Boobirds: Why giving it to The Man feels good

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Don Miller

 

Quite a scene Monday night in Oakland when Golden State Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob was repeatedly booed down by a crowd of about 19,000 during a ceremony honoring Hall of Famer former player Chris Mullins.

Warriors fans, as the linked articles report, have plenty of reasons to complain and to boo — and the fact they were gathered in one place to make their feelings known, with hundreds of thousands of people watching the ceremony shows they didn’t waste their Golden opportunity.

So, I thought: What if we all had such an opportunity? Consider our state government, for example. Almost all incumbents will be reelected this year — count on it — even though almost all Californians are sick and tired of an ineffective political process that has blocked almost all tax, spending and pension reforms. Would voters dare boo incumbents? Not likely.

In San Francisco, would residents, much less his deputies, boo their sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, who pleaded to a lesser domestic violence charge, a crime, after stonewalling for months about his behavior toward his wife and other women? Not likely — although you gotta like the moxie of SF Mayor Ed Lee who is today trying to force the sheriff to resign.

Would you boo the banker who turned down your application for a home loan? Probably not. Or the corporate boss who refused to listen to employees’ plea for a raise, while using the profits to pay off debt service from foolish business ventures that went south? Don’t think so.

So sports is one of the last places we can let “them” have it — for all the broken promises, the frustrations, the big money and the escalating prices “they” have brought on.

Sigh. In that murky light, waiting for someone, somehow, to make things right, it just feels … good to start booing.

 

 

 

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Dead man’s curve: Highway 17 horrors revisited

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Don Miller

Accident scene Friday at Laurel Curve, Highway 17/Bill Lovejoy photo, Sentinel

Spring can’t come soon enough at Highway 17’s Laurel Curve.

Tragically, a man lost his life there on a rainy, late-winter Friday morning.

The head-on collision closed all northbound lanes for hours and slowed traffic dramatically southbound. According to the California Highway Patrol, the driver was headed south on 17 when he lost control, crossed the center divide and struck an SUV. Two were injured in that car and two other vehicles also were involved.

The latest smashup on what was once an infamous roadway came as Caltrans, the state transportation agency, is planning to begin repaving this section of 17, which arguably is most dangerous turn remaining on the twisting highway between Los Gatos and Scotts Valley.

How bad is it? From 2004 through September 2010, there were 2,092 crashes on the Santa Cruz County side of Highway 17, according to the California Highway Patrol. Over the same period, there were 534 crashes at Laurel Curve — 26 percent of all crashes on 17. This winter, up to last week, has been mild, which seems to have kept down the crashes on 17. But last week there was a nine-vehicle pileup at Laurel Curve. Then came Friday’s tragedy.

Ironically, Laurel Curve stands out because of the remarkable success of a safety program that began in 1998. The program, Safe on 17, was a joint venture of a number of public agencies, including the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Caltrans, Freeway Service Patrol, Scotts Valley Police Department and the California Highway Patrol on both sides of the hill. Under the program, law enforcement moved aggressively to ticket speeders, which, along with a public education effort, quickly made a dramatic difference in safety.

That wasn’t all. In the first decade alone, more than $23.5 million was spent on the Santa Cruz County side of 17. The money went to building retaining walls, improving drainage, widening road shoulders, and replacing guardrails between the Summit and Granite Creek Road in Scotts Valley. Transportation officials said the improvements made wet weather driving safer, increased roadway visibility for drivers — and gave them a place to pull over in the event of a breakdown or traffic collision.

When the safety program began in 1998, there were 283 injuries and fatalities on Highway 17. By 2009, 10 years after the program began, the total dropped to 133.

