Land Alive
Verdant Pastures speaks Steinbeck out loud.
In a fertile Central California valley, a handful of farming families face a friend and a foe much larger than themselves: the land itself. To the characters in Steinbeck’s 1932 The Pastures of Heaven, the ...
John’s Journeys
International authors converge on Salinas to pay homage to the world-renowned literary traveler.
What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style. That excerpt from John Steinbeck’s influential 1962 travelogue Travels with Charley – a sort ...
Travels with Charlie
Singer-songwriter to appear at Steinbeck Fest with tales of life as a road warrior.
Singer-songwriter Charlie Faye talks about cities as though flipping through a calendar: “May was Shreveport. June was Burlington. August will be Milwaukee.” For Faye, touring isn’t a drop-in and get-out-of-town kind of event. She likes ...
Tasty Trip
The foodie element of the festival traverses the planet’s palate.
Decades ago, local celeb-chef Wendy Brodie’s father Howard, an accomplished sketch artist, had contacts who brokered an expedition with Steinbeck. “John would do the writing,” she says, “and dad would do the sketches.” Only Steinbeck ...
Issues / 2010 / Aug 05
County health officials warn of high bacteria levels at local beaches.
First it was San Carlos and Lover's Point Beaches where Monterey County Health Department officials warned they'd found elevated bacteria levels early Tuesday, Aug. 10. Later in the day, they posted similar warnings at Seaside's ...
Activists protest at Chase Bank's Watsonville branch, saying California's big banks don't pay their fair share of taxes.
Joe Keffer, a public employee union leader, says he and several dozen other activists jammed the Main Street branch of JP Morgan Chase Bank in Watsonville Aug. 10 to highlight their idea for closing the ...
Special Edible
Inside a meat-free, underground, seven-course dinner in P.G.
There is more than one way to skin an heirloom tomato. Take a look inside how one local chef is keeping alive his craft by treating his friends to a cost-only feast in a dark ...
Pinnacles Pinnacle
Pinnacles may soon win National Park status.
California Senator Barbara Boxer has introduced a bill to give Pinnacles National Monument a promotion—to national park status. It's a move that Boxer says will draw more tourists to its 26,000 acres of volcanic rock ...
Monterey City Council race smooth sailing for incumbents
No mystery about who will run the city of Monterey for the next several years. Mayor Chuck Della Sala is unopposed in his bid for a third two-year term in the November election. Likewise Vice-Mayor ...
Monarch Movement
P.G. group seeks donations to improve butterfly habitat.
Pacific Grove monarch lovers who blame heavy tree pruning on last winter's low butterfly count are launching a campaign to lure the insects back to "Butterfly Town U.S.A.'s" Monarch Grove Sanctuary. "In September 2009, trees ...
Fired Up over forest flames
Enviros throw cold water on new wildfire prevention proposal.
Following the 2008 Basin Complex and Indians fires, locals agreed there’s a need to form a comprehensive plan to prepare for the next inevitable wildfire in Big Sur and the Los Padres National Forest. But ...
The best of our web exclusives.
Answers Please…Carmelites turned out in force to City Councilman Jason Burnett’s Aug. 2 town hall meeting to ask questions and demand answers on the $600,000 settlement of a sexual harassment case in which ex-staffer Jane ...
Sweet Skills
Sierra Mar’s Jamie Jarrard offers an exclusive peek into what makes her treats soar.
Noon in the kitchen at the award-winning Sierra Mar at Big Sur’s Post Ranch Inn – rated first in California for cuisine in the 2003 Zagat – may appear to the outsider as a whirlwind ...
Inside a meat-free, underground, seven-course dinner in P.G.
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Art of War
An ambitious project captures the leftover murals and mystery of former Fort Ord.
Enid Baxter Blader and a handful of intrepid CSU Monterey Bay students enter an abandoned barrack on the former Fort Ord. Their weapons of choice are cameras and adrenaline. Their targets are ghosts. And while ...
Squid Fry for Aug 05, 2010
Squid Fry for Aug 05, 2010
ELECTION TIME… Late summer in an even year means local politicians ramping up their fall election bids. And the recent do-goodery of two campaigning Seaside councilmen reminds Squid of the Stevie Wonder lyric: “I live ...
The Other Guys
Will Ferrell brings out his inner dudeness in bromance dream team.
Just when it seemed like the once-robust buddy-cop action-comedy was going to require a do-not-resuscitate order, along comes Will Ferrell and Adam McKay to show ‘em how it’s done. Having successfully collaborated with director-writer McKay ...
Top Scotch
A look at the best of the Scottish Games music.
