Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 1

Aptos beats Watsonville in SCCAL football Sports, B1 Santa Cruz County Saturday, Nov. 11, 1995 SCI 29066 090696 01 8601 BAY MlCROFILMt INC. 1115 ARGUES AVE SUNNYVALE? CA 94086 Serving the community since 1856 minfiiiiliilii minij CdbiriiDIko) IMI ansae FesftowaiD no ME curft writ oiF A budget Mum patrol 1 a Officials fear loss of grant may start trend By ROBIN MUSITELLI Sentinel staff writer APTOS A new sound came from Washington Friday the budget blues muting the symphonies of the Cabrillo Music Festival. Festival directors said they learned that the 33-year old festival, which enjoys a national reputation as a cutting-edge showcase for contemporary composers, has lost its entire National Endowment of the Arts grant due to federal budget cutbacks. They warned that the festival's funding loss may only be the first of an avalanche of cuts to local artists as the impacts of NEA budget tightening filter from Congress to Santa Cruz County.

"This is where we find out what Republican policies mean in terms of support of art and culture," said Tom Fredericks, the festival's executive director. "We're not talking about fringe artists or performance artists who deliberately push people's tolerance to the edge. We're talking about symphonies who do very mainstream work," said Fredericks. "They've cut off funds to a contemporary music festival that champions the works of contemporary American composers and nothing else," he said. "It leaves, me shaky." The grant eliminations are in response to congressional reductions of the NEA's budget from $162 million to $99.5 million.

The NEA's $13,700 grant to Cabrillo Music Festival represents about 5 percent of the festival's budget. The impact may swell, however, when funding cutbacks to the California Arts Council take effect. The Arts Council grant from the NEA will be reduced by about 20 percent, according to Ellen Primack of the Cabrillo Music Festival. The council gives the Cabrillo Music Festival $5,000. A portion or all of that money may disappear, said Primack.

The same state council also funds the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. "It's like a food chain, and you're cutting off an important source," said Fredericks. How the cuts from the California Arts Council will be distributed hasn't been decided, Primack said. Nevertheless, Cabrillo's funding loss was bad news to Tim Jackson, director of the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, which has received NEA grants since 1976. Jackson applied for $10,000 this year and, as of Friday, had not heard whether it would be forthcoming.

"I don't think that bodes well for any of us if they cut the Cabrillo Music Festival," said Jackson. Primack said losing the grant, although a seemingly small portion of the festival's $270,000 budget, would be painful. The festival's budget has already withered from $390,000 in 1991. Please see CABRILLO BACK page Bill LoveioySentinel Michele Garcia cruises through a Seacliff-area garden in search of a renegade mum plant. Dan CoyroSentinel Cory McDonald at home.

The man behind the mask How Mr. Twister changed his life By ROBIN MUSITELLI Sentinel staff writer CAPIT0LA Everyone loves a clown. When Mr. Twister walks down the street he moves like a double-jointed marionette children scramble for him. Strangers stuff money in his hand.

His goofy mug with bright blue eyebrows is in People Magazine this week. After all, everyone loves a clown. That's why an artistic, lonely kid named Cory McDonald who struggled to write and add in special education classes became Mr. Twister. Mr.

Twister, of course, is the clown that honked his nose at Santa Cruz's parking meter law by putting coins in other people's expired meters and became a nationwide symbol of a good Samaritan. Born in Santa Cruz, McDonald, 26, describes himself as a loner, who was a hyperactive and dyslexic child. He loved to read, and still does, but he couldn't string words together on paper. Writing a paragraph still takes him about 45 minutes. "Transferring it from my head to hand to paper is hard," he explains.

Numbers were much the same. If asked to add two numbers in his head, he was baffled. As a student at Natural Bridges Elementary School, McDonald said he was considered a discipline problem. He spent a lot of time alone in the library. He read, He drew, he sculpted.

He loved to dance. It was much the same at Santa Cruz High School, except he spent more time trying to stay out of fights. "I basically was pushed around. I ate lunch alone and only talked to a few people. I just wanted to be left alone." After a frustrating three years, McDonald left Santa Cruz High to live with his father in Alaska.

Around that time, he decided to change his life. "I decided this is not working. I was getting bigger, meaner, uglier and more unemployable. I got tired of people telling me how my life was. I said, 'You're and went about proving it." "I decided to become more positive." What could more positive than a Please see MR.

TWISTER BACK PAGE door to find any plants that were overlooked, inadvertently or otherwise. Sometimes people don't know what the plant looks like, and sometimes they haven't heard about the quarantine. A few people have refused to allow inspectors access to their yards. "We'll send them a nasty-gram," said local agricultural commissioner Dave Moeller, whose office is cooperating with state and federal agricultural officials. "Refusing to allow the inspection is a violation." Consequences could include civil penalties, or a fine; conceivably even criminal charges, he said.

Inspectors have checked more than 7,000 gardens since they started last month, said Cliff Ramos, the San Jose-based agricultural official overseeing the program. Inspectors began near the Pajaro River and are working their way northwest. Chrysanthemums have turned up in 350 of those yards, Ramos said, with actual cases of white rust in two. Before it's over, inspectors expect to knock on 50,000 doors from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, he said. The quarantine area runs from the Pajaro River at the south end of the county northwest to Santa Cruz's Bay Street.

