To the Mayor, City Council Members: 4th of July my family and I took a walk down upper State Street in Santa Barbara. As we walked, we had concerns about the planning by the city to provide a safe sidewalk. We also wondered if there would ever be another parade down State Street. The heritage of […]
What on earth is going on in Miami? A 40-year-old, 12-story building named the Champlain Towers South (the “Towers”) collapsed into a heap of rubble without any advance warning, a mile from Miami Beach in Surfside, Florida. At this writing, there are at least 11 fatalities, many injuries, and more than 150 people still missing. […]
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Carlos, The Bear, reclined in his reading chair listening to Tom Petty. He was flipping through last year’s 4th of July Car Roadshow photos he took with his old iPhone. This year everything will be better, he thought. No lockdown, masks not mandatory and people out everywhere trying to get back into the swing of […]
I was talking with a friend about the institution of marriage — why some marriages last and others don’t. We agreed that for a marriage to last, both partners must, first and foremost, be committed to the institution itself; because on any given day they may not agree on the same ideas or course of […]
This column is being written on Father’s Day — as the humorist Jim Gaffigan observed, “the government mandated day of paternal gratitude.” By now, everything conventional that needs to be written already has been. What motivates this column is to look behind the conventional nostrums of the day to the more basic, the more archetypal, […]
Mayor and Councilmembers, You have an agenda item coming up June 22, agenda item No. 16, that could remove parklets in July, or impose onerous modifications on them. Please avoid doing this. It is the most business unfriendly thing you could do right now. Thanks to the quick actions of Anthony Wagner, and the blessing […]
I am troubled by the apparent conflicts-of-interest by attorney Marc Chytilo involving his lobbying for a major cannabis grower and Foothills Forever. The latter is a large community philanthropic effort involving the pro bono efforts of many attorneys, but one that Mr. Chytilo seeks primary credit. Last Wednesday, many in the First District were left […]
Cruise ships are lined up and ready to sail… maybe. Yes, last week the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidance that permits cruise ships to sail from U.S. ports provided that at least 95% of guests and 98% of crew have been vaccinated. This drops the requirement for test voyages without […]
“Go West, young man, and grow up with the country,” a newspaper editor proclaimed as the United States expanded westward in the 19th century. That advice could be amended now to “South and West,” according to the latest findings of the U.S. Census Bureau, which in April issued its pandemic-delayed count of the nation’s population […]
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I’m loving what I’m seeing on Coast Village Road as most of us pull ourselves from our cocoons — an inside table at Lucky’s, things really are getting “normal.” It’s a spring like no other and I can’t wait to become fully engaged in our community because, frankly, it needs as much help as we […]
Upon reading Jim Buckley’s OpEd piece in the recent Montecito Journal issue regarding voter fraud I was filled with surprise at its publication, appalled by its content, and appreciation that the MJ printed it. I would remind Mr. Buckley that the courts, election officials, and the Attorney General, many of whom were appointed by the […]
This column is sort of an “apology” to President Joe Biden. I became a bit critical of President Biden last Wednesday, June 19 as the shelling in the Middle East continued unabated. I spoke to Congressman Salud Carbajal to express my frustration that Biden, who had been doing fairly well in my view up until […]
I rarely comment on the content in this newspaper, but in last week’s edition our staff ran an opinion piece before we could screen it for our normal standards of respectful political discourse; the piece I’m referring to included the use of gratuitous language that some find misogynistic, bigoted, and should have had no place within […]
They say the most important quality a student can have is “grit.” You want grit? I’ll show you grit — the class of 2021 began its freshman year with the onset of the Thomas Fire, which turned into the subsequent Montecito debris flow causing hundreds of students and their families to evacuate their homes — […]
