This Sunday will be the Third Annual Mariachi Festival at Cabrillo College, & will feature 6 mariachi bands, 4 of which are youth bands, as well as one class & Adam's band, Mariachi Libertad; youth bands include UC Santa Cruz; Adam has been in the area 8 years, with a day job dealing with environmental issues...he's a professional violinist, playing with the Santa Cruz Symphony as well as Chamber Music; along the way he fell in love with mariachi music; Adam's mother is Mexican, from Oaxaca, & his dad is Danish...his grandfather came here as part of the Bracero program; with his day job & musical pursuits, why is he teaching? People asked him to, and there's a resurgence in mariachi music...plus, students are enthusiastic & want to learn - making it rewarding; the mariachi class started 2 1/2 years ago, & Adam is the 2nd teacher; their fall concert sold out; Jalisco is the birthplace of mariachi; the song "Solamente Una Vez" (If Only One Time) is a beautiful ballad (Javier Vargas on vocal) performed by Mariachi Libertad de Watsonville at the 1st Cabrillo College Mariachi Festival 2024.

An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan" Orange, & "DJ Spark Plug", "DJ Spark Plug" (Dylan Estevez) & Maury-the-Mentee (Maury Burnett-Cavotto) airing Friday mornings on KZSC Santa Cruz, California. 2026 is Bushwhacker's 37th year on the air! Thanks for listening!

To support KZSC (& these podcasts), please go to KZSC.FM and click on the "Donate to KZSC" button. Thanks!

The MAH is now in its 30th year, and recently celebrated with their Red Ball Gala, which raised over $130,000 for the MAH (although it was pouring, so they had to pivot & move 200 people indoors, where DJ Spooky from New York entertained them)! the MAH oversees 3 sites, the main museum in downtown Santa Cruz, the Evergreen Cemetary (in Harvey West Park), & the Davenport Jail, where a resident artist, Joshua Moreno, is doing a year-long study in light (you can visit the 2nd Saturday of every month); the origin story is that back in the 90s there was a history museum in town, & an art museum, but that funding became harder after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, so that funding was the impetus to merge...with successful crowd source funding (20 years before GoFundMe?) they succeeded!! the annual budget is $1.5 million, with 7 full time employees, and 7 part-time; Ginger spends 95% of her time fundraising from individual donors, grants, (no more federal funding), donor-advised funds, Community Foundation of Santa Cruz, the Hewlitt Foundation & the Packard Foundation; the main MAH museum has 3 floors & a combination of exhibits from the permanent collection as well as rotating exhibts, a sculpture garden, and galleries; there's a new installation of light that will be there a year - come some night to see it; "Who picks the exhibits?" "Great question!!" - the MAH is unique in that exhibits are co-created with community input; on the last Sunday of every month there's a poetry workshop at the Everygreen Cemetary 1-3pm; Ginger came to Santa Cruz year and a half ago, lured by the job.

An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan" Orange, & "DJ Spark Plug", "DJ Spark Plug" (Dylan Estevez) & Maury-the-Mentee (Maury Burnett-Cavotto) airing Friday mornings on KZSC Santa Cruz, California. 2026 is Bushwhacker's 37th year on the air! Thanks for listening!

To support KZSC (& these podcasts), please go to KZSC.FM and click on the "Donate to KZSC" button. Thanks!

