UCSC faculty takes UCSC administration head on in a recent letter to the community

Fifty faculty members have signed an open letter to the UC Santa Cruz campus community in support of the strike and protest that happened on March 4. Notable faculty signatures include those of History Professor Dana Frank, American Studies Chair Eric Porter, and Kresge College Provost Juan Poblete. Last week’s protest and strike effectively shut down the base of campus preventing most workers, teachers, and students from going to work or class.

“It is true that the demonstration successfully stopped ‘business as usual’ on the UCSC campus,” the letter says. “While this may have represented an inconvenience for some, it perhaps bears repeating that no significant social change occurs without some inconvenience.”

Twelve UC Santa Cruz students from the school’s CALPIRG (California Public Interest Research Group) chapter will meet with Senator Diane Feinstein on Friday, March 12 at her San Francisco office to tell their healthcare horror

stories. They will present her with a 5 foot tall “Get Well Soon” card filled with over 200 stories from individuals who have felt the wrath of an unjust healthcare system. In a March 8 press release, the group said, “UCSC

students have been greatly affected by the lack of health care reform and are tired on inaction in Washington D.C. It is critical that legislators hear from their student constituents on this issue which usually thought of as an issue affecting primarily the elderly and those with families.”

So its finally come to this. Anyone who's been keeping up with the fallout after DC's Final Crisis wrapped up back in 2008 has seen some less than subtle changes in Gotham City. The murder of Bruce Wayne at the hands of his old pal Darkseid forced Dick Grayson (the original Robin) to step in and don the cape and cowl. Being forced to team up with a noob boy wonder with a not exactly bright and shiny past has led to more than a few disagreements between these caped crusaders. And now the tension is being taken to the next level.

Batman and Robin are about to get it on and not in the way you're thinking.

Local youth gets recognized for his commitment to animal rights work

Whoever thinks teenage boys are too busy playing video games to do anything productive obviously has never heard of Beau Broughton. The 17-year-old honor student at San Lorenzo Valley High School founded the SLVHS Animal Rights Club earlier this school year, and has been busy organizing local protests and guest talks by animal rights activists ever since. His group has held a vegan bake sale to help raise relief funds for Haiti after the earthquake, collaborated with Saturn Café for a benefit for the Farm Sanctuary, and much more.

Thousands participated in statewide Day of Action to defend public education

At the Capitol

By April M. Short
In solidarity with the nationwide protest against the State’s increased budget cuts to education, a large crowd stretched out from the front steps of the building and across expansive lawns.

College students, professors, parents and kids as young as 5-years-old raised signs with messages such as,  “Educate our State,” and “Last Generation College Student,” in front of the California state capitol building in Sacramento on Thursday, March 4.

Speakers ranging from assembly members to students, parents, and professors pleaded for restored federal aid to education by any means necessary, and rallied supporters from a microphone at the foot of the capitol steps.

How Bands Should Write an Inquiry Letter to Book a Show

There are people in the world who make your job easier and those who make it harder. In order to write a successful booking inquiry, you need to be the former—be the band that makes the booker’s job easier.

This isn’t rocket science, but it should take some brain power to produce. If you are zapping off your booking inquiry from your cell while riding your bike and checking the waves, you are not giving it enough attention.

In order to get into the zone, I humbly suggest you set aside an hour and put yourself in the booker’s shoes. Assume that they have never heard of your band and that your e-mail will end up next to 30 other similar requests awaiting their fate.

If someone had told me two years ago that I would become a runner, I would have told them they were crazy. I did not grow up in a fitness-focused family. My dad and my brother were sports boys, playing baseball and soccer. But I did not have a female fitness role model. My mom's workout routine consisted of jumping on a trampoline to bad ’80s music. This is what I learned in my childhood years: To lose weight, you diet.

As I got older, I tried for years to "become" a runner. I remember being 12 years old, "running" at my grandmother's beach condo in Monterey during my summer vacation. I think I made it a mile and crashed. Although I was an active dancer, there is a cardiovascular difference between dance class and running a mile. I could feel it in my bones, my muscles, my lungs—and I quit before even trying. I repeated the "try and fail" technique for the next 15 years, going full force and then burning out.

A relaxing home base for a day of play in Cannery Row

There’s nothing quite like falling asleep to the sound of crashing waves—especially when you’re tucked into a plush, king size feather bed. Like sleeping on the beach, but a million times better, Monterey Bay Inn is a 49-room boutique hotel on the waterfront in Monterey’s famous Cannery Row and the perfect balance of luxury and practicality. Unpretentious yet beautiful, the Inn offers perks to be relished.

Driving through pounding rain, slipping on the winding shoulders of rte 9, lost in Greg’s dreamy music, I am part of the world, at one with the trees and the rain and the notes. This ride is how I prepare for my Tuesday, 8:00am class with Kris D’Amico, who teaches a solid and energetic vinyassa flow at Village Yoga, on Front Street.  I need to feel this solid movement.   Don’t come if you don’t like heat.  The Bikram room is normally heated to about 100˚, although the temperature is not jacked up as high for this class.  The movement was welcome, considering the long holds I have recently been practicing.  The sweating and the twists, the balance and the rest, the focus and the alignment.  A necessary change for today, as I am needing to shake it.

Alright, I have a confession to make. I don't really care for Warren Ellis comic books. Now hang on a second, that doesn't mean that I don't respect the guy as a prolific writer or that I've never read anything of his that I've enjoyed. Not true at all. It's just that outside of one huge exception, his overall style and sense of humor never managed to grab me in the same way as books by say...Morrison, Moore or dozens upon dozens of other writers out there have. So what is it? The one book of his that actually rests alongside some of what I feel are the best comics ever written?