Letters

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 The Uglification of Montecito

MONTECITO JOURNAL10 “Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.” – Henry David Thoreau SUMMER SALE 1470 EAST VALLEY ROAD M O N T E C I T O , C A • ( 805) 695-0220 n o s p e c i a l o r d e r s o r l ayaway s . we will be closed TU esday j U ly 21 s T in preparaTion. 25 – 75% OFF on selec Ted i Tems JULY 22 N D

THRU AUG 8TH

We miss all of you… To our customers, our neighbors, people walking by our windows, to the community at large stay healthy!

We are excited to announce that we are building our website and it should be up and running soon. If you would like to be notified of its’ launching, please call 805-695-0220 ( leave a voice message ) or email us at info@imagineartfulthings.com

While we are closed, during this difficult time, we are offering 20-30% off everything in the store with personal shopping via video consultation. Just give us a call. Curb side service or free local delivery. Free shipping on clothing purchases over $200. E ver since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 – passed “to promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies” – effectively usurped the rights of local communities to police the crap someone or some company wanted to throw up on a pole or wire in order to make a few quick bucks, Montecito’s roadways have become eyesores, littered with junk put up by AT&T, Verizon, Cox Cable, Crown Castle, Fiber Tel, and who knows how many more inconsiderate and/or voracious entities.

And, because of the Telecommunications Act, every elected and/or unelected official can throw his or her hands up and claim there is nothing to be done. That their “hands are tied.”

As a 35-year resident and founder (but no longer owner/publisher) of Montecito Journal, I am appalled that we (and in retrospect, I) have simply sat by as these hordes of telecommunications companies devour the byways of our-once simple village. Wherever there are utility poles, along with them are a proliferation of cables and wires that get larger, more intrusive, bulkier, and, naturally, uglier. Utility poles have been transformed from indistinct wooden crosses into fat 40-foot-high metal and heavily laden behemoths. Our thoroughfares featuring myriad wires and cables running helter-skelter across and along them, resemble those scrambled roads one sees in documentaries of Third-World countries, rather than those of an upscale First-World “semi-rural” community.

At some point there will be so many wires hanging from pole to pole we’ll be able to hold a community limbo contest. On Middle Road, I count seven heavy cables strung along, all with various large and odious fittings, “snowshoes,” and connectors either propped up or embracing the already thick cables. Hot Springs Road, East Valley Road, School House Road, Sycamore Canyon, and... well, virtually every byway, big and small, in Montecito, is corrupted by these impediments.

If you haven’t taken a walk lately along East Valley Road between Hot Springs and Sycamore Canyon for example, where a number of our valued residents lost their lives in the recent debris flow and where a great deal of work is still required to remedy the roadway, even more cables and wires have been attached to existing and newer poles.

Shouldn’t we – or the Montecito Association, or our First District Supervisor, or even our U.S. Representative – have insisted upon the undergrounding of utility and telecommunications equipment as a requirement of renewed service there and elsewhere? Paid for, of course, by the companies that expect to profit from these connections and not Montecito taxpayers.

I do believe residents still have the ability to protest if these intrusions can be shown to mar the “aesthetics” of a community. At this point, those poles, cables, wires, and devices have practically devoured the aesthetics of much of Montecito.

Maybe I’m wrong, but if so, isn’t it about time we either abolish the Planning Commissions that look the other way, the Architectural Review Boards that can “advise” homeowners what to plant in their front yards but have no thoughts about the aesthetic degradation taking place on our roadways?

I do believe also that, if the Montecito Association continues to look away from this ongoing assault, it too should close up shop.

Sincerely fed up, James Buckley Montecito

Simpatico

I am glad Mr. Brooks has chosen to skip reading the Montecito Journal. That way I will not have to read his “ignorant, vicious ranting.” What are these American values he is so proud of? It certainly is not standing with his fellow Americans in a time of crisis and great hardship. Strange that he would use the work vicious. That is how I would describe his attack on a point of view not his own. And why would that be? Does he think that is the American way? That those are values we hold dear as Americans? No, it is a favor he has done the rest of the readers of the Journal.

Carolyn Quackenbush

Deterioration of Democracy

At last, the MJ speaks for the core values of our democracy, not just for the great concentration camp of wealthy people in Montecito.

I consider myself one of them. As an immigrant from war-torn Europe, I have been “privileged” from the moment I was admitted to UCLA at $75.00 a semester 1959-1961. Such a “free” education made it possible for me to embark on a well-paid career leading to marriages to men who were equally “privileged” at public Universities. Both husband #1, a banker, and #2, a lawyer, have had great success surpassing that of their own parents. This was during the ‘60s and the ‘70s while still paying high income taxes and leading comfortable life-styles.

Mine was a typical hard-working immigrant family that barely scraped by, but agreed to allow me to attend the higher education I so cherished.

It changed all of our lives, not only materially, but spiritually and emotionally. My parents received their citizenship in 1952, exactly five years after our arrival. One of my best memories was to accompany them to the polls so that they could cast their votes for Dwight Eisenhower, who, like Churchill, was revered for “saving” Europe from the Nazis.

I had to come along because my English at 14 was better than theirs. I had helped them register and accompanied them to the voting place just down the street in South Gate, California, at a modest little neighborhood church.

My mother, the more religious German Jew, balked at entering a church. Papa and I just laughed – we knew she couldn’t not vote for her hero, General Dwight Eisenhower. Like millions in the post-War era, they “liked Ike.” (I had wanted Adlai Stevenson.) This voting habit has been a part of my family ever since. I not