Tsunami survivors share stories of resilience in Gretel Ehrlich’s new book, ‘Facing the Wave’

When a massive earthquake struck Tohoku, Japan in 2011, it shook the waterfront house of an 84-year-old woman so badly that it fell over. A local merchant who happened to be running past scooped the older woman onto his shoulders and carried her to higher ground. Interviewed later by a local journalist, the woman revealed that she was the last geisha on the northern coast of Japan and the last person who knew a traditional song.

Watsonville native Scott Serrano turns back time, lets imagination run wild

Scott Serrano’s journey backwards in time began roughly 10 years ago, when he became interested in science travel writing as a source of artistic inspiration. “I read ‘The Malay Archipelago’ by Alfred Russell Wallace, and I basically fell in love with that book and the way it captured the feeling of being in dense tropical jungles, and somebody immersing themself in that kind of universe,” says Serrano.

“[Wallace] was like a sponge; he was absorbing everything around him,” he continues, “tribal people, plants, insects, the weather, geology… He spent most of that book celebrating how rich the diversity of life is—this from a sheltered young man from uptight Victorian England, raised in a small town in almost-poverty conditions, who had never been out of England until he began exploring.”

Valengrams make hearts hum in barbershop harmony

We all remember the scene. John Cusack’s character in Cameron Crowe’s 1989 film, Say Anything, legendarily attempts to get the attention of his love interest by holding a boombox above his head and blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” outside of her house.

The tradition of making such grand romantic gestures lives on, thanks in part to groups like Santa Cruz’s Gold Standard Chorus (GSC), a chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society, which was founded the same year that Say Anything hit theaters.

Local octogenarian eco-artists are ahead of the environmental curve

A note to all future journalists preparing to interview environmental and ecological artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison: Despite all of your prior research and groundwork, chances are you will end up asking all of the wrong questions. “There’s a better way to look at it than that,” Newton will say. “I would like to go somewhere else with that question.”

Rest assured, the former UC San Diego professors are happy to help you figure out what questions you should be asking, and in the process, you will learn much more.

18th annual 8 Tens @ Eight one of the best ever

The philosophy behind Santa Cruz Actors' Theatre's annual short play festival, 8 Tens @ Eight, has always been what I call the Bus Theory: if one play doesn't get you where you want to go, there'll be another one along in 10 minutes. What's great about this year's festival is the quality of the plays overall is so high. Not one of this year's eight 10-minute plays ever runs completely out of gas; all are well-written, well-acted, and cleverly staged, and most have a story arc that delivers the viewer to a valid destination.

Author Rebecca Thistlethwaite helps small-scale farms find success 

When she’s not busy training baby oxen and learning to make fermented foods—her new favorite pastimes—Rebecca Thistlethwaite runs a small farm and food holistic financial planning business in Oregon and blogs about “honest meat.”

To top off her pursuits as of late, Thistlethwaite has released a new book, entitled “Farms with a Future: Creating and Growing a Sustainable Farm Business.” The former Aromas farm owner and UC Santa Cruz researcher will be back in town to speak about her new book at Capitola Book Café on Jan. 22.

Editor’s note: Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is the author of “My rice tastes like the lake,” “In the Absent Everyday” and “Rules of the House” (all from Apogee Press). “My rice tastes like the lake” was a finalist for the Northern California Independent Bookseller’s Book of the Year Award in 2012. Her non-fiction book on Tibet is forthcoming from Penguin, India in 2013. She recently moved to Santa Cruz where she is pursuing a doctorate in Literature at UC Santa Cruz.

Filmmaker depicts how music shapes the lives of the incarcerated

Any opening night jitters that Benjamin Harbert may feel at the Santa Cruz debut of his documentary on Louisiana prison music, will be tempered by one crucial fact: The film has already received a thumb’s up from its potentially harshest critics: the prisoners themselves.

New performance piece at Motion at the Mill explores how limitations can create opportunity

The first thing you should know about “Your Body is Not a Shark” is that it is not about triumphing against impossible odds. “This isn’t a piece about Joan [Jeanrenaud] and Denise [Leto] and their conditions, nor is it a piece about heroically overcoming these things,” says choreographer Cid Pearlman, referring to her collaborators on the performance piece, who grapple with multiple sclerosis and laryngeal dystonia, respectively. “It’s a piece that’s about the possibilities for generating creativity within limitation—we want to be careful not to create a false heroic narrative.”

“Your Body is Not a Shark” encompasses dance, live music, and sound collage, and runs Jan. 17-20 at Motion at the Mill. Examining the creative process through the prism of physical limitation and difference, the production is choreographed by Pearlman, with an original score composed by Joan Jeanrenaud, text by poet Denise Leto, and musical direction by Maya Barsacq.

Clowns and pot plants abound in Santa Cruz art icon Futzie Nutzle’s latest exhibit

When it came time to put together his new 100-piece retrospective, “Creating the Path,” local art icon and former Rolling Stone cartoonist Futzie Nutzle went to the attic and dug out some oldies, some dating all the way back to the ’80s. The resulting collection of paintings, drawings, cartoons and assemblages—some funny, some poignant and some a combination thereof—can be seen now through Jan. 26 at the new R. Blitzer Gallery location inside of Westside Santa Cruz’ old Wrigley building. “It's a remarkable collection of his work and a rare opportunity to see them all in this gallery space,” gallery owner Rob Blitzer states.