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Is Local Railroad Track Already Off Course Before It Starts?
I need you to tell me the truth about something. If the county follows through and builds a half a billion dollar train line from Watsonville to Davenport, will you take it regularly? Will you commute on it? Will you send your kids to school on it? Will you go shopping on it? Please let me know that if we reach deep into our overtaxed pockets to come up with a boatload of money it will in fact take cars off our miserably crunched roads. My own take is that I don’t believe it will take any cars off the road, or a few at best. And keep this in…
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Festivals Inspire Santa Cruz Symphony
The exciting March program begins with the Matsuri Overture. Named for the Japanese word for festival the Matsuri Overture was composed in 2017 by Spain’s José González Granero. Now based in the Bay Area, Granero has been principal clarinet for the San Francisco Opera Orchestra since 2010. The composer recalled that he was inspired by a trip to Kyoto, Japan, during which the Ebisu Festival at New Year’s made a powerful impression on him. During this Festival participants pay their respects and pray for success, using special branches of bamboo grass they hope will bring good luck. Granero’s Overture captures the feel and excitement of both the ancient Japanese festival…
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Birthday Battle Royale at the Children’s Museum
We’ve had a lot of the usual birthday parties for our 8-year-old son—bowling, the Boardwalk, Blue Ball Park— but nothing topped going to a local museum with Nerf guns locked and loaded to shoot your guests. Think Night at the Museum meets Terminator and you’ve made a lot of boys’ dreams come true. It sounds crazy, right? But the Children’s Museum of Discovery in the Capitola Mall has stretched the boundaries of what a museum can be and has come up with a party like none other. For two hours, kids get to run amok with Nerf blasters. They can bring their own guns or the museum supplies them. It…
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Tips for the Teen Years
It wasn’t that long ago that I was riding the wild, twisty rollercoaster called Raising Teens. I remember countless tense discussions with my son in particular, who often felt the rules and schedules at home and school didn’t apply to him. It was stressful and exhausting to stay calm and find a balance between setting age-appropriate limits and fostering independence. I’ll admit I wasn’t always successful, but we made it through the turbulent teen years and now enjoy seeing the independent, responsible, and insightful young adult he’s become. In fact, we’re celebrating him getting his first full-time job in the field that he studied. I’m beaming with pride (and relief)…and…
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Prepare Your Kids for Careers in an AI-Driven Future-World
Many parents today never experienced a world where computers weren’t a standard household fixture, let alone a world without the Internet. When the World Wide Web first became available to the public in 1991, it was archaic compared to today. Yet at the time, it was quite the phenomenon. But the rapid speed of technological progress over the past couple of decades will resemble the crawl of a tortoise in another decade or two as technology continues to advance at an exponential rate. In fact, according to Ray Kurzweil, a world-renowned inventor, thinker, and futurist, “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be…
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Postpartum Doulas Help New Families
Sometimes there’s one miraculous moment of postpartum doula care that seems like a turning point in a new parent’s confidence. But more often it’s a series of small, almost imperceptible moments that together lighten the load; allowing everyone to take a breath, get their perspective back and continue learning how to be in tune with their new baby. Postpartum doulas are available to new families for a few hours, days, or weeks. Experienced with feeding support, they can offer encouragement through helpful tips and techniques that have been successful for many other families. They keep an eye out for situations that may seem beyond normal new baby transitions. While not…
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Reaching the Heart Before Reaching the Head
When you became a parent, did you say to yourself, “I’m going to love my child only under certain conditions”? This is called Conditional Love. I’m guessing this was not your goal. I’m guessing your thoughts align with wanting your child to feel loved at all times. Through all the challenges and mistakes we make, we all want to know we are loved. “I love you no matter what.” This is called Unconditional Love. How to Love Unconditionally The theory of parenting is the easy part. How to put it into practice is the challenging part. Let’s begin with the theory, the easy part. To set the groundwork for children…
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Child’s Play
Before I had a grandchild, much of my internet searching started with a headache that quickly escalated to the most common symptoms of a brain tumor, or the discovery that one of the side effects of a new medication is death. Now that I’m a grandmother, my searches and the results are a bit more cheerful, but they can still send me down a rabbit hole. The rabbit hole is where I learned that there is a condition called Obsessive Grandmother Syndrome and a style called Coastal Grandma. And where I learned that I might have Obsessive Coastal Grandma Style Syndrome (OCGSS). And yes, my granddaughter’s big head does mean…
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Exploring California’s Wildlife Through Printmaking
Stephanie Martin is a well known painter and printmaker based in Santa Cruz. Her beautifully hand-colored etchings depict the wildlife of her native landscape. Martin’s illustrations are part of many Bay Area collections and publications, including Fruit Trees for Every Garden: A Organic Approach, by her husband, Orin Martin, manager of UCSC’s Alan Chadwick Garden. How did you discover etching? SM: I fell into etching by pure chance: it was offered in the evening! I was in my mid-40s, working as an elementary school teacher, and interested in a new challenge. I enrolled in Introduction to Drawing at Cabrillo, and the following semester found an Intaglio Printmaking (etching) class offered…
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Can You Trust College Rankings When Choosing Where to Apply?
Ever wonder how the US News and World Report select which university is the best in the nation? You would hope that the researchers would create algorhythms to consider a wide range of factors to fairly determine this elite ranking. But no. Critics in the past two decades have exposed just how ratings can be easily manipulated by the colleges themselves. In order to boost their rankings, colleges simply increase the volume of students who apply. To do this, many colleges target applicants who are unqualified students and entice them with free application fees. Stanford University, Reed College, and others have openly criticized ranking colleges based on the fact that…
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Disconnect to Reconnect
In a world where mostly everything we do is ONLINE, how are we making space to connect within and with each other in our community. It is no surprise that the mental health crisis is on the rise. In 2024, San Mateo county declared state of emergency for loneliness – the first county ever to do so. The impacts of isolation from the pandemic in 2020 are still on the rise. Not only is it affecting adults but having a massive negative affect on our children too. What does this mean for you reading this? How have you been impacted by the pandemic isolation and how has it affected your…
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Coloring Contest
