Yes, Virginia, There are Faeries and They are Magic By Natalya Dreszer Faerie Cricket brings face painting, giant bubbles, and general whimsy to events of all kinds. She is a “Ground Faerie,” brought to life by Santa Cruzan Haley Brown, 29, a visual and performing artist who addresses disability with her work with children. “I imagine a ground faerie is any faerie that can’t fly for whatever reason,” Haley says. “It’s an allegory for disability or difference or limitation of any kind.” Haley has finished the text of her first children’s book, The Ground Faerie. It’s written as a letter from an older ground fairie to a child ground fairie.…
-
-
Editor’s Note: December 2019
Editor’s Note: December 2019 ‘Tis the season to say ‘tis the season at the start of every news story, greeting card and podcast. Cliché much? We know, we know, we’re kidding, but you can’t blame anyone for being giddy this season, especially if they have a roof over their heads and a family to share with. We feel so blessed to be able to have some time off work and school to be with the ones we love, even if sometimes preparing for the holidays is harder than our jobs. It also gives us pause to remember how lucky we are while others are so much less fortunate. That’s one…
-
December 2019 Coloring Page
December 2019 Coloring Page Color this page and send it in and we will pick a winner for two tickets to the Santa Cruz City Ballet Nutcracker at Cabrillo College Dec. 14 and 15. Send your copies by email to [email protected] or in hard copy to Box 3505 Santa Cruz, 95063. Make sure to send your address so we can mail the tickets.
-
Holiday Gift Guide for Dogs
Holiday Gift Guide for Dogs By Natalya Dreszer The holiday season is right around the corner and everyone deserves an extra treat – that’s right, it’s time to think gifts for your furry pet! We sat down with a dog expert at Hazeldog to get the best ideas. Hazeldog is a source of information and tools for dog guardians to help them have fulfilling, fun lives with their dogs run by a CTC certified Dog Trainer. Here is a list of some of their favorite holiday gift ideas for you and your dog. The Kong-Wobbler is a go-to intro food puzzle, it’s a durable and dishwasher-safe treat-dispensing toy. Hazeldog suggests…
-
Chimney Fire Safety Tips
Chimney Fire Safety Tips Fireplaces are dangerous if not kept up By the Fire Safe Council Fall is here and many rural residents are turning to their fireplaces and woodstoves to heat their houses. Dirty chimneys can cause chimney fires, which damage structures, destroy homes and injure or kill people. Structure fires related to dirty chimneys may also spread and cause damage to adjacent structures or even ignite a wildland fire. Fireplaces and wood stoves are designed to safely contain wood fires, while providing heat for a home. The chimneys that serve them have the job of expelling the by-products of combustion – the substances produced when wood burns. These include smoke,…
-
Linking Play to Future Careers: Career Pathways December 2019
Linking Play to Future Careers Career Pathways: December 2019 By Mary Gaukel Forster The holiday season provides opportunities to give career exploration gifts and to reflect with our children about what toys and games teach us about ourselves. Traditionally, we may think of trucks, dolls, kitchen sets, erector sets or video games. Here are some conversation starters for all ages, that link play to future careers, and suggestions for toys and games that entertain and teach. Younger Children Parents can help younger children connect their toys and play with skills, interests, and possible careers through questions and conversation. With practice and observation, a parent can encourage career awareness from a…
-
Finding the Right Gift for the Thrill-Seeker: Always Amused December 2019
Finding the Right Gift for the Thrill-Seeker Always Amused: December 2019 By Erik Chalhoub Have a theme park fanatic in your family, but don’t know what to give them for the holidays? You’ve come to the right article. It’s a well-known fact of life that theme parks are an expensive hobby: tickets, season passes, parking, hotels, airfare, etc. are not kind on the wallet. But savvy shoppers looking to give the gift of thrills this holiday season know the who, what, when and where for the best deals. Here are some suggestions that will hopefully make your shopping easier. To Pass or Not to Pass? In a previous column for…
-
Forget Broadway, Catch Some School Plays
