Opinion

The Pajaro Valley Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture has announced its annual awardees, including the man and woman of the year. Nita Gizdich was on her ranch Tuesday morning, and as usual she was working.  Although sweeping the driveway leading to her iconic pie shop was...

For decades in the Salinas Valley, the short-handle hoe, known as “El Cortito,” was used for weeding and thinning rows of crops that kept farmworkers stooped over for long hours each day. Workers were only able to stand and stretch when they reached the...

Thousands of Monterey and Santa Cruz County families were forced to evacuate March 11 after the Pajaro and Soledad rivers flooded this rural agricultural area. The storms arrived at the beginning of the growing season, just as farmworkers were going back to work and...

A novel idea for the rail A friend and fellow rail advocate came up with the following idea:   Following the terrible and tragic wildfires that have devastated North Santa Cruz County, there will be a need to bring in materials such as lumber as the rebuilding...

I didn’t know Feliciano Martinez Perea but his story is not foreign to me. It’s a story that many Watsonville residents know. It’s the immigrant’s story. Martinez Perea hailed from the small town of San Martín Peras, Oaxaca, Mexico. He came to Watsonville to...

Letters to the Editor, Nov. 28, 2017

As long-time elected representatives for the northernmost and southernmost reaches of Santa Cruz County, we believe the community conversation over the Rail Trail should be thoughtful, respectful, and inclusive. We have sought to model those ideals both through our respective roles within county and...

By Erica Padilla-Chavez, Cindy Larive and Susan True Shelly and Marty Hernandez go big on their annual Holiday Open House. Shelly, who has a passion for cooking, starts prepping weeks ahead. Over the years, the Hernandez open house has raised tens of thousands of meals...

Letters to the Editor, Nov. 16, 2017

We would like to begin by stating that as Watsonville City Council Members and as citizens of Watsonville, we were extremely concerned when we learned on June 6, 2019, of the intended sale of Watsonville Community Hospital (WCH) to yet another for-profit entity. Our concerns, like many other elected officials and community members, were even intensified because of the long history of our hospital under 21 years of outside, corporate and for-profit ownership by first Community Health Systems (CHS), and then their spin-off, Quorum Health Corporation (QHC).