Not affected are Scotts Valley, the San Lorenzo Valley and the North Coast, as well as most of the inland mountain areas. The fungus doesn't affect mums' close relatives, Shasta daisies and marguerites, or asters, which look similar. It's getting on for noon when the searching finally pays off. Please see PLANT back page Plant cops on the beat Hunt for bad fungus coming to your home lion chrysanthemum industry. Normally, chrysanthemums are a most congenial plant for the home gardener.

But they're in big trouble because of the white rust that affects their leaves. Ag officials hope to keep the disease from spreading throughout the U.S. by outlawing the plants in much of the county between now and May 31. The fungus affects only two types of chrysanthemums, and survives only a short time off the plant. Getting rid of one season's worth of chrysanthemums, officials say, should eliminate it once and for all.

Gardeners were supposed to have uprooted all their chrysanthemum plants within the quarantine area by Oct. 1. Now, Macintosh-Jose and Garcia are one of a half dozen teams going door-to- By KATHY KREIGER Sentinel staff writer SEACLIFF They've been going up and down the streets of a residential neighborhood behind the Sno-White Drive-in since early in the morning. Knocking on doors. Peeking over fences.

Traipsing into backyards and braving the "Beware of the dog" signs. But it's been two hours. And so far the intrepid chrysanthemum white rust inspectors AKA the mum patrol haven't found even a trace of their quarry. They've seen ferns and fuchsias and junipers. Snoozing cats and conversational old people.

And they've left lots of "we'll-be-back" notices at houses where no one is home. But no mums. "You should have been with us yesterday," Lori Macintosh-Jose, 42, tells a reporter accompanying them on their rounds Thursday. A chatty veteran of Santa Barbara's medfly battle, she's an avid gardener who says one fringe benefit of her inspection job is getting to see so many gardens. "We must have dug up, was it, 16 or so?" Her mum-detecting partner Michele Garcia isn't sure of the number either.

A lot. "We dug and dug," says Garcia, a quiet 26-year-old who commutes from Salinas and most recently worked oh walnut-husk fly research. "Some were really old The two are part of a federally-funded effort here that could cost as much as $100,000 to eradicate the imported fungus disease that threatens the state's $44 mil- 1 EH HWI'IIWW' I I. 1 d-g Renaissance runner SC High's David Kessler rounds out a rich life with running. Page B1 Judge quits trial A press release by the county's Domestic Violence Commission caused a judge to withdraw from the Nina Leibman homicide case.

Page A2 Ann Landers D5 Astrograph D6 Bay Living D1 Business B5 Classified C3 Comics D6 Crossword D6 Entertainment D4 Local news A2 Lottery A1 2 National news A10 Obituaries A12 Opinion A13 State news A8 Stocks B6 Sports B1 TV listings D5 World news CI Saturn Cafe beaming out Santa Cruz fixture closing By DAN WHITE Sentinel staff writer SANTA CRUZ If you've been putting off getting a Chocolate Madness at the Saturn Cafe, you'd better beam in soon. On Dec. 14, the Saturn Cafe, a Santa Cruz fixture where nose rings and purple hair don't look out of place, will cease to exist unless, perhaps, someone steps in to buy it. A sign inside the store Friday read: "Hey, ever dream of owning your own cafe? Buy the Saturn In its 16-year history, it became one of Santa Cruz's funkiest and most well-known eateries, noted as much for its laid-back co-op style as it was for health-food entrees and decadent desserts. For years it was known as the place where all employees did all jobs.

But employees questioned the sincerity of its cooperative spirit this year by organizing a union, on the grounds, among other reasons, that they wanted better communication with the owners and health benefits. Cary Sunberg, who co-owns the restaurant with his Shutdown shovydown looming By LAWRENCE M. O'ROURKE Scripps-McClatchy service WASHINGTON Moving one step closer to a federal government shutdown next week, House Republicans Friday passed two emergency spending and borrowing bills that President Clinton attacked as "deeply irresponsible" and threatened again to veto. By a 224-172 vote, generally along party lines, the House approved a temporary spending measure that would let the government pay salaries and bills until Dec. 1.

Under current law, that authority expires at midnight Monday. Without an extension, Clinton has said he would furlough on Tuesday 800,000 federal civilian employees in jobs that are not Please see SHUTDOWN A12 Anatomy of an assassination 'Defective planning and implementation' allowed Yitzhak Rabin murderer close enough to the Israeli prime minister to kill an official probe has concluded. Page C1 Printed on iJ recycled paper wife, Melissa, would not go into detail about the exact reasons for closing. But he said the last few months have been a struggle. "Eleven years is a long time and we are very tired and it is just a tough personal decision we had to make, and decide to do something else," Sunberg said.

The Sunbergs own the business but not the building. On a recent afternoon, employees were playing bid Devo tunes as they worked the counter. Customers ate lunches under a UFO-shaped lamp that looked like -it flew straight out of the sci-fi movie "The Dav ThV Earth Stood Still." A painting of the galaxy on- the ceiling, and a model of a pterodactyl hanging near a window, contributed to the atmosphere. "The ambi- Please see SATURN CAFE back Page Clearing after morning clouds. Highs in the 70s; lows in the 40s-50s.

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