I have a pair of nesting kestrels in my yard. Because the kestrels need lots of mice and voles to feed their young, I realize how easily they can be harmed if my neighbors put out rodent poison. On my walk yesterday a woman asked me if I had seen the sick coyote which is […]
Lea más
Santa Barbara Channelkeeper (SBCK) celebrated its 25th anniversary at its annual Blue Water Ball fundraiser, held March 14 at the Cabrillo Pavilion in Santa Barbara. SB Channelkeeper, formerly the Environmental Defense Center (1999), is an independent conservation organization that describes itself as a “science-based environmental advocacy, education, fieldwork, community engagement, and enforcement” organization dedicated to […]
Lea másThe mind of your Independent Mind columnist has been adrift this week. Too much going on to take it all in. So, I am going to report on two things I can’t get out of my head. Rent Control The City of Santa Barbara ignored my generous offer of help on the issue of rent […]
Lea másA Humanist Society talk by podcaster Charlie Painter on Ayn Rand’s libertarian Objectivism offered an illuminating opportunity. Mostly to see where this “rational” philosophy is irrational. Ayn Rand expressed her philosophy in the title of her 1964 book The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. As a student at MIT, I was immersed […]
Lea más
Casa del Herrero hosted a neighborhood gathering on March 10 to highlight progress on its Save America’s Treasures Grant preservation project. Leading the event were Natalie Sanderson, executive director and Head of Curation, and Elizabeth Esrey, President of the Board of Trustees, who also serves on the Save America’s Treasures Ad Hoc Committee. Casa del […]
Lea másStardate 79659.4 Hold on to your ears, Spock!* Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) Astrophysicist Andy Howell, PhD, head of the supernova research group, and his fifth-year UCSB graduate student Joseph Farah are part of an international research team featured on the cover of Nature (Volume 651, Issue 8105, March 12, 2026) for their discovery of “chirp” […]
Lea másDD sends me this strange portrait of a male face in profile composed of writhing nude bodies, and I KNEW I had seen this technique before: a mélange of nude women arranged to form a head, a skull, a profile: WHERE had I seen this? I had seen it in the work of Salvador Dalí […]
Lea másUnder the Influence / North Jameson Lane — Tuesday, March 17, at 08:10 hours A male subject was contacted as a result of a call for service and found to be in possession of a stolen Trader Joe’s shopping cart. The subject was also determined to be under the influence of drugs in a public […]
Lea más
by Scott Craig, photos by Brad Elliott The Westmont Women’s Leadership Luncheon, an inspiring community event dedicated to educating, enriching and empowering women, features Keynote Speaker Anja Manuel, renowned author, former diplomat and trusted advisor to Fortune 50 companies, on Friday, April 24, from 12-1:30 pm, with check-in beginning at 11:30 am, at the Hilton […]
Lea más
It was a night full of laughs and surprises at the Santa Barbara Bowl as Westmont celebrated its 65th year of Spring Sing, where students from each residence hall produce musical skits to compete for prizes and bragging rights. Spring Sing, the longest running Westmont tradition, involves hundreds of students who use song, dance and […]
Lea más
Kim Denu, Westmont provost and dean of faculty, serves as the keynote speaker for the annual Santa Barbara Family YMCA Good Friday Breakfast, “Keeping Hope Alive,” on April 3 beginning at 7:30 am at the Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. Tickets, which cost $70 each, may be purchased at ciymca.org. The inspirational event features a […]
Lea más
Whether by accident or design, UCSB Arts & Lectures has dedicated the first three Tuesdays in April to focusing on the L-word part of its name, with the dates offering discussions of some of the most pressing issues of the day. First up is Ibram X. Kendi, one of the world’s leading scholars of racism […]
Lea más
NeuroField is not an easy thing to explain in a sentence. It blends neuroscience, clinical therapy, and a suite of technologies designed to read and influence the brain in real time. But behind the complexity is a clear goal: to understand how the brain is functioning, and then help it function better. At its core, […]
Lea más‘The Mountains We Call Home’ Next month brings an influx of world-renowned writers and speakers to Santa Barbara for the inaugural Santa Barbara Literary Festival. Many of the authors have new books dropping this month and next. Among them is NY Times bestseller Kim Michele Richardson, who is one of our keynote speakers. Her latest […]
Lea más
More than three decades ago, Geof Wyatt found himself in need of medical care without a clear way to get it. He didn’t have a doctor and needed tests, and someone suggested he try Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics (SBNC). What he encountered there stayed with him long after the visit itself. It wasn’t only that […]
Lea más
It’s not hard to see why writers end up in Santa Barbara. Sure, the weather helps, but it’s more than that. There’s space to think here, and a kind of quiet that doesn’t feel isolating. Montecito, in particular, has long been home to a number of well-known writers (see Steven Gilbar’s mini tome), while downtown […]
Lea más
In the iconic Weimar swan-song movie Cabaret, liberal-democratic 1933 Deutschland throws itself a final champagne-soaked party before the Nazis come in and churlishly stomp the balloons with their jackboots. In one of the film’s most famous scenes, a satin-draped Liza Minnelli delivers, from the stage of a nightclub, a vivid 11th-hour lecture on the evils […]
Lea más
On March 26th, Coast Village Association presented the first Spring event of the year ~ Beyond the Canvas. I keep writing about Beyond the Canvas, trying to capture its essence. But this year, something felt different. The experience spoke for itself. What unfolds along Coast Village Road isn’t simply an art walk – it’s a […]
Lea más
Mary Bridget Davies was just a teenager when she realized that her singing voice sounded a lot like that of Janis Joplin, the iconic rock singer who quickly shot to fame in the late 1960s before her accidental death from an overdose at 27. “My normal singing voice is pretty darn clean in comparison,” Davies […]
Lea más
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more perfect pop debut than Marshall Crenshaw’s self-titled 1982 album, which was chock full of indelible hooks and riffs, a sound and a quirky approach to storytelling that were both fresh and classic at the same time. Forty-four years and a dozen albums later, after nearly half a century […]
Lea más