Tease photo Snubbing Snobbery

Ashamed of that cheap wine you're buying? Maybe that's because wine writers don't take either of you seriously. They should.

According to independent research, Wine Spectator has 2,298,000 affluent readers who love wine. The number occasionally climbs a bit, but the message, which appears regularly on one of the venerable magazine’s heavy, oversized pages, is ...

Sniff This

Great local wine values and a retort from Bouchée's wine mastermind.

Bouchée Wines point man Kerry Winslow doesn’t have a problem with Robert Parker. “We must admit both Parker and The Wine Spectator have done wonders for the wine industry,” he says. “While Spectator seems highly ...

Tease photo Boxing Match

Two-Buck Chuck shocked the world; then box wines turned the tables.

Jaws gaped last summer when the judges of the revered California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition named Charles Shaw’s 2005 Chardonnay the best in the state. Known as Two-Buck Chuck thanks to its once-shocking $1.99 ...

Pop Phenoms

Five affordable bubblies for the big toast.

There’s no substitute for Champagne, especially come Dec. 31. Unfortunately, it’s (frequently) flipping expensive. But before crying into a bottle of Cook’s, try one of these, which, being sparkling, will lift the spirits and lessen ...

Tease photo Short Takes

101 Short Story Contest Winners

More than 200 readers took the time to enter the Weekly’s contest for short sagas. The quality of many of the entries was high – choosing one winner was hard. We also awarded second and ...

Tease photo Now She Gets It

The allure of Elkhorn Slough is clear from the vantage of a kayak.

In Monty Python’s Spamalot, there’s a song called “The Song That Goes Like This.” It’s too long, it changes key, and it parodies Broadway musical love songs. (Its opening lines: “Once in every show there ...

Tease photo Like the Back of His Hand

Professor dedicates himself to learning all he can about Elkhorn Slough.

Rikk Kvitek knows nearly every inch of Elkhorn Slough. For the past 25 years, Kvitek, a CSUMB science and environmental policy professor, has been studying environmental changes in the slough and surrounding wetlands. “The loss ...

Tease photo Slough of Change

Scientists and activists aim to save Elkhorn Slough from erosion and development before it's too late.

The tide is high at Elkhorn Slough, as it usually is this time of year. Harbor seals and sea otters take refuge in the sheltered waters, sunning, feeding on crabs and entertaining kayakers. By now, ...

Tease photo The California Experiment

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s green state and the mathematics of carbon.

If you wiped California off the face of the planet, just made it disappear – left behind no car or SUV, politician, person or cow – you’d eliminate only about 1.6 percent of the greenhouse ...

Tease photo Desert Greenhouse

What global warming could do to the world’s deserts.

How will global warming affect the world’s deserts? Scientists in Nevada predict potentially heartbreaking outcomes. Imagine a future where hundreds of thousands of people in the more arid parts of the country flee wildfires. Imagine ...

Hot Numbers

Hot Numbers

20: Inches in median worldwide sea level-rise by 2100 from ice melt caused by global climate change, as estimated by the 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 30: Percent by which auto makers who want ...

Issues / 2007

Dec 27
Dec 20
Dec 13
Dec 06
Nov 29
Nov 21
Nov 15
Nov 08
Nov 01
Oct 25
Oct 18
Oct 11
Oct 04
Sep 27
Sep 20
Sep 13
Sep 06
Aug 30
Aug 23
Aug 16
Aug 09
Aug 02
Jul 26
Jul 19
Jul 12
Jul 05
Jun 28
Jun 21
Jun 14
Jun 07
May 31
May 24
May 17
May 10
May 03
Apr 26
Apr 19
Apr 12
Apr 05
Mar 29
Mar 22
Mar 15
Mar 08
Mar 01
Feb 22
Feb 15
Feb 08
Feb 01
Jan 25
Jan 18
Jan 11
Jan 04
Artlistings for Dec 27, 2007

Artlistings for Dec 27, 2007

OPENING THIS WEEK Steinbeck center Discovering Nature’s Alphabet: photo exhibit by Brian Boyl and Krystina Castella. One Main St., Salinas. 775-4721 or steinbeck.org. Gallery at 417 Group show of D. Gorman, J. Guignard, M. Johnson, ...

