September 9 – 15, 2026
Greensite… on Coolidge Drive disaster… Steinbruner… soil at the county fairgrounds… learn about the October ballot… Hayes… Food: A Case for Conservation… Patton… I Can’t Help But Comment… Matlock… winning…scum…cotton candy… Eagan… Subconscious Comics and Deep Cover … Webmistress serves you… Rocky Horror Picture Show… Quotes on… “Summer’s End”
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THAT WAS EPIC… I’m in Reno, and the hotel wifi is worse than what I could get on Playa! I had a fantastic time at the burn this year. I took part in the 3 big burns: Titanic’s End on Friday, The Man on Saturday, and The Temple on Sunday. I’m still processing and decompressing, and if you had told 25-years-ago me that in the future I’d be part of what made that all happen, I would not have believed you. It never ceases to amaze me that I get to do all these interesting, fun, and inspiring things at this point in my life!
I hope you are having a fantastic time, whatever you are doing in your life!
~Webmistress
KATLA. Netflix. Movie. (7 IMDb)
Katla is bleak in the best possible way, set beneath the ash-gray skies of a small Icelandic town, Vik, where everyone seems to have learned to survive by saying as little as possible. But when the volcano begins returning people who should not be there, it does more than produce doppelgangers; it drags old grief, guilt, resentment, and buried secrets out of lives already worn thin. What begins as a supernatural mystery gradually becomes something more unsettling, asking whether identity is really a matter of being the “original,” or whether the person who loves more deeply, suffers less damage, or makes better choices might have the stronger claim to that life. Quiet, strange, and relentlessly melancholy, Katla makes its frozen landscape feel like an extension of the people living in it: apparently still, but with something hot and dangerous moving underneath. Worth a watch.
~Sarge

THE LAST HOUSE. Netflix. Movie. (5.5 IMDb)
Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel meets Lovecraft.
This is the ultimate “bottle story.” A suburban Seattle family wakes up one morning to find they can’t leave their house – and neither can anyone else on the block, or maybe anywhere. Some kind of mostly unseen force has sealed everyone in, and it brings the rain with it. Endless, relentless rain.
Stories like this always get under my skin. There’s a very specific kind of tension that kicks in once it starts to feel like there’s no way out – I stop hoping for a clever escape and start just wanting these poor people put out of their misery. That’s not a knock on the film; it’s a testament to how well it builds dread. You feel the walls closing in right along with the family.
What makes it work is the slow unraveling – watching ordinary people get inventive out of sheer necessity, rationing food, rigging up ways to collect water, turning on each other and then back to each other again. It’s as much a study in psychological survival as physical survival. The monster stuff, when it finally shows up, feels almost like an afterthought bolted onto a much stranger, much better film about isolation and endurance – but even that tacked-on quality has a certain charm, like the movie couldn’t resist giving its dread a shape.
Worth a watch.
~Sarge
THE BACKROOMS. In theatres, PrimeTV. Movie. (6.8 IMDb)
The Backrooms, like Slenderman and Creepy Pasta, grew out of the internet, a new kind of horror born from the post-Covid emptying of once-populated spaces. The Backrooms are both a genre and a reaction to liminal spaces: those empty places between places. Abandoned terminals, shopping malls, office buildings. They can be fascinating, but also deeply unnerving.
The Backrooms movie takes that unease and turns it up to 12, suggesting these are places misremembering themselves: genuinely endless hallways, random fragments of stairs, windows where windows shouldn’t be. Even people become fragmented, misremembered.
For anyone who’s ever found themselves unnerved not by boogeymen, but by places that just aren’t right, this hits a very particular nerve. Well worth a watch
~Sarge
THE ODYSSEY. In Theaters. Movie. (8.5 IMDb) ![]()
The “Helen is DEI casting!” and “Achilles is trans!” outrage tells me you looked up The Odyssey just long enough to be angry, without actually reading it or seeing the film. I’ve read it multiple times, from adolescence through university. It’s a legend Homer recorded centuries after the supposed events, preserved through oral tradition, and all the variations that adds to the story. Helen’s skin color has no significance to the story, and Achilles is already dead when The Odyssey begins. Elliot Page doesn’t play Achilles at all, but Sinon, the young man sent to war in another’s place.
Nolan’s Odyssey is a solid, faithful-ish telling, briskly told in about three hours (I know, that sounds like an oxymoron but it’s true). It adds some believable depth to Odysseus, gives Penelope less screen time than she deserves, and as a mythology geek I could nitpick the lack of spear fighting or the anachronistic Corinthian helmets instead of the Achaeans’ boar’s tusk helmets. But that’s fanboy trivia. At its heart, it’s a powerful story about responsibility and loss. Well worth a watch. Twice, if you can.
~Sarge
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. PrimeTV. Movie. (6.8 IMDb)
Masters of the Universe (2026) was a genuine surprise. Rather than forcing the franchise into a dark, gritty reboot, it embraces the colorful, larger-than-life spirit of the original. It balances action, fantasy, and humor without winking at the audience, making the whole adventure feel sincere, fun, and delightfully goofy.
This isn’t trying to be the next great fantasy epic—it’s trying to be a Masters of the Universe movie, and it succeeds. Ignore the toxic nostalgia crowd complaining about the diverse casting of characters like Man-At-Arms, Triclops, and Ram Man, and you’ll find a tonally accurate adaptation that answers plenty of questions longtime fans have had for years (particularly namings). Stick around for the mid- and post-credit scenes. Well worth the watch.
~Sarge
QUICK LOOK AT NETFLIX. Netflix. Series, Movie.
Here’s some stuff that’s not necessarily current, but currently on Netflix:
Veronica Mars think Buffy, but with no vampires, and lots of class conflicts, roofies … and the result … and murder in a small California coastal town. Young Kristen Bell (The Good Place) lives with her disgraced cop/now PI father, and is determined to solve the murder of her best friend, and the case that tanked her father’s career. A fun watch.
The Dead Don’t Die think Night of the Living Dead directed by Wes Anderson. Only in this case, it’s Jim Jarmusch. Zombies in a small town, with Bill Murray and Adam Driver starring. Tilda Swinton is a samurai. Much more like his 80’s films.
Mindhunter was pretty amazing, on and off; the casting for Big Ed Kemper was spot on. Period piece that follows the building of the FBI’s “profiling” division, focused on this new thing: serial killers.
The Enola Holmes movies: Sherlock (Henry Cavill)’s little sister, Enola (Alone backwards), breaks free of an attempt to ship her off to a deportment school, and takes up the family business on her own. There follow adventures, romance (on her terms), and occasional visits by her anarchist mother, Helena Bonham Carter. The first is a lot of fun, growing less (for me) as the sequels went on.
Marty: Life is Short, let’s hope it’s not for him! I love Martin Short, so this was a gem. An autobiographical history, chock full of familiar clips, as well as previously unseen personal movies, and of course a tremendous group of cameos.
~Sarge
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Sarge, aka Jeffery Sargent, cut his teeth on the Golden Age of Hollywoood on TV and with regular trips to the Sash Mill. Film classes then, at Cabrillo with Morton Marcus, broadened his scope – he found he preferred Keaton over Chaplin, and Akira Kurosawa was his Yoda. Sarge spent 15 years working in Special Effects, on everything from Starship Troopers to Battlestar Galactica. He is a staunch geek who has a weak spot for Cozy Mysteries and loathes “Reality” shows. While he doesn’t care for the unrelenting banal horror of “True Crime”, he licks his lips over a twist like the end of Chinatown. Email Sarge at JeffLSargent@gmail.com |
September 7, 2026

