Fruit trees are glories of the botanical world, producing fragrant blossoms in spring and luscious fruit in late summer. There’s very little that Orin Martin—head gardener at the UCSC Alan Chadwick Garden—doesn’t know about selecting trees, preparing the soil, finessing proper irrigation, controlling pests and pruning like a surgeon. Martin will be sharing his considerable knowledge about the subject at the workshop Fruit Trees 101: Basic Fruit Tree Care this coming Sat., Jan. 25 from 10am to 1pm at the UCSC Farm.
News
Steep Ravine Leaves Home
It’s become clear to Steep Ravine that being an acoustic band has its advantages.
The band formed in Santa Cruz in December 2012, and after deciding they wanted to give a legitimate shot to doing music full-time, they all moved into a small house in the East Bay late last fall. This way, their thinking went, they’d be more centrally located in the Bay Area music scene.
Why Switch from Coffee to Green Tea?
For coffee drinkers, that first sip of piping hot java is a crucial part of the morning routine. It jolts us awake, fires up our neurons and gives us the stamina to tackle the day. But is it healthier to free ourselves from the delicious shackles of America’s most widely used psychoactive substance?
In short, it’s a highly personal decision; every human body processes coffee differently, and it changes as we age. But while coffee’s benefits are vast—from improved mental processing and athletic enhancement, to its myriad of antioxidants and nutrients—evidence suggests that it may be worth slogging through the withdrawal headaches and brain fog to replace coffee with an alternative psychoactive substance: green tea.
Crunching Your Own Numbers
Yes, technology rules our lives. And it’s true that everyone is more plugged in now than ever before. But maybe that’s not always a bad thing. If we can look away from Candy Crush Saga for a few minutes, there are actually some potential health benefits to be had from technology invading every aspect of our lives.
The latest one to hit the pop-culture radar allows people to monitor every detail of their physical health. With easy-to-use devices like Fitbit Tracker and Jawbone Up to calculate activity, sleep and other stats, as well as smartphone apps that quickly track everything from calories to heart rate, anyone can precisely graph the path to their health and fitness goals.
Can Fitness Culture Embrace Yoga’s Spiritual Roots?
Once upon a time, very few Americans knew what yoga was, and even fewer practiced it. It was just a few decades ago, in fact. But today, yoga is a multi-billion-dollar business in this country, with some 20 million practitioners, and an ever-growing faction of devotees continue to wriggle into those tight pants and take to their mats on a regular basis.
Still, yoga—which means “union” in Sanskrit, as in union of the body, mind and soul—only really caught on in the U.S. after its physical benefits hit the mainstream. Embraced by the fitness boom, yoga-instructor training emerged as a new and profitable market, and here we are today.
Letters to the Editor, Jan. 22-28
Can infrastructure really keep cyclists safe on the road?
Temple Grandin on the Autistic Mind
In a bizarre twist of cosmic irony, Temple Grandin, the woman responsible for single-handedly revolutionizing livestock handling operations in America, now has a handler of her own.
Grandin is a leading autism activist and animal behavior consultant responsible for designing humane livestock handling mechanisms now used in half the nation’s farms. She has grown so popular in the last several years that “she normally has to be pulled away from crowds,” says Lyn Dunsavage, Grandin’s publicist, “so we have people who handle her.” Dunsavage explained this to me over the phone, after I had waited 45 minutes past the time of my scheduled call with Grandin. “Obviously, someone has blown it,” she said. She suggested I call Grandin every five minutes until she picks up.
Las Cafeteras Benefit Show for Local College Bound Students
A group of musicians heralding from southern California, Las Cafeteras, will perform a benefit concert on January 30 at The Mello Center for the Performing Arts in Watsonville. Proceeds from the show will benefit the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) College Bound Scholarship Fund. Playing a uniquely East LA sound that incorporates a mix…
City Council Approves Broadway Hyatt
There were two themes to recent Santa Cruz meeting about a hotel: precedent and integrity. Council approved the hotel in 2011, and it came back due to parking issues.
Soquel Creek Water District Considers Rationing
Santa Cruz city leaders have abandoned a Soquel Creek Water District desalination plant; so, what’s next?