Tease photo If you could erase one day or scene from the past year, what would it be?

Asked at the Cherry Bean in Salinas.

Follow-up: What is the best thing that could happen to you in 2008? APRIL LOPEZ |Student | Gonzales A: The first day I got my driver’s permit, I was driving my dad’s truck and hit ...

New Rules of the Road

Don't talk on a cell without a headset while driving, or use the terms "idiot" or "lunatics" in 2008.

More than 3,100 bills were proffered by busy California legislators in 2007. A whopping 909 of those bills were signed into law, with the vast majority taking effect Jan. 1. Most of the bills updated ...

Little Treasure

Carmel's cozy Chez Christine feels like home, only the food tastes better.

I first heard about Chez Christine last summer, but didn’t get around to visiting then. The details were hazy. Something about a French woman, Christine, and her husband, the chef, who makes everything, including the ...

Juno

Juno shines due to new screenwriter Diablo Cody and young actress Ellen Page.

The 16-year-old title character of Juno takes three tests before accepting that she’s pregnant “for shizz.” Juno is no slutty cheerleader or latchkey kid who doesn’t know better. Instead, she’s a wise-beyond-her-years tomboy whose defining ...

Food Chain

Power Outing

Better Late… I just got home. The clock in the downtown right-hand side of the screen says 2:50am. That’s absurd. You can’t go out around here and get home at 2:50am. The night – actually, ...

The Savages

Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman portray middle-aged children in The Savages.

Julie Christie gave one of the year’s most graceful film performances in Away From Her, playing a woman quietly surrendering to Alzheimer’s at a comfortable nursing home in a bucolic setting. In the first scene ...

Waves of Change

Global warming drives some marine animals north up the Central Coast.

As global warming tweaks weather patterns – contributing to more droughts, hurricanes, wildfires and floods – it’s prompting some people to move to more environmentally hospitable places. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, a reported 14,000 ...

The Right Keys

The skills that make Calvin Keys a great teacher charm Hyatt audiences all weekend.

When Bruce Forman was creating the JazzMasters Workshop, the local nonprofit organization that provides free jazz guitar clinics to any young musician who shows up at one of the designated sites around the country, he ...

Virtual Public Square

How Al Jazeera helped create a Middle East mainstream media.

Soon after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush declared that the terrorists “hate our freedom… They can’t stand the thought that people can go into the public square in America and express their differences with government.” ...

By the Numbers

By the Numbers

$387,500 Average sales price of houses in east Salinas, October 2007 $383,278 Average sales price of houses in south county, October 2007 $4,377,113 Average sales price of houses in Big Sur, October 2007 Source: Monterey ...

Tease photo Bowled Over

Reliable insight into the BCS end of a season that shocked all the experts.

We really should have seen this coming. The moment triple zeros appeared on the scoreboard, signaling the conclusion of Appalachian State’s upset of the University of Michigan, we should have known that this would be ...

Letters to the Editor for Dec 27, 2007

Letters to the Editor for Dec 27, 2007

Like The Dinosaurs Literacy–are we for it or against it? Current trends seem to indicate that we are against literacy! Note, for example, when city budgets are under consideration, the city library is one of ...

Tease photo Flat Broke

No easy answers for Pacific Grove's fiscal quagmire.

Four Pacific Grove City Councilmembers eat sandwiches and drink beer at Monterey’s Crown & Anchor Pub in the late hours of Dec. 12, talking about anything but their city’s budget mess. State law prohibits a ...

Tease photo Dragon Slayer Needed

Foreclosed Carmel Highlands home will challenge, reward its buyer.

It’s located in one of the most coveted parts of California, in one of the most desirable areas of Monterey County, within an exclusive enclave of heavily forested land so secluded that tourists couldn’t find ...

Playing the God Card

Huckabee is doing exactly what the nation's founders sought to guard against.

Mitt Romney achieved a rare political feat when he delivered his “Don’t let my Mormonism cost me this election” speech. With barely 20 minutes of disjointed rhetoric about the role of faith in public life, ...

