#santa cruz
Chillin. IG: @thejazzwilliams
Hodie III maji… Inventio sacrosanctae Crucis Dominicae.
#InvenciónDeLaSantaCruz #CruzDeMayo
Sorry, sorry!
Sorry to all my followers for my inactivity but I was having great time in Finland.
I promise I will be back soon
On ihana!❤️
Ole hyvä!
Local thief spotted in my backyard
The brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) is a notorious thief. This is merely a young thief which I observed in my yard; it’s still in training, but when it is an adult it will look more like this:
Source:Wikipedia
It will search out a nest of an unsupecting bird, perhaps a sparrow or other songbird, and it will sneakily lay an egg when the parents are away. The egg will hatch and the other…
Too much is riding on Student Housing West to allow NIMBYism to destroy it.
It was hard not to feel irritated as I opened the homepage of East Meadow Action, a grassroots group recently formed to defeat the development of Student Housing West (SHW), particularly regarding the Family Student Housing project on East Campus. The group has its heart in the right place. They believe that the field at the base of campus is a setting deserving of preservation, and are trying…
Light Over the Pacific
Davenport Beach, CA
A Day at Shark Fin Cove
Davenport Beach, CA
Grandpa Emerson’s house has seen better days, but it’s still a beautiful hike up to Pogonip!
People are strange when you’re a stranger.
Welcome to Santa Carla
Lighthouse at West Cliff and view of the Boardwalk from Steamers Lane, Santa Cruz. Filming locations from the beginning of “The Lost Boys.”
♂️ Santa (Cruz) Carla Beach Boardwalk 2/6/21
This is Part 1
for part 2 (Eastern Europe) click here
and for part 3 (West Africa) click here
I’m currently planning on going to Europe in December to spend Christmas with my German family. One of my American friends from boarding school will be around because he is working in Germany for a year but not going home, and so I’ve invited him to Christmas with my uncle. Because of the way the holiday, and New Year’s Day, falls in the middle of my Sun-Thurs work week, it’s very easy to take off the next week as well, and so we’re now planning a little jaunt around German speaking Europe. It’s all very tentative, but I’ve started looking at prices and things to do around and routes to take, and I map the itinerary below:
It’s fun because it takes us through every Germany speaking country: Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Austria, and because it is pretty short, with the maximum travel time less than 6 hours. We would have about nine days to do it- probably the first four going quickly point by point and then a slower five in Austria. Who knows if it will materialize or how much of it we will do, but it looks like a lot of fun!
In getting excited for this trip, I started thinking of other overland tours I would like to take, looking into whether or not they’re possible, and fantasizing about when I could do them, who with, and adding extra fun components like making a documentary of the journey or something. It all sounds up in the air and like a dream, but I’m sure I will actually do at least one in the next five years. I always say, “always be dreaming 10 amazing things, then if you only accomplish 1 or 2, you’re still being amazing!” So, I’ll add these to my list of amazing ideas and see where they go.
So without further ado, the trips!
The W®est of South America
This trip would hit all of the things I wanted to do in South America but haven’t yet. It hits three of the four countries on the West of the continent, as well as the rest of the Spanish speaking countries I’ve yet been to, so I call it the W®est trip. It would start in Buenos Aires where I would see my wonderful Italian relatives that live in the Capital. I would then head up to the triple border of Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil to see the Iguazu falls, which are the last waterfall on my list of the top 5 (the others being Niagara, Angel, Gullfoss, and Victoria). I would then head up through Paraguay to Bolivia, stopping to revisit the family of a friend I stayed with in Santa Cruz, the Potosi Salt Flats, and the Mile High city: La Paz. I’d then head into Peru, spending time admiring the Andes, and of course seeing Machu Picchu near Cusco. I’d then head up through Ecuador before finishing in Bogota, Colombia!
The yellow highlighted bits are “optional” thoughts that I would consider depending on time. The first is to explore Argentine Patagonia, supposedly one of the most beautiful places in the world. The second is to take a flight to the Galapagos islands (or maybe Easter island?) from Ecuador. A third one not included on the map would be a quick jaunt over to Suriname and French Guinana- so I could officially say I’d been to every country in South America!
