about 50% of the time. Tourism is down at least 10%. Honolulu Airport has built huge new runways and lowered airfare to attract the vanishing and big spending Japanese tourists. There was a huge brush fire on Lanai that almost totally destroyed the Four Seasons Resort.
MUCH LIKE HOME. There's talk of recalling the mayor of Kihei, 1 in 6 students in Hawaii are obese, teen age suicide rate is the highest of all our states, and The Maui Sun daily newspaper had a statement saying that, "The destruction of special sites, religious, cultural, environmental and scenic destroys the very reason that people want to visit and live there', which is something all too few of us having been saying about Santa Cruz for decades now. There aren't as many roosters and chickens on Kauai as there used to be and you do notice that, and they still wake up just about 6:05am. They are working on banning aerial advertising like in LA because there are lots of planes carrying banners, which are visual pollutants. Great Hawaii ideas...regulate, don't terminate vacation rentals. 89% of Maui County residents say they should regulate and tax vacation rentals instead of banning them. Orchids for the world famous Hawaii Leis were all coming from Thailand now that's stopped and Hawaiian florists are going crazy. The kid's game of POG played with paper bottle caps from POG soft drink bottles is coming back.(POG stands for Passion fruit, Orange and Guava) Gasoline was dropping fast while we were there and was about $2.67 near Hanapepe.
STILL MORE HAWAII MATERIAL. State House of Representative Joe Bertram III (11th District South Maui) says, "End the destructive war on cannabis especially for patients without time, we should follow the Big Island and Massachusetts lead and decriminalize at the State Level." About world famed Waimea Canyon (Kauai) if you've been up to the canyon, and you should go, next time take the original highway 550 behind the Waimea High school it's not as touristy, and you can see where the locals live. The Green Gardens Restaurant is shuttered. When I was there first in 1982 or 83 with Tim Seidel and my daughter Jennifer it was a lovely place. So was The Coco Palms hotel, which was where Elvis filmed Blue Hawaii and Esther Williams along with Howard Keel made Pagan Love Song. Actually the Coco Palms is almost totally collapsed and ruined but there is STILL talk of reviving it. There's also a new book out which I perused of the history of the Coco Palms, which is an odd collection of silly publicity photos and an almost diary of The Guslanders who ran the place.
BOOKSTORES ON KAUAI. Ed Justis and Cynthia Powell are the folks who own the Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe on Kauai. http://www.talkstorybookstore.com . They told us that there has never been an independently owned new book store on Kauai. Borders Books (yes Borders Books Inc).in Kakui Grove carries an amazing amount of local authors, lots of Hawaiiana, they used to carry even larger amounts of music and DVDs too. Now that the future of Borders is so in doubt and with the only other used bookstore near Kapaa about to close, which was much smaller than Talk Story there will be exactly one book store on the island. That's good for the Talk Story Book store and they deserve all the business they can get but it says a lot about the reading habits. By the way there's a genuine bookstore in the Honolulu airport of all places. I don't mean one of those airport bookstalls that carry all the current junk. Go to gates 12 & 13 and check out "Booksellers". They have remainders, new books, odd books, local books, all sorts of interesting reading.
HAWAII'S GREATEST PROTEST. Next week I'll go into detail about how 1500 surfers stopped the Honolulu Superferry from landing in Kauai. I'll tell about how Border's refuses to sell a book revealing the sneaky practices of the Kauai Police Department in KPD Blue by Anthony Sommer. I'll relate what the reaction was to Linda Lingle the Republican governor of Hawaii when she refused to attend Obama's Governor Conference.
THE CITY BUDGET. So I get back home and some guy named Joe ups to me on the corner of Locust and Cedar and says you know how to fix our local budget? Cut the administrators salaries...start at the top! Perfect logic and we know it'll never happen here in Surf City North. Imagine if each of the Department heads took only a 10% cut...it would save all those closings of Harvey West, London Nelson Center, save jobs too. The City Council could begin work on collecting and raising Visitor Occupancy Taxes. We could be tougher on collecting and governing vacation rental taxes. We could stand up to and force the Seaside Corporation to pay the same taxes as other local businesses do but we won't. We'll go on bitching and whining and cutting jobs. Wait and see if even one City Official offers one cent of a pay cut...just wait. Or better yet wait and see if any elected official dares to suggest such a thing....just wait.
