Pitch Imperfect
By Gwyn Lurie   |   July 30, 2020

Remember the movie Home Alone? It’s a fantasy, a comedy, and a horror film wrapped in one. The parents leave for a family vacation and amidst the chaos of preparing to leave, they forget the most important thing… their son. So the kid gets left home alone with no grown-up in charge, no one to […]

Pundit-Palooza!
By Gwyn Lurie   |   July 2, 2020

When I made the decision to create the consortium to purchase this newspaper I did so with one primary goal: to create a forum for our community to talk with and to each other, not at each other. Nor to avoid each other. From where I sat, there was a vast diversity of political and […]

 

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Rage Against the Machines
By Les Firestein   |   June 25, 2020

Thanks To the Internet of Things, It’s Always Open Mic Night at Su Casa Humanity may never have been more disjointed, tribal, and disconnected but our stuff, thanks to the Internet of Things, is thriving wirelessly and virtually everything has been WiFi enabled, or, in today’s parlance, is “smart.” It’s my observation that most things […]

Will Desal Have its Day?
By Gwyn Lurie   |   June 25, 2020

Water has historically been Montecito’s (and one of California’s) most critical and controversial issues. We hope you’ve found helpful Nick Schou’s deep dive into the complicated nature of Montecito’s proposed “Water Sharing Agreement” or WSA, with Santa Barbara; and Montecito’s historical relationship to Santa Barbara’s desalination project and how the MWD has finally been able […]

What Difference 10 Years Make
By Gwyn Lurie   |   June 25, 2020

It was March 2004 and I was pregnant with our first child when my husband and I bought our home here. We’d married nine months earlier at the San Ysidro Ranch and we would drive up for weekends, rue L.A.’s show biz culture and roam around Montecito, fantasizing about raising our kids in one of […]

The Right to Be Imperfect
By Gwyn Lurie   |   June 18, 2020

My kids don’t appreciate when I publish what I write about them. Let me clarify, they hate it. We live in a small, one-degree-of-separation town. And they’re kids, which is hard enough without your mother writing about your travails in the local paper. I get it. So, we made a deal: As long as I […]

Upstanders, Bystanders, and Grandstanders
By Gwyn Lurie   |   June 11, 2020

There’s so much to unravel from last week. And a lot to thread back together. In the much maligned 2020, I think there’s more news, coming from more sources, than any of us can efficiently process. To make matters harder, my theory is we have at least two different nations happening at the same time. […]

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  • 3 Dylans, 2 Zimmermans, 2 Coopers, and 2 Junes in Minnesota:
    By Gwyn Lurie   |   June 4, 2020

    What Are We Going to Tell our Kids? The George Floyd video is a Zapruder film of not just the final moments of a man’s life, but a snapshot of race relations in this country, at this particular inflection point. What each of us finds most disturbing about that video is as unique and diverse […]

    Unsolitary Confinement and Other Considerations in the Age of Coronavirus
    By Les Firestein   |   May 14, 2020

    You’ve gotta give it up for humans. With the exception of the Dark Ages, we’re always trying to figure out better ways to nest and adapt those nests to what life throws at us. But how we shelter has never had to absorb so much change… or so much stuff… so quickly as now. Our […]

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    Many Things Can Be True at Once
    By Gwyn Lurie   |   May 7, 2020

    The coronavirus and the related deaths of seventy thousand Americans and nearly two hundred thousand more people around the world, would seem to be a shared enemy that could bring people together – even people in a country as divided as ours. Instead, this pandemic has handed us new beliefs over which to divide. Stay […]

    Having Montecito’s Back
    By Gwyn Lurie   |   April 30, 2020

    These days, there’s no shortage of things to get emotional about. Like most of us, other than essential workers for whom I feel deep gratitude, I’ve been home for almost six weeks. Reading and watching the nightly news is painful, but I do it. I worry about my elderly mother. I feel horrible for my […]

    Shelf Improvement
    By Les Firestein   |   April 23, 2020

    With plenty of extra time on my hands thanks to social distancing, I’m doing what millions of Americans are doing: reimagining my home office. Because quarantine is a great time to fixate on that which you control (or perceive you control). Sketching out a new blueprint, I asked myself: do we really need all these […]

    The Importance of Building Bridges
    By Gwyn Lurie   |   April 16, 2020

    Thank you to Montecito realtor, Cristal Clarke, for sponsoring this week’s MJ home delivery. Bringing the MJ to your doorstep (or at least your driveway) is one way we are working to meet the challenges of this moment. Thanks to Cristal Clarke’s support, we are once again able to deliver. I’d also like to give […]

    Voting to the Moon and Back
    By Gwyn Lurie   |   April 9, 2020

    Huge thanks from the Montecito Journal to Maureen McDermut & Associates for sponsoring this week’s home delivery! We are doing everything possible to get to you during this difficult moment! In the blink of an eye, the world has changed. On Sunday evening my daughter wanted takeout from a local Mexican restaurant, but my husband […]

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