But CHP officers wonder whether this vastly improved safety record has also caused a false sense of security among some drivers. They say too many drivers are again exceeding the 50 mph speed limit on Highway 17 — and when it comes to a more difficult-to-navigate turn like Laurel Curve, the results can be deadly. The numbers bear this out: In 2010, the CHP reported 164 injury collisions and two fatal crashes on 17 — a 14.5 percent increase over 2009 in injury and fatal collisions and 8 percent higher than the annual average since the Safe on 17 program started reporting crash data in 1999. In a 2010 report, the RTC noted that a state moratorium on CHP overtime corresponded to the fewest citations given on Highway 17 since traffic ticket data began to be tabulated starting in 2003. The extra CHP presence on Highway 17, from both the Santa Cruz and San Jose offices, comes in part from this budgeted overtime. State budget difficulties, however, could have a further impact on Highway 17 enforcement. While the CHP gets funding for its $1.97 billion budget largely from state driver’s license and vehicle registration fees, not from the general fund, Gov. Jerry Brown has indicated he wants to preserve the option of reducing staffing in the future without layoffs, and has delayed filling some positions. Caltrans improvements also are vital.

According to a recent report in the San Jose Mercury News, federal officials met with Caltrans in December to survey Laurel Curve and came away convinced a new, experimental paving surface should be tried to reduce crashes.  When driven over, the high friction surface reportedly leads to a noisy and rough ride expected to slow drivers down.

The state agency also plan to install a speed-warning electronic sign at the curve later this year, and eventually widen the road shoulders plus install a taller guardrail. The news story also reported, sadly, that Caltrans may consider constructing a center divider to prevent southbound drivers from veering into northbound lanes and causing head-on crashes.

Which is just what happened Friday.

Because despite all the safety improvements, the CHP presence, the flashing warning signs and the turnouts, speed and unsafe driving kills on Highway 17 — and especially at Laurel Curve and especially in wet weather.

This post will be the Santa Cruz Sentinel Editorial Sunday, March 18, 2012

 

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Letting the Sunshine in: the public’s right to know

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Don Miller

We’re in the middle of Sunshine Week — the annual national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.

Participants include news media, civic groups, freedom-of-information organizations, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know.California, like many states, has a fairly extensive Public Records Act, designed to give the public access to information in possession of public agencies.

But there are exceptions to this access. For instance, the act does not cover the courts or the state Legislature.

Although this makes their jobs harder, it hasn’t stopped reporters from shining a light into the secrecy surrounding much of what government does. As our news organization, the Bay Area News Group, reported this week, the California Judges Association is fighting the Fair Political Practices Commission’s plan to post judges’ financial disclosure information online. The judges say it poses privacy and security risks that outweigh the public’s right to know.

And while judges, by the nature of their jobs, have reason to be concerned about their safety, the FPPC has agreed to black out any information that would provide security risks or compromise their safety. But the issue of trust and disclosure cannot be ignored. Most judges in California are, in effect, elected for life. The public should be able to know relevant information about the personal holdings of California’s 1,700 or so judges as a check that these do not influcence their judicial rulings. Recent government surveys, for instance, show that many legislators and state court judges believe campaign contributions influence judicial decisions.

Also this week, the Associated Press found that state legislators have been changing their votes after a bill has passed or been rejected.

Why would they do this? Simple — to try and convince voters their stands on various issues are different than how they actually voted. In January and February alone, Assembly members changed their votes after the fact a whopping 417 times. Legislators contacted by the AP defended the practice, saying, unconvincingly, they often don’t have enough time to read legislation before voting — or they do it for political reasons, such as realizing others in their party have voted differently.

Peter Scheer, executive director of California’s First Amendment Coalition, said this week the practice either shows legislators are stupid because they did not understand legislation — or they are trying to deceive their constituents.

California’s law also does not apply to privileged “personnel” information — which is a shield wielded by many public agencies to deny requests for documents and other information.

The Sentinel, like many publications, often is working with local governments to get information. Many times, the agencies are willing and helpful to provide the information requested. Other times, it’s a battle.

But our belief the public has a right to know how its money is being spent is why the Sentinel for the past three years has been publishing salary databases on public employees.

Last year, the Sentinel also asked a number of government agencies for information about pension benefits — information the public deserves to have as services are cut and jobs lost in the name of making up for budget shortfalls. It took months, but we finally got the information, and our series on the looming crisis for government agencies on the hook for sometimes unaffordable pensions helped prod administrators to seek renegotiated contracts with employee unions.