UCSC STUDENTS VOTING. Suggesting that UCSC students either don't vote, or vote at their "home address" before they moved here is like saying no new Santa Cruz residents can vote here until they have lived here at least four years.
CHRIS WATSON. Back in July I wrote that book reviewer Chris Watson was fired from her 30 year stint at the Sentinel. She wrote to ask if I'd change it to "laid off" and said she would still be reviewing for them. Last week she wrote again to say her pieces on Wally Lamb, Joe Stroud and Terry Tempest Williams would be her last Sentinel works. She added "Who knew there were no readers left in Santa Cruz who loved books, ideas and local information?" I disagree, I think there's plenty of folks who care about that stuff...obviously. Chris and I talked a lot at the New Music Works Concert Saturday night. We agree that as depressing as this period in communication is, we are going through a revolution of how the word is spread, and it's happening so fast we just need to try to hold on until we see where it's going. Watch for new developments in Watson's corner.
JANET BLASER SAYS HOLA!! Janet Blaser long of this County and City publications now lives in Mexico....she writes," I want to share with you what I'm doing down here in Mazatlan. I just published the second edition of my own monthly newspaper, M!, modeled after the A&E weeklies in the States. You can see it in its entirety online at www.maz-amor.com, the name of the parent publishing company (which is mine too!) This is what I wanted to do, why I moved down here, what my intention was. I saw the need for it when I first came on vacation - it's a twofold need; one to have reliable information in English of what's going on here (the city has a fabulous renovated theater from the 1800s that houses not only an 800-seat theater but one of the most prestigious music & arts schools in the country, and also music & cultural festivals all year round) and also because our minds hunger desperately for English reading material.
We printed 5,000 copies in November and again in December and it is available in about 100 locations all over this city of 500,000. How many are gringos? Official estimates say 5,000 year-round, but thousands more come as one-day cruise ship visitors and even more come as 5-6 month "snow-birds," renting apartments, condos or coming in the RVs. Whatever the case, people are LOVING M! And as an example, on Dec. 1 we had 600 hits on our website! The local Secretary of Tourism, Antonio Salgado, has publicly stated his support for M! several times, and the local daily, Noroeste, ran an editorial the week after the first issue in November came out praising it as a "bridge between cultures" that would increase understanding and show the Mexicans the love we extranjeros have for their city and the joy we feel at being here.
If you think it appropriate, please feel free to mention this in your e-letter (which is very cool & full of so much information, geez, Bruce!) Check out the historical photo in the December issue, too - we'll be running one each month. Saludos, Janet Blaser
Closer to home, we now have Harold Griffith who opposes just about everything related to government if it involves money. Now he's suing the county over their continuing to charge residents $1.47 per month that pays for our 911 emergency call system. I think it's time to replace 911 with Harold's home phone number, so he can take over this essential service and not charge anybody for it.
Tony Madrigal's victory
Karen Osmundson's victory
Karen Osmundson won her Pajaro Valley Unified School District 3 reelection bid in another close race. Besides returning an excellent trustee to the boarding District 3, PVUSD voters also returned Sandra Nichols in District 6. Neither of these two winners had the support from the Committee for Good School Governance headed by Bruce Woolpert, who actively supported their opponents. There's still hope that good candidates can win, even when up against a power structure of "community leaders" that oppose them.
Sour Grapes?
For those that haven't followed the Board of Supervisors actions lately, they recently decided to form a task force to look into financing of local BOS elections. This resulted from outgoing Supervisor Beautz' request to look into independent campaign expenditures, after the candidate she supported to replace her lost It will be of interest to see the results of such a task force, i.e. who will be on it, will they also consider limiting contributions to ballot measures, will it establish limits on all elections from judge to school board races?
