High Schooler’s Invention Can Stop Fires Before They Spread By Brad Kava Fence-mounted FACE’s can build a wall of protection. Arul with a FACE prototype, which he expects to ship in September. A FACE prototype placed in an attic. As the thick of the fire season approaches, Santa Cruzans may want to protect themselves with an amazing invention created by a 17-year-old high school student. Arul Mathur, who lives in Danville, but has been studying online with Soquel’s Merit Academy, has created something he calls F.A.C.E., or Fire Activated Cannister Extinguisher. You put them around your house and when triggered by high temperatures, they shoot out a fire retardant in…
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Fourth of July
Fourth of July Celebrations By brad kava There may not be fireworks but the Fourth of July is back big in Santa Cruz! Aptos’s “World’s Shortest Parade” is back after a year off, with a huge assortment of family friendly people and crazies marching the few blocks between Wells Fargo and Trout Gulch. This is the event that made Growing Up fall in love with the town many years back. There won’t be a breakfast or park event because of the last minute drop of Covid restrictions, but we are thrilled. Come check us out, handing out the latest Growing Up with the cover story about berries. It’s berry…
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Ava Barret
Ava Barret Local Artist You don’t need to be good at art to call yourself an artist. My name is Ava Barrett, and I am an artist. I have been dancing at the tannery arts center for seven years. And I know what your thinking. What does dance have to do with these pictures I have painted? Well, dance is my main outlet for creativity. Recently I have been given fantastic opportunities to work with professional dancers to further my artistry. Within those seven years, I have seen tremendous growth in my body and mind, now onto the subject of painting. I took art classes as a kid but never…
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July 2021
MONTH LONGBanff Centre Mountain Film Festival Virtual Festival This year, bring the adventure home! Fluff up your couch cushions, grab a snack of choice, and make sure you have good internet connection, because the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour is Virtual! Travel to the most remote corners of the world, dive into daring expeditions, and celebrate some of the most remarkable outdoor achievements, all from the comfort of your living room. Films can be purchased individually or as a bundle. Visit riotheatre.com for more information about the online programs and how you can support your local screening. You may also go directly to the Banff affiliate link for…
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Inspirational Posters
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Foxy July 21
Summer Fox submission deadline August 20 Read More Coloring Pages
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Playwright Winners
Actors Theatre Young Playwrights Winners Press Release Ten local high school students have been named as winners of the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre’s Young Playwrights’ Festival and their scripts will be offered in various productions in the coming months. “Ocean Disaster,” by Julien Jacklin, and “Mother & Daughter” by Lila-Rose Roberts, both from Georgiana Bruce Kirby School, along with “Together at Last,” by Stella Pfefferkonn of the San Lorenzo Valley Nature Academy, will have their plays featured on the Actors’ Theatre Radio Hour on KSQD (90.7 FM) at 9 p.m. June 20. Six young playwrights will have their works presented on Zoom Forward, on June 25 at 5 p.m., a…
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Alice’s Avengers in Underland
Alice’s Avengers in Underland press release Alice and a host of singing and dancing superhero’s, dive deep into Underland to fight Gotham City’s most vile villains in their Underland hideout in Little People’s Repertory Theater’s Alice’s Avengers in Underland. This original rock music by Janinne Chadwick opens July 21st at Park Hall in downtown Ben Lomond. LPRT is back with live theater, promising to entertain audiences of all ages. Alice’s Avengers in Underland parodies pop music, classic rock and iconic pop-culture icons, from Tom Petty to Lizzo. Under the Direction of Jocelyn Mcmahon-Babalis, with Gabe House as musical director and choreographer, Sadie Rose, over 65 local kids will perform once…
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Santa Cruz Montessori
Santa Cruz Montessori Students Fight Hunger Press Release It all started with a news story showing mile-long lines for food banks around the country in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Santa Cruz Montessori teacher Kristin Tosello shared this news with her 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in the Junior Class. She also streamed videos from the Second Harvest Food Bank that showed that one in five people in Santa Cruz County and one in four children in Santa Cruz County face food insecurity.The images and the statistics hit home with the Montessori students, shocked at the number of hungry people in their own community. But instead of simply feeling…
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Mac vs PC
Mac vs PC By Luigi Oppido Let’s start with the differences. Both machines are virtually the same inside. The same components live inside both machines just like any other computer, Ram, CPU, hard drive etc. The difference starts with the operating system and the functionality and communication of those components, and of course, what you can do with them! This question plagues the computer user every time the trigger needs to be pulled on a new machine. What do I get? Mac or PC? And why? Common today, Macs are mostly found in laptop form and run the Apple operating system called OSX or OS11. Microsoft computers called PCs normally…
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Sales Slowing
Are Real Estate Sales Slowing Down? By Sebastian Frey If you’re in the market to buy or sell a home, you may be paying particularly close attention to the headline news about real estate. If so, you may have seen some news stories about a cooling real estate market. Many of these stories were based off a report from Redfin, showing somewhat declining sales activity, coast to coast. But all real estate is local, so national trends aren’t necessarily reflected in our local real estate market. But even locally, today we are seeing a modest decline in homes going under contract, and homes sold in June, compared to March, April,…