Tease photo Dirt Farmer

LEVON HELM

Levon Helm, legendary drummer for The Band, is enjoying yet another round of critical acclaim – this time for a solo release, Dirt Farmer, his first studio album since 1982 and one that has already ...

Divide, Conquer, Celebrate

How to get what you want at First Night Monterey.

It is that time of the year again when it’s the time for next year, yet again. Not confused yet? Log onto the First Night website (firstnightmonterey.org), click on the “Event Program Guide” tab, and ...

Tease photo In Rainbows

RADIOHEAD

For all but blinkered loyalists, anticipation and trepidation ebbed and surged as the wait for a new Radiohead record stretched on and on and on. There were label issues, solo records, side projects and break-up ...

Squid Fry for Dec 27, 2007

Squid Fry for Dec 27, 2007

Making The Grade… People don’t except much from Squid: Tiny brain. Cold blooded. Not nearly as good looking as some of the other cephalopods in the sea. And, truth be told, Squid likes it this ...

Developers ask for more time to work out project design.

Oldtown Salinas hotel delayed again

Add another three months to Salinas’ prolonged pursuit of a downtown hotel. Developers have asked for more time to finalize the design concept and business terms for a hotel and condominium complex planned for Main ...

Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski

An NPS expert on Arctic ice loves what he does. So does Al Gore.

t’s the end of the world as we know it… and Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski feels fine. This, despite the fact that the Naval Postgraduate School associate research professor spends most of his time – sometimes ...

Tease photo Dark Stars EP

WHITE MAGIC

In the post-Dylan landscape, the art of storytelling has warped into a cannon of impenetrable self-indulgence. Mira Billotte, an exception to this trend, understands both the power of allegory and that less is more when ...

Tease photo Station Control

City Councilman wants to see a park, not homes, in final phase of Marina Station.

A coyote cuts across a grassy hillside on Armstrong Ranch north of Marina. As cars hum by on Highway 1, Marina City Councilman Ken Gray points out patches of coastal dune scrub and a bright ...

Sonya Haramis

Marina woman finds inspiration in martial arts.

Sonya Haramis is at peace. Not in the Buddhist sense, or the feeling one gets after a massage, but in her own way – a peace achieved through a commitment to advanced martial arts, and ...

Public Citizen

Public Citizen

GET INVOLVED IN 2008 Visit the websites (below) for meeting schedules and agendas, and attend public meetings. It’s your civic duty. City of Carmel-by-the-Sea | ci.carmel.ca.us City Hall, Monte Verde between Ocean and Seventh, Carmel ...

Tease photo Crisis Management

Monterey County Rape Crisis Center, with a new office in Salinas, fills the need following the Women’s Crisis Center closure.

For 31 years, the Women’s Crisis Center in Salinas shelled out services mostly free of charge to survivors and families of sexual assault and domestic violence. But it doesn’t exist anymore. In August, out of ...

Tease photo The Hives

The Black and White Album

The Black and White Album marks the attempt by Sweden’s The Hives to fully transform themselves from mere garage-revivalists into a straight-up party band. It’s The Hives at their most radio-friendly. Gone is the bleak ...

Nest Best Thing

Jayson Fann's latest Spirit Nest creates peace from myriad sticks.

A thick 10-foot wooden ladder leads up to a circular entrance wreathed with a spray of branches – oak, plum, willow, and eucalyptus. Each bough gracefully bends to form this supple arch, almost as if ...

Tease photo He’s Got That Funny Feeling

Collin Moulton makes fun of homeless pets, God and his own mom.

Local comedian Collin Moulton knows that real-life experiences are better grist for his comedy routines than made-up situations. Therefore, like many comedians before him, Moulton retells true stories about his life with the comic elements ...

Tease photo Art Listings for Dec 20, 2007

Art Listings for Dec 20, 2007

OPENING THIS WEEK Del Campo Gallery Miniature exhibit by H. Apelqvist, K. Licht, S. Healey, L. del Campo and others. Hwy 1, Loma Vista, Spirit Garden, Big Sur. 667-2618. Highlands sculpture gallery Mobius strips and ...