We’d like to add something else about Sunshine Week. It’s not just a reminder to the media. It also applies to you, the citizen. You have the same right to ask for information about crime in your neighborhood or how your child’s school is faring, and to ask local government agencies for information about their finances and taxes they are collecting.

And you can publish what you find by taking advantage of the ever-increasing openness that’s a hallmark of the digital age.

Here’s one place to do that: The Sentinel recently began hosting local bloggers in our new Community Media Lab. So far, more than 120 bloggers have signed up; their posts, unedited by us, can be found on our website santacruzsentinel.com

Because, the more Sunshine, the better.

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Coexistence and public life at Pogonip

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Don Miller

Pogonip trail/Sentinel photo by Shmuel Thaler

We get that hikers in Pogonip don’t want to share trails with mountain bikers.

We also get that bicycle advocates push hard for what they want, often get it because they are good at organizing and applying pressure — but sometimes leave a trail of resentment behind them.

But their plan to pay for and construct a four-foot-wide trail in the city’s Pogonip greenbelt adjacent to UC Santa Cruz and Highway 9 is one that should be accepted, even if some of the touted benefits of the path are a bit overstated.

The 1.5-mile trail has already been approved by the advisory Parks and Recreation Commission, and next will be taken up the Santa Cruz City Council, either in two weeks or at another date, probably in April.

The proposal for the trail is the culmination of a longtime dream by the biking community, who want more trails in city-owned property. A Sentinel poll last week showed overwhelming support for the bike trail. The trail through Arana Gulch, another Santa Cruz greenbelt, was supported by bicyclists, whose efforts paid off when the state Coastal Commission finally approved the path earlier this year.

The Pogonip trail proposal winds its way up a couple of social hills. One is already occupied by a vocal environmental/conservationist community, veterans of the efforts in decades past to establish the greenbelt. This group likes the quiet and relative unobtrusiveness of allowing only pedestrian access.

These folks have legitimate concerns about environmental problems associated with bikes. It’s more than likely that the hikers and horseback riders who prefer Pogonip the way it is now in terms of trail use, will not use the new bike trail. That’s OK. They can continue to use existing trails.

The other issue is the prevalence of crime in Pogonip — specifically drug use and drug dealing, especially heroin and methamphetamines.

The situation got so bad that the Sentinel devoted much of a special report two years ago to investigating the so-called “Heroin Hill” that was making Pogonip off limits except to narcotics officers making arrests.

Since then, aided by money from a tax city voters assessed on themselves, police and park rangers have made major inroads in the Pogonip drug trade. While down significantly, however, vestiges remain.

Another issue in Pogonip has been illegal camping, a problem that continues, as transients and people seeking a place to sleep outside of the long arm of the law often pitch tents in the greenbelt. Unfortunately, this prohibited use also is often accompanied by illegal campfires (occasionally leading to wildfires), trash left behind and a host of other environmental degradations.

Will a bike path solve these issues? Yes and no. Yes, in that the more public use, the better. That’s why citizen groups trying to drive out illegal activities from public spaces back the biking trail.

No, because mountain bikers speeding by are not really going to deter wily drug dealers, not to mention illegal campers, tucked back in the shadows and trees.

But this is public property, and a bike path absolutely fits in with public use and access. So we support both pedestrian trails AND the biking trail.

While the city obviously does not have the money to make the bike trail happen, bike-path advocates say they’ll raise the $25,000 or so needed to complete the trail and provide the volunteers to maintain it. Based on their track record, they’ll do both — and we urge the council to approve their proposal.

This post is the Sentinel Editorial for March 14, 2012

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HBO’s “Game Change” not much change on Palin

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Don Miller

 

Say this about the media and Sarah Palin — for all the scorn and mockery heaped upon the erstwhile candidate, she remains the star of the show.