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Water Parks
Getting Back in the Water South Bay Shores Highlights New Water Parks By Erik Chalhoub Growing up, I used to be very timid when it came to trying a different theme park attraction. I was even nervous about riding the Giant Dipper at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, even though I had ridden it many times before.But once I went on my first upside-down roller coaster at age 18 (I was a late theme park bloomer), I haven’t looked back since. I’ll try any ride at least once. I’ve even been on a slingshot-type attraction as well as a “skycoaster” before, no problem.Yet, when I look at the seven-story Shark…
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Sweetest Job
A Day-in-the-Life of a Driscoll’s Strawberry by Jeanette Prather The Sensory Panel team at Driscoll’s is composed of seven individuals who went through an extremely specific three-month training for flavor analyzing before moving on to testing and evaluating the berries, is one of the many steps that Driscoll’s takes to ensure that its berries meet the standard of “Only the Finest Berries Who knew that one strawberry could yield hundreds of taste testers, a plethora of scientific analysis, as well as a cascade of careers? For Driscoll’s, the Central Coast’s centuries old and family-owned berry farm, this is not just a far-out question but rather just a day-in-the-life of your…
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Jenny Putt
Physical Therapist Jenny Putt Finds Covid Silver Linings by suki wessling Welcome back to our monthly feature of moms who have faced the task of pandemic parenting while also continuing their work in our community. Research has shown that women have suffered greater economic and personal fallout from the pandemic, losing jobs or having to work while also caring for children. “It’s easy to miss so much of your child’s growth and development when you are a working parent, especially self-employed,” says physical therapist Jenny Putt, mom to three-year-old Peyton. “I had no idea what I was missing by working all the time.”That’s Jenny putting a positive spin on the…
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Musical Baby
Your Baby’s Brain is Hooked Up for Music By Sue Doherty Babies listen to our unique way of speaking to them, known as motherese or parentese. The distinguishing characteristic is the singsong emotive quality we place on our words. How do a baby’s senses begin to integrate, cooperate, and collaborate in the brain? Amazingly, newborns as young as 2 days old can decipher pitch. Rocking to the beat is innate. István Winkler and Henkjan Honing discovered that babies can detect the rhythmic beat in drumming-infused rock music. They believe that evolution may have favored brains wired to rock for learning purposes, and, he suggests: “music went along for the ride.”…
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Doula
Aiming High – Or a New Normal? by Laura Maxson, LM The birth community is breathing a sigh of relief as pandemic restrictions begin to lift. Getting back to normal sounds pretty good after the past year and a half, but why stop at normal? Families will be better served with higher goals – so let’s aim beyond normal. Consider vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) in Santa Cruz County.(Note: families travel to our county because we have better VBAC options than others.) Studies show pregnancies following a cesarean should result in a vaginal birth about 70% of the time, with only 30% of attempted VBACs resulting in a repeat cesarean.…
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Capitola Library
The New Capitola Library Bringing the Outside In By Suki Wessling The years of fundraising, wrangling over details, and suffering through closure and construction have paid off: the Capitola Library is open and it’s beautiful The years of fundraising, wrangling over details, and suffering through closure and construction have paid off: the Capitola Library is open and it’s beautiful! Melanee Barash, Branch Manager, showed me around before opening day and I was astounded by the thought put into the project, which was designed by architects Noll & Tam. There were several important elements that they wanted to integrate: The old library was comprised of several portables joined together, and thus…
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Mental Health
A Focus on Mental Health for South County By Suki Wessling Luckily right now there’s a good amount of funding and will to make mental health a priority. For us, it’s one of those things that we knew could be beneficial, so this is an opportunity for us to do something we’ve always wanted to do, which is to make it more of a primary concern. The pandemic hasn’t spared the southern half of Santa Cruz County, and no one has a wider view of this than professionals who work with families here.“In PVUSD almost twenty percent of students have lost a family member or someone close to them,” says…
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Home Alone
Tips for Leaving Kids Home Alone By Nicole M. Young, MSW As a working parent, summer vacation was always a mixed blessing when my kids were younger. It was a relief to have a break from the daily school routine, but figuring out a patchwork quilt of childcare and supervised activities was stressful (and expensive). The older they got, the harder it became to find affordable options that would work for both of them – and not require me to spend half of my working day getting them to and from their different activities. So it was a relief when they were old enough to be left alone, unsupervised –…
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Reading This Summer
Reading This Summer More Important than Ever If your child can read, he or she can learn anything. It’s really quite important. So get on the reading bandwagon this summer and let those skills flourish.. Summer is here and it’s time for fun in the sun. Yes. But, many of your children have been through the pandemic mill when it comes to their classroom experiences and they will need extra support to maintain their reading skills.Some children in primary grades have not had “normal” educational direct instruction for two years. While we all applaud the efforts of classroom teachers during this challenging time, even they know the instruction has not…
