Where Yellow Flowers Bloom: A True Story of Hope through Unimaginable Loss by Kim Cantin is honest, heartbreaking, and inspiring. Cantin and her daughter survived Montecito’s 2018 debris flow, but her son and husband did not. In vivid detail she recalls that night, and the subsequent months as she recovered and desperately sought the remains […]
Lea másMonthly Archives: April 2023
As I do most days after leading a kayak tour at Scorpion Anchorage on Santa Cruz Island, I took a stroll with my camera after everyone had left the island and returned to the harbor in Ventura. As small waves crashed on the deserted, cobbled shoreline, I noticed something odd approaching the beach just before […]
Lea másOne of the ways we celebrate important occasions is by eating. Festivals, whether religious or secular, are times for joyful observance of something worth remembering, and tend to be annual, since the regular solar cycle makes a good periodic reminder. I grew up in a Jewish family, but also in a Christian community, and each […]
Lea másIt finally arrived! Freighter delays, they said. Lack of experienced labor. Cost overruns. Sound familiar? But a giant truck pulled up in front of our condo today and delivered my IKEA easy-to-assemble, all-parts-included, fully-illustrated-plans-provided… ark. That’s right! I’m going to save the world from the great flood! Or, at least a few hundred people from […]
Lea másThe recent failures, negotiated bailouts, and buyouts of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, and Credit Suisse are a reminder of how life is different for different classes of people. “Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor” is how Michael Harrington described it in his 1962 book, The Other America. Detroit […]
Lea másThe first time I spoke to Clare Ogle we were sitting across from each other in high school AP Biology. Four and a half years later, Clare is a graduate of University of Washington in Seattle, where she recently completed her major in marine biology with a minor in Arctic studies. She now puts that […]
Lea másThe beloved annual Tiara Ball held by the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital Foundation (CHF)is as glamorous as it is dedicated to raising funds to continue supporting and expanding its latest health care services, and its top rank in the country – in 2020, Newsweek ranked the leading hospitals in 21 countries, listing Santa Barbara Cottage […]
Lea másThis week we visited with Kerri Burns, CEO of SB Humane and her team of CFO Paige Van Tuyl, and COO Dori Villalon at the Santa Barbara location on Overpass Road. The four-acre property holds a veterinary clinic and surgery center, food, lodging and training of dogs, a cat hotel, and offers shelter during local disasters […]
Lea másAfter having contemporary, abstract, and fine art galleries color the town of Montecito, there’s another one on the horizon ready to captivate your senses. The Waterhouse Gallery, located at the Coast Village Plaza (1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 3, formerly the Scoops store), is where traditional contemporary works engage your art spirit, delight your eyes, […]
Lea másHollywood knew him as Gary David Goldberg, creator/producer of acclaimed TV series Family Ties, Brooklyn Bridge, and Spin City. Brooklyn knew him as a storied high school athlete. Montecito knew him as the guy on local beaches walking five big black dogs – four Newfoundlands and a Labrador. He was all of these; and a […]
Lea másI think it’s time to cede Bryan Rosen space as a columnist; there is no other way to describe his way-too-regular contributions on a single topic. Certainly, no one can doubt his passion for the Hot Springs Trail and its attendant issues, but his letters exceed the accepted word limit by hundreds; often they cannot […]
Lea másGranada Theatre benefactors Roger and Sarah Chrisman hosted the first of a three-part series, Onstage at the G, with 85 guests dining at the cavernous locale with scrumptious food from the Catering Connection. Previously the theater hosted Upstairs at the G in the McCune Founder Room, but the capacity was limited to 40, with the […]
Lea másCAMA Women’s Board threw its second annual Sunset by the Sea at the Cabrillo Pavilion, where London-based luthier and co-founder of The Open String, Robert Brewer Young, 56, talked about the famed 17th century Italian violin and cello maker Stradivarius, whose instruments have sold for millions of dollars. Young, who received traditional French training in […]
Lea másJust 96 hours after St. Patrick’s Day at Dargan’s, the popular Ortega Street Irish pub was bustling for the Santa Barbara Revels 15th annual Vernal Equinox pub singalong with guitarist Josh Jenkins and the group’s song leader, flutist Erin McKibben. The only thing “Dublin” more than Ireland’s capital city was the volume of rain that […]
Lea másAward-winning actor Max McLean, 69, was a true tour de force performing the Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis in an entertaining one-man show at the Granada. McLean is known for his adaptations of books by the Irish author who died in 1963 at the age of 64. C.S. Lewis is memorialized in Poet’s Corner […]
Lea másOpera Santa Barbara’s latest production The Light in the Piazza at Center Stage Theater, this year’s annual showcase of the Chrisman Studio Artist Program, was an absolute gem. With music and lyrics by Adam Guettel and a book by Craig Lucas, the show was based on the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer and the 1963 […]
Lea másMontecito actress Gwyneth Paltrow, 50, is used to being in the limelight, but her current appearance in a Utah courtroom – where she is being sued for $300,000 over a 2016 ski crash on the slopes of the Deer Valley Resort in Park City – must be quite a new experience. Retired Soda Springs optometrist […]
Lea másLife may imitate art but for many of the artists I know, the two are pretty melded and hardly an imitation – they are their art, and the art is them – and this seems true for Susan Read Cronin and her collective body of work as well, including her newest book of poetry, What’s […]
Lea másLife for cinephiles everywhere just got a little easier now that Dino Risi’s long underseen film from 1961, Una vita difficile AKA A Difficult Life, has finally made its way stateside for the first time ever, after being overshadowed by Risi’s followup masterpiece, Il Sorpasso. And even better, it features two of Italy’s greatest stars […]
Lea másTV and film writer-producer Jonathan Prince – whose adaptation and book for the world premiere of a musical based on Dark of the Moon opens at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura this weekend – wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way; least of all the discovery that several big theatrical icons had previously […]
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