2005

Story of a Lifetime

Local literary giant scores with the tale of another renegade.

Pacific Grove author Richard Miller recently published his 12th book, Tanglefoot: An (Almost) True Story of Civil Wars and Cities. Billed as a “factual fiction,” Tanglefoot tells the story of Captain George Wellington Streeter, a ...

Unchartered Course

Unless it can find a new sponsor, Monterey Bay Charter School may shut its doors.

Cast adrift on a sea of school districts, Pacific Grove’s Monterey Bay Charter School is looking for a sponsor. The Monterey Bay Charter School (MBCS) officials are currently petitioning Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD) ...

Road to Recovery

Miracles: Every bone in Millie Perez’s body is healing.

It was supposed to be a simple visit to the grocery store and then right back home. The date was Dec. 24, 1997. The time was 10:30pm. Millie Perez was sitting in the passenger seat ...

A Carmel Couple

The homes that sit next to each other on Mission Avenue behind Carmel’s Sunset Center are priced the same, are about the same size, were just completed by the same builder, and share many of ...

The Miracle of Love

Miracles: A big family came together to support Haley Baxter.

There are miracles—like 13-year-old Haley Baxter surviving a six-pound malignant ovarian tumor and returning to captain the Salinas Christian School cheerleaders in under nine months. Then there are miracles—like seven full-grown women voluntarily shaving off ...

Bordering on Mean

Immigration debate in Congress gets ugly.

Some of the toughest, most radical anti-immigration proposals in the nation hit the floor of the House of Representatives late last week as some Republicans pushed hard to legislate a crack down on undocumented immigrants. ...

ArtListings

Tracking Progress

Rail service plan could come as early as next year.

It takes about 15 minutes to drive a car from Marina to Monterey. But it takes twice that long to travel the same route by bus—and that’s not counting a wait of up to another ...

Street Talk

You Gotta Believe: Asked in downtown Pacific Grove

Q: What’s the closest thing to a miracle you’ve ever experienced? Follow-up: What sports team needs a miracle? Michael StalelyWriter | Berkeley A: An out-of-body experience. I was lying in bed when I felt a ...

Learning to Move

Miracles: Guillain-Barré could not stop Maria Corona.

Maria Corona was preparing food at Red Lobster in Salinas on Aug. 6 when her hands went numb. “The next day, my left leg was hurting a lot,” she says. So her daughter, Myra Corona, ...

TheaterListings

| theater opening | Christmas Bent: Selected Shorts To Soothe the Savage Shopper Opens 8pm Thu; continues 8pm Fri. Non-traditional literary works, presented in reader’s theater format. The perfect counterpoint to this season’s flood of ...

Home On the Range

In director Ang Lee’s beautiful Brokeback Mountain, two cowboys became enamored with one another during a summer in Wyoming.

Enough with the “gay cowboy” label. The term is more or less accurate, I suppose, but the phrase has a way of diminishing this amazing movie’s focus and reach. Brokeback Mountain is a love story ...

The Best of 2005

Alternapop, hip hop and hard rock classics from this year’s batch.

FRANK BLACK | Honeycomb | Back Porch While publications were hyping the Pixies reunion tour this summer, the band’s singer/guitarist Frank Black quietly released Honeycomb, a “country” album recorded in Nashville. Honeycomb, which features a ...

Letters

TYRONE’S A GOOD DOG In a world full of big issues, big ideas and big thoughts comes a story that shows how each individual life is as important, compelling and close to the heart as ...

Squidfry

MR. PARTY…Party invitations are cool. Squid’s gotten quite a few for the holiday season. And Squid will even make brief, albeit meaningful, appearances at a few holiday parties. Sadly, though, one invitation is notably absent. ...

DiscSpace

MARIANNE FAITHFULL | Live in Hollywood | MVD/DVD The companion piece of a sort to A Bigger Bang, this 2005 concert speaks volumes. Shattered sounding, croaky and more or less the ultimate example of rock ...

Reefing Madness

Northern California businessman says sinking a ship in the Monterey Bay will bring divers and dollars.

Hours after the HCMS Yukon came to rest 105 feet below the surface on the barren sand flats off San Diego’s Mission Beach in 2000, scuba divers reported seeing a school of perch swimming through ...

The Sweetest Holiday

I love Christmas. I can sing the song “Sisters” from the movie White Christmas almost word for word. (See Martha? I told you.) When I start thinking about “We’ll follow the old man wherever he ...

Spurning Japanese

The focus of Arthur Golden’s novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, focus was on the day-to-day minutiae that made the world of the geishas so uniquely compelling. But the film version of the book hones in ...

Bush Had No Choice

Evidence of ‘enhanced interrogation’ just kept piling up.

