Community Comes Together

If there’s a silver lining to all the storms we’ve faced—besides fighting back on the long drought—it’s the way our community has come together.

People have taken both big and small steps to help each other. Big corporations, once considered the Evil Empire around Santa Cruz, have rushed forward to help bring service to so many people stricken by the floods, often not seeking publicity for their efforts, but thanked by residents nonetheless.

While everyone praises first responders from police and fire departments, we rarely see enough credit given to workers who climb poles in torrential rains to bring back electricity, cable and phone service. We’ve tried to call out some of them in our article about Heroes of the Storm. We know there are many more and would love to print your thanks to them in a column next month. So send them to editor@growingupsc and we we may used them in print.

We also loved the way volunteers have stepped up, from big groups cleaning beaches, to individuals carrying bags on their daily walks and filling them with plastics. Some beaches, such as those between Rio del Mar and Manresa are almost spotless already.

And we love the individual efforts, such as the person who left out donuts and plastic bags, asking people to take one and fill the bag with plastic. We can only express our gratitude at your thoughtfulness and the hope for the future you bring to Santa Cruz County and those growing up here. You are true role models for our kids.

We appreciate President Biden for showing up. Yes, it cost a fortune in expenses and fuel to bring him here. But we saw the pride he brought to the school kids who saw his flyover and stood out along the roads to greet him.

Yes, it’s symbolic, but we think it was worth it, just for what it brought to the kids and to the struggling businesses. It was a big ray of hope that someone in Washington cares and was a big contrast to a previous executive who blamed our problems on not raking leaves or controlling the forests—which, by the way, were on federal land and under his jurisdiction.

We are feeling so grateful to have January sunshine without the fear that it’s deepening the drought. And we are hopeful that this climate event will open paths to future initiatives to meet the threat of climate change.

It’s not just coming…it’s here, right before our eyes. We have to take steps to stop it, whether it’s by building alternative transportation, like the bicycles the rest of the world favors, switching to solar powered electric vehicles, cutting down on all that plastic and moving to truly recyclable packaging.
Growing Up will be taking on those issues throughout the years and highlighting your efforts to make our world safer and cleaner.

Thanks for reading

Brad Kava, Editor and Publisher