Forget Broadway, Catch Some School Plays By Brad Kava We used to think that you had to handicap school plays, measure them on a different standard, then, say, something you would see in a professional theater. These are just students, after all. Well, two plays we caught last month in Aptos changed our minds about that. When we saw “Carrie” at Cabrillo College, all through the play we assumed it was done by the professionals at Cabrillo Stage. Camrynn Ford as Dora Bailey in “Singin’ in the Rain.” Not so. Most of the actors were students, and we only found that out at the end. It was as tight and…
-
He Flies Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease: Extremely Sports December 2019
He Flies Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease Extremely Sports: December 2019 By Kevin Painchaud Taj Rodriguez, 13, started bouncing on a trampoline when he was 2. Now, he’s a competitive trampolinist who trains at Vargas Academy and placed seventh in the country at the nationals for Trampoline and Tumbling held in Des Moines, Iowa. The Aptos Junior High eighth grader does Jiu Jitzu and has been a Capitola Junior Guard. He enjoys mountain biking, snowboarding, skating and surfing. KP: When did you first discover the trampoline? Taj: When I was 2-years-old I saw my dad on a trampoline and I tried to copy some of the things…
-
Kids Navigate the Rails During Winter Break
Kids Navigate the Rails During Winter Break By Suki Wessling One of the highlights of Santa Cruz holiday season is the ginormous train set at the Museum of Art & History, where kids can run the trains themselves. The set has been put up for 15 years by a group of devoted train lovers, the Golden State Toy Train Operators. “I’ve always enjoyed trains,” says Eric Child, 75, one of the group’s founders. “When I was about 6 or 7, I got my first toy train set. As a very small child in San Anselmo I can remember taking the train to catch a ferry over to San Francisco. I…
-
Impossible Burger vs. Beyond Burger
Impossible Burger vs. Beyond Burger Healthy Eating: December 2019 By Kris Holden The two biggest brands of fake meat, Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger, are all the hype. They are in the news and headlines and displayed on the menus at hundreds of restaurants and fast food chains. The Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger are both highly processed and engineered to replicate meat. They have similar protein amounts to ground beef, but have just as much saturated fat (from the coconut oil) and high sodium. They do offer two to three grams of fiber, where as beef has none. The Impossible Burger has 21 ingredients with the main contents being…
-
New Movie Villains Want to Destroy People to Save the Environment
New Movie Villains Want to Destroy People to Save the Environment Comic book movies take a new turn By Jordy Hyman Avengers, Kingsman, Venom, Aquaman: comic book movies almost always have a big bad guy who wants to destroy civilization, but there’s a new trend developing in Hollywood. The villains of these movies want to kill us to save the Earth. We live in an era of entertainment where straightforward heroes are considered poor form and antagonists are written with the utmost empathy. It’s raining coins, cell phones, cameras and stopping some coasters. Photo by EriK Chalhoub So it makes sense that villains need a compelling reason to commit genocide,…
-
Organization=Family Peace During Board Games: Get Organized December 2019
Organization=Family Peace During Board Games Get Organized: December 2019 By Jhoneé Fillmore Keep Attention My family LOVES to play board games. Our family consists of a seven-year-old boy and a four-year-old boy. I noticed that the amount of time it took to merely setup a board game was using up their attention span and focus needed to play the game. I decided to create a system that allowed a quick setup. At the conclusion of every game, my family and I take an extra minute to cleanup and the whole family is involved. We have small Ziplocs bags to separate all items in the game such as: character pieces, money, cards,…
-
Jacob’s Heart Beats for Santa Cruz
Jacob’s Heart Beats for Santa Cruz “You Can Handle Anything if you Don’t Have to Handle it Alone” by Kevin Painchaud Every parent’s worst nightmare is finding out that your child has a life-threatening illness. Your entire world is turned upside down. Where do you turn? What do you do? Your child becomes the only thing that matters. Things like food and bills become secondary. And for those thousands of residents in our community that do not have the financial means to take time off work to focus on their child, life seems insurmountable. Teacher T. Jesse Rile. Photo by Jules Holdsworth. This is the reality for many folks in…