Like an oil spill that cannot be contained, the offense of building on the East Meadow of the UCSC campus seeps over into Coolidge Drive as shown in the photo. If you haven’t been on campus in a while, this is the latest visual clutter accompanying the unpopular relocation and building of Family Student Housing (FSH) and Child Care Center from their current site on the westside of campus to the new site on the East Meadow where Coolidge Drive and Hagar Drive intersect.
Before you say, “But Gillian, it’s Housing!” as if that rallying cry absolves all negatives, remember that the number of new apartments is 140 compared to the current 199 which will be demolished due to neglected maintenance, that the rent per new apartment is significantly higher than the current apartments, that there were other sites available, that this site was vigorously opposed by the excluded UCSC Design Advisory Board, including campus architects, that building on the meadow violates decades of planning principles and ignores geotechnical impacts of building on top of underground caves.
In the early days, the siting of campus roads was entrusted by the founding chancellor Dean McHenry to Hal Hyde who was charged with overseeing UCSC’s infrastructure. Both men were aghast when the first cut to make the road was carved into the meadowland, but time and vegetation softened that impact. Glenn Coolidge Drive was dedicated in 1968 in a ceremony captured on film and available in UCSC Archives. For almost 60 years, this road sweeping the east side of campus has remained the same simple two-lane road revealing stunning views of Pogonip and Monterey Bay as you walk, cycle or drive downhill and nothing but meadow and trees as you do the same in reverse. I made this trip twice daily for 30 years.
When not on motorcycle, I rode my horse, Fats, to work when the campus population was closer to 10,000 rather than the current 20,000 students plus staff and faculty. Riding home after work, down the undulating trail next to Coolidge Drive on October 17th. 1989, I experienced the earthquake on horseback. Contrary to popular belief I don’t think Fats felt the quake before I did. He was more interested in getting home for dinner. Since riding bareback is always bouncy, I wasn’t aware of the quake until I saw the streetlight pole near the Cooperage building arcing back and forth 180 degrees. When I looked behind, I saw cars pulled off to the side of the road and heard a sound like a train coming from machinery in the Cooperage. Until now, that road hasn’t changed except for the decidedly unattractive new FSH cluster on its western flank.
This road clutter added to Coolidge Drive has changed its character, its feeling and its understated place in the landscape. It screams “urban” in your face. It seems vastly overdone as an entrance to the FSH facility. The entrance to the current FSH is a simple wooden sign on an equally busy main campus road. Do you really need five signs announcing a pedestrian crossing? Some of the outside orange markers will probably go but the rest is already anchored in place. No doubt transportation planners can justify such ugliness as improving safety. They are the same people who label lights and roads punched into a meadow as “improvements.” I have my doubts.
When I first saw the new FSH apartments being built on the east meadow my reaction was an audible gasp followed by a string of swear words. I didn’t think it could get worse. Then yesterday I saw this transformative scene on Coolidge Drive and realized that bad can get worse; when those in charge lose a founding vision of the human-made in harmony with the natural environment, achieved with a light footprint. This new era both on and off campus is implemented with jackboots.
| Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association http://darksky.org Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild. |
MOUNTAINS OF SOIL AT THE COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS
There were multiple mountains of soil piled in the parking lot at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, all being excavated from the area where Granite Construction had dumped and compacted it next to the creek, with permission of former Fairgrounds Manager Zeke Fraser. This was soil from the excavation necessary along Highway One to build the new Capitola Avenue overpass. It has been the subject of many Closed Session discussions by the County Fair Board for about three years.
Now, Granite Construction has excavated all the soil out, piled it in the Fairgrounds parking lot, and compacted the creek side to maybe restore what was there originally.
Take a look at these photos.

Multiple mountains of soil were removed from the creek side and edge of the Fairgrounds parking lot.

Was there contamination, or just impure fill that the Fairgrounds felt was unacceptable?

Now the creek bank is sloped, compacted and ready for winter. There have even been sprinklers irrigating the hydroseeded slopes.
Read on to find out where the mountains went…..
THE SIXTH REACH…WILL IT HELP THIS WINTER TO PREVENT FLOODING IN WATSONVILLE?
For two solid days last week, two large excavators loaded a series of dump trucks with the soil from these multiple mountains in the Fairgrounds parking lot. Where were these trucks going?
I followed them to Holohan Road, where the trucks exited to go to a large construction project happening on the banks of Corralitos Creek, near the former Watsonville Hospital (now the headquarters of Pajaro Valley Unified School Administration).

A non-stop convoy of dump trucks taking the mountains of soil from the Fairgrounds to the banks of Corralitos Creek.

and heading back on Holohan Road in a cloud of dust to return to the Fairgrounds for more soil.

This work is known as “the sixth reach” of the large project to reinforce and expand the flood control improvements along the Corralitos and Salsipuedes Creeks, and ultimately, the Pajaro River.
Granite Announces Launch of Pajaro River Flood Risk Management Project – Reach 6 | Granite Construction
Let’s hope the work being done now will help prevent what we are being told could be a very severe winter.
MOSS LANDING BATTERY FIRE SCIENCE…WHAT DO WE KNOW? WHAT DON’T WE KNOW?
Last month, the scientists from Moss Landing Marine Lab who are working collectively on resarching the impacts of the 2025 Vistra Battery Fire in Moss Landing did a marvelous job of presenting information. You can view video recordings of their research presentations individually. Please take time to watch those that interest you most and write to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors with your thoughts on including this research alongside that of the consultant Terraphase, paid for by Vistra.
Moss Landing Fire Science Symposium
| Mailing Address: PO Box 1728 Salinas CA 93902
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Phone: (831)755-5066 |
Fax: (831)755-5888
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Email cob@co.monterey.ca.us |
GO LEARN ABOUT ISSUES ON YOUR NOVEMBER BALLOT
Want to learn more about the issues on your November 3 ballot? Try to attend this free informational presentation by CalMatters and Santa Cruz Local.
“Join Santa Cruz Local, Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, and CalMatters for a workshop on the November ballot. We’ll share what we’re hearing from voters locally and across California.
We’ll also help you make sense of your ballot. We’ll talk through some of the key state propositions and facilitate discussion.
You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of the role of fair and accurate news in strengthening civic engagement — and practical ways you can help create a more informed and connected community.”
- When: 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 6
- Location: Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, 7807 Soquel Dr, Aptos, CA 9500
RSVP here: You’re invited: Civic Engagement Matters – Santa Cruz Local
NO ON MEASURE E…DON’T BE FOOLED AGAIN
This November’s ballot includes a sly piece of work by the County Board of Supervisors to convince you to vote for yet another half-cent sales tax. Don’t be fooled again.
All of the money will go to the County General Fund, with no restrictions whatsoever on how it is spent.
Measure E will hurt those who need help the most, including students and people on fixed incomes. Measure E will increase the cost of living here even more, with no accountability by the County.
Can you afford to pay 10% tax on your purchases? The tax will be even higher in
Watsonville, Scotts Valley and the City of Santa Cruz.
Measure E is the third time the Board of Supervisors has grabbed for your money via a half-cent sales tax, offering empty promises about spending:
In 2018, Measure G increased sales tax, promising to fix roads and fund fire protection. The 2022 Civil Grand Jury deemed this misleading, with no money spent on fire services.
In 2024, Measure K increased sales tax, promising to fix roads, housing and homeless needs. The County lost a lawsuit because of false ballot claims, forcing restrictions on spending.
Now the County Executive Officer advised the Board of Supervisors “This Resolution is a guidance, and the Board can always pivot to other needs.”
County Counsel advised not identifying specific funding recipients, as Santa Cruz City Mayor lobbied for allocations to serve the homeless.
Meanwhile, many County staff salaries are nearly $500,000/year. All received raises this year. The County Board of Supervisors voted to give themselves a raise, too.
Don’t be fooled. Measure E will hurt people while County leadership spends freely on whatever they please.
Take a moment to view the Board of Supervisor special meeting video include the Santa Cruz County CEO Coburn advising the Board that they could “pivot spending to whatever needs in the future”?
She acknowledged that sales taxes are regressive at Minute 1:06:40 and also acknowledged that the cities of Scotts Valley and Capitola did not openly support the sales tax action at Minute 1:04:50.
The County wants a new radio communication system that will cost $28 million but has no money to support it. That is just one of the many pots any Measure E money could be used for, that differs from what the proponents are claiming, including the continued staff pay raises (4% approved this year, and 3.5% guaranteed for next year with SEIU).
Vote NO on Measure E.
Read more about it on the Votes Count website here: Measure E
You can listen to the recording of “Community Matters” discussion last week of the topic: http://www.ksco.com/
KSCO RADIO INTERVIEW THIS FRIDAY: THE CURIOUS POT OF WEALTH GRANTED BY MEASURE Q PASSAGE
In 2024, voters approved Measure Q to add $87/parcel countywide to build a pot of money to be used for parks, wildfire risk reduction, and water projects. It was put on the ballot by paid signature gatherers on behalf of the Santa Cruz County Land Trust, but somehow deemed a “citizen initiative” and was able to pass with a simple majority vote.
What is happening with this new pot of money, now in the hands of an Advisory Committee to decide on who gets some, and who doesn’t?
Listen in this Friday to “Community Matters” at 2pm-3pm Pacific Time to hear Scotts Valley Fire Chief Correira describe his views from inside the Measure Q Advisory Committee.
Measure Q
KSCO radio on AM 1080, FM 104.1, or livestreaming at: ksco.com
GEE, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
I wonder why the treated water tank at PureWater Soquel has been empty for about 10 days?

