One shot down, one to go
A few days after my 67th birthday in early February, I got my first Covid-19 vaccination shot a day after my wife Sarah got hers. It was really simple and straightforward.
The process began with calls from our health provider, Dignity Health, about getting vaccinated....
Letter: RTC misses the mark on Highway 1
You can take an express bus from Watsonville to Santa Cruz without traveling a whole lot longer than it takes by car—so long as you travel after the morning peak commute hours. If you hop on a 91X bus at Main Street and Green...
Guest view: California needs a universal broadband infrastructure bond for our students
By Luis A. Alejo, Kevin de León and Eduardo Garcia
On July 17, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that counties on the state’s Covid-19 “monitoring list” must begin the new school year with distance learning. More than half of our state’s counties are on the list,...
Loving past the division
Memo from Pastor Rene:
There they were, side by side, helping to feed evacuees in our church parking lot last week: A true red-state conservative and a deep blue Democrat. I knew this about the two men from previous conversations, but as I watched them...
Sambrailo sees major growth in sustainable packaging line
WATSONVILLE—When Santa Cruz-based natural foods store Staff of Life opened its second location in Watsonville in March, employees from Sambrailo were pleased to see their products featured front and center.
Fresh, organic vegetables and fruit in the store’s produce aisle were nestled inside Sambrailo’s sustainable...
Annual Obon festival set for Sunday
The annual Obon Festival will take place July 21 at the Watsonville Buddhist Temple.
Open to the public, the event will include entertainment, a vendor’s market, childrens’ games and an array of traditional foods.
The festival culminates in a dance, known as Bon-Odori, which participants practice...
Local grower on cutting edge of organic farming
WATSONVILLE—About 200 people disembarked three large charter buses on Green Valley Road in Watsonville early Wednesday morning as part of the EcoFarm Bus Tour, a kickoff to the EcoFarm Conference in Pacific Grove this week.
The tour was visiting Strong Agronomy, a management company that...
Opinion: Crime and Punishment
After being incarcerated on death row for 35 years, and after surviving a multiple hours-long botched lethal injection attempt 16 months earlier, on Jan. 25 Kenneth Smith became the first person in the world to be executed with nitrogen gas.
Alabama state officials described his...
Traditional international alignments are shifting
The initial response to the disastrous Oval Office encounter between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump and his vice president was that the resulting confrontation became a horrendously shameful moment for our country.
The sentiment expressed by many was that the objective...
Watsonville nurses rally against ICU closure
Several dozen Watsonville Community Hospital nurses and staff warned Wednesday that closing the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit—an idea they said officials have floated amid...






