Tease photo Lacerated Throats

Sweeney Todd delivers grand spectacle, but the tunes could use some sharpening.

If you love musical theater – and I’ve yet to meet anyone who is ambivalent on the subject – you can be a bit… unreasonable when it comes to interpretations of beloved shows. “Richard Gere ...

Tease photo Mighty Rights

Poll shows we care a lot about human rights.

While the topic of human rights is frequently in the news, mainstream media coverage of human rights invariably describes violations in faraway lands. Social injustice in the United States almost is never discussed in terms ...

Tease photo Sing a Silly Song

Walk Hard's musical numbers help the faux biopic shine.

There are so many things for which we should thank Judd Apatow in this joyous time of year. He made it through the fire of failed-but-brilliant television comedy like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared to ...

Tease photo Ag Contractors Accused of Corruption

Lawsuit says ag company stole from farmworkers

When celery harvesters left his crew, supervisor Jorge Aguilar allegedly kept some of the farmworkers on the payroll. Aguilar, who used to work for Castroville-based Sea Breeze Harvesting, then pocketed the checks of the “ghost ...

Public Citizen for Dec 20, 2007

Public Citizen

ONGOING FEED THE HUNGRY | COUNTYWIDE—Hunger and poverty exist even here, in the salad bowl of the world. Help out by donating food or money through the Food Bank for Monterey County. F815 W. Market ...

Tease photo Right Time, Right Place

Chanticleer's distinctive male-only sound evokes the Renaissance.

In 2005, Mikhael Rawls, a 17-year-old countertenor (or male soprano), was denied an audition in Texas’ all-state soprano choir competition because the part is traditionally sung by a female. Although he felt most comfortable singing ...

Tease photo Saline Solution

Monterey council OKs evaluating feasibility of a desalination plant

Monterey may join the list of California cities looking to the sea as a solution to its water shortage. At a recent City Council meeting, council members agreed to move forward with a preliminary step ...

Hunger? What’s That?

Heritage Foundation says let them eat broccoli.

While most Americans were planning for the annual ritual of over-consumption known as Thanksgiving, the good folks at the Heritage Foundation, America’s leading architects of conservative thought, were doing their part to add to the ...

Tease photo One Man, 1,000 Instruments

The bizarre story of a local man and his abiding love for music.

Sean Folsom lives in a pocket-sized one-room cottage just beyond Carmel Valley Village. He owns the adjacent main house, but rents it out to help support his three children – and to fund his ever-increasing ...

Tease photo Choc Full

The Chocolate Factory in Seaside churns out sweet dreams.

Among the joys of living in a new town are meeting new people, exploring new neighborhoods and finding new places to eat. It did not take me long to discover The Chocolate Factory on Fremont ...

Tease photo Time Out of Mind

Todd Haynes' I'm Not There features six actors playing different facets of Bob Dylan's personality.

“Idon’t belong to anybody,” goes a verse from the titular song, which may very well be the point, or at least one of them, in a film that was “inspired by the many lives of ...

Tease photo Peter White

Peter White Christmas with Mindi Abair and Rick Braun

The best new Christmas jazz CD this year is Peter White’s collaboration with trumpeter/flugelhorn player Rick Braun and saxophonist/vocalist Mindi Abair. Their collection of enjoyable and breezy interpretations put many similar albums to shame. Their ...

Tease photo Raul Malo

Marshmallow World and Other Holiday Favorites

Raul Malo has carved out a musical niche, conquering every genre from country western with his former band the Mavericks to jazz with this year’s After Hours. With the release of his latest project, Marshmallow ...

Tease photo Give the short story of your life in 15 words or less.

Asked at the Fishwife next to Asilomar Beach.

Follow-up: If someone made a movie about your life, who would play you? Whitney Stone | Waitress | Carmel A: Wanderlust and independent. Also, justice-seeking, Constitution-lover, sensitive, and compassionate. Closer Than You Think: Natalie Portman ...

Tease photo Built-in Views

Pacific Grove home's master suite is a dessert worth savoring first.

The crown jewel of this 1,487-square-foot house from the 1940s is appropriately located in the premiere spot at the top, occupying the entire second floor. Revealing these details first, instead of later, ignores the recommendation ...

