Friday, November 6, 2009

Tenerife, Part 2

This is just a little side note, but I decided that I shouldn't let it pass.

Close readers of the last post may have noticed that one of the highlights--in my eyes--was that the capital of Tenerife is Santa Cruz, which also happens to be the name of my own metropolis. No big deal, really--I'm sure that pretty much any region the Spanish colonized has a Santa Cruz, as the name simply means "Holy Cross".

Or so I thought. Today, I was sitting in the break room, thumbing through one of our free local papers and came across this:

The sky's the limit when it comes to Cielo/Sky, a cultural exchange project between sister cities Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands and our very own Santa Cruz de California. The multivenue exhibition features artistic renderings of the sky through the use of countless media..

One of the venues up at the university was having an opening literally as I read the words, and there were two or three other sites that were hosting events as the night went on. I regret to say that I wasn't able to attend any of these events on such short notice, but I feel almost duty bound to try and check out all of these installations before the month that they are up runs out.

Anyway, I just find it a bit odd that I was prompted to write about an island on the other side of the world during the very week that our sister cities were attempting to forge a connection.

Must have been something in the air.

6 comments:

  1. Seana,

    Pretty cool coincidence if you ask me.

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  2. Thanks, Brian, I think so too. I do think I should have waited downtown and gone to one of the openings, as there actually might have been someone from Tenerife there, but we had our annual birthday sale on Friday and Saturday, and I was a bit fried by the end of it.

    I will definitely check out the exhibits I can get to easily, and maybe even the one at UCSC if I can find the time.

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  3. Santa Cruz is also a pretty posh suburb in Mumbai, where there is an airport and a whole lot of filmstars.

    Glad to know more about the other Santa Cruz-es.

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  4. The Spanish sure have left their mark a lot of places.

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  5. Toby Belch was always drinking "dark Canary wine" which I assume came from Tenerife and I've heard that they grow some wine around your way too.

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  6. Yeah, that's the rumor.

    Actually, the Santa Cruz mountains have some great wineries. I have a friend who leads a whole wine tasting class periodically, in which she brings people over to the idea that Santa Cruz wineries should not be seen as some sort of inferior cousin of Napa and Sonoma.

    The Smothers Brothers had an acclaimed winery up there for awhile--I don't know whether it's still going.

    I wonder what dark Canary wine would taste like...

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