Hmmmm…..Maybe there is something about this on the GeoTracker site for the Project?
Take a look under “Reports and Studies”
MAKE ONE CALL. WRITE ONE LETTER. ATTEND A PUBLIC MEETING AND ASK QUESTIONS THAT MATTER TO YOU. DO ONE THING THIS WEEK, AND MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE.
Cheers,
Becky
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Becky Steinbruner is a 30+ year resident of Aptos. She has fought for water, fire, emergency preparedness, and for road repair. She ran for Second District County Supervisor in 2016 on a shoestring and got nearly 20% of the votes. She ran again in 2020 on a slightly bigger shoestring and got 1/3 of the votes.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com |
Might we call the foods in our wildlands ‘cryptofoods?’ Ingenuity is rife in the Bay Area, and this geography’s discovery of the hidden has long made humans’ lives richer. Here, I present a juxtaposition of two native plants that are foods: strawberry and acorn. The forebearer of the grocery store strawberry hails from the dunes of California, and this fabulous fruit’s future still lies in the wild plants of California. Once a dominant food of Native Peoples, the acorn is largely lost to modern Californians’ diets: might acorns one day again become important in the human larder?
Strawberry Culture
The modern cultivated strawberry is a relatively recent addition to the human diet due to the cross breeding of wild species, including from the coast of California. There is a lot written about strawberry breeding including its overall history, genetics, and the breeding done right here on the Central Coast by brilliant folks at UC Davis as well as at the Driscoll family’s business. Of course, strawberries were delightful fruit even in their wild forms around the world. Europeans were cultivating wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca) in the 1300’s and then added musk strawberry (F. moschata) in the 1500’s. Then, in the 1600’s, the Virginia strawberry (F. virginiana) reached Europe, appearing more popularly in English gardens in the 1700’s and 1800’s. In the mid 1700’s, the beach strawberry (F. chiloensis), a native to the West Coast (of the Americas), reached Europe (from Chile). Shortly thereafter people encountered accidental hybrids between the Virginia and the beach strawberry that became the large-fruited sweet thing that gave the fruit real popularity. Later, a Californian variety of beach strawberry gave the red internal flesh that breeders thought would add even more pizzaz. Those Californian genes came from San Francisco and Humboldt Counties.
In the Community Orchard at Molino Creek Farm near Davenport, we grow the same species of wild strawberries that Medieval Europeans were growing for food as an understory food plant. Those wild strawberry fruit mature earlier than any tree fruit, so this is our first fruit harvest of the early spring as it has been for hundreds of generations on this same land. The taste of California’s wild strawberries is intense and the fruit is very sweet and juicy (when it rains!). It takes no effort to grow, and the plants spread vigorously on their own.
Strawberry Problems
As with any cultivated plant, one encounters problems with growing strawberries agriculturally. New diseases crop up or old ones get worse, old pests evolve or new ones show up, or the climate changes. Also, there is the problem of novelty – humans like new things! How does one deal with such issues? Those conundrums are how the plant breeder makes a living. Driscoll employs plant breeders, indeed has a long history of strawberry breeding, and now reportedly employs 30 scientists full time in that capacity. Those breeders rely on variation in DNA created by nature to constantly innovate their novel strawberries that are the cutting edge against disease and pests while exploring new approaches to strawberry taste, visual appeal, and storage/shipping. If you’ve lived 30 years, you’ve seen their work as the strawberries you purchase continue to look and taste differently. The fact that you have strawberries to eat, at all, is in part due to their ingenuity: otherwise, diseases, such as the many viruses that attack strawberries, may have gotten the upper hand. Those diseases, and the resistance to them, come from the wild strawberries found in nature where evolution is taking place.
Native Nuts
It is acorn season right now, but would you have known if I hadn’t mentioned it? If a native person living here in 1700 were just transported to the hills around the Monterey Bay, they would be ecstatic about what is going on right now: it is a Big, Big acorn crop this year with the coast live oaks. Every branch on every tree is laden with fat, shiny, fresh nuts. There are a few species of oaks native to the Monterey Bay region, so chances are good that each year at least some of the oaks will make a good crop. These varieties of oaks make food without irrigation, cultivation, or fertilizer inputs. And yet, oak trees make the best nuts with good stewardship: indigenous people know how to care for them. One tribal member I spoke with from Sonoma County told me that the oak understory had to be burned, otherwise the acorns would get pests. There is much more to that story – about when to burn, how frequently to burn, and more. If you are curious about what acorn dishes taste like, you might have to delve into it yourself, though perhaps the Café Ohlone will reopen and offer acorn dishes in Berkeley again starting in October 2026. Acorns are nutritious and as oil rich as olives; with California’s climate crisis leading to an even more dire water crisis, might it be time to consider our native trees as a source of food?
Food Conservation
The lesson here isn’t just for strawberries and acorns, these lessons pertain to all food: we must take more seriously the need for conservation of nature if only, selfishly, for our own diet. All that we eat comes from nature. We take those things out of the wild and into the field but even so we rely on the ongoing evolution of fitness that nature is constantly at work with. Some people suggest that only by killing nature will we rid ourselves of the pests and diseases that attack us and our food. This Death Culture bulldozes nature, replacing it with fabricated landscapes of cultivated fields, asphalt, turf, neighborhoods, and the like. We have learned that such simplified landscapes are more susceptible to pests, while less productive from lack of pollinators, less resilient in terms of the hydrological and nutrient regimes, and are accompanied by decreased quality of life for the surrounding communities. The agricultural areas around the Monterey Bay are a microcosm of these global scientific findings: look to the heavily agriculturally polluted Elkhorn Slough, the poisoned well water in Salinas Valley communities, and the megatons of topsoil deposited in the Monterey Bay since the advent of modern agriculture.
The answer, of course, is to STOP destroying nature as a policy and as a practice. How do we get there? Better decision making. How do we make that happen? Vote as if the next generations’ lives depended on it – they do. The vast majority of us want the finest strawberries on Earth to be available for the rest of time, and we all want to be able to eat well, in general, maybe even including dry farmed, oil rich acorns. What we as a culture don’t tend to recognize is that we need intact natural systems and processes to make those things work. We are on the brink of the end of that, and we aren’t acting like, and especially voting like, that’s the case.
Please talk about cryptofoods with someone this next week and make the case for conserving nature for resilient food systems.
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Grey Hayes is a fervent speaker for all things wild, and his occupations have included land stewardship with UC Natural Reserves, large-scale monitoring and strategic planning with The Nature Conservancy, professional education with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, and teaching undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz. Visit his website at: www.greyhayes.net
Email Grey at coastalprairie@aol.com |
Tuesday, September 8, 2026

As of September 1, 2026, John Ternus is the new Apple CEO, replacing Tim Cook. Ternus is pictured above, with the photo having been appropriated from an article in The Wall Street Journal. Click right here if you’d like to read that Wall Street Journal article yourself.
One statement in the article captured my attention, and I just couldn’t help but comment. Here is what that article said about Apple’s ability to maintain its leadership as a company that sets the standard for the design of the electronic devices upon which we more and more rely:
In the age of AI, Apple has lost its status as the company that defines how consumers interact with devices, a title it held for 40 years, from the Apple II to the iPhone. That leaves it vulnerable to a new generation of devices built specifically for AI, which OpenAI and SpaceX are working on, for instance.
While I am certain that the kind of business challenges described above are real, I have to say that when it comes to design issues, I think I’d bet on Apple over SpaceX, any time. SpaceX has now absorbed Tesla, and Elon Musk is the “decider” when it comes to design issues relating to his companies. Here, just to jog your memory, is one of the most recent design initiatives brought into the world by Mr. Musk:

