Tag archives: covid 19

The Home Front
By Claudia Schou   |   April 16, 2020

With California’s statewide stay-at-home order in effect, businesses are closing and people are hunkering down at home, but still working, courtesy of Zoom and FaceTime. We spoke to four Montecito residents about how they’re managing to keep their businesses going during the coronavirus crisis: Vera Kong, Piano Instructor I spend most of my day connecting […]

Zoomers Helping Boomers
By Victoria Chow   |   April 16, 2020

In the midst of a global crisis, the pandemic and forced quarantine for Americans is causing strife among everyone. The ones that are getting hit the hardest? The elderly and immunocompromised. To stop the curve of the virus, people are encouraged to self-isolate. However, this serves as a major problem, as many people still have […]

Protecting the Community
By Richard Mineards   |   April 16, 2020

Santa Barbara fashion designer Catherine Gee is doing her part in helping with the coronavirus pandemic. Her company has partnered with Grant House Sewing and donated hundreds of yards of cotton linen for face masks, which will be given to doctors, nurses, and the local community. Additionally, the companies have donated stock fabrics to LAProtects.org, […]

Losing the Loins of Longleat
By Richard Mineards   |   April 16, 2020

Alexander Thynn, the 7th Marquess of Bath, owner of the Elizabethan stately pile, Longleat House, who has died at the age of 87 after contracting COVID-19, was one of Britain’s most colorful and eccentric aristocrats. At an imposing 6’5″, with flowing shoulder length hair and straggly beard, and colorful outfits more befitting Woodstock, the Old […]

Showing Gratitude
By Richard Mineards   |   April 9, 2020

It was the perfect blend when global medical device manufacturer Karl Storz Imaging president Miles Hartfeld expressed his gratitude to employees when they left work the other day at the Goleta offices. The company makes critically needed endoscopic medical equipment, including bronchoscopes used on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19. Although Governor Gavin […]

Social Distance Serenades
By Richard Mineards   |   April 9, 2020

Santa Barbara classical guitarist Chris Fossek is looking to the Middle Ages, when balladeers roamed the land, to soothe our furrowed brows during these most trying of times. Chris, who has performed at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Rome’s Olympic Stadium, has launched a charming new project, Open Window Serenades. “As long […]

Village People: Slim Gomez, Matt Mosby, Caroline Geddes, and Jorge Bernabe of Montecito Natural Foods
By Nick Schou   |   April 9, 2020

During the disastrous Thomas Fire and debris flows two years ago, the entire Montecito Country Mart was closed for business with the exception of Montecito Natural Foods. That turned out to be a good thing for the town’s first responders, particularly the Montecito Fire Department, because emergency workers were laboring under high stress in unsanitary […]

COVID-19 Updates
By Kelly Mahan Herrick   |   April 9, 2020

As of press time, Santa Barbara County Public Health Department reports 218 cases of COVID-19 in the county, which includes 14 cases in the South County communities of Montecito, Summerland, and Carpinteria. Of the over 200 cases, it was announced earlier this week that 37 of those are healthcare workers; a number that the Public […]

Land Use Committee Discusses MSD Plans
By Kelly Mahan Herrick   |   April 9, 2020

On Tuesday, April 7, the Montecito Association Land Use Committee met via Zoom to discuss an upcoming project in Montecito: a proposed project by the Montecito Sanitary District that includes a new 5,000-sq-ft Essential Services building with a new 17-space parking lot, lighting and landscaping, multiple solar canopies, and a new recycled water treatment system, […]

Pacifica Moves Platforms During Pandemic
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

Pacifica Graduate Institute has amped up its availability of offering immersion in depth psychology to prospective students over the last several years, marketing its programs, information sessions, and campus visits all around town and beyond. Now as the coronavirus turns its Carpinteria campuses into deserted spaces, Pacifica has created a series of virtual events designed […]

Access to Alexis in our Anxious Times
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

Santa Barbara native Alexis Slutzky has spent decades as a wilderness guide, mentor, MFT, reclamation practitioner, and council trainer who also specializes in indigenous wisdom traditions, rites of passage, depth psychology, ritual and ceremony and community exploration. Her grief work – which has brought people from both far and wide to retreats at Arroyo Hondo […]

Virtual Meditating with Mahakankala
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

The downtown Santa Barbara center has finally also migrated over to online offerings, with resident teacher Kadam Keli Vaughan teaching and guiding meditations via Zoom several times each week. Featured are “Search for the Self: Buddhist Meditations on Emptiness” from 6-7 pm on Wednesdays, “Learning to Love” from 6:30-7:30 on Thursdays, and “Meditation for World […]

More Streaming Buddhism: BodhiPath Beckons
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

Resident teacher Dawa Tarchin Phillips launches a new three-week course over Zoom on Thursday evenings, offering “What the Buddha Taught” as a way to explore your own life’s journey in light of the Buddha’s wisdom from the perspectives of personal maturation, liberation, awakening and service. The 7-9 pm sessions April 9-23, accessed via Zoom at […]

Thai Meditation for Trying Times
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

As recently as early March, Courtney Purcell’s Santa Barbara Buddhist Meditation Meetup had a full slate of events on its calendar, with gatherings all over town, from the American Buddhist Meditation Temple on Orchid Drive near More Mesa to the foothills and beaches of Montecito, a leap year forest retreat in the expanse at La […]

Nomad Goods Switches Gears to PPE Production
By Joanne A Calitri   |   April 9, 2020

Our town’s local premium consumer goods brand Nomad Goods, Inc., founded by Noah Dentzel and Brian Hahn, took on the COVID-19 urgent need of single use masks for frontline workers on March 18, and have ramped production to over a million masks per week with shipping in two to three days worldwide, utilizing their iPhone […]

Cannabis and Toilet Paper in the Coronavirus Era
By Nick Schou   |   April 9, 2020

Thanks to the fact that California has deemed cannabis to be an essential part of the state’s economy, Santa Barbara County’s cannabis industry is one of the few major employers that isn’t either completely shut down or drastically downscaled during the COVID-19 pandemic. CARP Growers, which represents legally licensed Carpinteria cannabis farms such as Autumn […]

Santa Barbara Tourism Update
By Nick Schou   |   April 9, 2020

In the past few weeks, hundreds of Montecito and Santa Barbara residents have been laid off or furloughed in the wake of the social distancing and shelter at home mandates issued in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. To get a sense of how this has already affected Santa Barbara’s tourism and hospitality industries, we […]

New ‘Music That Matters’ Marks K-LITE’s Morning Show
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

K-LITE 101.7’s morning show team of Gary and Catherine quickly came to confront the COVID-19 crisis with a new feature called “Music That Matters Now!” The segment, which airs every weekday morning at 8:45 am on the popular Santa Barbara station, also combines talking with a local musician about their ideas about the role music […]

Persevering Through the Pandemic with Performances
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

The stated purpose of the Lois & Walter Capps Project is “Connecting our community through authentic and essential dialogue,” but its mission comes down to an even simpler three-word mantra, said president and executive director Todd Capps: “Bringing Us Together.” That encompasses all of the project’s enterprises from Common Table – which began a few […]

My Corona – Local Doctor Contracts the Disease
By Mitchell Kriegman   |   April 9, 2020

Being alone in self-quarantine, as many of us are to one degree or another, isn’t easy. Being alone facing a raging coronavirus infection, even with loved ones nearby, is something everyone can’t help contemplating or perhaps doing their best to avoid thinking about. It’s a bridge we’ll cross too, if we find ourselves there. Dr. […]