76 Trombones - 12/8/07

You know, I hate to use a cliche' but, I love a parade!

The thing about a good community parade is, it really a representation of the community. Sort of - I mean generally a parade is put on for some sort of celebration. Whether we are celebrating the holiday season, our local sports team taking state, our sexual freedoms and empowerments, or our country's independence from King George, the whole reason for parading through town is to celebrate who we are, and what we do.

I just had the opportunity last week to help put on the Downtown Holiday Parade. We had about 50 different groups representing some fairly diverse segments of our community.

The question came up about whether or not the Holiday parade is an appropriate forum for Political Groups.

Life is what happens to you - 12/4/07

This week on the show we had the Planning Director, Greg Larsen. Greg has been the Director of Planning for about a year and a half. It's been an important year and a half for the City of Santa Cruz, and for all of us who call this place home.
I have called Santa Cruz home for the last twenty years, a little more than half my life. My son has called this place home all his life. Well, technically he didn't learn to call it home for at least a year, but you know what I mean. I plan on calling Santa Cruz home for a long time.

Funny thing about plans is you never really know what the future will bring and sometimes life has an ironic way of laughing in the face of the plans we do make. On the other hand it seems we do have some say over our own destiny and the more conscious we are about what we will do, the more graceful our existence will feel. In terms of the City, plans are essential. not only plans, but thoughtful plans.

The General Plan, Greg will explain anytime he is given the chance, is the single most important document the city council will endorse. I believe he is right. Greg is at the tail end of stewarding our city's very important general plan update to be presented to Council early next year. The General Plan sets the goals and policies for the city as they relate to land use, community design, economic development, and so much more.

For the next twenty years, much of what the city does, doesn't do, allows and prohibits will be decided based on this plan. I have had the extraordinary opportunity to work with Mr. Larsen and the General Plan Advisory Committee over some of the past year. The experience for me has been informative, educational, rewarding and yes, even exciting.

My ten year old son, Carson, will be thirty when the next general plan update happens. Maybe he'll be interested in serving on the advisory committee then, it's too soon to tell. Many things will happen before that. The population will change a lot. the climate, the economy, the way we get around, the way we communicate, the government, will all change a lot. We really don't know how any of it will change, yet we plan.

When the last general plan update happened there wasn't an internet. As far as we knew all of our presidents had been elected by the people, The Soviet Union was, and just after the general plan was updated Neal Coonerty became Mayor. This month his son was sworn in to the same office. Point is, a lot can happen in the life of a general plan. I expect to continue to call Santa Cruz home, and each time I do, over the next twenty years, I will feel a bit of gratitude for Greg Larsen for steering our planning process for the last year and a half. The process has been thoughtful, comprehensive, intelligent and the plan, I imagine will provide us all with a bit of grace.

Good Luck Mr. Larsen, and Thank you.

A safe bet - 1/7/06

I hated vegetables for the longest time.

But it makes sense that I would. See I grew up in a place that, with rare exception Vegetables grew in cans and to prepare them you would stick them in a pan just long enough for any flavor to disappear and any color to be muted to an acceptable gray/green tone. It was really disturbing.

Then I moved to Santa Cruz where some of the best produce in the world is, well produced, but I wanted nothing of it cause I had decided I hate vegetables.

That's sort of how it is with Theater. Especially community theater, Not to mention locally written plays performed by community theater actors. Some of it is pretty good, but a lot of it grows in cans, if you know what I mean. You take a friend to see a show at a local playhouse, and you run the risk of that friend having plans the next few times you invite them somewhere. I think that's why the eight ten's play festival is so popular.

They've picked eight short (ten minute) plays written by local playwrights and produced them as one evening of shorts. This is like the 12th year they've done it and it always sells out.

I'm not about to tell you that the whole thing is gonna be great, some of it may really suck, but the cool part is. If one of the plays sucks, it's almost over, and usually there's at least one or two that you'll really like allot. It's really a great introduction to local theater. There's often a very diverse cast, eight directors, eight writers and one fun night.