Nothing in the [Geneva] Conventions precludes directed interrogations. They do, however, prohibit torture and humiliation of detainees, whether or not they are deemed POWs. These are standards that are never obsolete—they cut to the heart ...

Learn To Drive

A recent arrival to Monterey County notices something we all try hard to ignore—bad drivers.

Multiple choice quiz: There’s a stoplight ahead. It just turned red. There’s a car in front of you and it starts to slow down. What do you do? A: Slow down. B: Grab your cell ...

Fossil Record

Collaboration by local artist and writer on myth of extinct sea creature is released as animation DVD.

On a day like any other, Gordon Freedman was working at his office when artist Jeffrey Sax walked in with two fossilized ammonites in his pocket. Sitting on Freedman’s desk was his own ammonite. The ...

Bouncing Back

Miracles: A happy kid beats a brain tumor.

On July 21, 2004, then-8-year-old Ethan Halbach and his mother Marya visited the emergency room at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Ethan’s recurring headaches, which had been diagnosed as tension headaches, had gotten so ...

News Briefs

MIIS, Middlebury Make it Official The Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) and Vermont’s Middlebury College tied the knot earlier this month at a private ceremony on the Monterey campus. The agreement made MIIS an ...

15 Great Books

Some of the best books of the year.

ADRIAN MOLE AND THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION | By Sue Townsend | Soho, 327 pages, $24 Townsend uses the weight of her 23-year-old literary project to create an expert entertainment that’s also a cogent, ...

Lost and Found

Miracles: A diver’s dark night and her uncanny rescue.

When a blue light pierced the darkness last Easter Sunday, 32-year-old scuba diver Jennifer Thomas thought she was dreaming. After five hours drifting in the 54-degree water of Monterey Bay, she was exhausted and afraid ...

Holy Mole

Flor de Oaxaca shuttles customers south.

As good as it can taste, the best part about good mole might be its first stages: when your chef (in my case, it was my sexagenarian pal Evanhelina) moves through the bustling block-sized market ...

Homepage

Heart of the Hills

At the top of Los Laureles Grade between Carmel Valley and Highway 68, a side road leads down to a sunny tucked-away neighborhood, appropriately named Hidden Hills. It’s the kind of neighborhood that seems to ...

Rock’s Not Dead

PacRep brings a pantheon of musical heroes to life.

Have you ever noticed that bands have a tendency to suck on Saturday Night Live? A distant, immobile audience and unblinking stage lights can sap the juice out of some great live bands. The television ...

Friendly Waters

Marine reserve proposals prove fishermen and enviros can play nice.

What do you get when you put a bunch of fishermen in the same room with environmentalists, scuba divers, underwater photographers, marine biologists, harbormasters, business owners, and kelp harvesters—and then ask this diverse, adversarial group ...

Holiday Posole

An easy recipe for the classic seasonal dish.

Last Christmas I was seized out of the blue by homesickness. It felt like a dormant instinct had lit up. It was as if all my molecules had decided, cult-like, to line up with their ...

Peak Experience

A hilltop park above downtown Monterey proves hard to leave.

Jim Maxon, park attendant at Veterans Memorial Park, says that when he was offered his job, he was very clear about his terms with then-Monterey Recreation Director Kay Russo. “I said I would take it—but ...

Puppy Love

Asked at PetCo in the Del Monte Shopping Center

Q: What’s amazing about your pet? Follow-up: What’s your pet’s favorite toy? JENNY LUTES | Mom | Carmel Valley | Three Dogs A: That they are always happy to see me. They have no agendas ...

The Boundaries of Truth

Falsehoods plague both sides of the immigration debate.

During the early years of the United Farm Workers Union, Cesar Chavez—the UFW’s beloved co-founder—would often call the US Border Patrol. His purpose: to have undocumented Mexican workers laboring in the fields caught and deported. ...

Big Easy Answers

The big question is: ‘Why rebuild New Orleans?’

More and more lately, New Orleanians are having to defend our city—in phone conversations, chat rooms or at Thanksgiving dinner—against those who argue that it’s just not worth the effort (read: the price tag). Friends ...

Hitting the Proverbial Fan

PG agreed to spend $500,000 to fix its dismal sewers. It didn’t spend the money, and the spills keep coming.

Pacific Grove resident Pat Herrgott began getting suspicious when she realized that the City didn’t seem to be working on the sewers. “We didn’t see any trucks. We didn’t see any construction. We didn’t see ...

DiscSpace

THE PILLOW FIGHTERS | Struggle to Snuggle The Pillow Fighters, formerly The Nancy Boys, make good on the promise the local band showed on their debut EP Baklava with the release of the 13-song Struggle ...

ArtListings

Warmth in Winter

Jane Monheit brings a tropical tinge to yuletide songs.