Grey Bears recently secured a larger location, acquiring a warehouse (& 2.5 acres) that was previously owned by Palace Arts. which was sold to a Bay Area company (Triple A), but with the local store being managed by a son of the original owner; Grey Bears was built around seniors & healthy food, started in 1973 by UCSC student Kristina Maillard and her boyfriend, Gary Denny; they saw a need to nourish seniors, & food left to rot in local farm fields - they decided to gather their friends, gather the food, & host the first harvest festival; Grey Bears grew to have 3 pillars: 1) healthy food either picked up by, or delivered to, 4,000 seniors, 2) free food available to be picked out & taken from the Grey Bears on site market, and 3) free meals where seinors can gather & socialize with the Monday-Friday Grey Bears lunch; have any other towns in ag country imitated Grey Bears? "Great question!" - the answer is no, but with California law SB 1383 encouraging grocers & farms to share what would otherwise go to waste, maybe we'll see more Grey Bears like activities; their current capital campaign is 81% there, raising money to outfit the new warehouse & create a more dignified shopping experience; the budget is just under $4 million, with 34 employees (24 full time) & 836 volunteers - they have so many volunteers they have a weekly orientation! They still do recycling at their Chanticleer Ave. location, but the county took back the recycling centers at the landfill sites in December; the majority of their budget comes from thrift store sales, plus recycling (the "waste not, want not" mantra is baked into the Grey Bears DNA!); their website is GreyBears.org; Santa Cruz County has the fastest growing senior population in California!

An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan" Orange, & "DJ Spark Plug", "DJ Spark Plug" (Dylan Estevez) & Maury-the-Mentee (Maury Burnett-Cavotto) airing Friday mornings on KZSC Santa Cruz, California. 2026 is Bushwhacker's 37th year on the air! Thanks for listening!

To support KZSC (& these podcasts), please go to KZSC.FM and click on the "Donate to KZSC" button. Thanks!

Audio interview with Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon from Israel about their new book The Future is Peace on "Transformation Highway" with host John Malkin on KZSC 88.1 FM / kzsc. org. Their local book event is at Temple Beth El in Aptos on Monday, April 20, 7:00PM. The book event is co-sponsored by Bookshop Santa Cruz and the Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz and will feature a Q&A moderated by Douglas Abrams.
Tickets: bookshopsantacruz.com/future-is-peace

Aziz's older brother, Tayseer, died in 1990 at the age of 19 after sustaining internal injuries due to torture in an Israeli prison, where he was held on suspicion of throwing rocks. Maoz's parents were killed by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023. Aziz and Maoz are co-CEO's of InterAct International, a nonprofit dedicated to Middle East peace.

An edited version of the interview is available online and in print in the April 16, 2026 issue of the Santa Cruz Good Times.

Calling in from Capitola, but hittting the road in an hour to tour in support of new album, "Whirligig", a 6 song EP & 10" vinyl project coming out May 1st (officially), but advance copies available for purchase at shows - Santa Cruz show coming 2 weeks from tomorrow; songs on "Whirligig" include tunes about Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay, plus a song, "Gil Carter" about the longest home run ever hit in baseball (Carolyn is a big fan of baseball history) hit on August 11, 1959, in a farm league game in Carlsbad, New Mexico, where the home run knocked a peach out of a tree that someone witnessed, so they know the home run was either 650', or 733'!!! Bushwhackers mention Chuck Brodsky, who has at least 2 CDs with all baseball songs that are in rotation at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York; the new CD was recorded in Portald, Oregon by Eric Skye; "Telephone Tune" with references that our grandchildren might not get (land line telephone with rotary dial & a chord; letters in the mail); Carolyn, "Are you my mommy or are you A.I.?"'; the Money Question ("are you able to support yourself with your music, & if so, how?"): "Yes!! Wea re very fortunate to have a guitar repair shop in Soquel, The House of Twang, which they can shutter temporarily when they tour; "Dollars Medley" is a set of 3 songs inspired by the Clint Eastwood triology directed by Sergio Leone with Ennio Morricone's iconic scores - "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "For a Few Dollars More", & "A Fistful of Dollars" - that Gerard Egan (the other half of Poi Rogers) wrote into a whistle-infused song on their first album.

An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan" & "DJ Spark Plug", airing Friday mornings on KZSC Santa Cruz, California. 2026 is Bushwhacker's 37th year on the air! Thanks for listening!

