Not too long ago, I walked into my office and found a picture of my family on my desk. This may not seem unusual. After all, many people have framed pictures of their loved ones, especially on their desks. Pictures of my family, however, have a different home. They’re perched on a shelf, facing me, three feet away from my desk, and I often look up admiringly and find family members staring back.

“What are you up to now?” I imagine them asking.

“The usual: trying to get out of my own way,” I might silently respond. (It’s this thing we have.)

Midway through our interview, Joseph Ribeiro pauses to take a deep breath. “Are you bored yet?” he asks, chuckling.
Pity the poor jaded soul who manages to find himself bored in Joseph Ribeiro’s company. “I’m snowed under with teaching and rehearsing and choir work and saving the universe,” the longtime local actor offers, obviously tongue-in-cheek. It’s his explanation for having no time to meet in person. Regardless, his accent, a velvety blend of his native South Africa and the British cadences forced on him during his boyhood schooling, only seem to lure you in further.
“The teachers told me, ‘If you speak like that any longer, you’ll always be lower class.’ Just like Eliza Doolittle,” Ribeiro laughs. “I know what she went through, poor gal. I learned to speak posh.”
There’s also a tiny hint of an American inflection in his voice, just the barest suggestion of the last 20 years, which he’s spent mostly as a teacher, performer, and choirmaster in the Bay Area. Dec. 18 will find him playing the title character in the Cabrillo Stage production of “Scrooge,” where he’s been a Theater Arts instructor since 1996.

Four local bands make a fast impression
Just because it’s winter, it doesn’t mean you have to stay at home. We all know it’s easy to feel the lethargy that sets in at the end of a long year as the start of El Niño advisories kick into gear, but wallowing in a season of bedroom iPod sessions doesn’t have to be the call. With Santa Cruz teeming with musicians, the following are four local bands whose live shows leave no room for idle observation. During the past year, each has corralled audience participation and allegiance that’s making heads turn. Whether through jagged classic rock mayhem, a feverish  ska whirlwind, amorphous post-punk power or a blistering funk shake-up, each tantalizes with a reputation for a high-adrenaline show that’s spreading as infectious and as fast as the H1N1.
No matter how epic your playlist may be, seeing the real thing live will keep you toastier than your long underwear—so go to a show and leave your coat at the door. You’ll stay warm through the music.

The decades-old push to legalize marijuana finally gains political momentum in California. But is it the right thing to do?

On Oct. 28, Dale Gieringer did what millions of marijuana smokers have only dreamed of doing: He sat before lawmakers and told them why marijuana should be legal.
Gieringer serves as the state coordinator of the San Francisco-based California chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML). Founded in 1970, NORML is the nation’s oldest and largest organization dedicated to lobbying governments to legalize the possession, cultivation and sale of marijuana.

Five nonprofits pave the way for transformation in our annual Community Fund issue

A community is only as strong as the individuals who inhabit it. Therefore, it only makes sense that communities should work together to empower their residents and provide a safe haven for children to grow up in. Such is the shared ambition of the five family resource centers throughout Santa Cruz County, each dedicated to serving the members surrounding their specific geographic location. There’s the Davenport Resource Service Center to provide services to families on the North Coast, Mountain Community Resources in the San Lorenzo Valley, Live Oak Family Resource Center located mid- county, Familia Center in Santa Cruz and La Manzana Community Resources in Watsonville. Together, these family resource centers provide a host of helpful programs to ensure parents, children and individuals have the opportunity to lead safe, healthy and constructive lives. See donation guide at bottom

Emily Howell and UCSC professor David Cope make beautiful music together

Dried reeds, seashells, metal tubes, bells and tiny tin cans labeled “beer” jostle for space among the 200 or so wind chimes hanging from the ceiling of David Cope’s home office. One wall is lined with schemes for elaborate satellite dishes, scrawled in pencil on large sheets of tan paper. Textbooks, novels, sheet music and CDs spill from the shelves onto the cluttered floor.
“This is the sanctuary,” Cope says, negotiating a path to his desk, head bobbing from side to side to avoid the low-hanging and varied tentacles. There are chimes from every continent except Antarctica, he explains. “Some make lovely, extraordinary sounds, and some don’t.”

