Celebrate the Winter Solstice with meditation with Sarah McLean – the 25-year veteran contemporary meditation and mindfulness teacher who co-founded the new Montecito Meditation Center. Participants will be guided into a solstice meditation practice to welcome the dark on the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and let go of what doesn’t […]
Santa Barbara author Jeanine Kitchel, who used to live and own a bookstore business in Mexico in the 1990s, has written a very timely new book, Wheels Up – A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival. “Writing non-fiction was good for a travel memoir and my book on the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, but when […]
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Santa Barbara documentary filmmaker/journalist Kevin McKiernan was a rookie NPR reporter in 1973 when he was embedded at Wounded Knee during the famous armed American Indian Movement (AIM) occupation in South Dakota that left two dead and scores arrested. Embedded himself, actually, as McKiernan had to circumvent government roadblocks surrounding the village and resort to […]
The FireTenders men’s groups were founded several years ago by Timothy Tillman to be a self-sustaining community of responsible men committed to wakeful living and willing to support other men in the process of self-discovery, true masculine embodiment, and open-hearted relational engagement in the world. There are three such ongoing groups in town, plus several […]
If you do Thanksgiving right, it’s not just edible leftovers you’ll be enjoying the next day. The cavalcade of flavors on your table means you’ll be popping a lot of corks, too – a wide range of wines to match a wide range of foods. And while Tupperware and aluminum foil works well when it […]
Elizabeth Schwyzer developed Write from the Body – a creative writing workshop that explores the intersections between language and physical experience – back when the Santa Barbaran was practicing dance and serving as an arts writer at the Independent before moving, marrying, and starting to raise children. Now Schwyzer – who holds degrees in art […]
Social gridlock reigned at the Margerum Wine tasting room at the Hotel Californian when owners Doug and Marni Margerum hosted a bustling bash for Santa Ynez Valley author Frances Schultz‘s latest book California Cookery & Southern Style, featuring 100 classic recipes by Stephanie Valentine, inspired menus and gorgeous table settings. Frances, a North Carolina native, […]
Too many cooks didn’t spoil the broth when Epicurean Santa Barbara celebrated its second anniversary at the Chase Palm Park Recreation Center with 120 guests. The food and wine social club, which has 150 members who attend around four events each month, featured four chefs and their culinary wizardry at the boffo bash. “Our goal […]
Loyalty has its rewards. That’s certainly a fact in the travel industry, where repeat stays at your favorite hotel and repeat flights on your favorite airline can translate to upgrades, freebies, and being made to feel like a VIP. Oenophiles can tap into special perks, too, thanks to wine clubs, which can be a boon […]
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JourneyDance is a dynamic, conscious dance form that combines freestyle and structured movement to inspire participants to move from the mind into the body. Lisa Buell, who boasted a decade of experience as a life and business coach before adding dance and intuitive painting to her repertoire, brought the practice to Santa Barbara from the […]
Sarah Taylor has been acting since high school, but was always interested in the serious roles. She didn’t get into performing stand-up comedy until many years later, right around the same time her own struggles led her to investigate Buddhism. “It was very odd, because I had a real pull to just sit and practice […]
When the founder of the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF) Wilma Melville was looking for a place and funding the banks all said, “You’re going to do what?” except Montecito Bank & Trust. It became a $30 million project and was open in 2010 for the business of training dogs to find live people […]
Winning a Living Legend Award at the annual FestForums Santa Barbara is film director Penelope Spheeris. A not-to-miss three-day event is filled with a VIP Speaker Line-Up that includes Steve Baltin from Forbes Magazine, former World Surfing Champion Shaun Tomson, Skip Martin (Kool & the Gang, The Dazz Band), Jon Anderson (Yes), Grammy Songwriter Ray […]
Last August’s debut of NEST Fest – produced by the collective known as New Earth Star Tribe – was a deep, one-afternoon immersion in all kinds of healing and transformational modalities, from ecstatic dance to conscious talks, sound healing and movement and plenty of partner play. The event was hosted at a private East Side […]






