EDITOR’S NOTE
Looking over 25 years worth of photos of Marin Alsop for this week’s issue got me thinking about why she’s been such a revolutionary figure at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. As Stacey Vreeken documents Alsop’s legacy in advance of the longtime conductor and music director’s final season here, the images say so much about the personality and philosophical approach that have transformed Cabrillo into a world-class festival for contemporary composers.
Her portraits are always classy, but they’re playful, too. She always looks like she has no patience for the pomp and pretension of a typical “classical music” type photo. And sometimes, she gets flat out crazy—I mean, just look at our cover this week. There’s always a twinkle in her eye, like she’s up to something. There’s also a softness to her expressions that stands in sharp contrast to her snappy, perfectly structured sense of style, which makes it not at all surprising to read in the cover story that perhaps the most important part of her legacy is the way she’s brought the music to the people with a defiantly democratic aesthetic.
Stacey and I worked together through much of the ’90s, including her accomplished time as editor of this paper. We’ve looked at a lot of photos of Marin Alsop together over the years, and I get the feeling from her story that she, like I, will miss seeing them.
STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR IN CHIEF
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Read the latest letters to the editor here.
Trees Tops
Re: “Stumped” (GT, 7/13): It’s uncanny how often I’ve been thinking about a particular subject, and—voila!—there it is in Good Times. I had just copied these words from Jeff Speck’s excellent book, The Walkable City, in which he sings the praises of trees, saying, “Urban trees, located close to roadways, are 10 times more effective than more distant vegetation at hijacking car exhaust before it hits the stratosphere.” He adds that a study in Leicester, England (where I happened to live for 18 years) found that “above-ground vegetation stores more than 200,000 tons of the city’s carbon, of which 97 percent is stored by trees … even counting those ample British gardens.”
Trees that shade us in the summer, turn colors in the fall and bare their branches in the winter to let the sunshine in make welcome companions for walking or biking. Your article mentioned Catalpa Street, with its tunnel of catalpa trees. Never heard of the street or the tree, but now I’m anxious to find it and walk it. Walnut Avenue is so appealing because of its roadside trees. But what happened to the trees along Maple, Elm, Locust, Laurel, and Chestnut? There’s lovely shade this summer on the east side of Pacific Avenue, where you’ll see more people walking, but please let the cherry trees on the west side branch out more, and don’t replace them with crepe myrtles.
Dana Bagshaw
Santa Cruz
Don’t Release The Hounds
I was disturbed by the lack of compassion for homeless people in Kara Guzman’s “Saving Lighthouse Field” (GT, 7/6), as well as the absence of any concrete proposals to actually solve the problem by finding homes for the homeless (real homes, not a mat on the floor of a shelter).
Even worse was last week’s letter to the editor on the topic, which seemed to propose off-leash dog harassment of the homeless. I don’t know if that person has been watching too much Game of Thrones, but the fact is that any decent human being (especially anyone proud of Santa Cruz’s traditions of peace, love, human rights, and compassion for all) should be ashamed of themselves for being so selfish and cold-hearted as to deny essential human rights and dignity to the most vulnerable among us.
Everyone deserves respect, and everyone deserves a home and a livelihood. To debase people who are already suffering debases our society as a whole. The solution to homelessness is housing, along with social services and funding for substance abuse and mental health counseling. It’s wrong to use the police to harass the homeless to simply chase people from one spot to another. I assume no one is yet supporting a “final solution” to homelessness (will have to check with the Trump campaign on that), but the increasing hatred for the homeless is indeed disturbing. We will have these problems with us for a long time until we get serious about finding people the homes and services they need.
Michael Donnelly
Santa Cruz
LUNAFEST SUCCESS
Friends of WomenCARE – LUNAFEST would like to give a huge shout out to the community and our sponsors for supporting the LUNAFEST, a traveling festival of films by, for, and about Women. Thanks to local wineries, New Leaf and The Buttery for donating food and wine for our pre-party. This year, thanks to our paid sponsors and those attending the festival, we raised over $10,000 for WomenCARE and the Breast Cancer Fund. Special thanks to the staff at the Del Mar and to Good Times, santacruz.com and the Sentinel for getting the word out about this amazing event.
