This Week on the Central Coast…
Teachers get financial help, MRY announces more flights, Cabrillo announces The Perfect Pair, and another fossil is found in Santa Cruz.
Monterey
Montage Health is Helping Teachers Afford Healthcare
Montage Health announced a new plan to help local teachers afford health care. The hospital group is donating $5 million to the community foundation for Monterey County, which will help distribute the money to teachers in a project called the Montage Health Teachers Fund.
The financial aid will be available to all teachers, both public and private. Full-time instructors can acquire $1000 grants and part-time instructors can acquire $500 grants. The money will be available for teachers by the end of the school year.
Monterey Regional Airport Announces More Nonstop Flights
Monterey Regional Airport will add an additional flight to Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Diego. “The Denver, Dallas, and San Diego flights have performed so well that passenger loads on our current flights are at or near capacity,” said the executive director of the airport, Michael La Pier.
The additional flight between Monterey and Denver will begin on April 10 with United Airlines.
The Monterey and San Diego flight will begin a week later on April 17 with Alaska Airlines.
The Dallas Fort Worth flight will begin on May 6 with American Airlines.
All three flights will have 128 seats between three classes.
La Pier expressed Monterey Regional Airport’s excitement of the additional flights. “Adding a second daily round trip to these three destinations means more connection opportunities…(and) an increase in the number of visitors flying to the Monterey region for leisure, business and conventions”.
Santa Cruz
Perfect Pair Wine Event at Cabrillo College
Years ago, Cabrillo College put on a fantastic food and wine event called Dair to Pair where culinary students partnered with Surf City Vintners. The Perfect Pair is a spiritual successor to Dair to Pair. The new event will take place on campus at the Sesnon House and will feature wines from the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA paired with food made by the students.
The Perfect Pair will be on April 27. Events will start at 10:30am, starting with a “Sensory Evaluation” class that guides you through a mini masterclass of Cabrillo’s Wine Studies program.
Following “Sensory Evaluation” is “Taste the Terroir: Santa Cruz Mountains AVA” at 12pm. This class will walk you through the Santa Cruz wine region and will teach about how the terrain influences the wines of the area.
The main event starts at 1pm. Eleven teams of students are matched with wines from the Santa Cruz Mountains and each prepare a dish to pair with their chosen wine. Teams are competing to create “The Perfect Pair”.
Tickets for The Perfect Pair event are $90 and will include a commemorative glass. An all-inclusive ticket, which includes both classes as well as the main event, is $140.
Santa Cruz Kids Find Fossil of a Giant Sloth
Tara Redwood School elementary students found a large bone in the forests near Nisene Marks State Park. The bone was brought to the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History and the Paleontology Collections Advisor identified it as an arm bone that likely belonged to an ancient three-toed sloth.
After getting confirmation from sloth fossil experts, the museum was able to identify it as a Jefferson’s ground sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii). The bone was found in “an Ice Age sediment deposit, placing it in a ballpark between 11,500 years and 300,000 years old.” It’s the first Jefferson’s ground sloth fossil ever found in the area.
This fossil is the second that has been found within the past year, adding to the mastodon tooth of 2023. The sloth fossil will be on display until March 26. After, it will be stored in the museum’s collections department for further research.