Tease photo Letters to the Editor for Dec 20, 2007

Letters to the Editor for Dec 20, 2007

Wounded Heart I was raised in the “Valley of Hearts Delight,” now known as Silicon Valley, where every neighbor had at least one or two fruit trees in their yard (cherry, fig, apricot, plum, peach) ...

Tease photo Foodchain

Stirred Up

Ballin’ With Chain… Every year during the holidays I like to vary up the Chain a bit, sometimes wondering into various reflections about the holiday season, sometimes ruminating on the state of the restaurant, wine ...

Tease photo The Other Moth

This year's oak moth epidemic leaves local trees ugly, not dead.

They’ve been busy – feeding off oak leaf surfaces as larvae, wolfing down entire leaves as red-headed worms, morphing into tannish-brown moths, fluttering around in courtship, and laying clusters of whitish eggs on neighborhood oak ...

Tease photo Squid Fry for Dec 20, 2007

Squid Fry for Dec 20, 2007

Extreme Makeover… Squid feels for Marina, really. While some cities struggle with things like, say, violent crime, or multimillion-dollar budget deficits, Marina city officials tackle the hard stuff: a new city logo. Last year, the ...

Tease photo Hearty Winter Fare

PacRep’s The Full Monty satisfies theatergoers’ hunger for edgy, character-driven musical-comedy.

For years, a clipped-out BC Sunday comic was pinned to my office wall. In the drawing, one animal character slumps against a rock saying, “I’m going to turn this experience into a book about the ...

Tease photo What Scares You Most About The Ocean?

Asked at Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing.

Follow-up: What ocean creature do you identify with the most? JOAN GARCIA | Board of Education Trustee | Hollister A: The pull of the tide. I’m from a place with a lot of lakes. Out ...

Tease photo Serious Swell

Admiration for Peter Davi only grows with his dramatic death.

The first beach I went to in Monterey County was Asilomar. That day I noticed a guy who looked like the Incredible Hulk pushing a small, blond-haired, 10-year-old boy into the whitewash. I never knew ...

Tease photo The Audacity of Oprah

Her backing Obama could invigorate our political landscape.

This Christmas, the film The Great Debaters will come to theaters nationwide. Starring Denzel Washington and produced by Oprah Winfrey, it tells the story of an award-winning team of debaters from Wiley College, a small, ...

Tease photo Margot at the Wedding

The Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach takes another look at family with Margot at the Wedding.

Like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? for the Prozac set, Noah Baumbach’s gloriously dysfunctional Margot at the Wedding centers on two emotionally toxic sisters trapped in an old house filled with jealousy growing like a ...

Tease photo Squid Fry for Dec 13, 2007

Squid Fry for Dec 13, 2007

Nice Kitty… Oh, Darryl, when will you ever learn! Seaside voters ousted the long-time city councilman last year, perhaps because they were tired of Darryl Choates’ bluster and bullying antics – like threatening future pay ...

Real Estate

By The Numbers

Condominiums 55 Total of new listings in October, Monterey County. 245 Total as inventory in October, Monterey County. 18 Closed sales in October, Monterey County. Source: Monterey County Association of Realtors

Tease photo Imagine That

Drew Harrison evokes Lennon in Monterey, then joins a Beatles tribute in Salinas.

Drew Harrison has a tradition that he has enacted every New Year’s Eve for the past 31 years. On the cusp of the new year, Harrison makes sure that he hears John Lennon’s “Imagine” no ...

Tease photo Food Chain

Grand Designs

Count It… This fine publication that so graciously allows me this weekly rant recently put out its 1,000th issue. That’s consecutive, friends, with nary a burp. That translates into 19 straight years of bringing you ...

Secrets and Lies

Sex abuse allegedly occurred under former Monterey vicar’s watch

Diocese of Orange County Bishop Tod D. Brown has tried mightily to position himself as a leader in the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse scandal. He’s settled multiple lawsuits, met with victims, and has urged his fellow ...

China’s Valley of Tears

After the breakdown of state socialism, success as a market economy cannot be immediate.

