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HERB CAEN FOLLOWUP. Bill Raney Nickelodeon builder and author of “Letters To Zerky” sent this Herb Caen original item…Bruce, That pic of you & Herb Caen made me think you might be interested in this attachment in which Caen coined the word “Beatnik,” thereby putting it into the lexicon of American speech. Bill R. Check it out…
APOLOGY ABOUT CITY WATER FLUORIDATION.I got a letter last week from a reader saying she was saddened by my “describing those who oppose water fluoridation as looneys then citing a very short editorial in a newspaper, appears to be rather flip”. I forget that just because I’ve been writing, investigating, broadcasting, researching, and interviewing experts on City Water Fluoridation since the early ’60’s that not everyone has that background. Since my directing and producing days at KPIX TV, KPFA, KCBS and KGO radio I’ve been involved in trying to make sure people knew the facts about Fluoride and not some looney distortions that are more aligned with flat earth theories, Illuminati and UFO’s.
Read here about such data as “Nearly 100 national and international organizations recognize the public health benefits of community water fluoridation for preventing dental decay, including the American Dental Association, the U.S. Public Health Service, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the International Association for Dental Research, the National PTA and the American Cancer Society. In April 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proclaimed community water fluoridation as one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century”.
And larger concepts like….”Thanks in large part to community water fluoridation, half of all children in the U.S. ages 5 to 17 have never had a cavity in their permanent teeth. According to the 2000 Journal of Dental Research, the use of fluoride in the past 40 years has been the primary factor in saving some $40 billion in oral health care costs in the United States. Fluoride is nature’s cavity fighter and is naturally occurring in all water sources. Community water fluoridation, has been around for over 50 years, and is simply the process of adjusting the fluoride content of community water to the recommended level for optimal dental health. Check this website out too…it says,” Despite the claims of a small number of activists, the use of fluorides are safe and effective. Backed by a 65-year record of practical experience and scholarly research, community water fluoridation has won the endorsement of more than 100 national and international health organizations, from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the World Health Organization. Studies show overwhelmingly that the use of fluorides can reduce the amount of dental decay by as much as 60 percent.
I’ll be writing more about Fluoride to be sure, but in the meantime ask your dentist about it. Actually, in Santa Cruz some dentists are too afraid of the looney element to come out publicly supporting fluoridation but they’ll tell you privately how beneficial it is. And remember, Every Surgeon General of the U.S., for the past 50 years, has supported community water fluoridation.
| BEETHOVEN, TEN THOUSAND STRONG. The power and great music of the master really comes across in this 18 minute clip from Japan. |
MICAH AND THE ENVIRONMENT.We always have to guess about candidates for our Santa Cruz City Council. They all promise the same thing, but in the end they end up following Mike Rotkin and Cynthia Mathews or just possibly staying independent and being lonely. Guesses on Micah Posner have him pegged as being a little different than the Mike, Cynthia, Ryan, Hilary and Terrazas, but also so single minded that he’ll continue his destructive path across our green belt and the rest of what environment the city has left. His manipulating and under handing of Arana Gulch, The Sierra Club, Fred Keeley, the Pogonip, and Gary Griggs leaves few thrills over the beginning of the Posner campaign. Be sure to keep track of his supporters, they’ll tell a story (but they won’t talk about it!!)
ALL FEMALE HAMLET!!! This will probably be your only chance in a lifetime to see an all-female cast perform Hamlet. The San Francisco State University Theatre Arts Department production is directed byBill Peters. Yes, it’s being presented by the Jewel Theatre Company and its one weekend only April 14 & 15. It’ll be at the Center Stage Theatre. Go here to get more info and especially tickets because the theatre only holds 88 people
| WILL FERRELL AS GEORGE W.BUSH. Even though La Casa De Mi Padre doesn’t contain one deserved laugh Ferrell can be clever. Watch this clip.
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“THE PEOPLE’S VOICE, part 2. Manu Koenig wrote re my asking last week, “With the De-Sal issue and so many more issues facing our city council, why doesn’t someone create a secure and trustworthy online voting system? So Manu says, “we came across your recent blog post: It just so happens that we are doing just that. In fact we’d like to invite you to some beta testing that will be happening over the next couple of weeks.