Perhaps the best part of the new HBO movie about Palin, “Game Change,” comes when the handlers of 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain are watching yet another fawning tribute to then candidate Barack Obama, this time the ludicrous “Greek temple” setting in Denver when he accepted the nomination.  The McCain team knows they are up against a celebrity and that their candidate is sunk unless they can come up with … a game changer.

Enter Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, played by Julianne Moore in the movie. The tale is pretty shopworn now, nearly four years after the halycon days of the ’08 campaign, but needless to say Palin was not competently vetted, which led to the uproar over her disastrous TV interview with Katie Couric and the SNL/Tina Fey skits that made her look like a mentally unstable moron. Which is pretty much how the McCain team came to see her, according to the movie.

Watching it this weekend, however, I came away thinking, I wonder who will have the last laugh? Palin has been targeted non-stop ever since she burst on the national scene, and to see her today, staying out of the horrible Republican primary campaign, telling breathless reporters — “hey, we got an interview with Sarah Palin!” — that she is just biding her time as her party self immolates, leaving President Obama facing what looks like a cruise to reelection, isn’t quite the picture the HBO movie paints. Palin and her partisans hate it, of course (see video above), calling it yet another liberal media smear job.

The movie ostensibly comes from the best selling book of the same name,  by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. But guess what? There’s nothing in the docudrama about Hillary Rodham Clinton or John Edwards, who figure prominently in the book. Obama’s part is left to a few clips, mostly about the mass adulation that surrounded his candidacy. McCain, played in the movie by Ed Harris, is a secondary character. Mostly, it’s about Palin as seen through the experiences and eyes of senior McCain aide Steve Schmidt, played with sepuchral angst by Woody Harrelson. Another aide, Nicolle Wallace, also figures prominently — always with a look of either horror or shock as she encounters a moody, petulant, egotistic and, of course, surpassingly ignorant Palin, who proves mostly uncoachable and in the end, uncontrollable.

The Sarah Palin painted by this production, and by Schmidt, who started blabbing to journalists about the perils of Palin soon after McCain lost, is not entirely unsympathetic.  Her obvious connection with working people out on the campaign trail — especially with parents of special needs kids (she has a son with Down Syndrome) — show a candidate with rare gifts. As a mother and wife, she seems to come alive — but then, male politicians don’t carry these duties and have more time to become policy wonks and to work out their political personas without having to check in on the drama of their pregnant teen-age daughter, which is what Palin had to face.

Palin’s faith comes across, as well — but mostly as the kind of backwoods mindlessness that Obama scorned in his “guns and religion” quote of 2008, and is mostly the cause of a lot of eyerolling among the campaign insiders. And of course, her monumental cluelessness about  foreign policy and the workings of the Washington establishment are hammered home in scene after scene. Curiously, while Palin’s 2008 obvious shortcomings scare the political pants off her Republican handlers, who realize that if McCain at 72 were to be elected and die in office, a moose hunting hockey mom would be president, McCain himself is portrayed as unruffled by his running mate, even appreciative of her skills at connecting with people and her star power.

And that’s pretty much the Palin story, isn’t it? Would she have become the target of so much scorn if she wasn’t an attractive woman with a reality-show family and a Pentecostal faith in God’s actively in her life? Or is it all about her almost willful inability to describe what the Federal Reserve does or why this country is in Afghanistan behind all the news stories, books and now this docudrama? Palin and her team put out their own, much less artful, account of her career late last year, called “The Undefeated,” which, to be charitable,  is a whitewashed account of her political rise (and is based on her book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”)

And, like I said, this story is still being written.

You the viewer can decide.

 

 

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Christianity dying in Mideast/God is Dead theologian … dead

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Don Miller

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, writing Friday in the Wall Street Journal, said that contrary to popular thinking, Christianity is not disappearing from the Israeli portion of the Holy Land, but outside his country, in Muslim-governed lands.

In the article, “Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians,” Michael Oren writes, “As 800,000 Jews were once expelled from Arab countries, so are Christians being forced from lands they’ve inhabited for centuries. The only place in the Middle East where Christians aren’t endangered but flourishing is Israel. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, its Christian communities (including Russian and Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Armenians and Protestants) have expanded more than 1,000 percent.”

