Tag archives: Tecolote

A Timetable to Trot To
By Richard Mineards   |   October 29, 2024

Carpinteria photographer Christie Jenkins launched her new polo men’s calendar with a bijou bash at Tecolote, the bustling bibliophile bastion in the upper village. Polo: Man & Horse 2025 features 44 lavish shots of players in the barns with their favorite horses. The calendar benefits 16 equine charities across America, with the players choosing the […]

Terrible Bore: The Hellish Adventure of the Tecolote Tunnel
By Jeff Wing   |   October 15, 2024

This political season is sufficiently fraught that your fraidy-cat columnist is going to steer well clear of the melee and write about something we can all agree on. I’m talking of course about the inarguable virtues of Communism. Ha Ha Ha. Kidding.  As has been lightly touched upon in endless cocktail party conversations (and more […]

Steve & Steven
By Richard Mineards   |   July 9, 2024

Writer and comedian Steve Martin turned up at Tecolote, the bijou bibliophile bastion in the upper village, when prolific Montecito author Steven Gilbar launched his latest tome Montecito Noir: True Tales of Murder & Mayhem in Paradise. Gilbar has lived in our rarefied enclave for 40 years and has written myriad works over four decades.

Attorney to Hippie to Beloved Literary Gadfly. Steven Gilbar? Yep.
By Jeff Wing   |   June 25, 2024

Yes, there are people in the area you are more likely to have heard of than to have actually met. Jeff Bridges. Carol Burnett. Beloved local mononyms Ellen, Oprah, and Harry. Steven Gilbar is in this category, but with a caveat. The name rings a deafening bell, but where the hell have you heard it? […]

Diana Raab at Tecolote 
By Jeffrey Stewart   |   January 16, 2024

Celebrated advocate of the profound healing properties of writing, Dr. Diana Raab will be discussing and signing her book Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors at Tecolote Bookshop in Montecito’s Upper Village, and at Summerland’s enchanting and indescribable Sacred Space. “Hummingbird coincides with my 70th birthday, a time when many of us intuitively reflect on our […]

Tonia at Tecolote, Authors Assemble at Library 
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 5, 2023

Artist Symeon Shimin’s name may not be a household word, but his most famous work might be one of the better-known images in American history: the original poster for Gone with the Wind. But Shimin, who died in 1984, not only painted such promotional images for Hollywood films but was also an award-winning illustrator of […]

Half a Century Later: Memoir of War’s Woes and Wooing 
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 31, 2023

The veteran experience is also a jumping off point for The Hardest Year: A Love Story in Letters During the Vietnam War, a just-published memoir by author-poet Carole Wagener and her husband, William Wagener, that has been called a personal snapshot of the turbulent ‘60s as framed through the hearts of two souls divided by […]

“All’s Fair” in Love and Tecolote
By Richard Mineards   |   September 12, 2023

A bevy of bibliophiles descended on Tecolote, the upper village literary gem, when retired corporate attorney David Gersh hosted a launch bash for his latest art mystery, All’s Fair, featuring Jonathan Benjamin Franklin. It is one of eight books that Montecito resident David, a Harvard Law School graduate, has written. His last tome, published in […]

Sec 106, Row C, Seat 5: Jana Brody’s Mother and the Crusade for Safer Baseball
By Jeff Wing   |   June 6, 2023

On a sultry August evening in 2018, Linda Goldbloom was struck in the head by a line drive foul ball at Dodger Stadium. She died four days later. Seated next to her husband Erwin in the loge section of the storied ball field some 200 feet behind and above home plate, she never saw it […]

From Page to Stage
By Richard Mineards   |   May 23, 2023

Local literature lover and attorney Steven Gilbar was busy promoting his latest work, The Little Book of Montecito Actors at Tecolote in the upper village. The 207-page book spotlights the stars of stage and screen who have lived in our rarefied enclave over the years, including Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell to more […]

Another Little Signing for Little Book
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 16, 2023

Steven Gilbar – attorney, artist, litterateur, gadfly – is Montecito’s answer to the Gutenberg press. This lone figure’s prolific authorship is surely responsible for our community’s overweening literacy – the screamfests about Dickens over breakfast, the fisticuffs over the provenance of the term “Chicken à la King.” Gilbar, once and future member of the California […]

Where Yellow Flowers Bloom: Kim Cantin’s Successful Search for Meaning
By Jeff Wing   |   May 2, 2023

In the wee-hours and pitch darkness of a howling January morning, a mountainside loosed itself and descended like a wave of stone on the sleeping, forested village of Montecito. Moments before, awakened by the roar of rain jackhammering the roof of the Cantin home, Kim and husband Dave had thrown back the sheets and hurriedly […]

The Poetic Art and Life of Susan Read Cronin
By Zach Rosen   |   April 4, 2023

Life may imitate art but for many of the artists I know, the two are pretty melded and hardly an imitation – they are their art, and the art is them – and this seems true for Susan Read Cronin and her collective body of work as well, including her newest book of poetry, What’s […]

Book ‘em 
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 6, 2022

You might need your own cloning technology, or at least a fast car, to make it to the two most intriguing author events this week, as they share a Saturday afternoon time slot on December 3. Montecito artist and general contractor William “Bill” Dalziel will read from his second children’s book, Charlie’s Dream, a sequel […]

The Little Book
By Lynda Millner   |   April 12, 2022

Writers and friends gathered at Tecolote recently to celebrate Steven Gilbar’s latest tome, having published over 20 books. This one is titled The Little Book of Montecito Writers and includes over 50 names. This doesn’t count journalists or memoirists.  No garrets or starving poets here, with the median home costing about $5 million. Gilbar thinks […]

Little Book Brings Big Crowd
By Richard Mineards   |   March 29, 2022

A boffo bunch of bibliophiles descended on Tecolote in the Upper Village to mark the publication of Steven Gilbar’s Little Book of Montecito Writers, a 160-page paperback including more than 60 authors, which derived from a talk he gave at the village library last summer. The book signing, which benefitted the Montecito Library, also featured […]

Celebrating the Earth
By Richard Mineards   |   May 2, 2019

Earth Day was celebrated at Tecolote, the tony tome temple in the upper village, when four local poets and authors, accompanied by Diane Ippel on a hammered dulcimer, read and recited from their works. Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Laure-Anne Bosselaar, editor of four anthologies and a Pushcart Prize recipient, joined Montecito native Doyle Hollister, author […]

History Never Ends
By Richard Mineards   |   December 20, 2018

Thirty years after it was first published, a third book on our rarefied enclave, Montecito III: History Never Ends, has just hit the bookshelves. David F. Myrick’s first tome in the series, Montecito: The Days of Great Estates, was followed three years later, in 1991, with the second volume, From Farms to Estates. Myrick died […]

The Truth About Santa Claus
By Kelly Mahan Herrick   |   December 13, 2018

Ocean activist Hillary Hauser has published a new book based on a manuscript written by her mother, Mabel Hauser. The Truth About Santa Claus was originally written and illustrated in 1949, by Mabel and her sister Avalo. Hillary says she was doing “a spring cleaning” of her house and uncovered an old black and white […]

BenShea Bakes Another Level in Staircase for the Soul
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 15, 2018

Noah benShea created Jacob the Baker, a simple but wise character whose plainspoken wisdom and common-sense approach to life are delivered as parables with both compassion and humor. Until recently, there were just three books in the series that have provided solace and support for millions of people (and been translated into 18 languages) dating […]