Tag archives: covid
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” – Alfred Austin Couldn’t we all use some nurturing right now? Planting and harvesting your own food is rewarding and even more so now, with fewer […]
Montecito may oddly benefit from California’s post-COVID grand reopening. Coast Village Road may be one of the few dining, shopping, and hotel areas that is elegant, energetic, and well designed for the next new normal. You know the Pandemic New Normal – that’s the normal after the Debris Flow New Normal and that other new […]
After nearly 12 hours of discussing the proposed roundabout at San Ysidro Road last Wednesday, the Montecito Planning Commission agreed to continue their hearing on the project until June 10, in order to give County staff time to formulate additional conditions to the project. In what Commissioner Susan Keller called Montecito’s biggest land use and […]
The real estate market in Montecito and Santa Barbara remains strong, despite major changes to the way properties are marketed and viewed. Sales in Montecito are up from last year in May; as of press time 16 homes have sold in May, with five full days still left in the month. This is compared to […]
Clarinetist Narek Arutyunian was supposed to make his Ojai debut on May 3 for the Chamber On The Mountain series that honors the traditional while celebrating the innovative. However the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans, so instead Arutyunian recorded a concert from his home in Queens, New York, exclusively for Chamber On The Mountain donors, […]
Having your CEO depart in the middle of a pandemic that caused cancellation of the rest of the season’s concerts probably isn’t the best thing for building the confidence of the local classical music community. Fortunately, the Santa Barbara Symphony was able to announce its Interim CEO, Kathryn Martin, even before the then-current Executive Director/CEO […]
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 […]
Roxy Lawler had already been in the grocery business for nearly 15 years when she and her family took over Montecito Village Grocery in January 2017. But in the last three years alone, the store has experienced not one but two once-in-a-lifetime (or perhaps once-per-millennium) disasters: the devastating January 9, 2018 debris flows and this […]
In a time when many nonprofit organizations are struggling to raise their usual funds, Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation, which assists and supports families dealing with childhood cancer along the Central Coast, has pivoted to raise much needed funds for their families. TBCF has announced a new song, “Stronger Than You Know,” is available for purchase […]
If you’ve walked along Coast Village Road in the past weeks, you may have stopped to peruse the menu posted at the Montecito Inn; the hotel’s new restaurant, Coast & Olive, is set to open for takeout orders in the coming weeks. The eatery, which is run and managed by the Copus family, the owners […]
Last week, the County of Santa Barbara published a local supplement to the State’s guidelines for reopening various industry sectors following over two months of stay-at-home orders. The Reopening in a Safe Environment Guide, aka RISE Guide, is a roadmap that describes when and how the County can reopen businesses safely. The Guide, which is […]
Just in time to celebrate the eatery’s 23rd anniversary on Coast Village Road, Cava owner Carlos Lopez-Hollis says he is thrilled to be reopening his doors after a two-month pandemic-related hiatus. The restaurant opened Wednesday, May 20, and is open noon to 8 pm, seven days a week for take-out and curbside pickup. “It feels […]
SBCC School of Extended Learning’s summer session got underway earlier this week, but it’s never too late to join the ongoing classes, particularly now that all of their offerings are online. Among the selections in the Spirituality, Self-Management and Psychology sections are beginning and intermediate sections of “Nature and Self-Healing,” where students can explore the […]
Also taking to the great outdoors this week is the Santa Barbara Ecstatic Dance Co-op, which features music programmed by members of the community who are encouraged to express themselves through their choices of songs, rhythms, and beats. Its last dance took place at Divinitree Yoga studio the first Friday in March before bowing to […]
Carpinteria Qigong/tai chi teacher Jessica Kolbe was one of the last to shut down in personal classes, only giving up her gatherings that were fighting the spread of COVID-19 through social distancing on Carpinteria State Beach when the statewide stay-at-home orders became official in mid-March. She’s been offering online classes ever since, with the more […]
My condolences to Santa Barbara rocker Dave Crosby whose son, Beckett Cypher, 21, has died after struggling with opioid addiction. The musician, 78, was the sperm donor for singer Melissa Etheridge and former partner, Julie Cypher, and addressed the tragic passing in several short messages on social media, saying that he’d taken an active part […]
Although it houses just 1,162 people behind bars – not to mention a healthy supply of razor wire – Lompoc Federal Prison already has no less than 900 inmates who have tested positive for COVID-19. That’s not only well more than 70 percent of the prison’s population, it’s also roughly half the number of people […]
This month, roughly 4,600 households in Montecito and Summerland received a special insert along with their monthly water bill. “WATER RATE UPDATE!” the flyer declared in urgent all caps, adding that the “Montecito Water District has Plans for Delivering a Secure Water Future.” Stating that its customers “want their drinking water to come from local, […]
In the pre-pandemic era, last weekend would have marked the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival’s 60th annual event, a downhome acoustic instrument extravaganza that is rivaled around these parts only by Santa Barbara’s own similarly-themed Fiddle Convention and Festival, which still has high hopes of holding its event in the fall. Instead, Topanga […]
The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics has streamed more than 30 hours of videos of events by KITP’s visiting scientists since it launched the series of curated talks from its archives in mid-March. New videos are added each Wednesday, with a recent week’s interesting entries including “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car […]