I’m ccing Chris Neklason (of Cruzio) who is working closely with us and specifically setting up the beta testing sessions. Look forward to discussing further” cheers, Manu. Responding to others who wrote…we gotta realize that it isn’t just an online survey we need, we need the City Council to recognize and make public the accurate results of each of these online votes…keep your hopes up, and thanks Manu.
| ANOTHER GEORGE BUSH IMPERSONATOR. |
| PAUL NEWMAN AND JOANNE WOODWARD ON WHAT’S MY LINE. I remember seeing the two of them on Pacific Avenue near the Del Mar theatre walking along and holding hands…amazing. |
WELCOME BACK MAD MEN. Not since the Sopranos have I been so attached to a TV series, and Mad Men continues to improve each season. I just wanted to alert you that IF you subscribe to Comcast (which I wouldn’t advise, except in emergencies) then you don’t have to wait until 9 or 10 p.m. on Sunday nights to watch Mad Men. You can watch it on channel # 769 HD AMC (American Movie Classics) much earlier and more often. Go here for the schedule
PATTON’S PROGRAM. Gary talks about a bill killing CEQA and how Bruce McPherson is one of the sponsors. He states on his Monday KUSP broadcast, “There is a new threat on the horizon to our system of environmental protection laws, in the shape of a state initiative measure sponsored by a group called “California Forward.” While it is posing as a “good government” measure, environmental attorneys have now uncovered what may be the initiative’s actual purpose. If qualified for the ballot and ultimately passed, the so-called “Government Performance and Accountability Act” will let local governments “veto” state environmental protection laws, including laws governing water quality, toxic discharges, endangered species protection, the Coastal Act, and even the California Environmental Quality Act. The main problem is found in provisions that allow local governments to adopt a so-called “Community Strategic Action Plan,” and then to invalidate any state law that the local government finds will “conflict” with that plan. Many city and county governments would use these powers to exempt major developments from current environmental protections.
Bruce McPherson, former Assembly Member, former State Senator, and now a candidate for Santa Cruz County Supervisor, is one of the official sponsors of this ballot measure. As you might imagine, the website for the initiative doesn’t mention the fact that the measure would let local governments veto state environmental laws. Read the rest of Gary’s weekly KUSP scripts here (Gary Patton is “Of Counsel” to the Santa Cruz law firm of Wittwer & Parkin, which specializes in land use and environmental law. The opinions expressed are Mr. Patton’s. Gary has his own website, “Two Worlds / 365” – www.gapatton.net)
ANCHOR IN ANTARCTICA. Micaela Neus writes…”Our Turnover Boat arrived this week, bringing a full order of pandemonium along with the avocados (hooray!) and majority of this year’s Winter Crew. The population effectively doubles during this
period when you count the folks who bunk on the boat, and that means twice the opportunities for disarray. Everything has gone smoothly thus far, including one of the more nerve-wracking operations we do here at Palmer Station two times a year: refilling our 125,000 gallon fuel tanks with enough diesel fuel to last us the next six months of darkness and cold.
Like all US-operated stations, Palmer relies on diesel generators for the electricity needed for heat and light as well as for desalinating sea water to make potable water. Each season, we roll out a massive hose from the fuel container in the ship’s hold to our hard piped system on the station. We pump between 50,000 and 65,000 gallons of jet-fuel into our aging tanks. Even though Palmer Station lies so far north along the Peninsula and therefore stays much warmer than the rest of the continent, diesel will thicken and separate in the cold. The jet-fuel is formulated to withstand the chilly upper-altitudes of the atmosphere and so performs well on the ground in Antarctica.
Pumping fuel carries an attendant risk of spilling it, of course. We need to pump from a boat onto land across the gangway, and our fuel lines run right along the coast above the water. Any spill, no matter how small, would go immediately into the ocean even if we turned off the valves within seconds of leak developing. Consequently, station-fueling puts everyone on high alert and now we have developed detailed instructions on how to complete the operation safely. Several years ago, someone misunderstood one step of those instructions and we overfilled one of our smaller tanks. Approximately 1000 gallons of diesel poured onto the ground, flowing down the road to the beach.
A drop in the bucket compared to a “normal” oil spill, but traumatic for the people involved. The woman who first saw the tank over-flowing and sounded the alarm says she cried herself to sleep that night. Taking care of the environment is part of our jobs, certainly– but it’s also part of our lives. The spill happened in about two minutes, the clean-up took days, and the paperwork probably took weeks! But the collective memory has remained fresh through the last six years, and so everyone breathes a sigh of relief when we get an All-Clear from the Fuels Team”.
(Micaela Neus works for Raytheon Polar Services Company as a utilities technician and is currently living at Palmer Station, Antarctica until at least October 2012.
VINTAGE DE CINZO.Steven opines on our changing shopping on Pacific Ave.! see below.
EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. Tim goes straight to hell for this week’s advice…scroll down about 3 pages.
LANDAU’S PROGRES. Saul titled this week’s piece “On To The Next War » he says, “Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) want war with Iran and refuse to learn lessons from the futile wars this country has perpetrated since U.S. troops landed in Korea in 1950. They begin with “facts not in evidence,” as lawyers say. “The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat to the entire world, including particularly the U.S., and its destabilizing consequences are not containable.” Huh?
