This week, Montecito became a little safer. On page 14 you can read about the ALERTCalifornia camera just installed on TV Hill that will provide 24/7 “eyes” on the Santa Barbara Front Country and eventually alert firefighters to new fire starts using artificial intelligence technology. But before you read about this exciting and potentially lifesaving […]
There were many COVID casualties, beyond the loss of precious life. Like ceremony. So many of us were forced to say goodbye to loved ones without the spiritual and emotional closure that comes with gathering closely with community to celebrate the lives that were lost. One such loss that hit hard here was the passing […]
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This year the Montecito Journal co-hosted a handful of Zoom candidate forums, all involving local school board races for which Montecito residents will have a vote (the one exception is the SBUSD area #1 seat, for which a smaller portion of our readers will have the chance to weigh in). This is not to say […]
From the day our children are born, we begin the process of teaching them everything they need to know so that one day they can leave home. And then, they do. Little ingrates! Like so many parents, I took my firstborn daughter to college last week. I flew across the country and dropped her off […]
Humor is often born of pain. So last month, when Justice Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked, sounding the death knell for the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade, it was no surprise when Stephen Colbert joked of the irony that this decision was written by […]
As a world and as a county, we face monumental challenges: climate, poverty, education, income inequality, systemic racism and sexism, houselessness, mental health, inflation, access to healthcare, etc… It’s a too-long list of issues that are intersectional and deep. And the only way for our leaders to even begin to unpack such a multiverse of […]
The Russian military strategy for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has been to unleash a campaign of genocide, defined as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation (or ethnic group) with the aim of destroying that nation (or group).” A deliberate attempt to maximize civilian casualties using targeted cruise […]
Pierre Lafond passed away this past Sunday at the age of 92, after 60 years in Santa Barbara enterprise overlapping a 25-year career in architecture. Pierre Lafond and his wife, Wendy Foster, developed a number of shops in Montecito and in greater Santa Barbara. And they were vintners and early adopters of Central Coast viticulture, […]
I reconnected with showbiz vets James Widdoes and Tim Matheson on the passing of Ivan Reitman, the prolific director and producer and founder of the wildly successful production company The Montecito Picture Company. All four of us (including Reitman) are connected through the National Lampoon, a magazine where I was once editor but which has […]
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We love our pets. They’re family members. And the dozen or so years most of us get with our canine loved ones fly by too quickly. But when one dies prematurely and unexpectedly, it’s a whole other level of painful and tragic. No one understands this more than a local Montecito family, who brought their […]
The last time I sat face-to-face with Congressman Salud Carbajal was in September of 2020, when we were all optimistic that the pandemic’s end was in sight. That was three years into his stint in Congress. And as honored as he was to be representing this district in the People’s House, he nonetheless seemed burdened […]
I’ve lived in Santa Barbara and Summerland for nearly 50 years and while I love our community, the continued lack of transparency needs to end. The current gas station remodeling in Summerland is a microcosm of the darkness that shrouds many County-decisions. More importantly, it demonstrates how our 1,500-person community is being run: In the […]
As we face the new year, it is lost on no one that those of us fortunate to have made it this far are heading into our third year living with COVID. At the same time, we are careening toward another all-important midterm election inside a nation seemingly as politically divided as ever. In addition, […]
It may have slipped by you with everything else that’s been going on lately — the new variant and two national murder cases — that this year was our country’s 400th Thanksgiving! And all was going well at my family’s annual Turkey Day celebration at my sister’s home in Los Angeles. Until my sister made […]
