Last evening Ed, my spouse, was walking up the trail that starts at the end of Park St. in Montara - he looked towards a noise in the bushes and saw a very long, large, tawny animal fluidly move away in a considered manner - quickly, but not in a startled fashion.  I won’t say it was a mountain lion - but I can say it was too big for a bob cat; to smooth for a deer or a dog.  I will say I will probably get some pepper spray to carry on future hikes up remote trails

In the year 2050, when earthquakes and famines are raging, five brave children flee from the artificially enhanced Censoids who want to take over the world.

Will nano-technology be misused to create a new worldwide dictatorship?  Ingenuity, humor, song and story triumph in this Sci-Fi musical’s West Coast Premiere. 
 
This is the first offering of the new Youth Summer Class, part of the expanding education program of Coastal Theatre Conservatory, founded and directed by Coastal Rep Artistic Director Michael Lederman.  The class features drama, taught by Gail Erwin, music, taught by Amy Cowan, and choreography, taught by Michelle McDonald. 

There will be three free public performances on Tuesday, August 4, Wednesday, August 5, and Thursday, August 6 at 7 P. M. at Coastal Repertory Theatre, 1167 Main Street, Half Moon Bay.  No tickets will be sold.  Seating is open.   

SamTrans proposes to cut Coastside bus service, public meeting Thurs, Aug 6

SamTrans is proposing to eliminate or reduce Route 17, the only bus route on the Coastside. There will be a meeting to discuss this and other cuts on Thursday, Aug 6 at 6pm, at Cunha Intermediate School in Half Moon Bay.

Faced with a budget deficit of $28.4 million, SamTrans will hold four community meetings to receive public comments about service reductions and fare increases following request from its board to cut costs by 15 percent. Route 17 is on a list of routes under consideration for "elimination, modification or reduction". Routes that affect the Coastside on the list:

Express Service
Route CX – Pacifica to Colma BART
Route DX – Pacifica to San Francisco

Coastside
Route 14 -  Linda Mar, Oddstad Park, Casa Pacific
Route 17 - Moss Beach (Seton Medical Center Coastside), El Granada, Half Moon Bay (Post Office, Downtown/City Hall, Moon Ridge Child Care Center)

On Saturday August 1st, The Visionary Edge will screen the second film in the Global Oneness Project series entitled Global Oneness: An Invitation to Re-Imagine Your Relationship to the Worl? The event will be co-hosted by and presented at the Community United Methodist Church in Half  Moon Bay.   

Part One of this film series explored the unexamined assumptions that form the very basis of our civilization and asked the questions  "What if the world embodied out highest potential?  What would it look like?"  The Global Oneness Project explores how the radically simple notion of interconnectedness can be lived in our increasingly complex world. 

In this second installment The Global Oneness Project filmmaker Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee travels around  the globe to show us how people in different cultures are expressing and living the concept of oneness, from Australia to Africa, Ecuador, India, Tibet, the United States and more.   

Youth worker Nelsa Libertad Curbelo Cora describes the inspiration behind Barrio de Paz (Peace Town), a non-violent youth movement in Guayaquil, Ecuador. It brings together street gangs to provide services to the struggling community. Gang members band together out of a need for unity, structure, and love when their social fabric has been torn apart. Mirroring the society that marginalizes them, gangs use this unity for domination and aggression. Nelsa shows how this instinct toward oneness can be transformed into a power of service, life, and love. 

The governor signed a budget today that takes an additional $6 million out of the state parks budget and eliminates Williamson Act funds to give landowners tax breaks for keeping their land as open space, reports the Sacramento Bee. The Bee says that as many as 100 of the state’s 279 parks could be closed in October.

To eliminate the $156 million deficit and create the $500 million reserve, Schwarzenegger made $489 million in additional cuts, borrowed $50 million from one of the state’s special funds and found about $117 million in savings from money not spent in the last fiscal year.

The biggest single cut was $80 million in funds allocated to counties to finance programs that investigate and remediate cases of child abuse and neglect. Administration officials said the program had been spared in earlier rounds of budget cuts.

"The situation has just gotten to the point we can’t exempt them anymore," said Mike Genest, Schwarzenegger’s finance director.

Other cuts include:

• $60.6 million from funds used to pay for Medi-Cal eligibility workers at the county level. Aid to recipients was not cut, but they will likely have to wait longer for service.

• $50 million from the Healthy Families Program, a 12-year-old program that provides low-cost medical insurance to low-income families that don’t qualify for Medi-Cal. New enrollments were frozen two weeks ago due to budget cuts; officials say that unless other funding is found, some families now on the program will be disenrolled.

• $52.1 million from the Office of AIDS Prevention and Treatment. Officials said the cut means the elimination of all services except providing drug assistance and monitoring the number of cases.

• $27.8 million from the Williamson Act program, which provides money to counties that give tax breaks to landowners who keep their land as open space. Because the governor couldn’t unilaterally abolish the program, he cut the budget to a token $1,000.

• $6.2 million from state parks. Coupled with earlier cuts, the added reduction could mean as many as 100 of the state’s 279 parks could close in October. But officials cautioned that local governments with nearby parks, or public-private partnerships, might save some parks.

Frank Long is the former owner of Oasis Natural Foods on Main Street in Half Moon Bay

Well, ..... here we are.