I see a few of these cybertrucks tooling around my town, and based on that experience, I am going to be betting on Apple, not Tesla/SpaceX, when it comes to the development of new devices that will appeal to, and meet the needs, of consumers.
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Gary Patton is a former Santa Cruz County Supervisor (20 years) and an attorney for individuals and community groups on land use and environmental issues. The opinions expressed are Mr. Patton’s. You can read and subscribe to his daily blog at www.gapatton.net
Email Gary at gapatton@mac.com |
Lisa Needham writes on Daily Kos, “Much like the Iran War, which Donald Trump has already won a thousand times, the Reflecting Pool repairs were already perfect — the best ever. But now they will be even better. Are you tired of winning yet?” The president bragged about corrections that will now be done, such as inflow and outflow pipes, that were being delayed until the end of the year, but he sped up the ‘repairs’ to coincide with his big birthday bash, so now we get to pay for more unnecessary expenses due to his half-assed planning. He can’t let go his claim of “clear evidence of vandalism” on the original American flag blue liner, yet he will admit that “contractor error” was one element of the pool’s cheap swimming pool appearance. “Meanwhile, we’ll all wait with bated breath to check out those Reflecting Pool improvements. Our tax dollars are hard at work — moving themselves from our pockets to Trump,” charges Needham.
But, stop the presses! The Horror! The latest pool makeover has been hit by disastrous storms resulting in toppled protective fencing, fallen trees, dirty rainwater with leaves and debris, and yellow “Do Not Cross” yellow police tape littering the site. Mother Nature gave the kibosh to Trump’s “pool is almost completely fixed” proclamation — a setback for the president AND the taxpayers’ pocketbook — with no projected completion date. A DC tour guide remarked, “I’ve lived here since 1965 and this is the worst I’ve ever seen the pool. $16 million later, here we are.” Trump’s initial announcement on the repair plans called for a $1.5 million revamp that would take just a few weeks. Cost has now ballooned to nearly $20 million. Place your bets on what the final sticker price will be!
In an altered photo of Trump and an aide standing beside the pool, the president says, “All I see is scum.” The aide replies, “Well, it is a reflecting pool, sir.”
Speaking of repairs, everyone is asking, “What in the world is going on with Trump’s hair?” A photo of him de-boarding Air Force One went viral with his new imagery, a drastic new look with brown hair with hints of gray, and flipped to the opposite side. Shirish V. Dáte of HuffPost asked if the White House was able to “certify that no animals were harmed in this process,” and political commentator George Conway cracked that “something needs to be done about [Trump’s] hair under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.” The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols‘ take was that it was odd, but “not the most important thing in the world.” It is known that hair-sensitive Donny has a prominent bald spot hidden by his usual combover, which also has a supplemental cotton candy-like hairpiece, sometimes protected by a red MAGA baseball cap.
On the Inside Trump’s Head podcast, biographer Michael Wolff claims that the president is accompanied by a portable hair fix-it kit in all his activities. Wolff says, “The ‘patch kit’ consists of small tufts of hair that match whatever color his hair might be at the time.” No word on who the stylist might be, but this person applies the tufts to Trump’s head with “some kind of paste,” the maintenance being a major enterprise for many years. Bet you can’t wait to read the tell-all book that is bound to appear in the post-Trump period! Especially when you consider that this individual gets to sit next to the person carrying the nuclear codes! Hot stuff! Wolff’s co-host, Joanna Coles, joked that the hair-do looks “like one of those spun sugar things that you can put your hand in and pull it out and start eating it, and it would have no caloric value at all.”
Unable to let his grudge against Canada be, last week Trump levied more tariffs against that country which set off a round of insults and tariffs levied against the US by Canada. Daily Dose of Democracy reported, “America’s 80-year-old nincompoop-in-chief apparently wants Canadian companies to teleport their headquarters across the border overnight as a precondition to continue doing business with the United States. ‘Let all Canadian Companies that are doing business with America move to the United States, immediately. Many of them are Companies that moved out years ago due to stupid US Leadership. When you move back, there are no TARIFFS!’ Trump wrote, mistaking his Sharpie collection for magic wands. For those keeping score at home, Canada is the United States’ second-largest trading partner with $900 billion in cross-border economic activity each year.”
Thinking it would enrage Canadians, Trump recently ‘changed’ the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, changing the mnemonic, H-O-M-E-S, used to help in remembering the names of the five Great Lakes, to S-H-A-M-E — as pointed out by Rachel Maddow and others. Janie Bonkiewitcz posted on social media, “16 years ago Google pulled its search engine out of China, refusing to submit to an authoritarian government. Today, they’re renaming lakes to appease one.” This was a result of Trump’s demand that all navigation apps alter their maps to read ‘Lake America.’ Apple held out for a few days but acquiesced. Old-timer MapQuest refused to obey, simply allowing users to name the lake whatever they preferred, gaining new adherents and users in doing so.
People have been laughing at President Trump‘s upcoming so-called mid-term convention in Dallas, which is referred to as a Trump-a-palooza, with his promises of “lots of Great Entertainment,” and “a RALLY like none other,” with no party business being conducted. The obvious message here is that the president wants to make the midterms about himself, to be onstage, hugging the American flag, cameras rolling and crowds looking on in complete adoration. The Republicans running for office? He doesn’t care and neither do the candidates because they don’t wish to be anywhere near his toxicity. So, if they lose, it’s not his fault because he won in 2024, remember? The GOP would rather not attend this two-day poorly-planned event, viewing it as a shakedown for corporate America with Trump’s placing a price tag on the ‘privilege’ to attend. The highest tier will pay $100,000 to attend, the low admission is ‘only’ $25,000 (to include one guest) — a bargain toll for their own execution, eh? Contrast the 2,000 tickets sold so far, with the 50,000 in attendance at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2024.
Trump is being a total cheapskate, guarding his PAC war chest which is estimated to be in excess of $400 million, despite his own claim of a stash of $850 million, and having no intention of parting with any of it to pay for his Disaster in Dallas. “Republicans desperately need the midterms to be about anything other than Donald Trump. Trump desperately needs everything to be about Donald Trump,” writes Kos on Daily Kos. “Because he’s a grifter first and foremost, you better believe he’ll find a way to use all that donor money on himself.” Poor planning, including invitations being mailed late, finds invitees already committed to other events, or quickly finding other excuses not to attend. Trump is noticing, and he will react with his childish fury, attacking the very Republicans whose seats he is supposedly trying to save. “They’re trapped in a no-win situation entirely of Trump’s making. And it couldn’t happen to a worse bunch of people,” concludes Kos.
Politico surveyed more than 70 GOP candidates and party members, finding that most will be no-shows or are undecided about attending Trump-a-palooza, with dozens more preferring to be mum about their plans. Reasons given include pre-existing district obligations, personal family plans, washing the SUV, with some bluntly explaining that avoidance of Trump this close to the election is best. Michigan Representative Tom Barrett says he would rather be “useful” in his district, saying, “I can’t control what the president’s going to say at the convention, but I can control where I’m at.” Cost has to be a major deterrent, with one member admitting that the costly fee gave him an easy excuse to skip an event he didn’t care to attend anyway, and another calling it “a waste of time,” aimed at the party base instead of attempting to persuade independent voters.
Trump and VP Vance will head the two-day event at the American Airlines Center, with leaders Mike Johnson and John Thune (a maybe), and a few 2028 hopefuls in attendance. Axios obtained a leaked list of speakers, with one name in particular drawing attention among critics, that of Attorney General Todd Blanche. “The United States Attorney General is speaking at a national partisan political convention,” former Obama campaign aide, Christopher Hale posted on X. Former US Attorney Joyce Vance notes that US federal executive branch employees are prohibited by law from using their position to influence elections, saying “The AG is on the clock 24/7, and his appearance is a potential violation of the Hatch Act.” Pick your poison carefully.
Lisa Needham writes on Daily Kos that Trump-a-palooza feels like a solution in search of a problem, “an unnecessary interference with actual campaigning, the point being to make President Trump feel special.” She says that it’s not about getting Republicans elected since that is being taken care of by gerrymandering and voter suppression. According to The Wall Street Journal, photos with Trump will cost $88,600, “a number that seems weirdly arbitrary until you realize that $44,300 is the current Federal Election Commission contribution limit for donations to national party committee. So, presumably, half would go to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the other half would go to the National Senatorial Committee.” Needham calls that a bargain when you consider that a “roundtable” with Trump on the first night of the convention will run you $250,000 — as he continues to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday, perhaps? It’s all about a tiny ego, folks.
At the bargain table sits VP JD Vance who offers a roundtable for only $75,000, and paltry $35,000 for a photo. Needham writes, “Honestly, we’d pay five figures NOT to have a picture with Vance, the least charming man alive and the only person currently more poisonous than Trump.” But in the end, she says, to be fair, “Trump is still really good at raising money, because everyone who loves bribing officials loves to bribe him — and he’s always open for business. At best, this convention will be a big nothing-burger; at worst, a disaster. But either way, have fun Republicans. The rest of us will just be studiously ignoring the whole thing.”
A Jack Ohman political cartoon features GOP strategists sitting around a table, looking at an Out-of-PowerPoint display on the wall, headed ‘2026 GOP HOUSE STRATEGY,’ with bullet point messages: • Deny knowing President Trump, • Pixelate his face out of your ads, • Stay in denial. Don’t worry. Be happy, • Look! A Squirrel!
The convention will not be helpful to Republicans fighting for their political lives, but it will be helpful to Donald Trump, a disparity that displays “the cost of a cynical decision made a decade ago by a party that traded a few more years in the majority for their inevitable destruction,” writes Matt Kerbel of Wolves and Sheep. “It is the cost of blindly following someone whose life’s work has been to suck the value from whatever he can acquire and cast aside the remains. This is how Trump conducted business. It is how he conducts his presidency, how he approaches relationships with other nations, and how he is treating the Republican Party.” Kerbel recognizes that Trump has no use for the Republican Party beyond what it can do for him, and it will be fully apparent this weekend as the attendees view what is happening to the party which placed its fate in the hands of a narcissist who will get what he needs.
So, this desperate effort to gin up some kind of momentum for the midterms for a few weirdos who would rather watch an aging pedophile rant about ballrooms, windmills and immigrants instead of watching the opening festivities of the NFL season, can find out more about Trump-a-palooza at gopdallas2026.com. Although, that doesn’t take you to the convention website — it takes you to the Epstein Files database on the Department of Justice’s website. HA! — GOTCHA!
Despite the bluster of the GOP, the White House is preparing for Democrats to be in charge, said Rick Wilson, former Republican strategist, and he has a plan to go after Trump should the blue wave come to pass with the midterms. The GOP is “starting to talk about executive privilege, about lawyering up, about making sure that people have their ethics disclosures and their financial disclosures and their personal paperwork in line, that they haven’t saved any incriminating documents, and that they’re not going to be patsies when they get investigated by the coming Democratic majority,” reports Wilson. He says Trump deserves to be impeached but because of the makeup of the Senate, those votes aren’t there, but, the Democrats need to take advantage of the fear that’s building within the opposition.
Wilson says, “The minute the polls close and we know we have a majority, Democrats should take a page from the book of mob prosecutors, and work their way through Trump’s key staffers first.” Starting at the bottom and quickly working through the chain of assistants, secretaries and key career staffers for their depositions to divulge Trump’s secrets, results initiating a fear that “is delicious, palpable, growing by the minute, a fear that needs to grow into a raging terror.” Unable to afford the big-time attorneys that Trump will hire for his protection, the lesser lights will fear for their futures, and recognize the urgency of being truthful about the administration’s willful destruction of this country, or the theft of assets from the country for the president’s benefit.
Elliot Kirschner writes in Through the Fog, “There will be a rush from those who appeased or conspired with Trump to distance themselves from the ashes of the dumpster fire they helped make possible, arguing that he [Trump] was an anomaly and that we need to get back to the America we had before. But that America was a big part of the problem, because it was the country that made Trump possible. We must recognize that the story America tells about itself has always favored the points of view of the privileged and the powerful…the forces that control and reap the benefits of the status quo almost never relinquish their position without a fight.”
As Rick Wilson pointed out, the reactionary forces are already trying to set the terms of the debate when the Democrats return to power. “This is a fight for the future, and we need the language equal to the stakes. Authoritarians will demonize whatever we call a mass movement to make the United States more fair and just…fighting back and holding these people accountable is not crazy. It is exactly what our Democracy needs if we are going to continue to keep it,” concludes Kirschner.
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Dale Matlock, a Santa Cruz County resident since 1968, is the former owner of The Print Gallery, a screenprinting establishment. He is an adherent of The George Vermosky school of journalism, and a follower of too many news shows, newspapers, and political publications, and a some-time resident of Moloka’i, Hawaii, U.S.A., serving on the Board of Directors of Kepuhi Beach Resort. Email: cornerspot14@yahoo.com. |
Thomas will be back!

