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Editor’s Note
We asked an Artificial Intelligence program to write a poem about being a teen whohas grown up in Santa Cruz and this is what we got in 20 seconds: In Santa Cruz by the sea, Where the waves crash wild and free.I spent my teenage years, With laughter, love, and tears.The sun-kissed sand, the salty breeze, The boardwalk bustling with glee.The pier where we’d fish and dream, Our youth so full of promise and esteem.The town was quirky, artsy, and kind, With open minds and hearts refined.Where we could be ourselves, express, And never feel the need to impress.We’d hang out at cafes, skate parks, and beaches, Taking risks, pushing…
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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…
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Editor’s Note
There were a few qualities I sought out when I was looking for my ideal place in which to live—It had to have excellent schools, lots of culture, proximity to nature at its best and idealistic people who cared about helping the world. I found it right here in this county of almost 280,000 people. In decades of living in Santa Cruz, I’ve never been bored and I’m always appreciative of the fact that tourists pay fortunes and travel hundreds and thousands of miles to enjoy what I wake up to every day.I had to live over the hill for work for too long and it was torture. Yeah, the…
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Should we R-E-S-P-E-C-T respect?
I can hardly express the joy I felt when my 6-year-old-son, Parker, won an award for being respectful at an assembly after his first month of first grade. What parent doesn’t burst with pride for any of their children’s accomplishments? But that night, I tuned in Bill Maher’s show and heard him lament that we give our children too many participation awards and make them feel entitled for the rest of their lives, regardless of their actual accomplishments. Now Maher knows as much about raising kids as I do about splitting atoms, but he was echoing the conservative platform that schools and teams now reward students just for showing up.…
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After School Conversations
Editor’s Note By brad kava It doesn’t seem right to start school before Labor Day, or as many in Santa Cruz know it, weeks before Burning Man. (As a college teacher, I can always tell the ones who miss the first week of school claiming to have been at a funeral or stuck overseas on some secret mission by their desert tans. Busted.) That said, one of the biggest challenges parents face as their youngsters return home from an arduous day of learning is getting them to talk about it. It can be as tough a job as a police person interviewing a suspected murderer trying to get the facts,…
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Missing Van
Editor’s Note By Brad Kava The school year is starting out sadly at Watsonville’s Pajaro Valley High School. The school’s only van—a beloved seven-passenger Ford, nicknamed “Grizzly Van” — was stolen from the campus in July.he white van was a fixture for the 1,650-student school, transporting classes, special ed students and athletes to events. It was last used on a Saturday to take members of the football team to Monterey for training. The next day it was gone. “At first I felt disbelief,” says Athletic Director Joe Manfre. “Nobody is going to steal a van from a high school. We’re across the freeway from most people and you have to…
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Community Kindness
Editor’s Note By Brad kAva You want to make America great again? How about focusing on kindness? I know, it sounds hippy dippy cliché, but when people put aside business as usual and do great things for each other the world really becomes a better place. It happened to me last week.My engine lights were flashing and the warning signals looked like a missile was pointed at the Starship Enterprise. “Oil pressure low,” it blared. Luckily, I was near the Valvoline in Watsonville, by Target. I coasted in, thinking I just needed an oil change, but no, the oil had all leaked out and even a mechanical dolt like me…
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Yes on D
Yes on Measure D Keep travel safe for kids and get them off the couch! By brad kava On June 7 Santa Cruz voters will have a chance to build something world class that will bring in tourists, cut down pollution and help locals get fit and travel safely. It will be a 32-mile-long bike, walking and wheelchair path that will wind along stunning beaches, majestic forests and picturesque landscapes between Watsonville and Davenport. It will attract tourists, as do similar well-traveled paths in Santa Monica, San Diego, Sacramento and hundreds of counties across the country that have converted useless rails to useful, joyful trails. It will be the most…
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Editors Note May 2022
Editor’s Note By Brad Kava Like so many other readers, we found a camp for our 5-year-old son, Parker, from an article in Growing Up in Santa Cruz. It was a story about an intriguing camp, Thomas Farm Films, which hires movie directors to teach kids how to make films and then makes them on an Aptos organic farm. I was afraid it might be too much for such a young kid. We’d already had a bad experience with a highly recommended preschool, but he hated it. It’s so hard to know what a kid will like. But Parker loved the film camp so much that even though we’d signed…
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March 2022 Editor’s Note
Fentanyl Epidemic Hits Home By Brad KAva We had a tragedy in the Growing Up in Santa Cruz family—the son of one of our longtime sales executives, Sophie Véniel, died of a fentanyl overdose. The incredibly dangerous and increasingly popular drug was secretly put on what looked like prescription medicine. It’s devastated us all. But in the tradition of journalism, it got us asking questions. Why is this happening? How often is it happening? What can we do about it? Writer Suki Wessling got answers and suggestions for help and you can read them in this issue. As a stepparent to two teens, it got me thinking. What should I…
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Art in Schools