First, we were told that our residents weren’t shopping Downtown because they were "fickle"; we couldn’t rely on them and that they had no loyalties to shopping locally because they were too busy seeking better deals over the hill .... and that it was more convenient for them to shop over there because they all worked over there anyway. Well, that’s what we we were told.

We were told that people weren’t shopping Downtown because, somehow, they didn’t know where Downtown was and that they were driving right past it because we lacked sufficient signage to remind them.

Then, we were told that the median strips weren’t attractive enough to encourage people to buy here. (Apparently, Half Moon Bay was looking too "mundane".) I don’t recall the final figure, but that boondoggle was headed for a $144,000 price tag.

And now, with all this immediacy over including the fiberoptic tree lighting system in with the "stimulus package", the one thing that is REALLY missing here is, not stimulating the residents to shop locally, but stimulating the Chamber of Commerce, its emasculated puppet, the Downtown Business Association, and the City Council to wake up and realize just how many residents on the Coastside are flat out fed up with these idiots continually falling asleep at the wheel. Still, they chase the tourist dollar as a means to fiscal viability. And by the way, the actual cost for the fiberoptic lighting, itself, is ANOTHER expense we’ve yet to incur. The construction crew was only putting in the conduit for it. What is for sure is that, at the rate these two groups are taking everyone, HMB will be the snazziest looking ghost town on the West Coast.

Rather than embrace the Coastside’s one topological constraint, the Santa Cruz Mountain chain, as a gift in keeping the Coastside insulated, this management seems hell bent on paving over every spot with a tree still standing; the idea being that if one of them doesn’t do it, someone else will, and, well, it’s all about money. And then they wonder how their behavior could have ever become an influence in the level of apathy here. Again, blame it on the residents.

Please join our upcoming Princeton Coastal Faire, if you are interested in displaying and selling your art, and anything vintage, including clothing and handbags. We are looking for any new, handcrafted, recycled jewelry, or furniture; painted, new and old. Also will take recycled items from retail stores and shops, and/or healing remedies.

Saturday, August 29, 2009, 10am to 4pm
The American Legion
470 Capistrano Road
Princeton-By-The-Sea 

Please [email protected] for an application. Please also include in your response what you intend to sell, and a photo, or several photos of your merchandise and/or your website if you have one. 

Community event with live music performances, food to purchase, and a full bar, outdoor seating cafe style, and a location just step from the ocean, in an area surrounded by restaurants, hotels, boats and tourists. Cost for a 10X10 space is $125.00. You supply your own table (s), chairs and canopy, or you can rent a vendor booth from the American Legion for $110.00. A limited amount of tables are also available to rent.  

Montara State Beach is one of the state parks with the lowest attendance in the Bay Area. This will be one of the factors in determining which parks are closed, reports the County Times.

The California Department of Parks and Recreation is not releasing a new list of sites that may be on the chopping block to avoid pointless speculation and panic among parks lovers, said spokesman Roy Stearns. The $9 million in cuts — $8 million to the department’s operating budget — will likely translate into 30 to 50 park closures across the state.

Had Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s original proposal to cut $70 million not been averted by drawing on new funding sources at the last minute, 220 of 279 state parks would have been closed and hundreds of parks employees laid off. ...

Any remaining park closures will be based at least partly on attendance as a major criterion, Stearns said. Bay Area parks with comparatively poor attendance include Portola Redwoods State Park and Montara State Beach in San Mateo County, Eastshore State Park in Berkeley, Angel Island State Park in Marin, and Henry W. Coe State Park in Morgan Hill.

This story is based on a report of state park attendance acquired by Julia Scott at the County Times. Here are the numbers for Coastside parks:

Although the final numbers aren’t known, $62 million of the $70 million taken from the state parks budget could be restored when the budget bill is finally passed, reports Capitol Weekly.

This means that there some state parks will close, perhaps one out of every five or six parks.

That leaves California’s state parks to handle a budget gap of $8 million.

This means that about 30 to 50 of California’s 279 state parks may have to close. The question now is which ones? That list is being put together. ...

Along with the proposed park closures, parks that do remain open will have to undergo significant management steps to save money. Park employees are already furloughed three Fridays out of the month, hours and days of operations will need to be shortened, and visiting fees will most likely increase. ...

In the unlikely event that California is completely unable to keep its parks open, some parks like San Francisco’s Angel Island, Point Sur State Historic Park and Fort Ord Dunes, could be taken back as federal land. ...

"If the land is reverted, it would revert to federal land reserves for re-disposal," said Siegenthaler, "and it would not necessarily remain a park."

For now, State Parks is working closely with the National Parks Service to make sure that land reversion does not happen.

 18 piece big band led by Fred Berry, professional trumpet player and Director of the Jazz Ensemble at Stanford University. Fred has performed or recorded with such artists as Count Basie, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Lou Rawls, Max Roach, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Nancy Wilson, Lena Horne, Billy Eckstine, Steve Allen, Bobby Hutcherson, and Louis Bellson
 
Baritone Jamie Davis, a member of the Count Basie Orchestra, exhibits the influence of the late greats Joe Williams and Lou Rawls, in his own highly personal style.
 
Reservations:  [email protected]
Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society
Douglas Beach House on Miramar Beach
307 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA