A Boy’s Life
In the chapter titled “Yellow Brick Road,” a grandson’s questions about the world beyond his experience lead to the start of a great journey.
After supper Ned walked Granddaddy Ike to his one-room cottage next door and helped him get settled in his chair. “Read me a chapter, will you?” said Granddaddy, sitting back with his pipe. “You’ll fall ...
Local authors of children’s, middle grades and young adult books worth checking out.
Beverly Cleary. The 96-year-old was born on a small farm in Oregon but now calls Carmel Valley home. Her book series, like Ramona, Henry Huggins, Ralph the Mouse and Beezus, have earned her accolades including ...
Button Down World
Monterey author Anne Ylvisaker crafts a writer’s life – and a book series – from the imagined world of the Button Family.
It’s a promising Saturday afternoon in December, and children’s book author Anne Ylvisaker looks like she is right where she wants to be: standing in front of an audience of a dozen people, in the ...
Issues / 2012 / Dec 20
Concert Town
Monterey County’s top 10 concerts of 2012 compete with those of many major cities. Really.
While Henry Miller Memorial Library and the Monterey Jazz Festival continued to pull in stunning shows across 2012, Golden State Theatre’s triumphant return from church to concert venue – bringing along the likes of punk ...
Patient Patients
As SVMH mulls the future of health care, business leaders ponder how to stay afloat.
Patients are already starting to take advantage of the new benefits provided under President Obama’s signature law, the Affordable Care Act. But the health care industry is looking a little bit like a deer caught ...
Chubby Numbers
Monterey County kids are among the plumpest in California.
Childhood obesity rates have fallen in several places across the nation, including California, according to a recent report. But Monterey County, despite a small drop, still has the state’s fourth-highest rate of overweight and obese ...
Takeoff Delayed
The Monterey airport is poised to approve a runway plan – and face another lawsuit.
The weather isn’t to blame for this delay. Wrangling over a proposed road at the Monterey Peninsula Airport is. The airport’s runway safety project was ready for takeoff, with a construction crew about to break ...
Hostel Environment
The planned Fort Ord hostel brings eco-design, adventure travelers to the old military base.
The Monterey Hostel counts some 10,000 overnight stays each of the last two years and is on track to break 11,000 this year, says Peter Kambas, president of the Central California Council of Hosteling International. ...
Seriously, I’m Santa
Pagrovian carpenter visits Monterey Bay Christmas events by way of the North Pole.
At a certain age, many men dye their gray hair a younger-looking color. But Vern Brischke does the opposite: He dyes his reddish-brown hair gray and silver. For the last four years, Brischke has added ...
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Isaac Newton is regarded as one of the most influential scientists in history. But the time he spent as a member of the English Parliament was undistinguished. The only public comment ...
By The Numbers 12.20.12
Real Estate
$1,225,000 Recent Sale 1123 Alta Mesa Road, Monterey Built: 1969 Size: 3,389 square feet Features: 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, 2-car port Amenities: Fireplace, deck, wine cellar, guest quarters, skylights, vaulted ceilings, sauna Seller: Kent Marshall ...
Raising the Mar
Sierra Mar deserves love for making the most delicious advances of 2012.
For years I’ve dreamed of doing the original locavore diet – you know, choking down crushed acorns, gnawing on grass seeds and swallowing suspect wild berries and potentially fatal fungus in an amateur attempt to ...
Sticks
High on the Hog:: Todd Fisher’s Sticks in Spanish Bay quietly ranks as one of the best sports grills in the area – and the most beautiful.
Here’s the schtick at Sticks: You can pay for tasty, inventive eats amid plush surroundings and enough flat-screen TVs to fill an electronics showroom, but to fully enjoy emerging celeb-chef Todd Fisher’s take on classic ...
Letters To The Editor 12.20.12
Steinbeck Blowback Dear Arvin Temkar, Steinbeck readers, dog lovers of the world and Weekly readers: If you were mildly amused or even somewhat disturbed by the “revelations” in the article (“Journalist paints Travels With Charley ...
The Giving Trees
Stanford scientist and her photographer friend publish an arboreal meditation.
As astronomer Carl Sagan famously observed in the 1980 PBS series Cosmos: “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made ...
School district under fire for naming new school, but scholars advise a closer look.
Tiburcio Vasquez: Robin Hood, or robbin’ hoodlum? Battle lines over the Californio, who was executed for murder in 1875, have been drawn over the naming of a Salinas elementary school. Earlier this month, the Alisal ...
How the American Legislative Executive Counsel thwarts honest debate about gun violence.
The first response of any country to violence of the sort seen in Connecticut must be one of horror. And sorrow. President Obama showed that sorrow when he wiped away the tears so many Americans ...
Public Citizen 12.20.12
ONGOING TO THE CAPITOL | COUNTYWIDE – Local legislators encourage recent college graduates to apply for fellowships in the Capitol Fellows Program through the Center for California Studies, which assigns fellows to the Assembly, Senate, ...
If we don’t heed the warnings, we’ll doom ourselves.
Of all of the terribly sad, chilling news since Friday, when a deranged man barely out of his teens took weapons owned by his mother and – after shooting her four times in the face ...
Street Talk 11.08.12 (asked @ Michael’s in Marina.)
Street Talk 11.08.12 (asked @ Michael’s in Marina.)
Follow-up: What would be the first thing you’d ask a psychic? SANDRA CRACCHIOLO | Student | Marina A: I would run to my favorite restaurant and order everything on the menu because I know in ...
Jingle Hell
Tiny Stardust Playhouse does David Sedaris’ infamous take on Christmas.
For their holiday theater offering, Stardust Playhouse was going to do a play by Steve Tesich called The Speed of Darkness, which Stardust director and co-founder Kirstin Clapp describes as a family drama of a ...
Coast Control
Seaside finally takes charge of its own near-shore development.
Seaside’s coastal zone is pretty spindly, as they come, and without many parcels that can be developed. But city officials are proud to finally be wrapping up a modernized blueprint of how that land will ...
Les Misérables
Sing Misery: Star-studded cast shows off powerful voices in remake of Hugo classic Les Misérables.
Les Misérables is a big, lavish Hollywood production of an equally extravagant Broadway musical. It looks and sounds phenomenal, and the sweeping story resonates on screen nearly as well as it does when viewed live. ...
Jack Reacher
Reacher Feature: Tom Cruise swings hard at this action-detective flick, but it’s better suited for basic cable.
The trailer makes Tom Cruise’s latest foray into action look like Jason Bourne channeling Martin Riggs, but it’s more like a midseason episode of a television detective show. Sure, the finale is a standard shootout ...
Variety Acts
The Golden State Theatre features back-to-back nights of music very different from each other.
Garrett Riley’s voice is unlike any you’ve heard, an almost theatrical vibrato that sounds like an old-time blues singer having a seizure. Once word spreads about his unique pipes, Hungry Skinny will make waves within ...
Squid speaks on water wars.
HOT WATER… When Squid wants to get away from it all, particularly after an action-packed Salinas City Council meeting, Squid detours down into the deep, where the water is cold and still and pretty much ...
