Mayor’s Message: Help shape the future
Since my last message our clocks have sprung forward and Spring is here. As we move past the storms of the past several months, much-awaited federal help for our neighbors in Pajaro has arrived.
The President approved a major disaster declaration for Santa Cruz and...
Erica Padilla-Chavez: We are the Food Bank
What is normal? I thought things would return to normal following the three-year Covid pandemic and devastating Santa Cruz Mountain fires. I thought we’d survived the worst. But nothing could have prepared me for the first three months of 2023 and the meteorological disasters...
Guest View: Hurt people, hurt people
For seven years in the 1970s I taught elementary school at Hall District School in Las Lomas. My students were virtually identical to those massacred in Uvalde, Texas. Apparently, “my” children watched for almost an hour while their teachers and friends were being blown...
Letters to the Editor, June 18
Acosta’s ‘No’ vote a disservice to PVUSD students
Amid a national teacher shortage, last week Trustee Georgia Acosta voted to make it even more challenging to put a quality teacher in every classroom. With hard-to-staff positions in areas like special education and science, schools occasionally...
Guest View: The long road ahead for Pajaro’s recovery
To say the last three weeks have been tough is an understatement. Overwhelming, heartbreaking, enraging and exhausting is more accurate. The Pajaro levee breach on March 11 came at the same time our community marked the three-year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic. As with...
Kangi-e ‘A Gathering of Joy’
The month of July and August is what Buddhists call Obon season. For many, the Obon is a Buddhist festival of food, cultural arts, displays and folk dancing. The religious aspect of Obon comes from the sutra called the Ullambana Sutra. The sutra is...
Letters to the Editor, Aug. 12
No trust in the Health Trust
The Community Health Trust of the Pajaro Valley was created more than 20 years ago from the proceeds of the sale of the Watsonville Community Hospital to a private corporation. I was a founding member of the Board of...
Sarah Ringler, Dec. 28: Top down educational reforms endanger public schools
Evidence shows that teachers are stressed. A 2017 survey in British Columbia found that two-thirds of teachers felt “stressed and emotionally exhausted all, or most of the time.”
Community celebrates Mexican Independence Day
Thousands of people gathered in downtown Watsonville Sunday for the annual Mexican Independence Day Festival.
Hosted by Fiestas Patrias, the free event featured a wealth...
