Art and wine come together with Bonny Doon Vineyard, UCSC partnership

"A former colleague said I’m looking more like James Joyce,” admits Randall Grahm, the witty vintner whiz behind Bonny Doon Vineyard, in reference to how he and the aforementioned Irish author wear similar circular eyeglasses.

The comparison of the men could continue, given the avant-garde creativity and unique paths forged by both. Yet, while Joyce demonstrated his keen awareness of the world through a stream of consciousness writing style, Grahm continues to capture his originality in wine bottles. This knack is evident in his latest label, for which the winemaker time-travelled back to his days at UC Santa Cruz.

Family and police hope a $50,000 reward will help solve Carl Reimer’s murder

The 2010 death of 19-year-old Carl Reimer has changed his mother’s life in countless ways—from the daily reminder of his inescapable absence, to smaller things, like the new meanings she hears in old songs.

“Songs have a completely different meaning since my son was killed, especially love songs,” JoAnn, Reimer’s mother, says. “It’s that Fleetwood Mac song that really gets to me.”

Montessori families look to build school within existing district

Supporters of bringing a charter Montessori school to Santa Cruz slowed their roll on Tuesday, April 3, when the group of about 90 families voted to give working with Santa Cruz City Schools (SCCS) officials a shot.

District officials had recommended building the school into the existing alternatives offered in the city and resisted signing a charter. Months of negotiations—which began in July 2011 after the group Maria Montessori Charter School Families (MMCSF) formed—had created a tense working relationship. The most buzzed about moment came in the fall, when MMCSF released a video that intended to promote the advantages of the schools. Public school supporters saw it as a hit piece aimed at discrediting traditional public schools.

Residents concerned over future of UCSC’s Family Student Housing

Brynda Zeller is a single mother and full-time student at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC). She says living at Family Student Housing (FSH), an on-campus housing unit that offers lowered rent and assistance to families with children, is the sole reason she is able to juggle parenting and her education.

“I can walk to classes and my daughter goes to the childcare center here,” she says. “Aside from convenience, the sense of community is really great here. … If [FSH] hadn’t been available, or had been any more expensive, I wouldn’t have come here. I would have just stuck with my associate degree and gotten a job or looked into other places.”

Volunteers help locals maximize tax discounts

Waiting a couple of hours for free help with filing taxes feels like getting paid $400 for a half day's work, says Shadowbrook restaurant server Glen Wunderling, 55.

“This is a great service because it's always good to have a second eye look over the forms,” Wunderling says. “It can get really confusing with all the legal and tax code changes.”

Wunderling is one of 3,700 Santa Cruz County taxpayers who, according to the IRS, collectively overpay between $6 and $8 million in taxes every year because they don't claim deductions and rebates they are eligible for. Wunderling says he failed to claim his Making Work Pay tax rebate in 2009—part of President Barack Obama's stimulus plan. That is why he was waiting for a volunteer tax preparer from Project Senior Citizen Outreach (Project Scout)’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program at the Aptos Public Library on March 22.

Cabrillo journalism department avoids possible elimination

Room 407 may look like an ordinary classroom at first glance, but a wooden sign swinging above the glass door sets it apart from any other room on the Cabrillo College campus. “The Cabrillo Voice,” the sign reads, signifying the room as the home of the school’s student-run newspaper.

Inside, students bustle about, craning at computer screens and making suggestions as they periodically stop to pet Riley, the standard poodle that is just as much a fixture of the room as the newspapers strewn about.

Expansion of Watsonville sparks new and long-standing issues

Watsonville City Councilmember Daniel Dodge may have opened a can of worms with a recent editorial published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on Jan. 29. 

His piece proposed that the City of Watsonville annex a property known as Sakata-Kett for large retail development and mentioned Costco as a possible tenant.  He says this would help create jobs outside of the agricultural industry for a city whose unemployment rate has hovered around 25 percent since 2008.

Nonprofit partners with U.S. Paralympics to provide disabled locals with more adventures

At 17 years old, Foster Andersen loved skiing, playing ice hockey, and listening to the Grateful Dead. He thrived outdoors and enjoyed trying new activities.

So, when he broke his neck in a motorcycle accident, his whole life changed.

Litigants say DA’s office is withholding documents in animal cruelty lawsuit

The video footage taken inside of local Cal-Cruz Hatcheries, Inc. in 2009 shows the mutilated bodies of dead or dying chicks and ducklings that lay trapped beneath processing machinery, newly hatched chicks with open bloody wounds, exposed organs, and mutilated feet and legs gasping for air in bins, and workers tossing baby birds into a bucket of liquid waste where they struggle to escape before drowning. The footage also depicts workers dumping unwanted hatchlings by the bucket-load into an eggshell disposal chute and forced, alive, down a clogged drain with a pole and high-powered hose.

Foreclosures may increase in 2012

Despite the nationwide legal settlement announced last month between 49 state attorney generals and major banks over fraudulent foreclosure practices, and despite a downward trend in the number of homes entering the foreclosure process both locally and statewide compared to this time last year, the damage done by the collapse of the housing market continues in Santa Cruz County. More than 100 Notices of Default and 120 Notices of Sale are issued (on average) by banks each month.