Jane Monheit got her Christmas wish this year. With her big, luscious voice and fetching stage presence, the 28-year-old jazz singer has enjoyed a meteoric rise, parlaying a second-place finish at the 1998 Thelonious Monk ...

Runaway

His new life was just getting good when Tyrone bolted and got lost,10 dangerous miles away from home.

In the late afternoon of Oct. 18, a large mixed-breed hound dog freed himself from his steel cable leash and jumped out of the back of a parked Ford Ranger pickup near Fremont Boulevard in ...

The Big Book

Unique coffee-table tomes for gift-giving time.

The gift book is an odd beast. No one is supposed to go into a bookstore and buy a $75 book for themselves. No. Books like that are created to be the safe bet when ...

Letters

We Get What We Pay For There has been a lot of discussion and letters about your series on “illegal” people working jobs in the United States. Although I don’t agree with the points of ...

Look It Up

Inphadelic means a new combination.

Local music enthusiasts might not recognize the name Inphadelic, but they probably have seen some of the new band’s members onstage. Formed six months ago, the group features guitarist/vocalist Deven Finnie, vocalist Nikki Anderson and ...

High Wattage

The only good thing about Ellie Parker is Naomi Watts’ sensational performance.

After spending nearly a year on the top-flight festival circuit, it’s probably not coincidental that this Naomi Watts performance showcase has just recently been slipping into theatres that are presently readying themselves for the onslaught ...

Wine and Spirits

SCARY BUT SWEET… New Year’s Day is about two weeks away. Christmas another week nigh (Come on, admit it. You didn’t think I could use a word like that, did you? It’s a cool word, ...

Monkey Shines

The humanity of a great ape brings emotional power to King Kong.

The face of the 25-foot-tall ape in Peter Jackson’s King Kong isn’t what we’ve come to expect from computer-generated creations. His jaw seems to slope to one side, perhaps another remnant of some long-ago battle. ...

Dead Again

New water plan could make public buyout even more impossible.

A new Water Action Plan issued by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) may make it more difficult for communities like the Monterey Peninsula to buy out private water systems. The plan is intended to ...

Newsbriefs

Marina, TAMC Mull Taxes City of Marina officials are expecting to undergo a tough couple of years, financially speaking. While dipping into the City’s reserve funds may be one way to stave off a deficit, ...

Squidfry

ANA V. ANNA?…It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Squid races to Squid’s mailbox every afternoon, beak wide open in a cheery grin, waiting for the arrival of…campaign letters, asking for money in light ...

TheaterListings

Sound and Motion

Former-local filmmaker brings movie about deaf man in love back to the Peninsula where he shot it.

A couple of years ago, filmmaker Eli Steele decided to revisit a script that he had written when he was just 18. Ten years earlier, Steele had abandoned the project, which concerns a deaf protagonist, ...

Cultural Exchange

Asked at the Barnyard Shopping Center in Carmel

Q: What is your favorite thing that American culture has imported? Follow-up: What import would you send back? Michael Begue | Bouncer | Monterey A: Mexican food. Life wouldn’t be the same without it. Squared ...

Roast with the Most

Acme brings blue-collar cafe culture to a Seaside alley.

Something fresh is happening at Acme Roasting Company in Seaside—and it’s more than the startlingly fresh coffee. That’s saying something at a place where each cup of dark roast Valve Job organic, Kenya Peaberry or ...

Blowing Up

Shane Dwight expands beyond the blues with his new release, and lets the band cut looser live.

Before his latest CD, Done With You, came out this past November, Morgan Hill-based guitarist Shane Dwight was headed down a respectable one-way road towards a career as an impressive contemporary blues player. With the ...

All I Want for Christmas

I just got finished watching the movie The Five People You Meet in Heaven, based on the best seller by MITCH ALBOM, the Detroit Free Press sportswriter who also penned the wildly successful Tuesdays with ...

DiscSpace

TALIB KWELI | Right About Now… | Koch Records After a disappointing triumvirate of Beautiful material in 2004, the last thing Talib Kweli needs is yet another mixtape. But Right About Now seems to signal ...

LIT: A Generation’s Hero

Three books about John Lennon, who died 25 years ago this week, offer various perspectives on a heroic life.

For the iPod generation, the musical and cultural revolution fomented by the Beatles and their counterparts must seem at least as moldy as the Big Band craze did to those who came of age in ...

Looking for a Home

A half-million immigrants came into the US across the Mexican border this year in search of work. Some will stay. And one way or another, they will become Americans.

Drive along any rural road or highway most months of the year and you’ll make them out just below the horizon: a raft of bobbing heads floating behind a tractor. Or carrying heavy boxes of ...

SquidFry

BENEATH CONTEMPT… Before the peaceniks get all huffy and righteous and start writing mean letters, Squid reminds them that Squid was against the war way before it was cool to be against the war. And ...