Studying the Masters so Young? By Brad Kava When I asked my 5-year-old son what he did in his afterschool program the other day, he said he learned about Monet. “Money?” I ask. “No, Monet, he’s a painter,” he replies. I sent him to the Apple Afterschool program, thinking it was just a place for him to play after school, where they even walked him from his half-day kindergarten class to the nearby center and did the usual crafts, games, and child projects. The next day, a different conversation.“Do you think Frida Kahlo was friends with Monet?” he asks me.I was pretty much stumped on that one but knew they…
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Editors Note Jan 22
Editor’s Note By Brad Kava Talk about traumatic. My dog, a 7-month-old standard poodle, ran away for nine hours and I must have walked and driven 20 miles looking for her. It was my fault, as my 5-year-old boy reminded me. I had her on a field and I looked down to answer a text. Next thing, she had run off somewhere around Aptos. I couldn’t believe she could disappear so quickly. After three hours of searching, I got on the internet and put out a call for help on NextDoor. For a while, nothing came back and at noon, while Parker and I were searching, we heard the howls…
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Editor Note Dec 2021
Editor’s Note by brad kava We’re about to flip the page on 2021 and while it’s been a tough year for many, there are some good things to celebrate. We love those little libraries sprouting up all over town outside people’s homes. It’s such a great way to give back. We also love the food libraries we’ve seen at places such as Leo’s Haven. Left to their own devices people will do good works and that’s reason to celebrate. Over in Scotts Valley we caught a plant library! “Need a plant? Take a Plant. Have a Plant? Leaf a Plant,” it says. “Sharing is caring,” my kindergartner says.The holidays are…
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We won
Bring Home Awards By Brad Kava Growing Up in Santa Cruz won four big awards in a national contest sponsored by the Parenting Media Association, a trade group that reaches six million family and parent magazine readers each month in the U.S., Canada and Australia. The competition was judged by the journalism department of the University of Missouri. We took top honors for humor, with our wonderful monthly cartoon by Patty Benson. Here’s what the judges said:“This illustrated column uses multiple visual devices as a framework for funny observations that most moms will recognize from their own lives. The approach is hilariously on point as well as entertaining and original.”…
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Nov 21 Editor Note
November Editor’s Note By brad kava I’m really afraid the Flat Earthers are winning. You look around social media and at certain websites and you see people who have no clue about science. Some of them throw out 200 years of vaccine study as fake news. Others don’t believe we went to the moon, because of fake YouTube videos. Still more deny climate change, ignoring the fact that we only have 62 miles of atmosphere and claiming that humans can’t affect that limited space. And yes, some are unabashedly saying they think the Earth is flat. Not to mention those– a much larger number than a rational person could possibly…
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October 2021 Editors Note
Editor’s Note By Brad kava A kid in our 5-year-old’s kindergarten class at Rio Del Mar Elementary School tested positive for COVID-19 and the school went right into action.All the students in the class had to get tested right away on school grounds and then again several days later. None of them tested positive. That was so reassuring and told me clearly that masks work. When the pandemic started plenty of science deniers claimed kids were losing their freedom by being forced to wear masks and they argued that youngsters didn’t have the discipline to keep their masks on and distance themselves when necessary. I worried about that also. But…
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Editors Note Sept 21
Editors’ Note September 2021 When we heard carmaker Hyundai had a commercial for a new model SUV/truck called the Santa Cruz, we were leery. How would they depict our town and would it be so commercialized we’d want to gag. Then we saw Jimbo Phillips in the ad and we knew they knew the essence of the town. They picked the right guy, an artist who mixes the Keep Santa Weird vibe with a wholesome family life. And then we knew that we had to get him to talk about his life and the three generations of Phillips’s whose vision is on skate boards, posters, shirts and sweatshirts all over…
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To mask or not mask
Editors’ Note By Brad kava One of the most important stories you’ll read in our Back to School issue is an interview with Faris Sabbah, the man in charge of keeping some 42,000 K-12 students safe. The biggest news from him is that students will have to be masked until at least November when the state will decide if that’s still a requirement. This should be a no-brainer. Medical experts see a second, more contagious wave of Covid sweeping the country and if students are going to be learning in person wearing a mask is a sensible precaution to keeping them and their families safe.But some are challenging Sabbah and…
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July 21 Editors Note
Editor’s Note By Brad Kava The minute I saw the help wanted ad, I knew we had to do a story about what looked like the sweetest job in Santa Cruz.Driscoll’s was looking for berry tasters, people to eat and review berries for one of the largest berry growers in the country.What?!!! Who wouldn’t want to do that? I was ready to apply for it myself.But it turns out, there’s more to it than eating and giving a thumbs up or down. It takes some real training in food science and developing your ability to describe and categorize tastes and two months of classes before they let you loose on…
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Editors Note 621
June Editor’s Note By brad kava We love the cows at Arana Gulch Park. Parker, 5, and I visit them most every day and we bring them carrots, which they love so much that the minute they hear his voice yell “treats,” they come running from wherever they are on the field to us at the fence. We’re surprised that a lot of people don’t even know about this great resource, but it’s a favorite for the families and cyclists who have found it (off Mentel Ave. but there are several other entrances). We want to salute the city for this great piece of urban development. And don’t think it…
