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May 18th
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The Ticker

Becoming An Awareness Advocate

Becoming An Awareness Advocate

Local teen rallies for increased epilepsy awareness

Epilepsy affects 65 million people worldwide and is the fourth most common neurological disorder in the United States, according to the Epilepsy Foundation’s (EF) website. Despite the prevalence of the condition both in the United States and in the world, the website argues that “epilepsy is among the least understood of major chronic medical conditions.”

Monterey Coast Preparatory School student Samantha Hampton agrees, and hopes to change this. The local teen has epilepsy, and is taking strides to improve awareness about the condition.

In an effort to spread the word, she decided to become an advocate for the Northern California branch of EF. “I wish to help anyone with epilepsy and want to raise as much awareness as possible,” she says. “Knowing that I could help make a difference in someone’s life, [which] includes raising awareness, [gives] us hope that people might finally understand and accept it.”

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CultureBeat

Getting Pumped

Getting Pumped

The Radical Reels Tour heads for the Rio

With summer coming to a close, and school nearly back in session, the UC Santa Cruz Recreation department is getting its game face on with its annual screening of National Geographic’s Radical Reels Tour. The featured short films allow us to bear witness to some of the world’s most serious adrenaline seekers as they bike tough trails, paddle wild waters, and ski treacherously steep slopes. The film screening will take place on Saturday, Sept. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Rio Theatre, and will highlight some of the most outrageous mountain sport films from the 36th Annual Banff Mountain Film Festival, which, of course, aim to thrill and inspire with mind-blowing big-screen adventures.   

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The Ticker

An Organic Leader

An Organic Leader

Q&A with Zea Sonnabend, recipient of a national award for organic leadership

Call Zea Sonnabend on the telephone and chances are that the answering machine will tell you that she is “either out standing in my field, or out standing in someone else’s field”—a good bet, considering the CCOF organic farm inspector and policy specialist recently started farming again, herself.

But for today, at least, Sonnabend will instead be standing on a stage in Maryland, receiving the Organic Trade Association’s prestigious Organic Leadership Award. Given annually since 1997, the award is given to influential and innovative figures in the organic movement. Sonnabend certainly falls into that category: from her career at CCOF, to her involvement with the Organic Foods Production Association of North America, the National Organic Program, the Organic Materials Review Institute, and the Ecological Farming Association, she has led the organics movement forward in more ways than one.

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CultureBeat

The Price Of Art

The Price Of Art

A generous donation takes the Tannery’s performing arts center one step closer to becoming a reality

“Our goal is for the Tannery to be, essentially, a cultural magnet as well as an arts center for the whole Central Coast,” says Tannery Art Center Executive Director Rachel Goodman.    

The local arts hub is celebrating a recent donation of $100,000 from Santa Cruz-based Plantronics that will go directly toward building a brand new performing arts theater and plaza.

The grant allows the Tannery, which is currently two-thirds of the way complete, to maintain its momentum and move closer to fulfilling its overall plan for a vibrant community cultural center where visitors will be able to enjoy plays and music, work in art studios, and get in touch with their own artistic side through art and dance classes.

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The Ticker

Hooray For Sea Otters

Hooray For Sea Otters

SLUG REPORT > UCSC researchers analyze 40 years of data to go beyond cuteness

In tackling their primary prey, sea otters also tackle global warming. A new study, credited firstly to UC Santa Cruz professors and researchers Christopher Wilmers and James Estes, finds that sea otters have a significant impact on global carbon sequestration. Because the otter’s favored snack is the sea urchin—a scavenger known to devastate kelp forests when populations go unchecked—more sea otters translates to more kelp. And because the giant algae is a bit of a photosynthesis machine, that translates to a lot of sequestered carbon.

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The Ticker

Going The Distance

Going The Distance

Can an electric car make the journey from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles and back in one day? Aptos resident Jack Brown thinks so

Electric cars are known for being eco friendly—not necessarily for covering long distances or being the most time efficient mode of travel. But Jack Brown, an information technology manager and consultant who recently moved to the Aptos area, believes that it’s all about “making the journey.”  