Workers’ Paradise?

High cost of living sharpens labor shortage.

Salinas Mayor Anna Caballero doesn’t believe it. Even the survey’s overseers still find it hard to swallow. But according to a first-of-its-kind hospitality industry labor survey for Monterey County, 78 percent of hospitality workers employed ...

Sprawl and Supersized Kids

New report says young people need room to move.

There is no getting around the fact that our kids are just too fat. A new study confirms what we’ve been told, over and over again: Monterey County’s children and teens are overweight. And if ...

Letters

BOSSES SHOULD PAY FOR LEGAL WORKERS Not enough Mexicans here legally…Is that what you are saying [“Not Enough Mexicans,” Dec. 1-7], that we need to let them come here, and change the world as we ...

Poor Little Rich City

No funds to fix Flanders, say Carmel officials.

Once again Flanders is a battlefield, though no poppies grow at this 81-year-old historic mansion in Carmel. In September, Carmel’s City Council voted unanimously to sell the unkempt seven-bedroom estate as a single-family residence. Last ...

Paper Tiger

Syriana gives policy-paper ideas about the oil industry dramatic urgency.

You won’t learn what the term “Syriana” means from watching Syriana. You won’t learn it from reading this review, either. If you’re the kind of poli-sci wonk who already knows this particular concept—or the kind ...

Who Gives a $%&t?

Are Americans charitable? Or chintzy? The myths vs. the facts.

Two in three American households say they give to charity, at an average of $1,262 a year. But only one in three households report charitable deductions to the IRS. In 2002, Americans deducted $654 million ...

Trail of the Vanished

When a hat is left on the bus, to what hidden, mysterious realm does it venture?

Alfred Lord Tennyson invites us to consider lost things thusly: The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost/ No wing of wind the region swept/ But over all things brooding slept/ the quiet sense of something lost. ...

ArtListings

NewsBriefs

SANCTUARIES IN SYNC Like a fish with two heads, the Gulf of the Farallones (GFNMS) and Monterey Bay National Marine sanctuaries (MBNMS) will hold a joint advisory council meeting this week to ensure that both ...

Toadal Chaos

Wind in the Willows tells the story of a driver gone completely animal.

Ah, the heedless, self-absorbed anarchy of Mr. Toad. Bent on self-gratification at all cost, this amphibious narcissist plays like a warty metaphor for America in The Western Stage’s current pastel-drenched production of The Wind in ...

TheaterListings

HOMEPAGE: Carmel Retreat

Joanne and Roger Shiffman are described by their former next-door neighbors as “some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.” Somehow, their 2,500-square-foot former home on Carmel Hill reflects that positive energy. Roger, a doctor, ...

Reel Fantasy

The screen adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ imaginary world in

This is the one, after The Lord of the Rings, that—if you’re any kind of proper geek at all—you’ve been looking forward to with a mixture of glee and dread. So it is such a ...

Holidays on Stage

Nine theatrical events celebrate the season.

The roots of theater can be traced back to the religious pageant—morality plays which instructed while they entertained and filled audiences with a sense of higher order and meaning. Stages and streets across the county ...

Squidfry

TURKEY TALES… Squid’s lucky to know a certain cephalopod whose FBI and security clearance allows him to mix and mingle with big-time politicos: Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, VP Al Gore, Terminator-turned-Governator Arnold ...

Bohemian Rhapsody

The big screen version of the Broadway hit musical

Playwright Jonathan Larson’s Rent opened on Broadway just shy of 10 years ago and was an instantaneous success, evincing the sort of critical kudos and popular response no scribe in his right mind would tempt ...

Three of a Kind

What can you get on the Peninsula right now for under $1.5 million? Realtor Joy Welch offers three options.

1. At 138 18th St. in Pacific Grove, $1,475,000 gets you a really cute, completely updated 1,400-square-foot Victorian cottage. “There’s a plaque honoring the first owner: Becilia Scott, 1889,” Welch says. “The original home was ...

L’Arome Naturelle

A Pacific Grove perfumer taps the fragrance of organics.

The smell of freshly cut grass takes me back to my childhood summers, in the yellow house I grew up in. My sister and I are sitting on our bunk beds, in the bedroom we ...

Season of Friends

MY FRIEND THE WRITER… It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere I go. Apparently, Americans are poised to spend somewhere around 500 billion dollars during the holiday season, purchasing all those “must have” ...

Not Enough Mexicans

As Congress tackles immigration reform and resentment of laborers from Mexico swells, few are facing the real nature of the crisis.

Every year since 1992, an estimated half million undocumented immigrants have crossed the border illegally to enter the US. That is more people than have immigrated to the US legally over the same period of ...

System Down

Issues / 2005

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