In the last week of February, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County announced that they were dropping SB 211, a piece of state legislation that would have allowed Santa Cruz County to put a measure on the ballot to create and open space district. The Land Trust has been working toward establishing an open space district (an area with protected scenic lands, water supply and productive farms and forests) for years, but has decided that they jumped the gun on authoring the legislation for it. “By withdrawing the proposed legislation, we are able to go back to the drawing board and rethink our way forward,” said Executive Director Terry Corwin in a Feb. 26 newsletter.

UCSC researchers use game to explain findings on speciation

What does the game of rock-paper-scissors have in common with speciation? More than you may think, according to a paper by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published this week in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The idea that morphs within the same population could eventually evolve into separate species is not a particularly new one. But a study by researchers Barry Sinervo, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, and Ammon Corl, who led the new study as a graduate student at UCSC but is now a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, about side-blotched lizards finds new evidence to support the theory.

Years ago, when I lived in Monterey, a friend and I often frequented a Denny’s restaurant that was nestled near the corner of Abrego and Freemont streets. We’d spend countless hours there chatting about life and, whenever we went our separate ways, we barely noticed the hotel that shared the same parking lot with the diner.

Well, those days are over—it’s hard not to pay attention to the hotel now. For starters, the Denny’s bit the dust. In its place is a new structure that makes up just one portion of an impressive 93-room vacation—or staycation—portal that was once dubbed the Sand Dollar Inn.

Welcome to Hotel Abrego.

Tips for local bands on how to book a show at The Crepe Place

As local bands come up the ranks from street corner to coffee shop to house party, they eventually reach the point where they’re ready to hit the big stage. While getting your name in lights (or at least on a flyer) may seem like an impossible mission, I’d like to give you—or the aspiring musos in your life—a fighting chance.

Hitting the stage doesn’t have to be a heartbreaking struggle, and I’m here to do the local music scene homework that all bands should be assigned. To kick off this “How to Book a Show” blog series for local musicians, I’ve spoken to the man behind the concerts of the Crepe Place (1134 Soquel Avenue), booker Adam Bergeron.

La Selva Beach resident Ronald Schusterman, best known for his research on the hearing, vision, and cognitive abilities of marine mammals, died on Feb. 11 at the age of 77. Throughout his life, Schusterman had many notable achievements, among them was helping debunk the idea that pinnipeds use echolocation and demonstrating that sea lions can understand syntax and a serious of commands. In 1985, Schusterman moved his research program to UC Santa Cruz's Long Marine Laboratory, where he conducted experiments to understand how California sea lions, harbor seals, and elephant seals think about the world around them. He helped establish the lab’s reputation as a leading center for marine mammal research. Schusterman was also a research marine biologist and adjunct professor of ocean sciences at UCSC from 1985 until his retirement in 2003. A memorial service is being planned for Sunday, Feb. 28. For more information, contact [email protected]

Well, here I am, a month to the day, fully healed and not even thinking about my absent tonsils (and I did NOT get a sore throat and tonsillitis with a recent cold!).  Overall, I did much better than the average patient, pretty well fully functional by 12 days following surgery and no complications.  I think that the prayers, herbs, craniosacral treatment, nutritional IV’s, and acupucture all helped—at least as much as the love of the people providing them.  And I have to give a grateful nod to Western medicine, for as much as I loved all the holistic approaches, nothing came close to the passion I felt for my bottle of liquid Vicodin in that first week.

I was promised, by the good Dr. Lane, that this surgery would hurt.  A lot.  And she never lies.  I started out gagging down the disgusting, yellow, sickly sweet liquid Vicodin and, honestly, by the end, I looked forward to its pineapple-like flavor.  Amazing what the imagination can do.  I have a whole new appreciation for the difficulty of living with chronic pain and a new sympathy for the longing of addicts for their substance of choice.  After 10 days, I graduated myself to Tylenol and poured my lovely Vicodin down the drain.

This year’s contest saw a sleeping giant reawakened

After a long two-year hiatus Maverick’s finally unloaded, delivering ego- and bone-crushing surf renowned for registering on the Richter scale.

In deceptively clean, sunny and photogenic conditions the watershed big wave contest was nearly more than the 24 invitees could wrestle with their bare hands. Even spectators found themselves unwittingly in the crosshairs of a mean west swell that peaked at 22-foot and 17-seconds, cruelly right in sync with a 9:20 a.m. high tide. Surfers met the 50- to 60-foot faces head-on, with respected alternates such as Rusty Long, Mark Healy and expert waterman Shane Dorian freefalling into a few gaping bombs even before the contest began.