Progressives divided in Watsonville Mayorship and Vice-Mayorship Vote. Watsonville progressives were divided last Thursday, December 4 on who to choose as the next mayor for the City of Watsonville. Some of the progressives believed that current Vice-Mayor (or Mayor Pro Tempore) Antonio Rivas, who is known for his long diatribes and incoherence during city council meetings, was not the best choice for the next Watsonville mayor. He also already served as mayor in 2006. The progressives instead thought current Mayor Kimberly Petersen was better choice to remain as mayor for an additional year with some major issues will be decided next year: budget cuts, negotiations with the airport pilots over Buena Vista development and the Atkinson Lane Housing Project. Plenty of community members spoke in support of Petersen as well while no one spoke in support of Rivas. But Rivas would not go along with his fellow progressives, and instead looked after himself and sided with conservatives, Dale Skillicorn, Greg Caput and Emilio Martinez, to obtain his four needed votes. When it came to the vice-mayorship, Democrat Luis Alejo and Republican Dale Skillicorn were both nominated. Many community members spoke in support of Alejo and no one spoke in support of Skillicorn. Even Antonio Rivas express support for Alejo after one of his typical diatribes that lasted for about 10 minutes. However, after Rivas spoke, Kimberly Petersen changed her previous statements in support of Alejo for vice-mayor and now claimed she would go along with Skillicorn. It was obvious at that point, that Alejo now lacked one vote without Petersen's vote. When roll call was called, Rivas went along with Petersen, and Skillicorn was named the next vice-mayor (or mayor pro tempore). Skillicorn is a former member of the Republican Central Committee and worked very hard to defeat Bersamin and Alejo during those last several months. Why Petersen flip-flopped on the spot and supported Skillicorn is still a question that remains to be fully explained.
Watsonville Opens Agricultural Workers' History Project. On December 3, Watsonville opened its one-of-a-kind Agricultural Workers History Project that celebrates the many different ethnic or racial groups who have made significant contributions to agriculture in the Pajaro Valley. Located in the second floor of the new Watsonville Public Library, the concept for the project arose about 10 years ago as a means to celebrate the rich history of different peoples who came into the Pajaro Valley via agriculture. The key people behind the project were local historian Sandy Lydon, Geoffrey Dunn, Ana Ventura Phares, Nikki Silva, George Ow, Jr. and several others. The Grand Opening was well attended by dozens of local residents and elected leaders as well as the Mexican Consulate based in San Jose. The celebration also featured a Watsonville native and poet Jeff Tagami, author of "October Light," who read a couple of his famous poems including one honoring a Filipino farmworker Fermin Tobera. Tobera was murdered in Watsonville in the 1930s during a period of anti-Filipino sentiment, which came to be known as the Watsonville Riots. Tobera's body was sent back to Manila in the Philippines and became a martyr for the independence movement in the country. There was is some controversy stirring about the Agricultural Workers History Project, but it seems to be, in part, about what moments of agricultural history have been highlighted such as the Watsonville Cannery Strikes or the organizing done by labor leaders Cesar Chavez (still touchy subjects in the Pajaro Valley with old-timers). Nonetheless, the project is surely to educate countless numbers of people about the diverse peoples who made the Pajaro Valley a great place and the many struggles that they all have in common.
Teatro Campesino's Play in San Juan Bautista Mission is One to Watch. You will not see community theater like this anywhere else in the United States, and it is done inside the historic San Juan Bautista Mission. It is one of the El Teatro Campesino's annual Christmas-time plays entitled "La Virgen de Tepeyac" or "The Virgen of Tepeyac," which was written and adopted by renowned Chicano playwright and filmmaker Luis Valdez. El Teatro Campesino started during the Grape Boycott led by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the 1960s. The play is about the appearance of the Virgen Mary (or the Virgin de Guadalupe) to Mexican Indian peasant Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico, which was a ceremonial ground for the Aztecs for their goddess Tonantzin or mother-earth. The play features some superb local acting, wonderful songs by local musicians, and excellent dancing featuring some folkloric dancers of La Esperanza Del Valle Folkloric Dance Company. Bring the family along to check this one out. Shows run through Sunday, December 21 and they are selling out quickly. For ticket information times and dates see: www.elteatrocampesino.com.