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Thomas Leavitt is the husbandy thing to our illustrious webmistress. A resident of Santa Cruz (now part time) since 1993, his interests include history, technology, and community organizing. He started the world’s first self-service web hosting company, WebCom, located at 903 Pacific in May of 1994. He’s been part of too many community organizations to mention, and ran for City Council in the early aughts. Email Thomas at ThomLeavitt@gmail.com |
“Summer’s End”
“Our bathing suits, waving like summer flags on the clothesline were begrudgingly packed away, and replaced with long-sleeved sweaters and woolly socks.”
~Arlene Stafford-Wilson
“There is a time in the last few days of summer when the ripeness of autumn fills the air, and time is quiet and mellow.”
~Rudolfo Anaya
“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
~William Shakespeare
“It was one of the warm nights at the end of summer that makes promises that won’t be kept.”
~Cinda Williams Chima
“By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer.”
~Helen Hunt Jackson
“We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. We will welcome summer’s ghost.”
~Henry Rollins
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15 facts, tidbits, whatever you want to call them, about The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I know, I know, they call them “weird facts”, but that’s just to get the clicks. There’s nothing weird, but quite a few interesting things. Enjoy! |
Direct questions and comments to webmistress@BrattonOnline.com
(Gunilla Leavitt)

September 2 – 8, 2026
Greensite… on monarchs, Coastal Commission and streetlights… Steinbruner… back next week… Hayes… Responsible Consumers for the Environment… Patton… People Acting In A Group… Matlock… greatest hits…focal awareness…mememe… Eagan… Subconscious Comics and Deep Cover … Webmistress serves you… a keyboard cleaning… Quotes on… “Dust”
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If you want to pitch in to |
HELLO FROM THE DUST! Well, would you look at that! I managed to get a bit of internet for a hot minute, and am posting the column straight from the Black Rock City playa. I’m having a blast, and I’m covered in dust. This is my first burn in an organized camp – back in the earlier days (my first burn was 25 years ago!), Thomas and I would drive out here, get a ticket at the gate, cruise around for a bit until we found a nice looking corner and pitch our tent. This time, I’m in a camp that has generators and power, and even a shower!
I’ll be brief and get back to participating. Be sure to pay attention to Gillian’s piece this week, and the Friday deadline to send an email about it.
Happy Labor Day! Next week I’ll be coming at you from Reno!
~Webmistress
New movie review next time. Things are still crazy!

THE LAST HOUSE. Netflix. Movie. (5.5 IMDb)
Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel meets Lovecraft.
This is the ultimate “bottle story.” A suburban Seattle family wakes up one morning to find they can’t leave their house – and neither can anyone else on the block, or maybe anywhere. Some kind of mostly unseen force has sealed everyone in, and it brings the rain with it. Endless, relentless rain.
Stories like this always get under my skin. There’s a very specific kind of tension that kicks in once it starts to feel like there’s no way out – I stop hoping for a clever escape and start just wanting these poor people put out of their misery. That’s not a knock on the film; it’s a testament to how well it builds dread. You feel the walls closing in right along with the family.
What makes it work is the slow unraveling – watching ordinary people get inventive out of sheer necessity, rationing food, rigging up ways to collect water, turning on each other and then back to each other again. It’s as much a study in psychological survival as physical survival. The monster stuff, when it finally shows up, feels almost like an afterthought bolted onto a much stranger, much better film about isolation and endurance – but even that tacked-on quality has a certain charm, like the movie couldn’t resist giving its dread a shape.
Worth a watch.
~Sarge
THE BACKROOMS. In theatres, PrimeTV. Movie. (6.8 IMDb)
The Backrooms, like Slenderman and Creepy Pasta, grew out of the internet, a new kind of horror born from the post-Covid emptying of once-populated spaces. The Backrooms are both a genre and a reaction to liminal spaces: those empty places between places. Abandoned terminals, shopping malls, office buildings. They can be fascinating, but also deeply unnerving.
The Backrooms movie takes that unease and turns it up to 12, suggesting these are places misremembering themselves: genuinely endless hallways, random fragments of stairs, windows where windows shouldn’t be. Even people become fragmented, misremembered.
For anyone who’s ever found themselves unnerved not by boogeymen, but by places that just aren’t right, this hits a very particular nerve. Well worth a watch
~Sarge
THE ODYSSEY. In Theaters. Movie. (8.5 IMDb) ![]()
The “Helen is DEI casting!” and “Achilles is trans!” outrage tells me you looked up The Odyssey just long enough to be angry, without actually reading it or seeing the film. I’ve read it multiple times, from adolescence through university. It’s a legend Homer recorded centuries after the supposed events, preserved through oral tradition, and all the variations that adds to the story. Helen’s skin color has no significance to the story, and Achilles is already dead when The Odyssey begins. Elliot Page doesn’t play Achilles at all, but Sinon, the young man sent to war in another’s place.
Nolan’s Odyssey is a solid, faithful-ish telling, briskly told in about three hours (I know, that sounds like an oxymoron but it’s true). It adds some believable depth to Odysseus, gives Penelope less screen time than she deserves, and as a mythology geek I could nitpick the lack of spear fighting or the anachronistic Corinthian helmets instead of the Achaeans’ boar’s tusk helmets. But that’s fanboy trivia. At its heart, it’s a powerful story about responsibility and loss. Well worth a watch. Twice, if you can.
~Sarge
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. PrimeTV. Movie. (6.8 IMDb)
Masters of the Universe (2026) was a genuine surprise. Rather than forcing the franchise into a dark, gritty reboot, it embraces the colorful, larger-than-life spirit of the original. It balances action, fantasy, and humor without winking at the audience, making the whole adventure feel sincere, fun, and delightfully goofy.
This isn’t trying to be the next great fantasy epic—it’s trying to be a Masters of the Universe movie, and it succeeds. Ignore the toxic nostalgia crowd complaining about the diverse casting of characters like Man-At-Arms, Triclops, and Ram Man, and you’ll find a tonally accurate adaptation that answers plenty of questions longtime fans have had for years (particularly namings). Stick around for the mid- and post-credit scenes. Well worth the watch.
~Sarge
QUICK LOOK AT NETFLIX. Netflix. Series, Movie.
Here’s some stuff that’s not necessarily current, but currently on Netflix:
Veronica Mars think Buffy, but with no vampires, and lots of class conflicts, roofies … and the result … and murder in a small California coastal town. Young Kristen Bell (The Good Place) lives with her disgraced cop/now PI father, and is determined to solve the murder of her best friend, and the case that tanked her father’s career. A fun watch.
The Dead Don’t Die think Night of the Living Dead directed by Wes Anderson. Only in this case, it’s Jim Jarmusch. Zombies in a small town, with Bill Murray and Adam Driver starring. Tilda Swinton is a samurai. Much more like his 80’s films.
Mindhunter was pretty amazing, on and off; the casting for Big Ed Kemper was spot on. Period piece that follows the building of the FBI’s “profiling” division, focused on this new thing: serial killers.
The Enola Holmes movies: Sherlock (Henry Cavill)’s little sister, Enola (Alone backwards), breaks free of an attempt to ship her off to a deportment school, and takes up the family business on her own. There follow adventures, romance (on her terms), and occasional visits by her anarchist mother, Helena Bonham Carter. The first is a lot of fun, growing less (for me) as the sequels went on.
Marty: Life is Short, let’s hope it’s not for him! I love Martin Short, so this was a gem. An autobiographical history, chock full of familiar clips, as well as previously unseen personal movies, and of course a tremendous group of cameos.
~Sarge
SUPERGIRL. In theatres. Movie. (6.1 IMDb)
Supergirl is 67 years old.
In that time, she’s been through a LOT of attempts to give her her OWN story instead of just being Jr. Girl Superman. She suffers here from 1) the Manosphere complaining that she’s not cute or “feminine” enough, and 2) people stuck on an older version of her, like comparing Super Friends Aquaman to Jason Momoa.
Loosely based on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King, and honestly drawing from True Grit too, Supergirl stars Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon) as Kara Zor El, who leaves Earth to escape the shadow of her cousin, Superman, and the expectations piled on her while still dealing with PTSD from the destruction of Krypton. She ends up caught in a child’s vendetta and a race against time to get medical help for Krypto (played by Krypto, from Superman).
The pacing isn’t the sharpest, but the soundtrack is a banger, the effects are great, and Jason Momoa as Lobo is a role he was born to play. Despite haters and Rotten Tomatoes, well worth a watch.
~Sarge
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Sarge, aka Jeffery Sargent, cut his teeth on the Golden Age of Hollywoood on TV and with regular trips to the Sash Mill. Film classes then, at Cabrillo with Morton Marcus, broadened his scope – he found he preferred Keaton over Chaplin, and Akira Kurosawa was his Yoda. Sarge spent 15 years working in Special Effects, on everything from Starship Troopers to Battlestar Galactica. He is a staunch geek who has a weak spot for Cozy Mysteries and loathes “Reality” shows. While he doesn’t care for the unrelenting banal horror of “True Crime”, he licks his lips over a twist like the end of Chinatown. Email Sarge at JeffLSargent@gmail.com |
August 31, 2026