Scotland gave us golf, men throwing 175-pound tree trunks and food cooked inside a sheep’s stomach. As the 43rd Annual Monterey Scottish Games and Celtic Festival demonstrates every summer, it also gave us great music. ...
What Steinbeck might say to a Salinas haunted by gangs.
The most recent spate of violence in Salinas has left a trail of blood. Gang violence took the lives of two men Friday night in a week that saw nine shootings in three days, the ...
Brezsny's Astrology
Free Will Astrology
Aries (March 21-April 19): The ancient Greek god Dionysus did not, in fact, encourage people to get sloppy drunk, lose control, and do stupid things. His preference was that they free themselves from their inhibitions ...
Bash Brothers
E-40 and Too Short lead a massive hip-hop lineup at the Fox in Salinas.
Earl Stevens has almost as many monikers as he does fingers: 40 Water, 40 Belafonte, 40 Fonzarelli, E-Feezy, Charlie Hustle, Mr. Flamboyant, The Ambassador of the Yay, The Ambassador of the Bay and most famously, ...
Real Estate
By The Numbers
$3,600,000 Recent Sale 2976 Cormorant Rd., Pebble Beach Built: 1956 Size: 3,700 square feet Features: 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 2-car garage, carport Amenities: Ocean view, fireplace, wet bar, two terraces, built-in barbecue, outdoor fireplace Seller: ...
Feeling the Heat
Carmel critics call for Guillen’s departure in wake of Jane Miller settlement.
Anger, embarrassment and shame were some of the ways Carmelites described their reactions to allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination inside Carmel City Hall. The charges leveled by former Human Resources Manager Jane Miller against ...
Public Citizen for Aug 05, 2010
Public Citizen
ONGOING PRISONS AND MENTAL HEALTH | STATEWIDE—The Task Force for Criminal Justice Collaboration on Mental Health Issues wants your input on a set of recommendations for prisoners with mental health issues. Comments due by Sept. ...
Blessed Bestness
Wine dinners from Bernardus approach ambrosia and PigWizard gets legit.
The primary difficulty with assembling a dream-team wine dinner is that it brings with it fantasy-scale expectations – and, inversely, an accompanying margin for error the size of a shard of Himalayan sea salt. Most ...
Bank Shot
New Salinas club complex is bucking the odds in a high-end gamble.
“Within the next three to five years, Salinas is going to be a booming place,” says Jesse Kehoe as he walks through the 28,600-square-foot expanse of a planned nightclub-restaurant in the old Wells Fargo Bank ...
Technicolor Blues
Big Brother and the Holding Company set off Sunset Center in Carmel.
By the time Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, record companies had already been drooling at the chance to sign the Bay Area rock band, fronted by vocal ...
How would you make good use of an abandoned building?
Asked at Salinas YMCA.
Follow-up: What is your weapon of choice? LISE BELTON | Associate Executive Director | Salinas A: I would use the space for a recreational center, a space for activities such as sports, crafting and service ...
Art Listing for Aug 05, 2010
Art Listing for Aug 05, 2010
HAPPENING THIS WEEK ARTISTIC HANGUPS Ron Dias was inspired to become an animator when he saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when he was 6 years old. As a young man, in 1956 he ...
Washed Out
Peninsula mayors may get advisory role in desal project; opponents call it “window dressing.”
F ive of six Monterey Peninsula cities have signed off on a deal giving mayors in the California American Water service area a place on the regional desalination project’s advisory committee. But opponents say the ...
Letters to the Editor for Aug 05, 2010
RUHNKE’S FUNKY Henry Ruhnke’s downtown redevelopment ideas (“Blue-ribbon committee tries to cut through red tape,” July 29-Aug. 4) are good for Henry, because they would bring him lucrative design and development contracts. His ideas are ...
Kisses
Lyrical tale of two kids loose on Dublin’s mean streets.
Two little Irish kids flee their abusive homes on a bleak estate and ride a barge into the center of Dublin for a night of adventure and stark terror in Lance Daly’s captivating Kisses. Foul-mouthed ...
¡Ask A Mexican! for Aug 05, 2010
One man's take on his culture's stereotypes
Dear Mexican: I am a retired gringa living in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. Most of us foreigners here are liberal and sympathetic to the immigration problem, which the U.S. Congress refuses to address in a meaningful way. ...
The winning entry from Steinbeck Festival’s Travels With Charley essay contest.
Beardog heard it first, as always. I was lost in a dream, chasing a fleeting strip of bacon through a swaying sea of corn silk. Good Bear and his own golden ears picked up on ...
P.G. group seeks donations to improve butterfly habitat.
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Pinnacles may soon win National Park status.
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