The explosion of capitalism in China has many Westerners asking when political democracy – as the “natural” accompaniment of capitalism – will emerge. But a closer look quickly dispels any such hope. Modern-day China is ...

Tease photo Lars' Star Track

Already ambitious MC Lars further expands his sound.

Teenager Elisa Greubel immediately identified with MC Lars’ “Download This Song,” a plea for the record industry to change. At the time, the Recording Industry Association of America was suing Greubel and her family for ...

Tease photo Letters to the Editor for Dec 13, 2007

Letters to the Editor for Dec 13, 2007

Help Us Out, Weekly Mr. Anderson’s article [“Miles to Go Before I Eat,” Nov. 29-Dec. 5] illustrates the rewards and challenges of being a “localvore.” However, I think that he and the Weekly did the ...

Tease photo Look Again

The outside of this Carmel home belies the distinctive touches inside.

Anyone looking at this house from the outside will be amazed to discover the trove of revelations inside. The view of the house from the street isn’t the best: the facade is flat, straight up ...

Tease photo Unique Local Recipes

Inventive Eats Five local chefs lay out unconventional holiday treats.

The holiday for monsters normally takes place at the tail end of October. No longer, says the fine-food-wielding man in L’Escargot’s Carmel kitchen: Chef Kerry Loutas would like to introduce “Monster Nog,” his chief celebratory ...

Tease photo Atonement

Atonement ponders the words that wound.

In Atonement, the wrong word seen by the wrong eyes – in this case, a bookish, sheltered 13-year-old girl – can have tragic repercussions. Director Joe Wright shows a masterful command of dramatic scale, at ...

Tease photo MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA

Live At Montreux 1974-1984

In the wake of Miles Davis’ jazz-rock explorations, fusion bands such as Weather Report and Return to Forever were born. Less easily accessible was the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Led by guitarist John McLaughlin, himself a Miles ...

Tease photo Freeze Frame

Carmel’s Robert Knight shares the icy photo that earned him international accolades.

By Susan Lukowski It was late afternoon in the storm-tossed Scotia Sea just off the frozen coast of Antarctica’s South Georgia Island. A small group took off in a Zodiac to explore the waters near ...

Tease photo Fields of Science

Salinas Valley tech center could bring new ag innovation to salad bowl of the world.

Salinas Valley lettuce could become much more than a salad staple, according to Dr. Henry Daniell, professor and trustee chair at the University of Central Florida. Daniell has produced insulin from genetically-modified lettuce, and the ...

Tease photo THE CULT

Born Into This

Twenty years ago, producer Rick Rubin thrust an obscure British psychedelic alt-rock band by the name of The Cult into the mainstream with Electric, still the best AC/DC record that AC/DC never recorded. From there, ...

Tease photo Naan Starter

India Clay Oven likely to close Monterey location after 15 years.

The nose-twitching smell of stale grease occupies the kitchen air. A creepy, high-pitched whine stirs from an industrial fan tucked into a corner. Outside the kitchen, next to the iconic painted window that has greeted ...

Public Citizen for Dec 13, 2007

Public Citizen

12|13 THURS MONTEREY YEAR IN REVIEW | MONTEREY—City Council’s joint study session with board and commission chairs includes 2007 annual reports and a look ahead to 2008. Ferrante Room, Monterey Conference Center, 1 Portola Plaza, ...

Tease photo ArtListings for Dec 13, 2007

ArtListings for Dec 13, 2007

OPENING THIS WEEK AVERY GALLERY Photography by Gerardo Perez. Artist reception 12/14, 7-8:30pm. Seaside City Hall, 440 Harcourt St., Seaside. 899-6811 or 794-2334. concepts gallery Trunk show of jewelry by Maggie Ferrari, 12/13, 4-7pm. Ocean ...

Tease photo Department of da Fence

Bidder alleges Seaside unfairly treated his minority-owned business.

A fence-building company is sour at the city of Seaside for flip-flopping on its bid requirements for a local project. But the City says the company’s got its chain link all in a bunch over ...

Tease photo Word Up

Ol' Factory Cafe reminds us why we love spelling bees.