The ambassador says that on the West Bank (of the Jordan River), where Christians until recent years were 15 percent of the population, persecution has since caused these numbers to shrink to 2 percent.

“Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, half the Christian community has fled, He writes. “Christmas decorations and public displays of crucifixes are forbidden. In a December 2010 broadcast, Hamas officials exhorted Muslims to slaughter their Christian neighbors.” Oren says that : “… in contrast to elsewhere in the Middle East where hatred of Christians is ignored or encouraged, Israel remains committed to its Declaration of Independence pledge to ‘ensure the complete equality of all its citizens irrespective of religion.’ ”

***

The Holy Land, of course, is where the great faiths came alive, much like the famous dry bones found in the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). But in the most Christian (nominally) nation in the world, the United States, God was pronounced dead, or at least dying, back in the 1960s, most famously on the April 8, 1966, cover of Time magazine (pictured above), which asked the question that had been whispered for the past couple of centuries in the modern Western world: “Is God Dead?”

William Hamilton, the retired theologian who became forever controversial for making that very statement — “God is dead” — himself died Feb. 29 in Portland, Ore. at age 87.

Hamilton, one of the key figures in what was then termed “radical theology,” received death threats after the Time story appeared, and he lost his endowed chair as a professor of theology at divinity school in 1967. He went on to teach religion at New College in Sarasota, Fla., and then joined the faculty at Portland State University in 1970. He taught classes in religion, literary criticism and death and dying for the next 14 years.

In an interview in 2007, Hamilton, who saw himself as a Christian who didn’t go to church and didn’t believe in an active God, said he often spoke before Christians who were struggling with the very questions he gave voice to: That the image of God as all-knowing and all-powerful couldn’t be reconciled with human suffering, especially after the Holocaust.

“I wrote out my two choices: ‘God is not behind such radical evil, therefore he cannot be what we have traditionally meant by God’ or ‘God is behind everything, including the death camps -and therefore he is a killer,’” said Hamilton in the profile published in the Oregonian newspaper.

“The death of God is a metaphor,” he said. “We needed to redefine Christianity as a possibility without the presence of God.”

The idea of God having left humanity behind, and leaving people to wander and suffer, is one that the Bible deals with throughout its pages, from the time of the Exodus from Egypt, and the wandering for 40 years until crossing the Jordan into Canaan  – to the Babylonian captivity around 550 years before the time of Jesus of Nazareth, to Jesus’s death on the cross, which scattered his despairing disciples.

Human evil was then, is now, a massive intrusion on the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus termed it. Professor Hamilton, of course, knew all this, seeing through the dim mirror darkly.

I remember reading an interview during the “God is dead” era with Bob Dylan, who said he had seen the magazine cover, and then observed, “And I mean, that was—would you think that was a responsible thing to do? . . . You know I think the country’s gone downhill since that day.” Not letting the cover statement go, on another occasion, in a press conference, Dylan said, “I wonder what God thought about that?”

 

 

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Cell phone fines save drivers’ lives

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Don Miller

Here’s some good news about our state government: A 2008 law approved in the Legislature is doing just what the author intended. It’s saving lives.

We’re talking, hands-free of course, about the cell phone law sponsored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto (a portion of Simitian’s Senate district is in Santa Cruz County).

A new study by UC Berkeley released this week shows that deaths among drivers using hand-held phones dropped 47 percent in the two years after the law took effect in July 2008.

In the two years leading up to the law, 100 drivers died while using a hand-held cell phone — but the number of deaths dropped to 53 in the next two years, according to the university’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center found. You need only keep your eyes open while on the road — and we sincerely hope you do — to see what this law has wrought. Far fewer drivers are holding phones up to their ears as law enforcement helps by issuing tickets when drivers are spotted with one hand on a phone and another on the wheel. We all have horror stories about either collisions or near misses involving a driver talking on a cell phone. Some of these stories can involve … us. What seemed a universal scourge now has become the exception more than the norm. A driver barreling down the road holding up a cell phone is becoming  as publicly unacceptable as driving while drunk — almost as deadly and more readily recognizable.