A streetlight and a grove of eucalyptus trees. So what? Well, the grove of trees is in Lighthouse Field and is the overwintering site for monarch butterflies, the 7th largest overwintering site west of the Rockies. The streetlight has just been installed by the city of Santa Cruz, across from Lighthouse Field where previously there were no streetlights. You don’t have to be an entomologist to figure out that artificial light at night and a butterfly overwintering site are incompatible. As Dark Sky International writes, “Artificial light at night (ALAN) disrupts monarch butterfly navigation, circadian rhythms, and developmental trajectories.”
Erecting streetlights was not part of the new, almost completed, two-story Ananta Senior Living project on the Oblates of Saint Joseph property. I attended all the hearings for the project. Protection of the monarchs was one of the issues discussed. Streetlights were never proposed nor part of that discussion.
It seems that the inadvisability of erecting a new streetlight across from a significant monarch overwintering site where no lights previously existed has escaped city attention. Hopefully this oversight will quickly be corrected with the removal of the streetlight. You can help by writing to the councilmember whose district encompasses this area: council member Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson at skalantari-johnson@santacruzca.gov.
At the same time this is happening, the city is asking the California Coastal Commission (CCC) at its September meeting, to approve what the city labels as “minor updates” to its Local Coastal Program (LCP). The “minor updates” include map EQ-9 which is the city’s mapped Sensitive Habitat Areas. The maps (also included is a Vegetation Map EQ-8) have already been added to the General Plan but are not official without CCC approval.
Map EQ-9 includes the Lighthouse Field Overwintering Monarch Site. The problem is that the city in “updating” the map has shrunk the sensitive habitat areas, erased some habitat areas, and removed specified species (Black Swift for example). In the case of Lighthouse Field Monarch Overwintering Site, the city has renamed it as “Potential Monarch Butterfly Habitat” (emphasis added). There is nothing “potential” about the monarch site in Lighthouse Field. It is an established site and has a long history. This renaming by the city undermines the site’s importance and need for protection. Since the city does not include in its packet to the CCC the 1992 map which this new one replaces, there is no way for the public or commissioners to know what is being changed and lost.
Besides the renaming, the city has greatly reduced the areas mapped as Sensitive Habitat. What used to be a large circle covering Lighthouse Field and a block into the adjoining residential area in the 1992 map, is now limited to just Lighthouse Field in the updated map. My hunch is this was done to avoid placing any environmental requirements for butterfly protection on nearby properties. I live in the 1992 Map EQ-9 area. When the temperature is right, monarchs fly all over this area, feeding on nectar plants wherever they find them. A city caring about habitat protection would never reduce this sensitive area but rather encourage property owners to plant nectar plants and avoid planting milkweed. And certainly not erect new streetlights!
If the CCC accepts the Sensitive Habitat updates as minor, we have lost this chance to better protect the monarch, a fast-disappearing natural treasure. There is some habitat restoration happening in Lighthouse Field but neglecting the wider habitat area is unwise. If the 1992 map with its larger area were being followed, as it should be without CCC approval of the new map, the streetlight would probably have been caught at the proposal stage and nixed.
The deadline to submit comments to the CCC for its meeting the second week of September is the previous Friday, September 4.
Our job is to alert staff and commissioners that this is no minor update but is a major change to the city’s Sensitive Habitat Map EQ-9 and requires the CCC’s deliberation. If we are successful, they will decide it is not minor and postpone for future deliberation which gives us time to do more work locally. You can copy the subject and text below, or write in your own words, just make sure to do so before Friday!
Email:
CentralCoast@coastal.ca.govSubject:
Public Comment on September 2026 Agenda Item Wednesday 18b – City of Santa Cruz LCP Amendment No. LCP-3-STC-26-0040-1-Part B (Sensitive Habitat and Vegetation Maps).Body:
The changes to Map EQ-9 of the Local Coastal Program are not minor, they are significant. They need more consideration and discussion at the city level.
Friday September 4 deadline. Don’t let the butterflies down!
| Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association http://darksky.org Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild. |
MAKE ONE CALL. WRITE ONE LETTER. ATTEND A PUBLIC MEETING AND ASK QUESTIONS THAT MATTER TO YOU.
DO ONE THING THIS WEEK, AND MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE.
Cheers,
Becky
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Becky Steinbruner is a 30+ year resident of Aptos. She has fought for water, fire, emergency preparedness, and for road repair. She ran for Second District County Supervisor in 2016 on a shoestring and got nearly 20% of the votes. She ran again in 2020 on a slightly bigger shoestring and got 1/3 of the votes.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com |
I have written before in this column about right livelihood and living by principles, and I want to focus readers this week on the related theme of being a conscious consumer. I realize that this is a roll-your-eyes kind of subject for many people on the Central Coast. Many have developed a jokey attitude towards this, accompanied by an increasingly calloused heart as one realizes the importance of responsible consumerism while feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to get an unbiased recommendation about what to buy. Please bear with me and open your heart to one substantial change we can make with the Monterey Bay’s coffee culture.
Wisdom
I recently re-read the mindfulness trainings from Thich Nhat Hahn, and the following one motivated my writing this week:
The Eleventh Mindfulness Training: Right Livelihood
Aware that great violence and injustice have been done to our environment and society, we are committed not to live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. We will do our best to select a livelihood that contributes to the wellbeing of all species on earth and helps realize our ideal of understanding and compassion. Aware of economic, political, and social realities around the world, as well as our interrelationship with the ecosystem, we are determined to behave responsibly as consumers and as citizens. We will not invest in or purchase from companies that contribute to the depletion of natural resources, harm the earth, or deprive others of their chance to live.
-Thich Nhat Hanh, 1966 (emphasis mine)
Neotropical Migratory Songbirds
A couple weeks back, the barn swallows left but the tree swallows still wheel and dive in the skies of the Central Coast. A bright yellow warbler delighted a friend just yesterday. The fabulous song “Quick Three Beers!” signals the welcome spring arrival of the olive sided flycatcher and its relative the ash throated flycatcher soon adds its referee whistle to the incoming migrants’ din. And there are many more. What would life be without these visitors from the coffee region? Well, we are already living in a world with much diminished visitation and it isn’t getting better.
Coffee Choices
How many coffee shops? How many pounds of how many types of coffee take up huge blocks of space in grocery stores? Surfers with their coffee cups gaze oceanward in the early morning. Every conference, every big meeting, must have coffee. US citizens drink so much coffee that contamination of ecosystems with caffeine is a real problem.
For years, I have been disappointed not to find any single place anywhere in the Monterey Bay that offers coffee marked with the only certification that guarantees that tropical forests still support a rich variety of birds while still producing coffee. It used to be that Whole Foods had one type that did – no longer. I recently ducked into a Whole Foods to look and Lo! there were many bags marked with the greenwashing Rainforest Alliance certification, which is, well, not so good. On the other hand, the Smithsonian’s Bird Friendly certification is science-based and supported by good evidence. But you have to either mail order it or pick it up when you travel, because, as this map shows, no one carries it around here.
Join The Movement
Shade grown, bird friendly coffee is taking off, and it is time for you to join the movement. In the last ten years shade grown coffee cultivation has increased substantially. It is time for someone, somewhere in the Monterey Bay region to start carrying Smithsonian’s certified Bird Friendly coffee. Why not ask your favored grocer to carry some? I asked New Leaf Market and they claimed that they were looking into it…2 years ago. I will ask again. If people don’t ask, you bet they won’t respond.
Getting Back to the Wisdom
Living Thich Nhat Hahn’s teaching to ‘behave responsibly as consumers’ is not easy, but mindfulness in general is not easy – we have to take it one step at a time. I have shown you the path with coffee and hopefully you’ve already found the path with certified organic foods. Where will you go next on this journey? Perhaps you can get to know the farmers; the Monterey Bay is rich with agriculture and the farmers are not far away. Perhaps some farmers are better to support than others. Perhaps some farmers are working to steward natural resources, caring for the Earth, and giving to others so that they have a chance to live better.
This column builds on a prior post from 2022, available here.
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Grey Hayes is a fervent speaker for all things wild, and his occupations have included land stewardship with UC Natural Reserves, large-scale monitoring and strategic planning with The Nature Conservancy, professional education with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, and teaching undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz. Visit his website at: www.greyhayes.net
Email Grey at coastalprairie@aol.com |
Tuesday, September 1, 2026

