The following is an open letter to the Coast Village Association and the property owners of the Country Mart and Starbucks strip: We need you to step up now and help your businesses and customers stop enabling homelessness. Help us solve it instead. We are writing to you as Montecito residents and founding members of […]
As Tokyo gears up for the 2021 version of the 2020 Olympics, and calls proliferate to boycott the 2024 Beijing Olympics, it’s time to evaluate the role of sports in society. The ancient Olympics were the first instance of sports diplomacy, as the city-states called a truce to allow athletes to travel to the games. […]
Recently Trending
More from Montecito
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 […]
As almost everyone in the U.S. is now aware, Georgia’s Republican legislators passed legislation to: a) actively suppress voter turnout, making it significantly harder for minorities to vote by adding new vote-by-mail identification requirements, limiting drop boxes, and an assortment of other measures designed to resuscitate “Jim Crow” voting in the state; and, b) provide […]
The “Sedition Caucus” is defined as those members of the House of Representatives who, after the January 6 insurrection was brought to a halt, voted to stop counting Electoral College votes in the hopes of overturning the 2020 presidential election. Counting these Electoral Ballots is the final legal act prior to initiating the “Peaceful Transfer […]
The recent news of the shameful episodes of past sexual abuse at Thacher School is deeply troubling. The perpetrators should be pursued, prosecuted where possible and never again be allowed contact, in any capacity, with young people. In the strongest terms, I condemn them as well as those who covered up these egregious incidents, and […]
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. […]
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 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 […]
Read more...
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 […]
The public’s right to use and enjoy Los Padres National Park and a number of its trails has little meaning when the public has no practical means of accessing Hot Springs Trail and others. Conflicts arise between private landowners and the general public who wish to enjoy wilderness areas that are not accessible without parking […]
In last week’s issue, Gwyn Lurie’s “Editor’s Letter” decries what she calls “incendiary language” in my recent column, calling it a “mistake” to have even printed it in the first place. I re-read it and though found it somewhat provocative, I believe that at no time does it reach the incendiary stage (450 degrees Fahrenheit, […]
Last year 40,000,000 human beings were uprooted from their homes and became international refugees. You read that correctly. Forty million people. The vast majority of these people flooding other countries out of a desperate attempt to improve their lives to the point of achieving subsistence living were climate refugees. People driven from their ancestral lands […]
“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 […]