The study, which relied on police-reported traffic crashes, also found that deaths caused by hands-free cellphone use — which is legal — also dropped by half. Traffic-safety experts say the ban on handheld cell phones may have helped, since even hands-free drivers have taken note of the dangers from any distracted driving.

No matter how you hold it, however, the ban has made a difference.

We hope carmakers take notice. The latest gee-whiz promotional distraction is the use of apps in vehicles — touch-screen dashboard displays allowing drivers to access the Internet. There’s talk about requiring the manufacturers to ensure these gadgets shut off automatically once a vehicle starts moving. Let’s hope it’s more than talk. Because too many people continue to break the handheld law. That’s why Simitian — one of the most effective legislators in California, but soon stepping down because of term limits — has reintroduced his bill raising the fines against yakking drivers and the incomprehensibly selfish motorists who insist on texting while behind the wheel.

The bill, SB 1310, would hike the base fine from $20 to $50 (the amount paid is far higher, about $160 with assorted fees, on average), assess a point against the driving record of a repeat offender and allow cops to pull over drivers they think are ignoring the law.

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed Simitian’s last attempt at toughening the law, saying the fine was already high enough to discourage people from dialing while driving. That was a mistake. This law has saved lives — and will save even more if the penalties bring more drivers to take it seriously.

This post will be the Sentinel Editorial for Friday, March 9, 2012

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Cirque du Soleil evolves out of creative rut

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Don Miller

If you thought  Cirque du Soleil was getting a bit derivative, think again. “Totem,” Cirque’s latest production to hit our area, renews the daring and the vision that made this whirlwind of gymnastics, acrobatics, theater and music so compelling for so long.

“Totem” tells a story, in a sense or senses, of humankind and beyond, taking an evolutionary stance that won’t really offend either creationists or atheists, while still keeping an edge.

From frogs to apes and cave men, to businessmen and beach bums, the Cirque cast takes a journey from the primal marsh that both dazzles and occasionally even inspires.

While Cirque productions often struggle with marrying the wizardry of the athletic performances and clowning with vague and sometimes new age-y plotting, “Totem” has a theme that, while not chronological or even logical, incorporates a myriad of traditions neither condescending or demeaning. From the beginning, when the “Crystal Man” descends from the big top, bringing life to the teeming stage underneath, to Native American incantations, to Darwinists and scientists conjuring up another creation story, to the acrobatic escapades of space travelers, the show suggests that mankind’s journey is both irresistible and ongoing.

Of course, Cirque being Cirque, the message is delivered through the thrills and near spills of 54 performers — and through the epic sets, costumes and humor.

Among the highlights: The mating dance on roller skates of two performers in Native American dress, Massimiliano Medini and Denise Garcia-Sorta, whose romantic and physical attraction takes place on a drumhead. Also wonderful: a troupe of Chinese unicyclists who toss and balance metal bowls on their heads; and a fixed-trapeze pairing, Louis-David Simoneau and Rosalie DuCharme, that evokes a first date, albeit one in mid-air.

“Totem” was written and directed by Robert Lepage, the creator of “Ka,” which received lukewarm reviews but has been a mainstay in Las Vegas. Sets were designed by Carl Fillion — most memorably the large oval “turtle” carapace that represents the earth, while also carrying the weight of the world, and the acrobats, on its shell. Also memorable is the reed-lined image “marsh,” a set piece that represents the organic world and provides a projection venue, displaying video shot around the world of everything from ocean waves to swimming sharks to boiling lava.

In recent years, as Cirque has grown into a global enterprise trying to take its once magical formula into themes as disparate as the theatrics of Michael Jackson and the music of the Beatles, the French-Canadian performance troupe seemed to have become a prisoner of the expectations born of its once stunning innovation and creativity.

This time, however, the creators, directors and performers have constructed a “Totem” that shows Cirque du Soleil  is still evolving.

