Montecito Miscellany

Monte ito Miscellany by Richard Mineards

SBYC Season Sets Sail Richard covered the Royal Family for Britain’s Daily Mirror and Daily Mail, and was an editor on New York Magazine. He was also a national anchor on CBS, a commentator on ABC Network News, gossip on The Joan Rivers Show and Geraldo Rivera, host on E! TV, a correspondent on the syndicated show Extra, a commentator on the KTLA Morning News and Entertainment Tonight. He moved to Montecito 12 years ago.

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Richard Nahas, Jo Sadecki, Linda Stirling, Leigh Cashman, Carol Kallman, Anna Molyneux, Julie Hinkle, Anna Friederich, and Lil Nelson celebrating the new SBYC season (photo by Priscilla)

It was a sea of navy blue blazers and Nantucket red pants when the Santa Barbara Yacht Club marked its 148th opening day as the second oldest sailing mecca on the West Coast. Executive chef Michael Blackwell laid on a culinary display of food, accompanied by gallons of mimosas, that would have made Belshazzar green with envy as Teen Star winner Andie Bronstad, 15, a San Marcos High student, sang the Star Spangled

MISCELLANY Page 184

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MONTECITO JOURNAL8 “I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.” – Ludwig van Beethoven “TO BE OR NOT TO BE” . . . IS NOT THE QUESTION T his article was to alert you “why big trees fall over because of wind, rain and fungus, and how you can prevent it.” But then I fi gured, if you have a large stump or roots in your front yard now, you don’t need me to tell you what you should have done.

So I’m going to write about problems coming up. Yes, avocados should be cut back hard to encourage interior growth, but any dead wood left on the tree is detrimental, and of course painting the end of the cut with black tree paint is very harmful.

Eugenia hedges should be sprayed and deep irrigated to fi ght off the syllid. (A spray license is required by the agriculture commissioner). Sycamores are in very serious trouble unless they get a leaf system soon. How do you encourage that to happen? Call and we’ll talk.

And last, because of the very cold winter, fruit trees are going to be prolifi c. You may think that’s good, but do you really want 10,000 plums, apricots, and peaches, etc., etc., on your trees? What should you do, and when should you do it? That is the question. Website is tlctrees.net THE MASTER OF TREE SOLVING PROBLEMS C E R T I F I E D A R B O R I S T TLC TREES Gene Tyburn Certifi ed Arborist for 40 years 969-4057 genetyburn@yahoo.com Y our Editorial and article “The Long now of Santa Barbara” (March 5, 2020) provide a great service to our community. You’ve touched on all the hot-button issues that will determine how we grow and adapt to a changing world: density, cars, parking, building height, views, retail, community. I loved the renderings of future city-scapes, but one figure captures the essence of the problem (p. 33): “Living Space vs. Parking Space.” Parking for two cars takes the space that could house two to four people, and that’s not even counting the amplifying factor of building height. Think of those 15,000 commuters a day who drive to Santa Barbara to make our food, clean our houses, haul our trash, heal our sick, teach our children, police our streets, and put out our fires; they could live in those homes, be part of our community, and populate empty State Street. We prioritize cars over people, and we pay for the price for that priority. Residents complain that Santa Barbara is already too crowded and cannot afford more growth. But how many times have you stood on a street and thought: there are just too many people here? Probably never. But you’ve certainly seen streets choked with parked cars, or the 101 so chocka-block that you can’t get from point A to B, or cars whizzing past so fast you’re scared to cross the street or put your children on a bike.

I’ve lived here over 30 years, and the population of the city has barely increased. Why? Because we have barely built any new multi-family residential housing in that time period. Whether the argument is lack of water or parking, or increased traffic, or blocked views, the anti-growth forces are out in force to stop multi-family construction. And what about those who’d benefit from that future housing; well, they have no voice, and they can’t even argue their side at the planning meetings. All those supposed arguments against growth and high density residential construction are solvable; desalination can provide water, active and public transportation can reduce the need for cars, and thoughtful infilling of buildings can frame views, as your architectural charrette drawings demonstrate.

So what’s the way forward? Those of us who live and own here, and who already enjoy all the benefits associated with that easy lifestyle, have to advocate for: 1) growth and increased density in downtown Santa Barbara; and 2) reduced priority for drivers, which might include less parking, lower speed limits, and designated car-free city blocks. Yes, it will likely mean we lose some of the ease we currently enjoy in driving right up to our favorite downtown venues. But in the end it will create a better outcome for our community at large, meaning everyone who both lives and works here, and will lead to a brighter future for Santa Barbara. David W. Lea Santa Barbara Land of the Free?

I enjoy your writing and believe you do an excellent job as editor for the MJ. However, one thing stood out in your most recent editorial re Santa Barbara visionary, Pearl Chase: “Most people believe it is the job of government to solve our larger societal problems.” Alas, that that may be true, but I strongly oppose that concept. The founders did not intend for the government to meddle in societal matters. They strove to establish a government that would limit itself to protecting life, freedom and property. Thomas Jefferson: “The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits,” and “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” And Alexander Hamilton: “It’s not tyranny we desire, it’s a just, limited government.” And James Madison: “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one...”

The founders believed societal matters should be left to free people.

Mid-19th century Frenchmen, Frederic Bastiat and Alexis De Tocqueville understood and articulated most persuasively the problems with an overreaching government. They both had witnessed the spirit-crushing, thieving nightmare of socialism in France (the short step after progressivism). De Tocqueville traveled and wrote about his mostly If you have something you think Montecito should know about, or wish to respond to something you read in the Journal, we want to hear from you. Please send all such correspondence to: Montecito Journal, Letters to the Editor, 1206 Coast Village Circle, Suite H, Montecito, CA. 93108. You can also FAX such mail to: (805) 969-6654, or E-mail to letters@montecitojournal.net LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Future of Santa Barbara

favorable experiences in an emerging United States. Bastiat admired the U.S. as best observing limited government, with but two major exceptions that he warned could lead to our downfall: slavery and tariffs.

Walter Williams (http://walterewilliams.com/) quotes and describes Bastiat this way:

Frederic Bastiat, a French economist and member of the French National Assembly, lived from 1801 to 1850. He had great admiration for our country, except for our two faults – slavery and tariffs. He said, “Look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person’s liberty and property.” If Bastiat were alive today, he would not have that same level of admiration. The U.S. has become what he fought against for most of his short life.

Bastiat observed that “when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” You might ask, “What did Bastiat mean by ‘plunder?’” Plunder is when someone forcibly takes the property of another. That’s private plunder. What he truly railed against was legalized plunder, and he told us how to identify it. He said: “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” De Tocqueville wrote: “...After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

Lastly, I’d like to compliment Ashleigh Brilliant on his philosophic-literary-irony and humor laced (or laden) columns. Ashleigh’s warm, thoughtful writing reminds me of the witty, agreeable (better described as

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