-
The First Placement for our First Foster Child
The First Placement for our First Foster Child By Amanda Firth This is part of a short series about Foster Parenting and Adoption in Santa Cruz County. Proper names in the story have been changed for the privacy and protection of the children involved. We were ready for a new baby. There was a half size crib in our bedroom with green and yellow sheets and baby blankets, a few baby outfits, and a toy. That was it. Oh, and a new credit card that was only usable at Babies-R-Us. Honestly, we did not believe this was really going to happen. We had trained, interviewed, and been thoroughly prepared and…
-
You Can Make an Impact this Holiday with Operation Christmas Child
You Can Make an Impact this Holiday with Operation Christmas Child Since 1993, more than 168 million boys and girls in over 160 countries have experienced God’s love through the power of simple shoebox gifts from Operation Christmas Child. You are invited to help spread the joy by packing a shoebox with school supplies, hygiene items and toys. For details go to this website, https://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/ If you would prefer to pack shoeboxes with others you may attend one of the following Packing Parties: Sunday, Nov. 10, 10:00 a.m.at Corralitos Community Church, 26 Browns Valley Rd., Watsonville Tuesday, Nov 18, 6:30 p.m. in the Newton Memorial Building in Mount Hermon, across from the Rec Field. Filled shoeboxes can…
-
Breakfast Time Savers & Hacks: Get Organized November 2019
Breakfast Time Savers & Hacks Get Organized: November 2019 By Jhoneé Fillmore School Day vs. Weekend The typical school morning is face paced. Many tasks must be done by the kiddos and adults for a successful school arrival. Let the family know in advance which breakfast items are available for school mornings versus weekend mornings. At our house, weekend mornings are for making french toast, baking muffins, making waffles or pancakes from scratch or something as simple as cooking bacon. School mornings however need to happen much more quickly so I limit the menu to: scrambled or fried eggs, frozen waffles, frozen pancakes, cereal, toast, instant oatmeal, yogurt, hard-boiled eggs,…
-
Juice vs Smoothies, What’s Healthier? Healthy Eating November 2019
Juice vs Smoothies, What’s Healthier? Healthy Eating November 2019 By Kris Holden There’s a lot of hype over juicing these days. More and more juice bars are opening and most grocery stores offer a variety of bottled fruit and vegetable juices. The latest trend seems to be cold-pressed juice. But, what is “cold-pressed juice,”? Are there more health benefits in drinking fresh pressed juice over drinking blended smoothies? Let’s start off by looking at the process and benefits of juicing. Juicing 101 Juicing is the process of extracting the liquid from fruits and vegetables and discarding the skin, pulp and fiber. Without the fiber your digestive system doesn’t have to…
-
Foster Parenting and Adopting is Like Crossing the Sea
Foster Parenting and Adopting is Like Crossing the Sea By Amanda Firth This is the introduction to a short series about Foster Parenting and Adoption in Santa Cruz County. Proper names in the story have been changed for the privacy and protection of the children involved. I’m drowning over and over again. First there was paperwork, miles of forms and visits to our apartment by person after person. This mother walks the walk, adopting and fostering kids and taking on the toughest challenges. They arrived with briefcases, clipboards, forms, and delved into every cupboard and cabinet, every bit of history, and every personal value we had. They rifled through our…
-
Downtown Felton Frolic
Downtown Felton Frolic By Christina Wise The downtown Felton area has taken a decidedly decorative turn in recent years. The southern stretch of Highway 9 (from the Graham Hill intersection) is dotted with darling shops that call to the eye of stylish dressers and the spirit of gift-givers. From the crystals and gems at Mountain Spirit to the vintage and consignment items at Tomboy Outpost to the carefully curated collections at Simpatico, shoppers are drawn to the homespun charm of Felton anytime of year—but especially in November. On Saturday, November 30th, Felton celebrates Small Business Saturday (a national movement to promote local shopping) by rolling out the red carpet with…