Started in 2015 with a grant to improve the scientific literacty of lay people about our watershed & its issues, inspired by former Santa Cruz city water director Rosemary Menard - & they've held the State of the San Lorenzo River Symposium almost every year since; our California State Senator John Laird will deliver the keynote; the Symposium is open to the public; Laurie is Executive Director of the Coastal Watershed Council, a local non-profit with a mission to preserve & protect watersheds - their budget is $600,000 - 700,000 per year, with 6 full time employees & 1 part-time...they get their funding from local & state as well as community support; deep dive into the agenda, with diversions to invasive species (esp. the shothole borer, which was first seen in Zayante Cree a year ago); "RCIS" = Regional Conservation Investment Strategy", which is used by the "RTC" = Regional Transportation Commission to guide investment & action in the watershed; "anadromous" = spawn in fresh water, & adult in ocean (e.g.: Steelhead, Coho Salmon), "HCP" = Habitat Conservation Plan = city permit to for handling water in the midst of endangered species, signed last year by the City Manager (after 25 years of work!); the San Lorenzo River habitat is the best it's been in 100 years, &, with regional planning, cities & communities are supporting each other better (but the challenge is that the Santa Cruz Mountains has the highest density of septic tanks west of the Mississippi!); the Symposium is a community conservation where, as Laurie put it, "It's amazing how many people are working on issues, & with a community conversation...about conservation!"

An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan" & "DJ Spark Plug", airing Friday mornings on KZSC Santa Cruz, California. 2026 is Bushwhacker's 37th year on the air! Thanks for listening!

Quoting Bushwhacker's interviewee Izzi (now Dio) aka "Azure iivy", whom "Dangerous Dan" & "Kaos" interviewed 3 years ago, "Trans is who you are. Drag is what you do!" Tomorrow the Santa Cruz Burlesque & Drag Show celebrates 15 years, & Cyanide Cyn started it & has run it the entire time; Cyn had just moved here and loved the art & entertainment scene, but there wasn't as much live entertainment as wished for, & there weren't any burlesque or drag shows; the Santa Cruz Derby Girls asked Cyn to put together a Burlesque & Drag show, and the first one at the 1000-person main room at The Catalyst was packed; they moved to monthly shows in the Catalyst Atrium, & later moved to the Kuumbwa, now bi-monthly; Cyn is re-purposing a costume from 13 years ago, adding even more rhinestones, but it's not done yet; their sound person, Tommy Powell-Demeuth, has been with them since the beginning (with a little break for serious medical issues) - "Solid!" There are 8 Sin Sisters - Cyn books 7 Drag Queens per show, and each does 2 acts, 1 in each set - Cyn also books from out of town, & always books who they want on stage; when you come to a Burlesque & Drag show, "Prepare to be amazed! And be a little scared!"

An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan" & "DJ Spark Plug", airing Friday mornings on KZSC Santa Cruz, California. 2026 is Bushwhacker's 37th year on the air! Thanks for listening!

Hailing from Aromas, on the other side of the Pajaro River in far north Monterey County; Chris was born & raised in Aromas - Richard was born & raised in Watsonville; Richard retired as a farm advisor, having gone to school at U.C. Davis in ag...now U.C. Santa Cruz has an Ag & Natural Resources Department! Both are songwriters, but separate, with different styles; played together in a 5-piece band for 5 years; the song "Fireworks Stand" is for his wife, Michelle, whom he met at Chico State after sitting next to her at a Freshman gathering, rifling through her purse, and seeing a picture of a girl he knew, so she must not have been from far from where he went to high school - Michelle later worked at a Fireworks stand in San Juan Batista, & when Chris asked how her day was, she said, "It was hot!" - Chris replied, without skipping a beat, that it must've been with her in the stand! Richard song, "All That I Need". The "Money Question"? A: Absolutely not! Chris' day job is a home inspector; San Juan Batista, where Dayan Kai, who Chris went to junior high school with, hails from. Song: "Down Like That". No website, no CDs....yet.

An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan" & "DJ Spark Plug", airing Friday mornings on KZSC Santa Cruz, California.