Santa Cruz smokers will soon find it harder to legally light up in popular areas of town. The Santa Cruz City Council voted Tuesday to prohibit smoking on Pacific Avenue, Beach Street, and West Cliff Drive. The new ban also makes it illegal to smoke within 25 feet of public entrances and within all outdoor dining areas. City property, including the Municipal Wharf and all city parks, will be smoke-free as well. Police will give warnings for the first month of the ban, which takes effect on Oct. 20, and will issue citations after that. 

The smoking ban, which council members unanimously supported, was prompted in part by a 2008 report by the American Lung Association of California that gave Santa Cruz a “D” for underwhelming efforts to curb public second-hand smoke. The council also voted to increase the percentage of nonsmoking hotel rooms in Santa Cruz from 75 to 90 percent, and they will consider a new tax on the city’s cigarettes sales at a future meeting.

In the last blog we discussed the importance of detoxification and how we could support our bodies to “detoxify” from the chemicals that we are exposed to.  It is literally impossible for anyone on our planet to avoid toxins because our ocean and wind currents carry toxins to the farthest reaches of our world.  The level of toxic cbemicals in the native peoples of the pristine arctic circle, for example, are so extreme that their future fertility is threatened.  They dine on sea life that has consumed toxins carried to the arctic from the United States and other countries.  We are exposed to plenty of toxins in our own environment and the most important steps we can take are to enhance our own health and well-being so that our bodies can deal with their “toxic load.”

 

In this, my final installment on RollerCon 2009 (http://rollercon.net/ ), the international roller derby convention on the Las Vegas strip, we'll get to the real personal nitty-gritty, beyond the skating and the learning. Beyond the networking and the elbow-rubbing. Even beyond the tattoo-comparing, the hero-worship, the grand Black and Blue Ball and the V.R . (http://www.thevagineregime.com/ ) guerilla pool parties. After all of the aforementioned activities, the week concluded as many Vegas weekends do, with the exchange of drunken vows, in the form of a mass derby wedding (and I don't mean a "wedding mass").

The "derby wife" among skaters is a special relationship having little to do with the sexual orientation (or current pre-existing marital status) of either party gettin' hitched. The relationship is best described in the introduction of the official derby wedding vows, credited to Kasey Bomber : (http://www.myspace.com/kcbomber)

SANTA CRUZ - Deadheads of the world now have one more reason to anticipate the opening of the Grateful Dead Archive at UCSC’s McHenry Library. Composer Lee Johnson presented the score of his acclaimed “Dead Symphony No. 6” to the University Library last week at the 2009 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Marin Alsop, renowned conductor of the Baltimore Symphony, showcased Johnson’s work at the festival to commemorate the 14th anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death. The Grateful Dead Archive will open to the public next summer.

Believe it or not, a roller derby conference in Las Vegas did require a notebook and pen.  Seminars and roundtable discussions on topics ranging from Budgeting and Bookkeeping For Derby and Junior Derby, to Balancing Sport and Spectacle and Building a Better Line-up, served to educate newbies with start-up leagues as well as jaded established league members.  (Kudos to all who lead these classes - I believe I am smarter now than I was on July 30th.  I know it's hard to believe.) 

Of all the announcements made at last months's Comic-Con in San Diego, perhaps nothing shocked the show floor harder than when Marvel blew the roof off of the convention center and revealed their complete acquisition to the full publishing rights of Marvelman. A character whose legal history rivals the most intense dramatics on display in even the most well written comics. To anyone unfamiliar, this may seem like a head scratcher. Just who is this "Marvelman" and why should I care? Well, I can answer that question with a name: Alan Moore.

Years before Moore made the jump across the pond to American comics and began his complete alteration of the comic book landscape with his work on titles like Swamp Thing and a little known 12 issue series called Watchmen, there was a British magazine called Warrior .  An anthology comic publication comprised of several serialized strips where the bearded one began to cut his teeth at redefining what the medium was capable of. Marvelman was one of the main features of the book which also included V for Vendetta. While the character himself dates back to the fifties as essentially a rip off of Captain Marvel, family and all (A secret word turns an ordinary person into a super hero with powers beyond those of mortal men, blah, blah, blah), it wouldn't be until Moore wrapped his hands around the title before the book would truly take flight and become something incredibly unique and beyond compelling.

Every group of like-minded people has its annual summit, a combination group hug, think-tank, motivational kick-in-the-pants, meat market, and (sometimes) drunk tank. Fantasists have Comic-Con, pagans have PantheaCon, computer hackers have DEFCON, and the cinema elite have plain old Cannes (some of you just pronounced that correctly for the first time).

A transformative tale of three local shapers

Wave-smoothing kelp beds, world class point breaks, and a relatively protected southwest-facing bay together tailor Santa Cruz into a high-performance surfing mecca. Marry nature’s bounty with the ingenuity of three local shapers at the forefront of producing red-hot, light and durable custom boards out of expanded polystyrene (EPS), and you’ve got one potent combination.
Photo Credit, Kelly V

When I was a kid I had no idea that comic books came out every Wednesday. Growing up without much money made trips to the shops pretty scarce so I would rarely see the same books twice. For all I knew my store was visited by the comic fairy constantly since every time I went, there would be all new and amazing reasons to warrant the public humiliation of begging for 2 dollars from my Mom. Back then the only scheduled comics that I knew of and could look forward to came in the newspaper - the daily black and whites (which felt like nothing more than a temporary fix) and that glorious Giant Sized Sunday Annual that came buried beneath what felt like pounds of coupons every week.

What happens when I see evidence of the rumblings and origins of the Earth?  Seeing an erupting volcano makes me question my understanding of this planet and my life, as I know it.  The volcano is evidence of forces still active on this Earth and a reminder of continual changes.  The calm summer days of Santa Cruz are a memory as I witness the drama of steam pushing its way out of random crevices, dark clouds forming over the top, huge moon-like craters. My life is short in comparison and I stand in awe.  I am able to observe a movement of time and see the physical turmoil of the earth.  We humans continue to alter our planet to suit our needs and are shocked when eruptions erupt and earthquakes quake.

Maybe this is why the breathing helps.  It brings me back to my natural rhythm, allowing me to become calm, to erupt, or to quake.  After all, we are a part of the earth and can learn a few lessons from the surprises that it continues to give.  Krishnamurti asks us to observe the whole movement of time and relate this to the movement of thought.  He says that thought and time are not two different things.  Neither ever ends.

www.nps.gov/havo www.jkrishnamurti.org