Kathy Ferraro, Laura Gleason-Fernandez, Lore James, Eva Brunner, Lesley Harris | Friends of WomenCARE – LUNAFEST
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
Submit to ph****@go*******.sc. Include information (location, etc.) and your name. Photos may be cropped. Preferably, photos should be 4 inches by 4 inches and minimum 250dpi.
GOOD IDEA
CLASS ACT
New Leaf Community Markets is asking customers to come downtown on Thursday, July 21, to support local schools. New Leaf will donate 5 percent of the day’s sales at its Pacific Avenue location to the Santa Cruz Education Foundation to benefit Santa Cruz City Schools and students. Meanwhile, the Capitola New Leaf will be donating 5 percent of its sales to the Santa Cruz Cancer Benefit Group.
GOOD WORK
LIVE CULTURE
Senderos, a nonprofit that spreads traditional Mexican culture and arts, announced that it has been awarded a two-year $10,000 grant from the California Arts Council, as part of the Cultural Pathways grant program. The program provides two years of operating support and technical assistance to small organizations like Senderos supporting communities of color and diversity.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.â€
-Michelle Obama Melania Trump
Steve Schnaar is being disingenuous at best; deceitful at worst. I supposed he’s gearing up for his City Council campaign.
Santa Cruz has already surpassed its State mandate for reducing emissions by the closing of the Cemex plant. This reduced the amount by 59% for the County. Induced traffic/demand is but only one of the many factors in studying traffic use. Here’s the CA DOT White Paper http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tpp/offices/owd/horizons_files/NCST_WP_Travel_Demand_Draft.pdf which shows that adding lanes to Hwy 1 would reduce congestion and thereby reduce emissions from the same amount of traffic just sitting there idling. I’m sure that there is not an unseen platoon of vehicles that will decide to venture out during rush hour commute traffic “just because.” Also, the White Paper shows that alternative transportation would have little to no effect on dealing with congestion for Hwy 1 and surface streets. I doubt that many would consider using their bikes to traverse Over The Hill or otherwise to and fro North County and South County.
Here’s where the Governor of another “progressive” State wishes to add lanes to a main corridor because it would drastically increase economic output. “These numbers prove that widening our interstates is the smart thing to do, and demonstrate what we’d be losing if we don’t do it, in terms of our economy, jobs, and productivity,” CTDOT Commissioner James P. Redeker said. “We really can’t afford to wait. If we unite in this effort, we will create the right strategy for Connecticut’s transportation future – building today for tomorrow.”
SORRY—I FORGOT A LINK I THE PREVIOUS VERSION. DISREGARD IT!!!
Steve Schnaar is being disingenuous at best; deceitful at worst. I supposed he’s gearing up for his City Council campaign.
Santa Cruz has already surpassed its State mandate for reducing emissions by the closing of the Cemex plant. This reduced the amount by 59% for the County. Induced traffic/demand is but only one of the many factors in studying traffic use. Here’s the CA DOT White Paper http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tpp/offices/owd/horizons_files/NCST_WP_Travel_Demand_Draft.pdf which shows that adding lanes to Hwy 1 would reduce congestion and thereby reduce emissions from the same amount of traffic just sitting there idling. I’m sure that there is not an unseen platoon of vehicles that will decide to venture out during rush hour commute traffic “just because.†Also, the White Paper shows that alternative transportation would have little to no effect on dealing with congestion for Hwy 1 and surface streets. I doubt that many would consider using their bikes to traverse Over The Hill or otherwise to and fro North County and South County.
Here’s where the Governor of another “progressive†State wishes to add lanes to a main corridor because it would drastically increase economic output. http://portal.ct.gov/Departments_and_Agencies/Office_of_the_Governor/Press_Room/Press_Releases/2015/10-2015/Gov__Malloy__State_s_Economy_Will_Benefit_Dramatically_from_Widening_Connecticut_s_Interstate_Highways/
“These numbers prove that widening our interstates is the smart thing to do, and demonstrate what we’d be losing if we don’t do it, in terms of our economy, jobs, and productivity,†CTDOT Commissioner James P. Redeker said. “We really can’t afford to wait. If we unite in this effort, we will create the right strategy for Connecticut’s transportation future – building today for tomorrow.â€