On Friday, Sept. 14, Brown will depart from the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County in Aptos at 12:01 a.m. and attempt to take his electric BMW on a more than 700-mile round trip journey from Aptos to Los Angeles and back before midnight that same day. “This will be the first time I have driven so far from my predictable commute,” Brown says.

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CultureBeat

An Endangered Adventure

An Endangered Adventure

New educational iPad game features endangered Santa Cruz species

Curious gamers of all ages can learn about some of Santa Cruz’s endangered critters in a new, educational iPad game titled “Isopod: The Roly Poly Science Game.”

Mike Parisi, the owner of Xylem and Pholem LLC, recently released the Isopod iPad app, which synthesizes arcade-quality gameplay and the scientific encyclopedia. His intention, he tells GT, is to inspire in the game’s users a fascination with insects and their relationship to a variety of life science subjects. Designed for gamers and learners ages "10 through 110," Isopod explores 24 scientific topics with a deep focus on the world of entomology and insects.  

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The Ticker

Reaction To The Crackdown

Reaction To The Crackdown

Homeless and allies take to the streets for a candlelight vigil

A candlelight vigil protesting the recent crackdown and clearing out of homeless camps by the Santa Cruz Police Department made its way through Downtown Santa Cruz on Friday night, Sept. 7, with the aim of raising awareness about those with no other option but to sleep outside. About 60 homeless people, homeless activists and sympathizers gathered in front of City Hall, formed an orderly procession through downtown, paid a visit to the levy of the San Lorenzo River that has recently been cleared of all homeless camps, and returned to City Hall, hearing speeches and testimonials along the way.

The SCPD, aided by the city’s Public Works and Parks departments, is now in the eighth week of its intensive effort to clear out homeless camps and arrest anyone involved in criminal activity. By law enforcement standards, the task force has been successful: 75 homeless camps have been cleared, 126 arrested, and 378 citations issued as of Sept. 1, according to Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark. “It’s time to return these open spaces to their intended uses to the citizens of Santa Cruz,” Clark says. “It’s our job to make it as inconvenient as possible to engage in criminal activity, and this project has been successful doing that.”

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    Bring Your Own Bag

    Single-use plastic bag bans are underway Shoppers in Capitola, Watsonville, the City of Santa Cruz, and the unincorporated parts of the county are, by now, becoming accustomed to the absence of plastic bags. On Sept. 20, 2011, Santa Cruz County became the first local jurisdiction to pass an ordinance that banned single-use plastic bags and implemented a fee for paper bags, which took effect last spring. Watsonville, Capitola, and Santa Cruz followed suit with similar actions: Watsonville’s ordinance went into effect last September, and, as of last month, the bans in Capitola and the City of Santa Cruz are now in place.

     

    The Maya-Ixil Move Forward

    Local nonprofit works to educate and create opportunity for indigenous communities in Guatemala In an isolated region of the Guatemala mountains called Ixil, the indigenous Maya population was devastated by a civil war between the government and leftist guerrilla factions that spanned 1960 to 1996. During that 36-year war, the Guatemalan military eradicated entire Mayan communities. In what amounted to genocide, soldiers burned Mayan farmlands and homes, raped and tortured the people, and scattered families. By the end of the war, 200,000 Mayans had been killed, 7,000 of whom were Maya-Ixil.

     

    Public Thinking

    Watsonville teens host TEDx event Santa Cruz County is no stranger to the TED brand. TED—which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design—talks have come to the area through independently organized events 10 times since 2011. This month, the gathering returns to the county with a new twist, thanks to the Watsonville Youth City Council. TEDxYouth@Watsonville, which will take place Sunday, May 19 at the Henry J. Mello Center for the Performing Arts in Watsonville, will feature only speakers younger than 19 years old and will traverse topics from racial stereotypes and renewable energy to traditional Mexican dance.