***

Of the 54 performers in “Totem,” only one has any roots in Central and Northern California. Umi Miya is a gymnast who grew up in Japan and later taught the sport while living in San Mateo.

In an interview this week, Miya, who appears as an acrobatic frog in the show’s opening sequence, and later cavorts across stage dressed in a monkey suit, said he has been touring with the production for nearly two years.

Miya joined Cirque in 2009 after submitting a performance video to the company in hopes they’d hire him. He moved to Montreal and began practicing, and practicing, for the performance — a discipline he and the other performers continue to be immersed in. “Totem” opened in Montreal in April 2010.

For Miya, 30, who took up gymnastics at age 5, it’s both demanding and immensely rewarding — even though it’s a life on the road, living, rehearsing and performing as part of a huge and diverse cast and support staff, 120 people overall, from 24 nations.

“I never get bored, or tired of it,” Miya said. “Physically, sometimes I’m tired, but never of the show.”

Miya said the challenges are considerable, especially since he, like all the performers, worries about making a mistake in the demanding exercises and feats on stage. Plus, he had to learn a new craft — to be an actor, “to use body language” and to show “feeling and emotion.” Then there is the daily makeup, the wear and tear on the colorful costumes, which have to be lightweight and flexible for the gymnasts and acrobats, while resisting rips and tears. “Totem” travels with more than 1,000 costumes, washed every day, and accessories.

“Every scene is  an individual part of evolution,” Miya said. “In my scene we are focusing on the life brought from the Crystal Man. The basic idea comes from Native American history. But this is still entertainment — I want them to see a show.”

The performers, said Miya, feed off the audience: When the audience reacts in amazement of wild applause, “I feel that and I can get energy from them.”

He said he loves the Cirqu-s life, and has no plans to leave. Right now, he shares a small apartment in a South Bay complex with a Cirque technician. “I love traveling,” Miya said.

It’s a Cirque-directed life. Food, living arrangements, transportation, health checkups are provided — even school for those traveling with children.

“We just think about performing,” said Miya.

Cirque du Soleil

When: March 2-April 8

Where: Taylor Street Bridge, 176 Asbury Street., San Jose

Tickets: $38.50-$360.

For more information: Call 800-450-1480, www.cirquedusoleil.com/totem

This review also is being published in this week’s Santa Cruz Sentinel Guide.

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Boardwalk memories: Hey, hey Davy Jones and the Big (Giant) Dipper

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Don Miller

The death of Davy Jones yesterday at age 66 at his Florida home of a heart attack seemed to come as a shock to all who knew him — he’d performed only a few weeks ago. It also resurrected (which surely follows … for a Daydream Believer) Monkees’ lore. Davy Jones was a canny enough performer to know that his run as one of the Fab Four II would create the kind of Boomer nostalgia that knows no bounds, and pays any price.

Plenty has been written about the late ’60s made-for-TV band that dared to bite the hand of the zookeeper. But local Monkee maniacs remember how Davy brought his act to the stage right in front of his namesake locker — as part of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk’s Friday night music series. I remember going to see him there on  Aug. 8, 2003. While my recollection is of something a little labored and a bit saccharine, I also remember that the crowd loved the old Monkees’ songs and loved 5-foot-3 Davy Jones.

Speaking of celebrities and the Boardwalk, March 2nd is the 50th anniversary of one of sports’ greatest feats: basketball immortal Wilt Chamberlain’s Night of 100 points. What’s particularly poignant about this anniversary, besides the sad fact that Wilt was not immortal (he died in 1999 at the young age of 63), is that it happened with almost no media on hand. Hard to believe in our era of oversaturation, but on a night of almost unthinkable sporting accomplishment in a Hershey, PA gymn, there were no TV cameras on hand, and only one press photographer, who left after one quarter, not realizing history was being made. The only news photos that came from the night were taken by off-duty Associated Press photographer named Paul Vathis, who was there with his 10-year-old son to catch the game.  Realizing what was occurring, Vathis went out to his car to fetch his camera, and captured several action photos. After the game, witnessed by only 4,124 paying fans, he got the team publicist to have Wilt  pose for a shot holding a handmade sign reading “100.” A wonderful story this week in the Wall Street Journal sports section by Gary M. Pomerantz discusses Wilt’s accomplishment, the famous photo and the epilogue: When the great player died, the AP Paul Vathis photo below was displayed on the dais at the Dipper’s memorial service.