Bonus trip (I haven’t put too much thought into but in talking with some friends, thought to include): Southeast Asia- somehow incorporating Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and maybe Myanmar?
Santa Cruz
Credit:George McCalman
“Food should be a right for all and not a privilege for some.”
— Karen Washington
Fresh food should not be out of reach due to racism.
As a physical therapist, lifelong NYC resident Karen Washington is more in tune with the needs of the body than most. In the early years of her practice, she noticed some of her clients were struggling with what she calls the “three food groups — fast, junk and processed.”
Washington spotted a vacant lot across the street from her Bronx home, where she’d already planted a backyard garden. She transformed the lot into the Garden of Happiness in 1988 and her journey into community gardening began.
All around the Bronx, Washington and her neighbors found throwaway spaces and turned them into gardens, eventually founding a farmer’s market. When Mayor Giuliani tried to wipe away their work in the ‘90s, Washington and other activists resisted, drawing on civil disobedience tactics — and they succeeded.
On the left, Karen Washington receives a 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Service along with Gregory Long, director of the New York Botanical Garden, from First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House. Pictured to the right, Washington with her tools.
Their work laid a template for a broader urban ag movement, but for Washington community gardening is first and foremost about social justice. To continue her journey in urban farming, Washington attended UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) apprenticeship program in 2008. The “mothership of organic agricultural training,” in the words of executive director David Press, CASFS teaches cutting-edge techniques for healthy, sustainable food, and the education, in the words of Washington, was a “gift.”
Returning to New York, Washington not only co-founded Black Urban Growers, a volunteer-driven support network, but sought to replicate her experience at UC Santa Cruz.
“We found a lot of people couldn’t get to California, so we replicated a sort of CASFS program in NYC,” Washington said. Her Farm School NYC focuses on community-based activism and farming to encourage residents of low-income neighborhoods to embrace food sovereignty and disrupt a food system that does not serve them well — if at all.
While black households disproportionately struggle from food insecurity (1 in 4 experience food insecurity, compared to 1 in 7 overall and 1 in 10 white households) for those recently released from prison, food insecurity is nearly a guarantee — 90 percent report experiencing it. The need to feed your family can drive people to desperate measures, as Cathrine Sneed of the Garden Project knows well.
“In my 20-year history, I have spoken to too many young men who said ‘I started selling drugs because my momma couldn’t feed me, and I was hungry.‘”
— Cathrine Sneed
“In my 20-year history, I have spoken to too many young men who said ‘I started selling drugs because my momma couldn’t feed me, and I was hungry,'” Sneed says of her work in urban gardening. A fresh young law school graduate, Sneed landed in San Francisco County Jail as a counselor, focused on helping prisoners live successful lives once released outside. But she found it wasn’t so easy to break the cycle of recidivism — they walk into the world with no money, no job, no home, and no food.
Sneed couldn’t fix all these issues — but she could lead prisoners outside, onto the jail grounds, to work on land that had once been a farm. Her wish was that they could derive hope from a connection with the land and by providing food for the community. Her results surpassed her wildest dreams.
Cathrine Sneed, left, keynote speaker for the 2014 Farm to Fork event at the UC Santa Cruz at the Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems (CASFS). Photo by Melissa De Witte.
In 1992, Sneed, another former UC Santa Cruz CASFS apprentice, began the Garden Project to meet the demand of former inmates connected to the work. The scope of the project expanded to include counseling, continuing education assistance and job training. The Garden Project has planted over 10,000 trees in San Francisco — and has cut the recidivism rate, nationally at 50 percent after two years on the outside, to 25 percent for its participants.
Sneed has now extended the program to at-risk adults and high school students, to break the cycle before it starts. “Gardening is the recipe for success,” said Sneed of the work. “This is how we stop crime.” Thanks to these two women, urban gardening is also a recipe for community empowerment, and longer, healthier lives.