So, PRT is fast becoming a possible new transportation methodology for our City. The proposed initial route extends from the Boardwalk to the University via the transit center and Harvey West. Other possibilities are to connect the Beach area with downtown and Ocean Ave. PRT "pods" normally hold about 4 people. They operate on a (generally) elevated platform, with individual pods either above or below the support. They offer rapid, off street, point to point and non-stop transportation. PRT would not compete with cars and certainly would not replace them---but PRT offers an alternative which would move students, for example, from the transit center to campus in about 7 minutes. It would permit easy tourist access to the downtown from the Beach. If and when a remote parking lot is built, auto congestion downtown would be minimized. And it would do this safely, with no noise and no pollution. At one time it was out of the box thinking , but recently it has found root in several cities in Europe. A PRT line is being installed at Heathrow Airport and in Uppsala, Sweden. PRT is being considered for several cities in the US.
Our famously liberal and progressive city is infamously conservative when it comes to any substantial change, and PRT would be a substantial change. Yet PRT could be a huge tourist attraction as well as a means to unclog our streets. Efforts are sure to be made to attract seed money from the federal Transportation people and as a part of the Obama public works program. Public support for a PRT proposal is building as awareness of the advantages of a system are becoming known. We hear a great deal about being proactive; PRT is an opportunity to act before we become completely gridlocked and gassed.
EAGAN'S DEEP COVER. Professor and poet Eagan rhymes it like it is...scroll down another 2 or 3 pages...
PATTON'S PROGRAM. Gary pays tribute to Jan Beautz and includes his rules for good supervisors which should be memorized by all office holders. He tells about the Santa Margarita Ranch Project that the developers are winning. Then he talks about AB32 and Global warming and SB375 and how it will affect all of us.
LANDAU'S PROGRES. Saul takes on the long USA history of scandals in a piece titled "Requiem For A Scandal". You need to read it, and especially the joke he closes the article with...
WATERS WEIGHING IN AGAIN. Christina Waters emailed while I was gone to strongly suggest we check her website because, "I take a closer look at the exciting new Bonny Doon tasting room, visit the dining room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and go wild for the handmade jewelry available at this Friday's UCSC Women @ Work Holiday Craft Sale. All at http://christinawaters.com. Check out my cheap wine suggestions in this week's Metro Santa Cruz. And go dine well!"...unquote.
SHRIMP SUCK. COM. My KZSC ally and fellow programmer Kady Lyons has been working on alerting the world to the dangers in eating shrimp. Shrimp is the number 1 seafood product in the world and we are decimating the oceans and the animals in it because of that love for shrimp....even farmed shrimp. I'll have more on this topic but for now go to www.shrimpsuck.org while you're there read about Ocean Revolution and the works that Wallace J. Nichol is doing....very impressive, important and immediate.
MOVIE CRITICISMS (IN ORDER OF GREATNESS).
MILK. It's sad that this movie wasn't released in time for the state wide Prop 8 vote. Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn have made a powerful statement in this movie. Full of tears, excellent acting, and the opera had the same effect too. It's a bad pun but the movie did drag in the middle. Van Sant made this one long thin movie. It has little imagination, no depth of character, little wisdom, almost an automatic and a not very well told plot. It is however so full of emotion, historical interest, and social importance, that it still is a winning picture. See this movie it'll do you good.
CADILLAC RECORDS. The music on Chicago's Chess label changed the music world forever, and this is a half true story of that label's history. Great music, fine singing by actors such as Beyonce Knowles, Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Columbus Short and everybody else. Prepare to leave the theatre singing.