FDR urged Americans to get behind a program of shorter hours and higher wages to create purchasing power that would restart the economy. He explained: “It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the Nation itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about.”
*I endorse this message!
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Gary Patton is a former Santa Cruz County Supervisor (20 years) and an attorney for individuals and community groups on land use and environmental issues. The opinions expressed are Mr. Patton’s. You can read and subscribe to his daily blog at www.gapatton.net
Email Gary at gapatton@mac.com |
EVERYMAN, PREDICTION, GIDDY-UP
A ceremony was held at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas last Friday, during which President Trump awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to the Artemis II crew, recognizing the four astronauts for their historic lunar flyby in April during which they set a new human spaceflight distance record of 252,756 miles from Earth. According to journalist Aaron Rupar, the president was more than an hour late, so in the interim the attendees were treated to long videos and ambient music as they waited for the MeMeMe routine to play out. Rupar live tweeted that once his speech began, he spoke to complete silence — no applause or reactions to his “brazenly partisan speech.”
“This is one of those instances where Trump’s inability to deliver a speech that’s under a half hour long really hurts him. Nobody wants to hear him riff about Venezuela and Iran for an hour+ at an event that’s supposed to be nonpartisan and in honor of other people. Complete silence at the NASA Center as Trump brags about the stock market and touts fake foreign investment numbers. Just a brutally awkward speech that is going over like farts in church,” reported Rupar. Instead of honoring the Artemis II astronauts, he talked about himself, making it a partisan speech of lies, playing his greatest hits, a total lead balloon to the scientists, astronauts, staff and their families, who sat in stony silence.
Daily Dose of Democracy’s take on the event reported that the president’s “demented brain STRUGGLED to come up with things to say to the well-educated crowd, his fryer-grease-soaked cerebellum coming up with ‘I had an uncle who was a great scientist, a great man. Was at MIT for 41 years, Dr. John Trump. And he loved space. He use to tell me about space, space, all space. He would throw in the word ‘nuclear’ every once in a while. But he loved space. I guess we have genetically, we sort of, believe in that stuff. I love it. I find it so interesting, so amazing. It’s very special.’ If there is one thing Donald Trump 100% does not care about, it’s space. There are no show tunes, fast food joints, big tough guys, scantily clad women, concrete, golden toilets, golf courses, or steam airplane catapults in space. Side note: we WOULD LOVE to hear more about the science of uncle-genes. Sigh. Houston…we have a problem.”
Trump’s struggling “to come up with things to say” is a bit more concerning to John Paul Garrison, a Georgia-based clinical and forensic psychologist, who analyzed footage of the president’s speech, in what he called the “most concerning footage” he has seen yet. His observations of various neurological concerns and some steep decline over the past few months compared to the Space Center speech “is extremely concerning.” As Trump boasted about the stock market’s performance, he briefly paused mid-sentence as his body twitched, in Garrison’s opinion, a neurological event that crosses both hemispheres in his brain. The psychologist describes his right arm jerking, eyes blinking, voice hesitating, and then the left arm jerking — not simple muscle spasms, and no sign of pain — which he terms a ‘focal aware seizure,’ or a brief epileptic event. Garrison is insisting this is not a diagnosis, but it is consistent with those who have suffered strokes, clearly neurological.
Trump did manage to announce the establishment of the US Space Academy, which will be modeled after traditional military service academies like West Point, for the purpose of training graduates for the US Space Force, NASA, and the commercial spaceflight industry. A specific location for the academy has not yet been selected, but look for a quid pro quo as Trump considers offers from contenders.
Among the cast of characters created by the late author and cartoonist Jules Feiffer was Everyman, an astute observer of the state of the nation dispensing his thoughts and ideas in serial panels. During the Reagan presidency, Everyman shared these ideas: 1. Truth hurts; 2. Before truth, this was a happy country; 3. But look what truth did to us in Vietnam; 4. Look how the truth fouled up the 1960s and the 1970s; 5. Truth has changed us from a nation of optimists to a nation of pessimists; 6. So when the president makes it a crime for Government workers to go public with truth, I say, ‘Hoorah!‘; 7. And when he bars the press from reporting our wars, I say, ‘About time!‘; 8. America doesn’t need any more truth; 9. It needs to feel better. Columnist Molly Ivins wrote, “Ronald Reagan, Feiffer observed elsewhere, represented a return to innocence; a new moral, ethical, and political Victorianism. Reagan’s Victorianism transcends truth. It circumvents politics. It gives America what it demands in a time of insoluble crisis: fairy tales.” With Trump’s embrace of space we have added yet another dimension for more of his exaggerations and lies. Tell us another one, Uncle Donny!
Thankfully, those attending the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks at Ground Zero won’t be subjected to any of President Trump’s MeMeMe routines. His team made advance site visits to Manhattan, as Trump was expressing to the planners an interest in speaking at the event; but since it is established policy to disallow politicians from speaking at anniversary events, he will have to riff somewhere else — be forewarned that he will be at the Pentagon, coming from the weekend’s midterm convention in Dallas with new stories/lies to spread. A 9/11 Memorial and Museum statement said that the president is “always welcome to attend the ceremony,” however, VP Vance will be representing the administration in Manhattan.
A few weeks after launching his war with Iran, the president said that he had “predicted” that “Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center,” a year before the attacks. “I said, ‘You better get him. He’s a bad guy.’ I watched him be interviewed one time, and I said, ‘That’s a bad guy. You’d better get him. One year before exactly. I wrote it in a book,” Trump insisted. “You can even check, about a year before the World Trade Center came down.” According to a CNN fact check, Trump’s 2000 book ‘The America We Deserve‘ only mentioned bin Laden once and did not call for him to be killed or warn of any attack. Tell us another one, Uncle Donny!
Trump envisioned himself as a caped crusader, coming to the rescue of consumers in the personage of Hamburger Helper, as he initiated a plan to import beef from Argentina. Beef prices have been escalating, so the president suspended tariffs on up to 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef for the next three months, throwing Capitol Hill Republicans into a full-blown meltdown. Promising to sell it at 25% below current market prices may sound gratifying to consumers but America’s ranchers and cattlemen — a hefty portion of the MAGA base — charge that they will be destroyed. Senator Cotton of Arkansas was vocal about this plan, writing on social media that market prices are high because cattle herds are small, as producers struggle against meatpacking monopolies.
Some staff members inside Congress are saying Trump is “an idiot who doesn’t understand economics and doesn’t understand math, who simply doesn’t grasp the laws of supply and demand.” One House Republican said that Trump is “Democrats’ secret weapon for success.” Additionally, onlookers are disturbed given Argentina’s recent history of shipping potentially health-hazardous beef, with China suspending a shipment after detecting the presence of chloramphenicol, and antibiotic that carries rare, but documented, risks of fatal side effects. Musician and social activist Bill Madden posted on X about the China incident, writing, “With serial-lying psychopath Trump as president, God help us.”
A statement released by Good Ranchers, a Texas-based direct-to-consumer meat company, says, “This isn’t alarmism. History is worth paying attention to. In 2013, Europe went through a massive food fraud scandal when products labeled beef tested anywhere from 30% to 100% horse meat. The package said beef. It wasn’t beef.” Wyoming-based beef company, Meriwhether Farms, issued a sarcastic warning to consumers earlier this year: “Chloramphenicol is banned in the US because it can cause fatal aplastic anemia in humans, but don’t worry, the US has increased beef imports from Argentina — without implementing mandatory country of origin labeling requirements!”