     

    The Tilt

    Although Jesse Malley, lead singer of the outlaw country, blues and rock ’n’ roll band The Tilt, no longer lives in Santa Cruz, she was born and raised here and this is where her love of music and performance began. “My dad worked at The Catalyst for 27 years, so I got to see a lot of music acts come through town,” she says. “Music always seemed to me to be such an incredible way to express yourself that I just stumbled upon my voice and jumped into it.” That jump eventually led to Malley heading down to San Diego to pursue a music career, and her band The Tilt has just released their full-length debut, Howlin’.

     

    Whole Lotta Blues

    The 11-piece, husband-and-wife-led Tedeschi Trucks Band headlines the Santa Cruz Blues Festival Guitarist Derek Trucks and vocalist/guitarist Susan Tedeschi, the husband-and-wife team at the helm of The Tedeschi Trucks Band, have learned that in a band as well as in a marriage, the best way to keep things running smoothly is sometimes to take a step back. That’s especially true when you’re dealing with an 11-piece group that, in addition to its namesakes, features two drummers, a keyboardist/flautist, a three-piece horn section and two harmony vocalists.

     

    Beck to the Future

    In celebration of Beck’s solo acoustic show at The Rio, GT explores Song Reader, the alternative rock icon’s most ambitious interactive art piece yet. Here’s an odd little paradox of the digital revolution: The more sophisticated our technology gets, the more our musical milieu begins to resemble that of a bygone era, when song ideas were passed around from musician to musician, perpetually taking on new twists. Dozens of different YouTube users might try their hand at setting somebody’s rant about cats or double rainbows to music, or you might hear the Belgian musician Gotye turning the many and varied covers of his song “Somebody That I Used to Know” into a virtual orchestra (see below).

     

    Land of Lions

    New research provides foundation to look at protecting mountain lions, particularly when it comes to Highway 17 An adult male mountain lion called simply “Number 16” by the Santa Cruz Puma Project led a scientifically interesting life for the more than two-year period he was tracked by the UC Santa Cruz-based research project. According to Chris Wilmers, associate professor of environmental studies at UCSC and head of the Puma Project, the group initially caught and collared Number 16 in Loch Lomond. He then proceeded to cross Highway 17 several times, where he was eventually was hit, but survived. In an unusual move for an adult male, Number 16 then shifted his home range to the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. Recently, the lion’s tracking collar went on “mortality mode.” The day before Wilmers spoke to Good Times, the researchers found his skeleton.

     

    So Sleep (Pralaya) Does Not Overtake Us

    Sunday is Pentecost, a festival of the Holy Spirit (Ray 3 of Divine Intelligence). Pentecost is the name given to the descent of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire appearing above the heads of Christ’s (Piscean World Teacher) Disciples (students) in an upper room (plane of the Mind). Pentecost is not a simple bible story. It’s an actual experience for each individual as the Light of the Soul begins to direct the personality with spiritual gifts and virtues – wisdom, understanding (all ideas, all hearts), knowledge and Right Judgment (directing the intellect), wonder, fortitude/courage and respect/reverence (directing our willingness to serve).

     

    Legal Battles Drag On

    More than a year after the 75 River St. occupation, four defendants remain embroiled in ongoing case  More than a year and a half since a group occupied the former Wells Fargo building on River Street in an act of protest, felony charges linger on for four of the original defendants and a trial may be imminent. Gabriella Ripley-Phipps, Brent Adams, Cameron Laurendeau and Franklin Alcantara were scheduled to begin trial May 13 in connection with the late 2011 protest. That trial now has been pushed back to September due to scheduling conflicts. The four face a felony charge of vandalism and a misdemeanor for trespassing.

     

    Bringing the Message Home

    Former mayor and UCSC student recap their experiences at the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women While traveling to New York for the 57th United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), seasoned local activist Jane Weed-Pomerantz had a notion of what to expect. But, with the vast scope of worldwide women’s rights violations presented at the commission, she knew she would still be taken aback at times. “I was worried because I had a feeling I would be finding out what I did find out about women and girls in the world,” says Weed-Pomerantz. “I was trying to brace myself for the knowledge of the reality, because we are really very protected in this country.”
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