EDITOR’S NOTE
Lauren Hepler has been working on this week’s cover story for a while now, and that’s not that unusual around here. Sometimes it takes months to sort through the research, find the right sources and examine the landscape of a story—especially this one, where the landscape of the story is pretty much the entire coastal landscape of Santa Cruz County. The goal is to provide a level of depth, context and history to our reporting that hasn’t been captured in any previous articles on the subject. That’s why we devote so much space and time and attention to our cover stories.
I’m often impressed with what our reporters are able to deliver, but this week, wow. I have to say I was pretty stunned when I was reading Hepler’s piece for the first time to discover she had traced this area’s coastal-access issues back hundreds of years to when beachfront property was first divided up on local shores. I would call this a definitive piece on the issues we face regarding public access to the shoreline, and I guarantee it will shatter your assumptions about what both landowners and community legally have the right to do. Prepare to take a very deep dive into a fascinating and ultimately bizarre tangle of conflicting interests, miscommunication and legal grey area.
This is exactly the kind of piece I’m proud to run. If you take a look at page 12, you’ll see several of our stories from last year just won California Journalism Awards, along with honors for cover design, arts coverage and a coveted General Excellence award. I think we’re off to a great start this year, as well.
STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Read the latest letters to the editor here.
Get On Your Mat
Thanks for a different perspective on yoga (GT, 5/1). The excellent article asks many important questions. I’d like to address this from the viewpoint of a recent yoga convert, spiritual seeker and old-timer building contractor who used to be in a lot of physical pain because my profession took priority over the needs of my body.
Not only has yoga made me feel better, stronger and younger at 60 than I did at 50, but the balance, poise, strength and flexibility gained while practicing asanas translates well into the daily lives of every yogi and yogini I’ve met.
Knowing how the respiratory, circulatory, musculo-skeletal, endocrine and nervous systems work in harmony to create vibrancy in our bodily communities prompts one to apply this knowledge to the rest of society.
If we all practiced this school of thought to our environmental, social, political and spiritual relationships, we’d achieve more harmony in all of life.
Just imagine everyone in the judicial, legislative and executive branches being required to do yoga for an hour (like I do every morning) before beginning work. They would need look no further than their own bodies to see how many different forces can act in harmony to benefit the whole. There would be no room for partisanship, let alone petty bickering, lying or working against one another. We either work together for the benefit of all, or one branch dominates and degrades the others to the detriment of all.
Shut up and get on your mat, Trump!
Ray Newkirk
Santa Cruz
Earth to Santa Cruz
In regard to the recent Nuz column in which Richelle Noroyan reportedly states, “the city doesn’t need people from Aptos coming in and telling Santa Cruzans how to run things”: What? Those of us in the unincorporated areas who get pushed around by all the little city states in Santa Cruz County could say “pick on someone your own size.” Or, “do you know where the gravy comes from that you put on your veganomic dishes?”
Santa Cruz’s spoiled progressive elitists apparently don’t have a clue as to what we put up with out here, and they don’t care. So here are a few clues: First, we can’t get “there” from “here” in a reasonable amount of time because you won’t support highway widening. Second, if we do get “there,” Santa Cruz does not have enough parking. Third, if we find a place to park, we can shop to our hearts content for two hours while we endure inattentive clerks who would rather not help women over the invisible age of 50.
Earth to Santa Cruz, and by extension to Richelle Noroyan: When I have money to spend, I like to shop locally if it is a convenient, safe and pleasant experience. Until Santa Cruz can provide that, I will head toward Watsonville, where there is parking along with friendly, helpful sales people. From there it’s not much further to Monterey and the Del Monte Shopping Center, where I can stay all day with free parking—maybe find something nice to wear besides a T-shirt, and someone nice who will show it to me.
Mary Comfort
Aptos
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GOOD IDEA
A Santa Cruz emergency sewer repair project will break ground this month at the intersection of Laurel and Chestnut streets. The work was pushed back one week to Monday, May 13, due to the contractor’s availability—which frankly makes it sound like less of an emergency, but we digress. The hours of the work are 6 a.m.-4 p.m., and traffic will back up. The traffic light will be flashing, and certain turns will be restricted. Friendly reminder that it’s Bike Month—so we probably shouldn’t be driving anyway.
GOOD WORK
UCSC astronomer Garth Illingworth has been studying the universe’s history for some time. The professor emeritus led a team that put together a comprehensive image of galaxies using shots taken over a 16-year span from the Hubble Space Telescope peering back at light from 13.3 billion years ago. Illingworth’s crew assembled nearly 7,500 individual exposures into one picture and also made a timeline of images—stretching back to just 500 million years after the big bang, when the universe was still in its toddler stage.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The coast is an edgy place. Living on the coast presents certain stark realities and a wild, rare beauty. Continent confronts ocean. Weather intensifies. It’s a place of tide and tantrum.”
-Carl Safina
