Recent Stories
The Other 20 Percent
A York School English teacher gives students back one-fifth of their time – to do anything.
Lamby Kreeger has had world records on her mind since she can remember. So when her 10th-grade English teacher opened up the school year with the invitation to work on anything interesting – yes, anything ...
All Fizzed Up
Bill Monning breathes new life into soda tax effort; industry fights back.
The debate over taxing sugar-added beverages is even more divisive than the age-old Coke-versus-Pepsi question. Some studies demonize soda for the rise in obesity; others defend it, blaming snack food and other treats. State Sen. ...
EL CHARRITO
Top Tortillas: A look at – and taste of – the best corn and flour tortillas Monterey County has to offer.
Chart human history according to culinary milestones, and a few moments stand out. There was the introduction of cooking with fire 1.8 million years ago, crude stoves 250,000 years ago, and the transition from hunting ...
Language Arts
DLI Foundation launches plan to foster multi-lingual learning, keeping DLI at arm’s length.
In 1995, California Gov. Pete Wilson made Monterey Bay’s claim as the “language capital of the world” official. Monterey Language Capital Advocates, a coalition of organizations, was formed in the early 1990s to support Monterey ...
Huffing and Puffing
Steam injection oil wells raise enviro eyebrows; group appeals project near Pinnacles.
Forget about fracking for a minute. That’s the controversial practice oil and gas operators use to create small fissures in rock formations, freeing up the reserves they contain and, for some, introducing legitimate concerns about ...
Charged Up
Local jurisdictions take steps in forming new authority to buy and sell green power.
Patrick Mathews, general manager of Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority, envisions landfills going the way of soda cans. What was once treated as a useless trash heap could be a resource. SVSWA partnered with Mass.-based ...
Boiling Point
With homelessness in Monterey at an all-time high, businesses ask the city for action.
JC Romero never stays in a place for more than two or three days. The 38-year-old started traveling (his word of choice to describe his voluntary homelessness) 25 years ago in Detroit. He made a ...
Bluntly Forceful
Natividad, Memorial hospitals invest big in competition for trauma center designation.
For a time last year, Natividad Medical Center was courting Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System with a proposal to merge. Now the two hospitals are locked in a multimillion-dollar battle, each seeking the county’s blessing ...
Off Season
Before Congress votes on immigration, labor groups prep ag workers for pending reforms.
Two weeks before Gonzalo Picazo went back to work on April 22 when the rapini harvesting season started, the 73-year-old took his first trip to Washington, D.C. Picazo, who’s been harvesting vegetables for D’Arrigo Brothers ...
Trails Blazing
Sea Otter Classic pioneers all sorts of two-wheel wonders, including mountain bike parks.
The hills of the Fort Ord National Monument are lush and green this time of year, and when the wind blows just right, the tall grasses sway like kelp. Below those hills, in a flat ...
