Forty-five years ago, in July 1966, Medicare was launched. Seniors were finally provided a pathway to plan and save for their retirement, and for the first time in U.S. history, it gave them a guarantee of health coverage, and with it the peace of mind that medical bills would no longer drive them into poverty.

EDITOR,

EDITOR,

EDITOR,

EDITOR,

EDITOR,

You may have noticed that the newspaper you are holding has the words “Postal Customer” on the upper right-hand corner of the back cover.

The following are three of the winning poems from the 2011 Verses in the Valley contest put on by the Scotts Valley Arts Commission. The winners were honored at a recent Scotts Valley City Council meeting, and the first-place poem from each division have been published in the Press-Banner over the previous two editions.

EDITOR,

With the citizens commission redrawing California’s districts, I had hoped that, finally, the San Lorenzo Valley would be reunited with the rest of Santa Cruz when they drew the lines for the state’s congressional districts. Sad to say, the commission has apparently not thought this a priority, since the new boundaries fracture the valley into nonsense bits and pieces.