Under the light of stained glass windows and gas lamps, the Reverend Joel P. Miller delivers his homily on “inviting sinners to the feast of the Lord.” The redwood pews at Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown Santa Cruz sit more empty than occupied, but attention is rapt among the 50 or so worshipers as the short, mustachioed priest discusses the importance of forgiveness and of serving the “least among us.”
Articles by elgeorge
Interview: Bluesman Jimmie Vaughan
When he was a kid, Jimmie Vaughan used to take the bus to the music stores in downtown Dallas and stare through the windows at the guitars, dreaming of the day he’d buy his own Fender Stratocaster. When he turned 14, he left home to join a band. Once he’d earned enough money to get his dream ax, he took to rewiring the pickups and monkeying with the frets, trying to get just the right Latin-tinged blues sound he was looking for.
Environmental Panelists’ Abrupt Dismissal Raises Questions
Most Californians have probably never heard of the Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants. Of the countless boards of scientists and researchers in state government and academia, the SRP is neither the most powerful nor the most glamorous. Its members—decorated University of California researchers all—are, nonetheless, tasked with checking the work of state-run environmental agencies like the Air Resources Board and the Department of Pesticide Regulations to determine what risk certain airborne industrial chemicals have of making people sick. An important job, most would agree. So when five of its nine members were abruptly dismissed from the panel last month, many with nothing more than a two-sentence “thanks for your service” letter, a lot more people started paying attention to the SRP and who’s on it.
Santa Cruz’s Rental Inspection Law Raises Ire
The doors are still boarded shut at the powder blue house on Lee Street. Below a red “Do Not Enter – Do Not Occupy” sign, a laminated letter from the Santa Cruz Planning Department dated July 28 tells the landlords when they can clean out whatever is left. Besides the menacing signs and boarded entryways, the building itself is bizarre. The driveway bridge lists to the right, the garage door is not a door but a tarp, and in the back, doors on the second story open into an abyss while several nail-studded wood beams poke north by northwest into the summer air, evidence of someone’s intention to build a deck.
Santa Cruz Attorney Takes Up Plight of The Homeless
“Damn. I don’t know if the cops are gonna show,” says Ed Frey, looking left to right down Center Street and pulling his tattered blue sleeping bag snug. It’s midnight at Peace Camp 2010 and the 70-year-old activist lawyer is on the steps of City Hall with a dozen homeless people and supporters for Day 44 of an ongoing protest against Santa Cruz’s ban on camping within city limits. Perched in a polyester foldout chair, dressed in wrinkled khaki pants, a straw hat and the same faded orange sweater he had on 10 days earlier when he was arrested for sleeping outside the Santa Cruz County building, Frey fits in with his flock of rebels and malcontents, though many of them barely know him in spite of the fact that he organized Peace Camp 2010.
Council Candidates Start Staking Out Positions
The first public showcase of this year’s crop of candidates for the Santa Cruz City Council featured seven hopefuls, multiple declarations of love for city services and not much in terms of hard choices on budget cuts. The forum, hosted by Operating Engineers Local 3 in City Hall’s council chambers, saw questions that touched on the city’s deficit, two-tier pension reform, the Measure H utility tax hike, union support, the camping ban, sanctuary city status and the UCSC long-term growth agreement. With slide show.
Internet And Porn Addictions: Dual Diagnosis
Ask Stephen L. Braveman what most of the patients he treats for pornography and sex addiction have in common and he’ll tell you that, in about 85 percent of the cases, they’re also addicted to the Internet.
Smash Mouth Still Walking
Steve Harwell is the kind of musician who would sing Pepto-Bismol commercials if you paid him right. And as long as his bandmate and songwriter Greg Camp was involved, the jingle would probably break the Top 40 charts. Harwell’s band, Smash Mouth, is now 16 years old, while he himself is 43. And having tried his hand at country music and reality TV, the band’s stocky vocalist and self-appointed chief executive is back to doing what he does best—cranking out maddeningly catchy ska pop hits that fit into bite-size, PG-rated, radio-friendly and easily marketable molds.
Local Companies Land Big Government Cash
With more than a little help from the Santa Cruz Redevelopment Agency, local businesses Cruzio Internet and Zero Motorcycles raked in $3.6 million in state bond money last week. City officials say the cash will help the companies create dozens of jobs, and, eventually, produce hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue for city coffers.
Sundown For The PACE Program
Robert Bulterman never counted on PACE to save his business. The 46-year-old Santa Cruz electrician and solar technician, like a lot of green collar workers, had admittedly held high hopes that Property Assessed Clean Energy would infuse the overcrowded sustainable energy industry with a slew of much-needed jobs. But to count on it doing so, he says, would have been “just plain stupid.” As it turns out, Bulterman’s skepticism was well founded.