The Festival opens on January 12th and runs for about a month. Check out www.sccat.org for their info.

And, for god's sake, don't overcook you vegetables. -chip

Robert -11/27/06

This is awkward. No, Awkward is too kind of a work, it implies a certain delicacy. This is disgusting. No not quite. You know what this is like? This is like having a big painful zit on your back and you know that it needs to be popped but you can't reach it yourself. and your just not in that kind of a relationship, so you just want the whole thing to go away, but it's so annoyingly there, and you can't ignore it anymore. It's now really affecting everything, no matter how much you try to pretend not to notice it and sooner or later you're just going to have to bring it up. So here I am, bringing it up, and I really don't want to talk about it, but it's getting really gross and, well... would you look at something for me?

I'm talking about Robert. Pinky, The slowwalker, the Umbrella Man.

There was a time when you mentioned the Umbrella Man and one would assume you were either a Dizzy Gillespie fan or a JFK conspiracy theorist. Now we have a neurotic sub-ambulatory cross dresser who is both adored and feared by residence and visitors alike.

A friend retells her experience of meeting with a fairly high powered official in another country, a man who has seen the world and has a certain amount of influence in his field. Upon her revealing that she was from Santa Cruz he notes that he's been here and knows our fair city.

Does he respond enthusiastically, "Santa Cruz, You've got some of the most amazing coastline in the world"?

No.

"What incredible arts festivals you have there, Shakespeare, Cabrillo, and I hear SoWat Now is extraordinary!"

No.

"Santa Cruz, what a wonderful wooden roller coaster!"

Not even that.

Our world traveler's impression of Santa Cruz : "You got that pink freak with the umbrella."

So Robert, and his bizarre iconography has become part of our cultural identity. It's not surprising, Santa Cruz has always embraced it's relationship to the weird, as the bumper stickers so ambiguously put it, and you have to admit the shtick is intriguing. Every day, all day, for probably two years now, walking at a turtle's pace up and down Pacific, as the costume gets more and more fem and less and less clean. All with very little, if any explanation.

I guess the part about Robert that I have issue with is the same part about the bumper sticker that I have trouble supporting. Keeping Santa Cruz weird is not a goal. It's a cliche, but underneath the cliche are very complicated and conflicting philosophies. There is an enormous amount of value in understanding and embracing cultural idiosyncrasies. However what is interesting about 'Weird' isn't so much the what, but the Why. Why keep Santa Cruz weird? Often when something, or someone challenges the status quo there are profound reasons for doing so. Every significant political or social movement began with someone refusing to accept things the way they were and insisting that cultural norms be challenged. Most Major innovations in science or art have been born out of someone doing something "different" than had been understood or expected.

Being perceived as weird is often a bi-product of new ideas that can have tremendous impact on our world.

Or there is just weird. Maybe I don't get it and Robert is on a journey that will cary us all into our next social evolution. I somehow doubt it. If there is a point to his weirdness, I wish someone would articulate it to me, otherwise it remains an annoying zit that I just can't reach. Sorry Robert.

Techfrigginknowlegy

11/22/06

After doing the SoWat TV show for two years from the comfy little studio's at Community Television, and being the cutting edge innovators that we are, living just a short trip from. perhaps the birthplace of the information age, we have decided to through caution to the wind, and jump feet first into the ninety's and go an' get us a web site.

So here it is, for all of you to polite to just say "your show is really boring to me" and prefer to say, "oh, I don't have a TV", Ha! now you need a better excuse.

Volunteerism

11/19/06

This week on the show our guests were two Santa Cruz residence who came from very different backgrounds with very different yet similarly inspiring stories, each finding their lives changed when they said to themselves one day, "I need to help".

We have all experienced on one level or another how gratifying it is to give yourself into service, to find a way to help someone in need, be it a family member, a friend or a stranger. The feeling of knowing that you have made somebody's life better, easier, less difficult, is a feeling more rewarding than perhaps any other feeling.