{"id":91,"date":"2005-02-24T16:11:28","date_gmt":"2005-02-24T21:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lee.org\/blog\/archives\/2005\/02\/24\/writing-from-santa-cruz\/"},"modified":"2005-02-24T16:14:39","modified_gmt":"2005-02-24T21:14:39","slug":"writing-from-santa-cruz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2005\/02\/24\/writing-from-santa-cruz\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing from Santa Cruz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is just a little ping to say that I&#8217;m doing well. I&#8217;ve visited Berkely and Oakland with S.H. Very good vibe. She asked me why I was going to Grass Valley. &#8220;Because 3 friends have told me that it&#8217;s a place to check out if I want that &#8220;hippier&#8221; feel.&#8221;  She wasn&#8217;t sure but doubted that ascertion so we walked into a bookstore and I had to pick up 4 CA travel guides before I found even a mention of Grass Valley. And that was more of a blurb than a listing. Aparently, Grass Valley&#8217;s claim to fame is some woman who (if I remember correctly from Fodor&#8217;s guide) entertained the gold miners in 1850 with her Spider Dance. She wasn&#8217;t a particularly good dancer, but she was very well known. Fodors listed 2 places to eat and one place to visit. At that, S.H. and I simultaneously, in harmony, said, &#8220;What the hell were they thinking?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m in Santa Cruz right now and I keep reading in the papers how the whole area gets wiped off the map every couple decades&#8230; and they&#8217;re pretty much due for another disaster soon.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.metroactive.com\/papers\/cruz\/02.23.05\/rebuilding-0508.html\"><br \/>\nMetroSantaCruz, Feb 23rd, 2005<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nNaturally, because the odds are against us. The sexy strip of land we call downtown is part of the natural floodplain of the San Lorenzo River&#8211;witness that this is the 50th anniversary of the 1955 flood that devastated downtown. The soil here is subject to liquefaction in an earthquake, and if there ever was a major tsunami on the West Coast (soothing experts say it&#8217;s is extremely unlikely), well, the downtown is right in the tsunami run-up area. If we were golfers, we&#8217;d call the spot where downtown Santa Cruz landed a bad lie.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I keep looking over my shoulder for the locusts,&#8221; says John Lisher, owner of Artisan&#8217;s Gallery. Lisher was one of the many merchants who owned businesses on Pacific Avenue when the Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed the downtown on Oct. 17, 1989.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtweekly.com\/gtweekly\/www\/arts\/story.2005-02-16.9886779643\">Good Times weekly<\/a> (speaking about Santa Cruz&#8230;) <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8230;That\u2019s the typical California cycle \u2013 flood, drought, wildfire, and flood with landslides&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s very pretty here, but doesn&#8217;t have the peppy vibe I&#8217;m looking for.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m liking Berkeley and Oakland.<\/p>\n<p>More later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is just a little ping to say that I&#8217;m doing well. I&#8217;ve visited Berkely and Oakland with S.H. Very good vibe. She asked me why I was going to Grass Valley. &#8220;Because 3 friends have told me that it&#8217;s a place to check out if I want that &#8220;hippier&#8221; feel.&#8221; She wasn&#8217;t sure but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}