The Internet and townsfolk are all abuzz about the Big Yellow House’s new “yellow” paint job. About a month ago, I received a text with a photo of the building being painted. It read: Dear Summerland correspondent, The Big Yellow House is being painted cream. Signed, Nancy Drew I was relieved that the super bright, […]
For many years, you couldn’t buy certain items, such as mattresses, in the U.S.A., unless they contained a federally required fabric label, or “tag.” I’m not sure exactly what information these labels provided, but what I do remember is that they also contained a very severe warning against removing them. Something like “DO NOT REMOVE, […]
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I was going to be the “Cool Mom.” The “Let’s Play Hooky and Eat Ice Cream For Dinner Mom.” Or at least that was the plan. The cruel reality came crashing down during the COVID pandemic when, against my will, I blurted out to my children the words feared by parents and kids alike: “Because […]
Kevin Frank and his wife, Katie, owners of K. Frank, the Montecito men and women’s luxury and designer clothing store on Coast Village Road, moved to Summerland six years ago after being attracted by the “small town charm and walkability.” It wasn’t until they toured their house that they became gob smacked by the incredible […]
Being rejected is a basic human experience, for which most of us need to be better trained than we probably are. If you ask Mr. Google about rejections, he’ll give you many lists of famous and successful people who failed over and over again, but went on, and, through sheer persistence, became the stars and […]
My tastes in most categories are very conventional, so most of my favorites probably will not surprise you. In poetry, for example, at the top of my personal list is the piece known as “Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard” – not to be confused with Gray’s Allergy. [Only kidding.] One reason I like it […]
30 June 2004, 7:30 pm. The VIP room at JPL is quiet as we all watch a thin line trace horizontally across the big screen at the front of the room. It’s the radio signal from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft as it speeds toward Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI) after seven years in transit. JPL invites some […]
I’ve lived in Montecito – in the same house – for over 35 years and find it necessary to point out to folks just moving here that while we live in a beautiful place, ensconced as we are between the 4,000-ft Figueroa Mountains and the deep blue Pacific Ocean, it isn’t perfect. Add a near-ideal […]
I suppose we nearly all have, or have had, secrets of some kind. Probably one of the most common kinds concerns some hidden object. Stores used to sell a little magnetic box called a “Hide-a-Key,” in which you could put your car keys, and attach it to some unseen part of your car. But thieves […]
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We can’t think of a sweeter Valentine’s gift than the one from generous Summerland resident and philanthropist Nora McNeely Hurley and her husband, Michael Hurley. Summerland School’s very tired tennis courts will be undergoing a complete renovation thanks to a two-year grant from the Manitou Fund. Nora McNeely Hurley is a Trustee and Chief Programming […]
Most of us grew up thinking that there were two World Wars, the first in 1914-18, called the Great War, which became World War I, when its successor of 1939-45 qualified as Number Two. But let me tell you how I came to question that whole idea. My father’s elder brother, Mortimer Brilliant, was, like […]
For five nights, my wife and I slept in the guestroom, while relatives slept in our room. “This bed is too hard. My back is killing me,” Pat said. “How are you holding up?” I could have said: “Fine. You probably just slept wrong.” Instead I said: “My neck’s a bit sore.” Two days later […]
It’s no surprise that Lou Cannon does a pretty good imitation of President Ronald Reagan. After all, he covered Reagan from his governorship in California to his time in the White House through to his final days, writing five books about California’s former governor and president, including President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, among […]
On July 20, 1976, seven years to the day after humans first walked on the moon, a bunch of us new employees of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory trooped over to Caltech’s Beckman auditorium (the one that looks like a circus tent) to see the first landing of a spacecraft on another planet. Viking 1 was […]
