Wallace Baine

Recommendations for things to do around Santa Cruz County on New Year's Eve and a final playlist from Wallace Baine highlight his last newsletter before heading off into retirement.

Two local churches – Holy Trinity of Divine Church and the Rising Phoenix Entheogenic Temple – now make it easy to become a member and “buy” a wide assortment of raw mushrooms, gummies, chocolates and capsules. Together, they make a Santa Cruz a national leader in envisioning what psychedelic legality might look like.

Margaret and Roya Ghodsi, a mother-daughter duo from Capitola, are emblematic of a growing number of local residents not active in politics before 2025 who began to participate in protests after Donald Trump's second inauguration. They were part of the local chapter of the national organization Indivisible who were instrumental in organizing the "Hands Off" and "No Kings" rallies.

Santa Cruz County lost a number of prominent people in 2025, including activists, journalists, artists and academics.

You made it through a harrowing 2025 and a half-decade of challenge. Now, put aside your fears of catastrophic climate change, the collapse of American democracy, and AI data centers stretching from sea to shining sea — for just a moment — and plan some fun in the year ahead.

With seats up for grabs on all of Santa Cruz County's city councils, the county board of supervisors, the California Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives, plus a new governor to be elected and statewide ballot measures, 2026 figures to be another active election cycle.

Like many in her generation, Paula Marcus came to Santa Cruz County almost a half-century ago and found it fit her values. Over her impactful career, Temple Bethel El in Aptos has grown from 100 to 600 families, and Marcus has led many interfaith efforts in the county. She plans to continue those, and looks to travel to places familiar and new.

Ripple Effect, a new, creative arts festival covering the entire county, officially launches on Thursday. It will feature a wide range of activities involving visual and performing arts, film, photography, and much more.

In his provocative new book, “Founding Daughter,” novelist and longtime Santa Cruz journalist Wallace Baine imagines a different Founders story for America — one shaped by a brilliant Black teenage girl in Revolution-era Philadelphia. The book came out in April and is, Baine writes, his way of coming to terms with the soaring prose Jefferson penned about equality and the bitter reality that he owned slaves. Here, Baine discusses who gets remembered, who gets erased and whether America’s 250-year-old ideals can survive their flawed origins.

Under the leadership of new executive director Dennis Bartok, Santa Cruz’s long-standing arts nonprofit The 418 Project is undergoing a "rebirth" by expanding its traditional dance focus into adventurous, self-produced programming.