Americans are infatuated with spelling bees. It’s the reason the National Spelling Bee is broadcast nationally on ESPN every year. It helps explain why the intellectual competition is featured in the 2002 Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound, ...

Tease photo U2

The Joshua Tree: 20th Anniversary Remastered

Long since resigned to the coffee tables of khaki families or wedged on shelves next to the Bible and The Da Vinci Code, it’s easy to forget the widescreen impact of U2’s 1987 world-altering breakout. ...

Defeat Brings Opportunity

Al Gore, accepting the Nobel Prize, called his loss for president painful, but a "precious gift" that led to his immersion in the fight to stop global warning.

Former vice president Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10. He shared the award with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, "for their ...

Tease photo Shipping Shape

Moss Landing’s Diamond Organics sends prime local produce all over the country overnight.

Minot, North Dakota is quite a ways from the Central Coast. There the soil, setting and the seasons do not allow for the fields of greens which are enjoyed here, where arugula and radicchios abound ...

Failure On All Fronts

Oil spill in San Francisco Bay underscores deficiencies in safety regulations and rules of the sea.

The first headline the San Francisco Chronicle ran after the Cosco Busan crashed into a Bay Bridge protective fender Nov. 7 implied that nothing terrible had happened. It read, almost comically, “CRUNCH!” Initial reports suggested ...

Tease photo Raw Talent

Etta James continues to push the envelope at the Golden State.

“You better roll it while the rollin’ is on/ roll on, roll on, roll on.”Etta James’ career in the music scene took off with her first recording, “Roll with Me Henry,” in 1955, at the ...

Tease photo Ragtime Revolution

Twelve standout pianists converge for a rare show in Pacific Grove.

Acrobats and magicians mingle with roughnecks in a smoky house of ill repute. A barelegged burlesque singer wearing a risqué, sleeveless chemise and short skirt gathered at the waist scampers off the stage. A spectator ...

Tease photo Letters to the Editor for Dec 06, 2007

Letters to the Editor for Dec 06, 2007

Traffic Safety No Accident A couple of years ago I went to a traffic safety meeting at Mid-Valley Fire Station because there are too many accidents on Carmel Valley Road. When it was finally my ...

Tease photo Bad Like Me

Lead singer Arcelio Garcia explains why everybody wants to be like Malo.

Arcelio Garcia, lead singer of the pioneering Latin rock outfit Malo, is not bashful about broadcasting his band’s influence on the current Latin music explosion. “There’s a difference between the creator and the imitator,” he ...

Tease photo It’s Not Over Yet

Newspapers still have a key role to play in our lives.

I was struck this past weekend by the announcement in the Monterey County Herald that the Sunday “Commentary” section I was reading would be the last one printed. According to a note from Opinion Page ...

Tease photo Squid Fry for Dec 06, 2007

Squid Fry for Dec 06, 2007

Sex And Taxes… Squid feels a tad bit sleazy when driving past L’Amour Shoppe adult DVD store on East Alisal Street in Salinas. Apparently, L’Amour’s services are in high demand: The store has tried to ...

Tease photo ArtListings for Dec 06, 2007

ArtListings for Dec 06, 2007

OPENING THIS WEEK ANTON GALLERY Water: clay sculpture and ceramics by Mark Tanous. Opening reception with artist 12/8, 6-8pm. 1095 Lighthouse Ave., Pacific Grove. 373-4429 or antongallery.com. BATISTA MOON STUDIO Open house reception of A ...

Tease photo Grand Land

Carmel Valley house sits on lush acreage along the river, offering peace and beauty.

1947 was a very good year, a very good year for a meadow of level land to transform into a home, grow trees, have horses roam. Sweet piece of heaven, 1947. The story may not ...

Tease photo Cheer Schmeer

Cheer Schmeer

Merry Me… This time of year really starts the emotional sap oozing out of our family trees. The holiday season exposes my innards (emotionally speaking) more so than any other time, excepting of course those ...

PublicCitizen

PublicCitizen

ONGOINGDONATE KIDS’ BOOKS | SALINAS – Friends of the Salinas Public Library seek donations of new and gently-used children’s books for distribution to kids up to age 6 at the Story Time programs in Salinas ...