Editor’s note: David Allen Sullivan teaches English and film at Cabrillo College. The following poems were taken from his latest book of poems about the Iraq war, entitled “Every Seed of the Pomegranate,” published this month by Tebot Bach. A publication celebration reading will be held at 6 p.m. on Sunday, July 15 at the Cabrillo College Horticulture Center, Room 5005.  
Photo of the author by Amina Barivan.

Why Big Sur’s iconic memorial library needs local support. Several upcoming events promise to turn heads

Many of history’s most unique creative and political beasts have lived in Northern California. Certainly civil rights leader Harvey Milk sits near the top of the list. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who birthed the revered City Lights Bookstore, quickly comes to mind, too.

Local writer JD Arnold pits humans against ravenous animals in new doomsday comic

The phrase “zombie apocalypse” has recently skyrocketed up to the No. 2 spot on Google’s list of trending search terms, thanks to a string of grisly murders and cannibalism. But if you were to ask Santa Cruz comic book writer JD Arnold who controls the fate of the human race, you might be surprised by his answer: animals infected by a mutated rabies virus.

Santa Cruz Toymakers celebrates 25 years with library exhibits

The story goes that Al Raboff, a Santa Cruz local, loved to fashion wooden roosters, helicopters, puzzles, trucks, and critters of any kind for his grandchildren to play with. But as the children grew up, Raboff never did.

He expanded his woodworking project to include friends. The group began meeting once a month at (the now defunct) Tiny’s Restaurant in Capitola to swap ideas, and show off the toys they had created. The collective began donating their toys to local kids via nonprofit daycare centers recommended by the County Board of Education.

Watsonville Taiko breathes new life into ancient Japanese tradition

When Ikuyo Conant was growing up near Mount Fuji in Japan, she never imagined she would play the Taiko drums. Every summer, her family and neighbors used the instrument to celebrate the Obon, a festival which she compares to Christmas in terms of importance. But as a child and a female, the drums were forbidden to her.

Mexican folkloric dance group celebrates its 40th anniversary at UCSC

once a Mejica, Always a Mejica,” reads the motto for Grupo Folklórico Los Mejicas; it’s a tagline that holds both literal and symbolic meaning, one that represents more than the simple association of having once participated in the group. It indicates something deeper, an acknowledgement of where one has come from, and the promise to take that knowledge into the future. And now at the impressively ripe age of 40, the group has certainly accumulated a substantial amount of members who will always consider themselves as such.

A young woman loses everything, then finds herself on the Pacific Crest Trail

She was only 22 when she lost her mother to cancer, fell out of touch with her remaining family members, and began to drift from her husband. A few years later—after a rampage of extramarital sexual escapades with men whom she had no feelings for, her subsequent divorce, and a fling with heroin—she made a spontaneous and unlikely decision: Cheryl Strayed set out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Alone. With no cell phone or GPS, (this was 1995, before the days of smartphones), and with only her ill-fitting boots and a backpack that weighed nearly as much as she did.

Annual Santa Cruz Pride Parade returns—with a twist

When the Diversity Center of Santa Cruz was thinking about a slogan for this year’s Pride Parade and Festival, its organizers immediately thought of Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign and the Gay Straight Alliance’s “Make it Better” campaign. “We wanted to riff on that theme,” says Jim Brown, executive director at the Diversity Center. “Some teens can’t wait for life to get better—they need to do something now.”

Upcoming exhibit features inspired collaborations between scientists and local artists

It’s not hard to find art that makes you think. It’s much less common to find art that actually requires scientific collaboration—a seemingly counterintuitive pairing. But, the upcoming show “earth • science • art / sixteen collaborative explorations,” at the R. Blitzer Gallery, does just that.

Featuring the work of 16 artists from the Central Coast and the greater San Francisco Bay Area working in collaboration with 16 research scientists from the Santa Cruz-based U.S. Geological Survey’s Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, the exhibit opens on June 1, with two evening panel discussions on June 7 and 14.

Middle school art students make colorful mark on the city

When Kathleen Crocetti’s Mission Hill Middle School art students installed mosaics on the Water Street Bridge last year, the City of Santa Cruz helped pay for the art supplies. But this year, when she approached the City with a plan to place 93 mosaics depicting the agricultural products of Santa Cruz County onto the Soquel Avenue Bridge, she learned the chances for funding were slim.

“I wrote to the art commission, a proposal for doing the Soquel bridge, and they said, ‘Yes, yes, we love it, we want to do it—if we have funding,’” says Crocetti. “Well, of course, the redevelopment agency closed and everything is a mess financially in our state. And so I could see the writing on the wall that the City wasn’t going to be able to pay for this, but I’m sort of driven and I really wanted it to happen anyway.”