But I digress. About 18 months after Chamberlain’s 100-point night, his team, the Warriors,  were training at Cabrillo College for the upcoming season. The team had moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia after the 1961-62 season.  So in September 1963, Wilt took a ride on the Boardwalk — forever captured in the Boardwalk’s historic photo at the top of this blog of the Big Dipper triumphant on the Giant Dipper.

 

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Wave of foolishness in cutting tsunami outreach funding

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Don Miller

The Santa Cruz harbor was closed due to the surge from the tsunami  on  March 11, 2011./Karen T. Borchers/Mercury News

Almost one year ago, the catastrophic earthquake off Japan sent a tsunami barreling across that country’s coast, taking nearly 20,000 lives and setting off a potential nuclear disaster.

That same earthquake sent a surge across the Pacific Ocean, leading to a tsunami that hit the California coast, devastating the Santa Cruz harbor. At the time, the tsunami warning system — strengthened after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed at least 230,000 people — was hailed for how it alerted local authorities to the potential disaster heading our way.

In what seems to be an incredibly shortsighted proposal, however, the debt-struggling Obama administration has proposed sharply reducing the federal funding for the public outreach part of the program.

It’s shortsighted not just because the savings — $4.6 million — are infinitesimal in the overall federal budget, and not because a tsunami warning system protects only a small number of Americans in the Pacific islands and living right on the West Coast.

It’s just that unlike earthquakes, where warning systems are ineffective, tsunamis, once generated, can be predictable.

Take what happened on March 11, 2011.

The warning system began delivering information minutes after the earthquake occurred off Japan, a nation that has its own tsunami warning system. Every minute matters when a tsunami is created, since they can move at speeds up to 600 mph across the ocean. The quake-triggered tsunami was detected by a series of floating buoys and monitoring stations in the Pacific Ocean, which relayed information about the size of the surge to scientists. The $400,000 buoys — the number was increased to 39 from six after the 2004 disaster — are tethered to the ocean floor.

The federal government, which created the buoy warning system in 1996, funds two tsunami warning centers — one in Hawaii and one in Alaska — to get the information out to areas where a tsunami might hit.

Once alerted, local emergency management officials activate their own emergency communications systems and start evacuating low-lying areas.Overall, the combined tsunami-warning systems seemed to work pretty well last year. Three minutes after the huge 9.0-magnitude quake hit, a major tsunami warning was issued for the Japanese coast and within nine minutes of the quake, warnings or watches had been issued for Hawaii and other Pacific islands.

The Alaska-based tsunami warning center then coordinated and issued warnings for mainland United States and Canada, predicting when waves would hit and how big they would be when they came ashore.

Santa Cruz officials got their alert about eight hours before the tsunami hit. Although the warning  couldn’t prevent $17 million in damages to the harbor and boats, it came with plenty of time to alert and evacuate local residents. Tragically, in Japan, the warnings, quick as they were, were not fast enough, since the waves hit just 10 minutes after the quake, so quickly that many people were unable to flee in time and were swept to their deaths.

But it doesn’t take long to forget, it seems. Republicans proposed a similar cut in a budget plan passed by the House in February 2011. But the plan went nowhere after the Japanese tsunamis.

Funding for the buoys is due to run out Oct. 1, with no new legislation yet proposed to renew it. Without sufficient funding, maintenance will suffer — currently, 10 buoys are inoperable.

The Obama administration proposal would cut money for things like computer research tsunami risk maps, emergency drills and warning signs — all vital toward preparing for the next tsunami. This cut should be rescinded immediately.

People’s memories are short. Apparently, so is the government’s.

This post is the Santa Cruz Sentinel Editorial for February 29, 2012

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