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 […]
Expressing Needs We need to realize most police officers are dedicated public servants who have a much tougher job than a vast majority of good people could handle. Yes, to use a cliché, there will be a few “bad apples” who manage to get massive publicity, but I wouldn’t want to “not have the police […]
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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 […]
The two original sins of this nation are the systematic genocide of Native Americans and slavery. Both were the result of overt racism which has become so imbedded in our culture that we’re now left with only this choice: either be racist, or be anti-racist. There is no longer any middle ground. It’s not going […]
Gratitude for Gwyn My wife and I have been reading the Montecito Journal with pleasure since Gwyn became CEO and Executive Editor. You have greatly improved the overall editorial content of the paper (which I, for one, seldom read under the editorship of your predecessor) and your Editor’s Letters have been uniformly thoughtful and well […]
Policyholder lawyers in the USA are singing “La Marseillaise” after a decision last week in Paris holding in favor of a French restaurant group seeking insurance coverage for a COVID-related “administrative closure” of its four restaurants in Paris which caused lost profits and extra expense. This is an “order of civil authority” in our parlance. […]
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. […]
Mike Nichols’ 1967 iconic and classic film, for which he received the Best Director Award among four other Academy Awards, was The Graduate. The film is a masterful exploration of the malaise of college graduation at a time of great social turmoil. A promotional poster captured the tension brilliantly: “This is Benjamin. He’s a little […]
The American Film Institute honored Frank Capra by selecting his movie It’s A Wonderful Life as the Most Inspirational Film of all time. It was a great pick. Not only has it become a “Christmas Classic” for decades, but Frank Capra is quoted as saying it was his favorite film of all the incredible classics […]
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Water Well Done Great job on the first water piece in last week’s Journal by Nick Schou. Water is very critical for us and a healthy environment but the issues surrounding it can get complicated very quickly. I have been very involved in both our local and statewide water issues for over three decades and […]
The cover of this week’s Sunday New York Times was stunning in its simplicity, yet powerful in its portrayal of the gravity of this moment. The headline: “U.S. DEATHS NEAR 100,000, AN INCALCULABLE LOSS” loomed above a thousand names of human beings, in tiny print, one after another, row after row – a newsprint version […]
Over the past 10 weeks, Santa Barbara, along with the rest of the world, has been paralyzed with fear over the scourge of COVID-19. People remain frozen in fear of venturing outside, of touching a foreign or unknown object, and in fear of coming within six feet of another person. As the medical community grapples […]
Tribute to a Community treasure, John Venable It’s extremely rare to find a person that gives so much of themselves unselfishly to their community as John Venable. John was always “there” and “ready” for whatever task that lay ahead. He was the first to volunteer to help organize and videograph our first Village 4th Parade […]
I am writing this article both as a memorial to a dear friend of 50 years who just succumbed to COVID. And as a reminder to all that the coronavirus remains a clear and present danger to everyone. After eight weeks of hibernation, I am as stir crazy as everyone else, although I have the […]