Andy Borowitz writes in his book, ‘Profiles in Ignorance‘, that “Donald J. Trump was born into third generation family wealth. His grandfather Friedrich Trump struck it rich during the Klondike Gold Rush not by mining gold but by ‘mining the miners,’ in the words of Trump family historian Gwenda Blair. After thousands of would-be prospectors abandoned their worn-out steeds on a treacherous mountain pass aptly named Dead Horse Gulch, Friedrich saw his big chance to break into the restaurant industry. In a forerunner of Trump Steaks, he repurposed the horseflesh as tasty entrées for famished Gold Rushers, thus launching a portfolio of businesses that soon included a highly regarded Arctic brothel. Inheriting the commercial savvy that enabled Friedrich to sell quarter-pound ‘horseberders,’ his son Fred created a thriving real estate business in New York, building thousands of apartments. ‘My father taught me everything I know,'” Donald later said. Well, giddy-up!
Not content to let his earlier Venezuelan intrusion lie dormant, Trump posted that he has locked up majority control of more than 65B barrels of that country’s proven oil reserves — the biggest oil deal in history, in ALL CAPS, he claims. The problem is that this is a geological estimate, not oil that can be pumped, refined, and sold, since it will take enormous investments and years of infrastructure work before any benefit can be realized. So, Trump’s promise of quickly lowering of prices can only be seen as another letdown. Because the Venezuelan crude is a heavy, degraded oil, a ‘sour’ oil high in sulfur content, most US refineries aren’t able to handle it, requiring new refineries that will take up to fifteen years to build.
Venezuelan leader Rodriguez announced that investment of a hundred billion dollars is backing the move, but nobody knows where it’s coming from — not Exxon, not Conoco — perhaps a newly created US entity, which would need congressional approval. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chevron and other US companies were nearing a deal to invest billions (not a hundred billion), but most companies are leery since Venezuela nationalized their assets in 2007, as they fight for restitution. Exxon declared the country as uninvestable without more durable investment protections in place.
There has been no public accounting of the $8B for 100M barrels of oil which has moved through the system in the months since the US took control of Venezuela’s oil exports. Supposedly the money sits in a Qatari bank account, but the Trump administration has failed to explain what safeguards exist to keep that cash from accumulating in a Trump slush fund. Actual production is stagnant — about 1.1M barrels per day — with risk analyst Brett Erickson calling it a blatantly corrupt deal and a clear robbery of Venezuela’s resources against the will of its own people, as he warns that the struggling population may see the truth and respond accordingly.
Economists estimate the ‘deal’ will generate tax revenue of only $3.22 per barrel of oil — less than half that of historical earnings — an unusually low figure and a complete lack of transparency. A Venezuelan opposition figure, unaligned with the previous Maduro regime, calls this a massive land grab by a rapacious mafioso US. We have to remember that Trump had praise for the so-called Freedom Fuel Network for pricing gas at $3.47 at the pump in about 20 locations, as they undercut other marketers. Turns out that Mansfield Oil Company filed a federal lawsuit against KRSM Inc. and its president, alleging KRSM took more than a million gallons of fuel valued at nearly $4M, then never paid up as it supplied the Freedom Fuel Stations. Hmmm…suspicious?
Calling it Trump’s Venezuela ‘steal,’ Ben Meiselas of MeidasTouch calls the plan “absurd and dangerous,” in misleading us to believe there is suddenly a gusher of oil to relieve our pain at the pump. Private investment companies are not identified, nor are there commitments, written agreements, and no congressional authorization for Pentagon involvement. Suddenly this underground cache will become part of the American energy supply? “Yet, Trump throws out these insane and gigantic numbers because that what he’s always done. Announce the biggest number imaginable and hope everybody repeats it before anybody asks whether it’s real. The point right now is to simply create the perception that enormous new oil supplies are coming. It’s part of this broader effort to manipulate expectations around energy prices while pretending everything is going to plan. Obviously, we’ve seen versions of this with Iran too. Announce deals that don’t really exist, claims shipping is returning to normal, talk about tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz as though everything is back to where it was, even as the numbers tell a very different story,” charges Meiselas.
“Let’s be clear: this isn’t a win,” wrote Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen in a social media post. “This is proof Trump put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies. Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty.” Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, accused the president of using Maduro’s ouster to “control Venezuelan oil.” “Will prices come down for Americans? Who knows, but not likely as much as Trump has forced them up through his idiotic Iran War. But here’s a guarantee — this will pad the pockets of Trump family and Big Oil companies and delay transition to cleaner energy. Bottom line — using our troops for a private oil grab is corruption at epic scale,” Kaine wrote on X.
Well, Trump has now scooped The Onion and Andy Borowitz with the satirical profundity of the season as he ‘changes’ the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, then heads them off with the suggestion that the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans may be next in his sights for an assignation. As Arwa Mahdawi of The Guardian suggests, “Don’t mention the war! Or the economy, for that matter. Or the Epstein files. Or Natalie Harp. Or ‘affordability.’ Best not to talk about anything that affects ordinary people our embarrasses the president, really. Instead, let’s all rejoice in Trump’s latest triumph: renaming Lake Ontario, which is shared by Canada and the US, as Lake America. On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to America-fy the lake’s name on US maps and documents, which is an excellent use of time and resources. I suppose we can at least be thankful that the president, who is trying to slap his own name on everything from airports to the Kennedy Center, didn’t decree that the body of water be called Lake Trump.”
With trade negotiations between Canada and the US collapsing, that’ll show ’em we mean business! A US president ordering the name change of a Great Lake in order to antagonize a close ally would have been headline news in a normal timeline — now it’s just another Silly Thursday stunt that governmental entities will ignore, because it demonstrates that Trump is out of ideas, a desperate, isolated, weak and floundering wannabe god-king. Of course, MAGA believes it will lower our grocery bills, decrease gas prices and make healthcare more affordable as we plunge into the abyss of uncharted stupidity. One poster on social media suggested we make another lake name change — how does Lake Barack Obama is Superior sound to you? No matter how many executive orders Trump signs for inclusion in his Mar-a-Lago-bound file box, Lake Ontario will be Lake Ontario long after we stop calling Trump ‘president.’
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Dale Matlock, a Santa Cruz County resident since 1968, is the former owner of The Print Gallery, a screenprinting establishment. He is an adherent of The George Vermosky school of journalism, and a follower of too many news shows, newspapers, and political publications, and a some-time resident of Moloka’i, Hawaii, U.S.A., serving on the Board of Directors of Kepuhi Beach Resort. Email: cornerspot14@yahoo.com. |
Thomas will be back next week!

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Thomas Leavitt is the husbandy thing to our illustrious webmistress. A resident of Santa Cruz (now part time) since 1993, his interests include history, technology, and community organizing. He started the world’s first self-service web hosting company, WebCom, located at 903 Pacific in May of 1994. He’s been part of too many community organizations to mention, and ran for City Council in the early aughts. Email Thomas at ThomLeavitt@gmail.com |
“Dust”
“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
~Pablo Picasso
“When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.”
~Rumi
“I am able to get up and dust myself off and keep moving forward. I’m very stubborn.”
~Rita Moreno
“Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.”
~Jesse Owens
“Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.”
~Carolyn Gold Heilbrun
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