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Can a lowly street urchin, chai server win the big prize on India's Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? Getting to the final answer makes for a good movie in this case. Great visuals, no problems with the acting, it's worth seeing, and most of all it's an inventive, creative idea...that's rare nowadays.
AUSTRALIA. Cloying, pandering, fake, miserable cartoon-like effects, and Baz Lurhmann the director should either start or stop sleeping with Nicole Kidman he's not doing her any favors. Hugh Jackman is in it too for some reason. Renting it and watching it on your little screen would be even more ridiculous. It's worse than being a parody of African Queen, which it is. Baz Lurhmann directed Moulin Rouge and the script writer wrote two of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies...that helps explain it.
HOSTETTER'S HOT TIMES. You can skip the first few concerts because it's too late, but do check out all the 2009 events that Paul's tipping us to....looks like a fabulous year ahead. http://www.lutherie.net/live.music.html
SPAM NAMES. After two weeks in Hawaii I figured I'd come back to the computer and face 100's of fake and funny spam names. Not so. I counted and collected exactly 7 worthwhile cuckoo monikers...to wit and woo...Hyon Adelaida, Afua Rehart, Akua Bath, Bangor Bandika, Mohabir Vanlew, Agatha Kaba, and a very brilliant Florine C. Link.
UNIVERSITY GRAPEVINE. I host University Grapevine every Thursday 4-5pm on KZSC 88.1 fm. This week Julie Boudreau and Scott Hawkins from Hospice will be my first guests. In the second half hour City Councilperson Emily Reilly will talk about her past and present on the Council and some ideas about the future directions the City Council could take.
QUOTES." Egg and sperm perform a round dance and in fallopian folds life begins" Life Magazine. "Mrs. Krishna is really saying; "Hurry Krishna, ram it, ram it; Hurry Krishna, hurry, hurry, hurry," Paul Krassner. "Man is about to become a woman", Marshall McLuhan.
Publisher, M! www.maz-amor.com. Janet doesn't mention it but Kathy Bisbee wrote an article on blogging and the web, Don Monkerud's name is in there and so is astrologer Risa D'angeles' Good Times Column. It's a quick download of 24 pages...go for it.
Those Anti-Tax nuts.
Am I the only person who is getting fed up with a minority group running things for the rest of us? Starting with Sacramento, it takes two-thirds of our elected representatives to pass a budget for the state. The Dems have a solid majority, but not two-thirds, so we continue to run the state into the ground financially because the Republicans vote no on anything that has 1 cent of tax increase in it.
Here's to newly re-elected Councilmember Tony Madrigal! Nobody worked harder than Tony to win a position on the Santa Cruz City Council. The Sentinel, in their predictable style when commenting on labor-backed candidates they don't like, never let their readers forget about a couple of Madrigal's public statements that may have offended the police department. Now they continue to remind their readers that he was backed by UCSC precinct voters and SEIU, as if their voices were less important that others. Congratulations Tony, you deserved that reelection victory!
Manuel Bersamin won his Watsonville City Council race, but no word on recount. As everyone knows by now, Councilman Manuel Bersamin won his Watsonville City Council race by only 11 votes. But the question that remains is whether his opponent Gabriel Gonzalez will ask for a recount, which comes with a price of $650. Will he ask for a recount and who will pay for the recount remains to be seen? Some expect the Watsonville airport pilots to fund Gonzalez' recount expenses since they had already funded 95 percent of his campaign. But some wonder whether they might stay out of it with the likelihood that Bersamin will still win the race. The pilots may cut their losses now after having contributed nearly $17,000 to oppose Bersamin and Luis Alejo on their city council races, and preserve their ability to negotiate with the NEW city council. The deadline for requesting a recount is on Monday, December by 5:00pm.
Deep Cover
Bruce critiques films every Friday on KZSC-FM (88.1) on The Bushwhacker Breakfast Club at 8am.
It's free! Click here.
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