How yoga maven Ann Barros became the creative catalyst in an enlightening Hollywood tale

In October 2006, Ann Barros took a walk to the beach and a neighbor called out to her, “You’re in this book, ‘Eat, Pray, Love.’” And indeed she was. On page 221 in the book, author Elizabeth Gilbert tells a medicine man in Indonesia:
“I don’t think you remember me, Ketut. I was here two years ago with an American Yoga teacher, a woman who lived in Bali for many years.”
He smiles, elated, “I know Ann Barros!”
“That’s right. Ann Barros is the Yoga teacher’s name. But I’m Liz. I came here asking for your help once because I wanted to get closer to God. You drew me a magic picture.”   
Ketut Liyer, an old Indonesian man whom people visit for spiritual and personal guidance, had painted a picture for Gilbert when she visited Bali in 2002 on a Yoga retreat led by Barros, a long-time Santa Cruz yoga teacher.

Residents say the best is yet to come for the Tannery Arts Center.  Plus: A look at the center’s funding and the hurdles ahead.

One year ago, on a cold and drizzly November day, more than 100 artists and their families camped outside of the soon-to-be Tannery Arts Center with hopes of securing a residence. Today, nearly 230 people live in the 100 Tannery live/work units, where the household artists work on everything from painting to poetry, piano to ballet, and pottery to hip-hop.

The center, a long time in the making, began as a mere dream of Santa Cruz arts organizations that hoped for a day when local artists and nonprofits could have an affordable home. The Santa Cruz Cultural Council had completed a Cultural Action Plan in 1999 that assessed local arts, concluding that it was a $32 million per year industry that employed 750 full-time equivalents and paid $3 million in taxes, according to Tannery Arts Center Director George Newell. The hitch was the high cost of living that was sending local talent over the hill. “You need affordable housing, you need an affordable studio, and you need some venues in which to present your art,” says Newell, describing the findings of the study.

A feast of chefs, vintners and 10 wild dishes that just make you want to grab a fork.

Charlie Parker, Cellar Door Café

Chef Charlie Parker cares about cooking, and cares about making people happy with food. This is evident when you taste his creations at Bonny Doon Vineyard’s Cellar Door Café. Whether it’s a small plate or a selection from the three-course prix fixe menu, each dish is memorable with its wonderful seasonings and thoughtful presentation.

“I love different flavors and how things taste together,” Parker says. “It’s what drives me.”  His passion is apparent and his journey is interesting to chronicle.

In the George Bush Sr. era, they ruled the Santa Cruz music scene, worked with the real-life ‘more cowbell’ guy and came inches away from becoming rock superstars. Almost two decades later, World Entertainment War is back to launch a new assault on mass media.

The 2006 film Idiocracy depicts a dystopian society of the future in which the movie Ass—a 90-minute close-up of a man’s buttocks, with the occasional fart serving to spice up the plot—wins an Oscar for Best Screenplay, and the most popular show on TV is called Ow! My Balls! (It’s exactly what it sounds like.) Absurd as this scenario might seem, the bizarre truth is that much of what passes for entertainment in the present day makes the media as depicted in Idiocracy look downright benign. In recent times, we’ve watched game show contestants vie for cash prizes by eating bowls of blended rats on Fear Factor, and we’ve seen Entertainment Weekly praise Jackass—a TV program whose stars captured the public imagination by attaching leeches to their eyeballs, receiving kicks in the groin from children (Ow! My balls!) and taking massive amounts of laxatives in order to poop into toilets that were up for sale—as one of the greatest shows of the past 25 years.