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SANTA CRUZ (May 2009) --  Jill Wolfson used to sit in the bleachers and imagine all the things that could go wrong as her gymnast daughter spun and flipped on the uneven parallel bars.  She imagined her daughter’s hands letting go, the crashing fall to the ground. She imagined broken bones and concussions and even death.

It was those horrible parental imaginings that Santa Cruz writer Wolfson turned to as she sat down to write her third young-adult novel, “Cold Hands, Warm Heart,” which takes on the subject of illness, loss and connection through the story of a young girl’s heart transplant – a book one reader called “the ‘Juno’ of organ transplants.”

A local business falls victim to economic crisis ©santacruzwire.com

SANTA CRUZ (April 2009) -- It’s 12:15 on a recent Thursday and the Main Branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library is anything but quiet. In an upstairs meeting room, pianist John Orlando flies through the lightning fast runs of a Mozart sonata for close to a hundred appreciative listeners, many of whom are discretely lunching on sandwiches or salads. These lucky music lovers are attending Munching with Mozart and Friends, a series of free noontime concerts offered the third Thursday of every month.

SANTA CRUZ (April 2009 ) - The Victory Garden is back. Given the sad state of the economy this year, interest in home-grown food is soaring. The National Gardening Association estimates that 7 million U.S. households plan to plant new vegetable gardens this year, boosting the number of backyard plots to 43 million. First Lady Michelle Obama has even installed a kitchen garden at the White House, imparting a patriotic feel to the sometimes grubby business of growing your family's food. 

If you, too, are taking the gardening plunge this year, start your growing season by building a sturdy raised bed. Here are directions for a gopher-proof redwood planter that you can build in one afternoon, and is portable enough to take with you if you move.

SANTA CRUZ (April, 2009) -- It’s official. I’m old. I didn’t feel that way when I got married and had two kids. It barely crossed my mind when I plucked those first gray hairs and then, without a whimper, turned 40. (40 is the new 30, right?) No, I didn’t actually realize I was old until I heard myself saying to my 13-year-old son, “Pull up your pants! You look like a hoodlum!” With that simple phrase, I joined the pantheon of parents throughout the ages who have responded to their children’s fashion choices with confusion and disapproval. I’ve crossed a line and there’s no going back. And that line hovers just south of my adolescent son’s narrow hips.

Santa Cruz City Hall was one of many local projects built with federal stimulus money during the Great Depression. ©santacruzwire.com

SANTA CRUZ (April 2009) -- Most of the drivers rushing over the Valencia Bridge in Aptos never even see the sign. It’s set low in the mossy concrete railing on one end of the span -- a tarnished plaque that marks the history of hard times.

The plaque, which someone had recently graffitied with chalk, commemorates the 1935 construction of the narrow, tree-shadowed bridge.  The span was built with funds from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, his program to restart the economy with a flood of stimulus money for social and public works projects.

That money -- distributed for half a decade through acronym-heavy agencies like the WPA, PWA and TRAP -- changed the face of Santa Cruz, although most people might not realize it now.  

SANTA CRUZ (APRIL 2009) - So you’ve read Michael Pollan’s books, and vowed to buy as much locally-grown, organic food as your grocery budget allows. But the tradeoffs get complicated when it comes to buying meat.

Step up to almost any meat counter in Santa Cruz and prepare to be confronted with a consumer dilemma. There’s grassfed organic beef, most of it shipped in from Uruguay, a 9,000 mile, oil-fueled journey. Other brands of organic beef hail from the U.S. Midwest, and require somewhat less shipping. But those cattle spent the last three to six months of their lives on feedlots, which many activists consider contrary to the principles of organic farming.

You can find several brands of “natural” beef raised in California. But the term “natural” can legally apply to cattle raised on corn, hormones and antibiotics, and kept in confinement for a full year. You just want the best for your family and the environment – how do you separate the beef from the bull?

A sparkling clear day gives a view of Holy Cross and the Monterey Peninsula, from the Pogonip. ©santacruzwire.com

SANTA CRUZ (April, 2009) -- Maybe you have a family member who found support and guidance through her battle with cancer at WomenCare. Perhaps your aging neighbors enjoy food delivery from the Grey Bears. You might have a colleague who comes to work each morning knowing that her children are safe and happy at the Emeline Childcare Center. In fact, almost every resident of Santa Cruz County has a neighbor, friend or family member who has been helped by a local, nonprofit, health and human service agency. But most of them have never heard of the Human Care Alliance.