The Iranian government denies it has a weapon or is close to getting one. Both the International Atomic Energy Agency and American intelligence agree with the Iranian assessment. Ironically, even Israeli intelligence concurs. Exporting democracy? The product doesn’t travel well, and is expensive: almost half a trillion dollars, more than 2,000 dead U.S. military personnel and contractors, and uncounted thousands of Afghans. Bush invaded Afghanistan to get bin Laden and the 9/11 fiends. Obama’s Seals got ’em. Why not withdraw and say: “Mission Accomplished” as W. Bush prematurely did in May 2003? Read it all here… Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow whose films are on DVD from roundworldproductions@gmail.
| MIDNIGHT THE STARS AND YOU. In case you forgot this is the theme from Kubrick’ s The Shining”. Just let it sink in a minute or two… |
LISA JENSEN LINKS. “Join me this week at Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.
| ELIZABETH TAYLOR ON WHAT’S MY LINE”. What a beautiful charmer |
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. We can only see it twice and only at the Del Mar. She Stoops is one of the great, generous-hearted and ingenious comedies of the English language, Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer offers a celebration of chaos, courtship and the dysfunctional family. It’s a live “telecast” from London’s National Theatre, the cast is the finest and you’ll have a good time. It’s Thursday night at 7:40 !!, and a re-play on Sunday April 1st at 11am.(Yes, I avoided calling it “She Conks To Stupor”).
HUNGER GAMES. Broke almost all box office records completely coincidentally on the very same weekend that James Cameron (who directed the record holding Avatar, Titanic and Aliens) grabbed as many headlines as he could by descending 6 miles to the ocean floor. You must need to read all three H. Games books before you see this teen age murder and chase film. It’s about as mindless as Rambo, except the kids are smarter.
SALMON FISHING IN THE LASHING IN THE YEMEN.I was going to be cute and call it Semen Flashing because it’s all about Ewan McGregor falling in love with Emily Blunt It’s cute, simple, Hallmarky, faith-driven, and preaches endlessly about the heavenly advantages of damming a river so the billionaire sheikh developer and tourists can fish.
CASA DE MI PADRE. I liked Will Ferrell in Elf and in Everything Must Go. He certainly would have been a better president than G.W. Bush but Casa de Mi Padre is a bomb. It’s a one joke movie. It’s a spoof of the Mexican telenovela or cornball romance/thriller serials. Ferrell can do better and has done much worse…and it’s a boring experience with no big laughs. Don’t go.
CADENZA ORCHESTRA. MARCH 31ST. The Cadenza Chamber Orchestra directed by Maya Barsacq with piano soloist John Orlando and violinist Rebecca Jackson will present a program of…Beethoven Romances I and II ,Trinitas – of Anica Galindo and Mozart Piano Concerto in B Flat, K. 450 at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 31 First Congregational Church, 900 High St., Santa Cruz . It’s an all day affair when Nancy Brown, MS Philosophy, moderates a Panel Discussion on the subject of
Rekindling the Spirit of the Age of Enlightenment at 11 AM and Don Adkins, Music Historian, gives a Preconcert Talk 7 PM. Go here for info and data…
UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer (live only, or sometimes old programs are archived…(see next paragraph) and go to WWW.KZSC.ORG. On March 27 Rita Wadsworth and Shannon Marie Kerr from Mountain Community Theatre will talk about their new play, “Crimes of The Heart”. Plus John Thiemann will give us details about the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Monterey Bay. The April 3 Grapevine has UCSC professor Amy Beal who is curating/programming the annual “April in Santa Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music”.(April 5-April 27). She’s followed by Robbie Schoen the host & director of Felix Kulpa Gallery. Mary Thyken, exec.dir. Of the Santa Cruz Community TV will be the opening guest on April 10th then Felicia Rice from UCSC’s Digital Arts Department will clue us in on late plans. Joan Boothe Author of “The Storied Ice” about Antarctica’s Explorers will be on April 24th and so will Christian Schwartz talking about Mushrooms and their bay area hunters. Do remember, any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in, and keep listening.
UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE ARCHIVES.In case you missed some of the great people I’ve interviewed in the last 5 years here’s a chronological list of just this year’s podcasts. Click herehttp://kzsc.org/blog/tag/
BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.
QUOTES. “Fluoridation is the single most important commitment a community can make to the oral health of its citizens,” Dr. C. Everrett Koop, Former U.S. Surgeon General. “There ain’t no life nowhere“, Jimi Hendrix. “May I point out that this is a tragedy, and in tragedies one doesn’t snore”, Jons in Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal.
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Snail Mail: Bratton Online
82 Blackburn Street, Suite 216
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Direct email: Bratton@Cruzio.com
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BEST OF VINTAGE STEVEN DeCINZO.
Deep Cover by tim eagan.
